by Jory Strong
Rebekka knew they’d fought over her before. Boden allowed her visits only because he hoped to save her soul.
Unlike Chloe and her, he had never lived in the red zone where contact with Weres was common. Until drug use made him a thief, and a criminal’s tattoo caused his parents to cut him out of their lives and business, he’d had a comfortable life among what served as a merchant middle class.
He didn’t know what it was to survive as her mother had, as the Were prostitutes were forced to. Before Boden experienced the worst of humanity, he’d been saved by Edom and joined the Fellowship.
“Don’t go,” Chloe whispered. “The first step toward salvation is the hardest.”
“I have to.” Only something bad would bring Levi here. “Tell the girls I’m sorry I didn’t say good-bye. Tell them I needed to leave quickly because of an emergency.”
“I won’t lie to Boden if he questions me. He may not allow you in our home afterward. He may forbid you from seeing the girls again.”
Rebekka’s throat tightened. She saw them rarely but she still cared for them.
“I have to go,” she repeated, eyes pleading with her mother not to allow Boden to have the final say.
“Wait a minute,” Chloe whispered, moving away from Rebekka to pick up a blanket lying neatly folded on a chair. She returned, pressing it into Rebekka’s hands. “Be careful.”
Tears wet Rebekka’s eyes. She had the fleeting fear she would never see her mother or the girls again.
“I love you,” she said, hugging Chloe before slipping out of the cabin.
Rebekka’s chest ached. As she hurried toward the woods she imagined the worst, Cyrin or Canino stumbling into a trap or being riddled with bullets. When she reached Levi, she asked, “What’s happened?”
He pulled her into a hug, then released her. “A Jaguar is badly injured. The bones in his back legs are broken, possibly crushed in a fight with hyenas. We got the bleeding stopped but he was fading in and out of consciousness when I left. He’s in a place we can defend during the night. It’s in the Barrens.”
Rebekka didn’t need to glance up at the sky to know there’d be no time to return to the Fellowship, even if an offer of shelter and safety was assured. The forest was already dark with the onset of dusk.
“I can leave now.”
Levi indicated a path. “Run in front of me.”
She ran, turning when he directed her to.
Questions pounded through her with each footfall but she had no breath to spare for conversation.
At the edge of the Barrens they stopped and she doubled over, sucking in air, her sides and legs burning. It was nearly full dark and though the night didn’t hold as much terror for her as it did for the majority of humans, she was still scared, more than she would have been if they remained in the forest.
“It’s not far,” Levi said, speaking close to her ear. “Ready?”
Rebekka nodded and straightened. Saw the gun in one of his hands and the knife in the other. This time he led, treading lightly, the pace slower than it had been, more cautious, though it was brighter, easier to see among the ruins than it had been in the woods.
Bats dipped and fluttered, making a meal of insects. Moonlight caught on the eyes of creatures crouched among vine and rubble. The faint smell of burning wood reached Rebekka, brought on a breeze that also carried the fragrant scent of night-blooming flowers.
Levi finally stopped in front of what had once been towering apartment buildings. Now they were a forbidding structure of narrow passageways formed by twisting, rusting steel.
From within came the rustling of hidden creatures, the scurrying of rats. Rebekka shivered, remembering the diseased animal in the brothel alleyway.
Nausea threatened as she thought about the pocket of plague elsewhere in the Barrens. She feared she’d made a terrible mistake in coming here, in turning away from Brother Caphriel’s offer. She might just as readily be used as a weapon against the Weres as come to be the healer who could make the outcasts whole.
They climbed, careful of jagged edges. There were traces of smoke now.
Levi gave a soft whistle. It was answered by Cyrin’s chuffing and a low rumble, most likely from Canino.
The rough stairway ended, leveling out into what remained of a hallway between apartments. Behind half-fallen walls was a living room complete with furniture long ago destroyed by rodents and rot.
Light came in through an opening above, adding to that provided by a small fire. Rebekka processed it all as she sought the injured Jaguar and found him unconscious on the floor.
She moved forward carefully. The female Jaguar was unexpected but there was no doubt in Rebekka’s mind that the woman crouched next to the prone figure was a Were, and most likely the male’s mate.
The Jaguar female was exotically beautiful and equally deadly. Her eyes glowed catlike and every line of her body screamed possessiveness, advertised her willingness to defend and attack.
Levi positioned himself at Rebekka’s side. He sheathed the knife but the gun remained in his hand.
“Step back, Melina,” he told the Jaguar. “Give Rebekka room to work.”
Melina snarled. Her eyes held distrust and dislike. Her body telegraphed unwillingness but she obeyed Levi’s order.
Rebekka dismissed Melina’s behavior. She was well used to seeing those same emotions along with hate for all humans, including her, in some of the brothel prostitutes.
She knelt next to the male. His breathing was shallow, rapid.
There was a rip in his side, long enough, deep enough, he’d only barely escaped having his internal organs spill out. His fur was matted with blood, his legs and flank torn open.
Tendons and muscles were shredded. Bone glistened in the light provided by the fire.
Rebekka took a deep breath, calming and centering herself. She’d healed worse, much worse.
