Hunted: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (Shadow Reapers Book 1)

by Jack Knight

When she walked in, I watched her gaze shift all over the room, like a scared animal. She looked at everyone at least once, but I made sure to look away the three times I saw her look in my direction. She could tell something was up, she knew she was being watched.

  I liked her.

  Still, just because Ezra said I had to recruit her, didn’t mean I had to follow the order. Kevin made sure to impress upon me the importance of making sure they were a good fit before even saying the name “Shadow Reapers”. Anything that made me feel like she might be trouble, I was supposed to bail immediately.

  Making sure not to draw any attention, I slipped my knife from its sheath and cut my palm under the table.

  “Cogitamentius circum me voces fiat,” I muttered.

  Asher had explained to me what to expect. He had left some parts out.

  Immediately, the entire room was full of voices, all at the exact same volume. It scared the shit out of me for a second, and then I started picking them apart.

  “If she would just shut about her boyfriend and lean forward, I could see her tits.”

  “Why’d that bitch have to get my drink right? I wanted to yell at her. Fuck it, I’m going to complain anyway.”

  Gonna have to figure out who that was, so I could kill them later.

  “Why aren’t vampires like in Twilight?”

  “‘Her perky breasts bounced up and down as she ran toward me.’ God, I’m such a good writer.’”

  Okay, I hated all of these people. Magnus had been right about trying to use this spell at the bar. If these were sober people’s thoughts, drunk people must be torture to listen in on.

  Finally, I found a way to focus. I stared at my cup of coffee and pictured the girl’s face in my mind. I remembered where she had been in the room. Suddenly, the other voices fell down to whispers, and I could hear her clearly.

  “These fucking hipsters are never getting any of these books published. They’re torturing themselves thinking they can get it done. Deep breath, have to pretend I’m not a bitch for the barista.”

  Yeah, I liked her.

  It was a little more difficult to keep my focus as I looked around the room, but me staring at my coffee with intense focus would probably look pretty weird, so I tried to act natural.

  The girl got her coffee, thinking the entire time about being nice, and then she insulted a few people to herself as she walked to a nearby table and sat down.

  “Perky blondes probably have the IQ of dirt. And still, they can get boyfriends. Maybe I should just start acting stupid and shallow around guys. I haven’t gotten laid since I left the pack.”

  On principle, I felt the need to intervene at that point. I couldn’t let another woman pretend to be stupid to get a guy. And, this chick was eighteen, if she started making stupid decisions like that now, it would ruin her entire life.

  Before I could convince myself this was a terrible idea, I sheathed my knife, grabbed my coffee, and quickly crossed the space to the table the girl was sitting at. I sat down across from her and she glared at me before I remembered that Kevin told me to ask for permission before sitting down.

  “Excuse me, do I know you?” “Bitch, who the fuck do you think you are?”

  I almost laughed out loud. Her words and thoughts had come at me at the same time, and they were so opposite each other I couldn’t help but find it funny.

  “Sorry, I was supposed to be nice about this. My bad,” I said quickly.

  “Too late for that,” she answered quickly. She thought the same thing at the same time, so they echoed off of each other. Maybe the spell wasn’t a good idea, I was going to get a headache soon.

  “You shouldn’t dumb yourself down to get a guy, though. Guys interested in girls like that,” I nodded toward the nearest table of blondes, “are douchebags. You can do better.”

  The girl looked at me like I had gone insane. She definitely hadn’t taken in a word I said. Time to try again.

  “Do you know what Hunters are?”

  The girl’s eyes went wide and her mind started racing with fearful thoughts. She glanced at my arm, but my jacket was covering my tattoo.

  “Good, you do,” I continued. “I’m not one of them, or I couldn’t know that you just thought about turning into a panther and slicing through my throat before you burst out of here and ran back to your shifter pack.”

  The girl froze completely, even her mind slowed down. She couldn’t process what was happening. I had to admit, I got a tiny thrill of vindictive pleasure from it.

  “Listen, I’m with a similar organization. One that is what the Hunters should be. We kill only the people who deserve it. We try to keep the secret of the supernatural, and we keep the mundanes safe.”

  “She’s here to kill me, because I ate those campers.”

  “No, actually, I’m here to recruit you. Because you ignored all the other campers and only ate the ones that were illegally hunting.”

  The girl flinched and then glared at me. “Are you reading my mind?” she seethed.

  I ignored the question and continued on. Kevin would not be proud of me.

  “Listen, I get you ran from your pack. It was the only life you knew, and you ran anyway. Because they were killing humans, and you didn’t like it, right?”

  The girl leaned back. Her eyes stayed narrowed, and I could hear every distrustful thought she had, but she wasn’t running away, or planning to kill me anymore. I took that as a win.

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Because, I’m one of the people that wants to do the right thing for everyone in the world. We’re called Shadow Reapers. And we want you to join us.”

  She still didn’t seem to trust me, but I could hear the words running through her head. It made me feel a little dirty, but I used them against her.

  “You’re all alone right now, you feel like you don’t have a family anymore. Trust me when I say the Reapers will be the best family you ever had.”

