Third year thrills hunte.., p.1
Third Year Thrills (Hunter Academy Book 3), page 1
Third Year Thrills
Hunters Academy Book 3
A.L. Kessler
Copyright © 2023 by A.L. Kessler
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
Dedication
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
About Author
Also By
To coffee, because without it, I wouldn't have been able to write this. ;)
Chapter One
“We’ve been over this, Crystal.” The elder master tapped his hand on the long desk separating her from the Elder Masters. “We do not have the hunters to raid a slave trade location right now.”
“One of our own is in there, and you’re telling me you will just let her sit there and rot?”
He crossed his arms and stared down at her. “I’m telling you, I’m not willing to risk a team for one member who disobeyed orders and got caught.”
That wasn’t what happened, but Crystal had tried to argue that point before, too. Sam, her partner, and Isaac, the Master Hunter who had given the orders to observe the trade, had gone against her story. “Isadora Sidel is still a Hunter. We shouldn’t leave her there.”
“This case is dismissed, Crystal.” He waved her away. “We will hear no more of it.”
She bowed her head and spun on her feet to leave the room. Joey, a Master Hunter and her mentor, waited outside the door. His dirty blond hair looked recently cut, but it still stuck out everywhere, like he’d just rolled out of bed. His hazel eyes met her gaze. “Still can’t convince them?”
“You know I can’t,” she muttered and walked past him. “She’s been in there for six months, Joey. There is no telling what they’ve done to her.” Or honestly if she was still alive. She rubbed her eyes. “I don’t understand why Sam and IsaacIsaac insist she disobeyed orders and was captured.”
Joey nodded. “I know. There’s something more going on. I know it, but I don’t know what.” He growled. “But I guess for now we just have to drop it and hope that people outside the Hunter Society can handle it.”
“You’re trusting Ayden to rescue Isadora?”
He nodded. “He has connections, and I have no doubt that he’s also trying to figure how to rescue Izzy.”
Crystal nodded. “Well, it’s time for Sam and me to head back home. I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
“Please do. I don’t want to lose anyone else.” Joey pushed off the wall. “Classes start back up next week.”
Crystal nodded. “Keep an eye on Izzy’s roommate?”
“Of course. She’s been staying with the pack over the summer. She’ll be lonely when she returns and Izzy is gone.”
Crystal walked off without another word. She needed to pack to return home. She’d stayed the summer to help form a plan that the Elder Masters would go for, but it had been all for naught at this point. Now she’d return home and try not to think about how they’d lost someone to the vampires.
She stopped in front of her room on campus only to find it blocked by her partner, Sam. His wild cowlick on the back of his head stuck out more now that his blond hair was longer. His hazel eyes met her gaze.
“Are you ready to go?”
“Not yet. I need to finish packing. I just got done with my last meeting.”
Sam crossed his arms. “Isaac told me you had a meeting with the Elder Masters. They will not risk letting you go after Isadora. Not when our numbers are so low.”
“Maybe if they cared more about what was happening to their Hunters, we’d have higher numbers.” Crystal shook her head as she started back to the dorm assigned to her while she was on campus.
Sam put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her mid-stride. “I know you’re worried about Izzy, but you can’t let it distract you from our actual problems and enemies here.”
It was a strange thing for him to say. Crystal shrugged his hand off my shoulder. “If it was you out there, I’d tear the world apart to get you back. You’re my responsibility. Izzy doesn’t have an Elite looking after her. She’s the society’s responsibility, and they should do the same.”
Sam said nothing as Crystal resumed walking away from him. This wasn’t right. Losing so many hunters in such a short amount of time wasn’t right.
She was going to sort this out and bring Isadora back from that slave trade. The Hunting Society was going to face the mistakes they made. She didn’t know how, but she would make them fix it. All of it.
Lucius stood behind the bar of The Disappearing Act while Tegan took her nightly inventory. She looked up like she’d heard a voice, like she had a few minutes ago. She frowned. “Will you call Orion for me? I need him to open the bar.”
His human had been acting weird again, but he didn’t think it was because Markus was messing with her head. No, something else was going on.
“Tegan? What’s wrong?” She had their bond locked down tight, as she always did. It kept him from prying into her thoughts and emotions when she didn’t want him to.
“Never mind. My phone is upstairs. I can run and grab it.” She jumped over the bar and headed toward the stairs where her studio apartment was.
Lucius grabbed her arm. “You are out of sorts and distracted tonight. What’s wrong?”
She stared at him through her sunglasses, always in place to hide her red eyes. “Can’t you feel it? He’s waking.”
There were only two people she was worried about waking, and, judging by the lack of fear in her voice, Lucius knew which one it was. “Your brother?”
“I can hear him calling to me, despite my mental shields being in place. He’s trying to coax me to him.”
Lucius pulled out his phone and handed it to her. “Call Orion. Let him know he’ll need to be here all night.”
She nodded and dialed the phone. She’d adapted to the technology that had boomed over the last century.
