The Traitor: Hunter Circles Series Book Two

by Jessica Gunn

  Shawn had the last demon pinned against a pillar, drawing his blood-soaked Fire Circle knife from the demon’s chest. Despite having no magik like he was supposed to, the guy could fight. I’d give him that.

  After dropping a cedo match onto the demon, Shawn cleaned his blade on a nearby couch. The demons had made this dank warehouse quite the home, with even an old TV set up in their makeshift “living room.”

  “Well, that was moderately easy,” Krystin said dryly as she too cleaned her blade, then folded it back down for easy concealment.

  I looked to my cousin Rachel. “You okay?”

  Rachel nodded. “Yeah. This pack was a genius idea, Krystin. It makes everything so much easier.”

  Krystin’s knowledge, aided by her Blackwood witch heritage, had given us the ability to temporarily take down Lady Azar and save Riley. Too bad we still had miles to go before Riley was actually safe.

  Since the beginning of time, no individual with the Power—an ability to wield both ether and elemental-based magiks at the same time, something that’d normally kill everyone else—had been safe. Most of those individuals had been hunted down and killed.

  But I wouldn’t let that happen to Riley.

  For now, the United States-Canadian border and an easy understanding between Darkness and the Hunter Circles was keeping Riley from being tracked up North. It wasn’t a surefire guarantee and it sure as hell wouldn’t mean much for long, but I’d take it for now.

  Krystin grinned proudly at Rachel. “Anything that helps you. You’re easily one of the most powerful water-elementals I’ve ever met.”

  “I assume you’ve met many, too,” I said.

  Krystin nodded. “You bet. Family gatherings are oh-so-fun.”

  My focus traveled from the conversation to watching Shawn pace the room like he was looking for more demons and obviously coming up short. Jaffrin hadn’t said the nest would be big, and I’d definitely expected more than a half dozen demons, but their power made up for their lack of numbers.

  “There aren’t any more,” I said to Shawn. “The place is clear.”

  He stopped pacing and glanced at me. “Do demons in Boston generally ignore eviction notices?”

  “Only when they think it won’t be enforced,” Nate answered. “And clearly these guys didn’t.”

  Rachel slipped her pack back onto her shoulders and adjusted the straps. “We made quick work of them, though.”

  “I say we take the rest of the night off,” said Krystin as she stretched out her back. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m exhausted.”

  Shawn frowned. Nate clapped Shawn’s shoulder, then headed for the door. For as much as Krystin and Shawn had trained, Krystin still hadn’t uncovered a single drop of his magik. Jaffrin had assured us there wasn’t a mix up. Shawn was indeed the other half of the Alzan prophecy. They were the Son and Daughter named inside of it. And yet… nothing.

  How was Jaffrin even so sure Shawn was the other half of this prophecy, anyway?

  “Then let’s go,” I said. My team needed rest, and I needed to get onto another job as soon as the coast was clear to teleportante out of our house.

  Krystin gave me a fake, ridiculously sarcastic salute and led the way out of the warehouse. I was sure the two of us would butt heads until the day we both retired from the Fire Circle. But all things considered, I was happy to have Krystin on my team. She was a fantastic leader in her own right, even if her arrogance got her in as much trouble as my temper got me.

  My wobbly legs, leftover side effects from the dharksa dose, carried me out of the abandoned warehouse behind my team. We were almost all the way down the street and back onto a main road when someone’s phone rang.

  Krystin slipped a hand into her leather jacket and plucked out her phone. Lit by a streetlight above the team, her eyes narrowed. She swiped her finger across the screen and spoke into it. “Drew? It’s almost midnight, what’s—?”

  Her eyes widened as she started walking back toward me, waving her arm around in the air, as though trying to gather us up with a lasso. “We’ll be right there. We’re already out. Drew? Drew!”

  Drew was Krystin’s second cousin and a bartender at Hunter’s Guild, a neutral ground between Darkness and the Hunter Circles. He’d helped us track down the location of Shadow Crest’s lair when Riley had been missing.

