The Hunter's Vow (Monster Hunter Academy Book 4)

by D. D. Chance

  It’s the end of the Academy as we know it…

  Grim Lockton is the biggest, roughest, and surliest member of our monster hunter team. And he hates me.

  From the moment I set foot on Wellington Academy’s campus, the brutally fierce hunter has kept me off balance with cutting insults and cryptic taunts, his pale gold eyes full of withering disdain. To him, I’m nothing more than monster bait.

  Despite his sneers, I can’t help watching Grim, wanting to understand him…get close to him. And maybe I hope he wants me, too. That the bone-melting heat I feel building between us is real.

  Wrong on all counts.

  With a shocking betrayal, Grim launches a winner-take-all monster war that threatens to destroy everyone I’ve come to love at Wellington Academy. But there’s more to Grim’s story than he’s ever shared, and when the truth comes out, it shatters everything I thought I knew about monsters, the academy—and Grim himself. Now, I just can’t quit my savagely beautiful monster warrior…

  So I’m going to have to save him instead.

  The Hunter’s Vow

  Monster Hunter Academy, Book 4

  D.D. Chance

  Contents

  Grim

  1. Nina

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About D.D. Chance

  Grim

  Kill her.

  The orders were clear, direct. They always were. I was to find and kill the woman who’d defied possibility. Who’d escaped the most powerful magicians in two realms, vanishing into the night without a trace, never to return. Five years after her disappearance, every other magical means of tracking her having failed, it was my turn at the hunt. I was supposed to unearth the bitch from her squalid hole, murder her in the night, then bring back the evidence of my kill and toss it before my masters like the prized beast I was.

  They owned me, after all.

  They believed they’d created me.

  That all their years of imprisonment and torture had finally honed me into the perfect killing machine, ruthless and obedient, filled with hatred for anything but ripping creatures apart.

  They weren’t entirely wrong. Fulfilling a vow so old, I’d long ago forgotten its details, I’d walked for generations in their filth, mired in the stink of their ambition and pride. I’d pushed aside what it was to feel the open sky above me, the warmth of a sun not proscribed by their magic or their rules.

  By the time they sent me on the hunt for the woman who’d outsmarted them, I already carried a dozen unhealable scars. Other scars, they couldn’t see. My mother and father, skinned in front of my eyes, trophies from their first wave of terror. My people, gutted and scattered before we’d learned to fight back, reawakening old alliances and unearthing ancient lore.

  I didn’t hunt with my people, though. I was the sacrifice on bended knee, bowing beneath the magicians’ rod and flame. And I had vowed to accept any charge of my masters, obey any order, until the time was right for us to strike these dark invading bastards dead. Every last one of them.

  So at my masters’ command, I went into the forests and picked up a five-year-old trail laced with magic and unexpected wards—wards I knew at once that no magician could break.

  I could break them, though.

  And I did. I found the woman who had so betrayed my keepers. An ordinary woman, with the barest flare of magic within her, for all that she carried protections from far beyond the bounds of her simple world. I didn’t care. I was proud. Relieved. Ready for the kill.

  Driven and tormented by the twisting spells that bound me, I leapt at the chance to cement my position with my enemies, to bring us that much closer to the final war. I tracked the wretched creature, following her mysterious wards and the trailing perfume of the plants she carried with her that had no place in her forested idyll. I raced faster and faster and finally, her scent in my nose and mouth and the fever of death upon me, I broke through the canopy of trees to take her—

  Only…she wasn’t there.

  Instead, a fierce and furious child stood in that clearing, waiting for me. A little girl of five years old, her dull iron knife held high, her eyes blazing with a pure and desperate power that unleashed a torrent of emotion in me so intense, I froze in place. This girl was magic, she was fire. She was every treasured memory ever made and every hope for a future yet to be born. She was the harbinger we had been waiting for. The promise of the ancient oracles.

  She also wasted no time.

  She attacked.

  We came together in a jolt of magic that ripped open our flesh to the bone, scored our skin and mixed our blood, a fury of slashing knife and claws and teeth. With every cut, she tore through me, with every strike, I claimed her. I could not, would not kill her. But I would mark her, through and through. Mark her so deeply that she would never be anything other than mine.

  Then I left her. Bleeding, battered, delirious. Close to death. But she wouldn’t die, I knew. She was the harbinger. She would fulfill the prophecy.

  And so I watched. I waited. Lying to my masters, feeding them snaking lies and possibilities, eventually convincing them to let me set foot upon the hallowed grounds of Wellington Academy. I gained the trust of young magicians I had sworn to destroy. I learned their ways, their dreams. And when I felt the keening cry of the girl whose blood ran through my own veins, mourning the death of her beloved mother, I knew it was time. I pushed her, just a little, to come to this city of dark magicians and lies.

