The Hero: Hunter Circles Series Book Four

by Jessica Gunn

  “Hunter?” Nate asked, not moving from where he held one of the demons.

  I searched the man’s body for a Hunter Circle knife but didn’t find one. “Witch, maybe. We should call this in.”

  “To Jaffrin?” Rachel asked.

  I shook my head and pulled out my phone. “No. Regular human authorities. It’ll look like a mugging gone wrong.” I also didn’t want to deal with Jaffrin or the Fire Circle right now. And on the off chance this was a witch any of them knew, I didn’t want to burn the body with a cedo match.

  “I have a message for you, Ben Hallen,” said one of the demons.

  I turned to him before I could place the 9-1-1 call. “Excuse me?”

  “From Lady Azar,” he continued, his burgundy eyes shining with demonic magik. “She want to extend to you an offer of peace.”

  I snorted a laugh. “Now that I wasn’t expecting. Peace? From her?”

  “I would not be so quick to dismiss this, Hunter,” the other demon said. “Lady Azar will return your son to you, but you must in return hand over the Daughter and Son of Alzan.”

  “Krystin and Shawn?” Rachel asked as she reached into her pocket. “Why would she give up Riley for them?”

  The demon she held in her water ropes only grinned. “I don’t pretend to know Darkness’s rightful heir’s wishes.”

  “I believe that heir you’re talking about is her brother.” Ammon, Lady Azar’s twin, was the first born. So unless some major shakeup had happened without the Hunter Circles’ knowledge, that thousands-of-years-long line of succession began with Ammon.

  The demon’s grin only widened. “So much in motion. So little you know.”

  “Okay, I’m over this.” Rachel tugged out a cedo match, lit it, and tossed it onto the demon she was restraining. He burnt up like a purple Christmas tree. When the purple flames died down, she turned to the other demon. “You’re next. Better explain the reasons for this offer.”

  I stared at Rachel. When had she become so aggressive? “Hey. Don’t get trigger-happy. We might need any information he has.”

  “Yeah,” she said, glaring at the demon. “Like why the hell my nephew is now a bargaining chip.”

  The demon glared back at her. “I don’t know. We’re only the messengers. Do as you will. Otherwise, the Son and Daughter for the boy.”

  Nate squeezed the ether tighter around the demon. “Riley is the only way she’s getting to Alzan and will stay alive long enough to see her plan through. She needs him.”

  Unless something’s happened to Riley, too. My stomach dropped at the thought. A lightheaded feeling swept through me.

  The demon’s gaze met mine. “Lady Azar does not need the siphon boy if she has another way to Alzan through its Son and Daughter.”

  “Siphon boy?” I growled at him. “What the—”

  Another lit cedo match flew through the air at the demon before I’d even finished my sentence. His purple flames were bigger and brighter.

  “Rachel,” Nate hissed. “We were getting somewhere.”

  “No,” I said. “She got to him before I did. I was about to do the same thing.” Riley was just a pawn to them. A siphon. A filter for magik that needed to move from one plane of existence to another.

  “We can’t give up Shawn and Krystin to Lady Azar,” Nate said. “Riley, we can save. But not the two of them if they somehow fall under demonic control again.”

  I turned on Nate, anger flashing hot beneath my skin. “We don’t even know where they are. We couldn’t trade them for Riley if we wanted to.” Although I was pretty sure both Krystin and Shawn would gladly take his place if it meant returning Riley to Sandra and me safely.

  That didn’t make me feel better about any of it.

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” Nate said.

  “I’m a little more worried about the demon implying Lady Azar plans to take throne,” Rachel said. “Ammon’s a known quantity. If Aloysius falls and Lady Azar takes his place…”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that for a while,” I said. “Even if she takes the throne from Ammon, she’ll never be able to remove her father.” Aloysius had been in power since the Split, since the day he chose a path different from the Powers. Not even his daughter would take that away from him.

  I looked down to the witch’s body again. “We need to call 9-1-1 and then get out of here.”

  “Right,” Nate said, nodding. He kicked the two piles of demon ash, scattering them.

