The Changed: Hunter Circles Series Book Three

by Jessica Gunn

  The Alzan magik.

  “Start with a fireball,” Shawn said. “Just throw it right at me, but keep it smaller than a football.”

  I nodded and lifted my hands in front of me, holding my palms about a football’s length apart. I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. Exhaled. Centered myself. And then I thought of fire, of power in this raw of a form.

  My fingertips warmed, then my palms, until I opened my eyes and found a ball of fire swirling around itself. The flames flickered orange and yellow and red, tumbling over each other in front of me.

  “There you go,” Shawn said, his voice even and smooth, like a glass of cold iced tea in the middle of summer. “Now grow it.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Grow it?”

  “Make it bigger. The size of a kickball or large watermelon.”

  That would require putting more power into it. A lot more. But not so much that—stop thinking. Isn’t that what I’d told Ben not three months ago when teaching him control? Don’t think—feel.

  I could do this. It was fire and nothing more.

  Another inhale, then I moved my palms farther apart and thought about a bubblegum bubble. More air, more force, more magik and this football-sized flame would grow.

  But nothing changed.

  “It won’t grow,” I said.

  “Yes, it will. Trust yourself.”

  Easier said than done. I shifted my weight from foot to foot and shook out my shoulders without losing the ball of fire I already had. Then I pulled my palms even farther apart.

  Nothing.

  Okay. Enough. I’d gone from magik guru to newbie all because of Kinder. And I was not used to being the newbie. And Ben and Jaffrin, my mother—what would they say to all of this? To me not being able to grow a single fireball into something actually intimidating?

  The flame between my hands warmed, turning from red and orange to a lighter yellow-white. Heat seared my fingertips but didn’t burn or hurt me. It was just hotter than hell.

  Then, suddenly, the fireball grew—much bigger than a watermelon, larger than a garbage can. Wider than the mat beneath my feet.

  “There you go,” Shawn said. “Good job.”

  But I could feel the fire beating against the mini cage my palms made, the sort of force shield keeping it together. The fire wanted out, like the sun in Giyano’s metaphors. It tackled the walls of my magik, whipping around and around faster than anything I’d ever seen before.

  “Krystin?”

  I shook my head, wincing with the effort it was taking to keep the flames from breaking free. “I can’t hold it. It’s too much.”

  Shawn walked toward me, toward the growing firestorm in my hands. “Yes, you can. You’ve held more magik before and lived.”

  “Lived but not controlled,” I said through gritted teeth that gnashed together. “I went crazy when Kinder dumped all that magik into me.”

  The firestorm grew with the memories of that night. Of me losing control of my body and mind—and my magik. Of becoming a weapon for Kinder to use, a human shield. Much like the things she had warned the Hunter Circles wanted to do to me. What they had done to her. Was exiling her the worst of it?

  I blinked and the firestorm erupted from my hands, exploding in all directions. I ducked from my own attack, bringing the cloud of flames down around me. Shawn dodged a wave of fire and summoned an orange ether shield around himself.

  Waving my hands, I tried to ignore the pull of my fire-elemental magik and call upon the air-elemental inside of me. The elusive magik that I’d used once and never again.

  Put out the flames, I willed it. Act like wind.

  I waved my hand in front of me, hoping it’d smother the flames, but instead the motion only spread them out farther.

  “Krystin!” Shawn called over the fiery din. “Are you okay?”

  “I can’t put it out!” I cried. Stilling my breath didn’t work. Motioning for the flames to die down didn’t either.

  The fire alarm went off above my head, blaring in my ears. The rest of the team appeared moments later, Rachel with a massive wave of collected water in tow. She doused the flames and encircled my hands with water gloves.

  “Breathe,” she said, watching the water around my hands start to steam. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” I grunted. “Magik isn’t a problem for me.”

  Shawn came beside me and rested his hand on my shoulder. A wave of calm rushed over me as the white tips of his aura seemed to slip onto my shoulder beneath his touch. Finally, after long moments, the flames in my hands died down.