  TO BE CONTINUED...

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  KEEP READING FOR A sneak peak at Book 2 in the Shadow Reapers Trilogy: Returned!

  Chapter 1

  “Are you going to wash the blood off of the walls?”

  I glanced over at Cat, who was standing in the doorway of the almost completely empty apartment, staring at the wall beside the door.

  Cat had darker skin, long, black hair, and dark brown eyes. I had met her two weeks before, when I recruited her to the Reapers, but I still didn’t know her ethnicity. All I knew was that she seemed to think following me around was an actual pastime.

  All around the apartment, every door and window had a sigil drawn in my own blood. When I drew them, I didn’t know what they were, only what they did. I had since learned that they were weak and almost useless compared to the sigils I knew about now.

  “Nah,” I answered as I hefted the last box into my arms. “That’s for whoever moves in after me to deal with.”

  I started toward the door, where Cat was still standing.

  “Hey, fur for brains, can you move?” I snapped.

  Cat stared at the sigils for a few seconds and then slowly turned her head to look at me. She smiled as she backed out of the doorway and pressed herself against the railing of the walkway in front of my apartment’s door. Then, as if she were guiding a queen, she bowed and gestured with one hand toward the staircase that led down to the courtyard of the apartment complex.

  When I walked past her, doing my best to see around the large cardboard box in my arms, I seethed, “You know, this would go a lot faster if you would help.”

  “Oops, sorry,” Cat said sarcastically as she closed the door to my apartment. Well, it was my old apartment, now.

  She wasn’t sorry, she knew what she was doing. She had asked if she could come along with me to help me move my stuff into the church, but she hadn�
�t lifted a finger. She just wanted to see where I lived. For some reason, she acted like we were friends. Or, possibly that I was some sort of mentor.

  I shifted the box, which was mostly full of clothes and wasn’t that heavy, and looked around it’s other side. When I did, I saw the door next to me. The door where I used to see my neighbor, William, at least once a week. He had been missing for about a month, now.

  “Hey, Maddi?” Cat asked. I could hear her footsteps behind me as I started descending the staircase.

  “Yeah?” I growled.

  “Do you think Gen is ever going to finish the expansion thing she talked about?”

  I glanced back at Cat, who was only one stair behind me, and almost fell down the stairs. It wasn’t until I made it to the bottom that I replied.

  If I, the best assassin the Shadow Reapers had, died falling down a flight of stairs because of this annoying shifter, I was going to be seriously pissed.

  “Why?” I asked as I started across the concrete courtyard toward my car.

  “Oh, you know,” Cat said airily. “It’d just be nice for everyone to live in the same place.”

  I rolled my eyes. I knew exactly why she was asking, and I didn’t have the patience for it.

  Just outside the courtyard, parked on the street, was a nice, shiny, grey sedan. I had never wanted a car, but it had come in handy. The best part was that it was only two weeks old and it was already paid off. There were benefits to joining the Reapers, even if it had taken me awhile to be completely sold on them.

  I popped the trunk and set my last box inside. It almost seemed a little sad that everything I owned could fit in the little car with just one trip, but I had been in hiding for a while. Technically, I still was, but there was no way the Hunters could find the base of the Reapers.

  “Hurry up,” I called to Cat as I shut the trunk and walked around to the driver seat.

  No sooner had I closed the driver side door when the passenger door opened and Cat jumped in. I buckled myself in and looked up to see Cat sitting there silently, staring at me.

  “Buckle up,” I commanded.

  Cat smirked and rolled her eyes as she reached for the seatbelt. “Whatever you say, Mom.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I snapped as I started the car. “People around here would rather kill twenty people than get wherever they're going twenty seconds slower.”

  Cat just chuckled, but I had been in California long enough to know that every driver was a potential serial killer, and they all acted like it as soon as they started their cars.

  “So,” Cat started again, as soon as I pulled away from the curb, “are we training tonight?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, probably. Unless Ezra sends me on another fucking recruiting mission.”

  “He’s your dad,” Cat said, sounding confused. “Can’t you just tell him you don’t like recruiting?”

  I snorted and didn’t answer. There was no point, she couldn’t possibly understand.

  Cat had grown up in a shifter pack. Those people were all like a family, and they loved and supported one another. My father and I had both grown up in the Hunters. We might as well not be related at all.

  “I just love hanging out at the church,” Cat persisted when I remained silent. “I can’t wait until I can move in.”

  This girl was going to drive me insane before we ever got to the Reaper’s base.

  Ezra had been recruiting a couple of people a day for the last two weeks. The first few had been allowed to move into the church, with the rest of us. Cat was the first person accepted to the Reapers who had been told she had to wait to move in.

  Gen, the smartest person I had ever met, and the Reaper’s resident hacker, had been working on a ritual to magically expand the church, so it could house everyone that we recruited. I didn’t know much about rituals, but the fact that it took Gen more than a few minutes meant it was probably pretty difficult.

  “You’ll move in soon,” I replied. “Just suck it up.”

