Witching Time (The Wild Hunt #14) - Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,69

Is there a way to drive wights into a specific area? Something they have to get away from, or hide from? Like setting a humane trap and then backing an animal into it?”

Ember groaned. “You mean like herding cows? I can see it now, we’ll all dress up in cowboy hats and chaps and drive the wights into the barn at milking time.”

I stuck my tongue out at her. “This isn’t funny! I mean, I grant you, that sounded weird, but I’m just trying to find some way that we can push them into the open.”

“Huh,” Yutani said. “Maybe you’re onto something. Hold on.” He began tapping away at the keys. “Let me see here…”

Herne returned at that moment. He was holding out his phone, staring at something on the screen. Finally, he sat down. “All right. Mother says there is a way to move into the Between, but it’s dangerous and she strongly recommends against it.”

“Bingo!” Yutani said, snapping his fingers. “Raven, you’re not so far off-track as you thought. Radio frequencies! There are some subsonic frequencies that aren’t great for humans, but wights really don’t like them. If we played them all around the perimeter and started moving in from the sides of the farm, we might send the wights on a one-way course directly to the center. That way we could gather them all at once.”

I nodded. “That sounds promising. They can’t just…teleport away, can they?”

“Wights can’t teleport. They move quickly, but they can’t just vanish from one spot and appear in another.” Herne frowned. “But if we gather a number of wights in one area, going Between to fight them won’t be feasible. They’re terribly strong and—”

“Not to interrupt, but I don’t even know how to fight them. I think Ember said fire can kill them, but what else?” It felt like there were so many variables that no matter what, I’d screw up somehow.

“I asked my mother about that, as well, and she talked to Cernunnos. Wights—autumn wights, specifically—can be killed by fire. Set it on fire and it will die if it’s prevented from putting out the flames. They can also be damaged by lightning, holy weapons, and silver.”

“Brighid’s Flame. The sword was made by the Lady Brighid,” Ember said.

“All well and good, but I don’t have any—oh wait.” I thought for a moment. “What about my wand? I have the Wand of Straha.” My mother had given me a wand created by a fire witch from the Black Forest. “Would that count?”

Herne cleared his throat. “I’d almost consider that an unholy weapon, but yes, I think it would. Especially since it was created by a fire witch.”

“Then would I need to be in the Between to attack it?” I frowned. I still didn’t want to try dimension hopping. It had been bad enough going into the Underworld to help Ember save Viktor. I wasn’t ready to shift into a parallel world again.

“No, I don’t think you would. Relics and artifacts like your wand tend to work on a multidimensional level. If we were to help you, we could drive the wight—or wights, if there is more than one—into the center of the farm and go after them.” Herne gave me a soft smile. “We aren’t going to let you go into this alone, Raven.”

I let out a long breath, more relieved than I wanted to admit. “So, how do we do this? They have five acres. That’s a long distance to station people around the exterior. That would take one hell of a lot of bodies.”

Yutani shook his head. “Not necessarily. Speakers would do the trick. Rigging up speakers every…let me calculate here. We’d need speakers spaced…” He began to calculate distances and fell silent. “That’s a lot of speakers.”

I turned to the others. “Are you sure you want to help?”

“Of course. Autumn wights are deadly and the last thing we want is for them to spread. And even if it’s slowly, they do spread, much like a disease.” Herne glanced at Yutani. “Any rough idea yet?”

“Too many speakers, I’m afraid.”

“There’s another possibility,” Viktor said. “We can use magic. There are spells to amplify sounds, and I’m pretty certain that you can charm crystals to vibrate at a certain level. If you could attune a massive amount of needle spikes—quartz—with the frequency, then set them all off via one spell all at one time, then it might work.”

“Of course,” Ember said. “It’s not hard to get hold of hundreds of crystal spikes, and