Healer's Choice g-3

by Jory Strong

  She thought about the wedding bands that so often glinted in the subdued lighting of the brothels. Even Levi, who routinely slept in Feliss’s room and intended to buy out her contract, took what was offered free by the prostitutes.

  Hopelessness settled like a heavy weight in Rebekka’s chest. She knew there was a difference between intimacy and sex, believed the act itself was meaningless for those who visited the brothels. But she wasn’t sure a man was capable of being faithful to only one woman over the course of a lifetime together. And she didn’t think she could handle that kind of betrayal by someone she’d given her heart to and created children with.

  “Would you like to hold him?” the girl on the couch asked.

  Rebekka moved forward in answer, looked in wonder at tiny fingers. Prostitutes rarely carried their children to term. And those who did—

  She knew she’d been lucky in so many ways. To be born at all had been the first stroke of it. And it had been followed by so many more, including being gifted.

  Her mother hadn’t abandoned her on the street or in the forest, leaving it up to fate whether she survived or not. She hadn’t ended up in an orphanage or been sold.

  Even in the red zone, those who trafficked in children didn’t operate openly. But it was common knowledge, especially in the brothels, that unwanted pregnancies could be turned into profit in any number of ways.

  There were men whose sexual fetishes involved pregnant women. And after the baby was born, there were brokers willing to sell to those with sexual perversions, or to dark mages looking for sacrificial victims, or to supernatural beings with an appetite for human children.

  “He’s beautiful,” Rebekka said, taking the boy into her arms and inhaling the baby scent of him, knowing this child would never fear the fates waiting for so many others in Oakland, not just those born in the red zone, but for the poor who scraped and struggled to survive.

  “He’s gifted,” the girl said, pride in her voice. “The matriarch said one day he’ll have the strength and skill to call upon the ley lines. She’s never wrong when she does her scrying using fire.”

  Mention of the matriarch reminded Rebekka of what had driven her here, forced her to turn away from a dream that always brought with it the ache of hopelessness. She handed the infant back to his mother, noticing the loss of his warmth before closing her mind to it.

  Rebekka turned away from mother and son, followed Annalise to the parlor where the Wainwright matriarch sat draped in black, hunched and bony, her eyes made sightless by cataracts.

  A tremor of fear went through Rebekka, deep and instinctual.

  Annalise took a seat on the couch next to the old woman. Rebekka sat across from them, separated by a coffee table, though the distance wasn’t enough to keep her skin from crawling.

  If Annalise’s magic felt like a hundred spiders pouring over her, the matriarch’s felt like a thousand of them, blanketing her as if they sought to measure what she was made of.

  Darkness formed at the edges of Rebekka’s consciousness. She swayed, on the verge of passing out, combatted it with the same determination and focus required in healing.

  As quickly as the shroud of power had covered her, it disappeared, leaving her breathing fast, sweating, but less afraid than when she’d stood in front of the witches’ house. She’d be dead now if the matriarch had wanted it. She knew it with absolute certainty.

  “It’s done then,” the matriarch said. “The maze is destroyed and Araña has set Abijah free.”

  Rebekka’s pulse sped up at confirmation of what she’d guessed was the witches’ true goal. It was only while being held prisoner at the Iberá estate that she’d learned demons could be bound to urns. She’d thought at first the Wainwrights meant to gain possession of the urn the maze owner had stolen from the Church, so they could command Abijah. Only later had she thought otherwise.

  A suspicion slithered into Rebekka’s thoughts. She wondered if the witches had originally sought her out, ensuring her path crossed Araña’s because somehow they knew a demon’s blood ran in her veins.

  Despite the pounding of her heart, she asked, “Why did you involve me in this?”

  The matriarch answered, “Because your father is like the one Araña freed.”

  Rebekka felt the cold drenching of fear. The same she’d felt when Abijah found her, tasting her blood and claiming to know her father.

