The Changed: Hunter Circles Series Book Three

by Jessica Gunn

I gulped, watching as the others began picking up the remnants of Kinder’s attack. She’d come here with a purpose, probably to help us regain Riley from Lady Azar.

  I didn’t believe her motives were entirely selfless. But that Ben seemed to want me still on this team despite everything… I couldn’t let him down. Except what Kinder had shown me had seared into my mind. And the images of her torture, her pain, would not be easy to forget.

  I had to tell Shawn.

  I had to get us the hell out of the Fire Circle.

  I caught up to Shawn as he retreated up to his room. Day or night—none of that seemed to matter anymore. We slept when we could, and the purple bags under his eyes said he hadn’t been sleeping enough, period.

  It made me almost feel bad for adding more to his plate.

  “Hey,” I said as he started to shut his door. He’d taken the last free room at the house when he’d joined the team, right at the start of the hallway and across from the bathroom. It’d be private enough for what I wanted to say to him. “Can I have a minute?”

  He peered at me through the crack in his door for a moment, then nodded and let me in. I closed the door behind me.

  “Are you here to tell me what really happened?”

  I nodded. “We need to leave the Fire Circle before they imprison us, team or not.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  I ran a hand through my hair, glancing at the walls. What were the odds the twins had placed some sort of bugging ward on every wall in our house? “Because the Fire Circle didn’t hunt Kinder down like other individuals with the Power.”

  “So?”

  “She showed me. Don’t you get it? She forced a vision into me, like she did at the Hydron operation three months ago. Except this time, she didn’t hold back.”

  He considered me with a weary look but ultimately sat on the bed and gestured me over anyway. “I get your empathy for Giyano. But you can’t ask me to care about Kinder, the same woman who nearly killed you, who did kill dozens of Hunters, and who will probably blow all of Boston by tilting the cianza sometime soon.”

  “No, she’s a monster,” I said. “But I get why she’s doing it, and why she’s so concerned about making sure you and I both know to watch ourselves around the Fire Circle.”

  He shook his head. “I thought it was Jaffrin we didn’t trust, not the Circle as a whole.”

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Whatever, then. I thought we didn’t trust anyone.”

  Was he for real? “Shawn, they’re going to do to us what they did to Kinder.”

  “Which was?” His tone was cautious, like he didn’t really want to know or he already had an inkling.

  “I don’t know what you know about our Circle’s history,” I started. “But before the Fire Circle was what it is today, they operated in Europe and the Middle East. The elemental-named Circles started there, and the names carried over to the United States.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Then you know that the succession of Leaders has stayed with our branch.”

  “I figured.”

  “Kinder was a Fire Circle Hunter in the ancient near east. She had magik and they found her, recruited her. She showed me how they saw her fighting with a demon, using her earth-elemental magik. They didn’t know, Shawn. Not at first. They thought she had the one power.”

  He gave me a sidelong glance. “And so did she, I assume?”

  Nodding, I said, “Kinder showed me the first magik she stole after her Power had awoken. How she didn’t know what was happening. But then the Fire Circle, all of the Circles and Darkness, kept rounding up people with the Power and killing them. They were so scared, so terrified of someone with that much magik inside of them. Of the unnaturalness of it all. But Kinder managed to stay hidden until a mission went wrong.”

  I glanced to the side, squinting, as if it’d help me remember the finer details of the vision. The more time that passed, the less I was able to recall. “Her team missed their mark and the only way to kill the demon was for Kinder to run on ahead, to claim the demon’s magik as her own and use it against him. So she did. And her team walked in on her doing it.”

  “And they betrayed her,” Shawn said. “I know the story. They tried to imprison Kinder, but she escaped and found Aloysius, and he made her immortal. Then she slaughtered her whole team in revenge.”

  Shaking my head, I looked back to Shawn. “That’s not all they did, Shawn. The Fire Circle did capture her, that part is true. But then they killed her entire family for hiding the fact she had the Power. Every last man, woman, and child blood-related to her. They imprisoned Kinder for her magik, a magik she didn’t even want or know how to control. They tortured her for months, only stopping to bribe her into using her Power for their devices—as a weapon, a tool instead of a naturally occurring thing.”

