Healer's Choice g-3

by Jory Strong

  The mental connection fell away, leaving Aryck to contemplate the corpses he’d unearthed. Jaguars carried their dead high into the trees in a place deemed sacred by a shaman. They left them for the carrion birds and insects to pick clean, then for the sun to purify. Later, those bones that could be gathered by the elders were placed in the ancestral cave dug deep in a steep hillside.

  He was no shaman to know the disposition of these only-human souls. Nor did they matter to him. Pack came first, and these dead represented nothing but danger to his kind.

  He and Daivat had both covered their tracks to this burial site. Still, until more was known about the human encampment, Aryck was hesitant to leave the bodies so close to it. If there were gifted humans among those who’d invaded Coyote lands, it was possible they could find these corpses.

  Even in the cities, where rule of law was said to prevail, Weres were protected only while in human form. Evidence of a jaguar attack might well offer an excuse for those in the encampment to come hunting with their guns, killing his kind regardless of whether they wore fur or not.

  Aryck once again lifted the dead man from the shallow grave, slinging the carcass over his shoulder as he would have done to a slain deer. He did the same to the woman, balancing the weight before settling into a smooth, mile-eating run.

  He traveled well-worn game paths until he drew near a pack of spotted hyenas. It was Jaguar land, but like most of the other Were alphas, his father allowed pure animals to move about freely as long as their presence didn’t threaten the pack.

  Aryck grimaced in reaction to scrub marked with oily excrement from hyena anal glands. He stopped on a sheltered rise above the den area and lowered the corpses to the ground.

  The wind favored him, carrying the smell of death toward the direction he’d come from. He carefully stripped the bodies, dropping the torn and bloody clothing into a pile before creeping forward to peer down at the gathered pack.

  Humans thought of hyenas as scavengers, but they were predators to be respected. Aryck had no desire to become their prey. There were almost thirty animals present, including two he didn’t recognize. From their subservient behavior and small size he guessed they were males.

  Several cubs played near a watchful female. They wrestled and tumbled, making Aryck smile in remembrance of a simpler time in his life, and reminding him, too, of the four mischievous and adventurous Jaguar cubs he often found himself hunting and chastising for the danger their curiosity led them to.

  He took a moment to study the slope leading down to the lounging pack. It was steep enough to serve his purpose.

  Given the lack of threat coupled with the promise of food, he doubted the hyenas would give chase. Still, he hurled the corpses as far from his position as possible.

  A rattling growl sounded immediately. It was echoed tenfold then followed by loud whooping, a rallying call announcing a meal as the first animal reached the bodies.

  Aryck paused only long enough to gather the discarded clothing then began running, confident that by the time he reached camp nothing would remain of the murdered humans, not even a bone.

  FIREFLIES lit the dusk and swarms of tiny, winged fey raced for their nighttime hives as Rebekka and the others reached the forest edge closest to the street lined with Were brothels. Her breath caught when she spared a glance in the direction of the maze. It was leveled, reduced to rubble and chunks of brick that made the demon’s destruction in the woods seem like nothing.

  He’d been a prisoner there as much as the Weres had been, used by the former priest, Anton, not just to guard the maze but to provide entertainment by hunting humans and beasts in it for the benefit of the gaming clubs. For Abijah to escape it, to wreak such damage …

  Fear settled in Rebekka’s chest for Araña, who’d entered the maze in payment of a debt owed to vampires, sent there in order to destroy the urn once housing the demon. And for Tir, who’d left to find Araña after helping to free the Weres.

  Levi whistled softly and, guessing that she worried, said, “If Abijah didn’t kill you, he probably left them alive as well. Let’s hope Araña and Tir were also successful in killing Abijah’s master.”

  Rebekka couldn’t suppress a shudder. If Anton lived, he would never stop searching for those responsible for his loss.

  “Let’s go,” Levi said, a hand on her arm drawing her away from the sight of the destroyed maze. “We don’t have time to savor our victory. The brothel doors will lock soon.”

