Hunter Circles Series Complete Boxset: An Urban Fantasy Adventure

by Jessica Gunn

  Would ours look like this once Lady Azar ruled over Alzan?

  My jaw set hard, determination finding a new home in my heart. I’d never let her win after everything she and her soldiers had done. She’ll have to kill me first.

  “Ready?” Shawn asked, breaking my thoughts.

  I nodded. “One last time. Let’s do this.”

  A glowing white light emanated from our joined hands, warm and reassuring. It felt like it was calling us home. Not that I knew what that was anymore. My relationship with my mother had been strained for years, but only now, after she’d died, did I start to realize that maybe it’d been my fault. She and Jaffrin might have started the isolation I experienced growing up. But it wasn’t them who’d kept it going.

  Coming back to the team a few days ago to tell Ben about Riley was the first—and only—time in the last ten years that I’d willingly chosen to not be alone. And look where it had gotten me.

  I closed my eyes and focused on our trip to Alzan rather than my twirling thoughts. Once again, we approached Alzan through the ether of planes of existence, quickly zooming in over the war-torn courtyard. The wall Lady Azar had erected around Cianza Alzan rushed us. I felt Shawn start to turn our journey and worked with him to steer us around the cianza and the wall, up over the mountains surrounding the city, and up to the Pyramid Building standing in the distance. The tiered gemstone building soared into the clouds. A light streamed out of the very apex of it. That’s where Shawn and I brought us to.

  A breath later found the group of us standing in the center of the ground floor of the Pyramid Building, where you could look up and see all the way through to a window at the top. The gemstone layers seemed to go on for miles, disorienting me. If I hadn’t seen it from the outside, I’d have thought this place was infinitely tall.

  The momentary sense of total peace was shattered by a layer of marble being ripped up from the floor and shot at us in an upsurge. Nate pulled up an ether shield at the last second, taking the brunt of the attack that was still powerful enough to send him skidding backward a few inches.

  I ducked down behind Nate and Shawn, two of the only other magik users in our group, and let them charge in first. Demons had already reached the Pyramid Building, probably through a series of teleportante spells based on sight alone. That was risky—but possible. Now, those same demons clashed with workers at the Pyramid Building.

  Shiny, white ala-ether sparked in every direction from everyone able to join the fight. I weaved among them, following Avery as he took aim after aim, firing on a single demon at a time. When one got too close, I swiped at them with my three-piece sword. But that last trip to Alzan had left my entire body shaking. A cold sweat had broken out across my brow and the back of my neck. A single chill coursed up my spine. I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly as dry as a cotton ball.

  We should have acted sooner. If we’d ignored the Ether Head Circle, we might have gotten to Lady Azar’s chamber faster and stopped her before they’d gone through that portal thing. Or at the very least, maybe we’d have gotten through it and not had to use our magik to get to Alzan.

  A wave of fire torpedoed toward my face. I dropped, but it did, too and all I could do to avoid it was shoot out my own wave of ala-ether. It collided with the fire, shoving it out in a burst away from me.

  I cried out, falling to my knees as my hand burned as though I’d stuck it into a vat of searing hot wax. I held my hand before me, staring at the betrayer. One last battle. Just one more.

  Magik shot all around, zipping past my crumpled form as I waited for my hand to stop burning. It looked normal, minus the inky veins that turned darker by the second. It was so much like what Giyano’s magik had looked like in my system that I had to wonder if, in the grand scheme of things, this had to have been his plan all along.

  But no, that couldn’t be true. Not when he’d gone to such great lengths to save me time and again.

  I wish you could help me now.

  Chapter 20

  KRYSTIN

  I looked around me at the unfolding chaos. The fights, the magik. The blood on the ground. Obviously, there was no easy answer to this battle—or its ramifications.

  “There!” Shawn shouted. “Areus, come to us!”

