Aaron had passed on his leadership of the pack and gone out witch hunting for the next decade or so. He’d significantly reduced the number of practicing black witches in Utah before one of them had killed him in Royal, a ghost town in Price Canyon.

Daniel and Jennifer Erasmus—and now that he thought on it, she had been born into the Green family—had been the masterminds behind the trafficking and the magic that broke those children’s minds. Charles had killed Jennifer himself. He had hunted Daniel off and on for years, but even whispers and rumors of the witch’s activities had died. He’d assumed someone else had managed to kill Daniel, but apparently not. Daniel had taken on his wife’s name, possibly because the Green family had been a prominent one. Daniel was the only witch Charles knew of who carried the Erasmus name. Maybe Daniel had changed it to throw off the werewolves who were looking for him. If so, Charles was embarrassed it had worked.

Charles glanced up at the huge building looming behind them. Just walking through those halls had left Charles wishing for a shower to wash the ichor of foulness from his skin. They were torturing the old and infirm for magical power. He did not think that Erasmus, that Daniel Green, was an exception.

Charles remembered the first group of children he and Aaron had found in a mobile home out in the mountains. They had been looking for cocaine, and they’d found that—nearly half a million dollars’ worth—stored behind the skirting around the building. They hadn’t been expecting the children. They hadn’t been able to save any of that group, though all of the children were still upright and breathing when they’d found them. Whatever the witches had done to them had destroyed their minds. Charles had laid them all to rest himself because Aaron hadn’t been able to bear it that first time. The next time, the Wasatch Alpha had helped.

Charles could not imagine a better place for Erasmus to end up than this house of horrors. He hoped the old witch lived forever.

He was glad that Anna knew neither what Erasmus was nor what they were doing to him in this place. They needed the information that he had, and Anna’s usual charisma was getting Erasmus to talk. If she knew what the witch had done, she wouldn’t be able to give him the smile that was keeping the weasel talking.

Charles kept quiet, kept his senses open, and stayed just out of the old man’s sight.

“What was the bargain?” Anna asked the old man, her voice soft and coaxing, as if she were dealing with a human being instead of Daniel Erasmus. Doubtless she was more effective that way.