Bewitching the Dragon

by Jane Kindred

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  Taming the Hunter

  by Michele Hauf

  Anacampserote (n.): something that can bring back a lost love

  Winter Solstice...

  After padding through the soft emerald grass that carpeted the floor of her sanctuary, Eryss Norling knelt before the altar she kept tucked between the pink-and-white petals of bleeding hearts and the cool winter stars of forget-me-nots. Behind those, crinkle-petaled hollyhocks bloomed as if it were summer. A dragonfly flitted among the leafy canopy that climbed to the top of the two-story glass-walled conservatory.

  Tucking her long, loose chestnut hair over an ear, Eryss bowed to light the large yellow beeswax candle on the simple wooden altar. Then she turned to light the eight smaller blue candles she’d placed around the altar to enclose her in a casting circle. Between each of the candles she’d placed rose quartz and garnet crystals to heighten the energy and fill the circle with love and happiness. And resolve.

  Her silver-green velvet robe splayed around her knees and legs as she twisted within the circle, brandishing the lit match. Closed by three braided-ribbon frog hooks over her breasts, the robe was a favorite piece she wore often when casting a spell. Talismans of silver, crow’s foot and bloodstone hung around her neck, sliding across the crepe-thin pink negligee she wore against her clove-scented skin. Blowing out the match dispelled sulfur into the humid air, and a waft of white smoke curled toward the morning glory vine climbing an iron trellis to the arched windows that formed a cathedral dome overhead.

  Steeped in reverence, her movements were slow and thoughtful. She nestled a heavy, six-sided quartz wand with points at both ends in the sifting of black salt. After whispering a blessing for all that she had, all that she would know and all that changed with her footsteps through this realm, she bowed her head and touched her chest, where a tiny maroon line darkened her pale skin just below her breast. Her heartbeat thudded softly against her fingertips.

  With her other hand she clasped the crystal-bladed athame and drew it across her forefinger, cutting a line through the whorls of her fingerprint. A few blood droplets splattered onto the black salt. Forget-me-nots bowing over the altar whispered delicious fragrance, entwining about the metallic tint from her blood, summoning earth elementals with the sweet perfume.

  Setting aside the knife, she then beckoned forth the earth’s energies with her hands, focusing it toward the quartz. Closing her eyes, she began to hum deeply and from the base of her throat, channeling the vibrations toward her heart and then releasing them throughout her body.

  “I have loved only one so many times,” she whispered. “In all my incarnations it has always been him. This I know.”

  And yet in each of those incarnations she had lost him for reasons she could not divine. Her portentous dreams had never explained that frustrating point. That wasn’t the important question. What was important was that she see him, recognize him should he enter her life once again. For in her dreams, she had never seen his face. She knew no one reincarnated into the same visage.

  There was only one way to recognize the one whom she had loved. And that was with a soul-deep knowing.

  A cool cloud of red smoke diffused from around the quartz wand and billowed up over her hands. She kept her eyes closed, confident the elementals of earth and time participated in this sacred spell.

  “When he returns to me in this life,” she said, “allow my soul to recognize his soul. Bind us with a love of the ages so that only death will part us.”

  She blew out a breath through the red smoke. “So mote it be,” she ended.

  And a force walloped her chest, lifting her from the kneeling position. Arms lashing out for security, she was thrown out of the casting circle. She landed hard on the grass before the green velvet sofa.

  “What the...?”

  Opening her eyes, Eryss saw tendrils of smoke curl and form into intricate arabesques before darkening into soot and dropping onto the quartz. A startling image. What did it mean? And she’d been physically thrown out of the casting circle. That wasn’t supposed to happen. What did such an expulsion portend?

  Had she performed the anacampserote incorrectly?

  “Yes,” she reassured herself on an intake of breath. Crawling forward on the grass, she leaned over the salt line and touched the black salt and soot. Rubbing it between her fingers dispersed a scent much like an ocean surf. Weird. But she would remain positive the spell had achieved her intention. “All will be well with my soul.”

  Bowing to blow out the yellow candle, she then swept her hands to encompass the circle, taking out each flame of the smaller candles as she whisked air over them. An emerald-winged dragonfly swooped down and nestled in her hair as if it were a fancy barrette.

  Now all she had to do was figure out what it would feel like when her soul recognized the one.

  Chapter 1

  Dane Winthur set aside yet another dusty accountant’s box filled with cards that dated back to the early 1900s. While the Agency had been established only a decade ago, they had been operating unofficially for over a century. During that century, detailed cards had been written on each weapon or entity they had encountered and/or confiscated for secure storage. Dane had volunteered to go through the files and verify that each had been entered in the computer database.

