by Jessica Gunn
“Well, at least it’s something,” Krystin commented. She swung the backpack off her shoulders, dug out two pairs of binoculars, and handed one to me.
“Thanks.” I grabbed them and settled in against the cold ground so there was no chance anyone from below would see me peering down at them. “Recon is a go.”
Krystin hunkered down next to me and brought her binoculars to her eyes. “Seems like a normal old house to me.”
“That’s always what they want you to think. Odds are this is nothing more than a demon nest that’s gotten out of control. Let’s move in.”
Krystin and I moved to flank the house, with Shawn, Rachel, and Nate heading straight for it. We moved on light feet, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. Being stealthy wasn’t by any means our strong point, and no matter what we tried, it seemed that, in the dead of night in this cold forest, every twig arose to impede our path.
By the time Krystin and I had gotten into position at the back end of the house, the others had texted me.
“They’re ready,” I said.
But Krystin had frozen beside me. Anything that made Krystin freeze up terrified me to the bone. I looked over and saw her eyes wide, unblinking, her mouth agape.
The house was small enough to see around to the front from here, where the others would no doubt be able to watch this same scene unfold.
A group of demons teleported to the front of the house. A fresh teleportante from somewhere unknown. The group was mostly male with one female in front carrying a giant shimmering chain that led to somewhere in the middle of their party of a dozen or so members.
“Wha—” I started.
Krystin pressed a hand flat against my chest, the silent command clear. What had her so…?
Auras. I’d forgotten Krystin could see them, a byproduct of her Blackwood heritage. All demons carried auras, a sort of floating cloud of light that followed them around. The brighter and stronger the aura, the more powerful the demon—or so I was told. If Krystin said to wait, these guys must have had strong ones. Auras powerful enough to warrant not attacking.
I gulped.
“Let’s get a move on,” the woman ordered, her voice strong and sure. She wore dark pants, a deep purple top, and a fine, long jacket. From where I crouched behind a large boulder, it was hard to make out more than that, though the bright moonlight bounced off the jewelry at her neck and wrists, bracelets hanging over a set of black gloves.
“Yes, mistress,” one of the men in the group said, tugging on the chain coming from the woman’s hands.
The group started to move, but someone screamed from the middle of their party. “No! Please! Don’t do this, we’re not—”
Someone surged backward, making a run for the trees. My muscles tensed, feet poised to move and intercept. Krystin’s palm pressed harder, some hidden force keeping me in place—her telekinesis.
“Enough!” shouted the woman. Her hands glowed a bright gray and she yanked on the chain, forcing a middle-aged woman, two men, and a female teenager to take a few awkwardly-large steps toward her or risk falling to their faces. They had their hands bound before them, each a link in the chain the demon woman and her entourage held on to.
My stomach lurched. No… no way. These demons, they were like the ones I’d fought in Boston right after I’d joined my trainer team. They were trafficking… witches, it had to be, to hold for Autumn Fire next year. To turn them into demons, or to use them for life energy to keep other demons alive.
“Witches?” I mumbled as quietly as possible, so as not to draw attention our way. How we’d gone undetected so far, I didn’t understand. Especially Rachel, Shawn, and Nate. Were they seeing this, too? Would they attack before Krystin and I did?
Krystin nodded almost imperceptibly in the dark.
Shit.
Slowly, I reached toward my back to grab my Fire Circle knife. Not that it’d do much against eight powerful demons, but it’d at least give me a sense of control, considering mine was suddenly otherwise spiraling out of the picture.
Krystin’s hand on my chest turned into a fist and she funneled her telekinesis into pushing my feet back an inch in the dirt.
Okay, okay, jeeze, I thought as loudly as I could, hoping that the thoughts would make it through her mental walls. She had spent the last month telling me how loud I was to her telepathy. Maybe she’d hear this, too. Intercept or run?
