Hela Inspiration for Chosen Wolf

The Hunter’s Binding Circle Scene
from Chosen Wolf

© 2023 Jena Gregoire
(lightly edited to protect the innocent from spoilers)

~o~o~✍~o~o~

“You’re going into early hunter retirement,” I informed him.

“What are you doing?” Marcel asked from beside me. I hadn’t discussed this possibility with him.

“Excuse me?” [the hunter] asked.

“You’re done as a hunter. Your judgment is shit and you can’t be trusted. If you ever even could have been. Every situation is the same with you. Best-case scenario, someone who actually knows what they’re doing gets there in time to save the day. Worst-case, innocent people get hurt or killed and the obviously guilty walk free. Hunters were given this power to protect those who can’t protect themselves. You’ve abused that gift so I’m taking it away.”

“What do you think you’re going to do, little girl?” he scoffed. “Sign my kill order right here?”

“That’s not the way we’re doing things these days, old man.”

I dropped the two blades to the ground and removed the satchel hidden just beneath my bra strap. I dumped the contents into one of my palms and then rubbed my hands together, coating them completely in the earthy mixture. Marisol had been nice enough to add a jasmine perfume of some kind to cover the distinct mushroom odor it had started out with. She warned that it would make the next step burn like hell.

I snatched the two blades protruding from the ground and flipped them both around so the razor-sharp edges bit into the flesh of my palms when I squeezed my fists closed. With a little guidance from Marisol before we left, I envisioned the inky blackness of the ether and my hunter magick glowing brilliantly at the center. The live-wire tendrils of the pack’s magick interwoven with my own. She was sure that calling on their magick as my own would amplify my abilities.

She was so much more right than she could have ever known.

I called forth my shadowfire and it blazed to life in each of my hands. The power was violent and yet felt like the softest caress against my skin. Bending it to my will was as easy as breathing. I heard [the hunter] ready his gun as I took a couple of steps forward.

I rubbed my hands slowly over one another as I spoke. “Vocant elementa, vocant matrem, vocant sanguinem meum, ono auxilium.”

Calling the elements, calling the mother, calling my blood, I beg your aid.

For just a moment, I got lost in the hypnotic movements of the flames as I envisioned what I wanted them to do. The path I wanted them to travel to accomplish their task. I took in a long, deep breath, and as I did so, the shadowfire stoked higher, and power gathered inside me. It quickly grew from a tight little knot of willful light to the world-destroying force of a star going supernova. I slammed my fist into the ground at my feet and a whip of electricity rent the air with a deafening crack. A bright blue missile of magick energy shot out in opposite directions from my hand, and I watched as the shadowfire traveled its path, encircling the entire house just as I had envisioned it would. With the hunter’s binding circle firmly in place, I turned to my pack and apologized for the pain they were about to feel. It would be intense but fleeting. I ground the blades into my hands, hard, one last time to get the blood flowing freely.

“Jamie, stop this!” [the hunter] yelled but I was done taking orders from him.

“In nomine Dianae, in nomine maiorum, nam sanguis venire, i te ligare.”

In the name of Diana, in the name of my ancestors, for blood to come, I thee bind.

I dropped the knives to the ground and allowed my blood to drip over the ghostly blue flames. They sizzled and hissed with each crimson rivulet. Ordinarily, the use of blood in magick was forbidden but in this case, my blood was the anchor to my ancestors. Without it, the incantation was nothing more than a light show. Once the spellwork was satisfied with my sacrifice, we all felt a forceful thump in our torsos as a wave of invisible energy crashed through each of us.

“Ego te peto.”

I thee claim.

I whispered the last line as a hopeful prayer of sorts because only nature could grant the favor. It wasn’t a given that it would work. Fortunately, it appeared the fates were with me this time. In a rush that lasted less than two seconds, all of the excess power in the Earth siphoned back into me and my pack. In a flash of blue energy, every cell in my body felt like I’d just awoken from a deep, rejuvenating sleep.