Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(67)

When he got to the doorway, he gave the witch a careful, eyes-up-and-watchful bow. Then he resumed his human form, closed the door between them and the witch, and followed ten feet behind his mate all the way out the front door.



* * *



*

TAG WAS SITTING on the hood of the SUV playing games on his phone. He stayed there until Anna opened the driver’s side door, and then he hopped down. There was a bit of a depression in the metal of the hood.

“Hope what you found was worth it,” Tag murmured, passing Charles on the way to his door. “This place is a witch-hive, and they started swarming about ten minutes ago. They are giving me the creepy-crawlies for sure.”

The parking lot was certainly fuller than it had been when they’d arrived, Charles noted, though Tag was the only person visible.

As soon as everyone was belted in, Anna—in a very un-Anna-like fashion—gunned the SUV out through the open gates, which swung shut behind them. There was nothing mechanical involved in their movement.

Charles wasn’t sure of the exact message the witches intended for them to take from that. Don’t come back? We could have trapped you anytime we wished? Leave us alone?

No one said anything until they were on the highway back to Happy Camp.

“Are you going to tell me what you found?” Tag asked. “Not that I’m curious about what the two of you got up to in Witch Central or anything.”

Anna filled him in on everything. When she was finished, she said, “Tell me why we left that old man to be tortured.”

“Daniel Erasmus—” Charles began.

“Erasmus?” roared Tag, jerking forward in a motion that threatened to rip his seat belt out of the Suburban. “You found Erasmus?” Then, calming somewhat, he growled, “Tell me that you left him in little pieces that somehow clung to life . . . or—” He paused, smiled in understanding, and relaxed like a big cat in the sun. “Or maybe you left him in the care of black witches who torture him every day and will eventually kill him and feed on his death to extract every bit of his power.”

Charles had forgotten that Tag had been one of the wolves his da had brought to help clean up the mess in Utah.

“What did he do?” Anna said, but less like she was worried that she’d left an innocent man to suffer needlessly.

“Made me kill children,” growled Tag.

“Trafficked in minors,” said Charles.

“Sex trade,” said Tag, in case Anna had misunderstood Charles’s terms. “Erasmus and his wife got their hands on children and then used magic to eat their minds. Left behind puppets.” He shivered. “Evil.”

Anna gave a sharp nod. “So it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” she said. By now she’d slowed back down to her usual grandma-going-to-church pace so she could safely take a hand off the wheel to rest it on Charles’s leg. “Okay.”

“How did you know the witch was a Hardesty?” Charles asked.

“Wild guess,” Anna said. “But there were nameplates in that hallway of offices where Underwood’s office was. One had ‘Ms. Hardesty’ and the other ‘Dr. Hardesty.’” She paused, then said in a low voice, “And she had Sage’s mouth.”

“She was pregnant,” Charles said.

His phone rang and he checked it. “It’s Da,” he told them, and hit the green button.

“Update?”

There was something heavy in that single word. Doubtless whatever lay under it would be made clear in Bran’s own time.

“Charles found Erasmus,” Tag said, his voice steeped in satisfaction. “And we left him helpless in the hands of a nursing home staffed by black witches who will make sure that he survives to suffer a very long time.”

“Daniel Erasmus?” said Bran softly.

“Carrie Green’s grandfather—the reason she was trying to mail a check to Angel Hills Assisted Living,” Tag told him.

“He won’t hurt anyone ever again,” said Charles.

“Good.”

That’s what I said, agreed Brother Wolf, still caught in his oddly talkative mood.

Rather than going through their two days moment by moment, Charles gave him a more ordered version of the story they’d put together about Wild Sign.

“There are white witches who use the wilderness to hide from their predators,” he said. “Some unspecified time ago—more than two years but fewer than five—one of them ran into the Singer in the Woods, Leah’s nemesis. The Singer offered the witches two bargains. Power for music. Safety for—and I quote—‘walkers in the world.’” The pause hung, then Charles continued, “Carrie Green’s grandfather called the Singer a god. Whatever one’s opinion of his character, his magical education was sterling. I am inclined to lean toward his assessment—this thing is at least a powerful manitou.”

“It broke the bargain,” observed Bran. “It did not keep the people of Wild Sign safe.”

“Erasmus was under the impression that the white witches broke the bargain first,” Charles said. “He implied it was a breach in the spirit but not the words of their bargain. What does the term ‘walker in the world’ mean to you?”

“It wanted some of the witches to go out and act and spy for it,” said Tag.