  They stepped from the woods. Movement drew Rebekka’s eye. A ragged street boy scurried along the front of buildings, probably having delayed to eat whatever food he’d managed to scrounge so he wouldn’t have to share it with those he took shelter with.

  Cyrin and Canino left the trees. Rebekka started to tell them to remain hidden but Levi said, “This close to nightfall the feral dogs will already be out. They’re getting bolder. It’ll be safer staying together than separating.”

  “I can make it the rest of the way on my own,” Rebekka said, forcing confidence into her voice because the thought of losing Cyrin and Canino to a bullet now was intolerable. The red zone was no safer for Weres in pure animal form than the areas of Oakland where laws were enforced by police and guardsmen.

  “We’ll see you to safety.” The growl in Levi’s voice was echoed by the deep rumble of the other big cats.

  “Then we’d better hurry.”

  Like the street boy, they kept to the shadows. Moved along the sides of buildings boarded up for the night, shutters and doors closed tightly by shopkeepers who didn’t rely only on bars to keep predators out.

  The red zone was as varied as Oakland itself. Pockets of wealth, clubs and homes owned by the vice lords and their associates, were surrounded by places where the poor lived.

  They entered the area holding the businesses and homes of outcast Weres. As they passed a bar with a skinned human nailed to the front of it, raucous noise drifted through the open windows along with the smell of beer and meat. Unlike the Were brothels, which were locked against the night to keep prostitutes and patrons safe, places like the bar remained open, daring predator and prey alike to enter.

  They were close enough to their destination to be recognized by those who frequented this area of the red zone. Rebekka moved into the middle of the street so they could be seen and use the fear of the vice lord Allende to keep them safe the remaining distance. Most knew she was under Allende’s protection when she worked in the Were brothels, and viewed Levi as her bodyguard.

  Cyrin and Canino stayed lost in deep shadow but Rebekka could sense where they were. Intensified by proximity to the maze, their desire to kill licked at her like hot flames and erupted into action when she and Levi rounded the corner and were rushed by five strangers, three of them armed with heavy iron pipes.

  Cyrin and Canino reacted instantly, without offering warning. In a bounding run Cyrin knocked the first of the pipe-wielding men down.

  A sickening crunch marked the crushing of a skull and the first death.

  It was followed by a second, and a third.

  By a shriek of terror as Canino dragged the man who’d grabbed Rebekka’s arm to the ground and mauled him as the fifth fled.

  It was over in seconds. The attack and counterattack so fast Rebekka barely had time to understand what was happening.

  Out of sight, an engine roared to life and a vehicle sped off, leaving the dead behind. By daybreak the corpses would be gone, taken care of by the creatures who ruled the night.

  Levi rifled through the dead men’s pockets and found nothing. He joined Rebekka, taking her arm and allowing her only a quick glimpse of the bodies before urging her forward, forcing her into a run that kept her from trembling in reaction to the sudden shock of violence.

  “Did you recognize them?” he asked.

  “No. But if I saw the one who got away again, I would. He had a birthmark on the left side of his face, a port-wine stain.”

  Canino edged closer, flanking her
. Cyrin did the same for his brother.

  “Who do you think sent them?” she asked.

  “The Church maybe, if they’re still trying to recapture Tir. Or the vice lords who own the gaming clubs. There are cameras in the maze. Before it was destroyed we might have been seen freeing the animals and leaving with Cyrin and the others.”

  They reached the first of the Were brothels connected to others by secure passageways. Rebekka gave Levi a hug, her stomach cramping at the thought of him out in the night, trapped in human form. “Go.”

  “You first. Make sure Feliss knows I’ll be back as soon as I see Cyrin home.” He hugged Rebekka against him before she could step away. “Don’t leave the brothel. You’re safe there, even from the other vice lords.”

  “I won’t.”