She didn’t have time to answer, as one of the male witches broke the line again, taking off at full speed to the right. He created fire out of nowhere and set one of the demons alight. The demon cried out as he dropped to the ground and started to roll, trying to put out the flames.
Still, Krystin’s hand held fast on to my chest.
We need to do something, I thought at her.
She shook her head again just as the demon woman—who appeared to be in charge—slammed a fist into the ground. A pillar of earth jutted up out of the mossy undergrowth beneath the man, shredding him… in two. In half, right up the middle.
My stomach roiled and I closed my eyes, blocking out the sickening sight of the two halves of him dropping to the ground with a near-simultaneous thud. The rest of the woman’s captives wailed, screaming out.
“I said enough!” the demon woman bellowed.
She waved two closed fists in the air and the handcuffs holding each witch’s hands flew up and knocked each one of them in the head. The entourage of demons caught them and, at the woman’s command, carried them inside the house.
Stomach churning, sweat beading on my brow, I turned to Krystin, whose chest heaved with heavy breaths. Without a word, she slipped her phone out of her jacket pocket and texted Nate three words: Retreat. Headquarters. NOW.
Chapter 8
Krystin
We landed almost instantaneously back at Fire Circle Headquarters. I tore my arm from Ben’s grip and started pacing up and down the main hallway. This was not good. Not fucking good at all.
“Krystin?” Ben asked, following me with his eyes.
But I didn’t know what to do first: tell them or tell Jaffrin or run as far as possible right now. Away from New England. As far away from Landshaft, the city of demons, and its bounty hunters as humanly possible.
Those poor witches—they’d be held and sacrificed next Autumn Fire, during the time when most captive humans were forcibly transformed into demons. A time of the year when dark magik was at its height. And there was nothing we could have done about it. Anyone who made an enemy of Landshaft soon found themselves with a bounty on their head and assassins on their trail, whether we’d successfully saved those witches from being trafficked or not.
Luckily for us, I was pretty sure I’d gotten the team out of there before we’d been seen.
I rushed down the hall and into the lobby.
Derek, the night administrator, sat behind the front desk, eyebrows scrunched together. “Aren’t you guys supposed to be on a mission right now?”
I leaned over the counter, glaring at him. “Call Jaffrin in. He’s gotta be back by now.”
Derek glanced nervously from me to his computer. “It’s one in the morning.”
“Do I look like I care?” Jaffrin might have set us up. I couldn’t knock that feeling, though I knew it was likely my own bias. But if he didn’t know, he needed to. Right fucking now. “Tell him Landshaft is involved.”
Derek’s eyes bugged wide. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Call Jaffrin,” I shouted. “Now.”
“Krystin, you can’t be serious,” Ben said as Derek made the call.
I trailed back into the hallway, where the rest of my team still stood, now with shocked faces. “Yes. That’s exactly why I pulled the plug. We can’t take them on.”
Ben swallowed hard and ran a hand over his face. “This is…”
“Not good, I know,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Nate asked. “It seemed like a normal house to me. You know, for a demon nest.”
“That
was Tatiana Viynar,” Shawn said, hands clasped behind his back in a military pose. “Head Huntress of Ember witches. She’s known in this area in particular.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “And you know this because?”
“Training, mostly,” Shawn said. “And hearsay. I went through my training period with a handful of Ember witches. They were all told not to go to New Hampshire for this very reason, not to mention the fact that everyone knows the top bounty hunters operate within Landshaft. The Trade isn’t a joke.”
“No one said it was The Trade,” I growled. The Trade was comprised of the bounty hunters specifically responsible for rounding up humans and witches for Autumn Fire. “The point is: we nearly got bounties placed on our own heads tonight. If she or her groupies had seen us, we wouldn’t have made it out of there alive.”
“Why are they operating so close to the Canadian border?” Rachel asked.
I almost didn’t want to know. My worst-case-scenario mind jumped to a terrible possibility. What if they were after Riley?
