M.A.G.I Hunters 1: A Bounty Hunter Fantasy Series (M.A.G.I. Hunters)

by D. Levesque

“What bonus?” Targun says, now looking confused.

  “The 150,000 credit signing bonus for being the first human to join the M.A.G.I.,” I tell him.

  “You got a signing bonus!” Marrisa says in surprise.

  “Yeah. I’m getting the pay you mentioned, but I also got a signing bonus as the first human. I thought it was something your dad set up?”

  “No,” Targun says, shaking his head. “Those signing bonuses were created at a time when not many other races would join the M.A.G.I. In order to bring them in, we had signing bonuses. The last to join the M.A.G.I. and get one was the first Vampire to join, thousands of years ago. Give me a sec,” he says with a frown.

  He takes out his communication stone and closes his eyes. The entire party looks at him. I look around, see Mavin, and wave to him. He’s floating in the air with a large Oreo cookie in one hand and a small mug in the other. The Oreo cookie looks more like a shield. He waves to me with his mug, sloshing whatever was inside it onto the floor. I look at Preeka and smile at her. She doesn’t seem to be as ugly as the first time I saw her. Guess I am getting used to her. She smiles back, and I see her crooked teeth. Yep, getting used to her, but some things will take time.

  “Done,” Targun says, putting his stone away and grinning at me.

  “What’s done?” I ask him slowly.

  “Well, the value of that 150,000 credits was over a thousand years ago. The contract was never updated for current rates and didn’t account for inflation. So, I had them fix that. You are good now.”

  “Dad, what did you do?” Lori asks him with a raised eyebrow.

  “I just made him richer,” Targun tells her with a grin.

  “How much richer?”

  “Oh, 2.3 million credits richer,” he says, and at the stunned look on my face, he laughs, puts an arm around my shoulders, and squeezes. “Now you can afford to pay me back for that down payment and still have money left over.

  “How much was the down payment?” I ask him dazedly.

  “Just under one million credits. But listen, you own this place, under your name or names. You are now part of M.A.G.I. and I can’t have my daughter sharing such a small apartment with you. Besides,” he says, and his voice changes to a whisper. “You need a bigger place in case there are, you know. Little ones.”

  “Dad!” Marrisa says in anger. Guess she heard that.

  “So, where did they assign you? They usually tell the recruit to tell their trainer. It’s sort of tradition so that the trainer gets a surprise,” Lori asks me.

  “Yeah. About that,” I say hesitantly, looking at Marrisa, who’s still glaring at her dad. At my hesitation, she looks over at me suspiciously.

  “Where?” she commands.

  “Earth,” I tell her.

  At that, her expression clouds over and she looks about to burst. I don’t say anything, but instead look at the people around the room. Her dad looks thoughtful. Lori looks uncertain. Mavin looks at me in horror. And Preeka, I’m not sure about her look. I am still trying to figure her out.

  “Dad,” Marrisa says slowly.

  “Marrisa, you know that even I have no control over that. That decision is made by a committee, and if I step on their toes I can be investigated for a breach of protocol,” he tells her.

  “But Dad. You can’t seriously expect me to go there and work around and with humans!” she growls. There is real genuine anger in her voice, and something else. Anguish?

  “Marrisa, it’s been five years,” he says softly.

  “Yes, I know it’s been five years. Do you think I would forget that it’s only been five years since they killed my partner? That a human killed my partner.” There are tears in her eyes, and she is shaking.

  Without thinking about it, I go up and hug her. At first, she jerks in my arms in surprise, and then her body stiffens against mine. As soon as I did it, I knew that I had, as they say, done fucked up. But I’m already holding her, and I’m not about to back away unless she does. So I just hang on.

  I look around and everyone is staring at me in surprise, even Preeka. Ah, so that’s what her surprised face looks like. Good to know for the future, if I make it out of this alive.

  Slowly, Marrisa’s body softens against me, and her muscles stop tensing. She puts her arms around my waist and mumbles into my shirt. “Why do you make it so damn hard to hate you, Kevin? I should hate you because you are human, but you don’t act like any human I have ever met.”

