Abe held out his hands, as if Kana would immediately scoop up Mika and Sora and drop them into Abe’s palms.
“You know that won’t happen,” Kana replied after staring incredulously at Abe for a long moment.
“Then we have a problem,” Abe said. “I want those cats, and you’re going to give them to me whether you like it or not!”
The time for niceties had clearly passed.
Kana’s base spell bloomed like a flower underneath Abe, and he quickly started drawing the next circles, but then Abe let out a disdainful sniff and flicked his fingers. The circles cracked and then shattered as if they were made of delicate glass.
“You have all this power at your fingertips, and that’s all you can do?” Abe asked, his tone incredulous and mocking. “Give them to me. I can do so much more with their strength than you’ve ever dreamed!”
“They’re not toys,” Kana snapped out, hoping his angry tone hid his fear. No one had ever broken his circles so easily; not even Diana had been able to break free, and she was probably the most magically powerful person he had ever met. And Abe had barely flexed a finger muscle.
Fine, then. Even if Abe could break through his magic like it was tissue paper, Kana could still use it to stall for time. When the hunters arrived, they would hopefully be better prepared.
Kana’s new circle had barely even begun to glow when Abe let out an exasperated sigh, and Kana’s magic shattered again.
“Of course, they’re not toys. They’re magical conduits, just like demons. Familiars come from a different plane of existence than demons, a place with incredible magic, and once I have your cats, I’ll be able to tap into that too. Shall we stop with the games, or are you not ready to give into the inevitable just yet? I suppose not,” he added when he shattered Kana’s third attempt with equal ease and an eye roll.
“You have polluted the very ground you stand on,” Shannon suddenly said, his voice echoing through the forest from somewhere off to Kana’s right. Kana didn’t dare turn away from Abe to find Shannon, but he did glance down at the ground where Abe was standing.
Something twisted and blackened was planted into the ground by Abe’s left foot. A second was near his right foot, and a third near his heel. In fact, now that Kana knew what to look for, the strange shapes completely encircled Abe.
“Trust a vampire to notice something dead,” Abe said. He nonchalantly looked away from Kana, turning to face Shannon. “How do you like my ward? I only had to chop off the fingers of two demons to get enough to set up a proper bone ward.”
No wonder Kana’s spells weren’t working! Abe wasn’t overpowering Kana’s magic with his own, the ward was preventing Kana’s circles from setting properly. If the circles weren’t grounded, a child could shatter them. Kana had absolutely zero idea how to overcome the ward though. Even creating a circle larger in size than the ward to attempt at encapsulating it wouldn’t work; the circle itself might set, but the pentagram and any runes would have to overlap the ward and essentially be rendered inert by the contact.
There were circles without pentagrams, which Kana had been studying in his free time after his interest had been piqued the first time he went to the magic section of the local library and saw one in use. At the very least, Kana could set a basic one of those around the bone ward to prevent Abe from having an easy escape route.
The resulting circle looked sad; a simple thin line glowing on the ground about a foot in diameter wider than the bone ward. Abe saw it and immediately dismissed it with a disgusted sniff and an eye roll as he returned his attention to Shannon. Neither Shannon, Ember, nor Kana would have been stopped by such a sad and pathetic circle for more than a half second, and Kana guessed Abe wouldn’t have any trouble with it either.
There had to be something Kana could do. Right now, Abe was just toying with them, and Kana had until Abe actually got serious to figure something out.
“I am merely being observant,” Shannon replied. “I have set a few bone wards myself, although I never had the luxury of using demon bones.”
“The high and mighty vampire has used something so base as a bone ward?” Abe asked, laughing, but Kana stopped listening to them.
Demon bones, he said to Mika and Sora. To combat a demon, you need holy water.
But it’s not the holy water that actually hurts demons, Mika replied. It’s the belief the person imbuing the water has. If they believe the holy water will stop demons, that influences the spell they’re incorporating into the water.
Not that most of them know they’re casting magic, Sora added with a disgusted sniff. Kana agreed with Sora and with Mika. When he was homeless he’d had one too many negative run-ins with religious organizations who preached love and tolerance and then callously threw him out when they learned he wasn’t interested in ascribing to their very narrow set of beliefs. The belief whomever making the holy water had in the holy water working was what in turn created the spell that made it hurt demons. If Kana could find a way to recreate that same spell via writing runes in a circle, he might be able to disable the demon-bone ward.
Might, but that was better than nothing.
First, he had to figure out a way to draw a circle at all. The lines of his magic couldn’t touch or cross the ward, which meant he had to draw something around the whole thing that could still somehow influence it. Kana counted quickly and saw twenty fingers planted grotesquely into the ground, which meant he needed twenty simultaneous spells.
Kana’s simple, single circle was still glowing weakly, and it would work as an anchor and connector. He kept the magic hidden from view by drawing all twenty small circles underground. The top edge of each small circle intersected with the inside edge of the single larger circle until it looked like a beaded bracelet. Inside each small circle Kana drew the usual pentagram, but then he paused to think. The runes he chose had to be perfect. He would only get one chance to break the bone ward.
Protective intent, Mika repeated.
Kana drew the rune for shield and combined it with the one for shelter, creating a dual rune of protection, but then Kana paused as he thought of another idea. He set the protective rune on all twenty circles, then quickly drew a second combination rune, this time focusing on attack by interlocking fight and strength. He set the second rune on the circles and then focused on his crazy idea.
Drawing the rune for demon was hard. The lines and turns were complex, and it wasn’t a rune Kana had any experience using before. Except, the last thing he wanted was to summon a demon. Instead of drawing perfectly straight lines, they wobbled and didn’t quite connect. When he finished, the demon rune looked like a kindergartner’s drawing in comparison to the rest of the circle. While it clearly read demon and would technically work, breaking it would be pathetically easy for anyone with a bit of power, which was the point.
Kana drew an intent line from the attack rune to the demon one, indicating when the spell started the attack rune should immediately destroy the demon. The rune would instantly shatter, but within that instance the demon rune ought to attract the demon bones and the attack spell would continue fighting the bone ward.
Twenty lines like the spokes of a wheel bloomed, one from each circle. Each line pointed directly at one of the finger bones, but Kana carefully stopped each line exactly a half inch from actually touching the ward.