She refused to give in to the fear that had been with her since waking from the memory and dream of the urchin. Her fingers glanced over the hidden amulet. She had witch-provided protection. She trusted the Wainwrights that much at least.
Rebekka gathered her will to focus it, leaned forward, and placed her hands on either side of the broken bone, intending to concentrate her efforts there. But instead of a tingling in her fingertips, instead of the flowing warmth of her gift manifesting itself, there was only the feel of blood-caked fur and a body lacking heat.
Fear returned, swallowing Rebekka as Brother Caphriel’s image flashed into her mind, his hands outstretched, her own lifting in that instant when she was tempted by his voice, by the promise his words held.
Before utter panic could take her, another image forced the one in the Fellowship garden away. Of skeletal, bone-white hands offering the amulet, calling it protection for one with her gift.
Rebekka trembled so violently that Levi crouched down next to her, asked urgently, “What’s wrong?”
She couldn’t tell him, wasn’t sure she ever would. Her heart thundered and she knew all of them would hear it, just as they would all scent the terror gripping her. First that she’d lost her ability to heal Weres, and then, that she hadn’t, but to use her gift meant she would have to remove the amulet and risk calling the diseased to her.
Her breathing was little more than short pants. She felt as if she was running again from the maze, from the demon Abijah’s words, from the Church spies positioned outside the witches’ house. But there was no outrunning this nightmare. No escaping it. And watching the Jaguar die as a result of her cowardice would only add to it.
Rebekka lifted her hands away from his matted fur and took off the necklace, shaking so badly the beads woven into it clacked. She set it on the ground next to her, gasped as an ice flower bloomed immediately in her chest, while at the same time her fingers felt as though fire streaked through them.
It was similar, yet different than it had been before. But there was no time to consider it and give it meaning.
She gath
ered her will. Gripped the Jaguar’s legs again on either side of the crushed bone and torn skin.
Rather than come as a tingling sensation followed by a gentle blending of purpose and desire to heal, her gift came as a taking. As if she were nothing more than a tool, a conduit for a power rooted in the earth, something raw needing eyes and intelligence to focus it, and a soul to judge who was worthy of being touched by it.
Pain screamed through Rebekka, originating in her legs, her side and abdomen, the locations mirroring the Jaguar’s injuries. The shock of it made her try to jerk her hands away, to stop using her gift. But it was too late for that.
It was like standing against the flow of molten lava. And in her mind’s eye she saw her blood seeping into the amulet.
Red like the beads that were a part of it.
Red like those her father wore in his hair.
Perhaps not a power rooted in earth after all, but in the flames of a fiery hell.
It didn’t matter. Of one thing she was sure—her gift was meant to be used on the Were.
Rebekka stopped fighting and felt the rightness of the choice deep within. Her will flowed into the Jaguar, walling off enough of the pain so she could concentrate on healing him, recognizing as she did so that while her gift had come without any cost except for exhaustion before, that was changed now.
Pain sliced through icy numbness. The intensity of it overwhelmed Aryck, turning human and Jaguar souls away from the steady, strong pounding of the ancestors’ drums.
Heat followed. Flowing in and forming a wall. Blocking the shimmering pathway to the shadowlands and trapping his two earthly souls to the faint beat of a heart housed in flesh, denying them the possibility of joining the eternal soul in triumphant unity.
Slowly he grew more aware, Jaguar and man rolling and tumbling in the warmth, bathing in it as though it were a pool of water. For long moments both were content to remain submerged.
Strength came with the heat, a feeling of wholeness, rightness. Rich scent pervaded, lush and feminine and totally unfamiliar.
The Jaguar mentally sprawled on its back, playfully exposing its belly, making the man, the enforcer, struggle away from pure sensation and toward conscious thought.
Memory returned in bits and pieces, with the concentration of burn in his leg, the slow mending of bone and flesh.
Healer. The word came into sharp focus and Aryck forced jaguar eyes open. His beast soul purred in approval at the first sight of the woman kneeling next to him.
Mate. Not a word but a recognition by the Jaguar, a claiming that had Aryck snarling in denial, rejecting the possibility of it.
“Stay calm,” a man’s voice said, accompanying the command by positioning the barrel of a gun in front of Aryck’s face.
Behind him Aryck heard Melina’s hiss of fury, sensed movement, but it was halted by low, rumbling growls. Tiger and Lion. He remembered them now, racing ahead to attack the feral hyenas.
Aryck subsided, heart beating even faster when he realized the Jaguar was very content to lie still beneath the healer’s hands, to luxuriate in the heat spiraling into its body with her touch, connecting the two of them in a way that had the man anxious to shift form so he could heal the rest of his injuries and break away from her.
For the first time in memory Aryck felt a separation of self, his two earthly souls diverging rather than integrating, preparing to battle against each other for dominance instead of existing in seamless harmony.
Even now the Jaguar was noticing the Lion who smelled too human hovering protectively at the healer’s side. It wanted to warn him away from her, to press between them, crowding her into a corner where she could be kept apart from other males.
