Chapter Thirty-Four
Bound hand and foot to a kitchen chair in rope and lightly singed, their captive sat in the middle of Astrid’s cottage, openly glaring. They forgot about the wards spelled to keep him out, so it wasn’t until he started shrieking, skin smoking, that they remembered and dismantled them. For someone who’d just seen the effects of their magic, he was quite brazen in his distaste.
They sat opposite him, sipping freshly brewed tea.
Oskar hadn’t returned with them. The fox familiar was finishing the boundary sweep and would report back if he found anything suspicious or spotted any other poachers. After finding one trying to sacrifice another wolf, it seemed likely the others would be employing themselves with the same task.
Three were slain the last time.
The ceremonial dagger they confiscated sat on Perchta’s lap right next to a plate of Springerle. “Who do you work for?” she asked, bringing one of the cookies to her mouth.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Perchta bit into the cookie with a smile and puncturing crunch, sharp needle teeth on display. “Mmm, that so?” she said after chewing. “And how, pray tell, did you learn to speak a language dead for thousands of years and come across this lovely artifact? It’s surprisingly well preserved.” That last bit was said with genuine interest and curiosity.
“Internet,” he grumbled.
Perchta looked to her, brow quirked.
“A human thing.” Astrid waved a hand. “Think of it as an endless book and scrying glass combined, but every good or nonsensical thing ever written or said on it sticks around forever. But that’s irrelevant. He’s making a smart-ass remark.”
“So rude.” Draining the rest of her tea, Perchta offloaded the items on her lap to the kitchen table behind her. “More fun for us though.”
Astrid smirked, eager to see what she did to loosen his tongue.
“Want fun, do you? Untie my hands.” Though he said it with a teasing, suggestive smirk, his eyes were ice-cold.
Sidling alongside his chair, Perchta said, “You’re a very naughty, stubborn boy.” She booped him on the nose, then brushed aside the collar of his coat. In a less playful tone, she added, “He’s been branded with the likeness of your esteemed lover, Tochter.”
Astrid got up to look.
It was an ugly, inflamed blister, but yes, the general shape of it did resemble Gudarīks. “The villagers did worship him when they were alive.”
“Good for him.” Perchta nodded approvingly as she rooted around the pockets of her cloak and withdrew a corked vial of bright yellow liquid. To the poacher, she said, “As much as I’d love to play this game of ‘you withhold information and we torture it out of you,’ time is of the essence.”
“I suspect Johanna will want to deliver this one to the human authorities,” Astrid added. “Can’t exactly hand him over all banged up.”
“Oh, Tochter...” Perchta smirked. “There are plenty of ways to torture a person without leaving a mark.”
Flicking the stopper off with her thumb, she roughly grabbed the man by the jaw and squeezed his cheeks hard, sharp nails biting bleeding crescents into skin and forcing his mouth open. He jerked and squirmed, the chair scuffing across the floor from his struggles, but Perchta didn’t lessen her grip and promptly dumped the contents of the vial down his throat.
Just as he began to sputter, she shoved his mouth closed and pinched his nose until he was purple in the face and finally made the big swallow.
“Truth serum?” Astrid inquired.
“Mmm-hmm. I started keeping it on me for the patrols just in case I came across someone like this wretched fellow.” She patted one roughened cheek, then settled back in her chair and refilled her teacup and plate. “Now, tell me. What’s your name?”
“Tanner.” The name fired out of his mouth, and judging from his outraged expression, the serum was working.
“Tanner?” Perchta scoffed. “That’s a little nail on the head. Anyway, Tanner , how did someone such as yourself come about sacrificing wolves in resurrection rituals for folk stuck in the Otherworld? And please, start from the beginning.”
Cigarette Man—Astrid refused to acknowledge him otherwise—screwed his mouth shut, cheeks puffed out, clearly attempting to keep the words trapped in his mouth. But instead, he spat them out in a loud, unflattering eruption of air. “We caught wind of a pack of wolves up north and tracked them down to this area,” he ground out, his teeth making an awful creaking sound. “I arrived first, met your...Mr. Antlers. Then, as I was setting up camp, my colleagues came. Passed around a few bottles of whiskey. Got a little rowdy.”
The idiot began holding his breath again.
“Cut it out, or I’ll freeze off your nuts,” Astrid snapped, summoning a little frost to her palm. It wasn’t quite as impressive as Mutter’s shows of force, but he flinched all the same. “I doubt the authorities will care about how you lost those.”
“Fine. Sheesh. Keep your skirt on.”
Astrid reached for his crotch.
