Cry Wolf

Walter growled, and Charles echoed the sentiment.

“She left it alive,” A

“Yes. And likely she’ll know we killed it.” Charles cleaned his knife on the sleeping bag, then put it back in its sheath.

“So what do we do now?”

“Burn the cabin,” Charles said. “Most of witchcraft is potions and spells. Burning her place of power will cripple her a bit.” And release whatever poor thing or things she had trapped underneath the cabin, too. He wasn’t going to tell A

A

He trotted toward A

A

Charles rolled over and sat up, fighting not to show how much falling with a chest wound had hurt. “I don’t know. But magic and fire have an odd, synergistic effect sometimes. ” He looked at where the cabin had been and whistled soundlessly. There was almost nothing left of it, just a few rows of stone on the ground where the base of the fireplace had been. Pieces of four-wheeler and cabin were scattered almost to their feet, and the trees nearest the cabin had been splintered like toothpicks.

“Wow,” A

The wolf came to his feet and shook himself, looking into A

“She knew we’d be hunting her,” said Charles. “She tried to hide this from us. I didn’t smell any trace of her when Walter and I circled the cabin. Did you, Walter?”

The big wolf had not.

“So what do we do?”

“Despite all our fears, I think it’s time to call my father.” He smiled at A

Bran had been ru

“I told you he was most likely to send Tag if Charles needed help,” said Asil. “I told you he wouldn’t be such a fool as to come himself.”

Bran planted all four feet and slid to a stop. Asil hadn’t spoken loudly, but he’d known Bran would hear him. Which meant it was already too late to escape.

Witches could hide in plain sight if they had some sort of hold on you. And Asil was clearly not speaking to Charles, so he belonged to the witch. And he belonged to Bran. That was enough of a co

He turned to face Asil and found him standing on a boulder the size of a small elephant. Next to Asil, a smallish woman bundled against the cold held on to Asil as if she thought the wind might blow her off the rock.

“Why he’d think that Tag would do any better than I, I don’t know,” continued Asil coolly. There was hell in his eyes, but the rest of his face and his body language matched the voice.

“Come here, señor,” the woman purred-and she facilitated their meeting by climbing down the boulder with unusual grace.

She spoke with an American accent except when she spoke pure Castilian Spanish-aristo Spanish. Part of him was interested in the fact that she’d been here long enough to pick up an American accent. His ear was too good to be fooled about which one was her native tongue-even if he hadn’t known that he was hunting for a witch who had killed Asil’s mate in Spain. Part of him was interested in the wolflike dexterity she’d displayed as she hopped down the boulder after Asil. No human could move that well, witch or not. But when Bran’s mother had enslaved him, she could move like that, too.

He’d have been horrified, except that worse happened: he came to her call like the well-trained pet he’d once been-a long, long time ago.

“Tag,” the witch purred as she walked around him. “Colin Taggart. A little on the small side…for a werewolf.”

He was aware, though she was apparently not, of the tension that held Asil as he waited for her to discover how he’d misinformed her, without ever lying. “I told you he’d send Tag” was not “Look, there’s Tag.” Asil was trying, and Bran gave him credit for it, knowing how difficult to balance upon was the line he was treading.

From the fear radiating off of him, Asil knew what the consequences of a witch trying to make Bran a pet might be. There weren’t many people left who would remember what had happened when Bran had broken free of his mother at last: Samuel, Asil…He couldn’t think of a third, it had been a long time ago. Likely the witches themselves didn’t know why it was forbidden to try to take a werewolf for a pet or familiar-not that most of them had the power to do it.

Bran would hold out for a while. First, the witch could make a mistake-especially if she didn’t know whom she held. Second, he was afraid that this time no one would be able to kill him. It had been Samuel who brought him out of it before…and Samuel wasn’t as certain of himself as he used to be.

The control the witch asserted over him had to be won by blood and flesh, and the only flesh and blood bonding he’d done was to his own pack. She must have used Asil to insert herself into his pack-but how?

While she looked him over, he searched his link to Asil for something that touched a witch. He paid very little attention to the witch as she talked at him. With the dexterity of a very long lifetime, Bran slid through Asil and found a dead woman-it could only be Asil’s mate. It was an impossibility.

No one could link to a dead woman; he knew that because when Blue Jay Woman, Charles’s mother, died, he’d tried to hold on to her.

But, impossibilities become possible when you added a witch into the mix.

He couldn’t go exploring further; the woman was dead, and her link was through Asil-but the only way the witch’s control of him made sense was if she was tied closely to Asil’s dead mate. Then she could run her own magic through that link and take control of any of Bran’s

He took the time to give Asil a cold look. Asil would have known that the bond to his dead mate was still in place-and he should have told Bran. He had the feeling that there were more things he should have known.

The witch had somehow kept the mating bond alive while she killed Sarai.

He hated witches.

“Colin Taggart,” she purred. “You are mine now. Your will is mine.”

He felt the magic she poured at him. Some of it slid off him like honey on warm toast: lingering a bit, here and there. But then it attached and solidified as she paced around him whispering the words of her spelling. It didn’t hurt precisely, but it made him feel claustrophobic, and when he tried to move, he couldn’t.

Panic flared, and something stirred where he had long ago buried it. He took a deep shuddering breath and tried to shut the witch out of his awareness. Panic was very, very dangerous-far more dangerous than this witch.

So he turned his attention to other things.

First, he tried to cut Asil off from the pack. If he broke the tie between him and Asil, he might stand a chance of freeing himself from the witch. He should have been able to do it, but the oddities in Asil’s mate bond and the way the witch had twisted it fouled the pack magic until he wasn’t certain that he could cut Asil free of anyone: Sarai, the witch, the pack, or Bran, even with a full blood-and-flesh banishment ceremony.