by Jessica Gunn
Oh, god.
I knelt beside my cousin, blood trickling down the side of his face. A pool of red surrounded his middle and legs. His phone rested inches from his hand, still illuminated from our call. The screen dimmed as I wrapped my shaking, clammy hand around his limp one. My throat closed along with my eyes, and though I needed to ground myself with a breath, I only succeeded in seizing my lungs with the scents of heavy battle.
My chest heaved, my heart splitting open as tears streamed down my face. Drew. Sweet Drew. My cousin. We’d lived under no illusion that being in this war meant having a long life, but not like this. Not him.
I lifted my gaze from Drew’s crumpled form to the Guild at large. To the devastation and fire, the two dozen other bodies, both Hunter and demon alike. Whatever had attacked the Guild had somehow gotten through the protection magiks. It would have had to have taken someone that powerful to kill everyone inside. And anyone that powerful wasn’t someone I wanted to tangle with.
“We need to call for help,” Rachel said, still shocked frozen. She hadn’t moved an inch, but her gaze roamed across the room. “Get EMTs for the wounded.”
“There won’t be many for long.” Shawn knelt beside another mangled body, reaching for their neck. He shook his head. “Whoever did this made sure there’d be no survivors.”
Nate joined Ben near the stairs to the second floor, surveying the area from a higher view. “What’s the point? The message is pretty clear. The Guild’s been the only space of peace between our sides for a thousand years.”
Destroying Hunter’s Guild like this wasn’t a show of power. It was a message from someone who laughed in the face of it. But even Aloysius, creator of Darkness, abided by the Guild’s rules. That meant whoever had done this didn’t fear Aloysius. Who would be that insane?
Giyano. The idea crossed my mind and sifted out just as quickly. Even he wouldn’t be this stupid, and all he’d wanted these past few weeks was to get to me. He’d succeeded in that, not that I’d let the rest of the team know. He had me. Destroying Hunter’s Guild would be overkill.
A door creaked open on the second floor. The sound screamed through the deadly silent air inside the remnants of the building. Ben and Nate froze mid-step, their knife-hands at the ready. I stood straighter and readied to lash out with my magik. Whoever did this deserved the beat down my team would be giving them.
A whine broke the tension, followed by a woman keening in pain and anguish. The sound struck right to my chest and squeezed my heart. My breath hitched as a man and woman piled out from behind a door to one of the inn rooms. They were older, maybe in their sixties or seventies, with wrinkled, kind faces, wiry gray hair, and bloodstained clothes. I recognized them, but only vaguely.
The man was clutching his side and managed three steps toward Nate and Ben before having to lean against the wall. The woman rushed to his side and pulled away his clutched hand. A nasty, deep wound lay underneath.
“Stop,” Ben said. “Not another step.”
I sprinted across the room to the stairs, climbing them two at a time. When the woman looked up and made eye contact with Ben, the memory of these two rang clear in my mind. “Don’t, Ben.”
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “What? Why? They’re the only survivors.”
“Worked my last magik to save us,” the woman said. She frowned down at her husband’s wound. “Too little good, I’m afraid. I’m not the magik-user I once was.”
She didn’t have burgundy eyes, but I’d never known the background of the couple who owned Hunter’s Guild. The original owners, supposedly. Which placed both of them well above the seventy-year-old age range. To be that old, they’d have to be demons. A demon’s magik twisted a human’s body, allowing their lifespans to elongate to the degree of their power. Not quite immortal, but close.
“They own the Guild,” I said as I brushed past my teammates and joined the woman. “What happened here?” I yanked off my jacket and balled it up, then replaced her hand with my own on the man’s wound. He was bleeding profusely, red blood seeping out the corners of my makeshift compress, but if we got him to a hospital right away, he might live.
“One demon,” the man croaked, his gray eyes searching mine. “One single demon broke through our protection spells and did… this.” His eyes tightened, tears welling up within them. “Our entire lives… have been dedicated to creating a place… of peace—even if just for a few nights—for both sides.”
