The Changed: Hunter Circles Series Book Three

by Jessica Gunn

  “What in the hell?” I gasped, a hand to my mouth. “What did you do?”

  Kinder stood behind the body, a hand on her hip. “I told you, I took care of your problem.” She gripped on to the body’s hair and lifted their head. “This is the person causing all of your problems lately.”

  My stomach roiled as I took in the beaten, scarred face of Zanka. Giyano’s rival and Lady Azar’s newest toy. Only now he was dead… at Kinder’s hand? “I don’t understand.”

  She let go of his hair and his head fell back to his chest with disgusting ease. “His interference was going to get you locked away for life. Or dead. And as we’ve previously discussed, while I don’t particularly like you or the Fire Circle, I do like power being balanced. Specifically, the power at Alzan. If you’re locked away, Ben’s son isn’t saved. And if he isn’t saved, if he’s not trained on how to keep the Power from eating him alive, my daughter wins. Alzan falls. And so does the world.”

  My eyes narrowed. “And you, what, don’t get to exact your revenge? That’s so petty in comparison.”

  She tsked me, a finger raised. “Now, now. I don’t think you’re in any position to be calling something petty.”

  “Fuck you.” I backpedaled, looking for a door. There was one directly behind me, but when I went to open it, a shockwave of magik slammed into me, sending me careening across the room. I landed with a hard thud against the wooden floorboards.

  Kinder sighed loudly. “I thought you would have thanked me for taking care of Zanka for you since the mentor you love so much was incapable of doing so.”

  “Leave Giyano out of this,” I hissed.

  “Why do you defend him?”

  Because he’s the only one who’s never lied to me. It was the first answer that came to mind. My only answer. But I didn’t voice it. It wasn’t logical and it sure as hell wouldn’t help my situation either, even if it was Kinder I was talking to and not the Ether Head Circle.

  “You and I aren’t so different,” Kinder said, staring me down. “And because of what you are, I did not want the Fire Circle doing to you what they did to me.”

  “Is that why you showed it all in a vision?” It was horrible, what I’d seen. And if I didn’t know the Circles’ history with the Power and the individuals who’d had it, I didn’t know that I would have believed her. I thought only Darkness was capable of treating its citizens like that.

  Kinder nodded. “My daughter is not the only individual fascinated by the power of cianzas, by what they’re capable of doing. While the Fire Circle was one of many that hunted down people with the Power, I was the only one they allowed to get close enough that, when my magik was revealed to them, they didn’t kill me. The Circles have an unfortunate desire for tipping the balance of power in this universe toward Good, but they have such little understanding of what occurred during the Split.”

  “When Aloysius broke off from the Entity?” I almost asked how she knew all of this, too, but then I remembered: Kinder was one of the original Old Ones. She’d been in ancient Mesopotamia long enough to see the pyramids built.

  Kinder nodded like a teacher proud of a student finally obtaining a basic understanding of something. “Yes. You see, the balance of power has always been in his favor, but only minutely. He’s always had a head start, though a small one. The Hunter Circles believe that if they simply kill enough of us demons, if they train you and other Hunters to believe the war is black and white, good and evil, that eventually the power balance will tip toward the Powers.”

  “And they’re wrong?”

  Kinder gazed at me, a zealous stare, intense and somber. “Cianzas are weapons, Krystin. And only those with the Power or no magik at all can hope to get close enough to use them as they’re meant to be used. But the problem is, no singular magik is inherently both good and evil at the same time. Those with the Power come close, which is why Jaffrin didn’t have Riley killed the day he was born. Or the day you returned with him from my daughter’s lair.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Jaffrin had no idea Riley had the Power until I told him about it.”

  Kinder laughed and walked away from Zanka’s body. “Is that what he told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And since when do you or your team trust Jaffrin?”

  I didn’t answer. It should have been obvious to anyone who knew me.

  “Yes, Jaffrin knew. So did the Ether Head Circle. Aloysius. Lady Azar. No one with the Power has been born in hundreds of years, Krystin. It was not an event that went unnoticed.”

