by Jack Knight
I pulled out my phone, waited a few seconds, and then stood up. “Sorry, guys, I just got called into work,” I apologized, trying to make it sound like I wasn’t thrilled to be leaving.
“Aww, okay honey, but we have to hang out for real some time, okay?”
“Absolutely,” I answered, already walking back through the coffee shop.
What the hell did that mean? I had just spent like ten minutes with you people, how was that not hanging out?
I quickly realized I didn’t care, and pushed the thought out of my mind. By the time I had reached the next corner, I had completely forgotten about it.
Because I didn’t really need to go to work, and the problem with the Hunters seemed to have passed me by without incident, I figured it’d be safe to go home and relax. I may ask William if he knew any mages that might be willing to part with a grimoire if I happened to see him, but I still needed to save up a lot more money before I even had a shot.
That was before I noticed the man. The same one from the shop, white hair and suit exactly as they had been the day before, standing directly in my path on the other end of the block.
I did a quick mental calculation: if I acted like I wanted to avoid him, it would look suspicious. My options were to draw attention to myself, or risk having to fight this guy in the middle of the street in broad daylight.
Fighting wasn’t my best option, but I could take a mage if I had to. Not killing him because of all the witnesses would be the difficult part, if it came to that.
I continued walking, my heart beating faster with every step, the distance between me and the man disappearing much quicker than I would like, even though he was standing still. Finally, when I was only a few feet away, I veered off to one side, doing my best not to look at him. Maybe if I acted like I didn’t recognize him, he wouldn’t remember me.
I was sure that it had worked when I was right beside him, with about a foot between us. He hadn’t made any move to stop me, he hadn’t even seemed to look at me. I was in the clear.
“Actually, Maddison, I do need to speak with you.”
Shit, the fucker could read minds.
Not drawing attention to myself was no longer an option, he had noticed me.
I didn’t waste any time. As soon as he said my name, I reached under my jacket, drew my knife, and ran as fast as I could.
When I glanced over my shoulder to see if he was following me, it was so much worse than I imagined. He wasn’t running. He was standing in exactly the same position he had been, he had just turned around. And, this time, he was smiling.
I faced forward and started weaving between the people on the streets. Something told me no matter how fast I ran, that guy was going to keep coming after me.
That didn’t mean I had to make it easy for him.
Chapter 6
DODGING THROUGH A CROWD isn’t easy, but if you’re holding up a knife and running at full speed, most people will assume you’re dangerous and jump out of the way. That was the only reason I got as far as I did.
The problem was, it didn’t matter how far I ran. And, it became clear a minute or so later, it didn’t matter how fast I was, either.
People were screaming and jumping out of my path. They yelled things like “Watch out!” and “She’s got a knife!” and “Hey, bitch!” But, they got out of my way, and I was sprinting as fast as I could.
Then, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, not even bothering to get out of the way, was the guy I had seen a few days ago in the apothecary. He was wearing a long sleeve shirt this time, but I would recognize him anywhere. He was a Hunter, I had seen his tattoo.
I dove into the nearest alley and kept running. I knew the guy with the white hair was a problem, but I didn’t know he was with the Hunters. My day just got a hell of a lot worse.
I dashed through the alley, but it came to a dead end. One of the buildings had a low roof, so I ran to the corner where two buildings met, jumped as high as I could, kicked off one building and barely caught the roof with my fingertips. It took me a second to pull myself up, but I doubted many people heavier than me would be able to pull it off.
Anywhere other than San Francisco, I would’ve been in a bind, but when the buildings of an entire city are crammed up against each other, traveling along rooftops is just as easy as running through a crowded street. I sprinted the length of the one I was on, jumped to another and sped off in the opposite direction.
When I was sure I had lost them, I jumped to another building and stopped to catch my breath. I looked around to make sure there was nobody else on the roof, and saw an access door. That would be the easiest way back down to the street, but that meant that any second, someone could come bursting through it and catch me.
Except something a thousand times weirder happened.
As soon as I thought I was safe, I sat down. As soon as my ass hit the cool concrete of the building, the door opened. Through the door, I didn’t see a staircase or the inside of the building, like it should have. I saw a street, with cars driving by and people walking past the guy with the white hair as he walked out onto the rooftop and shut the door behind him.
We were at least three stories up. This was one seriously powerful mage, I didn’t even know magic like that existed. Judging by the fact that the guy had a smug smile on his face as he put his hands in his pockets and stared at me, he knew I was surprised.
“Maddison Wessen,” he said slowly, his voice carrying easily across the empty space between us, “I would like to talk peacefully, but we can bring you in if you force us to.”
I slid my knife from its sheath as I stood up. Still panting, slowly backing away from the guy while making sure I didn’t accidentally fall off the building, I tried to weigh my options. It was fast, because I didn’t have very many.
The guy that I had seen on the street was obviously with the one with the white hair. Hunters never worked with mages, so I was seriously confused, but there was no way they had both found me at the same time without working together. I was trapped, and the Hunter could be anywhere.