  It used to take ten to fifteen minutes for me to walk from my place to the Reaper’s church. Even though I hated cars, and driving in San Francisco especially, I had to appreciate the trip barely taking two minutes. I parked in a grassy field behind the big, brownstone building, and got out to start unloading my stuff.

  Before I could even make it to the trunk, someone came running around the side of the building.

  “Need help?” Asher asked as he slowed to a stop.

  Asher had short black hair and green eyes, he had been working out recently, but you couldn’t really tell from his barely existent muscle, even though he was wearing a t-shirt that looked like it was half a size too small for him. In fact, his Mark of the Reaper was peeking out of his left sleeve.

  All the Reapers, including the newest ones, had a tattoo on their left bicep. It was a light blue pentacle with a scythe woven through it, the curve of the scythe’s blade followed along the pentacle from just above the right point of the star.

  If you took the scythe away, it was the Hunter’s Mark, which I found funny. Most of the founding members of the Reapers had been Hunters, and one of the first things they did was to alter the Mark, so they could separate themselves from the organization they had been part of all their lives.

  “Yes, please,” I answered with a glare at Cat. “I’m not getting much help here.”

  Asher chuckled to himself as we pulled all four boxes out of the backseat and the trunk, stacked them, and carried two each around to the front of the church. For the first time, Cat was helpful. She opened the door of the church so that Asher and I could walk in without having to put the boxes down.

  The church opened up to a row of pillars on either side of the short hallway. A door was set between the pillars, but the hallway was otherwise bare.

  Through the hall, the building opened up to a large room filled with tables and chairs. The entire room was bathed with multi-colored light from the stained glass windows all over the walls. It was beautiful, but I had gotten so used to the sight that it no longer phased me.

  Asher and I headed to the left side of the wall opposite the entrance, where the hallway to all the bedrooms started. Cat followed along, standing between Asher and me the entire way.

  “So, Asher, are you gonna train me, I mean us, today?”

  “Uh, no, I think you’re with Maddi today,” Asher answered as we passed lines of doors on either side of the hallway.

  “Here! I’ll get it!” Cat exclaimed as she pushed past Asher to open my bedroom door.

  “Thanks,” Asher grunted as he entered the room and let the boxes drop to the floor.

  “Don’t bother being careful,” I sneered as I placed my boxes on top of the ones Asher dropped.

  “Sorry,” Asher laughed as he moved to sit on my bed. “They were heavy.”

  I turned around and glared at him. “I was carrying books, spell ingredients, pots and pans, boots, and my weapons. You were carrying clothes.”

  Asher looked around the room. “Why’d you bring weapons?”

  The walls of my room were covered in weapons. Swords, a crossbow, an archer’s bow, a couple of axes, and a few more things all mounted on the walls. Besides the dresser, desk, and bed, the room was otherwise empty.

  “I need options,” I answered as I turned around.

  “So, Asher,” Cat said, interrupting again, “any plans for what you’re teaching us next time?”

  I was glad I was facing away from both of them, because I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath to stop myself from saying anything.

  Cat had been flirting with Asher since she first arrived. There was a vampire that had been all over Kevin since she got here, and a witch that we recruited never stopped complimenting Darius.

  I was glad the Reapers were growing, it was good that we were setting up an alternative to the Hunters to keep the world, especially the supernatural part of it, safe. But, the fact that Ezra wanted to recruit younger people almost exclusively meant I had
to wade through a river of hormones every time I entered the church.

  “You’re a shifter, right?” Asher asked. “I didn’t think I trained you at all.”

  “Oh, sorry, am I interrupting?”

  I turned around to see someone else was standing in my doorway. Cat had moved to stand beside Asher next to my bed, which made me a little uncomfortable.

  The person in the doorway was Matt. He was a lot more muscular than Asher, and a head taller than me. He had short blonde hair and blood red eyes. Completely average looking, which was good, when you were part of the Hunters, except for his eyes, which used to be grey. When I had been his partner, I had blue eyes and blonde hair. Dying my hair blue had been one of the ways I hid from them, nobody would have expected me to stand out when I was on the run.

  Matt followed my gaze, saw Cat and Asher, and then looked back at me with a small smile. “Sorry I couldn’t help you bring everything in.”

  Matt kept apologizing for everything, recently. He had been a vampire for two weeks, and felt like it was somehow his fault he couldn’t walk outside in the daylight.

  I waved my hand dismissively. “You didn’t come in here just to apologize, did you?”

  Matt’s smile faded and he nodded. “No, I came with a message.”

  I turned to Asher and Cat, who were both watching the conversation between Matt and me. I glared at them for several seconds until they got the hint.

  “Oh,” Asher said as he jumped up. “You’re all moved in, I’ll just go be somewhere else now.”

  “Good plan,” I answered.

  “Excuse me,” Asher said politely to Matt, who backed up a few steps so Asher could get to the hallway. Cat followed a step behind him.

  “Can I sit in on the magic class?” I heard her ask as their footsteps faded into the hallway.

  Once they were gone, I looked at Matt again. “Let me guess,” I growled, “Ezra wants to see me.”

  Matt nodded. “He said it’s urgent.”

  Chapter 2

  What could Ezra possibly want with me that’s “urgent”?