The Hunter's Vow (Monster Hunter Academy Book 4) Read online

  A blinding firebolt filled the hallway in a paroxysm of light and heat, and my sight narrowed to a pinprick in a brutal, defensive reaction. When I could see again, I was alone in the corridor, not even a shadow left behind of the wraiths.

  Then I smelled burned cat hair.

  “Grim!” I glanced back toward him in horror, but the scorch marks down the corridor stopped a bare foot short of his body. His eyes were open, though, and he studied me from beneath lowered eyelids.

  “That…was new,” he said in my mind.

  I raced back to him, my heart thudding in fear as I fell to my knees beside him, pressing my ear to his side. “Are you okay?” I had zero idea where to find a cat’s heart, but something boomed beneath Grim’s thick fur, hard and erratic.

  At the end of the hallway, the shadows shifted slightly, and I lifted my hands in warning. “Stay back,” I ordered, and they scuttled behind the corner again.

  Dimly, I understood that this was because I was my father’s daughter, and there was just enough question in their minds that they were uncertain of how to proceed. Had he not left specific orders about me, maybe? Did he not expect me to claim my birthright?

  Grim spoke in my mind. “He did. But he’s a wizard. He would test you first, then kill you. They’ll regroup. We don’t have much time.”

  “Yeah, we have to get out of here,” I agreed, but Grim’s laugh was low and rumbling.

  “You have to get out of here,” he said. “My people will find you at the base of the mountain.”

  “No…” I began, but there was no time for conversation. I could feel the wraiths already growing restless. Did they sense my weakness? Did they know I was on the verge of tears?

  “Get up,” I ordered him. Grim slowly got to his feet. His fur was matted with dark red stains. How could he be so injured?

  “We’re in the monster realm, not among humans. Magic is much deadlier here, and much swifter.”

  I spoke in my mind, not wanting to tip off our audience. “Walk me to the gray wizard’s office. That’ll keep their interest.”

  Grim shuddered but didn’t complain as I walked with him, my arms wrapped around his thick neck, wincing every time he hopped painfully on one of his paws. As we made our way up the corridor, I kept up a steady rolling commentary for the benefit of the wraiths lurking behind us.

  “I will find you,” I bit out. “And you will pay. For every lash landed on the leader of the Akari, you will pay. For every cut and bite and broken bone.”

  In my mind, Grim sighed. “They’re only acting under orders.”

  “I’m not talking about the wraiths,” I thought back as darkly.

  We reached the office again, as pristine as it had been as when we had first arrived, wide windows standing open before us. I curled my lip at the Laram bolts on Cyrus’s desk. I could have used those, fighting off the wraiths. I didn’t dare touch them now. I just wanted to get out of here.

  I glanced back to the windows. “Are they all portals?”

  Grim swung his big head side to side. “No. You see where they’re gathering.”

  He was right. The shadows had begun to coalesce in front of the center window, which I remembered now was where we’d exited the last time, while the two other windows that flanked it appeared normal, overlooking Lake Bashai.

  “So what should we do?” I asked.

  “We should go for the center window. It’s a universal portal. With the focus on the exit point at the base of the mountain, you should land someplace close.”

  “You mean we should land.”

  Grim shook his head imperceptibly, barely a tremor in his large body. “I vowed to be the sacrifice generations ago,” he said. “I’ve thought it would play out before now. But only one of us is going to get through that portal. And one of us is staying to fight.”

  I could feel the ring of truth in his words, or the truth as he knew it. But an equal and opposing force built within me. I was not leaving Grim to die at the hands of the dark lord’s wraiths. That wasn’t going to happen.

  I was also fully aware that he was a stubborn asshole and there was no time left to argue. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go around slowly alongside the walls and not approach directly, with me between you and the wall.”

  “Good.” He sighed, sounding relieved. That, more than anything, convinced me of how exhausted he truly was. But I wasn’t exhausted. I was running on adrenaline and fury, and I was a monster hunter, and a monster, and the freaking child of a gray wizard. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to go down here.