  Ashbel. He’d had a vision of me and Shawn having Alzanian magik, so maybe he’d seen Riley, too. Maybe he was the reason Giyano knew, and if he told Lady Azar…

  No. It couldn’t be that straightforward. Giyano had said he’d stayed in Shadow Crest after following her orders to take Riley because he’d wanted to keep him safe. Which meant that, if he’d known before taking him that Riley would one day have the Power, he never would have brought him to Lady Azar.

  “How did everyone know?” I asked. “What are we missing here?”

  Kinder stopped pacing and turned to me. “You’re missing all the shades of gray you never knew existed. Everyone knew because when Ben—”

  The door to the building burst open with a crack of lightning that stood the hairs of my arms on end. Splinters of wood flew through the air, sticking into me even as I rolled out of the way. I came up short, magik-less, with my arms over my face. In charged Ben and the rest of my old team, magik at the ready. Except where Shawn’s aura should have blazed wilder than even Ben’s and Rachel’s, he no longer had any. His aura had gone dark.

  Ben’s gaze found mine, hard and unforgiving. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “It’s not what it looks like—”

  “Enough!” he said and let loose a strike of lightning that flew directly at me.

  Chapter 22

  BEN

  My lightning almost acted of its own accord, shooting out from my fingers directly at Krystin. Nate threw a solid block of ether headed right for Kinder. She dodged, coming up from the roll with a knife in hand that matched the one Shawn held.

  Why fight us with a knife? Maybe she’d lost an ability and hadn’t had time to steal one of Krystin’s. But the fact that it was a Fire Circle knife intrigued me the most.

  “Ben, don’t!” Krystin shouted, tearing me away from my thoughts. “She knows how Lady Azar knew about Riley!”

  “What?” I asked. Had Krystin come here to collect more information? How’d something like that come up in conversation in the first place?

  “Enough!” Rachel yelled, pulling water out of the sack on her back and flowing it up her arms and outward, like gigantic tentacles, the ends of which turned into ice picks. “This ends tonight.”

  Rachel sent the tentacles at Kinder. She cried out as they whipped her around, slicing Kinder’s skin open where the ice connected. Kinder fought them, but every swing bounced off the surface of Rachel’s attack. A knife against water was not effective.

  I turned on Krystin with Shawn right behind me. He lifted a hand and called to her. “Krystin, please. Let us help you.”

  “I don’t need—you don’t understand.” Her gaze flickered between us and Kinder. “She knows everything. You can’t kill her. She knows why the Hunter Circles need us, Shawn. Beyond Alzan. It’s about cianzas—it always has been.”

  “Then come with us,” I said. “And cooperate.” I had no intention of bringing her back to the Fire Circle without knowing what the hell the truth was.

  That’s when I saw the dead body in the chair before Krystin. Zanka.

  Krystin looked up at me and said, “Kinder killed him. He’s been working some sort of magik to impersonate me and Giyano. To kill Hunters and witches and frame the both of us, to get me put back in jail and to steal Riley away. To make it so there was no way you could try to save him from Lady Azar again.”

  Kinder laughed as she traded blows with Rachel’s water tentacles. “Imp
ersonate? No, dear Krystin. That’s not what his power was.” She flung the knife at Rachel, who didn’t see it in time. Rachel cried out as it imbedded itself into her shoulder with a sickening sound.

  Nate lunged in front of Rachel, but Kinder stopped her attack. The rest of us stood, magik ready as Kinder stalked back toward Krystin. Shawn lifted his knife and fell into a ready stance. I never cared before about how well he’d fare in a demon fight, way back before he revealed his magik. But something about tonight had wrapped my stomach in knots.

  “Don’t!” Nate shouted. “Stay away from her.”

  “Giyano should have killed you when he had the chance,” Rachel spat, breathing heavily and clutching her bleeding shoulder, the sight of which drew lightning in a whip around my body. A shield of it grew so full that sparks and tiny strikes bounced off the floor and nearby wall.

  “Attack!” I ordered my team, sending lightning directly at Kinder. Rachel followed up with one arm becoming a long water-tentacle that thrashed around the room. Nate jumped in, sending spike after spike of ether as Shawn ran for Krystin.