Landshaft was essentially a demon city founded sometime after the Colonists came to America and was hidden by spell magiks from the normal human eye. It was raised and inhabited by power-hungry demons who participated in all sorts of unseemly activities. Drug dealing, like the dharksa I used to be involved with, and human trafficking to obtain more powers, magik, and money, but also to offer up individuals to be turned into demons. We assumed the Empire of Darkness hoped that if they reached a tipping point in the ratio of demons to everyone, they’d take over the world. And so far, they’d done a good job of working toward that goal.
Now, the city lived in untouched territory, hidden from view and left alone by the Hunter Circles, in the same way that Darkness—even Aloysius himself—never went after any of the Circles’ Headquarter buildings. The resulting bloodbath and escalation of war simply wasn’t worth it, not while we lived in a somewhat easy balance.
Sort of.
It was a gentlemen’s agreement to keep the world from burning.
As for why they were so close to the Canadian border… “It’s possible they’ve always operated there. No one knows the exact location of the demon city.”
“Bullshit,” Shawn said. “Someone has to.”
“No one knew where Shadow Crest laired until Drew had found out, either,” Ben said, glancing over at me.
My fists curled. “Someone might have fed him that information on purpose. Maybe as a way to distract from the plan to attack Hunter’s Guild. Something more than our feud with Lady Azar is going on here.”
There was only one demon I knew that’d feed my cousin information to get us into the position we were in at Shadow Crest’s lair. And I’d kill him the next time I saw him.
Or so I kept telling myself.
The back of my hand throbbed at the thought, an aching pain creeping up my arm. I slipped my hands into my back pockets.
Shawn shook his head and started to pace. “Why they’re there doesn’t matter. The fact that we’ve narrowed down Landshaft’s possible location does.”
“Not that the Fire Circle will ever authorize any mission,” Ben said. “I don’t think even the Ether Head Circle would touch that, and they’ve got some of the most powerful people around.”
“Again,” Shawn said, turning to me. “Bullshit. We’ve got us.”
I looked at him, deadpan. “Right. Me unable to tap into Alzan’s power and you magik-less. That’ll go over real well. Besides, the sheer amount of demonic aura that’s surely lying around that place will debilitate us the second we step foot inside the city’s perimeter.” Or had Mr. Star Pupil forgotten about that?
Aura sickness didn’t happen often, and I’d never experienced it myself. Not even in Shadow Crest’s lair. Maybe if their entire roster had been inside, all hundred or more demons, then we’d have experienced issues. When you had a bunch of demons in one place, the weight of their auras—even if you didn’t see them like I did—crushed the human soul. It made you nauseous, weak. And if you didn’t get out of the area or otherwise escape it, it’d squeeze your soul into nothing. Obliterate it.
Even with Lady Azar and Giyano, two Old Ones, we hadn’t felt it. And the normal demon nests around the city didn’t have enough demons for that. But in Landshaft… I’d always thought it was the main reason the Circles never went after the city. The Powers didn’t have a way to combat aura sickness.
“This is absurd,” Shawn snapped.
My eyes narrowed. “Well, when you have magik that can help us fight the demons there, then you can have an opinion on the matter.” Until then, I didn’t want to hear about any fantasies of epic quests from him. Period.
“Why do you want to go after them so badly?” Nate asked. “You nearly jumped in on your own.”
Ben spun on Shawn. “What?”
“Not like you were around to give orders,” Shawn said.
Ben’s fists balled, but he didn’t otherwise react. Shawn’s words were true—Ben hadn’t been there. We’d been positioned opposite them and, in the dark, there wouldn’t have been a way for Shawn to have seen hand signals. And it wasn’t like my telepathy pushed thoughts into others’ heads.
“Not the point,” Ben said through gritted teeth.
“I had to hold him back,” said Nate as he watched Shawn. “Why’d you almost go in alone?”
“To save those innocents, obviously,” Shawn said, looking at us like we were the thickest idiots in the world. “That’s our job.”
“Not in a fight we can’t win,” I said.