  I pulled my hands from Rachel’s and looked up at my team. “I’m sorry. Shawn and I were training, and—”

  “No need to apologize,” Ben said, staring at me, his mouth agape. “We might just have to, um, fire proof the training room?” He glanced over at Nate. “Can we do that?”

  “I’m surprised you think I’ll still be living with the team for long enough to justify that,” I said under my breath.

  Ben’s gaze cut to mine, hard as steel, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Ms. Blackwood,” Alexander said as he and Iris strolled into the training room. I’d managed to avoid them since Ben had come back from Canada, but after this incident, I doubted I’d ever be left unattended again.

  But Shawn had been there. And even he couldn’t help me.

  “What?” I asked Alexander.

  Iris came to a stop next to him and placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Easy, brother.”

  Alexander’s hardened, cold stare reached mine. “You are becoming a risk to your own team in addition to the Fire Circle as a whole.”

  I lifted a brow. “Newsflash, asshole: I’ve been a danger since Jaffrin placed me here.” And it wasn’t like Jaffrin hadn’t known that either. I’d told him on multiple occasions how stupid putting me in Boston had been. But no one had listened to me.

  “Krystin,” Shawn warned. Nate and Ben stood behind him, offering me more warning glances. It was too late for that.

  I shook my head. “No, you know what? I’m over this routine, Alexander. Either you and Iris bring me back to Ether Circle Prison now and stop being creepy guard babysitters, or you leave our house for good. Just because I have new magik doesn’t mean I’m a threat to the team.”

  “You nearly burned down the house,” Iris pointed out.

  Leveling her with a glare, I said, “And you probably would have let it happen, too. Just like the Ether Head Circle let Kinder kill a dozen Hunters and get away with it three months ago.”

  “Watch yourself, Hunter.” Alexander stood straighter, his hand inching toward his waist.

  “That’s unnecessary,” I said, pointedly looking at his hand. “I’m going back to my room and I plan to stay there until Jaffrin un-grounds us. Let me know if the Ether Head Circle determines that they want to imprison me again.”

  It was a risk. I didn’t know what orders the twins had. They could have killed me on the spot and the team would have been in cahoots with me for living in the same space, for all the logic that Circle had. But they were the leaders for a reason, so I had to believe that all of this had a purpose.

  Even the twins.

  I walked by them without saying another word.

  Chapter 17

  BEN

  The twins left. Krystin had walked out of the training room. Rachel had put out the rest of the small fires and shut off our alarm. And then Alexander and Iris had just left.

  Not a good sign.

  All I could do was hope they weren’t about to turn Krystin in. But a large part of me didn’t care anymore. She’d gone to Giyano. Helped him. And now Riley was gone—again.

  All while Hunters and witches were dying at his hand.

  Did he ever stop being a monster?

  I locked up the house again after the twins left but stayed in the living room, too unsure of everything that was going on to even hope of sleeping.

  Riley and Krystin. All the demons. The fat
e of Boston itself.

  I plunked onto the center cushion of our couch and scrubbed my face with the palms of my hands. Tonight. All I had to do was make it through tonight, see what the twins had gone off to do, and then take it from there.

  I could do this.

  A rush of warm air blew through the living room, much hotter than our heater. Then came the smell of wood burning. I jumped up from the couch, looking for the source of the burning, and found it in the kitchen. Or rather, I found her.

  Kinder stood, her hands on the back of one of our wooden dining chairs. The wood underneath her hand smoldered, smoke rising from her fingers.

  My stomach dropped, seeing her there, and my mouth ran dry. Not the first instinct I’d expected to have at seeing Kinder again. She’d caused so much destruction. I should be pissed. I should have attacked by now. But here I stood, unmoving.

  “Good evening, Ben,” she said coolly.

  I gestured to her hands. “We have enough problems with fire-elementals burning our furniture down. Could you cut it out?”

  Kinder lifted her hands, inspecting them. “My apologies. Sometimes my magik gets away from me.”