“Something that’s been appreciated,” Ben said, stepping forward. “Who did this exactly?”
The man shook his head and the woman’s frown deepened. “We don’t know,” she said. “The patrons hid us away during the attack to protect us. But it must be someone who feels threatened by peace. It is the only explanation.”
Someone threatened by peace. The same someone who also didn’t fear Aloysius. The two values seemed incompatible.
The man swayed beneath my touch and braced himself harder against the wall.
I worked my shoulder under his. “We need to get you to a hospital. Come on.”
“But where? No place is safe.” The heartbroken look in his eyes, a mirror of everything he and his wife had worked to build and just lost, broke something inside of me.
Ben whipped out his phone and dialed someone’s number at record speed. Probably Jaffrin.
Nate walked over and grabbed a hold of the man. “I got it. I can take him to Boston General.” A quick teleportante, and they’d both be there within seconds. “You’re needed here. The amount of magik on these walls is wigging me out anyway.”
I arched an eyebrow. Without the protection magiks in place, I hadn’t felt the other magik at first. I’d ignored most of it. But now, the amount of power oozing off of the banister and floors and furniture slammed into me.
Dark magik. Demon magik. I swallowed hard.
“I’ll take a look around,” I said. The weight of the power wasn’t like the oppressive temptation of a cianza, but it still reached to the deepest, darkest parts of my soul. The areas touched by Giyano’s magik.
“Start with that,” Nate said, nodding to the first floor.
“What?” I turned and glanced over the banister at the floor below, not sure what Nate was referring to. What we’d all missed upon walking in. What no one had noticed because it’d been burned into the ground, covered by bodies.
But from above, I could just make out something—a jagged, unreadable symbol charred into the wooden floor of Hunter’s Guild.
A calling card.
CHAPTER 3
BEN
I walked to the banister to get a better view of whatever had made Krystin look so confused. From above, the mark burned into the Guild’s floor didn’t look like much. At most, a few scribblings made by an angry child. “What is that?”
“Looks like cuneiform.” Shawn joined me at the railing. “At least I think so. I studied some archeology in college. The writing looks vaguely familiar.”
“Really?” Krystin asked, peering up at him. “Archeology?”
Shawn shook his head. “It was an elective.”
Oh, for god’s sake. “Jaffrin said he’d be here right away. He’ll know.” Well, if he was worth his value as a Circle Leader, he’d know. There were plenty of demons around in the early world, some of which were supposedly still alive. I didn’t want to meet any of them, but if this mark had been left by one of those demons… “So there’s a good chance an Old One did this?”
Krystin nodded as she backed away from the railing one slow step at a time. “Probably. But I don’t understand why. Hunter’s Guild is one of the very few neutral areas left in the world. Until tonight, Aloysius, ruler and creator of all demons, could have waltzed in for a drink and no one would have touched him.”
“And yet…” I turned my focus from the charred cuneiform mark on the floor to the scene at large. So much blood. Too much death. Sure, our team had just come off a mission that had resulted in demon deaths, but that was di
fferent. Wasn’t it? These demons and Hunters and witches, they thought they were safe here. They thought they had every right to be in this building.
And then someone, something, had come through and murdered them all.
I blinked, watching the area, and in the next moment, Jaffrin stood in the center of chaos’s remains. Avery’s team appeared behind him a heartbeat later. I closed my eyes and exhaled.
Most days, there wasn’t a ton about Jaffrin that I liked. I respected him and his role in the Fire Circle, sure. But he’d made a lot of bad calls, and now that we knew he’d jerked Krystin around for a good portion of her life, it didn’t endear me to him in the slightest. That said, just his presence, knowing someone with more authority than me had arrived, was worth its weight in gold.
I called out to him, “You can get a better view of the mark from upstairs.”
