by Jessica Gunn
Another man, face masked in shadows, stood in the middle of the alleyway. He had a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. He must’ve been a demon, even though I couldn’t confirm that without enough light to see his eyes.
“Did you do this?” Krystin shouted. She still hoped it wasn’t Giyano. I didn’t understand why. A person’s nature never changed.
The demon only laughed and charged, arching his sword arm backward for a swing. Krystin met him in the middle, pulling out her Fire Circle knife. The scraping sounds of metal on metal echoed down the alleyway.
I willed lightning to my hand in the shape of a sword and jumped into the fray, but the demon easily maneuvered around both Krystin and me as if we weren’t there. This guy was good.
He swung low, but Krystin ducked out of the way, coming up with a hand filled with fire. She threw it out at the demon, who knocked the fireball away with his dagger, which now glowed a soft yellow color.
“What the hell?” I snarled.
Water in the shape of a snake whipped out and coiled around the demon before freezing and pulling him to the ground. He roared, straining against the icy restraints.
“Who are you?” Nate demanded. He now sat by the victim with Shawn, watching the fight. In this tight of a space with normal people close by, having us all fight was a sure recipe for disaster.
The demon only laughed as he flexed against the ice manacles, the veins on his arms and neck near bursting. But after another moment, shards of ice flew across the alleyway as he ripped his way through them. Krystin and I lunged at the same time, though her fire hands had grown double in size. Could she control them?
The demon made quick work of both Krystin’s and my blades, though we were able to dodge any direct attacks.
“Quiet out there!” someone shouted from above.
I froze and looked up at the office building to our right. A light was on and someone peered down at the darkness we were thankfully wrapped in.
“Stop whatever you’re doing or I’m calling the cops”
Shit. “We can’t—”
Pain sliced up my left arm, a sharp searing ache that crawled its way to my shoulder. I looked down, but in the sweeping darkness, it was hard to tell how deep the wound was.
“Ben!” Rachel shouted. She now stood under the only light in the alleyway right beside Nate, Shawn, and the demon’s victim.
I still couldn’t get a good read on the demon, but he didn’t move like Giyano. Giyano favored swords and blades, but he’d often relied on his magik to intimidate us, too. So far this demon hadn’t shown any signs of magik.
Except they all had magik. Every last one of them.
“Oh, my god!” a second voice shouted from the same window. “Call the cops! Someone’s bleeding down there. And there’s a fire!”
“Fuck,” Krystin cursed. The flames in her hands grew. She shook them as if it’d blow out the flames, but they burst to a greater size.
A heavy thud smacked against something, but it wasn’t until the demon was totally out of my vision, a glowing shape of ether pressing him against the brick wall, that I realized Nate had done it.
“Now, let’s go,” Nate said. “Move while I have him held.”
Our trail would definitely lead to Fire Circle Headquarters but most demons didn’t waltz into Hunter Circles Headquarter buildings unless they intended to declare a small war, independent of the bigger one. Much like Kinder had almost done three months ago.
I ran to Krystin, but when she turned to fall back to Nate and Shawn, the flame wheels around each of her palms swelled in size once more.
“I can’t turn it off,” she said, her voice panicked. “It’s getting worse. And hot. So hot.”
The demon roared, pushing against Nate’s ether block that held him against the brick wall. Sirens sounded in the distance.
“Let’s go,” Shawn said. He had one hand on the victim and one held out, much like Krystin had when the demon’s attack had started. “It’s okay, Krystin. You won’t hurt me, I promise.”
She walked slowly over to him and tentatively pressed a fiery hand to his shoulder. He grimaced, grunting, but held everyone else together. I made my way over to him as the demon tried to get away from Nate’s ether block. Only at the last second did he break free, right as I touched hands with Nate.
“No!” he bellowed, charging us.
“Go, go, go,” Krystin said. “Hurry.”
“Teleportante.”
As Shawn said it, the demon’s face came into the light, revealing a narrow, pale face with a giant scar running down one side.
