Chapter Thirty-Five
My sweet darlings.
Arms folded, Astrid smiled as she watched Fritz and Liesel play with a bright red ball, butting it around the pen with their heads. She was reluctant to spend another second inside, trapped in the company of Cigarette Man, whose temperament soured as he came down from the ridiculous effects of truth serum.
She even stuffed a rag in his mouth and put a burlap bag over his head. All very satisfying things, but his sheer presence sullied her mood. She wanted to stick him in her shed and leave him out there away from her personal space, but there was no heat. And evidently that kills people.
So here she was. Run out of her own home.
If it weren’t for Johanna’s plans to bring him in, or her own tactical reasons for keeping him around—in case further intel was needed—she’d have just hacked him up and left him for any wolves left in the area, including the one rescued earlier that day. Poetic justice and all that.
“Someone’s in your house,” a voice growled behind her.
Verdammt, Mutter Holle!
Barely suppressing a startled yelp, Astrid whirled around. “Gudarīks!”
Blazing, crimson eyes zeroed in on the cottage, and if she hadn’t recognized the voice, she might’ve thought it was Heldin staring at her from the shadows. The forest god swayed back and forth on all fours, fur bristling along his spine. If she didn’t say something, and fast, he might launch himself through the wall to annihilate a situation already under control.
“A prisoner,” she rushed, holding up her hands. “Perchta and I captured one of the poachers today and interrogated him.”
He blinked, briefly blotting out the lambent red of his eyes, leaving twin dark holes at the center of his orbital sockets. The swaying stopped. “You’ve done what I could not.”
“Who’s Heldin?”
His attention snapped to her. “How do I know that name?”
“We should catch up,” she replied, patting a spot beside her at the fence post. He joined her, a weariness hanging about his shoulders. The yoke of remembering. “It appears a spectral aberration of her visited a group of poachers and charmed them into doing her bidding.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not. They resurrected her from the Otherworld when they sacrificed the three wolves. She has an uncanny ability to conceal herself and them. That’s why you’ve haven’t been able to find them.”
“So, she walks among us. What did that human inside say she wanted?”
“To free herself and her people from the Otherworld in exchange for their lives.” She rolled her eyes. As if. “I don’t know anything about her other than I’m fairly certain she was the leader of your old village, just by how he was talking.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, a heavy, downtrodden motion. “I guess that sounds right. I’m trying to picture and place her in my memory, but it’s just this black hole. Did he say anything else about her?”
“Nothing useful,” she said softly, laying a hand on his arm. “It’s been two thousand years. I’d be very impressed if you remembered what anyone looked like from that time.”
“But shouldn’t one of the greatest evils I’ve ever encountered be seared into my memory? Too terrible to forget?”
She squeezed his arm, then wrapped her own around herself. “Sometimes that’s exactly why we don’t remember.”
Heldin. Just the name sent shivers down his spine, his body remembering something his mind did not.
“There was one thing of note.” Astrid rubbed her arms, and Gudarīks thought it might be more for comfort than chill. “He said Heldin has red eyes ‘like two hot coals.’”
Gudarīks froze.
A woman’s voice, whispered on the wind in an ancient, long-dead tongue. “Oh, mighty Gudarīks. Where was your mercy before?”
A pair of red, narrow-set eyes, flickering like fire.
Heldin.
All this time, she had been haunting him.