Hunter Circles Series Books 1-3: An Urban Fantasy Box Set

by Jessica Gunn

  “No one said it was The Trade,” I growled. The Trade was comprised of the bounty hunters specifically responsible for rounding up humans and witches for Autumn Fire. “The point is: we nearly got bounties placed on our own heads tonight. If she or her groupies had seen us, we wouldn’t have made it out of there alive.”

  “Why are they operating so close to the Canadian border?” Rachel asked.

  I almost didn’t want to know. My worst-case-scenario mind jumped to a terrible possibility. What if they were after Riley?

  Landshaft was essentially a demon city founded sometime after the Colonists came to America and was hidden by spell magiks from the normal human eye. It was raised and inhabited by power-hungry demons who participated in all sorts of unseemly activities. Drug dealing, like the dharksa I used to be involved with, and human trafficking to obtain more powers, magik, and money, but also to offer up individuals to be turned into demons. We assumed the Empire of Darkness hoped that if they reached a tipping point in the ratio of demons to everyone, they’d take over the world. And so far, they’d done a good job of working toward that goal.

  Now, the city lived in untouched territory, hidden from view and left alone by the Hunter Circles, in the same way that Darkness—even Aloysius himself—never went after any of the Circles’ Headquarter buildings. The resulting bloodbath and escalation of war simply wasn’t worth it, not while we lived in a somewhat easy balance.

  Sort of.

  It was a gentlemen’s agreement to keep the world from burning.

  As for why they were so close to the Canadian border… “It’s possible they’ve always operated there. No one knows the exact location of the demon city.”

  “Bullshit,” Shawn said. “Someone has to.”

  “No one knew where Shadow Crest laired until Drew had found out, either,” Ben said, glancing over at me.

  My fists curled. “Someone might have fed him that information on purpose. Maybe as a way to distract from the plan to attack Hunter’s Guild. Something more than our feud with Lady Azar is going on here.”

  There was only one demon I knew that’d feed my cousin information to get us into the position we were in at Shadow Crest’s lair. And I’d kill him the next time I saw him.

  Or so I kept telling myself.

  The back of my hand throbbed at the thought, an aching pain creeping up my arm. I slipped my hands into my back pockets.

  Shawn shook his head and started to pace. “Why they’re there doesn’t matter. The fact that we’ve narrowed down Landshaft’s possible location does.”

  “Not that the Fire Circle will ever authorize any mission,” Ben said. “I don’t think even the Ether Head Circle would touch that, and they’ve got some of the most powerful people around.”

  “Again,” Shawn said, turning to me. “Bullshit. We’ve got us.”

  I looked at him, deadpan. “Right. Me unable to tap into Alzan’s power and you magik-less. That’ll go over real well. Besides, the sheer amount of demonic aura that’s surely lying around that place will debilitate us the second we step foot inside the city’s perimeter.” Or had Mr. Star Pupil forgotten about that?

  Aura sickness didn’t happen often, and I’d never experienced it myself. Not even in Shadow Crest’s lair. Maybe if their entire roster had been inside, all hundred or more demons, then we’d have experienced issues. When you had a bunch of demons in one place, the weight of their auras—even if you didn’t see them like I did—crushed the human soul. It made you nauseous, weak. And if you didn’t get out of the area or otherwise escape it, it’d squeeze your soul into nothing. Obliterate it.

  Even with Lady Azar and Giyano, two Old Ones, we hadn’t felt it. And the normal demon nests around the city didn’t have enough demons for that. But in Landshaft… I’d always thought it was the main reason the Circles never went after the city. The Powers didn’t have a way to combat aura sickness.

  “This is absurd,” Shawn snapped.

  My eyes narrowed. “Well, when you have magik that can help us fight the demons there, then you can have an opinion on the matter.” Until then, I didn’t want to hear about any fantasies of epic quests from him. Period.

  “Why do you want to go after them so badly?” Nate asked. “You nearly jumped in on your own.”

  Ben spun on Shawn. “What?”

  “Not like you were around to give orders,” Shawn said.