  “I somehow doubt that.” I took a step back toward the living room. Would I be able to call to the others for help before she attacked me? Maybe even just a teleportante to put space between us would be enough.

  She smirked. “I am not here to hurt you.”

  “Then what do you want? Because I ought to kill you right here and never look back. You killed over a dozen Hunters.”

  Laughing, she leaned back against one of the counters. “You think I care? The Fire Circle has killed enough for all of us to go on a spree every now and again and have it be completely normal.”

  “What do you want?” I asked again. Lightning crackled around my fingertips, jumping between them and the nearest wall.

  Kinder didn’t so much as look mildly annoyed by my magik. “I wanted to talk to you about your son, Riley.”

  “He’s gone,” I spat. “You’re too late. Because you couldn’t or wouldn’t finish Giyano off when he attacked you, he’s stolen my son. Lady Azar likely has him now.”

  Kinder shrugged, her dark, almost-black eyes unreadable. “I am not afraid of my daughter. I can get him back to you if you can’t.”

  “Why would you care? Last I checked, you were all for blowing Cianza Boston. Letting Lady Azar take Cianza Alzan only gets rid of a step for you.” When Alzan went, so too would every plane in existence.

  “The last thing I want is for my daughter to destroy us all. Cianza Boston is a special case. I do not care about the collateral damage standing between me and my revenge on the Fire Circle. But to attack a cianza the size of the one at Alzan?” She shook her head. “My daughter does not know what she thinks she does. She’s not prepared for the consequences.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from asking what those consequences were. It seemed pretty obvious to me: the end of the world. “Get out of our house.”

  “You don’t want me to help you with your son’s magik?”

  I leveled her with a glare, a sudden source of courage overriding the fear that Kinder, Betrayer of Darkness, stood before me while the rest of my team was nowhere nearby. “I don’t want or need help from demons.”

  Kinder’s nostrils flared. “You do not have a choice. Your son’s magik will eat him alive if he doesn’t train. My daughter aside, there are plenty of people who’d love to get their hands on him. Bounty hunters from Landshaft. Aloysius. My dear old Fire Circle. By binding his magik, you keep him lame.”

  My fists curled and I surged forward, stopping just short of Kinder. “I told you it doesn’t fucking matter! Lady Azar has Riley.”

  “Then go save him again,” she suggested in monotone. “I’m the only one who can train him, to teach him how to keep himself safe. One day you’ll see that.”

  I roared, lunging for Kinder. “I don’t need help from a demon regarding how to raise my son!”

  I tackled her to the ground, but she rolled and landed on top of me. It was the only attack I’d get in, evident by the barrage of shots she took at my face, each one becoming hotter and hotter, as if her hand w on fire.

  Lightning in my hands met each of her blows, but still she didn’t budge.

  “What the?” someone—Krystin, I realized—asked as she rushed into the kitchen. “Ben!”

  Kinder spun on Krystin, who froze, staring. “Come now, Krystin. Has the Fire Circle shown you their true colors yet?”

  Krystin’s eyes narrowed. She launched a small fireball at Kinder, although it was barely enough to warrant dodging. It distracted Kinder well enough that I was able to wiggle out from beneath her. I tossed a strike of lightning Kinder’s way. She waved her hand through the air, summoning fire to misdirect the strike somehow. Instead, Kinder grew her own fireball and tossed it at Krystin, a trail of flames following behind her hand.

  Krystin’s eyes went wide, but she lifted her hands to catch it. She did, then sent the fire flying back at Kinder.

  Kinder laughed as she made the flames dissipate somehow. “Funny how much you learn in an hour with a real master, isn’t it, Krystin? Did Giyano teach you that?”

  “Go to hell,” Krystin growled.

  “Not until I help you save us all,” Kinder said. And although the words sounded nice, she turned back to me and launched a new wave of fire, huge and blue this time, so hot that it warped the air around it in a mirage.

