Witch Hunt

by Skyler Andra

  Witch Hunt

  Guild of Guardians #0.5 (A Paranormal Prison Series)

  Skyler Andra

  Witch Hunt (Guild of Guardians #0.5) © Copyright 2019 Skyler Andra

  Cover art by Atlantis Book Design.

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher/author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Welcome to my Guild series universe where my heroes and heroines protect the world from supernatural and magical threats.

  Guild of Shadows - academy

  Darkfire

  Wifdfire

  Crossfire

  Heathrfire (A Christmas novella available by subscribing to my newsletter)

  Hellfire

  Nightfire (coming 2021)

  Guild of Guardians - paranormal prison

  Witch Hunt (a prequel novella coming 2020)

  Life’s a Witch

  Hindsight’s a Witch (coming 2020)

  Guild of Sorcerers (coming 2021)

  The Guild of Sorcerers will feature in crossovers with the Guild of Shadows and Guild of Guardians as well as my Evil Queen series (Dark Fae Legacies coming 2020). Keep your eyes peeled. Subscribe to my newsletter for updates skylerandra.com/index.php/subscribe/

  Check out the About the Author section for more of my exciting and addicting series <3 Skyler

  Chapter 1

  Knoxe

  “Watch it there,” Jaz goaded me, slicing the air with a training blade and I jumped out of the way. “Wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

  I gave a nervous laugh and wiped away a trickle of sweat on my forehead.

  “I’d be more worried about your own hide, buddy,” I grunted, slashing horizontally with my magical shield, and he leaned away from it.

  Reflexes like a damn fox. One of the best in my team. If he really wanted to better me, he could easily open up a portal using his magical ability to manipulate the veil—a universal energy that flowed through the Earth and supernatural dimensions—and shove me through it, ending our sparring match. But that would set off the prison alarms, and the warden would be down here in no time, throwing us in the hole for leaving the premises.

  Like half the warriors in the Guardians, I didn’t possess mage powers. My only magic came courtesy of the veil force charging my amulet and the moon quartz crystals sewn into my leather wristbands. Items I was only permitted to wear during training and on missions. The energy within them formed a shield and let me shoot offensive blasts to bring any supernatural gantii down. Dampeners in the prison’s walls suppressed the magic of all inmates except in the training room.

  “What’s wrong?” Jaz taunted. “You seem a little off your game.”

  He sliced through the air with his dagger, colliding with my shield, a crackling noise a result of the force. Sparks exploded and shot off in every direction from the clash of the spell infused blade with the veil energy.

  Yeah, I guess I was, a little. My empty stomach tossed with uneasiness. I still wasn’t used to this place. We’d only been here three months. Fresh meat as some of the other inmates called us. Things with the rest of the team were a little rocky. Pascal and Tor blamed Jaz for landing us in here. Raze was on the fence. Me, I knew my best friend was innocent, he’d sworn it to me, and I believed him one hundred percent.

  I beat Jaz back with a few blasts, and he grunted, deflecting my blows, the white energy ricocheting off his dagger.

  “This isn’t the time to slow down.” Jaz blocked another attack. “Beth is watching, and only the strongest will win a date with her.”

  Who are you calling slow?

  For that jibe, I swiped at the back of his ankle to bring him down, and win this battle round for good. But his stance was wide, balanced, strong, making my efforts futile.

  “Hah!” he cried. “Nice try, mate.”

  He clapped both hands on the blade’s hilt, activating its runes. It released a shock wave that threw me backward.

  I summersaulted, quickly recovering, raising my shield again. Nothing could penetrate the veil energy. I narrowed my eyes and smiled. Time to win this round.

  Our training routine involved serious attempts to unnerve the other. He led me forty to thirty-six. Lately, he’d used Beth as an edge over me to get ahead. Beth… the hottie of the prison with legs that went on for miles…was one hell of a prize for the victor. Except the stakes were different in this competition.

  I glanced through the plexiglass, into the next training room, and she pursed her lips and folded her arms. The way she tossed her head back, her silky hair brushing her shoulders, made me want to throw her to the floor and pin her with a kiss.

  Today was no ordinary training day, and we weren’t competing for her affections. Pressure built inside of me, ready to explode, bubbling like a shaken coke bottle. The warden and prison assessors watched us from outside, assessing us, scoring us, making judgment on whether we were trustworthy and fit enough to be sent outside the prison on missions to hunt down criminal supernaturals. All men and woman whose decisions changed the rest of our lives.

  Today, Jaz and I competed for a coveted spot as a Nezam, the squad leader of a team of Guardians. Teams approved for missions hunted down the scumbags of the supernatural world and arrested them, to see these criminals were tried under the gantii courts, punished, and brought to justice for their crimes. As prisoners, we were expendable, and we’d kill for the chance to go out on missions. Anything to get out of this shithole.

  This was my last chance to prove myself. To be the best. Prove my dad wrong. Show him I wasn’t a screw up.

