Page 17 of Hunter

Ember nodded. “Thanks. I’ll bring you to whichever sites Mika chooses later?”

Kana nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on the hunter for now.”

“I appreciate it.” Ember glanced up at the remnants of the setting sun. “I’ll have Shannon stop by when he’s up, so you have some backup.”

Ember trotted off, Mika tight on his heels, and Kana turned to head inside. He stopped in his workroom to pick up one of the old spell books to read while he was waiting, and then settled into a chair in the guest room where Ary was laid out on the bed.

Chapter Seven

KANA HAD NO idea what time it was when Ary let out a low groan. The spell book was fascinating, and Kana had been completely engrossed from the first page. Layered spells as a magical tool solved so many issues Kana had run into throughout the years.

The spell on his cats was a perfect example. He wanted to protect them, and that protection required preventing them from being noticed and, if they were spotted, preventing the spotter from caring. Kana had added a concealment rune to the spell this time as well, to keep them extra hidden. However, the format of a spell circle lumped every aspect of the spell together in one circle.

With the layered version, Kana could set a base of just protection and then caveat that protection with further layers of everything else. In the case of this spell, Kana would only need one additional layer, but for something more complex, he could create as many layers as he had magic.

Kana understood why the practice of layering circles had been lost. He had only learned to cast circles without actually drawing them due to sheer necessity. Chalk was expensive, and a dry, flat surface suitable for spells hard to find when he had been homeless. If he wanted to cast magic back then, his choice had been a quick-set circle or nothing.

A layered spell required the ability to cast without needing to physically draw the circle. Kana could write the base layer of the spell in chalk, but to layer the spells, each circle must be exactly on top of each other. Any additional layers could only be drawn with magic.

He had no way of knowing whether all witches could easily learn the quick-set method, or if it was only strong witches like Kana who could do it. Plus, Samantha had cast her coercion spell without a circle at all, so there were definitely other ways to do magic that Kana hadn’t yet learned. He really wanted to learn about the spell circle using only the rune and no pentagram, like the one he had seen at the library, but his current book didn’t have anything about that. He would probably have to return to the library to learn that magic.

Ary groaned again, and this time lifted one hand to press his fingers against his temples. A second later his hand froze, and then his arm dropped to the bed so he could lean on his elbows and leverage himself up. He looked around wildly and immediately caught sight of Kana, sitting in the light from the reading lamp he had been using.

“Where am I? What did you do to me?”

Kana gently closed his book and set it on the reading table next to the lamp. “You are in a city called Schenectady, which is near Albany, in New York State,” he began, unsure of how much Ary would remember or when he had been put under the coercion spell. “You are in the local werewolf pack house, where we brought you after we freed you from a witch’s spell.”

“A witch’s spell,” Ary repeated slowly, as if he were parsing out the words so they made sense. Then his eyes went wide, and he gasped, “That secretary!”

Kana nodded. “Yeah. She’s a witch from the Seattle coven. Do you know why she wanted to come all the way out here?”

Ary grimaced and levered himself all the way up so he was sitting properly. “The hunter’s association keeps tabs on the covens too. We know her coven is dying out. None of the children born in the last ten years have had any powers at all, and our informants say the coven believes the goddess is punishing them for some sin they committed. The last I heard, they were going to cast a massive divination spell to try to find an answer, but then the vampires and werewolves started fighting here, and I was distracted by this mission.”

“So, the coven casts a divination, and somehow Samantha ends up here to put you under a coercion spell?” Kana asked, mostly thinking aloud.

“You know her name?” Ary asked, his eyes narrowing as he studied Kana. He quickly glanced to the side, where his spear leaned against the side of his bed, but then he froze and reached out with a shaking hand to pick it up. “What did you do to my spear?”

Kana grimaced. “I didn’t have time for finesse. Samantha was about to force you to attack us. When I broke the coercion spell, everything else broke too.”

“How? Our weapons are supposed to be unbreakable!”

“I used salt,” Kana said with a shrug but then shifted uncomfortably when Ary stared, his mouth hanging open slightly in surprise.

“You imbued magic into salt? Salt is supposed to protect against magic and magical creatures! What are you?” Ary shook his head. “No, don’t answer that. I can see you’re a witch even though you’re male.” He paused as some thought made his eyes open wide in surprise again. “Was one of your parents a hunter?”

A hunter? Kana slowly shook his head. His mother had definitely been part of the coven circle, but he didn’t know anything about his father. His parents had been killed when Kana was thirteen, which was old enough to know some things, like his mother’s role in the coven, but certainly not to know any deeply held secrets.

“I don’t think the coven would have accepted a hunter as my mother’s husband,” Kana finally said. “She was part of the inner circle, so my father must have been carefully chosen for her.”

However, Kana didn’t think his parents had been part of an arranged marriage. They had certainly seemed to love each other, or at least Kana remembered them that way. Every day, after they had died, Kana had been focused on surviving being a male with powers in a coven that refused to accept him.

“Can you not ask them?”

Kana shook his head. “They’re dead.”

Ary didn’t look surprised. “Hunters are prohibited from having children with witches. When they do, the children are capable of doing strange things with their power, such as imbuing salt with magic. Too many of those children abused their powers and had to be put down, so a union between a witch and a hunter was forbidden.”

Kana sucked in a breath. “Do you think my parents were killed?” All he knew about their deaths was that it had been a car accident, but no one had ever told him anything else about it. He had seen their bodies prior to the funeral, but they had been cleaned prior to cremation, so he hadn’t been able to identify a cause. Kana had scattered their ashes in the forest near his old home in the hopes their lingering magic would help the trees grow strong.

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