The Hunter's Call (Monster Hunter Academy Book 1)

  These monster hunters are about to get schooled…

  Fighting monsters is all I’ve ever known—and I’ve always fought alone. Until the night I stumble onto an elite monster hunter academy and into the arms of four hottie hunters who not only know the exact Latin classification of the thing trying to eat me, but how to kill it dead.

  Then Tyler Perkins, the crazy rich and shamelessly sexy leader of this monster hunting squad, kicks it up a notch. He challenges me to stay. To fight. He’s arrogant and entitled and did I mention gorgeous…and the way he pushes me makes want to push back. Hard.

  Tyler and his whole smokin’ hot team tempt me in ways that are far more dangerous than a monster throwdown. I know I should split town—but I can’t.

  Because for all its gorgeous old buildings and shiny bright classrooms, something dark, sinister, and deadly is lurking in the shadows of Wellington Academy, waiting to attack…

  And I’m just the kind of girl for that job.

  The Hunter’s Call

  Monster Hunter Academy, Book 1

  D.D. Chance

  Contents

  Tyler

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About D.D. Chance

  Tyler

  I stomped down the stairs from Cabot Hall, striding away from the other guys. They let me go without a word, which was smart. All of us were on edge after our meeting with Dean Robbins, but I wanted to punch my fist through a wall.

  I could see what that dickhead was trying to do. Destroy us. Everything we’d worked for, everything we’d dreamed. The academy wanted to throw us away like garbage.

  Not gonna happen. I didn’t care how much money was flying around behind closed doors, or who was trying to buy out Wellington Academy’s idiot board of directors, so puffed up over their creaky, barely used magic and generations-old wealth that they couldn’t see how powerful the academy could be again, how important.

  Well, my family had money too. More of it than we’d ever known what to do with. And we also had the balls to fight for what was right.

  I pushed into a crowd of students who had no friggin’ clue about how lucky they were to even be standing on this campus. Wellington was the only magic academy in the world that had ever specialized in turning out monster hunters. Now there were only a handful of us going through the program, which had been demoted all the way to an obscure minor, but we were trained. We were good.

  And no matter what Dean Robbins and the board thought—there were still monsters out there, even if we couldn’t prove it. Never mind that every supernatural sighting called into the school in the past several years had turned out to be a wild goose chase or a total hoax. Never mind that the other students and, hell, way too many of the teachers, eyed each other with barely hidden smirks when we walked by. They were idiots.

  I knew that monsters—real, huge, and deadly—still existed, and so did the guys who fought alongside me. So how could the academy be talking about shutting the minor down?

  Focus… I blew out a long breath, forcing myself into the mental exercises Commander Frost preached nonstop before our battle classes. Reaching out with my mind, exploring the air around me, taking its measure. As always, the practice helped. My heart rate slowed, my breathing steadied. My body might be tensing for battle, but my mind was quiet, my thoughts were—

  A feral, yodeling howl ripped through the air.

  I jerked around, hands going wide. Nobody else reacted around me, other than to laugh and get out of my way with the usual mutters about monster hunters. But I had heard that high-pitched roar, dammit. It was almost…I frowned. Almost what I’d expect a Tarken land worm to sound like, but way too loud for those little bastards.

  I needed to reach out with my mind, cut through the shadows, and see what was really out there. I needed a spell of discernment.

  Except…how did that one go, again? I tried to pull the incantation’s exact wording from the depths of my memory, but I couldn’t remember a friggin’ thing. And Liam wasn’t here to prompt me with the opening words, which were right on the tip of my…

  Nope, nothing. My mind remained a complete blank.

  “Fuck.” I shoved my hand in my pocket and ripped out my phone, stabbing it to life and scrolling to where I kept my spells in a notes file. As soon as I saw the first few words of the discernment incantation, I locked in the rest. I was the best spell caster Wellington had ever trained, and now that I remembered how it went, I uttered the short, succinct enchantment with absolute confidence. The spell zipped out into the cheerful Boston night, searching on the wind.

  A new, chaotic scene flashed bright in my mind’s eye—slashing, thrashing, gore everywhere. Then I saw her. A girl bent over nearly double, hacking the shit out of…something big. Her blade flashed in the darkness, hard and sure. Whoa. Was that actually a person she was—

  Another wild howl sounded, sharper this time. I jerked my attention to the streets beyond the girl. Had the land worm scented her, or whatever she’d just taken out? The monster sounded huge though—way too big. This couldn’t be another one of Frost’s simulations, could it?

  If so, the man deserved a friggin’ raise.

  It didn’t matter. I needed to find this girl and whatever was tracking her. I had to help her. No way could she handle a land worm on her own. She wasn’t a student here. She wouldn’t have any clue what to do.

