Wolf, Willow, Witch (The Gideon Testaments Book 2), page 13
Lincoln slipped his hand into the water and placed his palm on her sternum.
Rose came to stand beside the trough. She traced the willow cutting tucked behind Tehlor’s ear. “Will you return clean and pure, sister in Christ?” She touched the red ink on Tehlor’s throat the same way a wasp might perch on bare flesh. “Will you become a vessel? Will you kneel before the Lord?”
Fenrir’s voice boomed through her skull. The mighty kneel before no one.
Rage lit inside her, singeing the tail-end of her misplaced fear.
“You were right,” Tehlor whispered. She met Lincoln’s two-toned eyes and gave a curt nod. “Your plan was better.”
Rose cocked her head, confused.
A handsome, raspy laugh rumbled behind Lincoln's closed lips.
Tehlor reached into her boot, gripped the leather handle, and pulled her hidden hunting knife free. She swung, jamming the blade beneath Rose’s ear. A guttural, wet noise lurched from the Haven matriarch. Her eyes bulged, cemented on Tehlor, and her pink mouth dropped open. She coughed and sputtered. Like Kimberly, she pawed at the air, unable to properly defend herself. Tehlor twisted the knife and opened Rose’s throat.
Blood gushed over Tehlor’s knuckles and dripped into the baptism trough, splattering her cheeks. She wrenched the weapon free. There, bitch. Go shake hands with Christ. Rose crumbled into a lifeless heap beside the shock tank.
No one moved. No one screamed. People watched, waiting for another miracle. Their saucer-eyes searched for a signal, for reason, but no one said amen, no one prompted them to holler or speak in tongues, no one praised God or quoted scripture. All was quiet except for Tehlor’s harsh breath and the sound of water sloshing over the sides of the trough as Lincoln lifted her out.
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 her chainbreaker. 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. True pain.
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 be holy mothers. 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 slippery crunch. 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.
Lincoln. The quiet scared her. Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln. You’re here, I know you’re here, you have to be here, you didn’t leave me, you wouldn’t leave me, don’t leave me—
“Shit,” Lincoln barked, turning her roughly.
“You didn’t leave,” she said, bewildered.
Blood speckled his sweater and coated his hands. His mouth dripped crimson.
Beautiful beast, she thought. Still mine.
“Leave? What? Look, don’t…” He exhaled through a frustrated growl and reached timidly for the knife. “This’ll hurt like a bitch, okay? Just stay still. I can…” He inhaled through his nose and narrowed his eyes. “I can heal you, but this has to come out first.”
As he wrapped his hand around the hilt of the knife, she realized she’d never seen him afraid before. She laughed, one single hah, and cried out when he pulled the blade free. He yelped, too, and plastered his palm over his stomach, concealing a matching wound.
Tehlor’s knees buckled. She swayed into him, but Lincoln did not let her fall.
“Where’s my rat,” she mumbled.
The darkness thickened. She heard Lincoln’s heartbeat, pounding, dwindling.
Lincoln cradled her in his lap, fumbling for the knife, muttering something in a language she didn’t know. Latin. Aramaic, maybe. Demon-speak.
“Where’s my rat,” she said again, louder.
“In my fucking pocket,” he snapped. “Can you stay still? Jesus Christ, Tehlor. You…” He blew out an annoyed breath, rolled his sleeve to his elbow, and picked up the knife, setting the blade against his forearm. “You went nuclear, you know that? Old-world shit.”
She snorted, staring at his perked ears, pretty snout, and stern eyes. Her vision doubled, tripled. She clung to here and now, to then and there, coughing through labored breath.
“Breathe,” Lincoln said. His two-toned eyes glinted.
Lincoln flattened his palm over the puncture.
“You first,” she said, glancing at his leaking stomach.
Lincoln ignored her.
“You first,” she hollered, choking on coppery ichor.
Lincoln hushed her. She didn’t hear what else he said, couldn’t parse the incantation tumbling past his sharp teeth, but she felt her flesh catch fire.
As wicked heat chewed her skin, cauterizing the wound, Tehlor threw her head back. She screeched, digging her heels into the bloody snow, and fisted her weak hands in Lincoln’s shirt. Before her mind clicked off, consciousness shooed by immeasurable pain, she caught a glimpse of Sophia De’voreaux crouched in the darkness, hand poised like a puppeteer, staring back at her.
Chapter twelve
CHURCH MASSACRE IN WILDERNESS PRESERVE
INVESTIGATED AS MURDER-SUICIDE
The headline scrolled past the bottom of the muted flatscreen.
Seven days ago, enthusiastic news anchors had reported on a brutal incident in the Gideon backcountry. The local sheriff refused to name suspects, and the investigation was under lock and key, but Tehlor still tuned in every morning, waiting for her picture to appear, for the headline to change: Local woman identified as prime suspect in Haven slaughter. She shifted on the couch, laid out in an unfamiliar place with her shirt bundled beneath her armpits, flinching as Lincoln peeled a bandage off her stomach.
“It’s getting better,” he said, tipping his head to inspect her charred skin.
A blackened handprint replaced the nasty gash. For seven days, she’d limped around, hissing and complaining, begging Freya for mercy, and for seven days, her ruined flesh sizzled with every breath. He was right, though. It was happening slowly, but hellfire be damned, she was healing.