  Krystin’s horrified expression, amplified by the light shining from above, met mine and she charged toward me. “We need to go to the Guild. Now.”

  “We have to check in with Jaffrin,” Shawn said. “The mission’s done—”

  “You don’t understand! They’re under attack.” Krystin’s eyes pleaded with me. “Ben, Hunter’s Guild isn’t supposed to be attackable. The protection magiks there, the owners… We have to go.” She held my gaze and I knew in my gut that no matter what my call was, she’d go to Drew’s rescue.

  I couldn’t fault her for wanting to protect family. But getting involved in a fight at Hunter’s Guild could prove fatal just by igniting my hand in lightning. The protection magiks the owners had instituted severely punished anyone who caused violence, often with painful backlash magiks.

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go. But until we’re sure about the protection magiks being disabled—”

  “Don’t use our powers, yes, we know,” Krystin said, hurrying to the center of our group. “It’s probably best no one attacks at all unless we know who our opponent is. Buckle up.”

  We all laid one hand on top of someone else’s like some awkward team huddle, and Krystin used teleportante to bring us to Hunter’s Guild.

  Chapter 2

  Krystin

  Usually when you teleported to Hunter’s Guild, the teleportante word-magik bounced off the protection magiks surrounding the establishment and dumped you outside of the “shield.” But this time, I felt no such bump and my team was deposited directly in the middle of the inn.

  The freezing New Hampshire winter air swept in and draped me in cold. Wind whipped at my face despite the fact that we were inside the building. I looked up, searching for the source of the mega-draft, and… the ceiling was gone. Blown off completely in favor of a clear, star-filled nighttime sky.

  Smoke filled my nose, sharp with the scent of still-burning fires. Dust and debris floated in the air, falling out of collapsed support beams. The bar where I’d gotten many drinks over the years had been crushed, split directly in half by a beam lying across it.

  And the auras… the entire place was awash in a singular, spreading dark blue aura that raged like an ethereal fire across the remains. Someone powerful had been here.

  As I walked, the aura seemed to sweep down to greet me in tendrils. I swatted them away and followed the destruction to the bleeding and dying bodies scattered across the floor. Moans and cries of pain slipped through the air, unanswered, as it appeared our team was the only other people in the room. And probably soon to be the only ones alive.

  “Help the wounded,” Ben said as he stepped carefully around overturned tables and chairs. Blood coated most of the furniture, a macabre, still-wet paint job. A coppery scent hung in the air, overpowering the smoke and fires.

  “Oh, god.” Rachel gasped, her wide eyes scanning the area, not resting on any one horrendous vision for too long.

  I didn’t blame her. I’d seen the worst of what demons could do. Mutilated bodies. Puddles of blood. Dark magik that they’d allowed to twist their forms and magik into something more. But this…

  We spread out across Hunter’s Guild, picking through the rubble and searching for survivors. But there weren’t many, and none that’d survive for much longer. Still, with each new body, I didn’t find Drew.

  “Where are you?” I whispered, a hand on my forehead as I surveyed the destruction. Sweat trickled down my neck, raising goosebumps that tidal-waved down my back. He had probably been behind the bar when the fight had broken out.

  But who’d started that fight? And, more importantly: how?

&nbs
p; I made my way to the bar and climbed over the wood, liquor bottles, and glasses. That’s where I found him.

  My heart dropped and breath hitched as my eyes fell over Drew’s crumpled body. The beam lay across him vertically, as if he hadn’t been able to get out of the way in time… and because of the protection magiks, he wouldn’t have been able to teleportante out of the way if the fight had broken out before the spells were taken down.

  Oh, god.

  I knelt beside my cousin, blood trickling down the side of his face. A pool of red surrounded his middle and legs. His phone rested inches from his hand, still illuminated from our call. The screen dimmed as I wrapped my shaking, clammy hand around his limp one. My throat closed along with my eyes, and though I needed to ground myself with a breath, I only succeeded in seizing my lungs with the scents of heavy battle.

