Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(61)

The witches had brought in children from all over the world—some of them in “adoptions,” some of them kidnapped, and others sold by their families, who mostly expected them to go on to better lives. The witches used magic to condition the children, who were as young as six or seven, to obedience, and shipped them off all over the US.

He and Aaron had been able to save a few of them, with the help of Charles’s brother, Samuel. But the damage the magic used on the children had done was irreversible after a few days. Most of those children had been unrecoverable.

Aaron had passed on his leadership of the pack and gone out witch hunting for the next decade or so. He’d significantly reduced the number of practicing black witches in Utah before one of them had killed him in Royal, a ghost town in Price Canyon.

Daniel and Jennifer Erasmus—and now that he thought on it, she had been born into the Green family—had been the masterminds behind the trafficking and the magic that broke those children’s minds. Charles had killed Jennifer himself. He had hunted Daniel off and on for years, but even whispers and rumors of the witch’s activities had died. He’d assumed someone else had managed to kill Daniel, but apparently not. Daniel had taken on his wife’s name, possibly because the Green family had been a prominent one. Daniel was the only witch Charles knew of who carried the Erasmus name. Maybe Daniel had changed it to throw off the werewolves who were looking for him. If so, Charles was embarrassed it had worked.

Charles glanced up at the huge building looming behind them. Just walking through those halls had left Charles wishing for a shower to wash the ichor of foulness from his skin. They were torturing the old and infirm for magical power. He did not think that Erasmus, that Daniel Green, was an exception.

Charles remembered the first group of children he and Aaron had found in a mobile home out in the mountains. They had been looking for cocaine, and they’d found that—nearly half a million dollars’ worth—stored behind the skirting around the building. They hadn’t been expecting the children. They hadn’t been able to save any of that group, though all of the children were still upright and breathing when they’d found them. Whatever the witches had done to them had destroyed their minds. Charles had laid them all to rest himself because Aaron hadn’t been able to bear it that first time. The next time, the Wasatch Alpha had helped.

Charles could not imagine a better place for Erasmus to end up than this house of horrors. He hoped the old witch lived forever.

He was glad that Anna knew neither what Erasmus was nor what they were doing to him in this place. They needed the information that he had, and Anna’s usual charisma was getting Erasmus to talk. If she knew what the witch had done, she wouldn’t be able to give him the smile that was keeping the weasel talking.

Charles kept quiet, kept his senses open, and stayed just out of the old man’s sight.

“What was the bargain?” Anna asked the old man, her voice soft and coaxing, as if she were dealing with a human being instead of Daniel Erasmus. Doubtless she was more effective that way.

“Power,” the old man said. “And safety. You know what life is like for a white witch. Carrie might as well have painted a target on her back and held up a sign saying ‘All-you-can-eat buffet.’” He scowled, fisting his hand.

Charles wondered how Carrie had protected herself from the old man if she had chosen the least powerful path open to a witch. He had no doubt that Erasmus would have taken every scrap of power she had, granddaughter or not, once she had defied his wishes.

“It promised them a safe place to live, free from being hunted.” Erasmus’s voice was tight. “A second bargain was that if they fed it, it would give them power.”

Something drew the old man’s attention. Charles felt it, too, glancing to the source: Underwood. Erasmus had broken the technology that was listening in—but Charles had no doubt that Underwood had some other means of eavesdropping. Because he used his magic to tug on one of the spells wrapped around the old man.

“Fed it with music?” hazarded Anna, oblivious to the currents of magic in the air.

She’d made a good guess, Charles thought. Whatever lived in those mountains had pounced on Anna while she played “The Minstrel Boy.”

“What?” Erasmus asked, turning his head to frown at Anna. “What are you on about? Who are you? Where is my nurse?” With each question, he became more querulous.

“What did they feed the Singer in the Woods?” Anna asked.

The old man snarled at her. “What the fuck do I care?”

Charles stepped in front of Erasmus, breaking Underwood’s line of sight. Anna scooted over on her seat, but Charles went down on one knee in front of the old man.

“I am Charles Cornick,” he said, his voice harsh as he used the old man’s fear to brush away Underwood’s cobwebs. “You know who I am. What did your granddaughter do for the thing in the mountains? What did it want in return for safety? For power?” There had been two bargains.

“Carrie?” His old voice was shaky, but the volume had increased to the point that Charles was sure Underwood could hear it from the path he was hurrying up. “She was a musician. A fiddler.”

“She played music for it?” Anna asked, her voice gentle. Charles felt Anna’s power encompass the vile old man, and he wanted to snarl.

It would be so easy to reach out and break his neck.