Jaffrin was dressed in his usual dark jeans and dark red suit jacket, but I could count on one hand how many times I’d ever seen him brandish his weapon. He held his own Fire Circle knife at his side, a bit more gold than ours, the fire emblem dancing along the handle. Sometimes I wondered if it was an illusion, or if these knives were enchanted by magik. Jaffrin clutched the handle, knuckles turning white.
Huh. If Jaffrin was worried enough to arm himself, but did so with a weapon, did that mean he didn’t have magik after all? We’d long assumed he did but never used it, but… Interesting.
I tucked that information away for later, when I could tell Krystin.
Jaffrin lifted a hand to his mouth, smoothing his fingers along the sides of his jaw. “This is…”
“Horrible,” Avery stated, turning with wide eyes, taking it all in. “What the hell happened here?”
“We don’t know,” I said. “Some sort of attack. We got the owners to safety. They needed immediate medical attention.”
“They’re the only survivors,” Krystin chimed in. “Everyone else is…” Tears spilled down her cheeks, and by the looks of her red, puffy eyes, they had been for a while. But with the lights out on most of the first floor and part of the second, I hadn’t gotten a close enough look.
“Krystin?” I asked, but even as her name crossed my lips, I realized what’d happened. Oh, god.
I spun, leaning over the banister to get a better view of the bar on the first floor. One of the building’s support beams had toppled over, splitting the bar area in two. A dark figure swathed in shadows lay beneath the beam. Drew, Krystin’s cousin. The man who’d given us the location of Shadow Crest’s hideout so we could rescue Riley.
“Krystin, I’m so sorry,” I said, turning back to her.
She stepped away and roughly wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “No time,” she mumbled.
“How’d they even get in here?” Avery asked as he walked to a wall and placed his hand on it. “Isn’t Hunter’s Guild protected by magik?”
Jaffrin nodded, then shook his head slowly. “I… don’t feel them anymore. The protection magiks are gone.”
“Obviously,” Krystin snapped. “The owners said a single demon came in and tore through the place. Given the strength of those protection magiks and the fucking cuneiform on the floor, I’m betting it was an Old One. Someone very old and very powerful, and obviously, they’re either bored or have been playing the longest of long games.”
“But why?” Rachel asked.
“Question of the hour.” Jaffrin slipped his hand into his pocket, retrieved a small camera, and held it out to Avery, the leader of his flagship team. “Go up to the second floor and take a picture of the cuneiform. I’ll get someone to translate it ASAP.”
“Because that’ll be easy,” Krystin said. She winced, then bit her lip as if she realized she needed to hold her tongue.
Someone teleportanted in behind Jaffrin—Nate. His face paled upon landing and meeting Jaffrin’s gaze. “Sir.” To me, he said, “I don’t think he’s going to make it. The doctors didn’t look confident when I showed up in their ER. But I think his wife is going to be okay.”
Jaffrin frowned, not speaking for many long moments as the ten of us looked on, waiting for him to say something. An order. A retreat command. Anything. Finally, he lifted his gaze from the floor. “I need to call Hydron first, then the Ether Head Circle. Ben, was your team able to carry out your mission tonight?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. They were sitting on a dharksa stash, which is probably why they were reluctant to leave. We took care of it.”
“Good. I want you to stay here until I can summon more teams to secure the area, as well as get in contact with the Ether Circle. They’ll be able to alert their contact in Darkness to the situation.”
Krystin coughed loudly. “Their contact?”
I had the same question but wasn’t about to voice it. I mean, it kind of made sense. Darkness was our sworn enemy, given that the Circles were a byproduct of the Powers, but this wasn’t 2,000 B.C.