  “As I said, in your line of work, I doubt you would have run into anyone like me. You just had bad luck and met all the bad ones,” I tell her with a shrug.

  Marrisa puts her head on my chest and bangs it twice. “I should hate you.”

  “Because another human killed your partner? Five years is a long time to hold on to hatred,” I tell her.

  “She was special,” Marrisa says softly.

  “She was??” I ask her.

  “Yeah. She was one of the best Bounty Hunters, and I got to train under her. I worked my ass off in the police academy, and then when I did my testing, I forced myself to learn as much as I could. I was lucky enough to get noticed and the I got picked to be her trainee. I got on the force when I was 18—the youngest M.A.G.I. to ever join the ranks. I had done a year’s training under her and then one year of a formal partnership. But we never made it to the full year.”

  “What happened?” I ask her softly, wrapping my hands around her and putting my chin on her head. I can feel her glasses pushing into me, but she doesn’t complain.

  “We were chasing a Bounty across three worlds. He was from Kratar,” she says. Right, the Werewolf world. I know that now thanks to that fountain of forced information in my head. I nod to let her know I get it. “Well, he ended up getting help to jump into a Portal to Rima,” the Dwarven world, “and there we thought we had him. But he used an illegal Portal and took it to Earth. So, we gave chase,” Marrisa says, and then she starts to shake.

  I don’t ask her anything. I just wait it out—everyone around me simply looking at Marrisa in varying degrees of sympathy. Even Preeka has tears running down her goblin green face.

  Marrisa takes a deep breath. “Little did we know that he had the backup of humans. You have to understand. There are still races that deal with humans, but not in a good way. Article 1 means nothing when you are already breaking the law, right?” she says with a shaky, bitter laugh.

  “When we used a Portal to get ourselves to his location on Earth, he had backup waiting, and they essentially opened fire using firearms with real bullets. They were all humans, so no Magic, but they had something even more devastating.”

  “Silver,” I say, knowing where she was going with that.

  The knowledge that had been passed down to me talked about silver being the bane of all creatures. Silver bullets would have been devastating to any race other than humans.

  Marrisa nods. “Her body got riddled with bullets. I was behind her, so her body protected me. By the time she noticed what was happening, she created a shield in front of her. She was a Beast, so she was able to take a lot of damage before she went down, thanks to her regeneration rates. But that shield being up gave me enough time to target every member there and shoot them with my Foci. I held her in my arms while she died,” Marrisa says, now openly crying, and I can feel the wetness on my shirt.

  “And the person who you were chasing?” I ask her softly.

  Marrisa shakes her head. “So what you are saying then, is that your partner died and you lived, but your Bounty, the person who you were both chasing, got away? Is that about right?”

  Marrisa pulls her head away from my chest, wipes tears from her eyes, and looks at me with confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “You feel guilty that he got away but that you lived. You blame humans for something that he most likely orchestrated, for something that he did. Pathy said that she died from a stray bullet.”

  “Yes,” Targun says. “We did not want it to get out that some of th
e Magic race was working with humans. So we let a story get out that it was a stray bullet.”

  “Then this hatred for humans is misdirected, isn’t it Marrisa? You should be hating the person who set this up. Not the humans. Oh, trust me, there is more than enough reason to hate us humans. I have all the history downloaded into my brain,” I tell her, tapping the side of my head with my finger.

  “Downloaded?” she asks me, confused.

  “Sorry, not sure what you folks call it. I had all that knowledge put into my brain. The best thing I could think of calling it was downloading. I know the history of all the races, and why you left Earth, and I can categorically say that we humans are shits. But this time, your hatred is misdirected. Whatever happened to this Bounty?”

  “We don’t know. He got away,” Marrisa says, and her fists ball up.

  “On Earth?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

  “Maybe?” she says, unsure of what I am getting at.

  “We are just about to be assigned to Earth, aren’t we? What do you bet that he stayed on Earth to hide?”

  Marrisa looks at me, and suddenly her eyes open wide in surprise. “You think he never left Earth?”

