The Hero: Hunter Circles Series Book Four
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
The Hero
Hunter Circles Series: Book Four
Jessica Gunn
Copyright © 2017 Jessica Gunn
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Contents
About The Hero
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
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World Key
Also by Jessica Gunn
About the Author
ABOUT THE HERO
I’m Krystin Blackwood, and six months ago I almost killed everyone I cared about.
I’ve been on my own ever since, watching my back for my team to exact revenge. But when the world I left comes knocking, I have no choice but to run back to my team… and deliver heart-breaking news.
Apparently, Lady Azar has turned Riley into a demon and she’s moving up her plans to use him as a path to the City of Alzan. Unfortunately for the Fire Circle, without my help and destined magik, Alzan doesn’t stand a chance. And neither does Riley.
So, despite my team’s hatred for me and my near-criminal status in the Fire Circle, they’ll have to trust me if we have any hope of stopping all planes of existence from imploding. Assuming we can all be civil long enough to do so.
Somehow, I think that might be an issue.
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Chapter 1
Ben
Hunter’s Guild. Ever since it’d been rebuilt following Kinder’s attack nine months ago, it’d become seedier than it used to be. Demons flocked to the place like it was their last sanctuary on Earth, leaving witches and Hunters to question whether or not the protection magiks and rules keeping people safe were actually doing their job. Which was, in hindsight, probably why Jaffrin had ordered Shawn and me to come here tonight.
I tossed back the rest of my beer and scanned the room once more. The demon-to-everyone-else ratio was heavily in the demons’ favor tonight, although for the first time in weeks there didn’t appear to be any Landshaft dealings going on. Strange, because in two weeks Autumn Fire would end and with it the peak time for humans to be transformed into demons.
“Stop going overtime,” Shawn said as he finished his own beer. “Nothing’s happening here tonight.”
“I can see that. That’s the problem.”
He leveled me with a look. “You’ve been preoccupied lately.”
I glared at him. “Don’t know what gave you that idea.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “My bad. Chill out.”
“Chill out,” I echoed as I smashed a French fry into a waiting pool of ketchup. I didn’t have to say anything else. It wasn’t like my sour mood was anything new, nor were the reasons for it any different than yesterday or the month before. And when I glanced up at Shawn to reply, seeing the scar running jagged across his eyebrow didn’t help. “I’ll chill out when we get Riley back and all of this is over.”
Shawn winced. He ate another chicken wing instead of replying. Hunter’s Guild didn’t always have the best food, but apparently, Wings Tuesdays were a universal thing. “I get it, Ben.”
“Good. End of conversation. Let’s keep an eye on this place a little longer and then get home.”
If no one was here trying to traffic any witches during Autumn Fire, then there was likely little other activity that would occur. Everything with Darkness had seemed to die down recently, which was something I’d never seen before. Not this close to the peak of transformation season.
It worried me, but after practically living in a hospital for two weeks when my team almost collectively died, I could deal with a little worry.
Jaffrin had recovered, though now he lived with a prosthetic hand. Shawn and Nate had spent time in various comas but eventually had woken up. Ever since, Nate had spent more time out looking for Krystin, swearing up and down both that she was innocent and that he wasn’t searching for her. But I knew the truth. On both accounts.
“Where’s Rachel tonight?” Shawn asked.
I shoved the French fry in my mouth and chewed before responding, hoping to keep the bitterness from my voice. “With her new boyfriend.”
He nodded and refocused his attention on his dinner. “Still haven’t met him, then?”
“No.” Rachel was old enough to make her own decisions, obviously. Didn’t curb my older-brother tendencies one bit, though. “One day soon.”
Shawn laughed and flagged down a waitress for another round of beers. When she’d come back with them, he looked to me and said, “One day soon all of this will be over and we’ll all be able to live normal lives.”
“Whatever those are.” I doubted I’d be able to live ‘normally’ again. Even if we rescued Riley, he’d still be a demon. I didn’t know the first thing about raising a human son—forget one who’d need to feed on human life energy every now and again.
I’d spent too much time over the past six months wondering if it was possible to reverse a demonic transformation. But Jaffrin wouldn’t field the conversation and no one else had been able to give me a straight answer. If there was a way to do it, I’d find it and save Riley. Otherwise… I didn’t know.