  “They use us for our magik all the time,” Shawn said. “That’s what makes us Hunters. Besides, that was so long ago. The Fire Circle has evolved. Look at Riley—Jaffrin was protecting him.”

  “No, you don’t understand. They used Kinder the same way Lady Azar wants to use Riley: as a vessel for power. Not as an extension of one’s ability to fight, but as a direct weapon against Darkness. A conduit. But to get her to that point after all they’d done… It was months of torture, Shawn. And when she escaped and found Aloysius, it was only to discover, a hundred years and three children later, that he’d wanted the same thing.”

  Shawn stared at me, his mouth hanging open. He closed it as his brow furrowed. “That’s…”

  “Exactly.”

  “You got all of that out of one vision?”

  I nodded. “It was mostly flashes, but enough to get the idea. And before you say it, I know that our magik, the Alzan magik, isn’t the same as the Power. It’s not a conduit; it can’t be used as a vessel.”

  “But the Circles and the Powers need it to get to Alzan,” Shawn said. “So does Lady Azar and all of Darkness.”

  “And if our magik really does balance out cianzas, or if it’s meant to once we unlock it—if all of this comes down to Cianza Alzan and what will happen if it explodes—then that’s what Kinder was warning us about. Shawn, we might be fighting on the side of Good, but the Circles and Darkness each have their own plans. I don’t intend to stick around and be pawns for either one of them.”

  His mouth thinned as he watched me. He sighed. “You’re right.”

  “I don’t want to be. The Fire Circle, despite Jaffrin, is supposed to be our home. It’s what we’re supposed to be fighting for, not running from.”

  “But they’re terrified of your magik,” he said.

  “And somewhat iffy about yours. Ember witches aren’t always trusted.” With good reason since their magik was demonic. Plenty of Ember witches had accidentally become demons because of that magik.

  “I still want to make sure that Ben and the others won’t take the fall for us or our disappearance,” Shawn said. “I don’t care how important Alzan is. The city has waited this long; it can wait another couple days.”

  “Assuming Lady Azar is going to wait long enough to use the magik on All Hallows’ Eve again to channel magik through Riley.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You think she’ll wing it rather than wait eight months?”

  “She’s got to be desperate. And with Giyano having turned on her…”

  “We should tell Ben.”

  “I think he knows. If not, I’ll leave it in our goodbye note. We need to leave the Fire Circle and search for these stones the Powers broke. If the prophecy is right, they’ll unlock our magik and we’ll get to Alzan. Start a war front there or something. Anything to keep that cianza from blowing.”

  Shawn peered up at me. “I didn’t realize you cared that much about the city.”

  “I care about living. And my freedom. And I don’t get either of those two things if Lady Azar wins.”

  Shawn looked away, focusing on something on the other side o
f his room. Finally, he turned and pulled open a drawer in his nightstand and withdrew a beat-up, leather-bound journal with yellowing pages. “Then let’s do what we can to get ready. This is everything my family and I know about magik and the Powers. Maybe something in here will help. It’s been in my family line for generations.”

  I grinned. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

  He gave me a blank stare. “Just trying to make sure you weren’t evil after all.”

  “Ha ha.” I held out my hand. “Let me look at that.”

  Shawn and I gave up around midnight. This family line’s notes on magik and the world were extensive and oftentimes hard to read thanks to bad penmanship. But one thing became clear: the Ember line had never before encountered any “stones” made by the Powers… or anything made by them, period. Meaning that, as we thought, the Powers didn’t do much of anything but sit on their lofty asses and do even less about this war with Darkness than the Ether Head Circle did.

  “Worth a try,” I said as I walked to Shawn’s door. “We can always dig through more tomorrow.”

  He nodded, the bags under his eyes having doubled in size. “Late tomorrow. I’m sleeping in.”

