The Hunted: Hunter Circles Series Book One

by Jessica Gunn

  I backed up through the spot my team had just stood on and willed my three-piece sword to me from where it lay. Gripping it with both hands, I circled around the chamber opposite Giyano.

  “You want to end this here?” I asked him. “Then let’s do it. Fight me. Kill me if you have to, but you’re not leaving here to come after Riley again.”

  Giyano swiped his forearm over his bloody mouth, wiping away the stains. “I don’t want the child. That was her doing. I don’t need Cianza Alzan for what I have planned. In fact, Cianza Alzan is the last place I want any sort of power.”

  “Duh. Because when it blows, we’ll feel it across all the planes of existence,” I said. Just like Cianza Boston exploding would be felt throughout the entire Northeast.

  “Foolish child!” he shouted. “We stand here running out of time. You joke, but you don’t know—you can’t know—what they have planned for you and the child. You, Daughter of Alzan, think you’re on the side of Good.”

  “I am,” I said, still circling him. “No thanks to you and your magik. You know you’re tainting mine, right?”

  A stupid question to be sure. Why else would he let doses of his magik roam free over my body? I just didn’t know why he kept doing that, and what, if any, connection that had to Riley and my father and Alzan. Lady Azar had wanted Riley’s gift of the Power to open a door to Alzan and to rule over the cianza there. But what use did Giyano have for me, my destiny aside?

  Giyano only laughed. His shoulders started smoking, literal steam rising out of his ears. Building an attack, holding it. “You and your power are no more Good than I am.”

  My breath hitched. “I’m Good.” A fancy lie. I’d often wondered about that very moral status. But every single time, I’d come up with only the facts: I was a witch, a direct descendant of the Powers in two forms (being a witch and the Alzanian destiny), and I was a Fire Circle Hunter. Had been since I was eleven years old. If that didn’t equal being on Good’s side, I didn’t know what would.

  And if Alzan wasn’t actually Good, if it wasn’t associated with the Powers and all we’d been told was a lie, I didn’t want to know about it. To know that something which had become my entire life was a lie would destroy me. And I refused to accept that as a possible scenario.

  I swiped my hand across the air in front of me and threw Giyano across the room with two fingers. He caught himself at the last moment by calling fire under his feet to act like mini rocket boosters. While he was still down, I flicked my fingers again.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be this big bad or something?” I said, taunting him. “The Fire Circle’s so scared of you, and for what?”

  I bent over him. The only reason I’d gotten this close to Giyano, and I knew this as the absolute only truth right now, was because of Rachel’s attack. He’d melted the ice as it broke his skin, but it’d still hurt him pretty bad. He was down and out, and I was playing a very dangerous game for which I was bargaining my life.

  I was betting on Giyano only wanting to hurt or immobilize me, not kill me.

  “You’re just a demon with hurt feelings because Lady Azar killed the love of your life. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “You know not of what you speak,” Giyano ground out. He lifted himself off the floor and pushed me off with a firestorm. I slid sideways to deflect his attack. “My fight with Lady Azar has more to do with your friend’s son than it does with you and me, Krystin.”

  “Then what the hell do you want? You’ve got Lady Azar basically dead over there. End her and walk the hell out of the way of the Fire Circle.”

  He grinned, lips curling. “And let you walk free? I don’t think so. You’re too important a game piece to risk losing at this stage.”

  He slashed out with one hand, the fire around him subsiding the more he concentrated on fighting. I slapped his attack out of the way and hit back harder. It jarred him and he staggered backward, though he caught both my next kick and swing. I hopped away, eyes narrowing. I needed to kill him now. With Giyano out of the picture, the rest of the team could start to move on. And with him gone, my magik might finally return to normal.

  But with every passing second, I lost confidence in what I knew to be true: that magik types didn’t change in a lifetime, except where humans turned to demons were concerned. Light magik to dark magik.

  Where once a warm light within me glowed, a dark icicle dangled from my soul. My magik. My Alzanian magik had turned to solid ice.

  I glanced up at Giyano. “What have you done to me?”

