Burn Bright

“‘Brother,’ he said, ‘why do you serve such a wicked one when you have in you the blood of earth magic? Of a priestess lineage that is a thousand years long?’”

Wellesley shook his head and held out his hands palm up and brought them slowly down. “It was as if the rains washed away clouds, and the wind blew away fog. My mind was my own for the first time since the witch had placed her collar around my neck.

“‘Spirit,’ I told him, ‘it is not of my will, but by this evil thing born of foul death and ugliness that I wear. This is a strange working I cannot fight.’

“‘Why, then, do you not take it off?’ he said.

“I tried then to do that very thing. Before this time, I could not even conceive of such an action. But alas, my hands could not break it, though I tried with all my strength.

“I cried out in despair. ‘It is impossible for me. I am born of a grand heritage, it is true. Some of that power and grace lives inside this body, but great is the corruption that binds me. Too great for a man such as I to break or remove.’

“The spirit of the hurricane looked upon that which I wore around my neck, and said, ‘Brother, truly this is evil. I can hear the cries of the tortured souls whose substance was used herein. It is greater than even I might destroy.’

“And truly my heart knew despair, then. If the spirit of the greatest storm that I had ever seen could not prevail over the witch’s power, then I would serve her until the end of my days or hers.

“The spirit of the hurricane, seeing my sorrow, took pity upon me then. He said, ‘Come out to my mother, who is far mightier than I. Surely, she can defeat the dark magic in your binding. I will ask it of her, but you should know that she does not always do as I ask. She may decide that to rid the world of such evil, your life is also forfeit.’

“In the end, what choice had I? I would rather be dead than to wear the witch’s collar to the end of my life. So I followed him, and he led me past locked doors and my sleeping comrades. No one heard us, and no doors could stand in our way. He led me to the edge of the island. The beaches were all gone, as were any of the gentle slopes, buried under the fury of the storm. If there was an easy way to the ocean, the spirit chose not to take me there. We stood, at last, at the top of a cliff.

“‘My brother,’ said the spirit, ‘if you would be free of this evil, you must jump.’”

Wellesley drank again. There was a trickle of sweat on his face. It sounded like a fairy tale, this story. But Anna, who’d seen Charles interact with the spirits of the forest, believed him. If she had had any doubts, the ring of honesty in his voice would have disabused her of them.

“I knew,” said Wellesley heavily, “that I could no longer swim as I had as a child, that the magic of the wolf does not protect us from water. And had I been as good a swimmer as any mermaid’s child, it would have done me no good leaping off a cliff that high. But I commanded my own actions and thoughts for the first time in a very long time, so I jumped, and the spirit jumped with me. I can still hear his laughter in my ears when a storm rises here in the mountains.

“‘Mother,’ he called as we fell, ‘I have found a prisoner of wickedness. A child of nature who should be unbound. Will you free him?’

“And, in answer, the salt water reached up and engulfed me.”

Wellesley paused again.

“I thought I was dead,” he said at last. “I thought I was dead, and I welcomed it. But I awoke on a beach littered with the detritus of the storm. The sun was high in a clear sky, and my skin was covered with salt.”

He smiled, a wolfish smile, and his voice roughened and the irises of his eyes brightened.

“The witch came down to the beach soon thereafter. ‘I have found you at last,’ she said in triumph. ‘All of the other wolves are dead. I was worried that we would not be able to make more of you. Come, let us show my love that the fates have not yet turned against us.’ And she turned around and started walking back to the big house.

“I had never changed except under the moon. But the ocean and the moon speak to each other as lovers do, and I have no doubt that it was the sea who gave me power and strength. I have never, before or since, taken wolf form as quickly as I did then. One moment I was human and the next a wolf. I killed the witch while she was still planning how to find more slaves to Change and control. The only regret I have is that it was quick and painless—I was too worried about her power to give her the death she deserved.

“Then I went to the big house and killed the man who had given her free rein. I found every one of those collars, and I threw them into the sea where She could do with them as it pleased her. I hope that She freed the tormented souls who gave their pain and their lives for the witch’s spell.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. Then, in a perfectly normal voice, he said, “There were only a few of us left alive on the island—and all of them were afraid of me, for which I have never blamed them. Eventually, a ship came to see how we had weathered the storm. Upon discovering that we were alone, they claimed us all. But without a witch to hold me, I soon left them, and slavery, behind me.

“Bran asked that this tale not be told lightly, which I have never done—” He paused and looked at Asil. “Except the once. These are Bran’s reasons, and they are good ones: First, the manner and matter of the collar’s making must lie with the dead if it can be made to do so. Second, which is adjunct to the first, that a witch can control a person’s mind and body is something that should not be known if those of us who are not wholly human want to live shoulder to shoulder with the humans in peace. And finally, there is this, my own reason. This is the story of my making, a private thing. I do not wish that it be a matter of common knowledge.”

Anna thought of the way the wolves all watched her last night as she came in from the truck where the body of one of the people who had abused her rested. She understood exactly why he didn’t want people talking about it.

“You said ‘manner and matter,’” said Sage thoughtfully. If she was as affected by his story as she’d looked in the beginning, she was hiding it better now. “Does that mean that you know how to make the collars?”

Wellesley’s eyes grew cold, then lightened to icy gold. “It is something that does not concern you.”

She put her hand up. “I only ask because if someone thinks you know how to make them, you have a target on your back the size of Texas.”

Anna remembered Charles saying that there were wildlings here who knew secrets that people would kill for. If Wellesley was the only one who knew how to make those collars … he’d be hunted by every black witch on the planet.

Wellesley didn’t seem worried about it. His shoulders relaxed as he told Sage, “We all of us werewolves have a target on our back. It’s not a matter of if but when someone pulls the trigger.”

“Cheerful thought,” drawled Asil. “But let us put that one aside—since there is nothing we can do about it that we are not already doing. What does that have to do with Rhea Springs?”

Wellesley shrugged. “I don’t know. Charles said to begin where my wolf told me to—and that’s where my wolf told me to begin.”

Charles was watching Wellesley with a thoughtful expression.

Wellesley shrugged. “As I told you, I really don’t remember a lot more about Rhea Springs than I did before Anna broke the curse. Not much at all, really. I remember going there—and I remember your spiriting me out of that jail. But I still don’t remember much in between, just bits and pieces.” He bowed his head. “I remember the witch’s face but nothing else about her.”

Charles said, “Maybe you should—”

The phone rang.

Wellesley rose from the table and glanced at Charles—who shrugged. He put in an earpiece and hit a button on the phone.

“Hello?” he said, and listened a moment.

He’d found a way to have a private conversation in a room full of werewolves, Anna thought, delighted. She’d have to find out what he used.

He hit another button, and asked, as he lifted the handset, “Could you repeat that, please?”