“Are you serious? Did none of you pay attention during training? Our job is to protect others against Darkness, no matter how powerful they are.”
“We would have died, Shawn,” Ben said. “And put a massive target on the Fire Circle. We can’t save innocents if we’re dead or being chased to the ends of the earth by Tatiana Viynar.”
Shawn’s jaw worked so hard, I swore I could hear his molars grinding together. What the hell had him so pissed? Was it really about us retreating? After Tatiana had split that guy in half, there was no way in hell we would have escaped. At all. Then bye-bye, Alzan. Because at one point or another, we had to take that into account too.
Jaffrin appeared in a see-through teleportante shimmer directly in front of us. He was dressed in a button-down shirt and dark slacks and didn’t look nearly as put-together as he usually did. “Derek called. You’ve only been gone for a few hours. What went wrong?”
“‘What went wrong?’” I echoed, barely above a whisper, but loud enough that Jaffrin heard my sarcasm and glared.
Ben stepped in front of me, a shield against Jaffrin’s ire. “You sent us after a Landshaft operation station. That’s what happened.”
Jaffrin’s eyes widened in what appeared to be genuine shock. “Excuse me?”
“That house might have once been abandoned, but now it’s being used by Landshaft bounty hunters.”
“Tatiana Viynar, to be specific,” Shawn chimed in. “She had a group of Ember witches with her to be taken into the city.”
“Autumn Fire already passed,” Jaffrin said, though he knew as well as I did that not only was there more than one use for human life energy, Darkness stocked up on that energy all year long for the annual turning of demons. “They were that close to the border?”
“Yes. For god’s sake, they were,” I snapped. “Can we please move past that point? Just because Canada’s generally considered safe and not as demonically populated doesn’t mean they aren’t operating near the border or over it.”
Ben went rigid beside me, his face paling. “They better not be.”
My blood ran cold. Obviously, no one wanted that. Sending Riley with Sandra to Canada had been a last-ditch effort.
Jaffrin looked to the ground and ran a hand over his bald head. “I’ll contact Sandra’s security detail and confirm their safety. I’m sure they’re fine. Do not go back north again.”
I shot Jaffrin a glare. “Then don’t send
us on wild goose chases. I get you wanting to order me to do whatever since you’ve always done that. And if it had involved Landshaft and the drug dealing I used to do, I get that too.”
Jaffrin’s eyes locked with mine. “I only condoned that because I was hoping you’d glean information about the whereabouts of Landshaft by doing so.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
Heat swept up the back of my neck and into my face as I tried to swallow down the raging fire inside me. This man had played with our lives, had played with mine too often. And now here we stood, me wondering if all of this had been an act or if Jaffrin really was this incompetent.
“Point is we now know Landshaft is up north,” Ben said. His gaze landed on me, his thoughts amplified in the telepathic space between us. If you can hear this, calm the hell down. That’s an order.
Screw Jaffrin. And screw Ben’s ability to break through my telepathic walls.
“And that they’re building power reserves for something,” Shawn said.
Jaffrin crossed his arms. “They’ve always taken humans and witches. This is no different, especially where the bounty hunters are concerned.”
Shawn’s mouth opened, but he closed it again and shook his head. “Yes, sir.”
“Go home,” Jaffrin said. “I need to inform the Ether Head Circle of these developments.”
“You might want to keep Hunters from taking jobs near the Canadian border too while you’re at it,” I suggested, this time without any trace of sarcasm. If we couldn’t handle battling with Landshaft’s bounty hunters, other teams wouldn’t stand a chance.
Jaffrin nodded. “Already done. I’m taking those off the mission list. Go home and rest.”
Not likely. Not after tonight. I was too riled up now, too scared. Sweat beaded on my brow. We’d almost made an enemy of Landshaft tonight. And that was not okay.
Jaffrin excused himself up to his office, leaving our team to stand amongst ourselves.
“What now?” Rachel asked. “He can’t honestly expect us to just go home and forget about tonight.”
