The Changed: Hunter Circles Series Book Three

by Jessica Gunn

  Giyano chuckled darkly. “That’s not exactly the case.”

  “Then what the hell is going on? I’m getting eaten alive by the Fire Circle because this guy is going around killing humans and witches like you do. Did. Whatever. They think I’m working for you, or at very least, keeping you hidden.”

  He shifted, coming closer to the edge of the cushion. He leaned forward with great effort and grimaced as he grabbed the glass of water sitting on the coffee table. “I warned you about the Fire Circle. Do not blame me for what happens now.”

  “What happens now? Are you kidding me?”

  Giyano sipped the water. “I told you not to trust your Leader. Jaffrin is a fool and a coward. His inability to stand up to the Ether Head Circle will cost you.”

  “I won’t even get that far unless you explain to me exactly why Zanka is doing this. Jaffrin already wants me back in prison.” He hadn’t said that, but I could tell.

  “Zanka is an old rival,” Giyano said as he eased himself back against the couch. I almost felt bad for him, but I was too angry to summon the energy to help him. “Back when I cared about the favor of Lady Azar, we vied for her attention intensely. He’s never gotten over it. Although I suppose since I utterly failed, he’s taken it upon himself to step up where I couldn’t.”

  My eyes narrowed. “With killing random innocents?”

  Giyano shook his head. “Think bigger, Krystin. I failed in helping Lady Azar reach Alzan. Riley got away. And now you’re back on the cianza because of it. The fact that you’re here at all after I went to great lengths to remove you. No wonder he’s trying to win back his place by Lady Azar’s side.”

  Giyano coughed, but it soon turned into a fit. Still, I didn’t move to help. When he pulled his fist away, it was covered in blood.

  “So Zanka is terrorizing Boston because he’s trying to draw us out?” I asked.

  Giyano nodded. “To kill you and Shawn and dispose of Ben. Without the three of you, the prophecy will never come to pass and Lady Azar won’t have any other obstacles in the way.” Another coughing fit took him. He winced with each cough, bending over until he was almost parallel with the couch.

  “Are you saying Zanka might be after Riley when he’s done playing with us?” I asked, watching him and trying not to feel any which way about it. He’s a demon. He’ll survive whatever Zanka’s done to him.

  Giyano inhaled sharply, straightened, then gripped the blade and yanked it out of his abdomen. Blood flowed as he roared with pain. The blade had a faint blue shimmer to it—poison of some kind. But not elin. “What I’m saying, Krystin, is that if Zanka is toying with you and your team; he already knows where Riley is. Why else play with those standing in the way except for fun?”

  My heart skipped a beat, but not in a good way. “Zanka has located Riley? Not even Ben knows where he is.”

  Giyano’s gaze met mine, but instead of the pain I expected, I found sadness mixed with anger. Self-directed anger. I knew that look all too well. “Yes, he has. You need to move the boy to a new location before Zanka gets tired of jerking your team around. You need to hide the boy away so Lady Azar can’t find him. Zanka will do anything to get into her favor. He always has. He will attack your team, and when you are out of the picture, he will come for the boy, and then Alzan and all hope with it.”

  He crumpled forward, writhing in pain as blood continued to ooze onto the cushions beneath him. The wound on his stomach wasn’t healing fast enough.

  I frowned, sighing as I walked over to the couch and knelt next to him. “Can I help you somehow? Take you to an emergency room?”

  He shook his head. “No. This house is protected. Hidden. The second I show my face, I’ll make myself a target. I’m not yet prepared to battle with Zanka again.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, do you have a first aid kit or something? Anything to stop this blood from staining every piece of furniture in your house?”

  “You could cauterize the wound,” he suggested coolly, like it wasn’t an insane idea. “Stop the bleeding. The fire might also burn out the poison if I can get you to control it correctly.”

  “Wait a second.” I thought he’d meant, like, go get a match and a metal spoon or something. “You want me to actually burn you?”

  “Zanka is a poisons master and this one only responds to fire as a cure,” he said. “Flames take out the poison, but the afflicted can’t use their powers.”

