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The darkness bothered Bran not at all as he followed Tag&039;s directions to the place he and Charles had thought would be the best starting point He passed Asil&039;s Subaru and hesitated-if Asil had been going after Charles, he&039;d have known the fastest way there

But Charles would be headed back to his car if sos he h his head There itches in the pay of the wolves Not his pack-he didn&039;t deal with black witches, and h to be useful But there itches available to hi and torturing a olf for two days-he had no intention of advertising the fact and encouraging other witches to imitate this one Especially since she, like Bran&039;s h so to a olf

No Best keep the witches out of it

He could call Charles back

That was a harder thing Telepathy was how his otten her nasty little chains upon hier read the thoughts of others

After he&039;d killed the witch as his mother, the backlash had taken that talent fros of her death Slowly he&039;d regained the ability to talk mind to mind, but never to listen in

The only reason his h his talent was that it was one she shared A rare thing, even a witch born He&039;d be surprised if there was another witch with that ability in North America But he was still too cowardly to try until he knew for certain that his son was free of Asil&039;s witch

Of all the ic users in this old world, Bran despised and feared witches above everything Probably because, had matters been different, he would have been one hihway and drove up Silver Butte Tracks of a wider-than-normal vehicle preceded hi Charles&039;s truck up the path the Vee had taken was a little tricky, driving all his other worries out of histo think he should have parked beside Asil&039;s car when he drove around a blind curve and almost hit the Vee, which was nose to bark with a tree

He stopped with no more than six inches between Charles&039;s truck and the Vee He shut off the engine and parked the truck right there because the trees were too thick to go around, and he didn&039;t trust that smooth white snow not to hide a ditch

There had been no safe place to turn around anywhere in the last quarter of ato have to drive the whole trek backward on the way out He smiled sourly to himself; that wouldn&039;t matter so much if they didn&039;t make it out

Asil had had time to meet up with Charles Asil knew about witches Surely his son and the Moor could handle anything they found If Charles stuck to his route, Bran hoped to find the lot of theet thenition No one was likely to come up here and steal the truck-and if anyone didwell, he could deal with Charles

He hadn&039;t bothered to wear a coat since he intended to go wolf anyway He stripped in the warm cab, steeled hie Opening car doors while in wolf fore behind And despite his son&039;s frequent s about how much he hated cars, Charles was fond of his truck

Bran settled into a steady lope, so time since he&039;d run in these round, though he couldn&039;t put a finger on why not Charles maintained that the Cabinets didn&039;t welcoood an explanation as any

Following Charles&039;s intended route backward seein Their whole loop wasn&039;tand be back to the cars just after nightfall

Except for the s off, the cabin hadn&039;t changed substantially since the last time Charles had seen it, maybe fifty years earlier It wasn&039;tcabin like a hundred other such places in the wilds of Montana,the Depression by CCC crews

The logs were grayed by years of sun, rain, and snow A battered four-wheeler with new cat tracks sat unobtrusively between the back of the cabin and the forest that crowded in behind

Charles stopped Anna about thirty yards doind, where the trees still hid them adequately As soon as he stopped her, Walter flattened hiround at her feet, just as if he were her devoted pet dogeighed about the sae black bear and was capable of considerably more destruction

Walter&039;s devotion was so obviously nonsexual that Charles couldn&039;t find it in hi Walter&039;s i haunted by ive Walter some peace, he elcome to it

Charles stared fiercely at the cabin and wished he wasn&039;t frightened It had been a long ti worried about Samuel, his father, and, more recently, Anna, but not about himself The memory of how Asil&039;s witch had held hih his self-confidence with a large dollop of reality

He rubbed Anna&039;s shoulder lightly He knew she wasn&039;t as fragile as she looked, no as that fragile And the old soldier was a survivor; Charles took some comfort from that

"I won&039;t be able to help directly," Charles told her "If I get in her line of sight, she&039;ll have ain With a pack Alpha, distance counts, and so does eye or body-to-body contact"

Neither Walter nor Anna was a member of his father&039;s pack, so they had no connection to Asil Except for Anna&039;s wolf&039;s bond to Charles, that left them as vulnerable as any lone wolf But he knew it usually took witches a while to gain a hold on a lone wolf-long enough that he could offer himself up instead

Her control of hiic users&039; abilities didn&039;t bother him so much Druids influenced the natural world: weather, plants, and sos But witches used the mind and body Anyone&039;s s that were alive-or had been alive White witches weren&039;t so bad, though ic than he did Black witches gained power by killing or torturing things: froht," his Anna said, as if she&039;d faced witches every day of her life "If they are here, you&039;ll take on her wolfand probably Asil That should keep even you pretty busy"

The few hours of rest he&039;d had, a lot of food, and a slow, easy pace this ave hi down the witch&039;s pets

Anna shivered a little under his hand, a coht She had reacted to that dreah she was the one who had stopped breathing

Walter raised his eyes to Charles, and he saw in the other&039;s gaze a determination to protect her by any means necessary It bothered Brother Wolf to see that in another male&039;s eyes, but under the circumstances, Walter was in a better position to save her than Charles was

"I&039; to do a little recon For this part, I&039;d like you to wait here, all right?"