  We angled to the right, the wraiths piling up in front of us at the far window, content to wait.

  “They need their strength,” Grim said. “I’m not such an easy mark as all that.”

  “Uh-huh.” We reached the first large, open window—which wasn’t a portal—the wind picking up over the lake far below, and I looked out over the vast expanse, trying not to think too much about the water-swept rocks that awaited us at the base of the mountain. It wasn’t a sheer cliff face all the way down. It would be a messy way to go. But it was my only option.

  Grabbing Grim by the shoulder and tugging hard, I stepped onto the ledge, and as he swung his great head toward me in obvious surprise—then terror at what I was going to do. I jumped.

  “No!” Grim roared in my head and lashed out at me with his great paws, but I was already falling. His roar shook the foundations of the keep, and then a split second later, he leapt out too, hurtling toward me like a bullet. I spread-eagled, my heart practically stopped with fear, and in my mind, I was screaming words that the wind ripped out of my mouth in panicked terror: portal, safety, portal, safety, portal—safety, I begged the magic of this realm, believing with all my heart that one way or another, I was going to be safe and so was Grim from the wraiths’ attack. Hopefully not because we were dead.

  “Nina!” Grim roared again, and a second later, he caught me. We spun through the air end over end, me chanting the words the whole time as we dropped—dropped—dropped.

  Then a fiery rectangle beneath us, and we fell directly through it, buffeted by a huge updraft that sent us surging up again, then gentled us down, until we crashed headlong not into the rocky cliffs of Lake Bashai but onto a rolling field of tall grass. By the time we touched the earth, we were sprawled out in the sunlight, barely moving.

  “Nina,” Grim gasped in my mind a second time, and his head lolled to the side.

  26

  “Grim!” I shouted, and scrambled over to him, dismayed all over again by the amount of blood matting his fur. “No. No, no, no. You have to live, you have to heal. We still have work to do.”

  He didn’t move, however, and this time when I pressed my face against his body, I could no longer hear his heart beating with any strength. It fluttered far too quietly and slowly. I flung my body over his, as the wind picked up, the grass around us whipping furiously. I wondered briefly if we were in danger, exposed as we were on the open plain, but unless some creature was directly overhead, I didn’t think so. I didn’t know where we were.

  Grim barely seemed to register my weight, his body stretching out further, legs twitching in some sort of frightening involuntary release. Without warning, a sob broke from my throat, and I buried my face in the thick fur of his shoulder, tears suddenly becoming a cloudburst. Shadows fell over us as clouds dimmed the sun, and I hugged Grim tighter against the chill, then tighter still as new rain fell. Wherever we’d landed, changeable weather was part of the package.

  The rain was soft, though, and gave me the right to burrow more closely against Grim, my arms tightening around him. I wasn’t a healer. I didn’t have Tyler’s skill in spell craft or Liam’s tools or Zach’s innate understanding of the magic in a place and his ability to touch minds. Grim’s mind was beyond all that anyway. I couldn’t do anything but hold on to him and will him back to life.

  “Grim, you can’t die,” I begged. “Not now, oh my God. Not now. Not when I love you this much.”


  There was no response. I bowed my head beneath the soft fall of rain and cried some more, until he no longer moved, no longer seemed to breathe. At some point, I slept.

  When I awoke, I had no real sense of where I was, but the rain had stopped, and everything smelled fresh and new. Beneath my head was Grim’s shirt, folded up. I jerked back, pulling it up with me. Grim sat several feet away, shirtless, his elbows on his knees as he watched me. Long scars marred his skin, bright pink but healing.

  I reflexively pulled his shirt toward me, and he nodded.

  “You wouldn’t let it go. I’ve learned the hard way that it was easier to let you keep it.”

  “Oh. Right.” I dropped my hands to my knees, still clinging to the garment. I stared at it, willing myself not to cry again, but I couldn’t raise my eyes toward him for a full minute.