A low growl threatened to erupt, this time the Jaguar’s instead of the man’s. Aryck suppressed it, as alarmed by the Jaguar’s desire to guard a human female as he was by the unraveling of self. He forced rational thought to prevail over instinct, ruthlessly overpowering the Jaguar soul when animal possessiveness bled into human images of coupling.
The healer’s hands moved to his other leg. It was less badly damaged, the bone more broken than crushed.
Additional strength poured into Aryck. He focused inward, as if watching an unseen gauge slowly rise until it finally reached the place where he was well enough to shift.
Pain returned in a heartbeat, marking the transition between beast and man. It was a price Aryck paid willingly, thinking he could more easily repudiate the Jaguar’s claim of having settled on a mate. But the moment he saw the healer through human eyes, desire raked through his belly. She was beautiful with her dark brown hair and blue eyes, with her gentle features and body created for pleasure.
No, he silently snarled, denying his physical reaction to her. Denying the Jaguar’s need to assure itself she was okay when it noticed her trembling as she reached for a necklace on the ground next to her.
Aryck turned away and found the collar of clothing. He untied it and dressed with uncharacteristic haste for a Were who found no shame in nakedness or the evidence of desire.
He’d barely fastened his pants before Melina was there, her clothed body pressed to his, rubbing against his erection as though claiming it for herself and publicly marking her territory. The Jaguar threatened to rise inside of Aryck and drive her away if the man didn’t do it.
At least in this his two souls were still in agreement. Aryck pulled her arms from around his neck and met her gaze with one ordering her back.
Her eyes flashed and her lips tightened. She obeyed, her face taking on an expression of disgust as she turned her attention to the healer and the man with her.
Had the healer not come, Aryck knew he would be dead and any hope for the cubs dead along with him. He’d heard the drums calling him and seen a pathway shimmer into existence. He’d felt the tug of the eternal soul anchored in the shadowlands, holding his place among the ancestors until his two Earth-bound souls joined with it there.
A thank-you was due before he spoke to the healer about the cubs. Aryck steeled himself against feeling the claw-sharp rake of lust as he turned to go to her.
Despite the Jaguar’s claim, she was not his mate. To want a human in that way was an invitation to become rogue and ultimately be made outcast.
He would rather die than have that fate befall him. He would never willingly live outside of a pack and away from Jaguar lands.
Twelve
TINY tremors continued to go through Rebekka but she was too exhausted to hang on to the terror that had flashed into her when the Jaguar sprang away. As soon as he’d ended their physical contact, the terrible coldness in her chest returned with swift vengeance, as if once freed from concentrating on healing the Were, her gift reached out, calling for the sick and injured to come and be healed.
She suppressed a whimper. More than anything she wanted to lie down and sink into a dreamless sleep. But she was afraid that small measure of peace would be denied her. She was afraid to sleep. To dream.
Levi’s silence bristled with worry. It radiated from him, shouting at her for an explanation about the amulet.
There’d be no avoiding conversation, though even if she wanted to confide everything, she couldn’t, not among strangers, nor even Cyrin and Canino. She wasn’t sure she would tell Levi at all. He carried enough burdens without her adding to them, especially now, when he was escorting his brother home.
From the day she’d found Levi nearly dead in the woods and healed him, then talked Dorrit into hiring him as a bouncer and guard so he could remain near the maze in the hopes of one day rescuing Cyrin, he’d sworn to protect her. He would put aside his chance to visit Lion lands if he thought she needed him.
“The Wainwright matriarch gave it to me for protection,” she said, answering Levi’s unspoken question as she looked up from spreading the blanket onto the floor.
His nostrils flared. He wanted to ask Against what and Why do you need it. She could see what it cost him to let it go.
“What
did they require in exchange?”
He was careful, as she’d been, not to speak of witches.
“Nothing. I offered the pages I took from the Iberá estate first, hoping . . .”
She let her voice trail off, knowing Levi would finish the sentence by assuming a bad night at the brothel had driven her to the witches in an effort to learn how she could deepen her gift.
He relaxed. She expected him to scold her for leaving the safety of the brothel before he returned. He surprised her by saying, “You were right about Tir. He looks and smells fully human but he can’t be. He found us earlier in the day, before we encountered the Jaguars. The tattoos were gone. So was the collar around his neck. He told me you were with your mother.”
Rebekka’s breath caught as she thought of Brother Caphriel and how he’d reminded her of Tir. “How did he know I was there?”
Levi shrugged. “I don’t know. He wanted me to pass on a message. You no longer have to fear returning home, but in the event you need to stay on Araña’s boat, it’s available, though Rimmon’s protection covers only the Constellation.”
“And Araña?”
“Safe and away from Oakland.”
Rebekka sagged with relief. “It’s over then?”
Levi hesitated for only an instant. “I think so. Tir said he’d taken care of the threat to you personally. I believe him.”
Rebekka caught herself lifting her hand to touch the amulet but aborted the movement, not wanting to draw Levi’s attention to it. Her chest became tight with renewed uncertainty about the future.
She forced calm on herself. She could go home, or at least to the house she’d homesteaded in the gifted area. She had money to pay for food, enough to last until she better understood the change to her gift and whether she could safely return to the brothels—or if she dared trust the witches enough to tell them about the urchin’s visitation and ask for their help.