  “He developed it for you,” I whispered.

  “Precisely.”

  I looked Giyano in the eyes. His dark burgundy irises seemed to swirl with magik. Maybe they actually did, him being a demon and all. The more I interacted with Giyano, the more I realized I didn’t know very much about demons at all. I lifted my hand and hovered it over his wound. “Are you sure? I can’t control this magik. I’m as likely to burn down your entire house and us with it as succeed in what you want me to do.”

  He chuckled again. “Then at least I won’t have to hide anymore.”

  “Hey, no quitter talk,” I said as I called fire to my palm. And for the very first time, it answered—wild, but it was there. The flame swirled around my palm in tight, ever-quickening circles. “Tell me what to do.”

  Giyano closed his eyes, breathing shallowly. “Think of the hottest fire you’ve ever seen. Blue. White.”

  “Stars?” I asked.

  He nodded. “That’ll work. Think of them. Picture the sun in your head. How hot it burns, how that burning goes on for relative eternity. That tenuous push and pull that keeps the sun alive. That is how our magik works. Fire-elementalists are a physical representation of that push and pull. The gravity keeping our magik inside and the explosion our emotions cause outward from within. Think of that, of the healing and transformative powers of fire, and your magik will do the rest.”

  As he spoke, the fire in my hand turned blue, then to white. The hottest fire I’d ever seen or held. It seared my hand, but there was no pain. In fact, the pain was pleasure. A white-hot sensation of a thousand emotions slammed into one tiny flame, ever transforming, ever moving.

  “Exactly,” Giyano said softly. He lifted up the bottom of his shirt to reveal the wound. “You’ve got it. I’ve done this before to others. Trust me. It’ll cleanse and then close the wound.”

  Or kill Giyano. Which I supposed was a somewhat favorable outcome, depending on the person asking.

  I lowered my palm above his abdomen, over the blood and mess of skin and muscle. As soon as the fire touched his skin, Giyano cried out in pain. He threw back his head, his body tensing as the fire cauterized his wound. But through the flame, I saw the blue poison start to leak out of the gash and from the sweat beading on his brow. Zanka’s poison.

  Slow minutes passed, but I held steady, ignoring Giyano’s shouts of pain, until no more blue came out of him. Only then did I pull back and stand up.

  “I-I think I got it all.”

  My breath came in shallow gasps as I watched Giyano lie there, not responding. His eyes were shut, his forehead and the top of his shirt soaked in sweat. The temperature in the room had skyrocketed. Belatedly, I noticed I’d sweated through my own shirt.

  “Thank you, Krystin,” Giyano said, his eyes still shut. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  I laughed once, shaking my head. I didn’t quite believe it myself. Help Giyano. What an absurd idea that was. Still… “You saved me. I saved you. We’re even now.”

  “For now.” It was the last thing he said before he passed out.

  I walked through the door of the team’s house at nearly 8 a.m. They were all awake in the living room, watching the morning news.

  Nate waved me over and offered me one of his waffles. “You’re just in time. We’re waiting to see if our run-in with Zanka last night resulted in the world finding out about the Hunter Circles.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Rachel said.

  Alexander and Iris glanced at each other, then over at Ben. Alexander said, “I don’t understand why
your team finds this entertaining. This is the exact thing we were sent here to stop.”

  “No,” I said, snatching a waffle from Nate. “You were sent here to watch over me.”

  Iris glared at me. “And still you keep disappearing, Ms. Blackwood. It does not do anything to build a case in your favor. Where were you last night?”

  “Honestly? Trying not to beat the shit out of—”

  “She was at her mother’s,” Shawn cut in. “Whom she doesn’t get along with. It’s a long story.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t out with demons?” Iris asked. “I hear that is a hobby of yours.”

  Okay. She’s going down. “No.”

  “Just the one demon, then?” Alexander asked. “We have ways of tracking you, Ms. Blackwood. We know where you were.”

  Just not what I was doing. I gulped and glanced over at Ben. His expression was unreadable for once. “It’s not what it sounds like.”

  Ben caught my gaze and rose from his chair, red blotches appearing in his cheeks. “You did, didn’t you? Are you serious?”