  He laughed and spat blood on the cave floor. “You’ll see. All in good time.”

  I went to charge him again, but someone appeared out of thin air. Ben grabbed on to my arm and used teleportante to get the hell out of there before I could ask why he’d done so. We went straight to Fire Circle Headquarters. As Lady Azar had said, we’d started a war. There was no point in hiding where we’d gone.

  Ben glanced down at me, looking over my injuries. But his face had paled to that of a ghost’s. “Are you okay?”

  The Power. This Riley kid was strong. If we didn’t take his magik away, he’d kill Ben. Then he’d kill himself.

  “Perfectly fine, sparky,” I said, then ended up coughing as air or blood got stuck in my throat. “But Riley isn’t.”

  Chapter 24

  BEN

  “Don’t let him touch you,” Krystin ordered. “No one!”

  Rachel stopped and turned around, Riley’s hand on her pale face.

  “Now, Rachel! Put him down,” Krystin said again.

  I spun on Krystin. “She’s not a fucking dog.” But my entire body felt weak, used as if I’d run the Boston Marathon three or four times rather than fight off demons and hold my son.

  Krystin stormed to Rachel’s side, standing between us. Other Hunters, who’d been spooked at our sudden appearance, now gathered around to see why Krystin was yelling. They whispered to each other when they saw our tattered, worn forms.

  “Rachel, he’s doing it to you,” Krystin said. “He doesn’t know how to control it. If you don’t put him down, he’ll take your magik for good. That’s his power.”

  Rachel’s brow furrowed, but she followed Krystin’s command. She was, after all, our magik expert. Only I wasn’t a huge fan of her telling us to put my son down after what he’d been through.

  “Krystin?” I asked her.

  “The Power,” she whispered. To the other Hunters around us, she said, “Get a move on! Nothing to see here!”

  Except apparently there was. A big something.

  “Where the hell have you—” Jaffrin froze halfway down the last staircase, staring slack-jawed at my face, then Rachel’s. And then at Riley. “Is he…?”

  I nodded. “Safe, yes. Fine. Healthy. Except—”

  “We need a quarantine room now, Jaffrin,” Krystin said. “And somebody call my mother. We’re going to need her help.”

  “Quarantine?” I echoed.

  Krystin held up a hand. “Not now, Ben. Trust me. I’m not going to hurt him, but there’s a very good chance Riley might hurt himself. I’ll explain once he’s safe.”

  “He is safe,” I argued. She ignored me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Krystin held up Riley with her telekinesis, barely lifting a finger, and brought him up the stairs with it.

  I chased after her, Rachel and Nate not far behind as Jaffrin led the way to the third floor. “What the actual fuck are you doing to my son, Krystin? He doesn’t have the plague!”

  “Might as well,” she said, even as she smiled at Riley to distract him. He didn’t cry or look worried. In fact, he wore an almost-smile on his face. Was he having fun being carted around like toxic waste?

  A quarantine room sat on the far end of the third floor. Krystin and Jaffrin rushed us down there and, once Riley was inside, alone on the padded floor, Krystin came out.

  Jaffrin locked the door and turned around. “Explain.”

  “The Power,” Krystin said.
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br />   Nate froze. “Wait a second—you don’t mean…”

  She nodded fast. “Yes. I do. That ancient magik that no one’s had for thousands of years? Yeah. That thing.”

  Jaffrin’s eyes widened and he spun to look at Riley through the window. For once, it appeared he was speechless.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. Anything that silenced Jaffrin was not something I wanted to mess with.

  Krystin grabbed my arm. “He has the Power, Ben. It’s older than Darkness, older than Alzan. It’s a magik that allows a user to house both ether and elemental magiks. People who wielded it back then could do almost anything. They took powers from people around them and abused them until they wore out because their bodies burned it off so quickly. Where you and I might see our magik working until our late seventies or early eighties, people with the Power, their magik only lasted a day or so, maybe two, and then they had to find more. Their bodies needed it. Craved it. And if they didn’t get another magik source, they died.”

