Violet Dawn

Chapter 6: the Hunters

"You have contact with dark witches?" asked Azalea, sounding surprised. I knew her emotion was genuine - I felt it too. If what Christine said was true, and the light witches had really been in contact with a coven of dark witches 50 years ago, then there were two possibilities; a) it was our coven, and b) there was another coven of dark witches out there. I'd never heard anything about our coven having any connections to the light witches at all, but even so, the first option was more likely than the second. If there were more dark witches out there, I'd like to believe our coven would know about them.

I wanted to ask. I wanted to make sure which of the two possibilities was the correct one, but I knew I couldn't. Asking a questions as specific as 'how was the coven called' would be suspicious. Maybe I could bullshit myself out of it if the enemy num... I meant Lucien wasn't here. Unfortunately, he was, so there was nothing at all I could do. He'd already proven that he could find the smallest of inconsistencies in our stories, and there was no doubt he'd have a lot to say about me asking something so suspicious. At this point, I couldn't afford to throw any more doubts on our identities and intentions.

"Had." said Sebastian. "They haven't been responding to our attempts to contact them for the past 50 years."

"How do you contact them?" I asked. While this question was still pretty suspicious, it was a lot less so than the one I really wanted to ask, since I could pass it off as curiosity about magical ways of communicating. My real motivation for asking was to find out whether there was an untraceable way to contact our coven. I knew they were still alive, but they were also being watched, so we couldn't safely get in contact with them, not without giving out our location. We'd tried anyway, once, and it had ended just as disastrously as one could imagine.

Christine shook her head. "I don't know." she said. "The coven head is the only one who does."

I nodded. That was... disappointing, though expected. I wasn't prepared to give up so easily though. The information had to be in the coven leader's (whoever that was) shadow book. The nature of light witches' magic was different than that of dark witches', which was expressed in the way magical knowledge was transferred to the next generation as well. Dark witches only rarely wrote anything down, most of the knowledge getting passed down orally. Light witches, on the other hand, wrote everything they newly discovered in their shadow books, passing them down to the next witch, who then added their own spells.

If there was a way to contact the dark witches' coven, then it had to be described in the shadow book. The only problem was... how the hell could I access it? Getting my hands on it was the first problem, getting it to show me its secrets the second. I was probably getting ahead of myself here though - I had to find out who the head of the coven was first.

"Why do you want to know?" asked Lucien, interrupting my musings. He was staring directly at me, his eyebrows slightly raised.

"Is curiosity a crime?" I wondered, narrowing my eyes at him.

"Just the suspicious kind." he said pleasantly, his lips twitching ever so slightly up.

Christine let out a suffering sigh, grabbing the nearest pillow and throwing it in Lucien's face. Lucien easily caught it, placing it on his lap, his expression never changing. "Are you going to stop that?" asked Christine, giving him an unimpressed look. Lucien responded to her question with an innocent smile, making it quite clear that he was - in fact - not going to stop that. Christine didn't seem at all happy with his reaction, but her defeated sigh implied she saw no other choice than to deal with it.

Lucien, still staring straight at me, opened his mouth, most likely to interrogate me some more, but I really wasn't having it this time. It was my turn to ask questions. "You said you were a hunter?" I asked, narrowing my eyes even more. "What does that mean?" I paused. I already knew, of course, but it would be suspicious not to ask. "You know, besides the clear paranoia and the lack of manners?"

"It's called a healthy suspicion..." started Lucien.

"Some people have the sight." said Christine, talking over him. Which... good. This was how things should be done. "It basically means they can see things ordinary humans don't, like the protection rune on our door. They also have a higher resistance to magic." she continued. "Not all of them are hunters though. Just those who have taken it upon themselves to use their abilities to protect the human race from the supernatural."

"There's a lot of really nasty stuff out there, so it's good to have them nearby." said Sebastian, shuddering at the thought.

"Tell me about it." muttered Christine.

"How many of them are there here?" I asked. It was always good to be prepared, and I wanted to know the number of other hunters strolling around the town, so I could avoid them.

I expected her to say two or three, but her answer was; "Around 50? I'm not sure." She turned towards Lucien, giving him a questioning look.

"56." said Lucien.

"56." repeated Christine, looking back at me with a smile on her lips. "They live in the Sunnyside." She paused, probably realizing neither I nor Azalea had any idea what Sunnyside was. "It used to be a hotel, but it was taken over by Lucien's family a few decades ago." she quickly explained.

Well, that was... worrying. Very, very worrying. Hunters were well organized, but there weren't many of them, and since their purpose was to cover as much ground as they could, they usually moved from location to location in pairs. The only time a bigger group was present at a certain spot was when the spot in question was problematic. Problematic in a sense that the number of cannibalistic and homicidal creatures in the vicinity was much higher than normally.

I suppressed a sigh, biting my tongue hard enough to taste blood. Evidence that we were back on a ley line was starting to pile up, and I couldn't decide if that was good or bad. Ley lines were roads of pure magical energy, running under the earth. It was where everyone and everything with even a hint of magic in their veins was at their most powerful. For witches, locations above the ley lines were the most attractive places to live. But... they could be a double edged sword, since the energies often attracted things that were either extremely homicidal or extremely cannibalistic. Or both.

Being on a ley line meant we were harder to track. It also meant we were surrounded by witches, hunters, and all sorts of highly dangerous creatures. We should definitely get out of here. We were still safer out there, moving from place to place to keep Her off our tracks, than we were here, surrounded by all sorts of beings with bad intentions. Azalea would never agree to it though, not after finding light witches next door. I suppressed a sigh. The fight we were going to have after this was going to be massive.

"It's getting late." I said, suddenly remembering Sofia's order to return before dinner. We were most likely already running late. "We should probably go."

Christine nodded, jumping off the armchair. Making a slow circle around the room, she pulled a book after a book off the shelves, laying them down on the table with a huff. "Take these with you." she said.

Azalea gave the pile an unsure look. "What...?" she started, her voice trailing off.

"Just some witchcraft basics you should know."

"Basics."

Christine smiled. "Yes, basics."