  Denial screamed through Rebekka once again. She argued internally against believing without further proof, without speaking to her mother. She reminded herself witches couldn’t be trusted. The Wainwrights had their own agenda and had already used her once in achieving their goal, arranging for her to meet and help Araña, who in turn became a tool to free the demon Abijah.

  But already Rebekka felt cut by shards of truth that left the life she knew bleeding away and a terrible acceptance seeping in. As soon as she’d gone to live and work in the Were brothels, her mother left the red zone for a life among the Fellowship of the Sign, a religious group that had carved out a community in the forests beyond the Barrens.

  In desperation Rebekka latched onto the purpose that had driven her to cross the Wainwright wards and enter their home. Through the fabric of her pants the folded pages in her pocket seemed to burn, like a hint of the fiery hell promised to those the Church condemned. Her throat went dry even as her palms grew slick.

  She had no confidence she could bargain with the witches and come out ahead, but she had no choice but to try. Her hand shook as she pulled the pages from her pocket and set them on the table. Her voice trembled as she said, “There were other urns, like the one Araña destroyed. They may no longer exist but they once did. These pages came from an old journal in the Iberá patriarch’s possession. He showed them to Father Ursu.”

  Ice slid down her spine at the memory of how hard the priest had pressed the Iberá patriarch, urging him with each visit to the estate to turn her over for questioning—a questioning that would surely have ended in her death. With its public face, and solely for political purposes, the Church might accept those humans having supernatural gifts, but it hadn’t truly turned away from a doctrine it’d carried with it from its inception and through all the different names it had called itself. Those humans with unnatural powers should be killed, just as the Weres were deemed abominations with no right to life.

  Annalise picked up the pages and carefully unfolded them, her eyes scanning the text and studying the drawings. To the matriarch she said, “The names on the urns are those you heard whispered by the flame.”

  “The hunt for them begins soon, then, with the aid of a Finder.” The matriarch’s milky, sightless gaze returned to Rebekka. “You’ve come here seeking the deepening of your healing talent.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is not a gift I can bestow on you.”

  Bone-white hands appeared from beneath her shawl. The subtle jangle of amulets hanging from bracelets sounded as the matriarch’s skeletal fingers opened a cloth-wrapped package on her lap to reveal a necklace.

  Strung on leather with knotted black beads along its length was an amulet that reminded Rebekka of dream catchers she’d seen in history books. It was made of supple wood and woven string. At its center were two red beads on either side of a small black feather that seemed to shimmer and cast off a thousand different colors.

  “The pages you brought have value. It’s fair you be given something in return. This amulet offers a measure of protection for one with your gift. Blood is required to bind it to you.”

  Rebekka rubbed damp palms against her pants. She couldn’t trust the witches with the remembered encounter with the urchin, or how the rat had come to her in the alleyway, and yet she also couldn’t afford to turn down the amulet and what protection it could offer. “I accept.”

  Annalise drew a silver athame from a sheath on her belt. Rebekka’s stomach cramped at the sight of the sigils running the length of its blade. She held out her hand anyway.

  Annalise lea
ned forward, making a shallow cut across the lifeline on Rebekka’s palm. Blood welled up quickly, unnaturally.

  “Take the amulet now,” the matriarch said.

  Rebekka did. She gasped as fire streaked through her, going from her hand to the center of her chest. And when she opened her palm, she found the cut completely healed, the red beads woven into the weblike design of the amulet darker, dry, as if they’d absorbed her blood.

  Hands shaking slightly, she lifted the necklace and tied it around her neck. At some hidden signal, Annalise rose and helped the matriarch to her feet.

  “Come,” the matriarch said, “Annalise and I will escort you to the back door. It’s hidden from the Church’s watchers. Do you wish for us to intercede on your behalf?”

  Rebekka licked suddenly dry lips. “At what cost?”

  “A favor owed.”

  Rebekka only barely suppressed a shiver at the thought of being in their debt. She’d brave a return to the Iberá estate and ask for the patriarch’s intercession with the Church before she promised a favor to witches.