  Fuck. What were the chances these twins were as telepathic as Ben appeared to be right now?

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Giyano? Hell no. I was out asking around about Zanka. I went to the places I used to go, like Hunter’s Guild. I figured someone out there might know where he is or what his story’s all about. I racked up a pretty decent bill if you want proof.” I searched my pockets for the whiskey shots receipt, then crumpled it up into a ball. I threw the ball at the Alexander, who caught it.

  He opened the receipt and leaned over to show Iris.

  “See?” I said. “That’s all the proof you’ll need.”

  Someone’s phone went off before either of the twins responded. Ben nearly jumped out of his chair, pulling a new phone out of his pocket. One I hadn’t seen before. He fumbled it, letting it fall to the ground before picking it up and managing to get it to his ear before it stopped ringing.

  “Sandra? Hello?” He paused, expression tight and worried. “What?” Another pause, during which my stomach twisted over itself. Ben wasn’t supposed to have Sandra’s new number. He wasn’t supposed to be in contact with them at all unless supervised by Jaffrin. “Wait—slow down, tell me—” Then she shouted, so loud that I heard it from where I stood, even though I couldn’t make out her actual words.

  Ben’s face paled for a moment to a sheet of pure white. But he pulled himself together, a mask of pure calm sliding down over his expression. He shut down, closing out the rest of the world. Apathy on Ben was terrifying because whatever Ben was, it wasn’t unemotional. “I’ll be there in less than five minutes. No. I can’t explain. I mean, I will when I’m there.” A pause. “Yes, really five minutes. Bye.”

  He hung up the phone and stared at me, wide-eyed. Then his stare moved to Rachel. “That was Sandra. There was an attack. She’s…”

  My heart stopped.

  “What, Ben?” Rachel asked as she crossed the room to her cousin. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s in the hospital,” he said, eyes brimming with tears, his hands shaking. “She was hurt pretty bad.”

  “In an attack?” I asked.

  His gaze met mine, within it a sadness so great, I felt as though I’d been crushed beneath the weight of a mountain. “Riley is gone.”

  Chapter 13

  BEN

  I’d been to Sandra’s aunt’s house before, so I started there, landing my teleportante in her backyard. Screw the daylight. If anyone was around to see my teleport, let them think what they wanted about it.

  I ran around to the front of the house and knocked on Aunt Betty’s door, constantly moving my feet. My arms. Anything to make it feel like I was doing something. I hadn’t been there this time. Without me to protect them, Sandra and Riley had been attacked. Riley had been kidnapped. Again.

  Sandra’s aunt opened the door not a minute later. She glanced me over as though I were a random passerby. But after a few seconds, her eyes shone with recognition. “Ben?”

  “Hi, Aunt Betty.” She’d made me call her that from the very first moment I’d met her when I was eighteen. It’d been Sandra’s and my high school graduation party. “I heard about Sandra. Where is she? Which hospital?”

  Aunt Betty’s eyes fell, a sob escaping her. “The general hospital.”

  “Perfect.” I turned to start running. It couldn’t be that far.

  “Not in this town,” Aunt Betty said.

  I froze. “What?”

  Aunt Betty’s eyes brimmed with tears. “A month ago she said she had to move because of work. So she packed up and left with Riley. They moved a few towns over, but it’s an hour drive or so.”

  And way too far to run. “Oh.”

  Aunt Betty frowned. “I thought she’d have told you.”

  I shook my head. “We don’t talk much.” Shit. I’d never been to these towns in Canada before, so there was no way I could just teleportante over there either. Unless… “Can I borrow your car? I’ll bring it back tonight. I just want to go check on Sandra.”

  Her brow furrowed. She leaned forward through the doorway and looked around. “How did you get here without a car?”

  “A cab,” I lied. “It was expensive.”

  “But the assault only happened a few hours ago…”

  Crap. I already shouldn’t be here. I couldn’t go ahead and reveal the existence of magik and the Hunter Circles to Aunt Betty while I was at it. “I got on the first plane available. But I’m here now. Please? I’ll put gas in it and everything.”

