Page 64 of Untethering Dark

“It’s due diligence,” Johanna murmured privately to her. “Can’t write ‘magic made them disappear into thin air.’”

Valid. Whatever these poachers were trying to summon from the Otherworld was undoubtedly also giving them power. Enough to disappear and keep someone meddlesome like herself from tracking them down and thwarting their plans. But Johanna didn’t need to be any more alarmed than she already was from today’s gruesome sacrificial find.

“Do you think Wald Vater has seen this? The wolves?”

“I don’t know,” Astrid whispered. “But I’ll check in on him once we’re done here.”

“Have you found anything?”

Astrid nodded slowly, wary of oversharing, but knowing she had to give Johanna something. “There’s definitely magic at work here, but I need to talk to Perchta first to make sense of it.” It wasn’t completely a lie. There were a lot of pieces to this puzzle, and she didn’t know quite how they all fit together yet.

“Go,” the forest ranger urged. “We’ve got it from here. Get whatever answers you’re able to on the magic front so we can properly prepare for what comes next.”

She gave Johanna’s elbow a light squeeze. “I’ll be in touch soon. Just give me a day or two.”

“Text me so I know you’re safe?”

“Of course. But that goes both ways.”

Smart, strong, a fierce protector in her own right: Johanna wasn’t fragile, not by a long shot. But she wasn’t invincible either. These poachers were as much a threat to her as they were to Astrid. More even.

One day, Astrid would lose her friend. That was the heavy price to a hag’s longevity and something she needed to come to terms with in the coming decades. But not now. When Johanna lay down for the last time, it would be to time and age, not human cruelty.

“Let me know when you get home to Suri, yeah?”

Johanna roughly swiped at her eyes, trying so hard to hold it together in front of her colleagues. “I will. I promise.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Wiedergänger.” One who walks again.

Perchta frowned at her from the icy surface of a pond. Astrid had just described what the forest rangers found, along with her own conclusions.

“You’re right that it’s an Otherworld summoning. The disappearances, the lack of tracks, makes me think that whoever these people are, they’re dipping in and out of the plane between theirs and ours. All while they gather enough strength to make the final crossing permanent.” As Perchta spoke, she pulled several old, but well-cared-for leather-bound tomes off her shelves and leafed through the pages.

“But there was so much ancient human magic present.” Astrid pressed her fingers to her temples. It didn’t make sense. What did modern human poachers know about Otherworld summoning rituals? And even if they had managed it—only the gods tasked with overseeing the dead could amass enough power to survive a summoning. The ritual required immense effort on both sides. But aside from an especially caustic fire, there hadn’t been any evidence of influence from the death deities. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were trying to bring back a human coven.”

“The effort would destroy them,” Perchta agreed, pinching her lips together into a thin, grim line. She leafed through a few more pages, expression thoughtful. “But just because the record doesn’t show it ever being done before, doesn’t mean it can’t be. Just that someone hasn’t figured out how to do it yet. Perhaps we’re witnessing attempts at a true human resurrection.”

Necromancy was an ancient magic, but it only reanimated the dead, made puppets out of corpses. It never brought things back whole, never truly restored life. But if Mutter’s hunch was correct, these humans were getting close. Or at least closer than anyone had ever come before.

“There’s some good news,” Perchta continued. “They’ll need to rest after this sacrifice before they can try again, if they survived it at all. I’ve summoned a death god or two in my day, and it’s quite draining.”

That would buy them some time to ready countermeasures and for Astrid to complete the transition from witch to hag. “How long do you think we have?”

“With death gods helping on the other end, it’s a week. So my estimation is we have at least that much time, probably more for humans attempting the same thing. Get some rest, daughter. Shore up your energy and prepare to complete the hag’s ritual. I’ll contain this. Whoever comes through, they’ll not leave der Schwarzwald on my watch. Gudariks should have no troubles destroying them once they’re fully in our world.”

Were it not for Astrid’s ability to track the lingering heat signature of Gudariks’s footpath in the snow, his den would’ve been impossible to find, tucked away as it was. At first the orange glow of past steps seemed to disappear into a craggy rock face, but feeling along the uneven surface with mittened hands, Astrid found a hidden crevice formed by overlapping rock.

To look at it straight on completely obscured the opening. But from the right angle, she could see that it was just wide enough for Gudariks to slip through, if he tilted his antlers just so.

Doffing the wooden skis she wore to traverse the deep snows of the forest, Astrid dipped inside.

Nestled on the other side was a sheltered field teeming with winter blooms sprouting up from the powdery snow in shades of silver and blue—like the ones Gudariks had gifted her—as well as ones so dark a purple they were almost black.

Petals closed, the flowers tilted away from the sun’s light, a nyctinastic movement she’d never seen before until Gudariks gave her a pot of the blooms. She kept them on her windowsill thinking they needed sunshine, but they only ever bloomed at night, coaxed out by the reflected light of the moon.

They were eerily beautiful in the full light of day and so still. Not even a breeze rustled leaves or shook stems. The rock face that encircled the field must have protected it from the mountain’s harshest winds, or all wind entirely, given its utter stillness.

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