  “You’re useless, boy!” How many time had I heard that?

  “A mindless twit.” Ah the pet name he’d given me and how he referred to me when talking to others.

  And a personal favorite: “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” That one came after I’d missed getting into a leading Victoria learning institution after she’d been accepted with all the fanfare of a parade—felt like it anyway—and a popping bottle of sparkling grape juice.

  My fist curled tighter over my runed dagger at the memory. Determined, I whisked my blade through the air. I needed this win. Jaz staggered backwards, barely keeping up.

  I would earn the position of Nezam if it killed me. Might as well achieve something of substance, even if I was a criminal. Not that my father had any clue where I was. I didn’t care to tell him, either. For all I knew, he thought I was still studying at the community college. He didn’t know I’d been convicted by association for selling secrets to the Guild’s enemies, then thrown into prison to pay off a fifty year sentence. If he knew, it’d just prove his theories right, and I’d damn well prove that bastard wrong. No matter that the Guardians helped save the world. A criminal was
a criminal to my father.

  Moving with the speed of the wind, I hacked at the air, until I caught Jaz in the chest. His shoulders slumped, and he dropped his blade.

  “Good game, mate.” He took my hand, wrapping the end of his fingers around mine, doing our little fist shake.

  “Thanks, man.” I clapped him on the shoulder, puffing from the exercise.

  Surely, winning the competition earned me a few bonus points. I glanced up at the warden and assessors, three of them watching me intently, their hawk gazes studying me as they scribbled notes on their papers.

  Vartros, the warden of this guild, stepped forward. For a man of one hundred and sixty with greying hair and bushy brows, he moved like someone my age; strong, confident, and with precision. Age didn’t affect Gildrons—or mages, warriors or any guild member or assistant—the way it did humans. For Guild members, each earthly year brought added strength and power. Decline didn’t come until they were about three-hundred or so.

  “Excellent demonstration of techniques, Knoxe and Jaz.” Vartros’ voice was sharp and hard, drilling into me, the staccato of discipline more than the melody of praise.

  I nodded, all but shitting my pants as I waited for his next words. Either I was a Nezam or out. The thought of not proceeding to that rank started an ache low and deep in my gut.

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure how the team would react if Jaz was appointed leader. Tor was pretty pissed at him for dragging us into the Guardians’ clutches. Raze was mad that he was caged up and unable to visit his family as much. And Pascal, well, he was different with his autism, and he was still pretty confused over the whole circumstance. I felt it was my duty to take leadership of the team to diffuse the mounting tensions.

  Pascal was the one who’d testified against Jaz selling secrets to the serpents, landing us in here. I was still pretty dirty about that. You didn’t rat out your mates. But the prison psychologist said to me that Pascal saw things a specific way, black or white, truth or lie, and there was no gray area for him. Any other man would have denied any knowledge of seeing Jaz talking to a snake. Not Pascal. He just had to tell the truth. Never mind that Jaz was getting intel for our mission with the Shadows—where we came from before our sentencing to the Guardians. If only the Guild jury who decided our fate saw it that way. They knew they had a mole in their ranks and pinged Jaz and our team for it.

  “Well done, man.” Tor, one of my teammates, gave me a congratulatory thump on the arm.

  “Thanks, man.” I clapped him back.

  Tor didn’t even look at Jaz.

  Vartros’ gaze panned the length of students in this class. “Thank you, everyone. You’re all excused while the assessors and I convene. We will announce the next step after we compare scores and discuss each entrant.”

  My jaw tightened. The ache in my gut sharpened. I brushed the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand as I followed my team out into the hall. Knowing I might never see the building again didn’t make for a pleasant wait.

  Chapter 2

  Knoxe

  I braced myself against the wall, leaning my head on the cold stone.

  My team and I lined up along the wall, sitting, standing, or fidgeting. Given the division in the team, they were all invested in whom was about to be appointed Nezam, for various reasons. I just wanted to make the next fifty years peaceful if we had to work together to earn enough credits to reduce our sentence. The last thing I wanted was in-house fighting and discord.

  I glanced at each man in the team. Raze first. Reserved, kept to himself, but a hard worker. A fighter like me with advanced healing capability, strength, agility and durability. No special gift. One of the few in the Guild that didn’t make me feel out of place without any magic to my credit. Brown eyes distant and far away, he paced the length of corridor. His shoulders were tense and his step brisk and sharp. His tracking skills were A-game. Hailing from the local indigenous tribe, he’d inherited all the stories of the star walkers from other worlds, and the secrets of tracking the stars, the variances in the landscape to literally find a needle in a haystack. From the start, he’d I’d kept his distance from the rest of us, preferring to be private and a loner.

  Of the lot of our sorry looking asses, Victor—or Tor as he preferred to be known as—stood out with his cocky swagger and self-assured demeanor, a loudmouth showoff who wanted to be a superhero. If I had a gift like his, to deceive and trick a gantii into seeing whatever he projected onto them, I would have been pretty confident, too.