  “No,” she said, and on the heels of her answer came a stirring of hope that they’d lied about her father being demon. It would serve their purpose to make her believe it, to pull her deeper into their elaborate web.

  “As you wish.”

  Levanna Wainwright allowed her granddaughter to support her as they slowly left the room. Rebekka’s refusal of help brought a stirring of worry, a tiny measure of pity. So many children of the Djinn died during their testing.

  It was only afterward, when the fullness of the pattern was revealed, that the choices, the places where failure originated or might have been averted, could be identified.

  Not that it mattered to those administering the tests.

  A waste, the matriarch thought, her hand tightening slightly on her granddaughter’s arm. A terrible waste.

  In this she was glad she was born human and gifted, and when it came to those of her family, her will—Anna’s will—ruled. Occasionally magic took one of them, or they died at the hands of their enemies, but their testing was meant to make them stronger, to determine position in coven hierarchy, not to separate out the weak, often at the expense of their lives.

  Theirs was a harsh world, one where everything came at a cost. She’d learned the lesson well enough when she was in her teens, on the fateful night of her initiation ceremony.

  She’d thought to show herself powerful enough to one day become not just matriarch of the Wainwright coven in Oakland, but of all those covens bound to the Wainwrights. And so she had. But at a price that altered not only the course of her life, but the destiny of the covens.

  How foolish the girl born Anna Wainwright had been. Proud and headstrong and overly confident.

  She’d thought to free a demon contained in an urn and command it. Instead she’d died at the hands of a female Djinn.

  If it hadn’t been for the quick action of those gathered, she’d be in the ghostlands, her spirit bound to that of the Djinn who killed her, her body nothing but a collection of ashes in the Wainwright burial vaults.

  She and the Djinn were still bound and, ultimately, when the thread tethering the both of them to the mortal plane—as Levanna—was finally and irrevocably broken, she and the other—Levaneal en Raum of the House of the Spider—would enter the spiritlands as one, their souls forever tangled unless the battle they prepared for was won and the Djinn once again claimed Earth as home, ruling it with those allied to them.

  As they stepped out of the house and Rebekka passed them, the matriarch felt only a coldness of purpose in the other, Levaneal. A ruthlessness tied to ancient memories of friends slaughtered or made prisoner by the alien god’s army of angels.

  Rebekka’s death would mean nothing to the Spider Djinn. The healer was only important if she proved herself worthy of her Djinn parentage, if the thread of her life strengthened the fabric of a future that had been in the weaving for thousands of years.

  “Take the path through the thornbushes,” Annalise told Rebekka, drawing the matriarch from her thoughts. “It leads to the other side of our garden and onto the next street. If you change your mind and wish us to arrange for the Church to stop pursuing you, come back.”

  With a thank-you, the healer hurried off. Shades of brown and a swirl of gray in the matriarch’s mind, offset by a flash of red just beyond the fence marking the warded boundary.

  The emotionless resolve defining Levaneal’s spirit presence gave way to a burning, hungry desire to be among the Djinn again. A face rose from ancient memory, spilling the image of a sharp-featured man into the matriarch’s mind. Torquel en Sahon of the House of the Cardinal.

  Surprise at his continued presence flickered though the matriarch, the emotion echoed by the other. In the eyes of the Djinn, Levaneal was tainted, feared.

  This was the first time Torquel had approached directly, risking what few of his kind dared. It made the matriarch wonder if perhaps he had grown tired of losing the daughters he created with human women.

  Few of his kind managed more than one or two children, either in this world or in the Djinn kingdom deep in the ghostlands. But since shortly after the initiation ceremony that left Anna’s soul bound to Levaneal’s, five of Torquel’s daughters had come to this house before Rebekka. All of them had failed their testing and died.

  With a tightening of her fingers on Annalise’s arm, the matriarch said, “Take me to where he waits.”