A knock at the door sounded, and Lucius turned, prepared to tell the person to get lost, but Ayden stood there.
What the hell was going on tonight? Zaaren rising from his sleep and Ayden showing up. He needed to be back at his home, in case Nuala woke.
Lucius wrenched the door open. “What do you want?”
“I hate to ask, but I need your help.” Ayden wiped the water off his face.
“You aren’t supposed to be here.” Lucius snarled at him. “You’re leaving your charge—”
Ayden growled and pushed his way in. “There’s a human I need to get from the slave trade.”
“Zaaren is going to wake soon. You are supposed to be with your Original in case she wakes.”
Ayden shook his head. “She’s nowhere near waking, but this hunter, if she dies or she’s broken, it’s my fault.” He paused for a moment. “Zaaren is waking?”
Lucius heard the way Ayden’s heartbeat skipped a few beats. “Yes, Tegan and I are going to him as soon as Orion gets here. You need to return home.”
“Nuala isn’t waking. I have our people watching over here while I’m here. I’ve been tracking this hunter since she entered the trade, but I need vampire backing to get her out.”
Lucius shook his head. “The Circle runs that trade. I cannot risk going up against them. I have too much at stake.” Like the fact that the soul of the father was still missing after Tegan had sent it away.
Ayden sat on the bar and put his head in his hands. “I can’t let her stay there. I know James was there, and he was tearing her mind apart.”
Lucius raised a brow. “Why is this human so important to you?”
“Because she’s the daughter of a keeper,” Tegan stated as she came down the stairs. “Orion will be here in a few minutes.”
Lucius frowned. “Who’s family?”
“Sidel,” Ayden said. “She was supposed to be Zaaren’s keeper.”
The world spun for a moment. Sidel was the sir name of the hunter Zaaren had been with. They’d lost track of the family when Lucius moved his people to the United States, away from the Circle. The Sidel family stayed.
“Mm, and lookie here. They lost touch with us and now I’m going to go open a vein for my brother,” she grumbled and pulled on a jacket. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Is he really ready to wake?” Ayden asked.
Tegan nodded. “I can feel him calling to me. He’s pushed through my mental shields.”
“Nuala hasn’t even stirred.” Ayden sighed. “I’ll let you be, but please, consider helping me? Izzy’s been in the trade for six months.”
“Markus and James have probably broken her by now.” Tegan shrugged. “Rehabilitating her, hunter or not, will be hard.”
“Are you saying I should just leave her there?” Ayden stepped in Tegan’s way. “You recovered from being with the Circle. Izzy can too.”
The anger in Tegan was so strong that Lucius put himself between the two of them. “Tegan, that’s enough.”
“Centuries,” Tegan stated before going to the door. “It’s taken me centuries to get to where I am.” She walked out
“Ayden, you know we can’t go up against the Circle, and that’s who is behind this. Ask the Hunters to save her, or ask your people to help.”
Orion appeared behind the bar a moment later. “Hey, we’re not open yet. Why are you letting people in?”
“I was just leaving,” Ayden said and walked out into the rain. Lucius followed him and found Tegan standing under the overhang.
“Are you ready?” Lucius asked her and held his hand out.
She shrugged. “Seems like feeding hungry vampires is becoming a thing for me again. Before you had me feed Mae, it’d been at least fifty years since I let someone taste my blood.” She glared at Lucius. “They chose not to stay in contact with us. They stayed there.”
“I can go get a wolf,” Lucius offered.
She shook her head. “No, he’ll kill the wolf, you know that. This won’t kill me. He can use wolves later.” She let the bond open so Lucius could feel the bitterness in her. The anger at the whole situation. “Let’s go. You know he hates to be kept waiting.”
Crystal pulled her suitcase out of the back of the SUV and then slammed the back shut. Home sweet home. The two-story house sat at the end of a block, painted in a nondescript white, had an astroturf lawn that would always be green, and wore blackout curtains for privacy.
The basement held a workout room that she’d spend a lot of her time in now that they were home. Sam had continuously talked about how bad the Hunter numbers were, and that he was hoping they would promote him to Elite sooner than expected.
If Crystal had her way, it wouldn’t happen soon. Sam still had a lot to learn before the Academy sent him off on his own.
“Look, all I’m saying is…” his voice died down when they walked into the house. He felt it too, then. The moment Crystal had walked into the house, she’d felt the shift in energy. She wasn’t a witch, but the energy shift was obvious.
Her heart pounded as she tried to figure out where the energy was coming from.
“Sorry to barge in.” A male voice came from the living room.
Crystal pulled her gun and held it at her side as she slowly walked through the entryway and into the living room. She aimed her gun the moment she cleared the wall. Sam was behind her, his gun drawn, but not aimed.
A man in a three-piece suit sat on the couch with a glass of wine in his hand. “I wasn’t sure when you would return, but I wanted to talk about your mission, Crystal.”
