Bad Hunting (Book 2 of Daughter of the Wildings) by Kyra Halland

Release date: February 18, 2015

Subgenre: Weird western

About Bad Hunting:

Cowboys and gunslingers meet wizards in this high fantasy series inspired by the American Wild West. Silas Vendine is a mage and bounty hunter, on the hunt for renegade mages. He's also a freedom fighter, sworn to protect the non-magical people of the Wildings from ambitious mages both lawless and lawful. In his line of work, Silas knows to expect the unexpected, but he never expected to end up with a partner like Lainie Banfrey, a young woman born in the Wildings who is both drawn to and terrified of her own developing magical powers.

Silas and Lainie have defeated the dangerous rogue mage who brought Lainie's hometown to the brink of open warfare. But the town of Bitterbush Springs isn't big enough for two wizards, or even one, so they've hit the trail. Then Silas gets word that another mage hunter down in the dry and desolate Bads is onto something big and needs backup. He and Lainie head into the badlands only to find one mage hunter dead and another one missing... And Silas could be next.

Book 2 of Daughter of the Wildings.

Excerpt:

 

They approached the Onetree, following the track as it made a slight curve around the tree. As they came around the bend, Silas saw something about the size and shape of a man dangling from one of the limbs on the far side of the tree –

“Hold on,” he said, but Lainie’s sharp gasp told him it was too late. She stared at the body hanging from the tree, her eyes wide with shock. Her hand moved to her throat, as though feeling for the noose that the hanging mob in Bitterbush Springs had put around her neck. Silas knew what she was thinking – it could have been her, hanging dead by the neck at the end of a rope. If he hadn’t stayed around Bitterbush Springs those extra days, trying to decide what to do with her, if he hadn’t heard the commotion down on the street as the townsfolk ganged up on her and dragged her to the gallows, it would have been her.

He reached for her hand and lowered it away from her neck. “Don’t look at it. Wait here.”

She snapped her head around towards him as though startled out of the horrifying memory, then nodded.

Silas kneed Abenar to turn towards the tree, but the big gray flattened his ears and tensed up, not wanting to go any closer to the corpse. To spare the horse’s nerves, Silas climbed down from the saddle and left him with Lainie while he walked over to the tree. They had seen no other signs of life the whole time they’d been in the Bads; the question of who the hanged man was and how he had ended up like this made an unpleasant tickle crawl up the back of Silas’s neck.

He got close enough to the body to take a good look at it. Abruptly, the world seemed to shift around him. In spite of the ravages of death, Silas recognized the dead man’s face. It was Verl Bissom, a mage hunter he knew. They had crossed paths on a difficult hunt several years ago and teamed up for a few days. While he couldn’t say he and Verl had been friends, they had developed a solid respect for each other. Verl was a big man and an experienced fighter with magic, his gun, and his hands. Not a man who was easy to kill. But here he was, hanging dead from the Onetree in the middle of the Bads.

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About Kyra Halland: 

Kyra Halland lives in southern Arizona. Complicated, honorable heroes; heroines who are strong, smart, and all woman; magic, romance, and adventure; and excursions into the dark corners of life and human nature mixed with a dash of offbeat humor - all of these make up her worlds. She has a very patient husband, two less-patient cats, and two young adult sons. Besides writing, she enjoys scrapbooking and anime, and she wants to be a crazy cat lady when she grows up.

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