  Her forehead creased. Tears spilled down her cheeks, but finally she nodded. “Let me get you the keys.”

  I ignored every speed limit sign along the way to the hospital Sandra had been admitted to, stopping barely long enough to put the car in park. I ran inside the emergency room and straight to the front desk. My palms had slicked with sweat somewhere along the forty-five minute drive, and that I had breathed at all was only evident by me still being alive.

  My heart was in my throat as I asked to see Sandra. “Please let me back there to see her. She’s my ex, my kid’s mother.”

  The nurse behind the desk considered me carefully. “Let me see your ID.”

  I handed it over, thankful to every god out there that I’d had my wallet in my pocket when I’d left the team’s house an hour ago. Had it really only been an hour? An entire lifetime or two could have gone by and it would have felt the same.

  The nurse looked over my ID and waved me on back. I was tired of meeting Sandra like this, with one of us in the hospital. From her after her car accident when we’d found out we were having a boy to the morning she’d been called to Boston General to pick up my broken ass after a demon fight gone bad.

  I was tired of it all.

  The nurse led me to Sandra’s room. She was sleeping, tucked beneath sheets on the hospital bed. Her face was peaceful in slumber despite the abrasions covering her cheeks and forehead. The IV line in her arm dripped steadily.

  “Thank you,” I said to the nurse.

  “You can stay with her until eleven. That’s when visitor hours stop until the afternoon.”

  When the nurse left, I dragged over a chair to Sandra’s bedside and dropped into it, my head in my hands. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Jaffrin. It wasn’t his fault Riley had been kidnapped again, but it sure as hell was his fault that the Hunters assigned to watch over Sandra and Riley hadn’t been good enough. Strong enough. Well-versed in their magik.

  It should have been our team watching out for them. It should have been Sandra who’d moved into our living room, not our Ether Head Circle babysitters who did nothing but stalk us until they found something to reprimand us about. Who knew what they were doing now, having watched me lose my shit and just up and leave.

  My stomach rolled over itself. They’d asked about this, about protecting Riley. And here we’d gone and lost him.

  My eyes stung with tears as they built behind my closed eyeli
ds. I blinked them away, wiping the tears from existence. No time for crying, Hallen.

  They rolled on down my cheeks anyway.

  “Ben?”

  I looked up. Sandra watched me with red, puffy eyes. “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you weren’t with Aunt Betty anymore. It was an hour drive and—”

  Her face crumpled and she started crying, an awful keening sound. “He’s gone. They broke into the house, attacked me, and took him. They stole Riley!”

  I scooted to the edge of my seat and reached for her hand. “Sandra, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to find him and bring him back.”

  Her eyes narrowed through the tears streaming down her face. “That’s what you said last time.”

  “And I brought him home.”

  “To be kidnapped again. What’s going on? Why does this keep happening to us?” Her shoulders and hands shook with every word. It was only when she wiped away her tears that I saw the cast on her left hand. The bruises on her arm.

  “Sandra…” God, she’d been beaten the hell up. All because of me. Because of that fucking lightning strike that’d flipped our entire world upside down. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing,” she cried. “Explain to me what’s happening for real this time. You said you had it handled. That the bad guys were taken care of. But clearly that was bullshit.”

  I couldn’t help but look her over again, cataloging every abrasion and broken bone I saw. “Did they have red eyes?”

  Her brow furrowed. “What?”

  “Their eyes, the attackers’. Were they red?”

  “Why the hell does that matter?” she spat.

  “It’s important, Sandra.” I shifted in my chair and met her gaze. “Look, I promise I’ll tell you everything, but I need to know this first. Did they have red eyes?” Though it was doubtful anyone besides Shadow Crest’s demons were at fault, I wanted to be one hundred percent sure.

  Sandra stared at me blankly for long moments before nodding slowly. “Yes. They all did, actually. That’s so weird, Ben. And there was fire, lots of it. But the house didn’t burn down.” She lifted up her left hand. “It’s not broken; it’s a burn. From when one of the men ripped Riley out of my arms. The one with a scar down his face.”