It wasn’t Giyano.
Fire Circle Headquarters was nearly empty when we landed directly in the Infirmary, although there was nothing to do for the victim we’d found. Shawn and Nate plunked the deceased Cassano witch on a gurney while Rachel ran to get Jaffrin or Dacher.
“Calm down,” Shawn said as he stood before Krystin, hands raised. Part of his shirt was gone, burned straight through the shoulder. In its place was angry, red skin that had started to peel and bubble. “It’s a flesh wound, Krystin.”
“But I did that to you!” she screamed. “I can’t control this—it’s got a mind of its own.”
“That’s elemental magik,” I said. I’d never seen her so scared, so unaware of what was happening to her. Krystin was our go-to for everything magik. But now she was staring down at her shaking hands with wide eyes like she’d never seen magik before in her life. “Like Shawn said, you need to calm down and it will.”
She whipped around, fixing me in place with a wild stare. “You calm the fuck down.”
Shawn reached out for her shoulders and she let him do it. “Breathe. Close your eyes and think of something peaceful.”
She closed her eyes, too. “Like beating Kinder’s ugly-ass face in?”
Shawn grimaced. “More peaceful than that.”
Krystin smirked, though the flames in her hands appeared to die down some.
“See? It’s working,” Shawn said.
“Don’t patronize me. This magik is new.”
I frowned. I hadn’t had this much issue with my lightning magik. A few instances here or there, but mostly when I was super angry. With Krystin, it almost seemed to be an utterly random occurrence. “You need to remember that with elemental magik, emotions drive everything.”
“I know,” she said. “This isn’t my first magik rodeo.”
“With this magik it is.”
Dr. Shan appeared, freezing when he saw the group of us. His gaze settled on Shawn’s raging red shoulder. “What happened?”
“Burn,” Shawn said, thumbing at his wound.
Krystin frowned. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “It’s not your fault.”
“But it is, don’t you see that?” She shook her head and paced for the door. “I’m supposed to be the one who knows magik. Who can handle all of this. But I can’t. I just can’t anymore.”
She turned to walk out the door but paused when I called out, “Where are you going?”
“To the library for research,” she said, disappearing through the doorway. Her voice echoed from down the hall. “I want to find out who this asshole is.”
I almost wanted to tell her how bad it’d be if she lost control down there, burning every book the Fire Circle had with her. But I kept my mouth shut.
“Go,” Shawn said instead. “Find the guy and keep her from going crazy.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
Shawn fell back onto a gurney and winced. “Fine. It feels like a really bad sunburn.”
“It looks like hell,” I said.
He smirked. “Great. Thanks.” A beat. “Go see what you and Krystin can find while I wait for a healer.”
Krystin tore down the stairs ahead of me. I had to jog to keep up, already winded from the battle. But she didn’t slow down until we’d reached the entrance to the library in the basement of Fire Circle Headquarters.
“Hey, wait a s
econd,” I shouted after her. “We have to call the twins and tell them you’re here.”
She froze, turning. “Absolutely not. They’ll flip and complain I left the house without informing them.” Her eyes went wide. “Ben! You’re bleeding!”
I looked down at my arm, which had stopped hurting a while ago. “Guess I am.” Oh, right. The demon had sliced me open with his blade. Now, in the light, I saw it wasn’t as deep as it’d felt. But then the tan film on top shimmered against the light above me. “Shit. Elin. Thank god that wasn’t a magik fight.”
“You’re damn lucky,” she said as she shrugged off the top layer of her shirt and offered it to me. “Apply pressure or go back up to the Infirmary. In fact, you probably should do that anyway.”
There wasn’t a cure for elin poison, which kept you from using your magik, unless you did push through, in which case it’d burn you from the inside out. The only way to deal with elin poison was time.
“I’m fine. Besides, you need help too.” I pointed down to her still-glowing red hands. “You’re going to set the books on fire.”
