Hunter Circles Series Books 1-3: An Urban Fantasy Box Set

by Jessica Gunn

  “Shadow Crest is taunting me again,” I said, fists clenching. “They wanted me to trade a ‘her’ for Riley. I knew it was a trap, but I bit. But Riley wasn’t there.” He never is.

  Jaffrin slid his chair forward so the arms touched his desk, as if he felt a need to restrain himself. “But?”

  I swallowed hard. “Giyano was there. He’s the one who saved Krystin from being wraithed to death.”

  Jaffrin’s eyes hardened. “I see.”

  “See what?” she asked, looking down at her hands. “Are you saying our issues are connected?”

  “Possibly,” Jaffrin said. “Although I’m not sure what use Giyano would have saving you from another demon.”

  “Who is this ‘Giyano’ anyway?” she asked. “I know he murdered my father, and Nate’s parents, and obviously he’s tied to that ‘Riley’ on the video, but to what end?”

  I said nothing. She didn’t need to know that Riley was my son, not yet. Maybe not ever. I was a fool. If Giyano had resurfaced, things were bad. Riley might already be—

  No. Stop thinking those things.

  “It’s complicated,” I said at the same time Jaffrin said, “He’s a powerful demon affiliated with Shadow Crest. Lady Azar saved him from certain death a thousand years ago, turned him, and has held sway over him ever since.”

  “He’s also the demon that killed my father,” she said through gritted teeth. When she looked up at Jaffrin, it wasn’t with unsure features like I’d expected from her downward gaze. Her blue eyes were on fire. “I recognized his tattoo and his magik. Did you know?”

  “Know?” Jaffrin asked.

  Krystin stood from her chair, the legs sliding along the wooden floor with a screech. “Did you know that you put me on a team with people who are tied to the same demon that killed my father—sir?”

  I closed my eyes. Apparently bucking against authority, or anyone and anything that stood in her way, was simply Krystin’s personality. Part of me admired her for giving Jaffrin the middle finger. But the other part of me, the leader side, knew that if Krystin wouldn’t respect and listen to him, she’d never follow me.

  And that might have been fine, except for what she’d just said.

  “That’s twisted.” I turned to Krystin. “What’s the deal with Giyano being very specific about not hurting you? About the other demon being way in over his head?”

  “That’s complicated,” she snapped. “Isn’t it, sir?”

  Jaffrin had somehow managed to not react at all to Krystin’s outburst, not even a raised eyebrow or hitched breath. But to her question, the tension from his body melted. “To some degree, yes. To others, no.”

  Krystin rolled her eyes and paced away from Jaffrin. “I knew it wouldn’t be safe for me to be on a team, Jaffrin. And my mother knew it wouldn’t be safe for me in the Fire Circle. And yet you two insisted on forming my fucking life into this Hunter-based paradigm. Congrats. All those years of keeping me on a leash were for nothing.”

  “And yet here we are,” he said as he stood too. I followed suit. “You’re safer with these Hunters than on your own. Their magik should conceal yours, and you can teach them to be as talented in their own abilities as you are in yours.”

  “But why? Why risk it?”

  Jaffrin’s eyes flared. “Because I need a magikal failsafe to protect this Circle from the coming war, Krystin. You know that. You’ve known that your entire career with us. It’s no coincidence the Fire Circle has more magik-enabled Hunters than all of the other Circles combined.”

  “Aside from the Ether Circle,” she snapped.

  “Yes,” he said, his face hardened. “Except them. And they’re not happy about it. But with the prophecy and Cianza Boston, I need magik-enhanced Hunters.”

  “Except Shadow Crest—”

  “Never mind Shadow Crest,” he spat. “They’re dangerous, but they’re not stupid.”

  “Do I get to know what you’re both talking about, or is your connection to Giyano not important enough to share?” I asked. Not that Krystin knew about Riley yet beyond the incident this morning. I didn’t like talking about it, much less to strangers. Which Krystin was. She might also be a Hunter, and she might also dislike Jaffrin, but beyond that, I didn’t trust her. Not as a person and definitely not on my team—especially now that she was connected to that asshole.