The house on Staghorn Way was not home, but they’d needed shelter after the revival, and staying at her townhouse had been too risky. Somehow, they’d circled back to their origin, waiting for the person they’d mutually betrayed to walk through the front door again. She tracked slow-falling snow through the window while Lincoln dabbed at the burn with a damp cloth, and tried not to flinch when he applied a cooling ointment. She’d mashed the salve together herself, imbuing it with blessings and hope. Do not leave me, she’d whispered to each herb, imagining godkin poised on the beach in her dream, do not forsake me. Each night, she envisioned the preserve—candles, prayer, bloodshed—and each night, she found another missing piece, collected another lost memory.
Lincoln, carrying her into the townhouse, hoisting her into the bathtub, holding her face between his reddened hands. Don’t you fuckin’ dare, Tehlor. Look at me, c’mon, hey! Something shattering, footsteps hurrying, voices carrying. Listen, kid, I saw what you can do, okay? Bring her back. Do it, or I’ll—Sophia De’voreaux’s blotchy face. How badly Tehlor had wanted to say I’m still alive, I’m still here, and how impossible that simple action had been. Sophia, stitching Tehlor’s flighty soul into place. Agony, agony, agony. Lincoln, standing in the doorway, holding the matching wound on his stomach with one hand and swatting at a stubborn tear with the other. And before that—before, before—how the night had turned vicious, and she had, too. Lincoln, lifting a man by the throat. Bodies bending backward, breaking. Death, how it sounded, how it smelled. How life sputtered out in her palm. Amy’s arm loosed from the socket. Her eyes gouged, her teeth cracked—
“Hey.” Lincoln finished taping a new bandage over the handprint—his handprint—and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “You good?”
Tehlor chewed her bottom lip. “Tired.”
They hadn’t talked about it. Not extensively, at least.
The night she’d become death, met death, escaped death, Tehlor had startled awake, confused and terrified, reaching for Lincoln. He’d fumbled for her quaky hands. Made a sound shaped like severe relief. Kissed her desperately.
She was alive, Haven was destroyed, and Lincoln hadn’t left.
Fuckin’ hell.
Nothing else mattered, really.
She pushed her shirt into place and sat up, grimacing.
“I made Sophia some toast earlier, but she won’t come down," he said.
Tehlor remembered Sophia slinking through the doorway after she'd lurched into Lincoln's arms. Remembered pitch-black eyes, gnashing teeth, how an hour before that, the strange, magically compromised girl had pierced through Fenrir's shield and managed to enter Tehlor's mind. Powerful little thing. Fear paralyzed her, but she swallowed and steeled her expression.
“Fair. I wouldn’t come down either if…” She gestured between herself and Lincoln. “We were waiting.”
Lincoln sat on the edge of the coffee table. Sometimes when she looked at him, she saw blood where there wasn’t any. Flashbacks from the revival came and went, snapping around her heart like a beartrap. For seven days, she’d avoided her reflection, afraid Rose Whitman might look back at her. She glanced away, focusing on a ritual candle melting on the windowsill. She’d etched runes into the wax and prayed for flowers on her bed again. But the candle burned, and the house slumbered, and her gods did not grant another audience.
"Maybe you should talk to her."
Tehlor stood, bracing on the armrest, then the back of the couch. She glanced at the ceiling. “I'll give her another day."
“We might not have another day,” he said, sighing.
Gunnhild squeaked. She climbed out of the snuggle ball tucked against the corner of the couch and hopped over to Tehlor, asking to be held.
A car door opened and closed. Another did, too. Ice crunched under weighty steps. Shoes made hollow, hoof-life sounds on the sturdy, renovated porch.
Tehlor placed Gunnhild on her shoulder and inhaled a long, deep breath. Her lungs tightened. She glanced at Lincoln and lifted a brow, shifting her jaw back and forth.
The lock twisted. Afternoon light streamed into the foyer followed by a dusting of fresh snow.
“Welcome home,” Tehlor said.
Colin Hart paused mid-unlace of one polished Oxford. Shadows purpled the thin skin beneath his sunken eyes, and a bruise marred the angelic ink creeping above his collar. Whatever he’d been dealing with, it looked exhausting. He tilted his head, inquisitive gaze flicking around the quiet house. Tehlor stepped into view, leaning her shoulder against the closed closet.
“Oh, hey. What’re you…” Colin’s question disintegrated.
Lincoln followed Tehlor’s lead, walking around the back of the couch to stand at the end of the hall. He leaned against the kitchen table with his thumbs curled through his beltloops, chin held high, staring at Colin down the slope of his human nose.
Bishop shouldered through the front door and dropped their backpack. Snow clung to their denim coat, and they plucked their glasses off to clean the lenses with their sleeve, shooting Colin a tired, confused smile.
“What…” They slid their glasses back on and followed Colin’s harsh gaze.
The moment Bishop Martínez laid their eyes on Lincoln Stone the air turned electric. Their pupils stretched into diamonds. They reached into their waistband and drew a sleek, black pistol, swinging the weapon forward without pause. They held the gun firmly, chest-high, and stepped in front of Colin.
“Be for real,” Tehlor barked. She rolled her eyes and scratched the top of Gunnhild’s head.
Above them, hinges creaked. The landing at the top of the staircase wheezed beneath cautious footsteps. Once again, the house on Staghorn Way began to tremble.
Bishop did not lower the gun. Colin held his breath. Behind her, Lincoln hummed, soft and thoughtful.
Great, she thought. Here we go.
Tehlor sighed. “We’ve got bigger problems, brujo.”
Acknowledgements
Wolf, Willow, Witch was a stubborn exercise in reflection. This little book became a personal healing journey for me. It's the result of a headstrong need to explore womanhood, gender, and sexuality in a raw, inelegant format. I hope the people who needed Tehlor found strength in her graceless determination and solace in her ruthless self-examination. She is all of us, I think, in one way or another.
