The Hero: Hunter Circles Series Book Four

by Jessica Gunn

  You were right about him. It’s time we use your plan. Do what you need to, then meet up with us. Shawn knows where we’ve gone. –Sparky

  “You were right about him,” I echoed aloud. What the hell happened? The note seemed genuine enough, signed with my nickname for Ben. I put the paper in the same hand as the dharksa baggie and wrapped my free hand around the door handle, pulling it open. “What’s going on?”

  Shawn stood there, an exhausted, weary expression on his face. Purple bags hung under his eyes. “Can I come in?”

  “Fine. Just remember this place is protected and you can’t hurt me.”

  A flash of guilt crossed his gaze. The light from above the door shone down, highlighting the scar above his eyebrow. The one I’d given him when I’d slammed him against the ceiling at Fire Circle Headquarters.

  “I’d never do that, Krystin,” he said. “I never wanted to. You didn’t exactly give us a choice.”

  I swallowed hard and blinked, looking away from him. “I wasn’t given one either.” I stepped out of the way.

  Shawn came into the inn room but didn’t go far. “Thank you. I wasn’t sure you’d let me speak.”

  “Why not?” I said, throwing up a hand as I shut the door. “Everyone just wants to talk. Except for the ones who want to hit me.”

  Shawn’s eyes followed the bag of dharksa in my hand, narrowing as he watched me flail. “Were you planning on taking that?”

  I looked down at the bag. “This? No. I was going to use it.”

  His brow furrowed. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  Oh. I gave him a blank stare and held up the bag. “In a locator spell. To find Landshaft or Lady Azar or the closest to those two things I can get. I was going to end this now.” And by getting the purest kind of dharksa, the kind only certain dealers made, I was sure to get pretty damn close to the poisons master demons themselves. If Lady Azar wasn’t with them, they’d be able to take me to her with some encouragement.

  Shawn lifted a brow. “That was your plan?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Seemed like a better idea than bickering with you all until the end of time. I tried running away from this war. And since I apparently don’t have the luxury of staying out of it, I decided it was better to act rather than wait around until someone else did the acting for me.”

  “I’m not saying you were wrong, just questioning your methods,” he said, looking down at the dharksa bag again. “Seriously, Krystin?”

  I threw the bag across the room and then circled back to the bed, falling into it again. “What happened that’s got Ben admitting I’m right? Something apocalyptic, no doubt.”

  “Hydron showed up at Headquarters half an hour ago.”

  I glanced up at him. “As in the CIA portion of Hydron? Not Water Circle Hunters?”

  He nodded solemnly and everything started piecing itself together.

  “What’d Sandra do?” I asked.

  “At first I thought it was an extension of what happened nine months ago. The whole ‘gas leak’ cover-up fiasco. But apparently Sandra’s been posting on social media about Riley being missing and stuff about magik and demons. Only Ben saw the evidence of those postings after Jaffrin told us and, so far, he’s kept it to himself.”

  “Lovely.” I could only begin to imagine what Ben was feeling at this very moment if this, on top of me coming back and Riley being presented in front of him like an enemy by Giyano, if all of it had driven him to finally forsake Jaffrin. He’d always been a little irritated by him during my time on the team, but to completely disregard orders and abandon ship? “This is bad.”

  Shawn gestured to the edge of the bed. “Yeah. Can I sit?”

  “Only if you’re really not going to arrest me afterward.” I meant it as a joke, but that hurt look flashed across his face again.

  “I’m not. I told you that. My word is good, Krystin.”

  “Except the part where you didn’t follow through with our plan six months ago.”

  He gave me a sidelong glance. “It could have something to do with the whole you-killing-the twins-and-then-going-rogue thing.”

  I glared at him. “Touché.”

  He shook his head and pointed to Ben’s note still in my hands. “Ben sent me here so we could figure out this Alzan thing once and for all. His actual words were something to the effect of, ‘Don’t come back until you’ve unlocked your powers,’ but there might have been some more profanity involved. He was speaking so fast, it’s hard to remember it all.”