  “Giyano… the guy who killed my father,” Krystin explained. To Jaffrin, she said, “At Arnie’s this morning he stepped in to tell the wraith demon to back off. He alluded to my… special circumstances.” Her voice and gaze dropped like she were ashamed of those “circumstances.” But then she gritted her teeth, her jaw working hard, and I realized that she was angry about it. Whatever it was.

  “And what might those be?” I asked. “Are they why Giyano went after your father?” If that was the case, at least she knew. I hadn’t the faintest idea what had made Giyano and Shadow Crest want to take Riley. He’d only been only a few weeks old when they’d attacked me in the park—in broad daylight.

  What could Riley, an infant, possibly possess that was that important to Lady Azar, Darkness’s second heir? If it was that I was a lightning-elemental user and that Riley might one day be, too, at least that was an explanation. But I wasn’t super powerful, and no one else in my family besides Rachel had magik.

  Krystin nodded in tight motions. Strained. “Probably. No one knows for sure, least of all my mother.”

  “I’d bet on it being true. Giyano might have known, which means Shadow Crest might, too.” Jaffrin sighed. “This is concerning.”

  “You think?” she quipped. “It’s not like you guys kept the prophecy a fucking secret. I knew this would happen. I knew becoming a Fire Circle Hunter was a terrible idea.”

  Hello, insubordination. “Krystin—”

  She cut me off with a swipe of her hand through the air. “I get it—whatever Giyano is to you and that guy from the video, I get it.”

  Fire flared behind my eyes. “I highly doubt that.”

  Jaffrin stood, a referee. “The point is that we have to be careful. You especially, Krystin.”

  “Yeah, the cianza, I know,” she said. “I’ll stay out of the downtown area for the next few days. I already felt the magik tipping when we were at the second attack scene the other night.”

  “You’ll have to stay out of the cianza’s area for weeks,” Jaffrin said. “Or longer.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Why Krystin? We all have normal magik and we’re fine as long as we don’t use it over the cianza.”

  Krystin lifted her eyebrows, her lips gnashed between her teeth. She nodded at Jaffrin and ignored me. “Understood.”

  “As for why Krystin needs to take those precautions,” Jaffrin said to me. “We need to talk.” He sat down and gestured for us to do the same. When we had, he continued, “We didn’t cover it in your training—anyone’s, actually—but on the off chance, do you know what Alzan is?”

  I wracked my memory. The name didn’t ring a bell, but that didn’t mean much. I’d always been better at memorizing the other football team’s offensive and defensive lines than my coursework. “No.”

  “It’s supposedly some old city the Powers let die off thousands of years ago,” Krystin said. “Something about Darkness coming in and destroying it. And rather than help Alzan and its citizens out, the Powers left them behind.”

  “We don’t know that they all died that day,” Jaffrin corrected. “The city was removed from this plane of existence before the end of the battle. Anything is possible now.”

  “Plane of existence?” I knew the Powers were our equivalent to Aloysius and the higher-level branches of Darkness’s Empire. “I thought the Powers lived on the only one other than ours.”

  Jaffrin shook his head. “Apparently not.”

  “And why wasn’t Alzan included in training?”

  “Because it’s supposed to be nothing more than a myth, this battle over magik,” Krystin said. “A joke. A rumor we whisper after a ni
ght of drinking. Unfortunately for us, I’m proof it’s not.”

  What? That didn’t make sense. “I don’t get what you’re saying.” Was she some sort of half-human sent by the Powers? Half-humans didn’t exist. You either had normal magik and were on the side of the Powers, or your magik had been tainted by Darkness’s Empire and you were a demon. Black and white. There was no grey.

  Krystin heaved a sigh. “There’s a prophecy that some stuffy Celtic druids made up about how Alzan still exists, its citizens are still alive, and that one day, two will rise up to save Alzan again from a certain shadowy destruction. That shadow is probably Darkness and, supposedly, I’m one of those two lucky fools who gets to risk their life for something I don’t even know about. No one does. Alzan was lost so long ago, only the Powers remember—and you’d be hard-pressed to find them helping with just about anything these days.”