I wouldn’t have even known Lady Azar had turned him into a demon if that nurse hadn’t told me. Beverly Rose, the same nurse who’d noticed he had the Power before he’d even been born. The same nurse whose communiqué to this “rebel Darkness group” had been intercepted, thereby allowing Lady Azar to find out about him and to order his kidnapping three years ago.
I rubbed the back of my neck with a hand and downed more beer with the other. “I hate this. Every part of this.”
Shawn nodded as he watched the crowd. “Me too. But nothing’s going to come of it if we rush headfirst into fights we can’t win.”
I sighed and looked down at my drink. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Only sometimes.”
“Wish you’d
been right about your powers returning. Might be helpful if this thing with Shadow Crest escalates.”
Shawn frowned and refocused his attention on the crowd of demons. “I don’t think my magik being gone has anything to do with Iris’ asanak.”
Or so he’d said. Even Nate was sure the now-dead ether-shaper’s attack would have worn off by now. It’d been six months since she’d taken his magik from him in that soul-cleaving move, and still, Shawn’s magik hadn’t returned.
“Then what?” I asked. “Is it because Krystin’s gone?”
He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure that stone Kinder crushed in Jaffrin’s office was one of the two the Powers had created to store the Son and Daughter’s power. That stone was mine.”
“Well, that doesn’t bode well.”
“No.” He lifted his beer to his lips.
Kinder. All of this had been because of her, and now she was as gone and disappeared as Krystin. Who knew if they were still working together, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Except Krystin had looked so terrified that night, at the end. After Nate had been impaled and Shawn knocked out. She’d stared me down—and guilt and shame and fear, it’d all twisted together in her eyes.
Then she ran. Like Krystin always seemed to.
“Let’s go home,” Shawn said, drawing me out of my thoughts. “There’s nothing here and I’m exhausted.”
“Me too.” I stood and left money on the table to cover our tab.
We made our way to the door, weaving in and out of groups of demons. My fingers slipped to the hilt of my Fire Circle knife out of habit, though we should be protected in here. But there were no guarantees, not in my mind. Not after Krystin had nearly killed us all.
Shawn pushed open the front door of Hunter’s Guild and we walked out into the hot, sticky late summer air. Mosquitoes flocked us almost immediately. I swatted them away as Shawn and I filed away from the Guild and into the woods beyond the protection magiks wall.
As soon as I felt us pass through the magik wall, I held a hand out to Shawn. “Ready?”
He went to grab my hand and it was knocked away by another.
“No!” a cloaked figure shrieked as they placed themselves between Shawn and me. “Stop this!”
I lifted my hands. “Whoa. Slow down.” Where the hell had they come from?
Shawn reached for their shoulder. “Hey—”
The cloaked figure threw their hand back, launching Shawn half a dozen feet into the air. He flew into the closest tree and slid down the bark, groaning. They turned back to me and took off their hood. An older woman stood before me with wild eyes and wiry, gray hair.
“She returns!” she screeched, staring me directly in the eyes. A fire seemed to burn within hers, though her irises weren’t the burgundy of a demon. Instead, they were snow-blind. “Beware of her, for she brings with her the tides of war!”
Then the woman turned, whipping her cloak with her like some sort of cliché cartoon witch and, in a flash of yellow, she was gone.
I stepped back, scrutinizing the spot where she’d stood. “What the ever-living hell—?”
“Ben,” Shawn grunted as he picked himself off of the forest floor. He brushed leaves and dirt off his pants.
I shook my head. “No. Krystin doesn’t bring the tides of war. She’s supposed to stop it. It’s not her.”
“Ben.”
I snapped my line of sight to him. “No.” Krystin wasn’t coming back. She’d never come back. And if she did, I’d take her down on the spot. If that’s who this crazy woman had been talking about, there was no to cause worry. “Krystin wouldn’t dare.”
“Ben, look!” Shawn shouted, pointing behind me with a shaking finger.
I turned, my chest heaving as my heart raced so loudly, I thought it’d moved behind my ears. “What?”
But as I turned, I took in the sight of six figures cloaked in darkness. Around their chests hung golden medallions that glowed in the dark, a dancing wave of flame on each and every gilded piece.
Shadow Crest.
I swallowed hard, my fists curling. My mind warred with my heart. One asked permission to jump in and kill them all to save Riley. The other begged for escape. Shawn and I couldn’t take six Shadow Crest soldiers and walk away with our lives, I knew that. But with Riley’s life on the line, I was pretty sure I could do anything.
Shifting sounded behind me, growing closer as I stood there, watching the demons, waiting for one of them to make the first move. The footsteps grew louder until a hand clamped down on my shoulder.