  I glanced up at the mention of our mentor’s name. He was currently running through the lobby with an armful of tomes from his office—which I only recognized because of the top one. The first Daughter’s journal. Demons swarmed around Areus, though they weren’t outright attacking him. There were plenty of other targets, and unless any particular demon knew exactly who he was—and his connection to Shawn and me—they’d likely never zero in on him.

  Shawn rushed in anyway. I gripped my sword pommel tighter, my knuckles turning white, and launched myself into the fray behind him. A water-elemental demon whipped water around in a lasso in front of me, waiting for an opening they’d never get. A few quick slashes from me, a duck to avoid their attack, and my blade found a home in their heart. I propped a foot on their thigh and pulled back, withdrawing my sword.

  I squatted down, dodging a strike from a demon with a mace, wildly swinging it. His actions were an illusion, a baiting to attack when he was the furthest thing from defenseless. I’d learned the hard way once. Coming up quick, I snapped off the bottom portion of the sword, shortening it, and jabbed the demon once, twice, three times, narrowly avoiding another mace swing. He cried out and grabbed on to his chest, trying to stem the blood flow.

  All I saw was that red. And although I sometimes felt remorse for killing demons—more for the act of doing so than for them losing their lives—I felt none here. I was completely numb to it because if I couldn’t handle it in here, I’d never make it to the real battlefield in the courtyard.

  Assuming we ever got there.

  I swung the sword again, aiming for the demon’s heart. A quick slash put him out of his misery. I didn’t stop to drop any cedo matches on the bodies. Cleanup was a luxury for peacetime.

  “Krystin!” Shawn shouted.

  I turned toward him. He’d made it significantly closer to Areus than I had, but Shawn was now surrounded by five demons. He spun, looking at each one in turn as ala-ether burned around his hands. He couldn’t take five demons alone. Even with that magik.

  I vaulted over a few bodies—demonic and Alzanian—and ran the rest of the way to where Shawn was squaring off with the demons. “Hey, losers,” I shouted at them. Only a few turned to greet me. “Pick on someone your own size, eh?”

  They didn’t need to know I didn’t have magik. And it didn’t matter if I did or didn’t because the split second of confusion that shot across some of their faces gave Shawn the opening he needed to toast the other two demons. He sprang forward and placed his open palms on them, pulverizing the demons in a shower of white sparkling lights. My jaw fell open slightly at the beauty of it.

  How the hell had Alzan lost the fight with Darkness in the First War if their magik was capable of this?

  I glanced around at all the other Alzanians and watched them use their magik in their own fights. They weren’t pulverizing anything. Their attacks looked like normal ether-shaper attacks, like the ones Nate used all the time. Except instead of solid blocks, Alzanian ether acted more like a flame.

  An aching grew in my chest, a longing for a magik that’d kill me.

  I’d operated as a Hunter alone for so long. Sure, during that time, I’d had my magik and used it as much as I’d liked. But I’d never relied on it. I preferred using weapons to fight demons because it made less of a mess to clean up and was easier to hide from prying eyes. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that magik now. Maybe if I had it, Shawn and I would have already saved the city or at least have been well on our way to doing so.

  Not yet, I reminded myself. Lady Azar first, then saving the city.

  I snapped the third part of my sword back into place and raised the weapon above me. “Let’s dance.”

  The three remaining de
mons all narrowed their eyes at me and charged. I weaved between them, dodging magik attacks of varying types. Shawn worked his way into the fight as well, taking out one of the demons right away. One of the last ones stopped and dropped his hands in a swift, firm movement. A shockwave knocked Shawn and me off our feet. I slid along the ground, crying out as the marble floor scraped against my bare arm. That was going to leave one hell of a bruise.

  “Enough!” Areus yelled. He dropped the first Daughter’s journal to the ground. His hands glowed at his sides, ala-ether reaching up his arms. He waved them as though prepping a lasso and shot out a rope of ala-ether at the two remaining demons. As the rope traveled, he sidestepped, circling his foot on the floor, and used his free hand to shape ala-ether into a dagger and shove it into one of the demons. The demon fell, skin graying in death. The lasso nearly decapitated the other.