She took a moment to figure out who this man was. “I don’t have a mission right now.”
“Not yet, you don’t. Please, come sit and talk with me. Sam, you’re dismissed.” The man waved his hand.
Now Sam raised his gun. “I don’t think so.”
“Who are you?” Crystal demanded.
“My name is Michael Flint, and I’m here to talk to you about…” He turned and glanced at Sam. “I dismissed you.”
“You aren’t a teacher, you aren’t a Master Hunter, you are no one. Get out of our house.” Sam snarled and a moment later, his voice clipped off and his arm dropped. Crystal tightened her grip on her gun and moved in front of Sam. “What did you do to him?”
“I did nothing. My witch friend, however, does not take lightly to me being threatened.” He glanced at Sam again. “Now, please leave. What I have to discuss with Crystal is none of your business.”
Sam spun around and marched out the door. His body taught and lips pressed into a thin line. The door slammed shut behind him.
The magic leaked out of the house, and Crystal let out a breath. “Your witch is quite powerful.”
“Look, Joey Curry sent me to you.”
She bristled at that. “What do you want?”
“I told you, to help with your mission of freeing Isadora Sidel. She’s alive, and there’s another independent hunter trying to free her.”
Izzy was alive. Part of her took joy in that news, while the other part of her wept. What kind of shape was Izzy in if she’d survived this long in the human trade? “How do we get her out?”
“We need someone with vampire ties that has some claim on her.”
Crystal holstered her gun. “Izzy has no vampire ties. She hates them.” She came to the couch and sat down, and found another glass of wine on the coffee table waiting for her.
“The other option is to raid the house of the vampire who bought her.” Michael shrugged.
Bought. Crystal’s stomach churned at the thought. “Send me details on who it was, and I’ll figure it out.” She locked her jaw.
“One more thing. There’s a traitor in the Hunting Society. You need to find them and take them out.”
She’d suspected as much after the last mission, but she hadn’t voiced it to anyone but Joey. Of course, if Joey sent this guy… “Does Joey know who it is?”
He shook his head. “He has some theories he will share with you, but he has to be careful, because if the wrong person finds out that he’s looking into it—”
“Then he’ll be next on the list. Thanks.” She rubbed her eyes. “Sam’s going to turn around and call Isaac the moment he walks back in here.”
Michael chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think so. My witch will keep him busy, and he’ll think this was a setup for his birthday.”
Crystal groaned. “I’d forgotten it was his birthday. Fuck.”
“You set him up on a blind date with my witch. All of this was a setup for two friends to catch up, and for him to have a good night with dinner and a movie.” Michael raised his glass. “This isn’t my first rodeo, Crystal. Sam will be told I was a friend of your mom’s.”
Crystal swallowed. “He won’t believe that.”
“But it’s the truth.”
Crystal stared at him for a moment. “My mother has been dead for a long time.”
“Don’t lie to me, Crystal.” Michael shook his head. “She’s not dead, and we both know it.”
He was right, but she’d buried that truth and her nightmares since she joined the Society.
“How do you know about that?”
“I told you, I’m an old friend of hers. I’ve wanted to get in contact with you. See how you were doing and maybe offer you a chance to step away from the Hunting Society and join the independent hunters.”
She considered his words for a moment. Leaving the Society meant leaving Sam behind, abandoning the only family she had, and never gaining the strength to defeat James. She frowned. “I can’t. Why would I?”
“The Hunting Society is corrupt. You know it. The independent hunters? We don’t take orders from higher ups. We do what the Society was created to do. We police the vampires and supernatural creatures without all the political maneuvering.” He sipped his wine. “Just think on it, and until then, work on a way to free Izzy.” He sat the glass down and stood up. “It was good to see you, Crystal. You’ve grown.”
He let himself out of the house, and Crystal sat there, staring at the two glasses of wine, wondering what the hell was going on.
Lucius watched Tegan walk ahead of him. He didn’t miss the tension in her shoulders. Seeing as her last interaction with her brother hadn’t been great, he imagined that this reunion was going to be bittersweet.
Zaaren wasn’t always tolerable, and Tegan was much more than a beaten and broken human now. She would not let Zaaren push her around.
Lucius smiled at how much Tegan had changed over the years, but the smile faded when they arrived and found the crypt open.
Her fear vibrated down their bond. “Come here,” he said.
She instantly stepped backwards, closer to him. She hadn’t brought her sword. They’d never had problems at the crypt before, and neither of them thought she would need it.
A deep laugh came from inside the crypt. “No need to fear, sister. It is just me.”
Lucius relaxed when he recognized the voice. He swore he could feel Tegan roll her eyes as a man walked out of the crypt. The doors cast a shadow over him, but his white hair stood out in the dark, and the moon flashed in his red eyes.
They looked so much alike. They could have passed as twins now, though Zaaren was ten years older when the Father changed him.
Zaaren stepped further out of the crypt, and Lucius saw the blood covering his shirt. Tegan let out a laugh.