  I smiled. “Good idea.” But as I stepped out into the hallway, voices trailed up the stairwell. “Sounds like Ben and Rachel are still awake.”

  “I don’t know that Ben actually sleeps.”

  “Fair enough.” I smiled and turned back to him. “Thanks, Shawn.”

  “Goodnight.” He gave me a small wave before closing the door.

  I stretched, rising to my tiptoes and reaching for the ceiling. Spending two hours huddled over a small journal had not been conducive to good posture. As I stretched, still standing outside of Shawn’s door, Ben and Rachel’s words got louder.

  “I don’t know what to do, Rachel.”

  “You take the night off and figure it out tomorrow. You’re exhausted. Even if you found out where Riley was, going after him right away would just get you and anyone you took with you killed.”

  Ben grunted, then said something unintelligible.

  “Ben,” Rachel hissed.

  “What?” he said, voice raising.

  My cheeks warmed. I shouldn’t be listening to this. Clearly, they thought everyone else was asleep. And if they hadn’t yet made their way upstairs for the night, there was no way they’d know I’d been with Shawn.

  “It’s not like any of this is our fault, Rachel. This, all of it, started when she joined the team. Giyano’s involved with all of us. This can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Ben.”

  “What? She’s admitted to working with demons before.”

  “Because Jaffrin half-ordered her to keep tabs on the dharksa trade.”

  My jaw clenched. Ben wasn’t wrong, but he was in no way right either. I bit my tongue to keep from defending myself. Why the hell was I still standing here, anyway?

  “And who knows what else happened on the side. Just like with Kinder. And Giyano. None of us were there; no one was close enough to hear for sure. She went to him so many times, Rachel. Krystin went to her father’s murderer for answers and guidance instead of her own team. That’s what we’re here for. If not to be friends, then to at least be teammates. But she went and threw that in all of our faces.”

  “Maybe because we didn’t exactly trust her.”

  “Since when are you worried about that?”

  A silence filled their conversation, long enough that I stopped breathing. Did I make a sound? Did they know I was here?

  But then Rachel said, “Because of Kinder.”

  “What about Kinder?”

  “She wants to help Riley, right? And she was trying to help Krystin.”

  “No, she was trying to use Krystin as a magik bomb to blow Cianza Boston.”

  “In order to keep the Fire Circle from using her as a weapon, in Kinder’s own way.”

  Another lull of silence. I crept closer. Where was this conversation going?

  A door creaked opened behind me and Shawn tiptoed out.

  “What?” he asked.

  I put my fingers to my lips and pointed down the stairs. His eyebrows knitted together, but he listened.

  “Kinder said she wanted to keep Krystin from being used as a weapon,” Rachel said. “It’s because of the Alzan power inside of her. Shawn, too.”

  “And he’s an Ember witch, so basically our team is surrounded by demons,” Ben said, but I could tell he didn’t really mean it. His tone was wide, sarcastic, but his hatred of demons remained an undercurrent.

  “They’re part of our team,” Rachel snapped.

  Ben chuckled darkly. “Our team is me, you, and Nate. You’re the only ones I can count on right now. And if Kinder’s so worried about the Circles using Krystin and Shawn, then maybe she shouldn’t have tried to do the same thing. And maybe she should have killed Giyano and kept him from doing it, too. Because he’s back, Rachel. And he’s either going to kill all five of us or lead Lady Azar here to do it herself.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know who I want on this team anymore,” Ben said. “But I can’t trust Krystin and Shawn. Not after everything.”

  I glanced up at Shawn, fire sparking in my veins and lighting up my fingertips. “Assholes. We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Black and white, Krystin,” Shawn said, grabbing my hand that’d started to flame. “Remember that they see the world that way. We don’t.”

  “Fuck them.” I tore my hand out of his grip and hurried down the hall to my room. I hadn’t brought much when I’d joined the team and hadn’t gotten anything new before being imprisoned. Everything I owned remained inside a single backpack except for a shirt or two strewn on my bed.

