Wolf, Willow, Witch (The Gideon Testaments, #2)

by Freydís Moon

Feeling her magic lessen was annoying. Like a half-assed orgasm.

Rituals on television always started with a chant or a blessing, but realistically, witchcraft was a boring, lonesome thing.

Sometimes she snipped fingers from cold bodies stashed at low-security morgues or attended full moon bonfires to suck spare energy out of white women who called themselves shamans.

“You are a daughter of Freya, child of the north, descendent of shield-maidens.” She nodded at herself. “Take no shit, bitch.”

“Lincoln Stone, will you pretty please help me infiltrate the LuLaRoe equivalent to Jesus Camp

It was like watching dolphins fuck in front of children at the aquarium. No one knew how to explain it, or what to say, if they should say anything at all, but everyone pretended to be comfortable.

What a fucked-up thing, realizing she enjoyed the prospect of being overwhelmed. Destroyed, even.

“C’mon, my ex cut my heart in half and put my body in a wall. Can’t be that bad.”

He dragged his hand out of her sweatpants and splayed it across her stomach, feeling upward across her sternum, fingertips featherlight between her breasts. “I can teach you patience; I can give you power.” Laughter gusted across her neck, gritty and tempered. “I can make you worse,” he whispered, pressing his clothed cock between her legs, “if you let me.”

She felt like a beautiful fraud. Like Mary Magdalene, a reformed whore.

Bodies meant for missionary position, green juices, and gestation.

“You’re talking about kidnapping a person. Like, a living, breathing person—” “Who is being kept against her will in a church safehouse by a militia-sex-cult,”

She’d watched long-winded documentaries on Hillsong, Peoples Temple, and the Branch Davidians,

There, bitch. Go shake hands with Christ.

What a sad, sorry thing to watch a murder take place and expect an absent god to intervene.

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.

CHURCH MASSACRE IN WILDERNESS PRESERVE INVESTIGATED AS MURDER-SUICIDE

The night she’d become death, met death, escaped death,