Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(71)

Charles nodded. “I don’t like being in this position. Reacting and not acting. We can’t get to an offensive position until we know more.”

“Speaking of knowing more,” Anna said. “What exactly happened at Rhea Springs? Asil gave me what he knew—but there wasn’t much of it.” She tapped her fingers on the witch gun lying on the seat between them. “Witches seem to be cropping up all over the place.”

Charles pursed his lips. “They do, don’t they? There is no reason that Rhea Springs has anything to do with our current situation, though.”

“Maybe not,” Anna said. “But Wellesley certainly has knowledge that someone might be looking for. If Wellesley is the wildling our enemy questioned Hester about, then maybe Rhea Springs has more to do with our situation than we think.”

Charles nodded. “Wellesley didn’t remember anything when I got there,” he told her. “Most of what I know comes from the newspapers. Rhea Springs was a small town of about a hundred people in 1930, three hundred if you counted the people who lived in the general area. A hotel and a hot spring with reputed healing powers was the major source of economy. I don’t remember exactly what year it was, but the Alpha of the Tennessee pack sent us some newspaper articles about a naked black man found with the bodies of some white people. The details varied from article to article—one said four young women. Another claimed it was fifteen children. The naked black man, our informant told us, was a werewolf and gave us a name that wasn’t Wellesley. Da knew the werewolf in question, told me his story, and sent me out on the next train.”

Charles quit speaking for a while. Anna waited, content to watch his big hands steadying the SUV as it bounced and slithered on the rough road. She loved his hands, broad-palmed and long-fingered. They were adept on the steering wheel, the fretboard of his guitar, or her skin.

“News didn’t get to us up here in Montana with anything like swiftness. By the time I got to the town where he was being held—a slightly larger town some miles from Rhea Springs—his trial was already over. Considering the era, the place, the color of his skin, Wellesley’s fate was determined no matter what his defense. I’d known before I got on the train what the result would be. Capital punishment was the electric chair. I don’t know that electricity has ever killed one of us—but I doubt it would make him very happy. Leaving him to the authorities just wasn’t possible. My orders were to kill or rescue him, depending upon what he told me.”

He fell silent again.

“What did he tell you?” she asked.

“That he didn’t remember anything. He wasn’t in good shape—his wolf …” He paused. “… what I thought was his wolf, anyway, would break in and babble some crazy stuff. A witch. Witchcraft. I didn’t smell the witchcraft on him—and I’d like to know how they did that. That had to be a major working to hold his wolf this long, and I didn’t catch the scent of witches anywhere.”

“Did you check the crime scene?” Anna asked.

He shook his head. “I knew his story. I thought he was talking about earlier. A stray Indian wasn’t much better off than a black man in that time and place, so I didn’t do a lot of wandering about. In the end …” His voice trailed off, then he shook his head. “In the end, I figured that Da could keep him safe with the other wildlings if he never recovered.”

“His story was so close to what happened to your da,” Anna said softly. “You couldn’t bear to kill him—innocent or guilty.”

“And once I realized that,” Charles said, “I didn’t bother investigating it further. I got him out of there and on a train to Montana.” He glanced at Anna, and smiled. “No, I didn’t buy tickets. We rode freight to Billings, then took horses the rest of the way.”

“I think,” she said slowly, going over what Wellesley had said—and what he hadn’t—in her head, “that he believed you broke him out of jail because he was innocent.”

“I know,” Charles said. “I wish I could go back and investigate for him. I don’t even know, really, who the victims were. At the time, I didn’t care. Maybe he’ll remember more when he rests up.”

“You didn’t want to find out that he’d killed fifteen children,” said Anna. “Because that would mean you’d have had to kill him.”

“Yes,” agreed Charles soberly.

“That briar curse is interesting,” she said. “More interesting as you think about it. Asil said there was supposed to be a witch in the vicinity. I wonder if the dead people were all witches.”

“I wonder if they were all the victims of a witch,” Charles said, “including Wellesley. I wonder if I let a witch free because I didn’t investigate further—and how many more people she killed before she died.”

“Oh,” Anna said, understanding how Charles operated. He was responsible for the world, her husband. She couldn’t change how he felt. She put her hand on his leg. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. I understand. Maybe you should do a little research on Rhea Springs? A place where the hot springs were supposed to be magically healing sounds like somewhere a witch might have set up shop, do you think?”

“Black witches seldom do healing,” he said dryly.