Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(90)

“She was not unwilling,” he said. And he lied.

“I see.” Anna kept her voice soft with an effort. “He has the witches—the ones who told him what Wild Sign had done—they are bearing his children. Why did you need Dr. Connors? And me?”

“Do you think that those children will be his as I am his?” Zander’s voice was bitter with something that sounded very much to Anna’s ear like jealousy. “Those creatures are selfish. They will keep their bargain—because they know the Singer does not trust them. But they are black witches. Evil. Their children are taught vileness with their mothers’ milk.”

He paused. “He trusted the people of Wild Sign. They gave him form and they worshipped him with music. My father loved them and they betrayed him. I told him not to trust them, that he could only trust me. That I am the only one who loves him. Now he believes me.”

His gun had been gradually lowering as he spoke, but he jerked it up, aiming it at Leah’s head. “I told him that he would need children better than those the black witches will carry. Children who will love him. My children. He told me to find women to bear them. So I have.”

Anna wondered if there were other unsuspecting women carrying the Singer’s children.

“Nonconsensual sex is rape,” Leah said. “Twisting someone’s memories around makes them incapable of consent. You are a rapist. We are done here.”

He said, “Yes, we are.” He pulled the trigger a hair slower than Anna did, even though she had to step around Leah first.

Anna’s initial bullet hit his hand, making his shot go wild. She’d considered the dangers of that before she’d fired and chanced it anyway. Better being hit by a chunk of rock than a bullet; the rock would do less damage. Her second and third shots went through his left eye. She hit him in the heart, too, as he was falling.

Six left, she thought. She shoved Leah, who had not moved.

“Out, out,” she sang instead of “rock you.” She had no intention of letting her memories get stolen again.

They had to step over Zander to escape.

Leah had quit even trying to sing. But she was running with Anna in the right direction, so Anna figured that Leah was in charge of her own mind.

Rain was still pelting down sideways as they scrambled out of the cave—a different opening than Anna and Zander had used to enter earlier. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed too close together. Anna quit singing.

Leah said, “If we head directly to the highway, we can make it faster than if we take your SUV.”

Anna shook her head. “The SUV is dead anyway. Pretty sure he took out the oil pan on a rock. But we don’t have to make it to the highway before we get help.” She pointed. “Charles is over there. Maybe a quarter of a mile away.”

Leah half lidded her eyes—Zander’s eyes. Once Anna had noticed the resemblance, she didn’t know how she could have missed it. Then Leah nodded. “Okay, I feel them, too.”

Anna gave her the damp flannel shirt with about the same amount of reluctance with which Leah accepted it. They jogged along the side of the mountain, skirting heavy undergrowth where they found it.

“I don’t really remember him,” Leah said suddenly, her voice tight. “I remember I had a child named Alexander. I remember we weren’t able to get him out, and that he wasn’t there when the rest of the children were killed. I don’t remember any more.”

And that was only partly a lie. Anna wasn’t going to call her on it. “What made you come here?” she asked, hoping it was an easier thing for Leah to talk about.

Leah said, “I dreamed. The night before I left Bran to come here. Buffalo Singer, Charles’s uncle, told me that the time had come to finish my battle. I didn’t know what he meant, not until . . . I heard the Singer’s call again. And I decided that I would go to the Singer after all. I expected a battle, I think. I did not expect Alexander.”

She sounded . . . broken. Voice hoarse, she continued as if the words were being forced out of her mouth. “I didn’t tell Zander that I don’t remember why we left him, did I? I told him, told my son, what I thought would make him angry enough to raise that gun so that I could make myself kill him before the Singer came after us in his stead.” She paused. “I wonder why he did not come?”

Anna did not regret Zander’s death. But she was very glad it had been her who had killed him and not Leah. The other woman would have done it, but Anna thought that Leah was going to leave this place with enough battle scars. She didn’t need to add killing her son to the list.

Anna groped for something she could say.

Don’t feel bad; he was a rapist asshole who stood by while the Singer did whatever he had done to the people of Wild Sign that turned them into what we found in that cavern didn’t strike quite the right tone somehow.

He took great photographs and fought for the environment didn’t seem . . . on point, either.

Leah was not someone Anna could give a hug to, even had it been appropriate to the situation. Sage was the only one who might have been able to do such a thing—and Sage had been a lie. And a hug was only useful if there was time to cry—and the person who gave you a hug was someone you didn’t mind crying in front of.

“I am not sorry” was all that Anna managed.

Leah didn’t reply to that.