Obviously, I was beat. I stopped backing away, but held my knife up. This guy had won, but that didn’t mean I was ready to surrender. I’d die fighting if I had to.
“No, no,” the man chuckled. “No need for that. We aren’t Hunters. In fact, the Hunters are in town trying to catch us.”
My mind went blank. I seriously had a “does not compute” moment for a second. I couldn’t help it, I was actually curious enough to talk with this guy.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “The guy that was with you was a Hunter.”
The man smiled wider and took a few steps toward me. “Carver has the Hunter’s Mark, but I’m guessing you didn’t see the entire tattoo, otherwise you’d be asking what it meant.”
He got me. I had only seen the bottom of it peeking out of the guy’s shirt sleeve. So, I had no clue what he was talking about.
“Allow me to explain. One quick chat with my friends and me, and I’m sure we will convince you not to fear us. Possibly even join us.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know, you sound like a villain. In my experience, that’s not a great opening line.”
The man chuckled and then nodded to me. “Fair point. How about this: my name is Magnus. I...”
He paused to unbutton his jacket and let it fall to the ground behind him. When he started unbuttoning his shirt, I started to feel a little skeeved out. This dude had better not be trying to seduce me, because I still had a knife in my hand.
When his shirt was open, he pushed the sleeve off on one of his arms and showed me his bicep. First thing I noticed, he was surprisingly jacked for a mage. When you could use magic, what was the point in lifting weights?
Then, I saw what he was trying to show me. His tattoo was almost exactly like mine. It was the same size, the same light blue color, almost exactly like the Hunter’s Mark. Almost
The pentacle with a circle around it was clearly t
here, but the handle of a scythe was weaved sideways through the pentacle, so the blade started just above the right facing point of the star and curved around the outer circle. It was like someone had altered the Hunter’s Mark, making something similar, but distinct.
The confusing part was that the rest of his arm, down to the wrist, was covered in smaller pentacles. They were marks that Hunters were given for killing a supe. If he wasn’t a Hunter, why did he have the kill marks? And, what was he?
“What’s that supposed to be?” I asked.
The guy, Magnus, started putting his clothes back on, thank god, and answered, “It is the mark of the Shadow Reapers. We are not the Hunters, we are what they should have been. And more. I can explain more thoroughly, but you will have to come with me.”
Magnus had finished dressing himself, even buttoning his suit jacket back up, and had his hands in his pockets again. I had to admit, I was extremely curious, now.
“I’m gonna need a bit more before I go anywhere with you,” I insisted. “Going along with creepy guys who undress in front of me is kind of on my ‘no-no’ list.”
Magnus chuckled to himself and then said, “I can give you this much: we kill supernatural creatures. Only those that have shown they cannot be trusted to live. And, everyone in our organization is welcome to have whatever power they wish.”
I’ll be honest, that was almost enough to get me to go along with the creepy stranger, but it sounded too good to be true.
“So, you’re like the Hunters, but people who can do magic won’t be killed on sight?” I clarified.
“Oh, not just that,” Magnus said, a smile touching his lips again. “I heard word that you are trying to acquire a grimoire, correct?”
My first thought was to demand where he had heard that. I had never told anyone my plans, it was too big of a risk. Supes loved to talk to one another, there was no way I would allow something like that to get around, in case it somehow got back to the Hunters.
Then, I realized this guy had already told me the answer. They were like the Hunters. That meant that more than half of what they did was recon. Before they ever would’ve approached me, they would have learned everything they possibly could about who I was. They probably knew exactly how I had done in the Hunter’s training, where I lived, hell, they probably knew everything I’d eaten in the past week.
And, they were recruiting me. It didn’t happen a lot, but when Hunters saw someone with a lot of potential, they were brought in, kind of like what was happening to me now. There were only so many people you could recruit from the families of established Hunters. There was a rule that every Hunter had to have at least two children, and it was because recruiting from outside was thought of as extremely dangerous.
Apparently, these Shadow Reapers didn’t mind the risk.
“Your silence does not answer my question,” Magnus pressed.
Oh, shit, I had just been staring at him and thinking. My bad.
“Yeah, I’m looking for a grimoire,” I answered. There was no point in lying, he already knew the answer.
“What would you say if I told you that everyone in our organization has access to dozens of grimoire, can study as often as they like, and is assigned a tutor?”
No fucking way.
A grimoire was great, but it was nothing compared to a tutor. Ideally, everyone studying magic would have both. A grimoire was a collection of spells, magic instructions, history, everything. Like the best textbook that ever existed. Still, it was just a book. Someone to teach me, that would be incredible.
A book could never tell me what the hell I was. Someone with experience might know.
“Alright, I’ll bite. So, where are we going?”
Magnus took a few steps backward without ever breaking eye contact with me. I saw him mouth something, but I didn’t hear even a whisper coming from him. Then, he knocked on the door he had used to get onto the roof.
“This way,” Magnus said as he stood off to the side and gestured to the door.
