Bounty Read online

  BOUNTY

  A Kaliya Sahni Novel: Book One

  K.N. Banet

  Contents

  The Tribunal Archives

  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

  12. Chapter Twelve

  13. Chapter Thirteen

  14. Chapter Fourteen

  15. Chapter Fifteen

  16. Chapter Sixteen

  17. Chapter Seventeen

  18. Chapter Eighteen

  19. Chapter Nineteen

  20. Chapter Twenty

  21. Chapter Twenty-One

  22. Chapter Twenty-Two

  23. Chapter Twenty-Three

  24. Chapter Twenty-Four

  25. Chapter Twenty-Five

  26. Chapter Twenty-Six

  27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

  28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

  29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

  30. Chapter Thirty

  31. Chapter Thirty-One

  32. Chapter Thirty-Two

  Dear Reader,

  About the Author

  Also by K.N. Banet

  Also by Kristen Banet

  Copyright © 2020 by Kristen Banet writing as K.N. Banet

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  The Tribunal Archives

  Kaliya Sahni is a series set in the world of The Tribunal. Events between series in this world will be cross referenced and secondary characters will show up in different series.

  For more information about The Tribunal Archives and the different series in it, you can go here:

  https://www.kristenbanetauthor.com/tribunal-series

  There is an official timeline that includes every book in the world on my website, but it is not the recommended reading order. Due to the nature of the world, each series stands alone and can be read at any time.

  You can find the official timeline here:

  https://www.kristenbanetauthor.com/tribunal-archives-timeline

  1

  Chapter One

  September 2018

  It was late on a Friday when I walked out of the airport and breathed in the dusty, overbearing hot air of Phoenix, Arizona. Cars drove by in the dark, trying to dodge each other and pick up their families, friends, or whatever.

  I never much liked airports, but I loved Phoenix.

  Home sweet home.

  “Kaliya! Welcome back!” someone called out.

  I turned, wind kicking around my white hair, causing my braids to begin coming undone as said wind pushed through the concrete tunnel. A smile bloomed on my face at the sight of my friend—curly blond hair nearly to his shoulders and a casual look that screamed beach bum.

  “Carter!” I called back, waving as I picked up my only bag and started walking toward him. “Thanks again for the ride home. I didn’t like the idea of leaving my car here for who knows how long.”

  “It’s no problem. No one wants to leave their car at the airport.”

  I quickly tossed my backpack into his trunk and jogged for the passenger’s seat, sliding in as he got behind the wheel.

  “So, what was the emergency business trip about?”

  “Oh, you know, the Tribunal wanted me on standby,” I answered, sighing as he hit the gas and started to swerve dangerously through traffic. “Please remember, I would die from a car accident, Carter.”

  “I’ve never been in an accident,” he retorted.

  “You’re immortal, so you’ve got plenty of time to fuck it up,” I countered. His driving didn’t really scare me, but giving him a hard time normally kept him from getting the inevitable

  speeding ticket I knew was waiting on him one day.

  “Sure,” he said, chuckling. “So, what did the Tribunal want?”

  “I was just on standby,” I repeated.

  “For the werecat thing?” When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “You aren’t going to tell me anything, are you?”

  “Nope.” I was generally close-mouthed about my business trips. “Do you really want to know how a business trip goes for a Tribunal Executioner?”

  That shut him up quickly. I leaned toward the window, knowing I made him uncomfortable. I just wanted to be glad I was home.

  “Nothing happened,” I finally said. “No execution. The werecat was allowed to walk, and a small loophole was addressed in the werecat portion of the Laws.”

  “No shit,” Carter said with a gasp. “You have the coolest job, getting to see all that. I wouldn’t have found out until my Mistress was told, and she decided to tell the nest.”

  I smiled, looking at him. “Thank goodness you have better sources than your Mistress.”

  “Yeah, just don’t ever tell Imani that. She likes to control what we do and don’t know.”

  “Then act surprised when she tells you,” I said, shrugging. Carter’s vampire problems weren’t mine, and I tried my best not to meddle. The last thing I needed was a vampire nest to get pissed off at me, and knowing his Mistress, the leader of the nest, they would if they found out I was feeding information to him that wasn’t carefully worded or put in the right light.

  “She won’t tell me. They’ll put out some memo.”

  I chuckled again, nodding.

  “So, are we taking you home, or do you want to stop somewhere?” he asked as we got onto Interstate 10.

  “Take me to The Jackalope,” I answered, watching us fly past other cars. For a moment, I was glad that Carter didn’t have the AC on. It was over eighty, just past sundown, and I loved it. The dry heat the area was known for didn’t feel hot to me; it just felt like home.