  His laptop sat on a stack of flat boxes to his right. So far, about 75 percent of the card files had been entered. But there was no rhyme nor reason why one card had been entered and another had not. It was a grueling, time-consuming task, but he was the newbie on the block in the Agency, having been with them for only two years, so he didn’t mind some grunt work to prove his worth.

  Besides, as a scientist by trade, he found the paperwork and attention to detail came naturally to him.

  Now he fingered another yellowed piece of five-by-eight card stock that seemed newer than the other cards, most of which displayed frayed edges and coffee stains. Another weapon was listed on this one—a dagger that dated back to the thirteenth century. It had been marked as “To Note,” not something the Agency had in hand, but wanted to keep an eye on. He scanned the rest of the notes.

  “Belonged to a witch hunter, eh?”

  He typed the weapon ID number into the database. It didn’t bring up a matching record, so he was about to set the card aside on the “to be entered” stack when a name caught his eye from the description below the record ID information. “Edison Winthur?”

  He read the description carefully and muttered the last line out loud. “Last known owner: Edison Winthur, California.”

  Blowing out a breath, Dane sat back against the stack of boxes behind him in the depths of the storage facil
ity the Agency had leased for the old records. A strange smile curled his lips, and he flicked the card between his fingers.

  “My father?”

  Two weeks later...

  “I’ve tracked down a location for the dagger, Winthur,” Jason said over the phone.

  Phone clasped to his ear, Dane tossed aside his surfboard and wandered across the sand to sit on a smooth boulder edging his property. A thermal wet suit allowed him to surf in the fifty-degree waters. January was always the best month to catch some killer waves. He’d noticed his cell phone glowing when he’d landed on the sand and had returned the call immediately.

  “The witch hunter’s blade?” he asked Jason Meadows, who worked in Research out of his apartment in New York. All Agency positions were “in situ,” since there was no home office or official headquarters. Jason was a cyber guru who could tease out the most hidden of information from a jumble of bits and bytes.

  “Yes, that one. Let me text you the address. It’s currently owned by an antiques store called Stuart’s Stuff. Hang on.”

  Dane smiled at the flock of seabirds swooping over the beach. But his levity was more for the discovery he’d made weeks earlier while going through some of the Agency’s old files.

  Dane was head of Weapons. Well, he was the only one in the department. It was newly created because there had been a need. Their crew was small and distributed across the United States and Europe. Tor Rindle was the head of the Agency and had been visiting the States when he and Dane had met—over the disintegrating fur, flesh and bones of a werewolf.

  Yeah, that had taken a lot of philosophy-changing faith on Dane’s part. He was a geologist who had never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t want to debunk. But the werewolf? Dane had no choice but to believe. And he had been strangely thankful when Tor had told him about the Agency and offered him the job. Such work aligned with a weird memory he’d had from when he was eight. The Agency was secretive, which was cool. James Bond gadgets were not in abundance, though. They used science to debunk myth and the paranormal—to keep humanity safe from the real monsters.

  Whether or not the dagger listed on the file card possessed any sort of paranormal powers hadn’t been recorded. Dane’s job was to rule out that sort of stuff. Or if not, to put a spin on it. Not that this was an official job. He was simply curious. Or rather, compelled after he’d seen his father’s name listed on the card. A man he had known only for the first few years of his life, and “known” simply meant that he’d been his son and had existed in the man’s life.

  And to think the word compelled set his heart racing. The first time he’d learned the meaning of that word he had been eight. And the few times since then that a compulsion had come upon him, he’d always been whisked back to that time when his mother had found him standing in the basement, sword in hand. She’d been so angry. Outraged. He hadn’t understood.

  But he was compelled to understand now, because it might fill in some integral knowledge he required to become completely whole. To simply know.

  “Sent it,” Jason said over the line. “Do you know this one has a legend attached to it of belonging to a witch hunter? Not sure if the blade itself is supposed to possess magical capabilities. But you know, witches.”

  “Yeah. Witches.” Dane chuckled. “It’s always something.”

  Though he’d not encountered witches in his service to the Agency, he was always up for an adventure, both physically and mentally. And learning about new creatures? Fascinating stuff. Because really? The world was a better place thanks to the Agency’s ability to think fast and to explain away the unexplainable with complicated scientific terms and theories.

  “So why this blade,” said Jason, “if I can ask? I mean, this isn’t an assigned job. What’s so remarkable about this item?”

  Dane twisted at the waist and turned, which flexed his abs. His muscles were rapidly cooling, even with the warm suit to protect him from the chilly temperature. He wasn’t much of a sharer. Then again, Jason was an okay guy, and it wasn’t as though he was going to call up the boss and tell him Dane was using Agency time to pursue personal issues.

  “The last known owner was my father.”

  “Oh man, cool. So, was he the witch hunter?”

  Dane chuckled. “I doubt that very much.”

