Page 24 of Hunter

The dust finally settled. Kana picked his way through the debris to check his cell, and smiled at the sight of all four walls collapsed into small bits of rubble. Kana had apparently hit foundation as dirt and roots from outside had made a nice pile along one wall. Kana could no longer see any trace of Mika’s cage.

“Upstairs?” he asked but didn’t wait for Mika and Sora to give their big-toothed grins. He hurried to the door, which opened into a set of stairs. Kana climbed upward quickly, the stairs groaning under Mika and Sora’s weight, but he paused to listen for any telltale noises or other signs that said someone was lying in wait on the other side of the door at the top.

I don’t smell anyone, Mika said.

Kana gathered more magic, ready to shape it into a shield spell, and thrust the door open. He needn’t have bothered. The kitchen he stepped into was completely empty, the seventies-green appliances rusted and the cabinets hanging at an angle. He could hear howling and a strange sort of chanting, and the awful screech as chalk was pressed too hard on a chalkboard.

The sun had set sometime recently, the barest red flare visible on the horizon out the windows overlooking the backyard. Two wolves were standing at the ready in the yard, and Kana knew if he rushed out the back door they would whisk him away to safety in moments. But that wouldn’t end the matter, nor could Kana provide Ember magical support if he was busy running away. Instead, Kana turned to the inside door, which was an old wooden swing-style door. He pushed through into what he assumed was a dining room, although without any furniture he couldn’t be sure. No one was in sight, so he continued through an arched door into a long hallway. To the left, Kana finally found the foyer and the front door, which was wide open and let Kana see the walkway and everyone standing outside. He hurried forward.

Ember was standing in the grass just beyond the doorway, an array of wolves in wolf form around him. The wolves dashed to and fro, growling and snarling, but not jumping forward. Ary and a man Kana didn’t recognize stood to Ember’s right. They were both twirling their spears in the air, and the stranger was chanting loudly in a language Kana didn’t know. Every so often one of their spears would suddenly flare with a burst of light that simply faded away after a second.

Chalk squealed, and Kana yanked his eyes away from Ember to look at the rest of the scene. Samantha was standing on the front porch, a handheld chalkboard in her left hand as she drew feverishly on it with her right. A second woman, who looked barely eighteen, drew on her own chalkboard, but she was slower than Samantha, and when she activated her spells, the flare of them impacting the hunters’ spears wasn’t as bright. A third woman lay facedown a few feet ahead, bleeding sluggishly from shallow slash marks on her arms. Her chalkboard was broken in three pieces and lay on the ground by her hand.

Samantha was the problem, and neutralizing her would stop everything. Ember could do it, Kana knew, but was no doubt waiting to hear Kana was safe before jumping in. Ary probably could too, but he seemed content to follow Ember’s lead. Which meant Kana was best placed to stop this before someone really got hurt.

“You think your paltry weapons will stop us for long?” Samantha shrieked as another spell flared and died against the hunters’ spears.

Kana could blast her with magic, knock her out just like she must have done to him, but when she woke she would just go back to her awful ways. There wouldn’t be anything to stop her from returning and trying to capture Kana again. No, Kana needed to do something much more permanent, like stopping her ability to cast magic entirely. But doing that would hurt her familiar too, and her dog didn’t deserve to be hurt just because its master was a terrible person. Still, if he did not cut off the magic completely, certainly Kana could craft a spell that would constrict her magic channels so only the barest trickle of power could slip through. She would maybe have just enough magic to light a candle, but not enough to kindle a full circle.

If he could complete the spell, that is.

Kana drew more magic from Mika and Sora, spooling it inside himself until Kana’s body was quaking from the pressure building inside. Five circles, Kana thought. One for each point on the pentagram. There wasn’t a rune for constriction, but there was one to bind. The binding rune was usually used in the ceremony to call a familiar, and it had been one of the runes carved into the walls around his cell. In fact, that gave Kana an idea. Samantha would still be connected to her familiar, so if she was patient, she could very slowly draw enough magic to cast a large spell. However, Kana adding a rune to drain any excess magic she gathered into the ground like the spell in the cell had done to Kana would prevent that.