“I won’t,” she said, but her voice was small.
“Krystin, it’s okay.”
She shook her head and hair fell across her eyes. “Yup. Help me identify this demon.”
“Okay. But first I need to call the twins.”
She sighed heavily, but nodded before heading for a large book on the back wall.
After a quick conversation during which the Ether Circle twins yelled at me for not informing them of Krystin’s leave, I hung up, promising them we were at Fire Circle Headquarters.
Krystin watched some of the conversation. When I hung up the phone, she said, “I found information about Giyano in the Tome of Demons a couple months ago. I bet this guy is in here, too.”
I glanced at all the books. This library, while small in square foot size, had more books than I could count. “What’s to say he is? You can’t expect to just open up any old book and immediately find out who this demon is.”
Without looking up from the book, Krystin said, “He’s mimicking Giyano’s favored form of killing people, but the victims are random. The two bodies we found months ago that had been Giyano’s doing were both normal humans.”
“Except for the demon Shadow Crest left us.”
Krystin shook her head. “Might not have been him. And the fact that it was a demon was meant to scare us, I think.”
I blinked. “You’re making a ton of assumptions.”
This time, she did look up at me. “Not once since joining this team has something not been connected to everything else. Kinder hates the Fire Circle but is Lady Azar’s mother, the latter of which stole your son, using Giyano, with plans to open a door to Alzan, a city which Shawn and I are meant to save. It’s all connected. So whoever this demon is, he has to be too. Somehow.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t know, Krystin. Maybe you’re searching for links that aren’t actually there.”
“Ah!” she said, pointing at a page in the book. “There you go. Same scar and everything.” She lifted up the Tome of Demons. “Here’s our guy. Zanka? He’s an Old One, but on the young side. He’s a copycat trying to frame Giyano.”
I glanced down at the page. “That’s a big leap based on not much information.”
She shrugged. “That’s all that’s in here for Zanka. But a name we can work with to confirm these guesses.” Krystin tugged her phone out of her pocket and snapped a picture of the page. Then she shut the tome and returned it to its resting place. “Let’s go find Jaffrin.”
Krystin zoomed by me, but I managed to catch her on the stairs.
“Wait a second. You were just telling me not to tell Jaffrin about the attacks.”
She turned back to me with determination shining in her eyes. “It’s not Giyano, and that cuts me off the hook, too. And like Rachel said, tonight’s victim was a fellow witch. They’re going to investigate. If we bring this information to Jaffrin now, he can work with it.”
And then she was gone.
Jaffrin’s stare moved from Krystin to me and back again, his eyes narrowing. “So there have been two attacks, one of which occurred before tonight, that you didn’t or weren’t going to tell me about?”
“Yes,” Krystin said. “It was my idea, before you go punishing Ben for it.”
Jaffrin’s mouth thinned. He plunked down into his desk chair and ran a hand along his jaw. “If the second victim hadn’t been a witch, would you have told me at all?”
“Only if it’d been a Hunter instead,” Krystin said.
I looked to her. “What Krystin means to say is that we didn’t want anyone to jump to any unnecessary conclusions about her involvement, sir.”
Jaffrin tapped his finger on his desk. “But Giyano might be back in town, endangering the lives of not only the general public, but also my Hunters and those allied with us. Not to mention what kind of trouble he might bring with him to Cianza Boston.”
“It wasn’t him,” Krystin said as she held her phone out to him. “It was a demon named Zanka. We caught him in the act and identified him before coming up here to see you.”
Jaffrin took Krystin’s phone and examined the contents of the page she’d taken a picture of. “Another Old One.”
“Good news, I know,” I said, sarcasm thick.
“What are his ties to Giyano?” Jaffrin asked.
“I don’t know,” Krystin said. “That was the only information we found before coming up here. But he has to have some connection if he’s mimicking Giyano.”
“Unless he was hired by Giyano to be a copycat. To bait you and the team.” Jaffrin glanced at Krystin. “He’s played worse games before.”