  Guys like Tor pissed me off. Why had he been given magical traits, and I’d missed out? Having some magic behind me would have furthered my chances of being selected. Not that the Guild only chose those with magic. There were plenty of Tollens, Guardian warriors, who didn’t have it, and relied on magical items for defense and safety. Tor wasn’t someone I’d normally chose for my team, but his skills would come in handy. I hoped he didn’t bring that loud mouth with him out on the mission. We didn’t need to alert the whole gantii universe that we were coming.

  I continued along the line of team members, analyzing, and comparing myself in my head. My lack of magic certainly left me with some serious insecurities.

  Beside Tor stood Pascal, the class nerd. Quiet, shy and weird, but his gift of harnessing musical frequencies packed a mean punch. While he might have had the physicality to keep up with the demands of the job, he didn’t have the same mental resilience as Raze or Tor. His autism meant he didn’t learn or understand the way the rest of us did. Also made him fidgety and easily distracted because of his autism, and that made me nervous.

  Some days the team struggled to motivate Pascal to perform. He communicated in musical concepts, and Jaz detected this because his brother had the same syndrome, and he helped Pascal grasp Guild theory on this basis.

  Guys I could work with and trust. Tollens that would die to protect me and I them. Brothers… even if now we were divided because of recent circumstances.

  I tapped my foot and drummed my hands on my thighs. Anything to distract myself from the wardens’ decision. Once the decision was delivered, we might have a mutiny on our hands if Jaz was appointed, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

  At last, the door peeled open and Vartros eased out and everyone on the team snapped to attention.

  “Thanks for your patience,” he said, his tone serious. “We decided it would be best if Knoxe lead the team.”

  Jaz sighed, one corner of his mouth peeling back into a disheartened smile. “Cool.” He shook his head, crossed his arms and stepped back.

  My chest tightened. I was the only one who believed his innocence. The warden hadn’t gone easy on him. Neither had most of the team with their constant reminders of why we were here.

  Tor fist pumped the air behind Jaz’s back. Pascal just nodded, never saying much.

  “And to celebrate Knoxe’s appointment,” the warden added, “we’re sending you on a mission.”

  Yes! A mission. My body quivered with anticipation. Even if I didn’t make it back alive, deep in my soul, I’d remember that I’d fought for the Guild. I might be a convicted criminal, scum of the Guild, but not many people got to do my job, and that counted, right?

  Vartros held out an envelope, stamped with the Guild’s symbol. Two G’s linked by an O. “In here is instructions for each your mission.”

  “Fuckin, A,” Tor shouted, sliding his arm over Raze, dragging him back into the training room, followed by Pascal.

  The tightness in my chest ached as Jaz trudged inside, put on two gloves, and began smashing the punching bag.

  The warden stepped closer. “It’s for the benefit of the team, Knoxe.” I squeezed the side of my thigh. “Make us proud, Nezam.” He smiled and withdrew, moving inside the training room to address the team.

  I blinked, processing the word. Nezam: a somewhat distinguished position within the Guild of Guardians… as distinguished as you could get as an inmate. At the Guild of Shadows, where we came from before our
convictions, the team and I followed instruction from a Gildron, a head mage. I didn’t know the first thing about leading a team. Now, all my insecurities, as well as my father’s voice, pounded inside my head, reminding me what a failure I was. What if I sucked at it? There were a hundred ways this could go wrong and as I stood there holding the envelope, I could see every single one of them. And the responsibility weighed more than I could carry. I had enough to worry about without adding the success of some random mission on top of it all. Of course, if I made the mission a success or was a part of the team that succeeded, then I would certainly have a place at the Guild. And they’d chosen me to lead. That meant something. Had to.

  My heart slammed against my ribcage. Going from a Guildling to a Nezam was a big jump. So far my training only consisted of weaponry, application of magic, the ins and outs of supernatural creatures, their weaknesses, strengths. The Guild didn’t exactly supply lessons on leadership. Although… we did have extensive training on team building and trusting. Out in the field, battling unpredictable, cunning, savage and incredibly strong gantii meant you had to have the back of the Nezam with you if you wanted to make it home alive. The Guild couldn’t afford to activate ineffective teams into operation. Not without mistakes, injury and sometimes death.

  I trailed behind the warden, still feeling numb at the decision, which hadn’t fully settled yet.

  Vartros cleared his throat to address the rest of the group. “The Guild’s arsenal of weapons and magic is at your disposal to arrest your zikers.” Zikers. Guild terminology for supernatural criminals.

  A rush of adrenaline hit. I hadn’t exactly been at the top of my class. I tended to coast in the middle no matter how hard I tried. Definitely not genius material. I mean, I got good grades, but I had to work my ass off to earn them. Unlike my sister who remembered everything. But there was something different about the Guild of Guardians. Despite the prison setting, the strict rules, lack of autonomy and freedom, the purpose of hunting zikers, it felt natural, like I belonged. Like home. Or the home I dreamed of.