Hunter Circles Series Complete Boxset: An Urban Fantasy Adventure

by Jessica Gunn

  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!”

  I scrubbed the sides of my face, wiping off the sweat. “That was fucked up.”

  Shawn stood, examining his hands. “Wha
t happened? Why the hell did—?”

  “Alzan magik,” I interrupted. “We finally unlocked the magik.”

  He stared at me blankly for a moment before looking down at his chest, pressing his hands against his shirt. “The elin.”

  “An illusion, a hallucination,” Areus said. “What you saw were all the things keeping your magik locked.”

  “A demon’s poison?” Shawn asked, his brow furrowing.

  “Elin blocks magik or forces you to overcome it,” I said.

  “I know what elin does.” He shook his head. “If that was the secret, we should have done it a long time ago.”

  “We’re both afraid of our magik, Shawn. That’s what the elin signified. We’ve both been afraid for so long now of what our magik could do. Yours was half-demonic. Mine almost brought Boston to the ground thanks to the cianza.”

  “And Giyano? Your evil twin? What was that all about?”

  I lifted my gaze to his. “The things keeping you and me apart.” Giyano had tried swaying me to demonic magik to neutralize my own. But in doing so, he’d opened the door for Kinder. And Shawn had always hated the demonic half of himself.

  Areus clapped again, drawing my attention back to the conversation at hand. “Your magik is now ala-ether, a pure, ancient form of good magik.” To me, he said, “You will also find your witch magik has been returned to you, I assume. Since it was locked away when your magik became elemental-based, correct?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Minus seeing auras.”

  “An inherent witch ability,” Shawn said.

  But if my elemental magik was gone… I turned to one of the chairs away from both Areus and Shawn and swiped a hand at the air. The chair slid along the floor, knocking into a bookshelf.

  “My telekinesis,” I said, grinning. “Awesome.”

  Shawn’s eyes narrowed, but then he lifted a hand. And where I thought he’d attempted to produce an Ember witch ether flame, the couch next to him lifted up into the air instead. Shawn cried out in surprise, dropping his hand. But instead of the chair falling to the ground, a bookcase toppled over, books flying everywhere.

  “Pockets!” I shouted, closing the distance between us. He looked over at me, surprise still written all over his face. “Hands in your pockets—now!”

  He complied, but as soon as he did so that Ember ether flame he’d been looking for burned right through his shorts. Only the flame was white like it’d been in the hallucination, and more like a wave of power than a true flame.

  Shawn jumped and closed his eyes, humming to himself. “Calm down. Calm down.”

  “Do everything you had me do with the fire-elemental magik,” I said as I stood in front of him. “I had issues controlling this power at first too. Breathe. It’s just magik.”

  “It feels like it’s crawling around inside of me.”

  Areus walked over to us, a careful look on his face. “It’s new magik to you. Pure, good magik. Your body isn’t used to it.”

  Shawn breathed heavily, his chest heaving. “It’s like when I healed you, but on a larger scale.”

  “I’d offer you some demonic magik of my own, but I think we’re past that.”

  Shawn chuckled, but I didn’t think he actually found any of this funny. “I can’t. It feels like the power’s going to burst out of my hands.”

  “Then aim it at a wall,” Areus said. “You’ve destroyed enough of my books.”

  Shawn laughed at that and so did Areus. I stood, my gaze jumping between them both. “Are you both mad?”

  Finally, Shawn’s breathing evened out and he backed away from me, hands still in his pockets. “I think I’m okay now.” He looked down to his hands, one showing through the hole now in his shorts. “Shit.”

  “New magik is fun, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Is this what you went through in Ether Circle Prison?”

  I nodded. “Yep. Burned everything—my clothes, my bed, my guard.”

  His eyes snapped to mine. “What?”

  I shrugged. “He was an asshole. The Ether Circle had it coming.”

  Areus cleared his throat loudly. “Well, now that you’ve gotten your prophesied magik, we can move on to how we’re going to stop Lady Azar from reaching the city.”

  Shawn’s eyes narrowed on Areus. “Are you serious? We got here less than twelve hours ago. New place, a new plane of existence. And now we’ve just unlocked magik the both of us have been searching for for years, and you want to jump into a battle plan?”

  Areus looked at him for a moment. “Yes.”

  I rolled my eyes and headed for the bookcase that Shawn had toppled over. “You’re crazy,” I said as I repositioned the bookcase using my telekinesis. It felt good to have it back, like seeing an old friend after years apart.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Areus said. “I can have someone put it back together.”

  “No worries.” Besides, it’d give me something to do while I processed everything that’d just happened.