  “Really? Jumping into it the first night you get back?” Carter seemed surprised, and I looked over at him again, raising an eyebrow.

  “How long have you known me?”

  “Ten years.”

  “How many short, stupid trips does the Tribunal send me on?”

  “Probably one or two a year, though not always for actual trials. Normally, they just send you out to kill someone who was convicted in absentia.” He shrugged.

  It might say something about me that he said that so nonchalantly.

  “And what do I always do when I get back?”

  “Go to the Jackalope. Yeah, yeah. I just figured for once in your life, you would take a break.”

  I snorted, shaking my head. “You just need to drop me off. I know how your Mistress feels about any of you hanging around there. It’s where the rogue vamps are.” With one more look at him, I reminded him of the last important reason I was going to the hidden supernatural bar in Phoenix. “I left my car there.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  He pulled off the 10 and got onto the 17 that ran straight through Phoenix. We weren’t on it long before he pulled off to take me to The Jackalope in Downtown Phoenix.

  On the corner of 2nd and McKinley there was a strange abandoned building, surrounded by several small lounges, a parking lot, and other little pieces of the Phoenix nightlife. The roadside parking was full, and so was the parking lot. On
a Friday night, everyone was out and about. I smiled, blinking several times as I saw the building come into view. The glamor recognized me as a supernatural and revealed its secrets. Humans were turned off by the building—no one wanted to go near it or thought to try to buy it. It was just there, standing the test of time with the bustling city around it.

  To me it was The Jackalope, the only supernatural bar in Phoenix worth visiting. Even with the glamor gone from my vision, it wasn’t much to look at—black walls, sealed windows, only a single story tall, with a neon sign with its name and mascot. There was even a warning posted on the door to ward off trouble and trespassers. It was considered the seedy bar for supernaturals in Arizona, the place to go to get drunk and do something stupid. No self-respecting supernatural would come here, nor would they let anyone they were responsible for come near it.

  Carter pulled up to the front door and smiled at me.

  “It’s good to have you back, Kaliya. Call me sometime, and we’ll go have drinks at my place. It’s a lot nicer than The Jackalope.”

  I made a face. “Your place sucks. Literally. I’ll see you soon, though. That’s a promise.”

  He didn’t stop laughing as I got out, pulled my bag from the trunk, and slammed it shut. I knocked on his car with my knuckles to let him know I was done, and he hit the gas, screaming down the street and going back to his own Friday night destination, probably the blood club that his nest ran.

  Wasting no more time, I strolled into the bar, throwing my pack over my shoulder. I couldn’t go home if I didn’t get my keys from the owner, who knew me well enough to keep my car from getting towed while I was gone. He also kept it from getting broken into. The amount of favors Paden and I owed each other was uncountable, so we’d stopped trying years ago. We had a set of rules we followed, and one of those was I could leave my car at the Jackalope for any reason at any time, give him the keys, and leave with the expectation everything would be fine when I got back. He never failed me.

  “Hey, look who’s back!”

  I waved silently at the bartender, not stopping for chit chat. Glenn was cool, but I was just trying to get home. I couldn’t get caught up in a round of drinks, not upstairs.

  “Who’s that?” someone asked softly. My sensitive hearing couldn’t miss the exchange, so I listened in as I walked through the bar.

  “Oh, that’s right, you’ve never seen her. That’s Kaliya Sahni, Tribunal Executioner.”

  “The naga?” someone else asked in a gasp. “I heard she’s like the last of her kind or something.”

  “She’s the last female, a nagini. Don’t get in her way, she’ll fucking kill you. They’ve taken bodies out of this place before when someone has tried to fuck with her.”

  I knew the last voice, gritting my teeth as I realized Martin was around. What the scrawny werewolf was doing upstairs wasn’t my business, but it was unusual. Upstairs was for people just looking to drink, but types like him were never in The Jackalope just looking for a drink.

  Then again, neither are types like me.

  I ducked into the back hallways of the bar, trying to control my temper about what he was telling people about me, and found the bouncer in the back. It was hard walking away. If there was one thing I hated, it was being the topic of conversation, especially that conversation.

  The last nagini. Like anyone really needs the reminder that my kind are going extinct.

  “Welcome home,” the burly fae said, nodding at me. Before I could say anything, he touched his ear and spoke into a mic on his shirt. “Kaliya is back, boss, and on her way down.”

  “Any reason he needed a warning?” I asked softly, looking around to see if anyone was listening. I also noted Deacon didn’t move to open the door to the Underground yet. Normally, I got in without a worry.

  “There are some new players in the city. A lot of them showed up the last week or so. He wants to make sure there isn’t anyone you might take offense to.”