  Kinder ducked behind the chair holding Zanka’s body, dodging the attacks with a speed I didn’t think possible. Maybe that was somehow a magik she’d stolen. But not much was faster than lightning; I just had to hit her.

  As I threw strikes her way, I saw Shawn try to help Krystin up, but once he had, she shoved him away.

  “Go,” she said. “Get someplace away from here before the Fire Circle shows up and arrests us all.” She was still trying to protect Shawn after all of this. My heart sank, knowing for good we’d lost her. And it was my fault.

  Kinder zoomed past me, untouched by everyone’s attacks, and held Krystin by her neck How they hell had she dodged all of our magik?

  “Put her down!” Shawn said. “She’s not a tool you can use for your revenge.”

  “No,” Kinder said as she smiled at Krystin. “You’re not a tool to be used, are you? You know the truth.”

  Krystin wrapped her hands around Kinder’s arm. “I don’t… know anything.”

  “That’s not true and you know it. They will use you and you will be too weak to fight back. That I’ve learned about you, Krystin. So how about we have one more go, you and I?” Kinder squeezed Krystin’s neck.

  Krystin’s eyes went wide, then flashed white as Kinder stole her magik. Only Krystin didn’t look winded or otherwise affected like she should have. She looked like there’d been no pain at all.

  Kinder leveled Krystin with a stare. “You’re going to listen to me, aren’t you, Krystin?”

  She nodded, her brow furrowing. “Yes.”

  “Good. Zanka’s power wasn’t imitation, but persuasion. I stole it just before killing him, hoping it’d become useful for the twenty-four hours it was in my possession. Luckily for me, it has.” She lowered her voice, just loud enough for me to hear. “You’re going to come with me and together we will take down the Fire Circle and all of Boston. And then we will dispose of my power-hungry daughter.”

  Krystin nodded. “Yes. Teleportante.”

  In the next instant, they were gone.

  “What the hell?” Rachel asked.

  I rushed to her side and examined her wound. She winced as my fingers made contact, but despite the blood and torn skin, the wound looked relatively okay. “We need to get you to a doctor.”

  “We need to get to Headquarters,” Nate snapped. “They’re going to destroy the building and everyone inside.”

  “Kinder is—Krystin won’t,” Shawn argued.

  I spun on him. “It doesn’t look like she has a fucking choice. Don’t you see? That must be what’s been going on this entire time. Zanka and Giyano—they turned Krystin with that persuasion magik.”

  Shawn shook his head. “No, I think Zanka used it on Giyano, to force him to do Zanka’s bidding, so Giyano would be caught and Krystin would be framed.”

  “Does it matter anymore?” Rachel cried. Her eyes had welled up, but I wasn’t sure if that was from the knife wound or what had happened over the last half hour. She pulled the knife out of her shoulder in her next breath, shouting in pain. “As long as Kinder has her, Krystin’s a danger to everyone she comes into contact with. Just like at that Hydron operation three months ago.”

  My mind twisted with all the scenarios and memories, the worry and fear. Krystin was under Kinder’s control, and the two of them both had magik the likes of which could burn entire cities.

  Which was exactly what Kinder had been planning for centuries.

  “We need to go,” I said to Shawn. “Nate, take Rachel to the hospital. Get her checked out.”

  Rachel kicked me in the shin and glared up at me. I winced. “Absolutely not. I’m coming with you. She was my friend too. You’ll need all of us to get through to her. Especially if Zanka’s magik was strong enough to turn even Giyano.”

  I looked over my shoulder to Zanka’s dead body. “It wasn’t strong enough, apparently.”

  Shawn pulled a pack of cedo matches from his pocket and burned one on Zanka. “We need to go. Now. Before anyone else gets hurt.”

  Assuming there was anyone left alive.

  Chapter 23

  KRYSTIN

  Kinder and I teleported into the foyer of Fire Circle Headquarters, a rage burning inside of me so strongly, I thought I was actually on fire. I looked down to my chest and found no flames.