  On the other hand, what did he know about his father? Edison Winthur had died during a cave spelunking expedition. He’d fallen five hundred yards down a narrow chute, and his body had never been recovered. It had occurred a year after Dane’s mother had divorced him. Dane had been three when Edison died.

  And still his mother’s words resounded loudly in his thoughts. Don’t be like your father. He was such a dreamer.

  “Should I schedule you for a weeklong vacation so we don’t overbook you?” Jason asked.

  Dane had to shake himself back from the haunting warning his mother had issued so many times. “Uh, sure. Give me a few days, at the very least.”

  “Fine. I have a contact name for the shop owner. I’m texting that to you, too.”

  “Where is this place?”

  “In a northern suburb of Minneapolis.”

  “Seriously?” Dane winced as a sea breeze skinned his face with a cold kiss. “Isn’t it, like, thirty degrees in Minnesota right now?”

  “Do I sense an inordinate fear of the weather from the guy who surfs in January?”

  “Never. But you know, anything below fifty is crazy cold.”

  “Ha! You’ll have to bring along a sweater. Give me a call when you have the dagger in hand. Unless...you’re doing this one under the radar?”

  “Not at all. The dagger wasn’t an assigned job, but I have no intention of keeping it a secret. Whatever I find will be documented, and I’ll address any issues regarding spin or how it should be stored when I’ve had a look at it.”

  “Cool. I’ve got you scheduled through the week. I can arrange a flight for you, as well. Will text the details.”

  “Thanks, Jason.”

  Dane hung up and tugged at the zipper on his wet suit.

  The key goal in finding this dagger would, with any luck, answer the questions he’d asked himself since he was eight. Was this the same dagger?

  The secondary goal was more emotionally rooted in the limited knowledge he’d been given about his father. He’d always wanted to learn as much as he could about a man his mother had described as “having his head in the clouds.” And he’d lost track of how many times she’d admonished Dane not to be like his father.

  Having one’s head in the clouds didn’t sound dangerous to Dane. Only if one also lacked logic and rationality, which he subscribed to. Always.

  What an opportunity that would be, to hold something his father had actually owned. Or rather, to hold it once again.

  But had the old man been a witch hunter?

  “Doubt it,” he muttered, and grabbed his board.

  * * *

  Dane had joked with Jason about Minnesota being thirty degrees on this January day. Actually, it was two. Degrees. He’d left the beach for two degrees. And he felt both those single digits breeze through his lightweight wool jacket and permeate his tweed vest and the dress shirt beneath as the chill fixed itself into his skin and sent out wicked feelers for the network of his once-warm veins.

  He rushed down a sidewalk edged with dirty snow heaps the city plow had pushed up as his cab had parked in the nearby lot. The concrete was white from the chemicals added to the sodium chloride used in abundance on the roads. The first time he’d ever heard the term “salting the roads” Dane had imagined a large kitchen saltshaker suspended from the back of a truck. His childhood imagination had been so vivid (when his mother wasn’t aware).

  He had that very imagination to thank for being here right now. And he wasn’t sure whether or not it was something he sh
ould be thankful for. Fantasy was best served in small doses, and even then, only on the silver screen or the pages of a novel. Very well; his mother had been right.

  Dane whispered his thanks when the antiques shop door opened to whoosh a welcoming warmth across his frozen cheeks. He huffed and clapped his gloved hands together, stomping his feet, even though there was no snow on his leather loafers. The weird stomping-clapping performance managed to get the warmth flowing through his system.

  A kind-looking woman, who looked to be in her eighties, appeared from behind a glass case and sailed over to the counter, which was littered with an assortment of Halloween ornaments and wooden black cats, bright orange Halloween Festival buttons and a plethora of orange-and-black garland.

  “I’m Dane Winthur,” he announced, with a chill invading his tone. “A colleague of mine should have called about a dagger two days ago?” Jason had said he’d handle alerting the shop that Dane was on his way.

  “A dagger?” The woman shook her head and adjusted the frothy white hair piled loosely atop her head.

  “Yes, uh... I was told Mr. Stuart is the owner? Is he in?”

  “Mr. Winther, I’m so sorry, my brother and his wife are out of town for a family funeral. Just left this morning, actually. Oh, wait now. I do recall him mentioning something as he was going through the list of things for me to do in his absence. You’re the scientist, yes?”

  Dane bristled but tried his best not to show it. The owner of this antiques shop had known he was coming to pick up the dagger. Traveling halfway across the United States and—he wasn’t here? That took some kind of nerve, to up and leave without calling to let him know.

  “Yes,” he answered, calming his rising ire. “I’ve traveled from California to your lovely yet icy state for the dagger.” He patted his vest pocket, where he’d tucked the dossier and a printed photo of the dagger, and pulled it out. Unfolding it, he showed it to the woman. “Did Mr. Stuart leave it in your care?”