Page 26 of Untethering Dark

Oskar dropped the scrolls on the ground and kicked at it with a paw.“Read for yourself.”

“Right.” Teleportation then. She bent to retrieve them, pinching the slightly sodden parchment between two fingers.

His whiskers twitched.“Will that be all?”

Astrid unraveled the first scroll, scanning the contents.

Take some dirt or ash and add a little water to make a paste. Spit will do in a pinch. Then paint an X on your stomach and say, ‘behalte mich doch unfruchtbar.’ It’s not permanent. You’ll have to reapply each time.

Shaking her head, Astrid read the next one.

There were two separate spells scrawled onto the page. One for teleporting oneself, and one for another creature. Not simple, but she should be able to follow it. “That’ll be all. Thank you, Oskar. Any Plätzchen for the road?”

“One, please.”

Pinching one of the round, glazed ones between her fingers, still warm to the touch, she tossed it to the familiar. Oskar snatched the confection out of the air with a little leap and a snap of jaws.

Without so much as a parting word, he spun away. She watched him dart out of the cottage, across the yard, and as hepassed her front gate, a portal opened, a swirling violet vortex about two meters tall and wide. Oskar trotted right in, not a hint of hesitancy, and with a whoosh, it closed.

Tiny pawprints in the snow were the only evidence he’d ever been there.

Well then.

Astrid closed the door and spent much of the remaining daylight studying and prepping the spell, just in case. While she hoped they hadn’t misread Altes Geweih—that his kindness and possible flirtation were genuine and not the whims of a bored and fickle god—at least she had a way to escape him if they were wrong.

At sunset, she left out a small plate of cookies on the tree stump and waited inside, sitting in her rocking chair knitting a crimson scarf, ears pricked for the sound of his approach.

And she waited.

And waited.

But he never came for his offering.

In all her days spent living in der Schwarzwald, not once had Altes Geweih ever skipped a night.

Chapter Eight

The wind picked up and Gudariks’s ears pricked, catching fragments of a new sound. Distant singing and raucous laughter to the north.

He tilted his head upward and sniffed. Campfire. Alcohol. Body odor.

Trespassers three nights in a row?

The idiotic daring...

Fury twisted Gudariks’s insides, gripping him in ferocious, rage-fueled hunger.

He’d know no peace until he found those that dared to enter his forest after dark.

The forest’s snow-laden trees were just blurred silhouettes of black and white as he raced toward the intruders, their unwashed bodies and drunken revelry a fetid beacon in the crisp winter night air.

The closer he got to his quarry, the worse the stench.

He ran and ran, his olfactory senses burning.

Any moment now and he’d see them.

A dark smudge in the snow caught his eye, and he snapped his head in its direction, spying the ashes and cinders of a dying campfire, encircled by empty beer cans. He slowed. There was a small pile of cigarette butts, too, the vile things. Although he didn’t see any hikers, he could practically taste the heady scent of them on the air.

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