Untethering Dark

Chapter Twenty-Four

“You’ll not get much sleep tonight, Liebling,” Gudarīks vowed, already fantasizing about the many ways he’d fulfill his promise.

Mirth sparkled in her eyes as her hold on him tightened. “Oh? And what grand designs do you have in store for me?”

He was about to answer when he was interrupted. Drunken singing, full of hearty, raucous cheer, carried across the mountains on a shift in the wind.

Astrid’s body tensed in his arms, her head snapping toward the direction of the sound.

Damnably ill-timed humans! Quiet for days, and now they wanted to restart their revelry?

“It’s okay,” Astrid whispered. “If you need to go, go.”

What he needed was for their elusive adversaries to shut up long enough for him to thoroughly bed his witch. “That’s not what I want.”

“Me neither, but...” She buried her face in the crook of his neck. “I don’t like hearing them taunt you.”

That was an effective mood killer.

One didn’t live as long as he without an immense well of patience, but this sapped it bone-dry. He kept the irritation out of his voice when he asked, “Shall I take you home?”

“I think it’s for the best.”

Mutual disappointment leached between them, but it only made him hold her closer, salvaging what he could of their time together. He carried her the whole way home, using his new scarf to keep her exposed flesh warm and covered from the biting cold. It was the least he could do after ruining her pants.

He left her tucked away inside her cottage, and of course, just as he left, the revelry stopped.

The haunted campsite and its living, elusive specters burrowed into Gudarīks’s every thought, so tenacious a fixation it was no wonder his nighttime wandering led him back to it. And just like every time that came before, there appeared to be nothing more than disturbed snow and a scorched patch of earth from a smothered fire.

Who would dare challenge him? This had been his forest for twelve thousand years, and it would remain so for twelve thousand more. Poachers might be involved in the puzzle, but they weren’t the sum of its parts.

Gudarīks stalked the site for clues. Maybe there was something they missed the previous times.

But finding nothing in the snow, he crouched down where the fire had been, pushing aside charred bits of wood. Items were sometimes burned during spells and rituals, and sure enough, buried beneath the ash he found a rough-hewn stone disk. A bit of singed, blackened leather thong was strung through the bail...an amulet, then. Brushing it free of soot revealed a stick figure drawing etched into its center.

An eerie cold settled over him.

Not only did the image bear his likeness, he’d seen something like it before, long ago. But when? The answer teased mercilessly at the edge of his mind. An unfortunate consequence of all his years was that memories blended or eluded him altogether.

As he took the amulet into the palm of his hand, a cacophony of human hooting and hollering pierced the night air, startling him to his feet. He whirled around, searching for them around the site, amongst the trees, but there was no one here.

And yet, their raucous revelry rang out as if he’d stumbled into the middle of their festivities. So close he could practically taste them in the air. Their smell, their laughter, seared his senses, stoked his anger, and shot needling hunger pains through his abdomen. He wanted to slash and rip and rend.

A woman’s screeching glee cut through the rising noise, mocking him, taunting him, making his blood run cold. One so familiar, and yet, infuriatingly elusive. There was a name, jabbing him from the blurry edges of memory. Hel? Heldeen? Heldin?

Strange magic was at work, no doubt about that. He’d seen a lot in his many years, but never something like this.

Tearing himself from the campsite for self-preservation’s sake, he sprinted off into the forest, desperate to put as much distance as he could between himself and that infernal place. By the time he ran himself out of breath, the sharp edge of his hunger had somewhat blunted, and a measure of clear thought returned.

But as his breathing slowed, and the blood pulsing in his ears lessened, that damned chanting came back, faint, but unmistakably still there.

He spun around.

Across the valley, from whence he came, he saw the telltale orange glow of a blazing bonfire, shadowy figures dancing around its flame.

Rearing back his head, Gudarīks let out a terrible roar. One that shook snow from the surrounding trees and sent it crashing to the ground.