  Caphriel’s Pawn

  THE cool evening air brought the sound of wolves howling in the distance and the nerve-racking yipping of coyotes. Goose bumps pimpled Radek’s skin at hearing them so close to the encampment with the arrival of night.

  “Filthy beasts,” he muttered, casting an involuntary glance at the concertina wire stretched along the tops of the walls. It, and the threat posed by machine gun-carrying humans, was the primary defense against being overrun by Weres.

  By law, this area was his now to salvage in—as long as he could hold it. But he was well aware of being deep in hostile lands.

  Anger flashed through Radek. He shouldn’t have to scurry around like a man afraid of his shadow. By rights the entire encampment should be bright with light. He shouldn’t have to pay the Ivanov militiamen premium wages to patrol by lantern light in groups, gossiping and joking at his expense.

  Radek purposely slowed his pace, not wanting to show any fear to the conscripted criminals and poor human trash who made up his workforce, or to the militiamen who answered to his father, or to the handful of guardsmen who probably spied for the other Founding Families of Oakland.

  The scent of fresh-cut timber drew him to a shored-up opening leading downward, into space no human had been in for hundreds of years until he was responsible for it being unearthed. Pride filled him. Satisfaction coursed through his veins.

  He’d done what he’d set out to do. After years of collecting and studying texts created in the days before The Last War, he’d identified the site of a laboratory dedicated to energy-related technology.

  The bitter taste of having to grovel for money to fund this expedition into Were lands filled Radek’s mouth for an instant, only to be replaced by the sweetness of success as he relived the moment when the overseer’s shout called him to where tons of broken concrete had been cleared to reveal a hollowed-out spot and a safe still set in what had once been a wall.

  It took a full day and almost every laborer in the encampment to get the safe out. Another to get it open and locked in the privacy of the building he’d claimed as his own. He was still going over the contents on the computer storage drives, the files upon files of schematics and designs for harnessing energy.

  Much of it was useless, the technology no longer in existence to produce the parts or even the plants necessary to create them, but some of it, enough of it, was clearly viable—not in his hands; he had no desire to manage a commercial empire, but in a buyer’s …

  A surreptitious glance and Radek found Captain Nagy, his brother’s loyal dog, leaning against a building, cigarette tip glowing red in the growing darkness. No doubt he’d already managed to get word of the safe to Viktor.

  Radek laughed softly, imagining Viktor’s face turning furiously red as he desperately tried to outbid those gathered at an auction—only to lose.

  Or perhaps not.

  It would be immensely satisfying to sell whatever information and physical items were salvaged here to the family, taking back a share of the profits they later generated by it and making it a condition that each month, Viktor, his father’s smug, condescending heir, had to personally deliver Radek’s due.

  With a smile on his face Radek turned away from the opening. There was plenty of time to consider the best way to handle the gold mine of information contained in the safe. This was only the very beginning of the discoveries. So far his workers had excavated just a small part of what he knew lay beneath the rubble of the valley floor.

  As he neared the building housing the prostitutes whose contracts he’d purchased from a vice lord in the red zone, the guard captain, Orst, emerged. Radek braced himself. It was too much to hope he was there to make use of the women.

  When Orst hailed him, Radek stopped rather than be followed back to his quarters and have his work interrupted. He didn’t trust anyone in camp when it came to the contents of the safe, wouldn’t have allowed the guard’s presence at all if it hadn’t been a requirement attached to using the convicts. That it had been a requirement only served to make him more suspicious.

  If his brother-in-law Felipe were still running the guard—

  But then Felipe and Ilka had played one time too many in the Oakland red zone. They’d become part of the entertainment when they were tossed out of Sinners, the club they favored.

  A fitting end, Radek thought. They were savaged by werewolves and feral dogs as the gathered crowd sipped brightly colored drinks and watched from the safety of the old Victorian house.

  Another strain of coyote song pierced the evening air. Radek shivered before he could stop himself. “What is it?” he snapped, irritated at having shown any reaction.

