Page 40 of Wolf, Willow, Witch
Phillip whimpered and took a half-step backward, staring at his dead wife. He lifted his arm and jabbed at Tehlor and Lincoln. Despite his shaking arm, blown pupils, and sheet-white face, he didn’t make a sound. Couldn’t, probably. He gaped, transferring his shocked gaze from Rose to Tehlor.
What a sad, sorry thing to watch a murder take place and expect an absent god to intervene.
Tehlor turned the knife over in her hand. Frost pushed through her wet clothes, but the angry, frantic magic stirring beneath her skin coaxed heat to unfurl in her core. Steam rose from her jumpsuit. She reached for the band holding her bun in place and pulled, allowing her damp hair to tumble over her shoulders.Be with me,she begged and snatched at the energy tethering her soul to Lincoln’s.Be with us.
“The Lord will keep her,” Tehlor muttered. She spat on the ground and crouched beside Rose’s corpse, plastering her palm over the leaking wound. Carefully, with intent, she smeared sacrificial blood across her face.Hear me. “Fenrir, be kind,” she whispered. Her small palm fit neatly around the handle of the knife. Blood clumped in her eyelashes. “I come to you humble and wanting, great wolf, for I am a child of the true gods, and I wish to carry their glory into the new world.”
Finally, Phillip let out a horrified scream.
Daniel reached for his holstered firearm.
In a sudden whip of frozen wind, the candles died, and the revival devolved into chaos.
Magic surged. Tehlor inhaled raggedly and got to her feet, whipping toward Lincoln. His energy pulled tight around her own, shackled to her skeleton like a second self. Same as in her dream, she felt the mountainous presence of Fenrir standing above her, teeth bared, calling herchainbreaker. Parishioners shouted. Someone shrieked and bellowed, yelling for police, for help, for an ambulance. The voices—so near, so close—became distant and muffled.Focus. But Tehlor was no longer in control. Not completely. She was Lincoln, and he was her. She was Fenrir, and Hel, and Loki, and Magni. She was every voice in the Æsir. She sparked, set ablaze by demon kings, scorched by the sorcery that’d followed Lincoln out of hell.
Fenrir’s voice rode the back of a wintery gust. “Rise.”
Tehlor sucked in a great breath and felt her body pull toward the sky. She was weightless and buoyant, channeling a storm as Haven broke apart. Energy swept upward from the bloody body at her feet. She gasped again, catching her breath, and saw herself through Lincoln’s gaze—eyes milky white, palms open, feet hovering above the ground—and felt his heart squeeze and sputter.
Be vigilant.
When she reached for life, she found it, and when she gripped, twisted, snapped, it went to pieces in her hands. Her knuckles buckled inward. The knife dropped, sinking into the snow beneath her boots. A gunshot rang out. She only caught a flash, the barely-there outline of a threat, and heard the buzz of a bullet whizz past her.Daniel. Another shot came and went, aimed at Lincoln. The bullet grazed his arm.Pain. Sudden; minuscule. Tehlor did not need to turn toward him, or look at him, or aim. Her power—Fenrir’s power—lashed out and struck Daniel’s sternum. The man’s ribcage caved. Bone, splintered, punctured, bent outward, curving like antlers from his gaping chest.
It was not her hands doing the breaking, but it was. It was not her mind manipulating hot marrow, but it was. It was not her magic peeling back flesh, but it was.
Lincoln’s animal growl filled the air, and in her peripheral, where their magic blurred and broke, she saw his wolfish maw slicked red, his teeth snapping at soft jugulars, his human hands squeezing and twisting. He snatched Phillip, searing each side of the pastor’s face with steaming palms, and snapped his neck. When the Haven patriarch fell, his cheeks wore charred flesh, as if Lincoln had pushed hellfire into his skin.
Völva imbued with Vanir.The voice snaked through her, familiar and not.We are alike, you and I.
Tehlor tried to find the source, but her limbs were locked, her body suspended, held by godkin.
I know you,she wanted to scream, remembering Sophia’s fingers curved around the bottom of a locked door.Jesus wept, you fuckin’ coward.
The sound of carnage faded, replaced by crashing waves, arctic wind, battle drums, and clashing steel, and Tehlor Nilsen could not separate herself from the woman the gods had decided she would be. Right then, she became a vessel for violence, shattering bodies with a single thought, stripping lifeforce with a sweep of her hand, coaxing blood from mouths, eyes, and ears as she pleased.
But when Hel whispered, “Be glad,” Tehlor recognized pain.
Not the pain of another. Not being grazed by a bullet, not being kicked, not being slapped, not being clawed, or shoved, or swatted. Disruptive pain.Truepain.
No, she thought,no, no, no. But reality tunneled inward, cutting through the sound of drums.
All at once, Tehlor’s vision cleared.
Amy stood in front of her, wide-eyed and red-cheeked, choking on ugly sobs, holding the hilt of Tehlor’s fallen knife against her belly. The blade buried deep. Searing pain jostled Tehlor into the present. Godkin, gone. Power, gone. Magic, gone.
Even the faithful face betrayal.
Tehlor Nilsen, chosen by Fenrir, blessed by Hel, had underestimated Amy De’voreaux.
“It was a prophecy,” Tehlor whispered. Copper tainted her tongue.
Amy sniffled and let the knife go, gripping Tehlor’s face with both hands. “I can still save you. I can fix this, I can—I can make this right. We’ll be gorgeous mothers, Tehlor.” Blood seeped through Tehlor’s jumpsuit, down her thigh, tickling her knee.Damn, Tehlor thought, choking on an ugly sob, and then,Lincoln. Amy continued, crazed. “We’ll beholymothers. Birth blooming from death. Beautiful, right? I promise—it’s not too late, it’s never too late, I can—”
Her soupy babbling was shredded by a scream. Fingertips raked Tehlor’s cheeks and Amy fell, pulled into the snow by a living corpse.
Kimberly, or whatever she’d turned into, clawed at Amy’s body. Ripped at clothes, then flesh, and dove fist-first into her stomach. Amy’s ghoulish wail echoed through the preserve, accompanied by a slipperycrunch. Kimberly pulled and plucked, emptying Amy’s body of muscle and organs. It was a quick, awful death, barbaric and fitting.
Tehlor clumsily felt across her stomach and wrapped a shaky hand around the knife.