  Ben’s fists balled, but he didn’t otherwise react. Shawn’s words were true—Ben hadn’t been there. We’d been positioned opposite them and, in the dark, there wouldn’t have been a way for Shawn to have seen hand signals. And it wasn’t like my telepathy pushed thoughts into others’ heads.

  “Not the point,” Ben said through gritted teeth.

  “I had to hold him back,” said Nate as he watched Shawn. “Why’d you almost go in alone?”

  “To save those innocents, obviously,” Shawn said, looking at us like we were the thickest idiots in the world. “That’s our job.”

  “Not in a fight we can’t win,” I said.

  “Are you serious? Did none of you pay attention during training? Our job is to protect others against Darkness, no matter how powerful they are.”

  “We would have died, Shawn,” Ben said. “And put a massive target on the Fire Circle. We can’t save innocents if we’re dead or being chased to the ends of the earth by Tatiana Viynar.”

  Shawn’s jaw worked so hard, I swore I could hear his molars grinding together. What the hell had him so pissed? Was it really about us retreating? After Tatiana had split that guy in half, there was no way in hell we would have escaped. At all. Then bye-bye, Alzan. Because at one point or another, we had to take that into account too.

  Jaffrin appeared in a see-through teleportante shimmer directly in front of us. He was dressed in a button-down shirt and dark slacks and didn’t look nearly as put-together as he usually did. “Derek called. You’ve only been gone for a few hours. What went wrong?”

  “‘What went wrong?’” I echoed, barely above a whisper, but loud enough that Jaffrin heard my sarcasm and glared.

  Ben stepped in front of me, a shield against Jaffrin’s ire. “You sent us after a Landshaft operation station. That’s what happened.”

  Jaffrin’s eyes widened in what appeared to be genuine shock. “Excuse me?”

  “That house might have once been abandoned, but now it’s being used by Landshaft bounty hunters.”

  “Tatiana Viynar, to be specific,” Shawn chimed in. “She had a group of Ember witches with her to be taken into the city.”

  “Autumn Fire already passed,” Jaffrin said, though he knew as well as I did that not only was there more than one use for human life energy, Darkness stocked up on that energy all year long for the annual turning of demons. “They were that close to the border?”

  “Yes. For god’s sake, they were,” I snapped. “Can we please move past that point? Just because Canada’s generally considered safe and not as demonically populated doesn’t mean they aren’t operating near the border or over it.”

  Ben went rigid beside me, his face paling. “They better not be.”

  My blood ran cold. Obviously, no one wanted that. Sending Riley with Sandra to Canada had been a last-ditch effort.

  Jaffrin looked to the ground and ran a hand over his bald head. “I’ll contact Sandra’s security detail and confirm their safety. I’m sure they’re fine. Do not go back north again.”

  I shot Jaffrin a glare. “Then don’t send us on wild goose chases. I get you wanting to order me to do whatever since you’ve always done that. And if it had involved Landshaft and the drug dealing I used to do, I get that too.”

  Jaffrin’s eyes locked with mine. “I only condoned that because I was hoping you’d glean information about the whereabouts of Landshaft by doing so.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  Heat swept up the back of my neck and into my face as I tried to swallow down the raging fire inside me. This man had played with our live
s, had played with mine too often. And now here we stood, me wondering if all of this had been an act or if Jaffrin really was this incompetent.

  “Point is we now know Landshaft is up north,” Ben said. His gaze landed on me, his thoughts amplified in the telepathic space between us. If you can hear this, calm the hell down. That’s an order.

  Screw Jaffrin. And screw Ben’s ability to break through my telepathic walls.

  “And that they’re building power reserves for something,” Shawn said.

  Jaffrin crossed his arms. “They’ve always taken humans and witches. This is no different, especially where the bounty hunters are concerned.”

  Shawn’s mouth opened, but he closed it again and shook his head. “Yes, sir.”

  “Go home,” Jaffrin said. “I need to inform the Ether Head Circle of these developments.”