  She glanced at Riley through the window. “At least that’s what all the history books say. They don’t teach these myths in the Hunter Circles because the Power died out thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. The ancient leaders and Darkness and even the Hunter Circles back then—they all hunted these people down and killed them so their lineage wouldn’t carry this magik.”

  My head spun around the information. One glance at Jaffrin told me everything Krystin had said was true. “Did you know?” I asked him.

  “That your son has the Power?” he asked, then shook his head slowly. “No, Ben. I—”

  “Would have handled it differently?” Rachel asked. “You wouldn’t have jerked us around for two-and-a-half years while they held my nephew hostage, doing god-knows-what to him?”

  Jaffrin’s jaw tightened. “Just because they knew doesn’t mean we did. As Krystin said, this ancient magik hasn’t been seen in centuries.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “This is unprecedented. I’ll have to consult with the Ether Head Circle. We might have to move him.”

  “You can’t do anything until my mother gets here,” Krystin said.

  “And what’s she going to do?” I asked.

  Krystin’s eyes rounded and she spoke slowly as though to a hurt toddler. As if to Riley. “He’s going to hurt himself, Ben. He’s a child. Practically still a baby. He doesn’t know how to control the Power, much less understand what it is. According to all the texts the Blackwoods have, not many people who had the Power survived to adulthood. And those who did had to keep magik constantly in their systems until the Power settled and then hoped to die of old age instead of being hunted down.”

  “Like a vampire,” I said. “Are you saying my kid is a vampire?”

  She looked to the ceiling, then back down at me. “God help me, Ben. No. That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Then explain,” Rachel spat. “We almost died and ignited a full-out war with Shadow Crest to get Riley back, and now you’re saying, what? We have to hide him away?”

  Hell no. “Absolutely not—”

  Krystin nodded. “Yes, hide him. Bind his powers. Keep him out of sight until he’s old enough for that magik to be unbound and for it to settle.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “You said he has to feed on other magiks to stay alive. What good would binding his magik do?”

  “If he can’t use his power, it’s not in effect,” Jaffrin said. “The binding magik Blackwood witches can wield is the most effective in existence. It’ll essentially freeze the magik-based parts of his body and soul until the binding is reversed. It will keep him alive and hidden from Darkness, at least as far as his magik and aura are concerned. Then we’ll have to find a safe house and a team to watch him.”

  “Around the clock until he’s old enough to handle magik?” Rachel asked.

  Nate stepped in. “You don’t want to mess with the Power. Everything I was taught by my ether master… It’s one scary magik, Ben.”

  I clenched my fists. What about how scary this was for me? For Riley?

  Krystin glanced over at Jaffrin. “Lady Azar was hoping to harness it to open a door to Alzan.”

  Fear laced Jaffrin’s dark expression. “The Cianza.”

  “Everybody wants it,” Krystin said. “Apparently.”

  Jaffrin nodded. “Wait until your mother gets here and bind Riley’s magik. I’ll work out the rest.”

  My temper flared and boiled over. “Don’t I get a say in this?” I shouted. “He’s my kid. I can protect him. I can—”

  Krystin’s eyes met mine and, in the softest tone I’d ever heard her use, she said, “No, Ben. You can’t. Not from this, not from Darkness. Not from anything on this magikal side of the world. Your child is quite literally one of a kind. And the safest bet for him is to hide this fact for as long as possible.”

  I looked away. Walked up to the glass and laid a hand on it. Riley was looking around the room, a frown on his face.

  After all of this, after two-and-a-half years of searching and fighting, Riley would have to be locked away again? Hidden for his entire life?

  How did this even happen? Rachel and I weren’t from a magik family. Our powers had manifested from a one-in-a-million chance. But Riley? My son?

  I pressed my forehead to the glass. “Will it hurt him?”

  Krystin came to my side. “The binding?” I nodded. “No. I don’t remember it being done to me, but when my mother undid the binding, I didn’t feel a thing. It was a bit like taking off a constricting pair of clothing after running around all day. I felt lighter afterward, protected before.”