  Areus put out the ala-ether in his hands and then brushed them down the front of his tunic. “There. Not so bad.”

  I pushed myself off the floor and ran to him. “Are you okay? Where are you going?”

  Areus picked up the book he’d dropped and turned to Shawn as he stood too. “I was hoping the High Council might learn something from the first Daughter’s journal about how she moved the city to another plane of existence.” He glanced down briefly at the tome. “I’m afraid that even if it were possible, only the two of you could perform such a feat. My guess is it has something to do with the undercurrent of Neuian magik in your—”

  “We so don’t have time for this,” Shawn said, grabbing hold of Areus’s hand. “We need to get to the courtyard.”

  “But Lady Azar’s placed some sort of shield around it. We had to arrive here in the Pyramid Building to get to Alzan at all,” I said.

  Areus’s gaze found mine, worry swimming in his eyes. “Did you…?”

  I nodded. “Just enough to get us here. I’m not using any magik again until I’m able to strike that bitch down.”

  Areus’s mouth thinned. He nodded grimly. “Then let us go. I doubt I’ll be able to take down the shield, but perhaps there is another workaround.”

  A dark thought skittered across my mind. The reality of it chilled me to the bone. “Yeah. There is one workaround.”

  Areus lifted an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Riley.”

  He was the common denominator. Lady Azar was using ancient magik to hold up the shield, but she was doing it to protect Riley. Riley still thought of Ben as family, which Lady Azar hated. If I could get through to Riley somehow, if Ben could if he was there too, maybe Riley could somehow use his magik to drop the shield.

  Or Shawn and I can dismantle it and get to Lady Azar and Riley as fast as possible.

  “You can’t be serious,” Shawn said, watching me carefully. He grabbed Areus’s hand and pulled us aside. “Riley’s the only thing keeping the cianza from exploding.”

  “So too are Ben and Rachel,” Areus pointed out. His eyes brightened. “Depending on how fast you move, you might be able to take out the shield, remove the boy and Lady Azar, and get off the cianza without it tilting completely.”

  Shawn’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think we’re that fast.”

  “We might need to be,” I said. “I like this plan. Ben and Rachel should be enough to stabilize the cianza if anything happens.”

  “It’s already happening,” Shawn said. “Can’t you feel it, even from in here? Cianza Alzan is trembling at its core.”

  I paused for a moment, reaching out with my subconscious and the magikal side of me. There on the horizon of my awareness was a tiny, blinking, white light and the vague sense of homecoming. But the white light turned red and orange and was burning like a flame. It was in distress. “Barely. I can barely feel it. but you’re right.” Shit.

  “We need to take out all the demons here first,” Shawn said as he leaned around the corner to confirm the battled still raged on. I did the same, just in time to watch Nate take out one of the demons with a lance-shaped block of ether. “Then head to the courtyard and try to take down the shield. That will make two big sources of demonic magik gone.”

  “Agreed,” Areus said.

  “And then what?” I asked. Because at the end of the day, if we couldn’t get to Lady Azar, we’d be screwed. There wasn’t enough power in the world to stop Cianza Alzan from blowing if Ben or Rachel or Riley died right now. Not unless an entourage of Neuians showed up to neutralize it.

  An idea popped into my head then, so striking and clear and risky as hell that I clamped down on my tongue rather than speak it aloud. It’d work. It had to. But Ben… he’d hate me for it. They all would.

  Good thing I was used to being the black sheep of this team. And that I wouldn’t be on it for much longer anyway. If I survived this fight, Ben would kill me for this.

  I pushed off the wall and grabbed Shawn’s hand. “Let’s do this. One wave of ala-ether should take the demons out. Then we go to the courtyard.”

  Shawn’s golden ember gaze found mine. He searched my eyes for something, likely my sanity. I’d lost it long ago. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yes. It’s the only way.”