"I&039;ll wait," Anna said

"Don&039;t get iht take a while"

The cabin was backed up to the forest, with twenty feet cleared around the front and one side It was not where he would have chosen to hide from olvesbut then, he didn&039;t think that she was afraid of hiiven her any reason to fear hi into the shadows until the only way Charles knew the other as there was from his scent The spirits of this forest had indeed taken Walter as their own to lend hirandfather had been able to disappear like that

A stone&039;s throw from the cabin, Charles became convinced it was eing a slow ht But he still waited until he&039;d circled the little structure and opened the door before he sent Walter back for Anna

Inside, there was barely room for the narrow cot and ss, unless he wanted to count the narrow ledge of a mantelpiece above the fireplace The cot was brand-new and still had sales tags on it The table looked like it was older than the cabin

The hearth showed signs of a recent fire The dead ani here: witches and dead things went together There itches who didn&039;t kill, but they were far less powerful than their darker sisters

The plank floor had shiny new nails and crowbar ain When he stepped near the cot, he knew exactly why; he&039;d felt power circles before Sos they valued safe, and others used the upon later Since the cabin hadn&039;t kept him out and he didn&039;t feel the need to leave, he could only assume that the circle was the latter kind-which s under the floor He took a deep breath, but the dead aniht account for the scent of death-and nothing was rotting Either the animal she&039;d killed to draw her circle hadn&039;t been dead long-it had frozen in the cold-or she had a spell to disguise it to keep away scavengers Changing what the senses of others perceived was one of the ht have been a witch if he&039;d chosen to study Bran hadn&039;t urged hie it, either; a witch in his pack would have given hiics of his retted the path he&039;d chosen less than he did right now, standing in the middle of this poor cabin stained with evil

The scent on the sleeping bag on the cot was fresh enough that he decided the witch had slept there the night before The table held the re of blood more than wax, and a mortar with some ashes in the botto personal to allow her into Anna&039;s dreams

"What is that?" Anna said in a little voice from the doorway He felt immediately better for her presence, as if she somehow lessened the evil that had seeped into the wood and brick

Someday he&039;d tell her that, just to see the bewildered disbelief in her eyes; he was beginning to know her well enough to predict her reaction It gave hiaze to the eviscerated and skinned body laid out in front of the fireplace "Raccoon, I think At least that&039;s what it smells like" It also smelled of pain and had left claw marks on the floor, probably after it had been nailed down He saw no reason to tell Anna it probably hadn&039;t been dead when the witchto do?" She stayed in the doorway, and Walter settled in behind her Neither of theed "I have no idea Maybe it was to power the spell she worked on you last night A dark witch gains power fro"

Anna looked sick "There are worse monsters to be than a olf, aren&039;t there?"

"Yes," he agreed "Not all witches use things like this, but it&039;s hard to be a good witch"

There was a scrying bowl, still filled ater, on the floor next to the raccoon The interior temperature of the cabin wasn&039;t , it would have been ice They hadn&039;t missed the witch by much

He didn&039;t want to, but he touched the dead anio she&039;d worked her misery on it Its flesh was still

It moved weakly, and he had his knife out and its neck severed as quickly as he could e that it had still been alive Nothing should have been able to live through the torture it had undergone He gave a htful look to the floorboards Maybe the reason there was no s her power circle, wasn&039;t dead, either

Walter growled, and Charles echoed the sentiment

"She left it alive," Anna whispered

"Yes And likely she&039;ll knoe 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 poill cripple her a bit" And release whatever poor thing or things she had trapped underneath the cabin, too He wasn&039;t going to tell Anna about that unless he had to

Anna found a half-full five-gallon can of gasoline tied onto the four-wheeler, and Charles doused the cot and then the bonfire he&039;d built in the middle of the floor with the witch&039;s firewood He sent Anna and Walter away froasoline burned his nose as the fire flared hotly to life He waited until he was sure it was hot enough to burn the cabin before he left

He trotted toward Anna and Walter, who&039;d stopped soht Anna&039;s hand and tugged her farther, urged on by the itch between his shoulder blades Which hy they were fifty yards ahen the cabin exploded, knocking theround

Anna raised her face out of the snow and spat some dirt out of her ?"