  “You might want to keep Hunters from taking jobs near the Canadian border too while you’re at it,” I suggested, this time without any trace of sarcasm. If we couldn’t handle battling with Landshaft’s bounty hunters, other teams wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Jaffrin nodded. “Already done. I’m taking those off the mission list. Go home and rest.”

  Not likely. Not after tonight. I was too riled up now, too scared. Sweat beaded on my brow. We’d almost made an enemy of Landshaft tonight. And that was not okay.

  Jaffrin excused himself up to his office, leaving our team to stand amongst ourselves.

  “What now?” Rachel asked. “He can’t honestly expect us to just go home and forget about tonight.”

  “No way I’m sleeping,” I told her. “I might walk home. To blow off some steam.”

  “That’s a long walk when it’s this cold out,” Nate said.

  Ben nodded. “Good. I need it, too.”

  “Yeah,” Shawn said curtly.

  I gestured to the front doors of Fire Circle Headquarters. “Let’s go. There’re only a few hours until morning.”

  WE TOOK the shortest route between Fire Circle Headquarters and our team’s house, although it was still a good five-plus miles. I was sure that, after the first hour, we’d likely hop a subway. But the fast pace we kept didn’t promise that as an outcome.

  Though I was glad I wasn’t the only one too riled up to hope of sleeping any time soon, I hated what’d happened tonight. How close we’d gotten to death—again—as a team after years of me operating perfectly fine on my own. Having to worry about them stressed me out more than me working solo missions for Jaffrin that were meant to be completed by teams. And to know that Shawn had almost gone in head-first anyway… What had he been thinking?

  “Do you smell that?” Rachel asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

  “What?”

  Nate stopped, sniffing the air. “Yeah. I do.”

  Shawn looked up. “Fire?”

  Sirens wailed, piercing the early morning in sharp tones.

  “Should we investigate?” I asked Ben.

  He shrugged. “It’d give us something to do.” I guessed he was feeling the restlessness too. “Let’s go.”

  We took off in the direction of the sirens, following them to an area of the city that got a bit closer to the cianza at Boston’s center than I would have liked. Chills crept up my skin, goosebumps following. I looked to Shawn. This was the first time we’d brought him close to Cianza Boston, although I didn’t know if he’d been this close on his own before.

  “Do you feel it?” I asked as we jogged to the scene.

  He looked down at me. “Feel what?”

  “The cianza. It affects me quicker than normal magik-users because of the prophecy. You should feel the same.”

  He shrugged. “I guess so. Feels like a blanket of power settling over you?”

  “More like strangling me, but yeah, sure.” The closer I traveled to the cianza, the worse the feeling got. The feeling of tipping the power balance between good and evil.

  “Shit.” Ben froze in place. “The human police are already there. But look.”

  I stopped behind him and peered over his shoulder. At Arnie’s bar, engulfed in flames. “Damn.”

  The building looked like it was mostly standing okay, but the windows and doors had been blown out. The walls were charred and half the roof was caving in. The fire department must have already decided no one had been inside—it was after 2 A.M. at a bar after all—because they were still fighting the flames outside.

  “Any way we can sneak in and look for survivors?” Ben asked.

  “I can sneak in,” I said. “I’ve been there enough times to teleportante inside and back out again.”

  Rachel stepped beside me. “I’ll come to help combat the blaze. We need to see if there are survivors.”

  Ben nodded. “Or any clues as to who started the fire. Go. But be quick.”

  I was surprised Ben had agreed to this without putting himself on the detail, too. In the past, he’d have demanded to go with us. Rachel’s gaze met mine, her eyes wide in surprise. Guess she couldn’t believe it either.

  She held out her hand and I grabbed it, using teleportante to bring us into Arnie’s now-burning down bar. Flames burned along the banisters and walls, over the tables, chairs, and the bar top, behind which… Oh, god.

  Rachel’s hand, still clasped in mine, squeezed tight. She didn’t handle gore well. And after the last few days, it’d gotten worse.

  Arnie had been impaled against the wall behind the bar by two chair legs. Blood poured out of the wounds in the middle of his chest and out of the corners of his mouth. His eyes were open and alert despite the pain wrinkling his face. His mouth was open, gasping for air.