  He squeezed my hand and together we made our way back into the center of the lobby of the Pyramid Building. When we stopped, I braced myself for the pain that was sure to come and then called to my magik. The normally warm, inviting power of Alzan seared my veins as it made its way through my soul to ether-flames at the ends of my fingertips. I cried out, my legs buckling beneath me, as my power awoke.

  Shawn looked over at me, but I kept my gaze straight ahead. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how weak I felt, I’d see this through.

  Just another few minutes.

  “Now!” I shouted, forcing my ala-ether to burst out. Shawn did the same. Our attacks intertwined until they looked like a singular one. Gold laced the edges of the ether flames that lashed out like many whips from a single source.

  The room filled with our magik, a white light burning everything demonic that it came across. Everything the light touched became illuminated in white and gold, cleansing the Pyramid Building of all demonic magik. And when their demonic souls were gone, the demons’ bodies fell lifeless, gray and ashen, to the marble floor.

  Our magik died down. I stumbled, my legs giving out beneath me. A cold sweat slicked my brow. My body shook with both chills and fever.

  Shawn held me up and wrapped one of my arms around his neck. “Easy, Krystin.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, my voice shaking. I wasn’t fine. Not in the slightest. But I still had some fight left in me. Enough to see the next ten minutes through. I forced myself to stand tall and push Shawn away. “To the courtyard.”

  “Krystin.” His tone was almost pleading, as if asking me to rethink this. There wasn’t time for that. Not anymore.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Fine enough to fight, and that’s all there’s left to do. Let’s go.”

  Areus stepped toward us. “I can take us to a place right outside the courtyard, just past the shield.”

  “Don’t forget me,” Nate said as he jogged up to us. “That was insane.”

  “The power of Alzan,” I mumbled under my breath. Would the same power that’d save this city be enough to save me, too?

  There’s only one way to find out.

  “What do you want us to do?” Avery called from the other side of the room.

  “Secure this building,” Shawn said. “It will be key to recovery after this is over.”

  Avery nodded firmly. “Go take that bitch down for me.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Areus held out his hand for us to take. We did, though mine was still shaking. “Teleportante.”

  We momentarily blinked out of existence. Since I wasn’t the one who’d initiated the teleportante, I didn’t feel the path of it. But when we landed, it was more like we crashed, sending the four of us teetering to the ground.

  The shield. We must have slammed into it a
nd gotten redirected, like what happened if you tried to teleportante into Hunter’s Guild instead of the woods outside it.

  Nate rose first and helped me off the ground. I brushed dirt off of my clothes with still-shaking hands. My head felt light and woozy, feverish. Like at any second it’d just lift from my neck and take flight.

  I swallowed hard, hoping to center myself through all the thoughts sluggishly passing through my head. One last fight. Ten more minutes. Then whatever was going to happen could happen. I was still alive, so whatever fate the Powers had prepared for me must still be on the horizon. When we crested it, the rest was up to them.

  “It’s the shield,” Areus said as he picked himself off the ground. “It’s bigger than I thought.”

  “You didn’t know. You were kind of busy,” Shawn said.

  Understatement of the year. I never would have thought the Pyramid Building would have fallen under attack. Not because it was the political center of the city, but because of its location far from the cianza. If you appeared anywhere near the cianza on this plane of existence, you’d have to cross it to get there. And even this close, even after our magik had been shifted to ala-ether, even though I could feel my magik eating me from the inside out, I still felt the cianza.

  Which meant Riley was failing.

  “He’s straining,” I said, my voice barely louder than whisper.

  “What?” Nate asked.

  Shawn looked toward the courtyard. The shield was little more than a thin layer of see-through magik. The rippling of it caught in the sunlight above, indicating where it started and continuing around in a dome over the main area of the courtyard.

  “You can’t feel it?” Shawn asked Nate.

  “I feel something,” he answered, his brows knitting together. “It’s… overwhelming.”

  “Cianza Alzan,” Areus said. “You must hurry. We knew that three Neuians would not be enough. If the boy falls before this attack on our plane of existence is stopped, we are all doomed.”