Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(67)

“As I said,” agreed Asil. “It takes someone who can deliver a curse to break a curse.” He and Charles exchanged a look of acknowledgment.

Wellesley grunted. He took up the story, but his voice was rapid and his sentences jerky. His account skipped around ungracefully.

“That part all happened before I came to the island. They frequently went to Barbados and bought slaves at the market there—including me. They herded all of us into a shed and turned the werewolf loose on us. Mostly the wolf just killed the people they threw in with him. Of my group, I was the only survivor. After my Change, it took another four or five years before they had six werewolves at their bidding, including the original wolf.

“We were, all of us, bound by the evil thing that the witch collared us with. We had no free will, no thoughts that were not put in our heads by the witch and her leman.”

Anna met Charles’s eyes because she knew another wolf who had been forced to do the will of a witch.

Yes, said Brother Wolf. The Marrok’s story is different in many ways, but it reflects the terrible things that happened to our father in the dawn of time. It is one of the reasons our father asked Wellesley not to speak of his origin. We do not want witches to know it is possible.

At the same time that Brother Wolf was speaking to her, Charles said, “Recently, I have learned that Bonarata, the vampire who rules Europe, had a collar he used to control a werewolf, though it was specific, I believe, to werewolves. It was also old. And it has failed—and he has no witch who can replace it.”

Wellesley growled and stiffened in his seat.

“Such things are never completely forgotten,” said Asil. “It is the way of the world.”

“If Bonarata cannot find a witch to make him a new one, then there is not a witch left in Europe, at least, with that ability,” Charles observed.

“Or maybe those witches are not willing to work for the vampire king,” Sage speculated.

But Asil shook his head. “No witch in Europe could say no to Bonarata. He is extremely persuasive, and it has been a very long time since the witches were powerful enough that they could do battle with such a one as he.”

“What happened, Wellesley?” asked Anna. “How did you get free?” Because obviously he had—and she wanted him to finish this story because the memories hurt him.

“She worked her magic only on those of us of pure African blood,” Wellesley said. “Holding the witchborn is more difficult than a normal person, just as holding a werewolf is more difficult. She knew that the native peoples in the Caribbean had their own version of witchborn, though nothing as powerful as the European witches—or so she believed. Myself, I am not convinced. Most of the slaves on that island carried native blood, so they bought “pure African” slaves to turn into collared wolves. She believed there were no mageborn people among those of us born in Africa.”

Charles snorted.

Wellesley nodded. “Ridiculous. All peoples have those born who can feel the pulse of the world. My father came from a family known for producing powerful healers. It is magic that is as different from witchcraft as wood is from steel. Subtle and powerful, perhaps, but also slow. My family’s magic brought good harvests, rain in season, and kept the wild predators from the village. Influencing natural tendencies toward beneficial results. It was not helpful in keeping the slavers away.”

He paused, as if waiting for questions, but when no one said anything, he continued, “I will tell you the next part, as a village storyteller would, because that is how I think of it. Because it makes the most sense that way.”

He took a breath, and when he began again, his voice was rich with drama instead of jerky and painful.

“One day, in the late fall, without warning, came a storm the likes of which I had never seen before,” he said. “The winds came, powerful spirits of the air. They battered the island for hours upon hours until the buildings became no more than piles of toothpicks, picked up and scattered together in a puzzle not even the gods could sort out. The rains came, too, so much rain that the waters in the river and in the lake welled up. The secret hope rose within me that the island might sink beneath the sea forever, that the great sea would drown the evil.”

He paused for dramatic effect.

“But it was only a very small hope, buried deep where I kept the few thoughts that were my own, because I was her creature then. And it seemed that hope was doomed because the witch drove away the spirits of the winds and the spirits of the rain, so that the big house and all the ground around it remained safe from them.”

He lifted his cup, found it dry, and set it down. Without a word, Asil filled the cup with the rest of the wine in the bottle and handed it over.

Wellesley took a sip and continued. “The eye of the storm came in the middle of the night. The winds calmed and the rain turned into a drizzle. It was at that time that the greater spirit of the hurricane came to me. Larger and more powerful than the wind or rain spirits, he was close enough to this world that he could speak with me.

“‘Brother,’ he said, ‘why do you serve such a wicked one when you have in you the blood of earth magic? Of a priestess lineage that is a thousand years long?’”

Wellesley shook his head and held out his hands palm up and brought them slowly down. “It was as if the rains washed away clouds, and the wind blew away fog. My mind was my own for the first time since the witch had placed her collar around my neck.