  I collected them and shoved the pack onto my shoulders before speeding past Shawn on my way down the stairs. He followed but didn’t try stopping me as I descended into the living room to where Ben and Rachel stood, eyes wide and questioning.

  “Yeah, I heard it all,” I said, planting my feet where I stood. “Don’t worry; I’ll make it easy for you. Shawn, are you coming with me?”

  “You—you can’t just leave,” Rachel said. “Jaffrin ordered us to stay and—”

  “And what?” My voice was full of venom and I didn’t care. “Wait for him to put me back in Ether Circle Prison at Ben’s recommendation? No, thank you. I’ll fulfill my destiny on my own and be out of the Fire Circle’s territory by sunrise.”

  “We can’t,” Shawn said. “We made a deal.”

  “Deal?” Ben asked, looking between us. “What kind of deal?”

  “Shawn here wanted to stay long enough to ensure you and the others—your real team—weren’t also imprisoned for everything, but now I sort of just don’t care.” I spun on Shawn. “Are you coming or not? I can’t fulfill the prophecy without you, but I sure as hell don’t have to stick around any longer either. We can always meet up when the final conflict starts and pray we’re in time.”

  He leveled me with a look. “You’re being—”

  “Don’t. Not after the last few days. I thought we were on the same page.” Maybe I just reacted differently to being shoved into a corner. “I’m done. I always knew putting me on a team was a bad idea. I was trained to hunt alone and I’ll stay a freelancer. That’s fine by me.”

  I wrapped a hand around one of the backpack straps and made for the door. As soon as my fingers brushed the door knob, the door flew open, knocking me back a few feet.

  The Ether Head Circle twins and a group of Fire Circle police stood on the other side.

  Chapter 19

  BEN

  Alexander and Iris stepped forward first, their glowing hands in the air. I couldn’t tell from where I stood how many Fire Circle police officers were on the other side of the door, but for this kind of very public operation, they might have tried to clear the whole street.

  “What the hell is going on?” I shouted over them.

  “We�
��re here to take Krystin Blackwood back into custody,” Iris said, raising her glowing palms.

  Krystin had backpedaled away from the door, but she now stood, frozen. No, immobile thanks to whatever Iris was doing to her. Krystin’s eyes met mine, though they reflected no panic or plea for help. She really was done with us. With the Fire Circle. With me.

  I didn’t know how I felt about that.

  “On what grounds?” I asked.

  “Like it fucking matters,” Krystin spat. The muscles in her arms flexed as though she were trying to break free.

  Shit. Whatever hold they had on her was powerful. Too powerful.

  Alexander cast a disapproving look at me. “While your team was supposed to be at the house under Jaffrin’s orders, Ms. Blackwood departed and went hunting again. For other Hunters this time.”

  I shot another glare at Krystin. “Tell me that’s not true.”

  “Would you even believe me?” she hissed.

  Shawn walked between me and the Ether Head Circle twins, placing himself as a barrier between them and Krystin. He didn’t wear a crystal around his neck like he had before we’d broken Krystin out of prison, which meant he was at full magik capacity. Would he really stop them from taking her?

  “Krystin was with me,” Shawn said. “We’ve been here the whole time, as ordered.”

  “I heard them talking,” Nate said. “I vouch for her too.”

  Yeah, and she’d heard me talking to Rachel about how no one trusted her anymore. Shawn too, maybe. I couldn’t tell if his loyalties lay with the team and the Fire Circle or with Krystin. In the end, it might not matter. This whole situation was fucked from the very beginning.

  Iris’s eyes narrowed. “Then how do you explain this?”

  The brigade of Fire Circle police just beyond our door separated long enough for two of them to escort a third person past the threshold of our house and into our living room. Krystin’s gaze jumped over her shoulder and into the kitchen. Was she hoping to escape somehow?

  “Holy hell,” Shawn exclaimed.

  I looked back to the person the Fire Circle police had ushered in. To Krystin. Long, brown hair, blue eyes. Wicked smirk. Mark on her hand from Giyano.