  “You’re okay?” I whispered, lifting my gaze only as far as his boots.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “But we need to talk.”

  Something in his voice was sharp, accusatory, and my chin came up. “We do?”

  He nodded, though his face remained impassive. “You drew on the magic of the wizard’s fortress back there. But that’s not all you did. What happened in the sky was only you. How long have you known that you had the ability to open portals?”

  “Oh.” I blinked at him, flushing, and glanced away. “I didn’t know, not for sure. But when Mom was talking in the library, she said something that stuck with me. Something that didn’t make sense—doors where walls should be. I thought she was being poetic, but then I thought…maybe not?”

  Grim chuckled. “Maybe not,” he agreed. “I couldn’t reach you in there. I could see you, but I couldn’t enter, and then the wraiths attacked. Did she say anything else of value?”

  I sighed. “No. She knew she was pregnant and that it was the wizard’s baby, but she was very conflicted. She wanted him to know about it—and she wasn’t all that afraid of him. He was the one she was writing the letter to all those years. There was a reason why she never sent it, but she wanted him to know.”

  “Why didn’t she tell him, then?”

  I shrugged. “You tell me. She said that others warned her not to, but I wasn’t clear on why. I doubt she had any idea what he was doing with the Hallowells. He brought her plants, and she would have loved him for that. Even around our house, she had so many beautiful plants.”

  “Plants?” Grim asked.

  I nodded. “But she said they—whoever they were—wouldn’t let her tell him, that it would be terrible. So, I don’t know. Maybe she decided she would make him come after her.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Yeah. If that was her move, it didn’t work out so well. Remember what he said about her running off and abandoning him or something like that? He sounded legitimately pissed.”

  “Plants…” Grim said again, and I sighed.

  “I don’t know what to make of it. And I’m not sure how it helps us—but at least we made it out again, and got here.” I glanced around. “Wherever here is.”

  “You don’t know where you are?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He lifted a hand almost lazily and pointed behind me. “Look at where the grass breaks there. You can see.”

  I rose on my knees, still gripping his shirt with one hand as I reached up and parted the grass. In the distance was Lake Bashai, and on an overlook amid a thick forest was a fortress. “We’re on that big mountain above your keep? I thought that was sacred ground.”

  Grim didn’t say anything at first, and I leaned farther forward, trying to understand our positioning. Only the faintest rustle behind me gave me any warning that Grim was behind me, then his large arm came around to wrap my body and pull me close, his head leaning forward, his mouth at my ear.

  “We are on sacred ground,” he agreed. “We’re on the high steppes that my race once roamed freely as lords of all the realm. We’re here because you are your father’s daughter as well as your mother’s. You are the harbinger. You can make magic, and this is where you brought me.” He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “To heal me.”

  “Oh,” I managed, barely following his words, my mind way too focused on his heavy arm around me, the soft touch of his lips at my ear, the heat of him.

  He brushed a kiss over my temple, following the line of the gash I’d taken from Niali, still not quite healed.

  “I’m here because you love me,” Grim said. “Only because of that.”

  He gasped again, his entire body trembling. I moved, and he loosened his hold enough for me to turn in his arms. His eyes were oddly bright as he stared down at me, his jaw clenched.

  “I do love you, Grim,” I whispered. “I love the kid who gave up his entire life to honor the sacrifice his parents made, the guy who survived freaking years of torture without breaking, the asshole college hunter who I thought was barely older than I was…and the guy who’s, oh, by the way, the leader of your entire people. But mostly I love that you fought by my side when I was strong, carried me when I was weak, and stood over me to protect me when I had nowhere else to run. You did that. You were always there to do that.”

  He chuckled quietly. “Is that all?”

  I gave a small choked laugh. “That pretty much covers it, yeah. So you had fucking better never die on me again.”

