“No,” he said. “But I expect it will take him a bit longer to recover than it will for you. Being freed from a powerful curse usually leaves the victim with a terrible hangover.” He paused thoughtfully. “Or dead. I expect he’ll appreciate the hangover.”
Anna had been wrapped in a blanket. Her face had been washed (she vaguely remembered that). She’d been pampered with three cups of sweet tea, and now Asil was stealing food for her. Wellesley had been left on the ground where he’d fallen.
“Asil,” she said slowly, “I thought you liked Wellesley.”
Asil pulled lunch-meat packets and a block of cheese from the fridge and gave her a politely surprised look. “Of course. Why would I dislike him? He figured out what you were, decided it might help him out of trouble he got himself into. He then grabbed you without leave, and if the Marrok hadn’t opened the floodgates, you would be dead. And probably so would the rest of the pack.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” said Wellesley without moving. “I have only been partially in control of my actions for the last . . . what is this year, anyway? Ninety years or so.”
Asil pointed at him with the knife he’d gotten out to cut the cheddar. “Do not blame your wolf for what you did. Your wolf only understood what she offered. It was you who decided to use her to break your curse.”
“That’s fair,” Wellesley said. “I guess I did.” He paused. “I’m not sorry. If I’d killed us both . . . us all? Anyway, if we were dead, I’d be sorry. But since we survived, I am merely very, very grateful. If I could move, I would kiss your hand, Anna.”
“You’d better get moving pretty soon,” said Asil cheerfully. “Charles is, I am certain, on his way. If you think I’m unhappy with you, you just wait until Charles explains his feelings to you.” He chopped up some cheese. “Charles is a man of few words. You are just lucky he quit carrying a club.”
“I think he has an axe,” Anna said.
Asil looked up at her. “An axe?”
She nodded. “I don’t know why, but I think he was carrying an axe when I first nudged him to see if he could help.”
Asil smiled. “Good. An axe is exactly what this calls for.”
“Asil?” she asked. “Speaking of axes . . . Where is the door? Um, and the doorframe?”
“I threw it down the hole,” he said, looking a little embarrassed for the first time. “It was in my way.”
“It was supposed to be werewolf-proof,” muttered Wellesley.
“I am not just any werewolf,” said Asil. “And if it had had a doorknob like any proper door, it would still be where you left it.”
* * *
• • •
WITH ANNA THERE to remind Asil of his manners, Wellesley was eventually helped to a chair in his kitchen and fed sandwiches at a rate that made Asil complain about his new calling as a short-order cook. Anna snagged two or three herself and noticed that Asil had eaten maybe twice that many.
There were a lot of things that she wanted to know about what had just happened, but she found herself nodding off between one swallow and the next. The next thing she knew was her mate’s voice.
“Anna?” said Charles.
“Sorry,” she murmured, without opening her eyes. “Food coma. It happens when I get sucked into cartoons and do battle with evil thorn-things.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Charles said.
You need to wake up, said Brother Wolf. So that no one dies.
And that jump-started her adrenal gland just fine. She sat up and rubbed her face. Asil, Wellesley, and Sage were in the kitchen, none of them looking very happy.
Charles was kneeling beside the couch. One hand on her face. The other hand was holding . . .
“That,” Anna said, “is a really big axe that you didn’t have this morning when you left.” And it had blood on it. Not his blood, she didn’t think. It didn’t smell like his blood.
Not ours, agreed Brother Wolf happily.
Charles grunted, then when she raised her eyebrows, he answered her implied question.
“When you contacted me the first time, I’d just stolen the axe from the Viking who attacked me and broken his leg with it.”
“I see,” she said.
“It took me a while to take out his twin brothers, or I’d have gotten back to you sooner.”
She considered that statement and decided he wasn’t trying to be funny. He looked apologetic.
“I would rather you not get hurt by Viking twins . . .” She had to say it again. “Because Viking twins are apparently a thing here. Anyway, please take care of pressing business before you answer me. If you are dead, you won’t be of any use at all.”