There were also ways to write runes and circles that limited the power of the spell by adding certain flourishes. Instead of adding those flourishes to the runes, Kana added them to the actual circle. The circle was usually the boundary that kept spells from dangerously escaping a witch’s control, but Kana turned it into the actual rope to bind the spell to Samantha.

Only seconds had passed while Kana was building his circles. Samantha was frantically scribing another spell onto her chalkboard, but Ember was smirking at her. He looked up for the briefest second, past her to where Kana was standing, and he winked before throwing back his head and howling a wolf’s howl out of his human mouth. The wolves around him, in human and wolf form, howled too. Samantha let out a scream of rage and slashed her chalk across her board. Ary grinned as her spell shattered against his spear in a flare of light.

As the howls faded, Kana heard police sirens quickly growing closer. One of the neighbors apparently wasn’t happy with what was going on, which meant Kana needed to stop it now before the police tried to step in.

Kana pulled as much magic as he could hold and focused on the spell in his mind. He raised his hands, which were shaking from the power still vibrating inside his body, and flicked his wrists at Samantha.

The magic rushed from his body as if the dam holding it back had suddenly shattered. Five identical circles formed over Samantha’s head, the light flaring even brighter than her spells against Ary’s spear. She looked up, shrieked again, and started adding new runes to her chalkboard.

Kana couldn’t let her complete that spell. He slowly lowered his hands, and the bottommost circle began to descend. Samantha’s body went right through the center of the pentagram, and as the circle passed, her body started to glow. After a few inches, the second circle followed, but it was a little different as Kana twisted one wrist and the circle spun until it was at an angle to the first. The third circle spun a little more as it, too, began to descend, and the fourth and fifth followed suit. The first circle stopped moving at Samantha’s knees, the second at her hips, the third at her waist, the fourth at her shoulders, and the fifth at her head. They pulsed with magic, their light blindingly bright. Kana turned his hands so his right was held palm down at head height and his left palm up at chest height. He clapped them together, and a boom like a cannon going off exploded from him, shaking the trees and forcing everyone near Samantha to take a staggering step back.

The five circles converged, slamming together into one single twenty-five-point star hovering at Samantha’s waist. The star flared brighter and brighter. Samantha’s chalk and chalkboard fell to the ground as she shuddered. Her mouth was open and her eyes clenched shut as if she were screaming, but no noise came out.

The magic built and built, until Kana was shaking with it too. He was leaning against Mika because the sheer force of the magic weakened his knees and made it impossible for his legs to hold him up. Finally, Kana felt the instinctual tingle that said the spell was perfect.

“So mote it be,” he forced out through numb lips.

The magic vanished the second Kana’s mouth closed on the final syllable, snuffed out like a candle in a tornado. Kana collapsed onto Mika, shuddering at how empty he felt inside with the spell completed. He carefully closed the channels between himself and Mika and Sora and had to shut his eyes when the floor below him swam side to side.

“What…what?” a woman babbled. Kana judiciously turned his head and opened one eye. The young witch had dropped to her knees next to Samantha, who had flopped bonelessly on the ground, unconscious. The young witch wasn’t looking at Samantha though; she was staring at Kana, her mouth hanging open.

Kana’s vision swam again, and he shut his eye and tried to breathe slowly. He really didn’t want to throw up as the roiling in his stomach from the way the world was rotating around his head got worse.

“Kana?” Ember said, sounding worried.

A hand rested on Kana’s back and someone knelt at his side. “It’s his head,” Sora said, which meant he had shifted to human form. “They walloped it pretty good, and all the magic he just used didn’t help.”

“Possible concussion,” Ary said from somewhere to Kana’s right. “Can we move him to the ground so his cat can get smaller again? The police are arriving, and I don’t think they’d appreciate seeing a tiger roaming around.”

Gentle hands slid under his back and his knees, and Sora’s familiar palms cradled his head and neck. Kana barely felt the change as he was lifted from where he had been hanging over Mika’s back and laid on the grass. When Sora slowly placed his head down, it was onto a pillow of the soft fur of Mika’s stomach in his small form.

“This is a hunter matter!” someone yelled. “We logged a report with your office first!”

Kana wanted to know what was going on, but he didn’t dare open his eyes to look. He was also afraid if he opened his mouth he might throw up on himself.