  My chest heaved, my heart splitting open as tears streamed down my face. Drew. Sweet Drew. My cousin. We’d lived under no illusion that being in this war meant having a long life, but not like this. Not him.

  I lifted my gaze from Drew’s crumpled form to the Guild at large. To the devastation and fire, the two dozen other bodies, both Hunter and demon alike. Whatever had attacked the Guild had somehow gotten through the protection magiks. It would have had to have taken someone that powerful to kill everyone inside. And anyone that powerful wasn’t someone I wanted to tangle with.

  “We need to call for help,” Rachel said, still shocked frozen. She hadn’t moved an inch, but her gaze roamed across the room. “Get EMTs for the wounded.”

  “There won’t be many for long.” Shawn knelt beside another mangled body, reaching for their neck. He shook his head. “Whoever did this made sure there’d be no survivors.”

  Nate joined Ben near the stairs to the second floor, surveying the area from a higher view. “What’s the point? The message is pretty clear. The Guild’s been the only space of peace between our sides for a thousand years.”

  Destroying Hunter’s Guild like this wasn’t a show of power. It was a message from someone who laughed in the face of it. But even Aloysius, creator of Darkness, abided by the Guild’s rules. That meant whoever had done this didn’t fear Aloysius. Who would be that insane?

  Giyano. The idea crossed my mind and sifted out just as quickly. Even he wouldn’t be this stupid, and all he’d wanted these past few weeks was to get to me. He’d succeeded in that, not that I’d let the rest of the team know. He had me. Destroying Hunter’s Guild would be overkill.

  A door creaked open on the second floor. The sound screamed through the deadly silent air inside the remnants of the building. Ben and Nate froze mid-step, their knife-hands at the ready. I stood straighter and readied to lash out with my magik. Whoever did this deserved the beat down my team would be giving them.

  A whine broke the tension, followed by a woman keening in pain and anguish. The sound struck right to my chest and squeezed my heart. My breath hitched as a man and woman piled out from behind a door to one of the inn rooms. They were older, maybe in their sixties or seventies, with wrinkled, kind faces, wiry gray hair, and bloodstained clothes. I recognized them, but only vaguely.

  The man was clutching his side and managed three steps toward Nate and Ben before having to lean against the wall. The woman rushed to his side and pulled away his clutched hand. A nasty, deep wound lay underneath.

  “Stop,” Ben said. “Not another step.”

  I sprinted across the room to the stairs, climbing them two at a time. When the woman looked up and made eye contact with Ben, the memory of these two rang clear in my mind. “Don’t, Ben.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me. “What? Why? They’re the only survivors.”

  “Worked my last magik to save us,” the woman said. She frowned down at her husband’s wound. “Too little good, I’m afraid. I’m not the magik-user I once was.”

  She didn’t have burgundy eyes, but I’d never known the background of the couple who owned Hunter’s Guild. The original owners, supposedly. Which placed both of them well above the seventy-year-old age range. To be that old, they’d have to be demons. A demon’s magik twisted a human’s body, allowing their lifespans to elongate to the degree of their power. Not quite immortal, but close.

  “They own the Guild,” I said as I brushed past my teammates and joined the woman. “What happened here?” I yanked off my jacket and balled it up, then replaced her hand with my own on the man’s wound. He was bleeding profusely, red blood seeping out the corners of my makeshift compress, but if we got him to a hospital right away, he might live.

  “One demon,” the man croaked, his gray eyes searching mine. “One single demon broke through our protection spells and did… this.” His eyes tightened, tears welling up within them. “Our entire lives… have been dedicated to creating a place… of peace—even if just for a few nights—for both sides.”

  “Something that’s been appreciated,” Ben said, stepping forward. “Who did this exactly?”

  The man shook his head and the woman’s frown deepened. “We don’t know,” she said. “The patrons hid us away during the attack to protect us. But it must be someone who feels threatened by peace. It is the only explanation.”

  Someone threatened by peace. The same someone who also didn’t fear Aloysius. The two values seemed incompatible.