  With a rough growl, Grim closed his arms around me and yanked me to him, pressing his mouth over mine, hauling me up against his body. I wrapped my arms around his broad back, wanting him closer, wanting to feel him against me, in me, more than anything. With a snarl that sounded much more Akari than human, Grim reached for my clothes and ripped them off me, first my shirt, then my pants when I wasn’t fast enough. And then his clothes were off him as well, and he leapt for me again, the two of us rolling deeper into the soft grass. He covered my body with his and spoke in a rush of words I couldn’t understand.

  He sank into me, and I welcomed him willingly, my emotions getting the best of me again. I cried and laughed in the same moment, tears flowing down my face as he kissed them away.

  And then he braced his hands on either side of me, the two of us losing ourselves in each other until we both tumbled over into a climax that was as much a part of this realm as the earth and sky. He lay down beside me and drew me close, surrounding me with his body.

  “Do the others know we’re here?” I asked. “The Akari?”

  He laughed. “If they didn’t before, they sure as hell do now.”

  I sighed and settled more closely against him. “I know that Sheori dropped this bomb, but when were you going to tell me that you were actually the leader of the Akari?”

  He grunted. “The Akari need no leader. Only the one who leaps first.”

  “And that person had to be you? You were deemed to make the sacrifice?”

  “I chose it willingly. I saw what the Hallowells had done, and I knew more than most what they could do. I made a study of the wizards of the realm. An academic study, I’d thought, prompted by Sheori when I was very young. As always, she is farseeing. Even when the vision brings mostly pain.”

  His words were unexpectedly solemn, and I lifted a hand to rest on his arm. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

  He sighed. “Thank you. They died fighting for what they loved, I guess. I thought I understood what that meant, all those years ago. I didn’t.”

  I gazed up at him, my heart swelling all over again. “They would be proud of you.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “But…” He trailed off, turning his head slightly as if scenting something new. “Can you hear that?”

  I frowned. I heard the rush of wind but then…then I did hear something. A sound, a word…a cry?

  I shot Grim a startled glance. “Is that Liam?”

  Grim was already moving, lifting me to my feet as he stood, then going to collect our clothes and tossing mine at me.

  “We can add ‘portal maker’ to your list of skills, so if he has a portal finder in t
hat pack of his, your life is about to get a lot more complicated. Dress fast.”

  I’d barely pulled on the rest of my clothes when a doorway of fire erupted in front of us.

  “I knew it!” Liam announced from the other side of the flaming portal.

  We dove through.

  27

  We landed in a place I wouldn’t have anticipated, and it took me a minute to get my bearings. It was a gym, with a gleaming floor and a vaguely stuffy scent in the air, like rooms that had been closed up for too long. I looked around, surprised.

  “Um…this is the arena?” I asked Liam. “You’re still here?”

  “I should be here. But you? Not so much. I just perfected my portal-finding device, and you guys walk through it like it’s no big deal and you ask why we’re still here?” Liam sputtered, but Tyler lifted his hands, staring at me.

  “What happened in the monster realm?” he asked, his words low and tight. I blinked at him, then slid my gaze to Grim and the others, realizing they were all studying me with varying degrees of surprise. Grim the least, because he’d been with me, but Tyler and Zach were clearly taken aback, and Liam, once he’d lowered the device he was brandishing, blinked hard.

  “Whoa,” Liam said. “You’re, um, kind of glowy.”

  “Yeah?” I asked, lifting my hands. They looked exactly the same as they always did, but then an image flashed in my mind, and I turned to Zach, seeing me as he saw me, as all the guys saw me.

  Glow was about right. My hair lifted off my scalp as if caught in an unseen breeze, my skin shone with a radiance that I hadn’t done anything to achieve, and the edges of my body were slightly shimmery. I shot another glance to Grim.

  “An effect of going through the portal?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “An effect of being a portal maker, more likely.”

  “What?” Liam blurted, but Tyler and Zach both started asking questions at once until it was my turn to hold up my hands.

  “Look—I don’t know how I did it, okay? I don’t know. But Grim and I went to my dad’s fortress and found his wraiths again, and along the way, I somehow siphoned off a bit of the magic in the building. Or something like that.”