  After that, the plan was simple. I would betray the now grown-up harbinger. Bend her to my century-old plan to free my people once and for all. With her as a lever, a weapon of perfect and powerful force, I would fulfill my vow. I would use her, kill her, if necessary. I would make the final sacrifice, no matter what it took.

  Except then I fell in love with her.

  1

  Nina

  You’re never a hero in your own nightmares.

  I scanned the concrete walls of my cell with an intensity that had gone from desperate and searching to resigned. There were no seams in any surface, no windows. The only door was protected with enough wards that I couldn’t get within three feet of it before my hands went clammy and my heart started slamming against my rib cage.

  Was there actually a door to this cell? I was the prisoner of a master illusionist, and Elaine Hallowell had made no secret of her powers. For all I knew, I was stuck in the bottom of a well, pressed in on all sides by her wretched insect army.

  Were all those bugs here too? Watching me with their alien eyes, their silvery wings fluttering almost silently as they hovered, stingers dripping with whatever foul poison Elaine had injected into them?

  Stop it.

  Freaking myself out wasn’t going to help matters, and if I kept it up, I’d be throwing up on my own shoes before anyone came to fetch me.

  Resolu
tely, I turned back to the small cot outfitted with blankets and pillows in the corner of my cell and wondered if Elaine thought she was doing me a favor with the sleeping arrangements…or if she knew the truth. I hadn’t willingly slept on a bed with any open space beneath it for more than twenty years. I’d spent my entire life on defense, doing everything I could to keep the monsters from coming for me. But I couldn’t protect myself here.

  I sat down on the bed anyway, steeling my nerves as I wondered who was watching. Not the bugs—or at least, not only them. There had to be cameras in this cell, the kind they put in zoo cages. Elaine wasn’t worried about me getting out, but she did want to know what I would do, left to my own devices like this.

  She wasn’t the only one. I hugged my arms to my body, not surprised that I’d been stripped of my own clothes while I’d been knocked out, but a little surprised that they’d given me something else to wear. The flat ballet-style slides and thin jersey knit of my black yoga pants and tunic top might not be enough to completely ward off the cold of this cell, but I was grateful for them anyway. I’d take whatever I could get as a silver lining at this point.

  I exhaled as slowly and calmly as I could, trying to piece together the events of my abduction. Not something most college kids had to think about on a random weekday morning, but then, nothing about joining Boston’s finest—and only—monster hunter academy had been normal. Why start now?

  The journey to New York had started out happily enough. After my team of hunters had contained the newest threat to the academy—a master illusionist from one of the fabled first families of the academy—the board of the school had confined Elaine Hallowell to a magical dead zone. So far, so good.

  Then a small team from the school had supposedly been taking her to be disciplined by her family—who were also my family, insanely enough. And surprise, said family-I-never-knew-I-had apparently wanted to meet me, so why don’t I tag along? All that had sounded pretty reasonable, and Grim Lockton, the biggest, baddest member of our team, had traveled with us. Great.

  Then everything had gone sideways.

  Somewhere between the Boston city limits and the border of Connecticut, Elaine had snapped out of her dead zone with the ease of shrugging off a sweater, materializing in the back of the limo in full and living color, and proceeded to tell me in no uncertain terms about how screwed I was. She wasn’t the prisoner; I was. And as soon as we got to her evil fortress in the hinterlands of upstate New York, she planned to siphon whatever magical abilities I had right out of me, use me up until I was husked dry, and then discard me.

  Worse than all that, in my opinion: she seemed way too excited by the amount of pain she was planning to rain down on my head during this whole process. I wasn’t really a fan of pain. I was used to it, but I wasn’t a fan of it. Especially if it was coming at me from the hands of an entitled psychopath with a thing for bug armies.

  After that little preview of coming attractions, the blast of light in the back of the limo had been my final memory…that and Grim Lockton’s ice-cold glare as I’d lost consciousness.

  Grim. You know, one of the monster hunters who were my sworn protectors. The guy who I’d fought right beside—fending off demons, zombies, succubi, fire bulls, and three sizes of killer spiders. What the hell is his deal? I mean, I’d never thought he’d liked me, but this went way beyond being irritated at the new girl on the team. Could he really be working for Elaine Hallowell—for their entire family?

  Denial flashed through me, a spurt of fury equal parts fear and outrage. It wasn’t possible that Grim had screwed us over—not just me, but the whole team. It didn’t make sense! I mean, how could he—how could anyone…

  I sighed, slumping back against the wall, my hope disintegrating into a sludgy ash of monster guts as reality slammed into me, hard.

  The truth was, Grim’s betrayal made total sense.