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time,” he said.
She didn’t think that he looked too scary, but then she looked over Charles’s shoulder at the others. Sage was a little pale, but her face was very calm. Wellesley looked almost dead—but he’d looked that way when she nodded off. Asil looked like a ticked-off cat cornered by a big freaking dog.
So probably the not-scary was a relatively new thing. Interesting that Brother Wolf had been the one to wake her up, possibly so she could prevent Charles from killing someone?
“Since we are all here now,” she said, “maybe Wellesley will tell us exactly what happened in”—she looked at Charles—“Rhea Springs, Tennessee, right? Because I think that’s where he picked up that interesting Sleeping Beauty curse.”
“I don’t know that it matters,” Wellesley said tiredly. “Most of the principals are dead, except for me. Even the town is gone, drowned by the TVA in the forties.”
“Call me curious,” Asil said. “I’ve seen a lot of witchcraft, but I’ve never seen a witchcraft construct that lasted that long and hid itself so well. Usually, they die once the witch dies.”
“It makes me unhappy,” said Charles, “to know that something like that existed right under my nose—right under my da’s nose—and none of us suspected anything.”
Wellesley rubbed his face. “I can see that. Where do you want me to start?”
CHAPTER
9
“I don’t remember everything.” Wellesley closed his eyes wearily. “But you have more than earned whatever I can tell you. Asil, my old friend, if you are through being irritated with me, would you open the cupboard above the fridge and get the bottle you will find there? Then, if you will, pour all of those who wish it, but most especially me, a little? I was saving it, but I think this tale . . . I think I need a little strength to tell this tale. I would do it myself, but I would end up on the floor before I got to the fridge.”
Asil folded his arms and stayed where he was. He and Sage had both lost the ready-to-defend-myself body posture they’d had when Anna woke up.
Sage heaved a sigh, opened the cabinet, and made a sound of approval as she pulled out a wine bottle.
“Merlot,” she said. “And a very good label. Yum.” She opened a cupboard and started to close it when she saw nothing but a plastic bag with cups in it.
“No,” said Wellesley. “That is what I have.”
She looked at him. “You want to drink good wine out of disposable cups?”
He shrugged. “I tend to . . .” He paused, looked at Anna, and gave her a small smile before returning his attention to Sage. “I tended to break glass. The plastic is easier to clean up.”
She shook her head, found a corkscrew, and pulled the cork—bringing it to her nose. She breathed in—and a warm, fruity smell wafted through the room even as far as Anna’s love seat.
“Very yum,” Sage said. “Charles?”
“No,” he said.
“Anna?”
Anna hesitated but shook her head. “Not just this moment.” Her stomach was unsettled. She assumed it was from the same thing that was making her head ache and her eyes burn—freeing Wellesley had ta
ken a lot of energy.
“Asil?”
Asil shook his head.
“That’s right,” she said, with a little bite in her tone. “You don’t participate in vice.”
Anna knew for a fact that Asil liked wine, but she didn’t think this conversation was about alcohol. It had the feel of one of those painful battles between lovers that continued past the point where either love or logic could put it right.
He tilted his head, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle and half-apologetic. “I assure you that I am a very bad Muslim. Wine is, for a werewolf, only grape juice—”
“Very expensive grape juice,” said Wellesley. “Also very good grape juice.”
“Though very expensive and good grape juice, I do not feel the need to consume it just now.”
“Okay,” Sage said casually, as if she hadn’t put more meaning into his rejection of the wine than it required. She filled two red plastic cups and brought them both to Wellesley. “You pick.”
“Did you poison one?” he asked with interest.
“You’re a werewolf,” she said dryly. “We don’t need to worry about poisons.”
“That’s not true,” Wellesley countered, taking one of the cups and sipping it with a happy sigh. “Our poisons are just different.”
“Alcohol is technically a poison,” Anna pointed out. “If a human drinks too much, it will kill them.”