  “Right,” Kinder said as she stepped closer to me. “Can’t have you defenseless, can we?” She scooped a finger into the front pocket of my jeans and picked out the crystal I’d bound my magik into not twenty minutes ago. “Time to get your magik back, dear.”

  Kinder threw it to the ground and crushed it beneath her feet. A rush of comforting warmth flooded me as my magik returned, fire instantly lighting at each fingertip.

  “There we go,” Kinder said as she grabbed hold of my arm. “Now, quick before your team shows up. I want you to sneak into your Leader’s office. At the back, in a safe older than Boston itself, is a stone made from frozen raw magik. Take it. I will watch your back.”

  A small, nagging part of my mind told me to run away, palms to my ears so I couldn’t hear her words anymore. But it was like some spell had settled over me, a whispering to listen. “I will. But why not take it yourself?”

  Kinder’s grip on my arm tightened and a pleasurable sensation rushed over me. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to please Kinder. To show her she was right about me and my magik. That she was right about the Fire Circle’s every intention.

  “It is meant for you,” Kinder said. “So take it. Steal the stone that should be yours.”

  Two stones that once were one, broken by the Powers but meant for Daughter and Son.

  Holy hell. Jaffrin had had at least one of those stones the entire time?

  My eyes narrowed, jaw locking. “Done. I’ll be back in a second.”

  That arrogant, hypocritical, self-serving bastard. If he’d known the whole time that the key to Shawn’s and my shared power was right beneath his fingers, if he’d known the danger we and the rest of the world were in without that Alzanian magik, why the hell had he kept it hidden for so long?

  Kinder is right. And everything today, for the last few days, had pointed in that direction.

  I laughed as I walked from the empty foyer into the main lobby where Lissandra sat behind her desk, like every normal day at Fire Circle Headquarters. Kinder was right. Giyano had been right. All the demons had always been right. And those from Good, the Circles and Jaffrin and Ben, they’d all be wrong. Liars. Cowards.

  Good and Evil, those sides we took and those titles we gave ourselves, they meant nothing. The world wasn’t shades of gray—it was levels of power. And this time, I was on top.

  Kinder followed behind me but stopped when I did in front of Lissandra’s desk.

  “K-Krystin?” Lissandra asked, staring up at me with scared eyes.

  “Tell Jaffrin he needs to speak with me right away.” I swiped the ai
r in front of me, lighting her desk on fire.

  Lissandra backpedaled away from her desk, uttering a teleportante to escape. But her teleporting shadow seemed to bounce off the ceiling. She landed on the floor at top speed, crying out at the impact.

  I looked over my shoulder at Kinder. “What did you do?”

  Kinder grinned evilly and held up another stone. “There are more vessels for power than those like me and Riley. Never you mind what I have done to ensure this mission’s success. Attack whoever you need to in order to get to that stone.”

  Another wave of desire washed over me. Follow her orders, a voice whispered to me. I leaned down and punched Lissandra across the face, knocking her out cold.

  “Hey!” a Hunter shouted, no one I recognized. “What the—?”

  I spun on him, a fireball in my hand, and let it loose. He made no move to stop it—he must not have had magik—and tried to dodge. Instead, I shot another his way, a bright blue this time, and he went up in flames.

  Kinder laughed at the sounds of his pain and death, walking behind me as I made my way to the stairs. “The Fire Circle shall pay for what it’s done to us!”

  I shot a fireball at every Hunter we passed, a giddy happiness rising inside of me. Revenge at last. Let’s see them control me now.

  But even as I thought those words, I knew they weren’t my own. Kinder, and her will, had seeped into every part of me.

  And I was just along for the revenge-driven ride.

  Chapter 24

  BEN

  My teleportation landing knocked the wind out of me as my back and side slammed against hard stone. Someone screamed, their wail piercing my ears.

  “They just appeared out of nowhere!” they shouted.

  My blurry vision started to clear, a mishmash of grays and blacks turning into the outside facade of Fire Circle Headquarters—the one people saw until they went inside. A skyscraper rose before my eyes, many stories tall.