  Ah. He wants to make sure there're no criminals with open warrants on them from the Tribunal. Smart move, Paden. I’d have to act and take them out, even if they aren’t my assignment.

  “He didn’t vet them as they came in?”

  “You know we do, but sometimes they bring friends faster than we can get information,” Deacon answered. “You know how the underground clientele is.”

  “I do.” I was one of them.

  It took a few minutes, but Deacon received an all clear and opened the door for me.

  Already, my return home was strange. Paden had never done that before, meaning something had him uncomfortable, worried about the safety of his establishment, especially with me roaming around in it.

  I walked down the narrow staircase quickly and breathed in the unique mix of magic, alcohol, soil. This was the secret of The Jackalope I didn’t tell Carter about—The Underground. This was the reason I always came back.

  “Well, if it isn’t my favorite bounty hunter,” Paden said, greeting me from the bottom of the stairs.

  I grinned. Only Paden.

  “I’m a Tribunal Executioner. You know that,” I reminded him softly when I reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Everyone knows. It’s an open secret that you are also a bounty hunter with your own agenda when you aren’t on the Tribunal’s dime,” he countered. “Come on. Have a drink with me before you drive off into the desert.”

  “You going to tell me about the new faces Deacon mentioned?” I inquired, falling in step beside him.

  “In a minute. It’s a little weird. I know you just landed, but I want to pull you aside for this one.”

  As we walked into the Underground’s main bar, I ran my tongue over my lips. Everyone probably thought I had a bad case of chapped lips, or I was playing with my lip piercing, but I was a naga. I pulled in scents from the air with my tongue that my nose couldn’t pick up. In the room, there were five werewolves, over six types of fae, three vampires who smelled like the humans they had recently fed on, and a witch. Of that group, the only one I was worried about was the witch. They always had too many tricks up their sleeves for me to be comfortable around them. They didn’t have the same consistency as the rest, every one of them different from the next.

  It wasn’t just my unusual ability to ‘taste’ scents on the air that helped me remain aware of my surroundings. If I closed my eyes, I could map the room out based on thermal information. Werewolves ran hot; vampires were cooler than any human; fae fluctuated in strange ways, depending on how much magic they were doing. The witch only read as human thermally, another reason I didn’t like them. They could hide in the crowd.

  I followed him to his back office, knowing every set of eyes in the underground was on me. It was actually a light night. The underground was three times the size of the bar above and hosted the worst of the worst from the state of Arizona.

  They watched me because I played both sides. Bounty hunting wasn’t illegal because it was a way for the supernatural world to police itself, but it was frowned upon that I did both, Bounty Hunter and Executioner.

  “What is it?” I demanded once Paden shut the door.

  “A new bounty. Ten million U.S. dollars.”

  My eyebrows went up. “That’s serious money.”

  “It is, and has gotten everyone’s attention because it’s probably going to be easy, but it’s also going to get a lot of them in trouble.” Paden seemed uncomfortable as he picked up the printout for the bounty.

  We all recognized the deep yellow parchment that bounties were printed on, one of the few things consistent in the world of supernaturals. There was a simple system. A bounty was put out publicly, giving any of us a chance to go for it. It guaranteed the backer would get the best work, and there was a competitiveness that was normally friendly. There were only two stipulations for bounties, two very simple rules.

  “Why?” I had a sneaking suspicion this wasn’t a normal bounty.

  “It’s for a human,” Paden answered.

 
“Oh. Well, that’s bad,” I mumbled, taking the bounty from his hands. Reading it over, I shook my head. “Idiots. There are two rules for the bounty hunting world. No humans and no killing. Bounty hunters have to take people in alive and let whoever put out the bounty deal with it. This breaks one of those rules.” I put it back down on his desk and shrugged. “It happens all the time, though, Paden. Why does this one bother you?” I didn’t take bounties on humans, considering it was a conflict of interest. Anyone else was fair game, but it left me confused why Paden showed me this one.

  “I did a little background on the guy like I do when any human comes through. He was in college and set to join the human military once he graduated. That was ten years ago, over in New Mexico. The bounty came out seven days ago.”

  “What happened in those ten years?” I asked, looking at the name on the bounty. Raphael Alvarez—who had he pissed off?

  “No idea. He didn’t exist.”

  That made me look back up at Paden, frowning.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. They put out a bounty on a ghost. No one has seen or heard of him in ten years, and his name doesn’t come up in any records across the United States, Canada, or Mexico. I know you hate bounties on humans and won’t do them, but I want you to look into this one. It seems off. There’s more to this story than someone looking for a human who might expose supernatural secrets.”

  I sighed, giving Paden a look that would normally put the fear of the gods into someone. He just met my stare evenly.