  Alzanian magik. The goodness of it flowing through my veins felt like a much-needed detox from all the demonic magik Giyano had been putting in me for years. Maybe that’s why I’d been sweating so much.

  One by one, I put books back on the shelves as Areus and Shawn continued arguing.

  “You can’t expect us to bounce back so quickly,” Shawn said. “We’ve been through a lot recently. New magik, powerful magik, will take time to learn and control.”

  Areus scoffed. “You were born to control this. It will come as naturally to you as breathing.”

  Shawn leveled him with a glare. “Somehow I doubt that.”

  My fingers wrapped around the binding of a large tome, leather-bound with gilded gold pages. I turned it over and read the front cover: Journal of Dariah.

  “Don’t touch that,” Areus called, hurrying over to my side. “That’s a special text.”

  “It was her journal,” I said, looking up at him. “When she got the power, did she write about it? Maybe that will help us.”

  He reached out to grab the tome from me. “I don’t know. I’ve never read her personal thoughts.”

  I lifted my hands. “Fine. Take it.”

  Areus did, backing up with it pressed against his chest.

  I bent down to retrieve another book, but before I’d even gotten my whole hand around the binding, a blinding pain shot through my head, a bright light burning my eyes.

  Suddenly, I was hurrying through a cobblestone corridor filled with red and black stones beneath a glass ceiling. The sky shone above, the stars and the moon lighting the path beneath my feet. I walked quickly to a door at the other end of the hallway, a too-long robe catching beneath my sandals. The hand that pushed open the door wasn’t mine—it was double my size, the skin was black, and there was something distinctly male about it.

  The door opened to a massive chamber filled with golden chandeliers and gilded archways rising up to a ceiling painted over in breathtaking murals. But I only spared everything in the room a glance before focusing on the council that sat at the other end. Seventeen people, all sitting on a raised platform made from black marble at the end of the hall.

  My heart leapt up into my throat as I fell to my knees before them. “I am here, as you summoned.” My voice was deep and commanding, so unlike my own.

  “Glad to have you here, Jaffrin of House Highborn.”

  “I am happy to serve.”

  “Rise,” said the figure in the center. “This day we have a special mission for you.”

  I stood on shaky knees and pressed equally-shaking fingers behind my back. “Thank you, High Council. What shall I do for you?”

  The man at the center stood, his eyes shining bright, cobalt blue. He had blue designs tattooed around his eyes, stretching down across his tanned skin to his neck. “You will lead our people, the Neuians, to balance. Go to the origin plane and insert yourself in the Hunter Circles. Await further instruction. War is coming. Be prepared.”

  The vision snapped
away from me as quickly as it’d come. I still clutched the tome I’d been in the process of picking up and flipped it over. The title read: A History of Neuia.

  The tome slipped from my fingers to the floor, the impact echoing in the sudden quiet that’d enveloped the room.

  “Daughter?” Areus asked.

  Shawn pushed past him to stand front of me. “Krystin? What is it?”

  “A vision,” I said, my voice wavering. I ran my hands through my hair, backing away from Shawn and Areus, deeper into the book stacks. “No. Oh, god. That bastard! I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

  Shawn followed me, Areus right behind him. “Krystin, tell us what you saw.”

  I froze, my chest heaving with heavy breaths. The cold sweat returned as every single damn puzzle piece, every memory, every excuse Jaffrin had ever given me, and every last awful, gut-churning feeling I’d had about him fell into place.

  “We have to get home, Shawn,” I said, staring at him. “We can’t wait. We unlocked the power and it’ll have to be enough.”

  His gaze watched my face. “Why? What did you see?”

  I swallowed hard, extrapolating how far this conspiracy might reach. “I saw Jaffrin.”

  “So?” Shawn asked. “Doing what?”

  “Accepting a mission from the Neuian High Council to infiltrate the Hunter Circles and prepare for war.”

  Shawn’s eyes widened and we both looked to Areus. “Explain. You’re the only one caught up to speed.”

  Areus’s own face had paled. “I’d worried about this Neuian influence. The Fire Circle has always been at the center of this war, especially with Lady Azar’s involvement. The Neuians created cianzas, Son and Daughter. And I don’t think they’re happy about their weapons being utilized by Darkness.”

  Shawn turned back to me. “But he’s always been for us protecting Cianza Boston. About learning our Alzan heritage and magik.”

  “Except when he couldn’t control what we knew and where we’d gone,” I said. “Every damn moment of my life since I became a Hunter has been micromanaged by him.”

  “To keep an eye on you,” Areus said. “Your magik undermines cianzas and their weapons. But I think they were more worried about you tipping the balance than anything else.”