Sage sipped her cup, raised her eyebrows, and nodded at Wellesley. “May all our poisons taste so good.” She tipped her cup toward Wellesley without stepping close enough to actually touch his. “To dead brain cells.”
He raised his cup. “To freedom,” he said, and as he did, his eyes flashed bright yellow.
“Now that we have that out of the way,” Sage said, “before story time, I’d like to catch up. Would someone care to explain matters to us?” She looked around and sighed. “To me? Since I have the feeling I’m the only one who doesn’t know what happened.”
“What do you know?” asked Wellesley.
“Charlie stared off into space for five minutes and left me to sort out the Viking twins and brother on my own.” She flashed a smile at the room. “But I learned a lesson in diplomacy from Charlie today. Funny how a few broken bones make even a bunch of Vikings so much more reasonable. I’ll try that if I ever have to deliver a message to them again. Maybe in another twenty years.”
“So not much,” said Asil. “But Sage also knows that you have been having trouble with your wolf—and it made you dangerous to deal with.”
“It was not my wolf that was the problem,” Wellesley told Sage. “Or at least my wolf was not the cause of the problem. I was in a battle for my soul, and the evil spirit that was trying to possess me has been, very slowly, winning.” He smiled broadly, raised his glass at Anna, and said, “Until today.”
“What you tried could have killed my mate,” said Charles softly, and everyone in the room who was not Anna stiffened. Funny how the man, even kneeling beside the couch, could cause so much fear. To her knowledge, he’d never killed anyone without just cause or the Marrok’s orders.
She leaned forward and caught a glimpse of his face.
“I think,” Anna said, touching Charles’s skin, just below his ear, so that he’d pay attention to her, “I think it was what I tried, actually. No one forced me to do anything.”
“Not true,” growled Asil sourly, “whatever you believe, chiquita. I was here, I saw him, felt him pull you into his nightmare. But I, who was supposed to keep you safe, could do nothing because I was occupied holding him so he didn’t kill you physically instead of magically.”
Under her fingertips, Charles’s muscles tightened.
Anna glared at Asil. “So not helping,” she told him. “Okay, so I got yanked into Wellesley’s nightmare—”
“Soul,” said Wellesley.
“That isn’t quite right, either,” Anna said. “Charles?”
There was a little silence, then Charles deliberately relaxed against her, wrapping one of his hands around her knee, which he squeezed. I’m onto you, that squeeze said.
“Vision,” said Charles, “or the Dreamtime, maybe.”
“It was a nightmarish vision, at any rate,” said Anna. “But once I was there, I could have left at any time. As long as I was willing to leave Wellesley’s wolf spirit bound in that witchcraft construct.” She couldn’t imagine doing that—not if she had a chance of freeing him. “But it was Wellesley’s own magic that turned the key, I think. You called it a spirit—was it a living thing that imprisoned your wolf?”
Wellesley nodded. “Magic is a living thing.”
Charles agreed with that assessment because he said, “You saw it as a plant, and that was fairly accurate, I think. Living, but not reasoning except in the most basic of drives.”
Wellesley took a sip of his wine, then tipped his cup to Asil. “I think it lasted so long because my own magic fed the spell. It was growing stronger, and I was growing weaker. I thought it was my wolf I was fighting, too, until Anna saw it with me. For me.”
“Cursed,” said Sage thoughtfully. “You were cursed, and Anna and Charles broke it? With a little help from the Marrok, our leader, who is absent?”
“In a nutshell,” said Anna.
Sage hummed, rubbed the rim of her glass with one of her well-tended nails. “There were rumors of a witch at Rhea Springs.”
“Yes,” Wellesley said heavily. “There was a witch. Or two.” He set his cup on the table and pushed it a little distance from him. “I don’t remember a lot more than before.” He glanced at Charles. “Do you still want this story?” When Charles nodded, Wellesley said, “I suppose it began with Chloe . . . with my wife’s death.”