  Rugged and brutal, he would make the perfect covert operative in a team of earnest Boy Scout monster hunters willing to do anything to graduate and go out and hunt supernatural creatures great and small for the betterment of society. He’d shown up at the academy out of nowhere with some vague story of being trained in the old country—whatever the hell that meant—and he’d been immediately hand-waved right into the heart of the monster hunter minor. The guys had been jacked to have him aboard, and why wouldn’t they? Grim was everything they expected a monster hunter to be. Big, tough, and silent as a crypt.

  But how had he managed to hide his true nature given his emotional connection to the guys—the bond they’d formed? The monster hunters of Wellington Academy were locked together as a collective, and all three of those guys were whip smart and keenly sensitive to boot.

  Tyler Perkins, our not-so-unofficial leader, was no slouch at spell craft and had only gotten bigger, faster, and more wizardly in the past couple of weeks. How had he missed a full-on spy on the team?

  Liam Graham, a guy with every gizmo in the universe that could track, record, and Geiger counter the crap out of you, should have been able to have sussed out Grim’s bad-guy routine in a heartbeat.

  And the third guy on the team, Zachariah Williams? All he could do was, you know, read minds. There was no way that he wouldn’t have picked up on Grim being an asshole of this magnitude. I couldn’t believe it.

  There had to be something else going on, right?

  Right?

  I drew my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. I didn’t care if Elaine was watching me. I needed whatever comfort I could get.

  When would the guys figure out that I was out of reach? That our contact had been cut off? Though I was a self-taught monster hunter in my own right, I didn’t have Tyler’s, Zach’s, or Liam’s kind of magical mojo. I’d picked up a bit of Zach’s skills in sensing magic and connecting with people, and Liam had leveled me up to the point where I could draw on magic around me, a little, but none of that really helped me while I was stuck in this box.

  I couldn’t register any sense of them, any flare of psychic connection that would indicate that they knew I was out here and in trouble. I didn’t even know how long I’d been in this room. My phone was gone, along with my little pouch of decorative animals that had served as a security blanket for me since I was a little girl. I didn’t have my knives, of course, and I definitely didn’t have my mother’s letter anymore—the thing that prompted my quest for family that’d led me to Wellington Academy in the first place. Basically, I had nothing.

  Still, I wasn’t dead yet.

  Why was that?

  With another slow, calming breath, I was finally able to distance myself from the events that had led me to this cell in the middle of nowhere. For at least a few moments, I could consider it with the same curious detachment I’d felt the morning my mom had died, months ago. Like I was watching some other girl go out into the garden that morning, a girl who’d walked up to her mother with a cup of tea, only to realize that the light had left her mother’s eyes, and that nothing would ever be the same.

  I hadn’t known how to react that morning. Should I scream? Cry? Call somebody? Ultimately, I’d done all those things, but in short, truncated blurts. Even the call to my mother’s doctor had been strangely disjointed—and to this day, I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said to him, nor him to me. I’d felt weirdly disconnected…and I felt the same way sitting here in this cell.

  Now, as then, I watched the girl who was me from a distance, studying her as she clasped her arms around her knees. My yoga pants and tunic top were comfortable, the blanket on the bed was warm. I had clearly been tranquilized at some point, but beyond that, I hadn’t suffered. And I easily could have. Between magic and more conventional devices, this cement-block box could have been transformed into a torture chamber in about five seconds. It hadn’t been.

  Once again, why?

  As I gripped my arms more tightly around my legs, my fingers played over the soft indentation on my skin, all that was left of the tight bracelet Tyler had give
n me before I’d left the academy. He’d inscribed a spell on it, but I was supposed to wear the bracelet for several hours for that spell to take hold. It had been ripped off me along with the rest of my clothes, so…the spell hadn’t taken.

  But…what if it had, just a little?

  Scarcely daring to breathe, moving as little as possible in case I was being watched, I pressed my fingers more firmly against the narrowest part of my wrist, dropping my head to my knees as if in utter surrender. Instead, I squeezed my eyes tight, willing myself to connect with Tyler, imagining him as vividly as I could—smiling, strong, powerful, all dark hair and ripped body and bold confidence oozing from every pore—

  “Nina? Nina!”

  I jerked my head up, staring frantically around the room, then remembered I was trying to be cool here. Hopefully, Elaine wasn’t watching this little display, but I knew I’d heard Tyler. I knew it! Ducking my head again, I clenched my fingers around my wrist where his bracelet had been and screamed his name silently.

  “Nina! Hey, I can feel you! This is so cool! But—everything’s dark around you. Spell hasn’t fully set in yet, I bet. How’s it going? Is it awesome there? The Hallowells are straight-up billionaires. Their estate’s gotta be outta control.”

  “Tyler!” I hissed, then, suddenly afraid I was being bugged, I thought the words as loudly as I could, tears starting to claw at the backs of my eyes. “Tyler, I’ve been kidnapped! Grim lied to us! He’s working with Elaine. They’ve kidnapped me. They’re planning something terrible. You have to come!”