For over a year, I had been completely on my own. I had hidden really well, I had kept myself going, given myself my own goals and restrictions. Everything had been good, for the most part. Staying with my plan wouldn’t be so bad.
Joining a group again, that might be better. Yeah, groups had people, and I still wasn’t a fan of people, but it would be nice to not have to look over my shoulder all the time. It would be nice to have people to talk to, maybe some of them might even be more intelligent than the fang-bangers.
Also, free grimoire and tutor? A place where I could Hunt rapists and murderers without having to worry about pissing someone off? That sounded good to me.
“One last thing,” I said before I even considered taking a step.
“I thought it might not be so easy,” Magnus said with a smile.
“If I go with you and decide I don’t want to join?...”
“Then you will be free to leave, but we will have to remove certain memories, so that you could not reveal too much to someone outside of our organization.”
Honestly, any other answer wouldn’t have made much sense.
I took a deep breath and walked across the roof. I grabbed the doorknob without hesitation, and threw it open, already walking forward.
If I was going to give it a shot, there was no room for being cautious.
Chapter 7
OKAY, MAGIC CAN BE kinda cool.
I walked through the door from the rooftop, and I stepped from concrete onto worn, light brown wood. There were pillars leading down an entrance hallway with a door on either side of me, and then a large open space.
My feet carried me into the building like I was in a kind of trance. Sure, I had been scared out of my mind a few seconds before, but using a doorway to teleport into a building was cool enough that it had taken my breath away. The building I had walked into was a little much.
It was so beautiful I had trouble remembering to breathe.
The ceiling was at least thirty feet above me. The light brown, brick walls were filled with stained glass windows. The light that filtered in from outside colored everything in blues, reds, pinks, purples, and greens, making it look like I had walked into a rainbow.
Past the pillars, I entered a room full of mismatched tables and chairs, like someone had moved in and grabbed all the free furniture they could find on the streets so the place wouldn’t be empty.
There were people sitting around the tables, some of them at least. The room was so huge it fit at least twenty of the dining room table sized pieces of furniture, seven or eight chairs around each, and they were all ignored. I counted seven people in all as I slowly walked into the room. They didn’t even notice me at first, which I was completely fine with.
“Do you like our church?”
Magnus had appeared beside me without me noticing. I did my best not to jump out of my skin, I didn’t even look at him so he wouldn’t see the surprise on my face.
“Church?” I asked as I looked around. “What god do you people worship?”
The stained glass windows didn’t depict Jesus or anything, they were just colors all shoved together at random, like the inside of a kaleidoscope. When I looked at the floor, I figured out what he meant.
There were long, shallow gouges in the wood on either side of the room, but the center of the floor, right in front of where I was when I stopped walking, was completely even. This place wasn’t a church anymore. They had removed the pews, and likely the raised platform that the pastor stood on when he spoke to churchgoers, or whatever.
I had only ever seen the inside of a church in movies and TV shows, I honestly had no idea what actually happened inside them.
Magnus chuckled and answered, “We only acquired this place because it is large and empty. Few people ever dream of breaking into an abandoned church. Come.”
Magnus gestured forward, like he wanted me to walk farther into the room. I didn’t exactly like the idea of being introduced to that many people
at once.
“What happened to explaining?” I asked as I crossed my arms over my chest, standing firmly in place as I turned to look up at the old guy.
Magnus gave me a kind smile, which made me feel kind of bad for being rude to him. Kind of, not enough to actually stop.
“You don’t have to meet anyone yet, I just assumed you’d like to have a conversation somewhere other than the doorway,” he explained.
Shit, now I felt bad.
“Lead the way, then,” I said, nodding toward the room.
“Of course,” Magnus said pleasantly as he strolled forward.
I followed behind him, trying to keep my eyes on his back. It was difficult when everyone in the room suddenly looked up.
Ignoring people is easy, ninety percent of the time. When seven of them look up at you at the same time, when you’re new and walking into their space, it’s like you can feel their questions coming at you. None of them spoke, but it still made me very uncomfortable.
As we crossed the room, the urge to look at them became overpowering. Magnus had almost led me to a door on the right side of the opposite end of the room when I finally glanced back. Most of the people had gone back to what they were doing, except one.
Five of the people were reading, most of them books but one guy did have a magazine. One of them, a guy who looked too pale to be anything but a vampire, was playing on what I swore was an original GameBoy. The last one was still staring at me.
The guy had short black hair, startling green eyes, and was dressed in jeans and a zipped up hoodie that looked as old as he was. He winked at me before I could face forward again, and I immediately felt revulsion rise in my stomach.
I was not here to flirt or date, I didn’t care who that guy thought he was. I was just here to get my grimoire and get out.
Magnus pushed open the door we had been walking toward and led me into what looked like a library. The room wasn’t very large, but there were bookshelves against every wall, filled with dusty old books. In the center of the room was a long table with a bunch of laptops spaced unevenly around it and a dozen chairs, most of which were not pushed in.