He twisted away, as much as his bindings would allow, shouting, “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Go on,” Perchta prompted, fighting back a smirk.
“We were drinking and hootin’ and hollerin’ a bit when the wind kicked up something fierce, almost took out our fire. But it was gone as soon as it arrived, kinda shit. Real spooky stuff.” He looked between them and, remembering his audience, he grinned. “Right, probably just another Tuesday around here. Anyway, the wind calms down, and the fire starts flickering and popping again.
“It gets kinda fucked up after that. This freaky lady pops up out of nowhere, right out of the flames. She’s got these wicked red eyes, like two hot coals, and I still can’t decide whether she’s a ghost or a demon, but in any case, she said to us, ‘Help me and you’ll be rewarded,’ or some shit like that. And after that, we’d harvest the pelts from the wolves we tracked as planned, but butcher ’em a specific way, and she’d show us where to dig up that old knife, how to make hex bags...” He trailed off, scrunching his brow, genuinely appearing to have lost his train of thought. “We had to chant her name a bunch and say, ‘Heldin, I summon thee. Shake off the dirt, reassemble thy bones, and return to this earthly plane whole.’”
Perchta leaned forward in her chair, eyes keen as a blade’s edge.
“Who’s Heldin?” Astrid demanded.
“How the fuck should I know? She just popped out of our frickin’ campfire like a demonic jack-in-the-box.”
“Fine.” Astrid made a mental note to ask Gudarīks about her later. “So, you just readily agreed to do all that?”
“Fuck no, Blondie. What kind of idiot do you take me for?”
Astrid arched her brow.
“Whatever.” He scratched his cheek on his shoulder. “I said to her, ‘That’s easy enough to remember, but what’s in it for us?’ And she got this wicked smile and said, ‘I’ll let you live.’ Then some purple smoke shit started rising from the fire, and we got sleepy and calm. Just wanted to do whatever she asked.”
Cupping a hand over her mouth, so that only Mutter could see, Astrid whispered, “Violet smoke? He’s been charmed into compliance.”
Perchta nodded her head in agreement.
“I don’t know why.” Tanner blinked and shook his head, as if clearing it of fog. “The guarantee of living is fine and all, but anyone who needs to promise you that shouldn’t be trusted as far as you can throw them. I should know. The number of times I’ve been on the other end... Probably should’ve fought, or something. That’s more my style, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind.”
He blinked again and his shoulders slumped, his demeanor relaxing. “We took the deal.”
When Cigarette Man explained how they’d heard something massive barreling their way and that Heldin had concealed them all, his tone grew progressively giddier. “Oh, to see that big ugly brute’s face. Sniffing around and getting all huffy. Bet nobody shows him up like we did.”
A ghastly and unexpected peal of laughter followed.
“Mr. Tanner’s already getting slaphappy,” Perchta interjected. “It’s a side effect of the truth serum.”
“Delightful.”
“It took three wolves to get Heldin up here...” The sentence trailed off, his head lolling back. “Heehee.”
“She’s already here.” Astrid clenched her fists. “Explains how these Idioten managed to evade us for so long.”
“She told me I needed to get more.” Cigarette Man kept talking, his voice badly slurred. “More wolves means more people. ‘But they need a week of rest,’ she says. Pfffft. ‘They’ve been rotting in Hell for forever,’ I says. ‘Who wants to wait a week?’ And that’s when you found little old me.”
“Verdammt.” Perchta rose quickly. “I need to find Oskar.”
“Go on. I’ve got everything handled here. Make sure Oskar’s safe.”
Turning back to the poacher, Astrid asked one more question. “Why did you break in here to steal my hair?”
Something flashed across his eyes, an emotion she couldn’t read, but his smile broadened. “‘Cuz, I think it’s pretty, Blondie.”
There was a loud knock at her front door. “Astrid, it’s Johanna. Just bumped into your mother. Everything okay?”
“Not sure yet.” Astrid let her in. “She’s off to find Oskar.”
When Johanna entered, her eyes lasered on Cigarette Man. “You the swine slaughtering wolves?”
“One of them. There’s five of us. Our very own pack! HEE! HEE!”
“He’s deranged.” It wasn’t an excuse, just facts.
Johanna charged forward and punched him square in the face—his head slamming against the chair back with a loud crack.
He spit blood. “Whatcha do that for?”
Astrid frowned at the bloody spittle. Taking his winter coat, she tossed it over the mess and mopped it up from the floor with her foot. “I thought we weren’t supposed to mark him.”
Johanna deadpanned. “Oops.”