Wolf willow witch the gi.., p.1
Wolf, Willow, Witch (The Gideon Testaments Book 2), page 1
Wolf, Willow, Witch
The Gideon Testaments Book Two
Freydís Moon
Copyright © 2023 by Freydis Moon
All rights reserved.
ASIN: B0C29T3HFW
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Cover Illustration and Interior Design by M.E. Morgan
Also by Freydís ☽
Exodus 20:3
With A Vengeance
Three Kings
The Gideon Testaments
Heart, Haunt, Havoc
Praise For ☽
Olivia Waite named Heart, Haunt, Havoc a New York Times Best Romance Book of 2023
"Freydís has created something truly exquisite... Reading Exodus 20:3 feels like a religious experience, leaving you in awe by the end, wishing for more but also entirely satisfied."
—Harley Laroux author of The Dare
"Eerie as a haunting, biting as the midwinter night, and as tender as the ache of new love, Heart, Haunt, Havoc lingers long past the last page."
—K. M. Enright author of Mistress of Lies
“[Heart, Haunt, Havoc is] filled with dark magic, romance, and high stakes, this is a fast-paced read that pulls you through to the dramatic conclusion and doesn't disappoint!”
—C. M. Rosens author of The Crows
Content Note
Wolf, Willow, Witch contains sensitive material, including but not limited to: sexual content, body horror, animal mutilation, horror, depiction of mania, murder, discussion of sexual abuse, premeditated abuse, and religious abuse, bloody gore, obsessive behavior, drowning, depiction of panic
Chapter one
Tehlor Nilsen chomped on a reusable straw, searching for tapioca pearls at the bottom of her almost empty cup. The house on Staghorn Way stood before her like a fresh corpse, empty and fucking basic. She sucked soggy boba into her mouth and chewed loudly, assessing the renovated porch and stark white shutters. Total new-age Victorian. Straight out of a Magnolia Network special. She half-expected a middle-aged woman wearing designer overalls to burst through the front door and call the house a ‘fixer-upper’ or ‘the perfect project’ before twirling around with a paintbrush thrust skyward.
But it was a run-of-the-mill veteran who owned that cookie-cutter house, and Bishop was still cruising through the Bible Belt with their dapper little exorcist, leaving their houseplants thirsty and alone.
Gunnhild, Tehlor’s plump, spotted rat, sat on her shoulder, stretching her pink nose toward the door.
“No knives this time, I promise,” Tehlor cooed. She toed at the welcome mat with her pointed faux-ballet slippers and pushed it aside, revealing a single key.
The door whined open. She stepped inside, scanning the shadowy staircase and tall ceiling. The last time she’d breached that entrance, she’d captured a handful of displaced ghouls—coaxed into the house by a stubborn demon—and offered their naked power to Níðhöggr. It was impossible to know if the great dragon had accepted her gift, but after she’d completed the ritual, prayed to her gods, and chanted under the full moon, Tehlor woke with an assortment of rose petals strewn across her bed. Someone had smiled upon her, at least.
Power was a borrowed thing. Sometimes the gods soaked her to the bone, and sometimes they left her parched and desperate, scrabbling for a sacrifice that would earn their favor. Flowers weren’t her fuckin’ jam, to be honest. But they’d been pretty enough.
Gunnhild’s tiny claws pushed through her beige blouse and needled her skin. Tehlor kicked the door shut behind her and twirled in place, inhaling a long, deep breath. She’d scraped this place clean of any spirits. Pulled them through the barrier between life, death, and the in-between, and peeled back their lifeforce like overripe fruit. Despite her successful harvest, and Colin Hart’s botched, angelic ceremony, a foul presence lingered. She couldn’t place the source of the energy—rage nestled in the belly of the house—but she recognized its brutish hum. Knew the shape of a spirit bending upward from the basement, reaching for another vulnerable magician to latch onto. Like a remora on a barracuda’s belly. She crossed the living room, dragging her finger across the banister.