“For matters such as these,” Jaffrin said slowly, “sometimes it is better to alert the enemy to another you might have in common. And since this person, whoever they were, killed without regard to moral affiliation, it’s safe to say that no one is safe.” Jaffrin glanced to me. “Once backup arrives, you’re to rest for the night, then return later tomorrow morning. If this is the first in a string of attacks, I’ll need your team in top shape.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Top shape when we’d only had a week to recover since our last run-in with a major demon didn’t seem possible. But Lady Azar seemed to be out of commission for now, thanks to Nate’s asanak, soul-cleaving move. She’d be unable to use her magik for a few weeks, according to Nate. Which also put her out of the running for attacking Hunter’s Guild.
I raked my hand through my hair, pausing to squeeze the back of my neck. “This is ridiculous.”
“Agreed,” Jaffrin said. “Let’s focus on moving forward and start getting this place cleaned up.”
Jaffrin walked off to make his calls, gesturing to Avery. He and his team took out their phones, turned on the flashlight apps, and began counting the dead. Which really was useless because the answer was horrifyingly simple: all of them. No one in here had made it out alive.
Even for a demon of Darkness, this was a new low. Death in a neutral area. Death without honor.
My fists balled, bile creeping up my throat. Whoever had done this was despicable.
I looked back to my team. Nate and Rachel had already begun helping Avery’s team, though I worried for Rachel. She shouldn’t have to see this. She would have never gotten close to this side of the world if I hadn’t told her about it. We would have just learned about our powers on our own and that would have been the end of it, rather than joining the Fire Circle.
Krystin climbed down the stairs and walked a few steps toward what used to be the bar. We’d been here a week ago, asking Drew for help. Joking about how working here was dangerous for him. And now…
Krystin stopped short of the bar, her shoulders shaking. “He should have left like I told him to.” She hadn’t turned her head, but she stood close enough to me that the words couldn’t have been for anyone else.
I joined her, ten feet from what used to be the countertop. Alcohol still dripped down the back wall where bottles had been smashed, glass shattered. Whiskey and tequila, rum and vodka—all of the scents blended together, stronger at this short distance. Strong enough to temporarily block out the coppery smell of blood and what smoke remained.
“He made his own choice.” I doubted that was what she wanted to hear, but it was the truth. Not that I was one to talk about having sane reactions when family was involved. “He knew the danger he’d placed himself in, both working here and helping us recover that information about Shadow Crest.”
“And look where it got him,” Krystin snapped, her fists white-knuckling. “I asked him for information and he ended up dead. It’s my fault and mine alone.”
“Hang on,” I said, placing a hand on her a
rm. “You don’t know that what happened here tonight has anything to do with Shadow Crest. In fact, I’m pretty sure we decided it doesn’t.”
Krystin tore her arm out of my grasp. “That doesn’t change the facts. I asked him to track them down, we defeated them, and now this.” Her voice broke on the last word and her lip began to tremble as tears spilled down her face again. “I need to call his wife. I need to—need—” Krystin shook her head violently and backpedaled from the bar, walking toward where the front door to Hunter’s Guild used to be, and slammed through the wall that remained.
Then she was gone.
I wished I could blame this, all of it, on being just another part of the job. But nothing in training prepared you for a massacre like this.
My gaze wandered back to the bar, to where Drew lay smashed beneath the support beam. I couldn’t free his body on my own, but there was one thing I could do.
I walked to the closest window and ripped off the curtain lining it. Then I trailed back to Drew’s body and covered him before saying a prayer to any gods that might be listening.
“Protect him. Protect us all.”
CHAPTER 4
KRYSTIN
Sunlight poured in through our living room window, shining against my closed eyelids. The sun was warm despite the snow covering the ground outside. It’d started snowing in Boston while we’d been out at Hunter’s Guild overnight. Luckily, one didn’t need to shovel anything when one could teleport. Not that I was feeling up to it anyway.
Telling Drew’s wife, Alicia, about his death and about the Guild attack nearly broke me all over again. And after relating the tragedy multiple times, even as Jaffrin sent out his own briefing to the Fire Circle, it never got easier. The Hunter’s Guild attack hadn’t been directed solely at us, but both Hunters and demonkind alike.