Charles, who had settled down enough to take a seat on the floor beside the love seat, resting against Anna’s legs, raised a hand to stop Wellesley. He pursed his lips, and said, “You should begin this story where your wolf tells you to begin it.”
Wellesley reached out, took a gulp of his wine, and set the cup rather firmly on the table. “Where my wolf tells me . . .” He blew air out like a startled horse. “He tells me to begin with my Change. That has nothing to do with Rhea Springs.”
Charles grunted. Then he made an amused sound. “Maybe, maybe not. That first story is why, when given the choice, I brought you to my da instead of killing you for the murders of those young women.”
Wellesley blinked at Charles in evident dismay. “Hmm. I thought . . . Hmm. I guess I wasn’t thinking all too clearly then, anyway. I don’t tell that story. Only to your father—who told it to you, I suppose.”
“Before he sent me to Rhea Springs,” said Charles. “Because he knew what I would do with it. If your wolf tells you to start there, please, begin at the beginning.”
Wellesley looked at his cup, at his hands, around the room as if looking for something else to talk about. At last, his gaze settled on Anna. He sighed.
“All right. I was born somewhere in Africa. Probably near the western coast because that’s where most of the slaves came from. I suppose if I traveled back there, I might find it again, given a year or two to wander. But my village was destroyed, my parents killed by slavers, so there has never been any reason for me to return. I was around eleven or twelve at that time, preparing for my manhood ceremony, but still a boy.”
He closed his mouth, shook his head, then said, “I was taken, and none of the next five or six years are relevant to anyone except for me. I choose not to talk about them.”
He let that statement stand, glancing at Charles as if expecting an objection.
When no one said—or did—anything in response, he nodded. “So. In Barbados, I was bought by a man looking for, how did he put it? A strong subject. He bought six or seven of us, about the same age, and took us to an island in the Caribbean. It was not a large island, and he owned it a
ll.”
He looked at Anna. “I never learned the name his own people would have called him, and I will not call him Master.”
“You could call him Moreau,” suggested Charles.
Wellesley gave him a quick, tight smile. “No. In the book, Moreau was a scientist, a doctor. The man who owned me was no mad scientist. He was simply evil, his soul destroyed by his own actions.
“But in the end, he is not important to the tale, this man who was not my master,” he said. “What is important is that man was raised, as many people in his class and station were, by servants and slaves. His nurse was an evil woman, a woman of power. She escaped hanging by fleeing aboard a ship headed to Barbados as a bondswoman.” Wellesley closed his mouth and shook his head slightly, as if the mere words had conjured up too much emotion to allow him to continue.
“Witch,” said Asil darkly into the pause, as if he could not help himself. “She was an Irish witch. It is true that she escaped hanging for the death of a child in her care, but I suspect that she was more frightened of the witches who were pursuing her for what she stole from them.”
“Who told you my story?” said Wellesley suspiciously.
“You did,” Asil told him. “This part at least. One night after a full moon, shortly after I arrived here.”
Wellesley stared at him, then looked down, frowning. At last he nodded. “Yes. Yes. I am sorry. My memory is tangled. I think I remember. You told me of your mate’s death. I told you . . . parts of this story.”
“You were talking of the nursemaid,” Sage said, her body leaning forward on the kitchen chair where she sat. She had a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table.
Anna wondered what elements of Wellesley’s story had tangled with Sage’s own to make her engage so strongly with it. Sage wasn’t old-old. Older than she looked, maybe, but not old enough to have experienced institutionalized slavery. Maybe it was the witches. Witches tended to send the hairs on the back of Anna’s neck up, too.
“Yes,” agreed Wellesley. “The nursemaid was a witch. No one paid attention to such women. They were to keep quiet and do the work of raising the children. The children who were the future of the family. Someone, you would think, should have understood just how much power that gave them.” He shook his head with sorrowful incredulity. “This man’s nursemaid was a witch, Irish, yes, because her accent was still strong. But how she came to the Caribbean and why—this was all based on rumors in the slave pens. Who knows how much of it was true?” He sent a frowning look toward Asil.