  “Would you, knowing that you caused the death of a M.A.G.I. Bounty Hunter? If the information I have is still correct, the sentence for that is automatic death on sight,” I tell her, with a knowing look.

  “My Gods,” Marrisa says. “I have been avoiding Earth all this time because of my hatred, and if I had been assigned and worked there, I might have caught clues about his whereabouts!”

  “One can hope,” I tell her, squeezing since she is still in my arms. “Now, can we eat? Because I will be honest, I am exhausted.”

  Marrisa, Lori, and Targun each give me a thoughtful look that makes me nervous.

  “What?” I ask them worriedly. I look at Mavin and even he is looking at me with an odd look. Then I look at Preeka, but she isn’t looking at me at all. She is on the table, pulling a cookie off a plate.

  “How much information did you download?” Lori asks.

  “I don’t know. I know that Luitta said she gave me a lot of information,” I tell her, avoiding a direct answer.

  “I am going to kick her ass,” Lori says hotly. I think me giving her an evasive grin didn’t help.

  “Don’t!” I plead with her. “I like her. She just wanted to make sure I was ready as the first human,” I say, sort of stretching the truth a bit.

  Targun, thank God, comes to my rescue. “Never mind. We are here to celebrate the newest M.A.G.I. Bounty Hunter! Let’s eat, drink, and be merry.”

  “You just want food,” Lori tells him, and she gives me a look that tells me this is not over.

  “Of course,” Targun tells his daughter with a grin. “Come, a feast awaits!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Thanks, Dad,” Marrisa says, giving him a kiss.

  He’s the last to go. Preeka is laying in his arms, like a doll. She had fallen asleep. Honestly, I’m pretty sure she drank more than the rest of us. I had maybe two beers, but I stopped once I realized I couldn’t stop yawning. Mavin left early. He even left me an Oreo cookie as a gift for finishing my training. I’m sure it’s from my stack cookies from my apartment on Earth. Lori tried to get more information out of me, but I was mum about it. I wasn’t about to get Luitta into trouble. Not if all this extra information will one day save my ass out there.

  Once her dad is gone, Marrisa closes the door to our new apartment and sighs. “Sorry about that. They wanted to give you a party since you don’t have family here.”

  “All good,” I tell her, holding in a yawn. I head back into the living room and start to clean up. “It was nice. The last time I had a party like that was when I got my first job after college. Mike’s parents threw it for me. Though, they were kind enough to keep it low-key. If it had been up to Mike, he would have rented out an entire hotel and hired caterers and everything.”

  “You mean a hotel room?” Marrisa asks me.

  “No, I mean a full hotel,” I tell her with a chuckle.

  “Just how rich is this friend of yours?” Marrisa asks me.

  “Hmm. I think he’s almost a billionaire. Maybe in another year or two?”

  “Damn,” Marrisa says, impressed, as she helps me clean up the mess from the party. The mess that was mostly created by Mavin and Preeka. “So, how did someone like you meet Mike?”

  “You mean someone poor?” I ask her with a grin to let her know I’m not offended.

  “Yeah,” she says with a smile.

  “Grade school. I’ve known Mike and Jim since I was six. His mom wanted him to start off with a typical education, even though they were rich. He was getting beat up for being the rich kid, so I scared the other kids away. I was tall for my age even back then.”

  “And this Jim?”

  “Ah, Jim,” I tell her with a chuckle. “Jim just somehow ended up following us, and since then, has followed Mike.”

  “So he’s what you humans call a brown noser?” Marrisa asks me, perplexed. With dishes in our hands, we head to the kitchen.

  “God, no,” I tell her. “Jim is smart. Like scary smart. Mike would be the money, I would be the muscle, even with how skinny and ugly I was back then, and Jim was the brains.”

  “How smart?” Marrisa asks me curiously.

  “You know MIT on Earth?”

  “Sure, that super smart university that humans go to,” she says, putting the dishes in the sink after scraping the food off of them.

  I stand next to her against the counter and put the garbage into the bin under the sink, and I scrape the plates I have as well before passing them to her.