Krystin’s eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t him. I swear.”
Jaffrin didn’t budge. “You can’t know that. And to be honest, Krystin, I don’t trust your word when it comes to Giyano. Or any demon anymore.”
Krystin swallowed hard and looked away. She laughed once bitterly. “Of course not. Why would you?”
“Krystin…” But I didn’t know what to say.
She shook her head. “No, Ben. Jaffrin’s right. Why should any of you trust me at all? It’s not like I’ve ever had a choice in all of this or anything.”
I reached for her hand. “I do trust you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Since when? Last I checked, you hated me for going to Giyano. Something about us not being a thing ever again? Is that right?”
Her words cut into me as if each were a physical blow.
“That’s enough,” Jaffrin said. “We’ll look into this demon, Zanka, but odds are that he’s not involved. I will also put the Fire Circle on alert for Giyano.” His stare focused on me. “If you see either of them and are able to do so without risking the lives of yourselves and your team, you are to exterminate them both on sight. Understood?”
“Wait a second—”
“Enough, Krystin!” Jaffrin bellowed. “We are under intense scrutiny from the Ether Head Circle. We do not have time for wild goose chases when there are enough things to worry about within the Fire Circle. If Giyano is at fault and he is found, you are to help facilitate his death. End of discussion. You’re both dismissed. Don’t either of you forget the oath you took when you became Hunters.”
“And don’t you forget that I didn’t have a choice,” Krystin growled at him before turning on her heel and marching out the door.
I watched her leave, my heart in my throat. What the hell is happening to this team?
“Keep an eye on her, Ben.”
I looked over my shoulder at Jaffrin. He held the receiver end of his office phone in one hand, fingers of the other hovering over the dial pad.
“I will.”
He held my stare for a while before looking down. “Good. Otherwise, we might lose her completely.”
Chapter 12
KRYSTIN
I stormed out of Fire Circle Headquarters and brought myself to Hunter’s Gu
ild via teleportante. It was the one place I should be safe right now, except if my magik flew out of control. Good. Then I’d be zapped with energy and hopefully knocked unconscious where I could forget about this stupid-as-hell world.
Let it burn. Let all of Alzan, all planes of existence, burn. Starting with Jaffrin.
I sat in a booth as far away from the bar area as I could. This wasn’t my first choice for a refuge, since Drew had died here three months ago. But the rebuilt Hunter’s Guild was even more protected against magik and violence than it had been before. Even Aloysius, Emperor of Darkness, could walk across the lobby unscathed.
My fingertips burned, but it was the mark on my hand I was worried about. It was glowing again. Naturally. “Get the fuck to Hunter’s Guild right now.” I realized that talking to my own hand—or any hand, really—in public looked insane, but I didn’t care. I wanted answers and I’d get them right fucking now.
But minutes passed into hours. And hours into sunrise. Giyano never showed up.
I shifted in my seat and threw back my last shot of whiskey. “Okay. Enough of this.” After paying my tab, I walked out of the Guild and into the woods beyond the wall of protection magiks. Only once I was past them did I use teleportante again.
This time, I landed in the living room of Giyano’s house in Maine. That was where I found him.
“Good to see you again, Krystin.” Giyano smiled up at me from a tan couch soaked in blood around him. A knife protruded from his abdomen, although there was no way it’d be fatal. Demons healed much too quickly for that. That was why you needed to get them in the heart or head or burn them with magik in order to kill them.
“What the hell happened to you?” I asked.
Giyano laughed but quickly stopped and grimaced. “An old friend who wasn’t happy to see me.”
“Clearly,” I said. “Does this ‘old friend’ happen to go by the name of Zanka?”
Giyano’s gaze cut to mine. “Excuse me?”
“Zanka,” I repeated. “About three inches taller than you, a giant scarred gash down the side of his… face.” Oh, god I was stupid. Giyano’s new wound. The victims in the city. “He is mimicking you.”