Each step brought her closer to the peculiarity stewing beneath the floorboards. She tapped the edge of the archway on her way into the kitchen. Set her empty cup down and skipped her coffin-shaped fingernails across the copper kettle on the stove. Hummed as she cradled a philodendron’s rubbery leaf and strode through the adjacent sitting room toward a closed door situated at the back of the house. Hidden, almost.
“Well, would you look at that,” she cooed and jiggled the doorknob. Locked, of course. Her voice lowered, husky and private in the lonesome house. “What’re they hiding, Gunnhild?”
On her shoulder, the rat cleaned her snout.
Tehlor summoned a shred of power. It inched through her veins, seeping into the lines of her palm. Whatever favor the gods had leant her after her sacrifice to Níðhöggr, it was fading. Feeling her magic lessen was annoying. Like a half-assed orgasm. She grasped the doorknob again and twisted, loosening the lock until it snapped open. On a hard tug, the hinges wheezed, and a strong gust tossed her fair hair. Gunnhild settled in the dip where Tehlor’s shoulder met her throat and crouched there, sheltering from the unnatural wind.
Death permeated the air. Sweetness like turned buttercream filled her nostrils. She inhaled, sucking in the dust leftover from mishandled magic then turned on the light and descended the staircase. The basement held an unusual chill. Electricity sparked on her skin, dancing across the runes tattooed on her knuckles. Something has been torn in two. There’d been a split of some sort. Life had been removed from a thing unused to living, and Tehlor sensed the heaviness of its leftovers heaped somewhere nearby.
She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet, bracing herself with a hand on the back of a ratty recliner. Death-marked. She jerked away and gasped. Gunnhild squeaked.
Places held onto pain, items kept the imprint of aggression, walls were watermarked with memories, and that nasty chair had witnessed the departure of a soul. She remembered a corpse slouching there, grayish and gone, and tempered her grin, whirling around, searching for the source.
“Come on… Where are you?” She took Gunnhild from her shoulder and placed her on the cool floor.
Pacing back and forth, Tehlor held her palms face-up, feeling for something, anything. She closed her eyes again and swung from left to right. Spread her fingers until they ached. Huffed with frustration when the stagnant energy refused to budge. Don’t be stubborn. She chewed her bottom lip, bratty and impatient. Don’t be a coward. But nothing changed, or moved, or manifested until Gunnhild sniffed around the base of the wall. It was then, as her familiar’s dainty snout tracked a patch of freshly laid concrete when Tehlor Nilsen noticed the half-assed masonry job hidden behind a linen shelf.
“No fuckin’ way,” she muttered, sighing the words like a premonition. She glanced at Gunnhild who stood on her back paws and gazed up from the floor. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
The rat wiggled her nose and skittered away, climbing atop the recliner to perch on its armrest.
Tehlor had been a ballerina in another life. She’d spun on sore toes in pointe shoes and pretended she might become a bird or a bat. A creature with the means to make falling look graceful. She wasn’t as athletic as she used to be, but her adrenaline surged as the shelf toppled over and crashed, splitting the air with a loud bang. She reveled in the hard connection of her foot against the wall, how the blow shook her ankle and radiated through her calf, causing her kneecap to shiver. Her legs had carried her through long rehearsals. Endured midnight ice baths. Stayed taut and reliable. Besides her pride, they were her strongest asset. The concrete hadn’t cured long enough to sustain much abuse and caved inward on another clumsy kick.
Brick gave way, falling onto the floor and atop a body wrapped in black garbage bags. Rot billowed into the basement. Tehlor gagged and swatted at the air, trying to shoo the smell of bile and decomposition. Nasty shit. She slapped her palm over her nose and punched a hole in the bag with her fingernail. The plastic split easily. Beneath it, pale, bloated skin shone yellow and splotchy in the dim lamplight. She tore the plastic until the form became a person, and the person became vaguely familiar. She remembered him differently—angry-eyed and walking in Fenrir’s shadow. As a man, he was plain. His straw-like, ashy hair had greyed, and his features were distorted, but she knew him, somehow. Felt the ebb of his lifeforce nudging against the terrestrial plane, searching for a fissure to widen and slip through.
