Page 79 of Untethering Dark

Astrid smirked, eager to see what she did to loosen his tongue.

“Want fun, do you? Untie my hands.” Though he said it with a teasing, suggestive smirk, his eyes were ice-cold.

Sidling alongside his chair, Perchta said, “You’re a very naughty, stubborn boy.” She booped him on the nose, then brushed aside the collar of his coat. In a less playful tone, she added, “He’s been branded with the likeness of your esteemed lover, Tochter.”

Astrid got up to look.

It was an ugly, inflamed blister, but yes, the general shape of it did resemble Gudariks. “The villagers did worship him when they were alive.”

“Good for him.” Perchta nodded approvingly as she rooted around the pockets of her cloak and withdrew a corked vial of bright yellow liquid. To the poacher, she said, “As much as I’d love to play this game of ‘you withhold information and we torture it out of you,’ time is of the essence.”

“I suspect Johanna will want to deliver this one to the human authorities,” Astrid added. “Can’t exactly hand him over all banged up.”

“Oh, Tochter...” Perchta smirked. “There are plenty of ways to torture a person without leaving a mark.”

Flicking the stopper off with her thumb, she roughly grabbed the man by the jaw and squeezed his cheeks hard, sharp nails biting bleeding crescents into skin and forcing his mouth open. He jerked and squirmed, the chair scuffing across the floor from his struggles, but Perchta didn’t lessen her grip and promptly dumped the contents of the vial down his throat.

Just as he began to sputter, she shoved his mouth closed and pinched his nose until he was purple in the face and finally made the big swallow.

“Truth serum?” Astrid inquired.

“Mmm-hmm. I started keeping it on me for the patrols just in case I came across someone like this wretched fellow.” She patted one roughened cheek, then settled back in her chair and refilled her teacup and plate. “Now, tell me. What’s your name?”

“Tanner.” The name fired out of his mouth, and judging from his outraged expression, the serum was working.

“Tanner?” Perchta scoffed. “That’s a little nail on the head. Anyway,Tanner, how did someone such as yourself come about sacrificing wolves in resurrection rituals for folk stuck in the Otherworld? And please, start from the beginning.”

Cigarette Man—Astrid refused to acknowledge him otherwise—screwed his mouth shut, cheeks puffed out, clearly attempting to keep the words trapped in his mouth. But instead, he spat them out in a loud, unflattering eruption of air. “We caught wind of a pack of wolves up north and tracked them down to this area,” he ground out, his teeth making an awful creaking sound. “I arrived first, met your...Mr. Antlers. Then, as I was setting up camp, my colleagues came. Passed around a few bottles of whiskey. Got a little rowdy.”

The idiot began holding his breath again.

“Cut it out, or I’ll freeze off your nuts,” Astrid snapped, summoning a little frost to her palm. It wasn’t quite as impressive as Mutter’s shows of force, but he flinched all the same. “I doubt the authorities will care about how you lost those.”

“Fine. Sheesh. Keep your skirt on.”

Astrid reached for his crotch.

He twisted away, as much as his bindings would allow, shouting, “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Go on,” Perchta prompted, fighting back a smirk.

“We were drinking and hootin’ and hollerin’ a bit when the wind kicked up something fierce, almost took out our fire. But it was gone as soon as it arrived, kinda shit. Real spooky stuff.” He looked between them and, remembering his audience, he grinned. “Right, probably just another Tuesday around here. Anyway, the wind calms down, and the fire starts flickering and popping again.

“It gets kinda fucked up after that. This freaky lady pops up out of nowhere, right out of the flames. She’s got these wicked red eyes, like two hot coals, and I still can’t decide whether she’s a ghost or a demon, but in any case, she said to us, ‘Help me and you’ll be rewarded,’ or some shit like that. And after that, we’d harvest the pelts from the wolves we tracked as planned, but butcher ’em a specific way, and she’d show us where to dig up that old knife, how to make hex bags...” He trailed off, scrunching his brow, genuinely appearing to have lost his train of thought. “We had to chant her name a bunch and say, ‘Heldin, I summon thee. Shake off the dirt, reassemble thy bones, and return to this earthly plane whole.’”

Perchta leaned forward in her chair, eyes keen as a blade’s edge.

“Who’s Heldin?” Astrid demanded.

“How the fuck should I know? She just popped out of our frickin’ campfire like a demonic jack-in-the-box.”

“Fine.” Astrid made a mental note to ask Gudariks about her later. “So, you just readily agreed to do all that?”

“Fuck no, Blondie. What kind of idiot do you take me for?”

Astrid arched her brow.

“Whatever.” He scratched his cheek on his shoulder. “I said to her, ‘That’s easy enough to remember, but what’s in it for us?’ And she got this wicked smile and said, ‘I’ll let you live.’ Thensome purple smoke shit started rising from the fire, and we got sleepy and calm. Just wanted to do whatever she asked.”

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