‘A long time ago,’ Callum said.
Kyan’s brow arched. ‘Care to share?’
Callum’s look meantMaybe, maybe not. ‘Apparently, it needs a new leader every few hundred years or more? Less? I’m not sure, I just know they supposedly swap out, but there always needs to be someone. Hence why we have Germanic, Norse, English, and Welsh myths that all claim the leader is someone else: Odin, King Arthur, Gwyn ap Nudd, et cetera. Once they go in, they’re bound to the Hunt until their time is up.’
At first, Kyan had believed the Wild Hunt was something the Wake wanted to prevent from happening again. They’d written that very fact in their archives.
But now …
‘You’re making it sound like the Hunt has been working secretly all this time,’ Kyan said. ‘But the Wake claimed they wanted to stop a Dark Age and Wild Hunt.’
‘Well of course theysaidthat,’ Callum said, ‘but evidently, it’s a lie. The Hunt is an important – albeit infamously mysterious and secretive – part of supernatural society that’s been doing its job a long time. Stopping it …’ He shook his head at the mere thought.
Kyan began to pace. ‘Freya claimed in her decoded Dante message that the Wake wanted to trigger a Dark Age, so what would Wild Hunt have to do with that?’
His friend’s eyes darkened. ‘My best guess? If the Wake can stop the Hunt collecting souls – or worse, find a way to unleash the hell trapped inside, otherwise known as all the world’s worst vanquished creatures, back again – there would be untold death and destruction.’
Thatwouldtrigger a Dark Age.
The very thing they always claimed they were protecting people against and used to get Empyreals to swear their oaths.
Ice lashed down Kyan’s spine. ‘Is thatpossible?’
Callum looked deep in thought. ‘Anything’s possible, I suppose. It’sa boundary. If things can go in, things can come out, but the Wake would have to get around some crucial issues. The lore of the Hunt says youcan’tcome out without some kind of consequence. But if they’re doing this, there must be a reason they believe they can use it.’
‘What would any of this be for,other than chaos?’ Kyan demanded, running his hands through his hair. How the hell was he supposed to protect Nicole fromthat?
He’d do it. He’d do it if it killed him.
But he knew that anything happening to her family would kill her first – at least extinguish that light in her eyes.
Shadows passed through Callum’s steady gaze. ‘I suppose we better find out. Which brings me to these.’ He went to the side table and pulled out a set of blueprints.
‘How did you get these?’ Kyan asked as Callum unrolled the layouts of several of the Wake’s most well-known buildings across the UK.
His best friend gave him a look. ‘Do you really want to know?’
He huffed. ‘I suppose not.’
Kyan braced his hands on the side of the table as he took in the papers.
He’d been in Wake-owned buildings often enough to know how sprawling they usually were. They had ones for Empyreals, which housed everything they might need whilst on a hunt: gyms, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, mission rooms, stashes of new identities, cash, and keys to new cars.
Sometimes there were even separate quarters for Seers who were able to transfer visions of future deaths to Empyreals and give them more insight into their prey. This transfer of knowledge didn’t give Empyreals the same level of insight that Nicole had, though. Thanks to her half-Seer heritage she could experience, through a vision of a past murder, the kill scent of a creature. It made her an invaluable assassin. Even more so than Kyan and Callum.
The thought of the Wake getting their hands on her, using her as a weapon, turned that ice in his body to a mist of sweat down his spine.
‘Let’s say one of these locations is the right one. They’d have wards; cameras,’ Kyan said. Cameras that would record him entering, or Influencing people.
‘Not if we wipe them first.’
‘How do you plan to do that?’
Callum grinned. ‘Oh, Kyan, when will you realise I have someone for everything? But there is one real issue: just because we don’t know what the Wake are up to, doesn’t mean other Empyreals don’t.’
Kyan crossed his arms. ‘You think others might be in on this? Guarding the doors and kidnapping creatures?’
‘How else are the Wake supposed to run this operation? They’d need muscle to keep this quiet. Someone sees something? They’d need to be taken out.’