  Then I called the human authorities and we walked away, even as thoughts of trading my teammates for my son came roaring back to me. It was one hell of a tempting way out of a situation we currently had no solutions for. But as tempting as it was, I knew I could never do it.

  Still, it didn’t stop me from wondering what had made Lady Azar so desperate—or confident—to bargain away the key part of her plan.

  Chapter 21

  Krystin

  I landed on my knees surrounded in darkness. In a flash, a scene appeared: a warehouse, sunlight streaming in through large windows to either side of me. It kissed my skin, warming it despite the glass barrier between us. Musty, moldy smells sifted through the air with metallic undertones. And although I was pretty sure this was some massive hallucination induced by whatever Areus had given Shawn and me, the ground beneath my feet felt as solid as the marble on which I’d previously stood.

  I glanced down. I still wore the same shorts and tank top I’d been wearing when Shawn had found me at Hunter’s Guild. Which meant I was also still unarmed.

  My eyes narrowed as I took in as many details as I could. Areus hadn’t explained how this would help unlock Shawn’s and my powers. But it must somehow. Normally, I wouldn’t have trusted someone so fast, but Areus’s story about the first Son and Daughter hit home. The Powers had had a plan and, for the first time in my entire life, Areus had confirmed the Powers were flawed. Their plan had failed or had at least been derailed. Which meant they weren’t saints and that they did need us Hunters to help them win this war. They weren’t all-powerful or all-knowing, only really good at positioning themselves that way.

  A crash sounded, the splintering of glass into a thousand pieces, and Shawn came flying through a window on the second floor. A filing cabinet followed, quickly making up the distance between it and Shawn.

  “Shawn!” I raced toward where he was doomed to be crushed by the filing cabinet. I reached out and swiped at the air, an old instinct. But I didn’t have telekinesis anymore and nothing happened.

  I moved again, swiping slower this time, thinking of the air currents around Shawn instead of Shawn himself. Out of my two new abilities, I’d definitely relied on and used the fire-elemental magik more often. But I managed to collect enough of a wind current to slide Shawn out of the way of the filing cabinet and float him to the ground.

  I ran over and helped him up, balking as a shock of red ran down his face. “Shawn?”

  His eyes rolled, sweat flooding his brow. Blood dripped down to his lips from a gash in his eyebrow. “I’m fine.”

  I held on to his shoulders, as much to support him as myself. “What happened? Is this really you?”

  His eyes lit up and he glared at me. “Are you really you?”

  “What?”

  Someone jumped out of the window Shawn had been shoved out of and landed on the floor, a knee to the ground like a freaking supervillain. Me. Or more accurately, a mockery of me. She stood, fire in one hand and a twisting ball of air in the other. “So nice of you to join us.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. Her voice—it wasn’t mine. It was low, deep, threatening. Male.

  She shot a hand out and launched the ball of fire directly for us. I pushed Shawn out of the way and caught it as the ball turned into a firestorm. Hands up, I pushed the wave of fire up and over where we stood, then swung it around me back at her.

  My evil twin jumped impossibly high into the air, swinging down with a lance made of fire. She slammed it into th
e ground. The impact sent Shawn and me flying. I landed hard, sliding against the ground and into a metal support beam. My body folded under the force of the slide, pain searing from my legs up to my neck.

  “The pain sure feels real,” Shawn said. Blood still poured down his face from his eyebrow. The same one I’d scarred six months ago. “What’s going on?”

  “Hell if I know,” I said, picking myself up off the ground. “Areus said it was some training or something right? To unlock our magik?”

  “How the hell does fighting you accomplish that?” Shawn hissed, cradling his right arm. “What Kinder did to you is the reason we lost so much time in the first place.”

  My double stalked toward us, another fire lance in her hands.

  “I don’t know, Shawn.” An idea hit me then, a hunch so strong that it wiped away the pain splicing through my body. “But I do know I’ve never used that move before.”

  “The fire sword?”

  “Yeah. I don’t have that much control.”