  “Well, they offered Jim a scholarship for MIT at the age of eight,” I tell her. “And he refused. He wanted to stay with Mike. And he has to this day. They offered him multiple scholarships, and each time he said no. Even if he hadn’t been offered scholarships to send him to the best schools, his parents had money. He just never wanted to go. The crazy this when you talk to Jim, you would never think he was that smart. He seems to blend into the background. That is why he is so good at helping Mike run his dad’s empire. People assume he is just the hired help.”

  “Ah, they talk in front of him when Mike isn’t around?”

  “Bingo,” I tell her, grabbing the drying cloth and drying the clean dish she had just washed.

  “And you all stayed friends, even after high school,” she says.

  “Yep. Mike wanted me to go work for him and his dad, but I don’t take charity,” I tell her with a sigh. I hate discussions about this because I know it makes me sound petty. “I have always had to look out for myself. I don’t like handouts.”

  “And this Magic you have?” Marrisa says softly.

  “Trust me, it’s eating me up inside. This is wonderful, but I didn’t earn it. You were born with it. I wasn’t. I know I should shout up to the sky in amazement and be happy that I, a human, am getting a chance to do Magic. But now that I know all this information,” I tell her, pointing to my head, “I’m scared shitless.”

  “Good,” she says, taking my cloth away and hanging it on a hook to dry.

  She opens the fridge and hands me a beer. Deciding why not, I take it and open the bottle, putting the cap on the counter for later disposal. She grabs her own, and I pad towards the couch in the living room. One thing that either Marrisa or Targun, whoever bought the furniture for the apartment, did not skimp on was a couch. This isn’t a recliner but a sectional, and it’s damn comfortable. Which is good since I will be sleeping on it for a while most likely.

  Sitting down, I take a sip of my beer, and Marrisa sits down next to me, her legs folded under her. She lifts her beer and says, “Congratulations on passing.” I lift my bottle and she clinks hers against mine, and we both take a sip.

  “So what made you think that Bounty that killed my partner,” Marrisa says with a catch in her voice, but then she clears her throat and continues, “would still be on
Earth?”

  “I used to read a ton of murder mysteries, and the murderer would always stay near where they killed their victims. So I thought, what if the reason this Bounty wasn’t caught yet is because he isn’t on any of the other planets, but has stayed on Earth?”

  “Hmm,” she says, taking a sip of her beer. I don’t interrupt her thoughts, and just enjoy the fact that she isn’t hating on me.

  “I will have to look into it. It might bear some fruit. As much as I don’t want to get assigned to Earth,” she says with a sigh. “This might be a chance to catch him.”

  “So, can I ask what this partner of yours was to you? Pathy says that you were all close, you and your sister included.”

  Marrisa smiles sadly. “Yeah,” she says, taking another sip of her beer. “Prita, that was my trainer, she took me under her wing. And we hit it off. She was funny, always full of energy. When she met my sister, she included Lori in everything. Prita was older than my sister and me by a good 20 years, but you wouldn’t think so if you met her. She loved to party. She loved life. We used to invite her to supper with my dad all the time. In the almost two years I knew her, she became family. When she died, we all took it hard. Even my dad. He won’t admit it, though,” she says with a soft smile.

  “She sounds amazing,” I tell her, taking a sip of my beer and putting my head back on the sofa.

  “She was,” Marrisa says softly. I feel a body against mine, but I don’t open my eyes. I just savor the feeling. It was nice falling asleep with her on me weeks ago. I reach over and put my arm over her shoulder and just sit there, my eyes closed, and I know I am tired as I can feel my head buzzing.

  Buzzing. Wait, that’s genuine buzzing. Focusing on it, I listen closely.

  “Marrisa,” I whisper. “Do you hear buzzing?”

  “Hmm,” she says sleepily against me.

  “Do you hear that buzzing sound?” I whisper again, looking down at her. Her eyes are closed and her empty beer bottle is almost slipping out of her hand. I place mine between my legs and grab hers, and she jerks in surprise, most likely expecting it to have fallen.