  Doubling down on my focus, I stretched my mind farther, beyond the campus walls, out into the city—searching, hunting, sensing. Time warped and folded back on itself. I couldn’t entirely believe what I was sensing anymore, not at this distance. Was I seeing the future? The past? It was impossible to tell.

  Another shout split the night, this one human, female. The girl again—running now—so fierce and focused, my whole body jacked tight, my senses locked and loaded. She had long dark hair, fair skin, and was medium sized. Not petite, but not an Amazon, though everything about her screamed fighter. The image crackled in and out in such a way that I knew I was no longer seeing the present, but the future. Maybe only a few minutes from now, but definitely the future.

  I strained forward, trying to see more clearly. The girl’s mouth was stretched into a snarl, and her arms and legs pumped like she was going for Olympic gold. She wore street clothes—T-shirt, jeans, running shoes. Her hair was ripped back in a ponytail, and her wide brown eyes searched everywhere, alert and scared but mostly pissed. In her right hand, she still gripped a knife. An iron knife. Who was this girl?

  “Nina,” I breathed, the name flashing in my mind with a burst of knowing that was so intense it nearly knocked me over. This was everything I wanted to see, everything I needed—but I still froze in place, unable to believe my own visions.

  Because this couldn’t be real, right? It had to be some sort of a dream. Otherwise, in less than ten minutes’ time, this intense and angry gir
l would be running for her life, chased through the streets of Boston by a genuine friggin’ monster.

  And she’d be headed straight for me.

  1

  Nina

  That which does not eat you makes you stronger.

  It also stank like feet.

  “Will you please just die already,” I gritted out over the deeply funky ghoul’s ever-more pitiful moans. Like most ghouls, it looked almost human, which wasn’t helping my mood. “All the way, this time. Completely. I’m not joking.”

  Dodging the creature’s skinny, flailing arms and razor sharp claws, I finally managed to hack through its neck. I flinched back to avoid the resulting spout of gore. Blood splattered across the dimly lit sidewalk, soaking the ghoul’s matted green fur. The head with its still gnashing teeth spun one direction, the body convulsed in another. I staggered up and away.

  It was done.

  I slumped against one of the stone pillars that flanked a wrought iron gate barely visible in the foliage, and wiped my knife on my jeans. Three feet away from me, the ghoul twitched and steamed. It was dead though. Decapitation never failed. Or at least, it hadn’t failed so far. Then again, this was Boston, not Asheville, North Carolina. The rules might be different here.

  I pushed a few errant strands of my long brown hair out of my eyes and peered at the creature’s cranium, wanting to make sure. But…yeah. I was right.

  The ghoul’s head, now several feet distant from the body, had already shrunk to barely bigger than an apple, decomposing fast. The body would take a little longer, sure, but nobody would find it in this forgotten corner of the city. Especially not given the heavy vines that had taken over the once-elaborate gate and high stone wall of the abandoned school in front of me.

  Stowing my knife in its ankle sheath, I reset my pony tail and glanced back toward the overgrowth I’d been clearing away from the gate when the ghoul had distracted me. I’d smelled it a good block away, and knew it had sniffed me out, too.

  But I couldn’t wait for it to shamble all the way over to me from whatever cemetery it normally haunted, not with so many people out enjoying the warm evening. I’d tackled it right as it was getting distracted by a sweet old lady walking her dog, then had dragged its stinky ass all the way back here to finish the job. Just another night in paradise.

  It was too bad, really. I’d sort of thought that maybe, once I left Asheville, I’d leave the monsters behind, too. That the problem wasn’t me, and all these years I hadn’t actually been doing anything to make monsters chase me, attack me, and try to eat me in one big gulp. I’d simply been living in a quiet little town with a super unfortunate monster problem.

  Monsters that no one else could see, until it was too late. Monsters that hurt and even killed people, if I wasn’t there to stop them.

  I grimaced as the heap of ghoul guts behind me dissolved with a bubbling sigh, releasing a newer, fouler stench. Well, I’d been wrong. If anything, coming to Boston had made things worse. No matter the zip code, I was flypaper for freaks.

  Now I peered at the pillar nearest to me, both satisfied and frustrated at the name etched into the heavy stone. Beacon Hill Preparatory Academy for Exceptional Young Women. Mom had only referred to the school where she’d taught in Boston once or twice, but the name had been memorable, at least: Beacon Hill Prep.

  I’d assumed it was a high school, since she’d taught college courses in botany and natural sciences at our local university. I’d been wrong. There was no Beacon Hill Prep of any sort in this area of Boston other than this decrepit old ruin, which I’d only found after hitting up one of the fussy, highbrow librarians at the achingly proper Athenaeum Library earlier today. Beacon Hill Preparatory Academy had been a gem in its time, the guy had insisted, but it had closed more than a century ago. My mother couldn’t have worked there.

  I squinted through the gate to the dilapidated building barely visible through the overgrown trees and heavy bushes, and sighed. Another dead end in the search to find anything about my mother in the city where she’d grown up…the city where, just maybe, she still had family. Somewhere.