  Shawn’s features darkened. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  My eyes narrowed on my double. Only I was starting to think it wasn’t actually me in there. “Only one way to find out.”

  I took off running, climbing up onto some boxes stacked nearby. Shawn ran interference as I made my way. He launched himself toward my double, ignoring the fire lance. Odds were it’d hurt, but we wouldn’t die here. Not for real. And I highly doubted Areus, keeper of the Son and Daughter of Alzan, would actually let us die before we saved the city.

  The fire lance soared toward Shawn, but he kept moving, pushing through it with a howl as he tackled my double to the ground.

  I produced my own fire as I leapt from the boxes, just as my double threw Shawn off of her yet again.

  With Shawn out of the way, I let my fire loose, the waves pulsing around my hands. I swarmed her in fire, melting away the exterior—or aiming to. The fire moved against me, building so I couldn’t see through it as the flames conformed to my body, then shot me across the room, too.

  I landed next to Shawn again, him catching me as I slid.

  “That didn’t work.”

  Shawn’s eyes widened as he stood. “No. It definitely did.” He offered me a hand.

  Only when I turned to see what he meant did my stomach drop completely. I watched as my double’s visage melted away, revealing Giyano underneath. The moment the shape-change was gone, his aura of flames whipped around him, crimson and orange and yellow. “I see you’ve finally figured it out.”

  I froze. “No. This is impossible.”

  Shawn’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t real. Remember that.”

  “Feels real.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Giyano’s standing right there.”

  “It’s an illusion,” Shawn said. “Think about it. He’s the reason we weren’t connected before now. Giyano’s also the reason we finally met at all. He’s led you away from and to the prophecy as many times as he’s hurt this team. And he’s the one who gave Riley to Lady Azar so she could use him to get to Alzan.”

  “So what? You and I work together to defeat our common enemy and kumbaya, we’re a force of nature?” Sarcasm dripped from my lips, but I didn’t dare move. “That’s too fucking convenient.”

  “Agreed,” Giyano purred across the distance. “Teleportante.” His form blinked out of existence.

  “Shit,” I said, spinning around. “Where’d he go?”

  “Think it’d be better to focus on how we’re going to do this.”

  “We’re not. This isn’t real.” But the windows, the office upstairs… it did seem familiar. “Holy shit.”

  “What?”

  “This warehouse. It’s in Salem. Giyano lured Ben and the team here. They had a shape-changer mimicking Riley’s voice.”

  “Okay, and what happened then?”

  “Ben rushed in headfirst, then got knocked out for the entire fight. Giyano was there with Shadow Crest demons and—Oh, fuck!”

  “What—”

  Giyano reappeared before Shawn could finish his sentence, a knife in each hand he’d drawn from sheaths on his lower back. He sliced across each of our chests and then blinked away in a teleportante again.

  I looked down, wincing in pain. The cuts were shallow, but a slimy, tan oil laced each one. “That,” I said as my body instantly weakened, my knees wobbling. “Elin.”

  Elin was a poison favored by Darkness in their fight against the Hunter Circles, though Hunters had also acquired it. Elin blocked access to your magik unless you were strong enough to fight it. But if you did fight it, it hit you back with your power three-fold. Rachel had been knocked out by her own magik because of elin when we’d been in this Salem warehouse nine, almost ten months ago.

  “Shit,” Shawn said as his body folded. He fell to his knees. “I don’t have magik, though.”

  My knees knocked against the cement too. “We both do. The Alzan magik is inherent. In our blood. We can’t… turn it off…” The poison flooded my system, turning every nerve ending into a pain receptor. And pain it absolutely received.

  Giyano reappeared beside us, laughing. “Let’s see you fight me now.”

  But I couldn’t even think. It felt as though my body was being torn apart atom by atom. Every new place the elin found a crack, it filled it with pain. My head throbbed, my tongue suddenly feeling as though it’d grown three sizes. I bent over, my palms pressed against the cold cement.

  Why was it so bad this time? So much worse?

  “It’s burning you alive, Krystin,” Giyano said, as though he’d read my thoughts. But it wasn’t really him. “You’re an abomination, something that cannot be. Only those with the Power can handle both ether and elemental magiks.”