  I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep breath. This was a shit-ass decision to have to make on the fly. My son’s safety for a chance to live a normal life. Not that I knew what normal was anymore.

  I was twenty-four years old. This was not the type of decision a twenty-four-year-old should be making. Which beer to buy? Where to apply to jobs? What girl to date tonight? Junk food or go to the gym? Travel or work or just sit around and play Xbox all day? Those were the decisions I craved. Not whether or not to take away part of who my son was to protect what he might one day become. Not to decide his entire life in this very moment.

  “It’s the best thing you can do for him right now,” Krystin said. “I know this isn’t how you wanted it to go, but there was no way to know that this was why Lady Azar stole Riley, Ben. No way at all. But if you bind his magik until he’s older, if you give him a chance to be held by you and Rachel and to live as normal a life as he can, he’ll be so much better off.” She paused and I said nothing. “If you don’t do this, he’ll be hunted until he’s caught. Or until he’s dead.”

  My eyes welled and my throat constricted until it felt like a hard, painful lump had formed there. Tears spilled over, running down my cheeks. I wiped them away furiously. Traitorous bastards, each and every one of them.

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll do it. But he gets to go home to Sandra. And if you insist on setting up a safe house, she goes, too. All expenses paid.” I looked up at Jaffrin. “I’ll stay on as a Hunter if that’s what it takes, but they will be taken care of or this deal is off.”

  Obviously, me being a Hunter, one who’d just started a war with Shadow Crest, wouldn’t help Riley at all. But if he had his mother and they were safe, I could live with that. I could live with visiting. As long as it meant he was safe and alive and well.

  Jaffrin weighed it for a moment longer than I thought he ought to, then he nodded. “Consider it done.”

  “Good,” Krystin said. “Now we wait for my mother. She’ll bind his magik and this will be done with. For good.”

  For Good indeed. Hopefully.

  “What’s the emergency?” someone said as they rushed down the hallway.

  Krystin scowled. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she said as she turned to the woman in the doorway. “But I need your help, Mother.”

  Krystin’s mother tread carefully into the room. Kryst
in was a spitting image of the woman, who had Krystin’s same long, dark hair, bright blue eyes, and slightly arrogant stride. Her eyes settled on the giant window allowing us to see Riley in quarantine. “Is that a child?”

  “He’s mine,” I said to her. “I’m Ben. Krystin’s on my team.”

  Krystin’s mother frowned. “Hmm.”

  “Desiree,” Jaffrin said, arms open. “So nice to see you again.”

  Desiree and Jaffrin embraced. “What can I do to help?”

  Krystin and I exchanged a look that said whatever kindness existed between her mother and Jaffrin wasn’t something that’d always been there. Lovely. More politics I didn’t enjoy.

  “I need you to bind Riley’s magik,” Krystin said to her mother. “Also, hello. Thank you for coming.”

  “Well,” Desiree said as she approached the glass window. “When you sent word for me and it was from the Fire Circle, I knew it had to be important.”

  Krystin’s fake smile shattered even me. “Please. He’s already been through a lot.”

  Her mother nodded. “Do I get to know why?”

  Krystin looked over her shoulder to me. I shook my head. I didn’t want anyone else to know aside from those who had to. “No, Mom. Not today.”

  Desiree shrugged, then pulled out a quartz crystal like the one Krystin had meditated with a few days before. “I’ll be quick.”

  I nodded to her. “Thank you.”

  Desiree entered the quarantine room with all of us watching. It took only seconds. She walked over to Riley, touched the crystal to his cheek, and said a few words. The magik flowed out of him in a kaleidoscope of colors, like when Lady Azar had tried turning him into a power vessel, and into the crystal.

  And then it was done.

  I rushed into the room and scooped Riley up, hugging him tightly. He was obviously bigger than when I’d last seen him, but he smelled the same, felt the same in my arms. My son. My son was safe again. Relief rushed through me like torrents passing through a small hole, breaking it into a bigger one to allow the happiness and love to flow freely.