  The Watcher

  ONLY a will honed over thousands of years of existence and tempered by being a healer prevented Torquel en Sahon from retreating as the old witch whose foolishness in youth had cost the Djinn one of their own approached. With each step she took he fought against retaking the form of the cardinal and escaping the presence of the ifrit—one of the soul-tainted, a being whose name was crossed through in the Book of the Djinn and whose spirit couldn’t be guided back and reborn into a new life.

  He stood his ground by reminding himself the loss of the Djinn whose name was no longer spoken had ultimately served The Prince’s vision. Only by forming alliances with those they would have seen destroyed in the past would the Djinn return to Earth.

  The Wainwright witches served as intermediaries. Even so, as the ifrit drew near, he couldn’t stop himself from turning his face away to look in the direction his daughter had gone.

  He’d taken no pleasure in her creation. In truth, he preferred not to remember any of the human women he’d lain with.

  Rebekka was the last of his children. Out of all of them, her gift as a healer held the most promise.

  He’d spent more time observing this particular daughter. Found himself caring about her fate more than was wise. But whatever the outcome of her testing, his time among humans was drawing to an end. When this was done he would return to his House and to the Kingdom set deep in the spiritlands that was both refuge and prison for the Djinn.

  “Did she give you the pages she took from the Iberá estate?” he asked, directing his attention and question at the younger witch, because for all his courage in remaining in the presence of an ifrit, he wouldn’t risk inviting a similar fate by speaking to it directly. Nor did he want to hear or see the Djinn soul tangled with the human’s.

  “Yes, and she accepted the amulet.”

  A wisp of guilt drifted through him. A private acknowledgment he’d failed to hide Rebekka well enough and Caphriel had found her.

  Torquel brushed the emotions aside. Caphriel’s games were the price for his silence about the alliances the Djinn sought and formed in this world.

  Caphriel’s gift could be countered. And in the end, both game and gift would be made to serve the Djinn.

  The necessity of the amulet added to the complexity of Rebekka’s trial, deepening her talent for healing and strengthening the blood tie between them, and with it her connection to the Djinn and the Earth that gave birth to them. He would have preferred otherwise, but when all was said and done, this daughter w
ould succeed or fail, live or die, as the five before her had.

  “And the rest of it?” he asked.

  “Her mother never spoke to her about you but she might have encountered Abijah in the maze before he destroyed it. She didn’t deny the possibility she’d been fathered by a being she believes is demon, nor did she seem shocked by the disclosure.”

  “You guess correctly. Abijah sought her out, but I didn’t witness what occurred between them.” He felt pride in his daughter, for not easily trusting the witches, though had she, there were things they could have revealed that would have helped her.

  The decision to have Rebekka think she was a demon’s child was his, made after Caphriel found her and when it seemed likely her path might one day cross Abijah’s. Until she proved herself worthy, she couldn’t know of the existence of the Djinn.

  The witch said, “We offered to turn the Church’s attention away from her in exchange for a favor owed. She refused.”

  “Will she continue to?”

  “I believe so.”

  Torquel looked again in the direction Rebekka had gone. It was his right to mark an end to the part of her trial that had begun when she’d agreed to wait outside the maze the night Araña ran in it, not knowing she’d been made a participant in a Spider Djinn’s testing.

  This daughter had courage and intelligence as well as honor and loyalty, all of which had prevailed in the face of fear. She’d withstood both the temptation of The Iberá’s protection and the terror of being turned over to the Church.

  The desire to intercede was strong, to separate this part of her testing from what remained. It was matched by his desire to have Rebekka prove herself worthy of being known by the Djinn, her name entered in the books kept by his House.

  The fierceness of his pride in her, the depth of his will for her to succeed, gave Torquel pause. He hesitated over the words that would make Rebekka safe from one threat, finally saying, “The Church’s part in this is done after the sun rises tomorrow. See that one of our allies visits the priest Ursu.”

  “It will be as you wish.”