  “Screw you,” Shawn shouted. Then an insane, desperate laugh crossed his lips. “I’m talking to an illusion. I’m telling an illusion to go fuck itself.”

  My lips pressed together. It wasn’t funny. And although Areus wouldn’t actually let us die, I was willing to bet he’d keep us in this “training” until we figured out what it was about. Unfortunately for Areus, there wasn’t a way out where elin was concerned. You either let it run its course or you died trying to fight it.

  Giyano kicked out a leg, sending me rolling. The world teetered with it, nausea sliding from my stomach up into my throat.

  “And you, Ember witch,” he spat. “Another abomination.”

  Shawn glared up at him before forcing himself to stand. “Didn’t you fall in love with an Ember witch?”

  Giyano’s eyes raged, flames seeming to dance inside the burgundy coloring. Flames erupted in his hands and flew at Shawn, who lifted his arms to hide his face and—

  A shield of orange ether, Ember witch ether, formed around Shawn. He cried out and in the next instant, the shield dropped to the ground with him. But the flames hadn’t touched a single inch of his skin.

  “Shawn!” I called, rolling myself to my front so I could stand. “Your magik.” Somehow it was back. Maybe inside of this fake scenario, everything was back to normal.

  Except my magik.

  Shawn writhed on the floor, his face a mask of pain. “Great. Now I can burn to elin more.”

  Giyano kicked a foot against his stomach, then bent down to lift Shawn up by the front of his shirt.

  This was impossible. I couldn’t even move without feeling like all my organs were about to fall out of my mouth. And Shawn, even with his magik, couldn’t defeat Giyano.

  He held Shawn up with one hand, the other forging flame into the shape of a long knife.

  I swallowed down as much of the pain as I could and forced myself, foot by foot, to stand and make my way toward Giyano.

  “Fight me,” he growled at Shawn, who sort of just hung there, defeated. “Fight!”

  Shawn’s eyes lifted, his own fire in them, and he wrapped his hands around Giyano’s. An orange band of ether formed there, power pumping in waves from him to Giyano.

 
; Giyano’s eyes widened, his stance wavering as Shawn burned him with magik, but Shawn’s own body shook from the pain of elin. The longer his hands made contact, the stronger he forced the power burning Giyano until the once orange ether now burned white hot. Pure white.

  I used the moment of distraction to reach out with my fire-elemental magik and pull on the fire knife in Giyano’s hand. The flames fled from him toward me. But Giyano turned, moving Shawn in the air with him, and reached his hand out once more. We fell into a tug of war for the fire, one that almost sent me to my knees. Where I fell, Shawn gathered strength. And when the elin became too much for him, I took over. We fought in sync, dropping Giyano—and Shawn with him—to the ground.

  The second Giyano’s back touched the cement, a shimmering wave of ether flame fell over his body. Inch by inch he turned from Giyano back into my double. Black veins ran up her arms and neck, bare for us to see as her outfit now matched mine. Shawn backed off of her and stood, his eyes now on me.

  “It’s not me, remember!” I said, rushing to approach them now that this Giyano-me demon had stopped fighting.

  Me, a demon. A villain.

  Not a hero. And definitely not the savior Alzan wanted.

  With a startling clarity, I realized the point of this exercise. Shawn had fought through his own doubts to his magik. A magik that now burned with the pure, white power of Alzan.

  I swallowed hard and then called my own fire lance to my hands. The fire fought against my control, the raw, wildness of it bucking against unnatural shaping. But the lance formed and I lifted it with two hands above the me-demon on the ground. And pulled it downward.

  Just before the lance pierced my double’s skin, the fire turned white with the power of Alzan.

  I awoke gasping, sweat trickling down the sides of my face. My clothes clung to me despite the cool marble beneath my body. I sprung up, using a nearby couch to pull me to my feet. Shawn lay on the other side of Areus’s sitting area, his eyes fluttering open.

  Areus clapped his hands and in a loud, happy voice that grated against my ears, he said, “You did it!”