“You’re stubborn,” she murmured, crouching to stare at him over the edge of the broken brick.
She thought of Fenrir, sacrifice, and godhood, and remembered a fragment of curious lore…
Wolves guarded Valhalla.
Gunnhild gave a terrified chirp, and Tehlor laughed in the dank, grim space.
“Let’s see how stubborn.”
Tehlor had stolen from crematoriums before, but she’d never stolen from a business specializing in beloved pets. Snatching someone’s bestie from their front yard wasn’t really an option, and the Rainbow Bridge Pet Mortuary was the only place in Gideon where she’d found a fresh body.
Gunnhild rode in the pocket of her knitted cardigan, making uncertain noises as Tehlor ha
Finally, she plopped the blanketed furry body on the basement floor and swatted her palms together, huffing out an accomplished sigh.
“See? Easy,” she said to Gunnhild, who climbed into her palm when she offered it. She placed the rat on her shoulder and set her hands on her hips. “Two bodies…” She nodded, glancing at the unearthed man and the canine corpse. She scanned the rest of the materials. “Needle, tube, cauldron…”
Her boline, a white-handled knife, rested in her basket next to bandages, peroxide, alcohol, and a suture kit she’d found on Facebook marketplace. The crescent-shaped boline was beautiful and tactile, but it wasn’t practical for the task at hand. She reached into the basket and pulled out a Promaja cleaver, turning the chef’s knife over and setting the thick blade flat against her palm.
Ritual came at a cost. Gods demanded payment. Still, Tehlor held fast to selfish hope. She could use an extra power source. Slave was too taboo to say out loud, but assistant worked. Sort of. A little bit. And to be fair, the goddess of death probably didn’t want him anyway—someone cowardly enough to trick his lover into pawning off generational magic—but Tehlor still braced for a bargain. Whomever Bishop had murdered wouldn’t be missed, and whomever Colin had exorcised surely wouldn’t be slithering out of hell anytime soon.
It would’ve been wasteful to leave—Landon, Liam, something like that—trapped in purgatory. Not when Tehlor had use for him.
Before she lost her nerve, Tehlor dabbed a bit of menthol beneath her nostrils, arranged the two bodies beside each other, and carefully placed Gunnhild on the back of the recliner.
“Don’t look,” she said to the rat and carved a line across the man’s bloated throat with her boline.
Rituals on television always started with a chant or a blessing, but realistically, witchcraft was a boring, lonesome thing. Especially Norse witchcraft, which tended to be messier than most. After she made the ceremonial cut with her boline, she set the knife down and then fastened her wheat-colored locks into a bun with a scrunchie.
“Hel, be kind,” she whispered. Her small palm fit neatly around the handle of the cleaver. “I come to you humble and wanting, my lady, for I am a child of the true gods, and I wish to carry their glory into the new world.”
Tehlor brought the blade down hard, severing the man’s head from his shoulders in three blows.
“The dishonored are bestowed upon you, but I request a contract. Give passage to this unclean soul. Grant him access to your daughter, and through his servitude, I will bring you greatness.”
After the man, the dog came apart easily. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand, and traded the two, setting the dog’s head upon the man’s shoulders. Sticky fluid stuck to her temples, and she paused to dip her fingers into the sour blood, spreading like a crimson lake across the floor.
“Honor me with a spectral guard selected from your keep.” She closed her eyes and dragged her bloody fingertips across her face, leaving red trails from forehead to chin. “Long is the way, long must thou wander.”
The words came easily, uttered from a poem-turned-spell she’d learned years ago. The Ballad of Syipdag, solemn and ancient, poured from her in longwinded stanzas as she sewed the dog’s head into place, and sutured the patches on the man’s body where insects had chewed at him.