  Captain Orst’s expression remained flawlessly neutral. A feat in itself , Radek thought sourly, considering the pole that must be rammed up the man’s ass.

  “The prostitutes tell me one of them has been missing for over a day. Apparently she was called from their quarters to service a convict yesterday morning and didn’t return. The man in question is also absent. His foreman says he reported it to you. Under the terms of the conscription contract you were supposed to inform the guard immediately.”

  “It slipped my mind. Consider yourself notified. The workers and prostitutes were warned not to leave the encampment. The fate of those who do is not my concern. One might even consider it a validation of Darwin’s principles. Now if that’s all, I have work waiting for me.”

  “I will return to Oakland within the next day or so and file the necessary paperwork.”

  Orst turned away, heading in the direction of the building housing the guardsmen. At the sight of the man’s straight back in its neatly pressed uniform, Radek allowed himself the small fantasy of the captain encountering a pack of coyotes in the woods and being ripped to shreds as a reward for conscientious duty. Sanctimonious prick.

  Irritation flashed to anger in Radek. If his father had been willing to give him more money instead of calling this venture a pipe dream and turning over what little was officially Radek’s inheritance, then he wouldn’t have needed to supplement his workforce with criminals. He wouldn’t need to tolerate the guard’s presence and, worse, pay for it as insurance that the conscripted men were treated fairly and not thrown to the Weres as the situation warranted it.

  Radek snorted at the ludicrousness of it all. Civil rights for criminals. Concern for whores and the worthless poor. Ridiculous. If there’d been enough of his brother-in-law left to bury then Felipe would have spun in his grave at the direction the guard was taking as the various factions, including the Iberás, fought for control of it.

  Radek paused long enough to turn on his personal generator before entering his quarters. He double-checked the locks on the windows then took a seat at his desk, turning on the computer so he could resume his study of the files.

  It was a tedious, mind-numbing process.

  Open the file.

  Read through pages filled with complex words and ideas.

  Decide whether any of it needed further study or not.

  His alertness faded quickly, though it returned for an instant when he stumbled upon mention of a top secret government-sponsored project being worked on elsewhere in the laboratory comp
lex currently being excavated.

  Radek’s eyes grew gritty, the lids heavy. The drone of the generator outside and the increasing stuffiness inside made it difficult for him to stay awake.

  He succumbed to sleep, to a favored dream.

  In it he smiled as he surveyed the reclaimed valley that was his domain. Where there was now rubble and ruin, much of it covered in tangled vines and rot-created dirt, a city stood.

  Its entrance and the roads leading to it were controlled by him. And like the city itself, they were patrolled not by guardsmen or the private militia answering to his father and Viktor, but by men who owed their allegiance to him and wore a crest of his own design rather than the one created by an Ivanov ancestor.

  His wealth surpassed that of all the Founding Families of Oakland combined. It rivaled that of the Tassone vampire family who ruled San Francisco.

  In his sleep Radek smiled as he stood at the entrance of a grand estate and watched the motorcade containing his father arrive.

  A chauffeur emerged from a sleek black limousine to open the back door. His father exited, pride wreathing his face as his gaze encompassed the city and the mansion behind Radek. “You’ve done well, son. Better than your brother, Viktor.”

  There was a short, pain-filled hesitation. “And God rest her soul, your sister, who was taken from us too soon.”

  Radek aped his father’s sadness over Ilka’s death even as he pressed his lips together tightly to keep from pointing out she’d brought her fate on herself. Death made saints of grasping bitches and sinners alike, and his sister was both.

  He escorted his father along a hallway filled with priceless artwork and into his study. Poured two glasses of expensive, imported brandy as his father claimed a plush chair covered in jaguar hide so black there was only a hint of the rosette pattern present in the fur.

  The sleeping Radek frowned, recognizing a deviation in the recurrent fantasy. But the thread of concern dropped away when his father said, “I’ve arranged a parade through Oakland celebrating your achievement.”