  The man swayed beneath my touch and braced himself harder against the wall.

  I worked my shoulder under his. “We need to get you to a hospital. Come on.”

  “But where? No place is safe.” The heartbroken look in his eyes, a mirror of everything he and his wife had worked to build and just lost, broke something inside of me.

  Ben whipped out his phone and dialed someone’s number at record speed. Probably Jaffrin.

  Nate walked over and grabbed a hold of the man. “I got it. I can take him to Boston General.” A quick teleportante, and they’d both be there within seconds. “You’re needed here. The amount of magik on these walls is wigging me out anyway.”

  I arched an eyebrow. Without the protection magiks in place, I hadn’t felt the other magik at first. I’d ignored most of it. But now, the amount of power oozing off of the banister and floors and furniture slammed into me.

  Dark magik. Demon magik. I swallowed hard.

  “I’ll take a look around,” I said. The weight of the power wasn’t like the oppressive temptation of a cianza, but it still reached to the deepest, darkest parts of my soul. The areas touched by Giyano’s magik.

  “Start with that,” Nate said, nodding to the first floor.

  “What?” I turned and glanced over the banister at the floor below, not sure what Nate was referring to. What we’d all missed upon walking in. What no one had noticed because it’d been burned into the ground, covered by bodies.

  But from above, I could just make out something—a jagged, unreadable symbol charred into the wooden floor of Hunter’s Guild.

  A calling card.

  Chapter 3

  Ben

  I walked to the banister to get a better view of whatever had made Krystin look so confused. From above, the mark burned into the Guild’s floor didn’t look like much. At most, a few scribblings made by an angry child. “What is that?”

  “Looks like cuneiform.” Shawn joined me at the railing. “At least I think so. I studied some archeology in college. The writing looks vaguely familiar.”

  “Really?” Krystin asked, peering up at him. “Archeology?”

  Shawn shook his head. “It was an elective.”

  Oh, for god’s sake. “Jaffrin said he’d be here right away. He’ll know.” Well, if he was worth his value as a Circle Leader, he’d know. There were plenty of demons around in the early world, some of which were supposedly still alive. I didn’t want to meet any of them, but if this mark had been left by one of those demons… “So there’s a good chance an Old One did this?”

  Krystin nodded as she backed away from the railing one slow step at a time. “Probably. But I don�
��t understand why. Hunter’s Guild is one of the very few neutral areas left in the world. Until tonight, Aloysius, ruler and creator of all demons, could have waltzed in for a drink and no one would have touched him.”

  “And yet…” I turned my focus from the charred cuneiform mark on the floor to the scene at large. So much blood. Too much death. Sure, our team had just come off a mission that had resulted in demon deaths, but that was different. Wasn’t it? These demons and Hunters and witches, they thought they were safe here. They thought they had every right to be in this building.

  And then someone, something, had come through and murdered them all.

  I blinked, watching the area, and in the next moment, Jaffrin stood in the center of chaos’s remains. Avery’s team appeared behind him a heartbeat later. I closed my eyes and exhaled.

  Most days, there wasn’t a ton about Jaffrin that I liked. I respected him and his role in the Fire Circle, sure. But he’d made a lot of bad calls, and now that we knew he’d jerked Krystin around for a good portion of her life, it didn’t endear me to him in the slightest. That said, just his presence, knowing someone with more authority than me had arrived, was worth its weight in gold.

  I called out to him, “You can get a better view of the mark from upstairs.”

  Jaffrin was dressed in his usual dark jeans and dark red suit jacket, but I could count on one hand how many times I’d ever seen him brandish his weapon. He held his own Fire Circle knife at his side, a bit more gold than ours, the fire emblem dancing along the handle. Sometimes I wondered if it was an illusion, or if these knives were enchanted by magik. Jaffrin clutched the handle, knuckles turning white.

  Huh. If Jaffrin was worried enough to arm himself, but did so with a weapon, did that mean he didn’t have magik after all? We’d long assumed he did but never used it, but… Interesting.