  We’d by no means been friends, but my heart plummeted for him.

  The heat from the fire scorched my skin, scents of burning wood and something less savory wafting up inside my nose. Sweat slipped down the side of my face and my neck. I made my way over to the bar and used my telekinesis to push off smoke and flames reaching out for me. Still, my ether-based magik couldn’t block out the heat from the fires burning around me.

  I stepped over too many demon bodies on my way to the bar, Rachel trailing behind me, using her power douse flames as best she could. But they kept springing back to life despite the water from her attacks and the firefighters’ hoses outside the building.

  This was no normal fire.

  Someone’s magik had done this. Might still be doing this.

  When I reached the bar counter, I placed a hand on the wood to vault over it, but the wood was scorching. I yelped as my skin burned.

  “Here,” Rachel said, floating a small wave of water over to me. She encased my hand in the water and cooled it to stop the burning. “That will help. But we shouldn’t stay here for too much longer. I can’t do anything against the fires and I’m sure the fire department will be inside soon.”

  I nodded. Rachel was right. But the way her powers cooled my burning hand, the feel of relief, had me frozen in place. Rachel was a godsend and a total natural at her powers.

  “Thanks,” I said and used my telekinesis to lift myself over the bar, feet dangling, behind it to where Arnie was impaled. “You’ve looked better, Arnie.”

  He coughed, blood sputtering from his mouth over the chair legs piercing his chest. I wanted to pull them out, to help comfort him, but instinct told me that’d just kill him quicker. There wasn’t anything I could do for him unless a healer showed up within the next few minutes. And I wasn’t totally sure a Fire Circle healer would even want to help out a demon, regardless of the information he might have.

  “Funny,” Arnie croaked. “Get… out…”

  I tsked, looking him over for any sign of what’d happened, or if there was a way to save him. “You let me worry about the human police and fire department.”

  “No…” He coughed again, splattering more blood from the corners of his mouth.

  I lay a hand on his shoulder. “Easy. This isn’t as bad as it looks, but talking will make it worse.”

  His eyes sh
ut weakly, like he wanted to roll them instead. Like all the times we’d joked when I’d come here, pretending to be a demon, to deal dharska. “Demon.”

  My eyebrows rose. “A demon did this?”

  He nodded his head almost imperceptibly, moaning painful, pitiful sounds.

  I shot a look at Rachel over my shoulder. “Check for that cuneiform mark.”

  “You think it’s the same person?”

  “He said a demon did it,” I yelled over the roar of the fire around us. Rachel looked around as I put my focus back on Arnie. “Which demon?”

  His eyes rolled back into his head, his breaths slowing. Arnie didn’t have much time left. And from the roar of the flames and creaking of the wood structure around me, neither did Rachel and I.

  “Kin…der…” he croaked. “Betrayer.”

  My heart stopped, all breath whooshing out of my body. A cool wave of shock washed over me, petrifying. No. “Kinder.” No way. No fucking way. I shook Arnie’s shoulder to wake him up again. To confirm the maddening reality of his words. “Kinder did this? Are you sure?”

  But Arnie didn’t wake, and his chest didn’t rise. He was gone.

  I spun back to the bar, where Rachel stood looking up at the burning ceiling.

  “It’s the same,” she said, pointing. “Cuneiform here, too.”

  A calling card. Kinder’s fucking seal.

  Oh, this was not good at all.

  “We need to leave,” I said, vaulting over the bar counter again with aid from my telekinesis. “Now. This entire area isn’t safe.”

  I grabbed on to her arm before Rachel could protest and teleported us back out to the alley where the others stood. Heat radiated off of us in waves in the suddenly-cold night air. Steam puffed from our breaths.

  “So?” Ben asked as soon as we landed.

  Rachel’s face paled and I felt all the blood rush from mine. “It’s not just Landshaft we have to worry about anymore.”

  “What?” Shawn asked.

  I gulped, closing my eyes. “We have a bit of a problem. And by we, I mean the entire Fire Circle.” Not to mention Cianza Boston too.