Shawn’s voice drifted near my ears. “Don’t, Ben. We need to go.”
Every single muscle in my body tensed. Lightning crackled around my palms, reaching up each arm. “They’ll know where they’re keeping Riley.”
Shawn’s fingers tightened on my shoulder. “It’s not worth it. If you die, Riley will never be found.”
The lightning around me grew as the first Shadow Crest soldier stepped forward. “I bring a message from Lady Azar to you, Ben Hallen.”
“Nope,” Shawn said as his other hand wrapped around my arm. “Teleportante.”
“No!” I screamed. It was cut off as Shawn brought us to the lobby of Fire Circle Headquarters. I spun on him, ripping free of his grip. “You son of a bitch!”
Shawn backed up, hands raised. “Better you pissed at me than dead. We wouldn’t have won that fight.”
“Screw you!” I shouted but immediately regretted it. So I turned and stormed down the main hallway. Then back up it again. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”
Shawn released a breath and then shook his head. “Don’t apologize. I said I get it. But this isn’t the time to be fighting stupid battles, Ben.”
“Whatever. Let’s go home.” Except they said they’d had a message from Lady Azar for me. A part of me wanted to know so bad, I could knock Shawn out and be back at Hunter’s Guild within seconds. But I held that side of me at bay by the very little sanity I had left.
Shawn didn’t move an inch. “You good?”
No. But he knew that as well as I did. I’d never be good as long as Riley was in Lady Azar’s arms. “I said let’s go.”
Chapter 2
Krystin
A scream tore through the night, raising all the hairs on my arm. My feet slapped against the pavement harder as I pushed on toward the cry for help—unwillingly.
I was supposed to be done with all of this. With helping people and killing demons.
Maybe this was just a mugger. But luck like that had never been on my side.
Sweat slicked my brow. Even at night, the August heat prevailed, muggy and leaving everything, even my skin, covered in a wet residue. I wiped the sweat on my forehead away with my arm and kept on running, my gym shorts hugging me tightly, peeling away and reattaching with every footfall. The streetlights above lit the residential road. That alone should have been enough to deter attackers.
A second scream ripped the welcoming visage of this New England suburbia to the ground. I rounded the end of the road and turned onto the dead end. There, where road met woods, stood a woman struggling with an attacker.
“Hey!” I shouted, sprinting down the street.
The attacker turned his face to me and grinned evilly as he tightened his grip on the woman’s throat.
I vaulted into the air, aiming to kick him away from the woman, but right before I landed, the demon’s face and form twisted, turning into someone much smaller with dark hair and darker irises. The demon looked to me with narrowed eyes burning with hatred.
“You’re a monster,” the demon said, but it sounded as if a hundred voices were talking at once. “Nothing more than a monster.”
The woman in transformed into a mirror image of the demon. A twin. “You’re not a hero.”
I jumped as the woman’s skin began melting off of their face, revealing red muscle and pale white bone. Fire kissed her hair, the tiny flames dancing down along her back and arms as their c
heeks disappeared, making a hole that revealed rows of teeth.
“You’re a monster,” said the voices again.
I backpedaled away, sweat dripping down my face. My eyes stung.
No, not sweat. Tears.
I turned, sprinting back down the dead-end road out into the main street. But the heat of the fires followed me, beating against my back. The air itself seemed to catch fire despite the humidity as if what made the air heavy was gasoline and not trapped water.
And the farther I ran, the faster I moved… the quicker the fires burned.
I bolted upright, clutching a thin sheet between my fingers. Wetness clung to my back and arms as if I’d dunked myself in the shower and then hopped directly into bed. I wiped my brow with the side of my hand. No, not water. Sweat. Lots of it.
Blinking through bleary vision, I took in the four off-white walls of my studio apartment, devoid of decoration and mementos. It was only a dream. A nightmare, sure. But a dream.
Iris’ and Alexander’s screams had torn through my subconscious’s playground on an almost nightly basis. Every night for the past six months. Their screams, their melting faces. “Monster,” they’d called me.
Maybe they were right.
I ran a hand through my hair with one hand and pressed the other to my chest. My heart raced beneath my fingertips, my lungs gasping for air.
“It wasn’t real.”
But it had been, at one point six months ago.
I hopped out of bed just to give myself something to do. Not a day went by without that nightmare, a constant reminder of what I’d done under Kinder’s control.