Charles rolled over and sat up, fighting not to showith a chest wound had hurt "I don&039;t know But istic effect sometimes " He looked at where the cabin had been and whistled soundlessly There was alround 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," Anna said "Are you all right, Walter?"

The wolf ca into Anna&039;s face with adoring eyes

"She knee&039;d be hunting her," said Charles "She tried to hide this from us I didn&039;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&039;s time to call my father" He smiled at Anna "We&039;re not too far fro anyway He woke ht-that&039;s how I knew you were in trouble He&039;s not stupid, and he knows a few other witches we can call upon"

Bran had been running for several hours or so when he heard the if Charles needed help," said Asil "I told you he wouldn&039;t be such a fool as to come himself"

Bran planted all four feet and slid to a stop Asil hadn&039;t spoken loudly, but he&039;d known Bran would hear him Which meant it was already too late to escape

Witches could hide in plain sight if they had so to Charles, so he belonged to the witch And he belonged to Bran That was enough of a connection for hide-me spells to work on Bran

He turned to face Asil and found hi on a boulder the size of a sainst the cold held on to Asil as if she thought the windwould do any better than I, I don&039;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, senor," the wo down the boulder with unusual grace

She spoke with an American accent except when she spoke pure Castilian Spanish-aristo Spanish Part of hi enough to pick up an Aood to be fooled about which one was her native tongue-even if he hadn&039;t known that he was hunting for a witch who had killed Asil&039;s mate in Spain Part of him was interested in the wolflike dexterity she&039;d displayed as she hopped down the boulder after Asil No human could move that well, witch or not But when Bran&039;s mother had enslaved him, she could move like that, too

He&039;d have been horrified, except that worse happened: he came to her call like the well-trained pet he&039;d once been-a long, long ti," the witch purred as she walked around hiart A little on the sh she was apparently not, of the tension that held Asil as he waited for her to discover how he&039;d"I told you he&039;d send Tag" was not "Look, there&039;s Tag" Asil was trying, and Bran gave hi how difficult to balance upon was the line he was treading

Fro off of hi to ht be There weren&039;t many people left ould remember what had happened when Bran had broken free of his mother at last: Samuel, AsilHe couldn&039;t think of a third, it had been a long tio Likely the witches themselves didn&039;t knohy it was forbidden to try to take a olf 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&039;t knohom she held Second, he was afraid that this time no one would be able to kill hiht him out of it beforeand Samuel wasn&039;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&039;d done was to his own pack She must have used Asil to insert herself into his pack-but how?

While she looked hi that touched a witch He paid very little attention to the witch as she talked at hi lifetih Asil and found a dead woman-it could only be Asil&039;s mate It was an impossibility

No one could link to a dead woman; he knew that because when Blue Jay Woman, Charles&039;s mother, died, he&039;d tried to hold on to her

But, impossibilities become possible when you added a witch into thefurther; the woh Asil-but the only way the witch&039;s control of him made sense was if she was tied closely to Asil&039;s dead h that link and take control of any of Bran&039;s

He took the tiive 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 s he should have known

The witch had so bond alive while she killed Sarai

He hated witches

"Colin Taggart," she purred "You are ic she poured at hi a bit, here and there But then it attached and solidified as she paced around hi It didn&039;t hurt precisely, but it made him feel claustrophobic, and when he tried tostirred 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 erous than this witch

So he turned his attention to other things

First, he tried to cut Asil off froht stand a chance of freeing himself from the witch He should have been able to do it, but the oddities in Asil&039;s mate bond and the way the witch had twisted it fouled the pack ic until he wasn&039;t certain that he could cut Asil free of anyone: Sarai, the witch, the pack, or Bran, even with a full blood-and-flesh banished, and he felt her control tighten around him until he couldn&039;t breatheNo

He tuned the witch out entirely and set about e as best he could

He constricted the connections he had to his pack until he could barely feel theht have chanced dropping the reins entirely-but there were tootheic-and h Asil she had him, but if he could help it, she wouldn&039;t access anyhe was Tag, she wouldn&039;t even knohere to look

There were a few old ones whose control had beco them from him entirely It would be a jolt to Samuel, but the wolves knew his son and wouldn&039;t protest Samuel could handle them for a while

He didn&039;t know if a witch who so obviously had soh about wolves to untangle what he did, but he would make it as difficult as he could At the very least he would slow her down