  Irritation riffled through me. I’d allowed myself three months to check out the place Mom had lived as a young woman—and possibly find a long-lost cousin or two. I was doing it for closure, I’d told myself. To finally deliver the letter my mother had written over the course of my entire lifetime but had never sent to her family…a family who should at least be told that she’d died, for heaven’s sake. I was doing it to hopefully understand why she’d walked away from her own people and never looked back…except in that sheaf of carefully written pages, scribed with perfect penmanship.

  My mom had been a fiercely independent single mother. She’d made it clear that it was her, me, and no one else in the world. Like any kid, I’d believed her. As far as I was concerned, I had no dad—at least not one who cared that I existed—no grandparents, no cousins. It’d never occurred to me to consider any other possibility.

  Right up until she’d died of cancer, anyway, and I’d eventually screwed up the nerve to go through her things. I’d found the letter in an unlocked, iron box—ten pages of sometimes lucid, sometimes bizarre passages that started and stopped and wound around again, stacked on top of a dozen ripped-open envelopes, all with the same address.

  I’d checked that addy, of course, but a Google search had only pulled up a long-defunct private mailbox store, closed some fifteen years ago. I’d almost given up after that. Mom hadn’t sent the letter, after all. Maybe she’d sometimes wanted to, but she hadn’t.

  I should respect that, shouldn’t I?

  Then, a few short weeks ago, barely a month after her death, a postcard had shown up in my mailbox, with a picture of some random street in Beacon Hill, Boston. It contained a single elegantly written line on the back: You will always have family in Boston. There was no address on the card, no postage. I had no idea how it had gotten to me, or who’d sent it. I didn’t even know if it was intended for me, or for my mom.

  My postal carrier hadn’t remembered seeing the card. Said it might have been a mistake. But how could it be a mistake? Mom had lived in Boston, worked here, before I was born. That much I knew to be true. And then there was that long letter, never sent, with the outdated Boston address…

  I couldn’t put it out of my head. School was done for the semester, and I didn’t know whether I’d go back in the fall, anyway. With Mom gone…I didn’t know a lot of things. So after several sleepless nights, unreasonably chilled to the bone, I’d pulled out the letters again, and read them through.

  They made me unexpectedly sad. Mom had wanted someone important to her to know about me. About my strength, my grit. She’d never acted like there was anything strange about me fighting monsters, even though, hello—nobody else I knew had monsters popping out from every freaking corner, looming in the shadows, rustling through the trees. She’d said it was simply my gift, that I was supposed to protect others, and fighting monsters was how I’d do it. She’d been proud in real life, proud in the letter. In fact, she’d gone on and on about how I could face any monster without fear—not true, but she was my mom.

  And then…she’d never sent the letter.

  Why hadn’t she sent it?

  On top of all that, there was the postcard, practically shimmering with possibility. A family, I thought. My mom’s family, anyway. Not really mine. But still…

  I’d finally decided that at least I could go up to Boston, to see first-hand where Janet Cross had grown up before she’d moved to a cute college town in North Carolina and had a freak of a monster-fighting baby girl. Maybe spend a day…or the summer. Maybe find a past I didn’t know I had.

  It’d been a nice idea. Hopeful. Fresh. A plan that could help me finally start to grieve. But I was already three weeks into my stay in Beantown, and the only thing that I’d managed to find was, well, more monsters.

  Another low moaning sound issued up from the ghoul’s still-twitching remains. I scowled
, then stomped back over to it. Dropping down to one knee, I flipped my knife around in my hand and got back to hacking, severing the arms from the torso, and then the legs. With every new slice, the ghoul fell further apart like a putrefied gourd, the stench making me gag.

  I didn’t stop, though. I didn’t need this thing to keep up its doleful wailing, maybe calling out to its buddies in the area to come join the fun. Monsters never knew when to leave well enough alone.

  As if on cue, an angry, yodeling howl split the night.

  I jerked away from the ghoul, scrambling up to spin around, trying to look everywhere. What was with this place? Monsters didn’t yodel. Asheville’s monsters had been bad, but at least they’d made sense. And after more than twenty years of tangling with me, they’d become much more cautious, too. The city was safe. My mom had been safe. It was her and me against the world, she’d always say…

  Now it was just me.

  Another ululating howl cut through the air, from a new direction, this time. I turned, then turned again, trying to get my bearings. I didn’t know this city. I definitely didn’t know this yodel. But I knew I could take on whatever had uttered it. I’d been fighting monsters my whole life, figuring it out as I went along. I was strong, scrappy—and when both those failed, I was fast.

  Besides, better me taking on the mad yodeler than having it attack another hapless old lady out walking her dog on this beautiful May evening in Boston, the wind whispering though the trees, the light breeze carrying the scent of honeysuckle and sewage…