  I laughed. “That I believe.” Angry Ben was also ‘talk really fast, scary, red-faced’ Ben. “Did Ben also have an idea how we’re supposed to go about unlocking this Alzan power?” Until now, Shawn and I had obviously never been able to figure it out. Pressuring us to do it in nine days more than likely wouldn’t solve the issue.

  We should have had the past nine months. But the thing was, even with nine months of time, this fated sort of thing probably came with its own timeline. Seemed like most of that kind of stuff did.

  Shawn shook his head. “No. Ben has no idea how it might work. But…” He sighed and then lifted a palm toward me. A clean, scarred line ran down the middle of his hand. “I was able to use our power to counteract Kinder’s shield around Headquarters six months ago. Mostly because I think the shield was keeping you inside. I don’t know that it was actually my magik that took it down so much as my half of the magik calling out to yours.”

  “What?” I asked, brow furrowing. “What does that have to do with scarring your hand?”

  “I cut it open on my Fire Circle knife. I figured if Kinder’s magik is older than dirt, then maybe an equally ancient magik would counteract it. Our magik, Krystin. Tapped into via the same blood magik that your mother used to find you with Kinder.”

  My eyes narrowed and I stood from the bed. “My mother is how you found me?”

  He nodded but didn’t also stand. Good. I liked it better when I had the advantage. “Your mother tracked you through your tattoo, using the ink infused with her blood to find you.”

  A phantom burn incinerated my ankle at the very thought of that tattoo. I’d known that night what my mother had done six months ago. But still, hearing it out of Shawn’s mouth…

  “Blood magik,” I said, looking to him. “You think our magik literally runs through our veins?”

  He shrugged and then pulled out his Hunter knife. “It’s just a guess. But since it worked on the shield around Headquarters…”

  “It might be worth a try.” I bit my lip, swallowing hard. This seemed like a giant leap. But using blood magik was about the only thing Shawn and I hadn’t tried yet to unlock or otherwise demystify our shared Alzanian magik.

  “What exactly are you proposing then?” I asked, glancing down at his knife.

  He reached it up and pressed the blade to his scarred palm. A drop of blood formed where the tip of the blade punctured his skin. “It sounds kind of crazy, but what if we mixed our blood together? Just little, not some extreme letting ritual or something. See what happens when our blood and magik are directly tied together.”

  I eyed the knife against his palm, wondering again how much of this might actually be a ruse to get close to me. To attempt bypassing the protection magiks, stick me with the knife, and incapacitate me long enough to lock me up in Ether Circle Prison.

  But the eagerness in Shawn’s eyes, the shining determination, the genuine strength, washed away those doubts almost instantaneously.

  And replaced them with the fear of what might happen if this worked.

  “Fine,” I said. “But I cut myself.”

  Shawn, to his credit, didn’t react at all to the silent accusation. “Okay.” He handed over the knife.

  I gripped the handle and touched the still-clean portion of the blade to the edge of my palm, hissing as it drew blood. I gave the knife back to him. “Now what?”

  Shawn held out his hand, blood slowly creeping from his wound. “Now we put our hands together and hope I
’m right.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not carrying any disease, right? No blood-born—”

  “Krystin,” he said, leveling me with a look.

  “What? Can’t blame a girl for asking.”

  He lifted his palm higher. “Let’s go, before it clots.”

  Slowly, I dropped my hand against his, trying not to think too hard about our blood mixing and how unsanitary it was or any of that. Instead, I thought of the prophecy. Of Alzan, this supposedly ancient city the Powers used to inhabit but instead left behind. Of the magik Shawn and I shared, the pureness of it that I’d felt on more than one occasion.

  I thought of what Shawn and I would have to do to get to Alzan before Lady Azar did in order to save it and all planes of existence from her plan.

  My hand warmed where our palms touched. I opened my eyes, thinking at first that I’d burned him with my magik. But when I looked down, a white light glowed around our interlocked fingers, growing like a halo.

  “Sh-Shawn,” I stammered as a feeling of pure power, an electrifying sense of urgency and magik, climbed up my arm.