  I mean, I knew the general story about how the Circles had proven our half of the world to be created. Long ago, there was one giant consciousness. Everything inside it shared the same form, power, thoughts—everything. Then one day Aloysius got all high and mighty and decided he wanted his own castle to lord over, so he broke off, adopted dark magik, and created his Empire of Darkness. Good—what was left after the Split—formed three different beings and organizations: the Hunter Circles, the witch lines, and the Powers. And if what Krystin said was true, was Alzan some other offshoot?

  “Aren’t the witch lines directly tied to the Powers?” I asked. It was the only response I could give. Lost cities, ancient wars. They meant little to me. I’d never been able to wrap my head around history like that. But if the Powers were involved in protecting something Darkness wanted for themselves, then it had to be big.

  Krystin nodded. “Yeah. Doesn’t mean they talk to us any more than they do the Circles. Not my family, anyway.”

  Silence swept the room as I digested what they’d said. “So Giyano wants you because you’re supposed to save Alzan?”

  “He likely wants her power to open the path to the city himself, though that’s not how it works,” Jaffrin said. “Or he wants to use Krystin’s power to sway Cianza Alzan to evil’s side, to dark magik.”

  “And Boston’s, too,” she said. “They’re neutral without influence. I mean, why else would this Giyano keep me alive when the wraith demon had almost killed me if it’s not about Alzan and the cianza?”

  “We wouldn’t have let that happen,” I said.

  “You were frozen solid.”

  “Because of Giyano,” I said. “If he hadn’t been there, we’d have been able to take the wraith.”

  Krystin nodded, but the frown on her face said she wasn’t so sure. Truth be told, neither was I. I didn’t know anything anymore, other than Giyano had Riley and I was no closer to getting him home and making him safe. Failure curled deep within my gut and began rotting my insides.

  Jaffrin stood, resting his fingertips on his desk. “We need to be careful for now. With All Hallows’ Eve right around the corner, this area of the country will be lit up with danger and a turn of magik. Both Cianza Boston and Salem itself will have to be under watch. Once we get through next week we can figure out a way to track down Giyano and stop any plans he has for Alzan.”

  “Because that’ll end well,” I said.

  Jaffrin leveled me with a commanding look.

  “Come on, he mutilated those bodies to send the Fire Circle a welcome message. He’s back in town on Shadow Crest’s behalf and who knows what they’re planning. The guy’s a living legend. And with Shadow Crest behind him…”

  “Let’s get through All Hallows’ Eve first,” Jaffrin said. “One bridge at a time.”

  Krystin clamped down her jaw. She was obviously not happy and neither was I. Jaffrin had basically dropped a bunch of bad news on us, sprinkled it with the truth about Krystin, and what—expected us to just wait to go after Giyano?

  Krystin turned to me. I met her gaze and nodded in a small, barely visible motion. We’d have to wait to sort this out. But I’d already been waiting long enough to find my son and get him back.

  I didn’t know how much more waiting I had in me.

  CHAPTER 9

  KRYSTIN

  I clenched my fists but didn’t speak. Anything I had to say would bounce right off of Jaffrin’s arrogant face. The worst part was: he wasn’t wrong.

  Ben and I stalked to the door with angry steps, but before we got through to the hallway, Jaffrin cleared his throat.

  “Krystin?” Jaffrin asked. “Can you please stay for a moment? I’d like to discuss something with you.”

  I glanced at Ben. A dark expression twisted his face into a dark, hard visage. It was good to know that at the very least, there was one thing we both agreed on: neither of us particularly trusted Jaffrin. “Go. I’ll catch up with you in a second.”

  Ben nodded and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  I turned back to Jaffrin. “I’ll stay off Cianza Boston. I know I shouldn’t have been that close the other night. The earth didn’t shake or anything, but I did feel the magik balance start to shift.”

  Jaffrin settled into his black leather desk chair and folded his hands in front of him. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  My gut hollowed. He had another one-off mission for me, that had to be it. “What’s the point of putting me on a team if you’re just going to send me on more solo jobs?”