  I scrambled out of the way, but when Kinder whipped around with the new attack, there was zero chance in hell I’d be able to dodge it. The massive storm of fire raged toward me. All I could do was throw up my arms to cover my face and pray that Kinder needed me somehow—for Riley, maybe, or something else. Anything that’d keep me alive. But she hated Fire Circle Hunters, and I knew that’d override everything else.

  “No, you don’t!” Krystin shouted as an immense wave of heat closed in on my face.

  Then froze.

  “Move, Ben,” Krystin said through gritted teeth. “I can’t hold it off for long.”

  I opened my eyes and dropped my arms. Krystin stood beside me, clasped fists holding the wave of fire at bay. I sidestepped it and swung around, but Kinder appeared next to me.

  “Without me, your son will lose himself to the Power,” she said.

  “Get the hell away from me!” I threw a punch at her jaw, following it up with another shot, but neither connected.

  Krystin let the fireball go and it slammed into the kitchen counter, igniting the cabinets. The fire alarm above us wailed as smoke spiraled to the ceiling.

  Rachel stopped in the doorway, Nate and Shawn right behind her. She turned on the kitchen sink’s faucet and gathered water into her hands. Rachel shot tendrils of it toward the flames, dousing them.

  A punch knocked me sideways, my vision spinning as darkness danced on the horizon. I stayed steady enough to watch Kinder and Krystin trade blows, to watch Kinder grab on to Krystin. For Krystin to freeze, her eyes flashing white.

  A vision.

  And then Kinder disappeared and the world went dark.

  Chapter 18

  KRYSTIN

  I was stunned, even after Kinder disappeared. The smell of burnt wood from the cabinets filled my nostrils as I stood there, frozen except for my shaking hands.

  What the Fire Circle had done to Kinder… what she’d shown me…

  No wonder she wanted to burn all of Boston to the ground.

  “Krystin?” Ben asked, his voice small. “Are you okay? What’d she do to you?”

  “I didn’t realize you cared anymore.” I winced at my own words but kept still. He’d almost died back there, and then where would Riley have been? I wasn’t sure what Kinder planned to do regarding training Riley, but that she hadn’t gone into Lady Azar’s lair and stolen him from her daughter already spoke volumes.

  Ben rolled his eyes and stepped toward me on cautious feet. “What happened?”

  The c
hains around her wrists. Kinder’s constant state of fear. I shook my head and inhaled deeply. It was just a vision. It didn’t actually happen.

  Not to me anyway. But Kinder had lived through it.

  “She showed me what the Fire Circle put her through,” I said. “Before Aloysius made her immortal.”

  The fire alarm still blared above us, so if Ben responded, his quiet words were swallowed by the noise. I doubted he’d understand anyway. We’d both been jerked around by the Fire Circle, but in very different ways. Ways I was beginning to realize that only Kinder understood. Kinder and me and Shawn.

  I glanced over at Shawn and found him already watching me carefully. He lifted an eyebrow in question. I shook my head. Later.

  “So Kinder breaks in right as Giyano’s hunting humans in Boston again?” Rachel asked. “Seems convenient.”

  “It’s not Giyano, I told you that.” I looked to Ben. “You must know that now. Even Kinder has Riley’s best interests in mind. Zanka and Lady Azar, they’re the ones who want to use him. To frame Giyano. To attack us and Sandra.”

  He shook his head, his fists white-knuckling. “They’re all demons and they will all die. We need to clean up the kitchen as best we can before the twins return tomorrow. They can’t know something happened here.”

  Nate pointed to the burnt cabinets behind Ben’s shoulder. “I think they’re going to notice.”

  “Tell them I tried cooking,” Ben said, totally serious. Not even Rachel cracked a smile. “Whatever we have to do to hide the fact that Kinder was here. It won’t look good for Krystin or us.”

  “There you go pretending you care again,” I muttered. It’d get him imprisoned too.

  Ben whipped around at me. “Of course I care, Krystin. You’re a member of this team. I trusted you. And on the very off chance that we’re all incredibly wrong about this, I still want to trust you. Now, help us clean up this mess before the twins return.”