Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(68)

“Walker,” said Charles, with a little more emphasis.

“Like Mercy?” Anna said.

“I think so,” said Charles.

His foster sister’s father was Coyote, one of the primordial powers. Such descendants, though most of them were not first-generation, were called walkers. Charles now wondered if the original name had not been “walker in the world,” which gave a different slant to the original purpose of such couplings. Certainly, Coyote had been making use of Mercy.

“Safety in return for progeny who would go out into the world and do its bidding, be its eyes,” said Da. “It wanted the witches to carry its children.” In his voice was the horror that Charles felt—and not for the missing occupants of Wild Sign, who were, after all was said and done, strangers.

They did not know for sure what had happened to Leah up in these mountains. But one of the babies his da had helped Sherwood bury had been Leah’s.

Charles thought of the haunted feel of the amphitheater. If every person who’d lived in Wild Sign last April had been killed there, it would not have produced the layered feeling of tragedy that overlay the broken land. But the deaths of Leah’s people might, especially if they were only the last people who had died there, not the first.

“She never said anything about her child,” Charles ventured. It wasn’t quite a question.

“No,” Da agreed heavily. “And I never asked.”

He should have, thought Charles.

Soul-wounded by Blue Jay Woman’s death himself, Bran had not been a fit savior for Leah. Sherwood should have known better. It was a wonder Leah had not killed them all in their beds, Charles thought.

From the backseat came a thoughtful voice that cut through the heavy atmosphere. “I don’t know about calling it a god. As a good Christian—” Tag paused, waiting for someone to make a derisive snort, but he was in the wrong car for that. “Anyway, as a good Christian, I’m happy to proclaim him not a god. That way we can go kill him. But the bastard is pretentious. ‘Singer in the Woods’ and ‘walker in the world.’ I wonder what he calls his shoes—‘Slippers of Justice’ or ‘Protectors of Soles’?”

Charles appreciated Tag’s intervention. Wallowing in guilt was never productive, but Charles decided to change the subject again before his da could decide how to respond to Tag’s flippancy.

“That’s all we found out about Wild Sign itself,” he began.

“Not quite,” Anna disagreed. “Daniel Green—Erasmus—said that the witches broke the bargain that guaranteed their safety. Correct me if I’m wrong, but given that witches have power over biological things, is it possible for a witch to keep herself from getting pregnant?”

“Yes,” Bran said. “Even the most powerless of them could keep herself from getting pregnant—and a small group of them could ensure that no one in Wild Sign got pregnant.”

“They kept the word of the bargain,” Anna said, “but not the spirit. That would have worked had they been dealing with the fae.”

“Not usually,” said Tag, sounding like the voice of experience. “If you break the spirit of a bargain with the fae, they can figure out some way to make sure you lose even without breaking the word of the bargain.”

“You had other news,” Bran said.

“Yes,” said Charles. “We found the storage locker that Carrie Green was paying for and bought the contents from the locker owner. And we found two witch families’ worth of grimoires—the Greens and whatever family Erasmus actually descended from, I think. I thought it better to wait until we get them home before I examine them. For now, I have them warded in a hotel room in Happy Camp. I had to let the spells the witch had laid upon them dissipate before I could go through the rest of her property for smaller items. We’ll try later today, but it might have to wait for tomorrow.”

Da didn’t say anything—which was odd. Whatever he was holding back was bigger than taking charge of a locker full of grimoires.

“There are some other things you should know,” Charles said. “At least two of the witches involved in running the facility we found Erasmus in are Hardestys.”

“Interesting,” said Da.

“They found a way to disguise the scent of black magic,” Charles said. “I could feel it—but not smell it.”

“Yes,” agreed Tag. “It’s an odd sensation.”

“I couldn’t feel it or smell it,” Anna said. “Not without bringing my wolf up to the surface.”

“And Anna and I walked down a hall with what felt like proper torture chambers on either side of us, and I still couldn’t smell it.”

“That knowledge has been in the world a long time.” Da’s voice was restrained. “But apparently someone decided to sell it to the rest of the witches. Mercy ran into that effect when she encountered the Hardestys.”

“Carrie Green had something that protected her from the black witches,” Anna said. “Something that predated Wild Sign. It’s the reason that Daniel Green—Daniel Erasmus—didn’t take her down for her power.”

“That is a different kind of thing,” Charles told her. “Though I’ve never heard of anything that could protect a white witch against the likes of the Hardestys or Daniel Erasmus.”