  He nodded. “I feel it too. Hold on. I think we’re finally getting somewhere.”

  But the longer we held hands, the stronger the sensation got until it was almost painful, a throbbing, overwhelming feeling of good, of power, of a blinding white light. Growing into a crescendo of fullness that grew and grew until it burst. And in a pinpoint of blinding light, the world went black.

  Chapter 16

  Ben

  I didn’t bother wasting time driving to Canada. Instead, I bribed Lissandra, the Fire Circle’s head admin, with coffee for three weeks to get the names of the Hunters on Sandra’s security detail since it didn’t matter anymore with Riley gone. She wasn’t a Hunter, so aside from the fact that Sandra was Riley’s mother, she didn’t pose Lady Azar any threat.

  Then, once I’d gotten their names, I kept calling until one, a younger Hunter named Salvatore, agreed to take me to their base of operations down the street from her house.

  Now, I walked down the sidewalk of her town, the weather significantly cooler than Boston in late August. My shoes beat against the pavement quickly as the front door of her house opened and she stepped out, hair blowing in the wind. She had a duffel bag thrown over her shoulder and a suitcase in the other hand. Sandra stumbled with it as she locked the door behind her.

  “Need help with that?” I asked, one hand holding the back of my neck. My voice wavered despite my attempts at appearing fully confident. Sandra would not be happy to see me, but it didn’t really matter given the situation. We had to talk, whether she wanted to or not.

  Sandra froze. Slowly, her eyes met mine, hers filled with contempt. “What the hell do you want?”

  “To help you with that suitcase,” I said, unsure she’d even let me do that much. But at least she was talking to me. That was a start. “And to talk.”

  Sandra finished locking up her door, adjusted the bag on her arm, and pulled up the handle of the suitcase. “The time for talking is over. Find someone else’s life to ruin.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. I didn’t really deserve that, as most of the things that’d “ruined her life” weren’t my fault. But I could have at least told her about demons and Riley’s magik, the truth about this world, a whole hell of a lot sooner than after she’d been attacked. “Sandra, please—”

  She huffed on past me, luggage and duffel in hand, all the way to her car. “No. I’m done.”

  “What happened?” Her not wanting to talk to me made sense, but the suitcase and running wasn’t like her.

  Sandra turned on me. “What happened? Are you kidding me?”

  “You’re running somewhere.”

  “Yeah,” she said, shooting me a glare. “Home. I’ve lost everything these last six months and I’m tired of being alone. If you’re going to save Riley, clearly, it’s not going to happen any time this century. So I’m going home to Connecticut.”

  What was so damned special about Connecticut that made every woman I’d ever cared for run there to get away from me? “Can we talk before you go? A few minutes, tops.”

  She put a hand on her hip. “Why, have you saved Riley from those demons?”

  Dammit, Sandra. I took a quick look around to make sure no one had heard her, but we were alone. “No. Not yet.”

  “Then there’s nothing to talk about.” Sandra spun back to her car and finished packing it up before slamming the trunk closed.

  I closed the distance between me and her car on quick feet. “Let me ride with you. It’s a long drive and we have things to talk about.”

  “No, not until Riley is home safe. I told you he wasn’t safe with you, Ben. I came all the way to Canada to protect him from something I didn’t know existed. Maybe if you’d told me sooner, I would have been more prepared.”

  “Doubtful. I tried to tell you years ago and you didn’t believe me,” I said, then nearly ate my own foot. “I—sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Her glare renewed, delivered with the fire of a hundred suns. “Bye, Ben. For real this time. Don’t come back again.”

  “You need to come with me. I know there wasn’t exactly an agreement made about you not saying anything publicly, but I thought we’d all decided you wouldn’t. Especially given what’s at stake.”

  “What’s ‘at stake’?” she echoed. “Riley’s already gone, Ben. And the fact that you’re here empty-handed means he might very well be—”

  “Don’t!” I shouted, swiping the air with my hand. “He’s not—I saw him not that long ago. But he’s still in danger, Sandra. And you posting about the Hunter Circles and demons on social media, exposing us, isn’t going to do anything but put a target on your head. It’ll impede our chances of getting him back.”