Power churned inside her. The more she tended to him, and the more blood spilled, the more entranced she became. She hadn’t realized the candles she’d arranged around the room had sparked to life until their light sent shadows flickering in the corners. She didn’t notice her breath fogging the air until the ghostly chill crept beneath her clothes, nipping at her skin like a winter morning. At one point, she was reciting the poem, and at another, she was breathing hard, blind and overcome, lost in the overlap between Nilfheim and Earth.
“I am your daughter,” she whispered, teeth chattering, and traded the cleaver for her boline, pressing its curved mouth to her arm. “And I am loyal. Give unto me the blessing of vorðr.”
Tehlor winced and sliced her fair flesh. The small incision gaped. She dropped the knife, pressed her hand over the wound, and flicked her blood onto the man’s body, laying claim, calling his spirit back to the host she’d uncovered and reshaped.
Give me power. She hiccupped. Nausea rolled through her. Give me a warrior.
Something brutal and unfamiliar opened in her core. Her magic snared it—him—and she held on.
“You’re mine,” she choked out. Blackness tunneled inward, snatching away her consciousness.
Somewhere nearby, Hel whispered, “Be glad.”
Chapter two
Tehlor woke to Gunnhild nosing at her cheek and the Promaja cleaver pointed at her face. She blinked blearily, willing the shape looming above her to sharpen.
Well, I’ll be damned.
Pointed white ears rimmed in black fur twitched. The man’s newly attached snout curled back in a snarl. She stared into his wolfish eyes—one blue, the other brown—and laughed in her throat, grinning triumphantly.
“You again,” he seethed. An animal growl bubbled up and out of him.
“Me,” she purred. “What’s your name?”
He lifted the knife away and crossed his arms. “Lincoln. You’re that witch, aren’t you? Bishop’s friend.”
“Sure, I guess. I’m Tehlor Nilsen, your new keeper.”
“Careful,” he warned.
She laughed again, coughing through it. Whatever power she’d summoned had left her weak, but she knew what she’d done. Recognized the gift Hel had given her. “Go ahead, honey. Try it. Let’s see what’chya got—”
Before she’d finished speaking, Lincoln slipped the cleaver beneath her chin and set the blade against her throat, pressing until blood welled beneath it. She flinched, cursing under her breath, and watched the same, small wound open on Lincoln, darkening the place where snowy fur met beige skin.
“See,” she whispered, craning into the knife. Her skin stung and her eyes welled. “I hold your leash now, Lincoln.” Her tongue clipped his name like scissors. “Slit my throat, slit yours, too. Kill me, kill yourself.”
Lincoln narrowed his eyes and reached for his neck. The moment his fingers found fur, he paused, tilting his head curiously. Realization tightened the muscles in his forearms. She watched him feel across his new face and saw the exact moment shock dissolved into fury.
“Oh, right, that.” Tehlor flashed another crooked smile and knocked the cleaver away. It dangled limply from his hand. She sat up on her elbows, blowing a piece of hair out of her face. “You rocked the anthro-chic look, so—”
This time, Lincoln placed his dirty boot on her sternum and shoved her hard against the floor. The back of her head cracked the concrete and she hissed, shooing Gunnhild before the rat got hurt, too. Motherfucker. If she could’ve, she would’ve summoned a necrotic spell and unstitched his filthy skin. Left the reformed tissue raw and blackened. But she was tapped out when it came to magic. The only thing she could do was sputter out, “Wait, wait, okay, let me fuckin’ explain. Jesus, man. Relax!”
“Relax?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” She wrapped her hands around his ankle. It was no use trying to dislodge him. He was bigger than her. Stronger. Meaner, maybe. “Hel would’ve never let you go, all right? I needed to reshape you in the image of a god. You had no problem walking in Fenrir’s shadow when a demon put a collar on you. Why is this any different?”
“Because I had a say in that,” he growled, and pressed harder on her ribcage, digging his heel into her paisley blouse.
“Fair enough, here’s your…” She strained through a breath and smacked his shin. “Here’s your choice: live or die.” She paused, meeting his dual-colored eyes. “Again. It’d be the fourth time, right?”