  “You’re on a team because I need you to be. That was the deal I made with your mother.”

  I bit my tongue. The Blackwoods hadn’t gotten along with the Fire Circle since some of my ancestors had been “accidentally” burned at the stake in Salem. The Circles had covered up their involvement, sure, just like they had with many of those witch trial deaths. But bad blood didn’t evaporate overnight.

  Jaffrin let out a sigh then shifted in his seat. “I apologize. That rudeness was uncalled for.”

  Pretty sure that’s your normal, actually. I didn’t dare speak the words, though. Being one half of a prophesized savior duo didn’t excuse me enough to risk total insubordination. “I need to tell the rest of the team about the prophecy if you’re planning on keeping me assigned to them.”

  “I am.”

  “Good. Then I’ll tell them today.”

  “And risk their lives by letting them know?”

  I clenched my fists tight at my sides. “They’re in danger by being associated with me. The entire Fire Circle is. I mean—god, do you realize what you’ve done by putting me on a team that’s linked to Giyano? Especially now that you admit he killed my father because of this fucking stupid destiny of mine?”

  Jaffrin shot out of his chair and jabbed a finger toward me. “It is not a ‘stupid’ destiny, Krystin. You and whoever the Son named in that prophecy is are the last and possibly only line of defense for Alzan in the final war. And the city’s center, Cianza Alzan, is the size of North America. If that is swayed and explodes, the cianza will destroy this plane of existence right along with Alzan’s.”

  I crossed my arms and fell back into an admittedly arrogant stance, my hip pointed out. “And whose shitty design idea was that, huh? Clearly not theirs. And last I checked, we didn’t know enough about cianzas to be one hundred percent sure they weren’t manmade. If anyone’s to blame, it’s the Powers. Not me. Not us. Not the Circles they left behind to clean up their mess.”

  Fury bounced behind my eyes, dancing and banging to escape. My words might have been over the top, but I couldn’t let this go any further. Like it or not, Jaffrin was the Leader of the Fire Circle. My Leader. My boss.

  For now.

  Jaffrin’s steady eyes found mine. The coldness in them frosted my breath, stopping it entirely. “Need I remind you that no matter what you say or what crimes you commit in the name of… What did you call it? Gleaning information about Darkness from demon haunts? Despite all of that, you’re still the Daughter named in the prophecy. You are one half of the power that will s
ave Alzan when the war comes. And don’t you fool yourself, Krystin. It is coming. The Alzan prophecy, Shadow Crest’s sudden resurgence, it’s not a coincidence. Our Circle has always been at the center of the Good and Evil conflict. Where will you be when it occurs?”

  “Likely next to you, still attached to your leash,” I spat out before even a second of clear thinking kicked in.

  Jaffrin chuckled once. “That ‘leash’ is the only thing that’s kept Giyano from coming back to finish the job all these years. If you want to run away now, I’m sure you’d at least get out of the city first before he hunts you down and disposes of you. And Alzan.”

  Given that he’d saved me last night from that water wraith demon, I highly doubted Giyano’s ultimate plan was to kill me. But there was no way to know that for sure.

  “I’m still playing your game, don’t worry,” I said. “Just know I’m aware it’s a game now.”

  “Good,” he said. “Train the team I assigned you to. Your team leader will need your assistance as well. You’re solely responsible for getting them up to speed regarding magik, for building their powers to its full potential, because when the ending of this war comes, they’ll be at Alzan with you. Their lives depend on yours.”

  “And what if they’re not ready?” I asked. Nate definitely would be. Rachel, too. But Ben… Ben couldn’t see past today’s source of blind fury, forget next week’s or anything further out than that. Besides, at some point Jaffrin was supposed to find the Son named in the prophecy and, given the way this was going, I’d probably have to train him, too.

  “Then they’ll die,” Jaffrin said without hesitation or remorse. “And it’ll be your fault. We need a magikal failsafe for this city, a secret weapon. Your team is it.”

  “How is it a secret if Shadow Crest and Lady Azar know about us?” I asked, an eyebrow raised.