  Sandra’s glare held fast, but she roughly pointed to her car. “Get the hell in, then. I’ll hear you out. But you can’t tell me what to do.”

  “I can when it comes to this.”

  She clenched her jaw and climbed into her car. I joined her. She pulled out of her driveway before I even had my seatbelt buckled.

  Sandra tore down the main road, headed south. Which I only knew because I’d driven this way six months ago when Giyano and Shadow Crest had attacked her and Riley.

  “Please, tell me why I shouldn’t be posting everywhere about Riley,” Sandra said, staring at the road ahead of us. “Most of the time they tell you to do that to increase the chances someone will call if they see him.”

  “Except this isn’t a normal kidnapping, Sandra.” I gripped on to the handle above the passenger door. “Right now, you’re not a target for Shadow Crest, the demons who have Riley, because you don’t have magik. They know you can’t waltz into their lair and try to take Riley back.”

  Sandra bit her lip, as if she had a whole swarm of words to say to that but held them back. I could just imagine what they were, mostly about how I’d not managed to rescue Riley either, even with magik.

  “How’d anyone even know about those posts?” she asked. “It’s not like we’re friends online anymore.”

  Her words stung, but I’d gotten over that a long time ago. I’d never been into the social media scene. Besides, Sandra and I would be connected for at least the next fifteen-odd years no matter what.

  Assuming we got Riley back. As a human.

  I didn’t know if I could handle Riley being a demon for the rest of his—or at least my—life. But I knew Sandra definitely wouldn’t be able to.

  I sighed and turned to Sandra. She had an eyebrow lifted as though waiting for my answer, but otherwise she seemed totally focused on the road. A good thing since Sandra’s house wasn’t far from the highway and we were now merging onto it. I hadn’t planned on actually driving Sandra back to Boston. I’d have much preferred a quick teleportante instead of sitting with my ex awkwardly for hours on end. But if that’s what got her back to Boston with me, I’d do it.

  “The Fire Circle
has been keeping tabs on you ever since Jaffrin helped move you to Canada,” I said, glancing over at her. “Honestly, in the interest of transparency, I actually don’t doubt that they’ve been keeping an eye on both of us ever since I took Jaffrin’s offer to join the Hunter Circles.”

  “So years,” Sandra said, her voice suddenly calm.

  I nodded. “Yes. Three years ago.”

  “And you don’t think I’m a target, but you also do, so you don’t want me opening my mouth about it all?”

  I leaned back against the passenger seat and stretched out my legs as far as I could. They’d become suddenly restless. “This is going to sound harsh, but the only thing I could see them using you for was bait—for me—or to use against Riley as collateral if he suddenly lost interest in what they’ve got him doing.” Assuming he remembered Sandra at all. But I kept that thought to myself.

  “Collateral? Seriously, Ben? He’s three years old.”

  I winced at the sharpness of her tone. “I know.”

  The car suddenly slowed down and Sandra veered us off into a breakdown lane. When she’d finally gotten the car to a full stop, she put it in park and looked to me. “What the hell do you want me to do, then? What can I do?”

  “Why did you post about it?”

  She paused for a moment, thinking. “Because I was tired of feeling alone. My mom doesn’t believe me because obviously it’s an insane story. And Aunt Betty thinks the house was just burglarized and Riley was kidnapped. It’s not like she thinks of it as no big deal or anything, but it’s not the same as knowing—and believing—demons are at fault.”

  “And you?” I asked her, an eyebrow raised.

  She gave me a hard stare. “Demons attacked my home, stole our son, and burned me. I don’t know what to think of the whole demons and magik thing in general, Ben. I’ll be honest about that. But at this point, I’m willing to believe in all of it if it means there’s a chance of getting Riley back.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then I need you to come back to Boston with me. Now. I’d rather teleport there instantaneously, but if you’d rather drive, I’d totally understand.”