by Jory Strong
“There’s no time to waste,” Aryck said, his voice gravelly, harsh. “Three of the cubs barely remain in this world. The other two are not far behind them.”
His words were a club Rebekka used to beat back exhaustion and keep it behind a barricade of determination. “Let’s hurry then.”
She refused to fail the cubs. Even without the root she needed for the wash she could use her gift to battle infection and to restore skin and muscle.
It wouldn’t be permanent, not until the nanites were destroyed. But she could stabilize the cubs, keep them alive until a true healing was possible.
A mile passed in bristling silence with Aryck shackling her to his side and ignoring her. The longer it continued, the angrier she got.
Rebekka tugged, attempting to break Aryck’s hold on her wrist. His fingers tightened in reaction. She pulled again. Harder. And when he didn’t let her wrist go, she halted, digging in her heels so there was a sharp jerk down the length of their arms.
He turned, and she felt her lips pulling back in a snarl of her own. “Release me.”
Surprise probably accounted for him doing just that. It was there in his eyes, glinting along with something else. Appreciation maybe.
Rebekka refused to contemplate it. She shook out her arm like a prisoner freed from a chain, then, without a word, continued in the direction they were headed with fast, purposeful strides.
He caught up easily, striding close enough so every other step it seemed as though his arm brushed against hers, sending a jolt of awareness through her. To take her mind off his effect on her, she asked, “Will your pack have found the root by the time we reach the cubs?”
Aryck faltered, recovering with cat quickness so there was barely a change in the smoothness of his movements. She added, “I know you were showing someone the picture of the plant.”
“How?”
Her eyebrows drew together. She wondered why he would ask such thing when the answer should be obvious. “I live and work among Weres.”
“Outcasts.”
She drew away from him then, a step, all the trail allowed but enough so there would be no casual touch of his skin against hers. “You say it as if they were all guilty of crimes.”
His nostrils flared. She braced for an argument. Instead he answered her original question. “My father is speaking with our healer, Phaedra, about the root. If she’s not familiar with it, he’ll ask others.”
“And the cubs? Can you describe their current condition?”
“No. He didn’t show me images of them.”
The tightness in Aryck’s voice revealed his fear they would be too late. Rebekka returned to his side, unable to stop herself from taking his hand in a silent offer of comfort. “I can run for a while.”
He brushed his thumb against her knuckles in a soft caress, then slipped into an easy lope. She fell behind within steps and found a pace she could sustain.
They slowed and sped up as needed. Stopped when absolutely necessary.
Rebekka drew on strength beyond any she thought to possess. She endured because she couldn’t accept the price of failure. Pushed on, fueled by optimism when she drew abreast of Aryck and he said, “The plant has been found and the roots harvested. Phaedra assumes you’ll need boiling water to create the wash. It should be ready by the time we reach camp. We’re close now, less than a mile.”
“Good,” Rebekka said, the pain in her sides making it difficult to say more.
They arrived a short time later, finally stopping in front of a house well hidden by trees. From inside the small building came the steady beat of drums and songlike chanting.
Rebekka forced herself to remain upright though she trembled with physical exhaustion. The gathered Jaguars would view it as a sign of weakness, but at least they wouldn’t scent fear on her at being in their presence. She’d come too far, endured too much, to feel anything but a driving need to get to the cubs and heal them so she could finally rest.
An old woman stepped through those gathered. She was cool-eyed and assessing. “The water boils,” she said, thrusting a wooden cup into Rebekka’s hands. “Drink this. It will revive you so we can make the wash for the cubs. They grow worse, but I believe there is still time to heal them if we hurry.”
Phaedra, the healer, Rebekka thought, drinking the bitter brew and recognizing it as a stimulant some of the brothel prostitutes used when they wanted to work longer hours to pay off their debt more quickly.
She handed the cup back to the old woman. “This way,” Phaedra said, leading Rebekka to the back of the house where other Jaguars waited.
It was easy to pick out the parents of the cubs. They stood in pairs, desperate hope shining in their eyes as well as the promise of death if a human caused further harm.
Several copper pots hung over small fires, the water in them boiling. On a nearby table lay the roots she needed, along with bowls, knives, and stone pestles.
Aryck took the blanket-made satchel from her shoulder before she could slide it off. He unknotted it, gently dumping the contents on the table. Rebekka pulled the journal from her pocket, opening it to the page describing how to make the wash.
Phaedra emitted a low, threatening growl and instantly Rebekka found herself behind Aryck. Canino crowded in, trapping her against the table and answering Phaedra with a growl of his own.
Several men shed loose clothing, shifting form. They crouched in readiness for attack.
A knife appeared in Aryck’s hand, pulled from a sheath he wore on his thigh.
Fourteen
THE back door opened, freeing the stench of infection and making the sound of the drums beating within throb through the air. A man stood in the entryway.
“Enough,” he said, his voice holding such command Rebekka knew instantly he was the alpha, and most likely Aryck’s father given how closely they resembled each other.
His gaze fell on Canino. “This is no place for you. Melina will take you to my home until the cubs have been healed. The enforcer has promised Rebekka safety while she is among us. No harm will come to her on Jaguar lands.”
Rebekka touched Canino’s shoulder, using her gift to communicate calmness and acceptance. He rubbed against her, eliciting a growl from Aryck, before padding away to follow Melina.
One by one the male Jaguars reclaimed their human shapes and pulled on their clothing. The pack leader sent a hard stare at Phaedra. She bowed her head slightly. “I am too old to have reacted without thinking. The book smells of Jaguar, but its origins and how it came to be in human hands aren’t as important as its contents. My apologies to Rebekka. If she will read what has been written, we will set to work.”
Aryck stepped back and Rebekka reclaimed her spot next to Phaedra. The Jaguar healer made no attempt to see the words written on the pages as Rebekka described what needed to be done.
Phaedra listened. She assigned tasks to those gathered, halting Rebekka only once and asking to see a picture of a familiar plant bearing an unfamiliar name.
Compared to the length of the journey, creating the wash took very little time. Yet by the time it was done, the concentrated solution mixed with cold water so it could be safely applied, Rebekka’s worry was profound.
“The parents will apply it to their cubs,” Phaedra said, though she lifted one of the basins containing the wash and carried it into the house herself.
Rebekka stood aside, allowing the others to precede her. Four couples passed by, the male in each pair stopping to pick up a basin before following his mate inside.
Aryck motioned Rebekka ahead of him. She entered the house, barely noting the old men with their drums or the caped figure with his back to her.
It was obvious every effort had been made to keep the sickroom sanitary, but the stench was overwhelming. She sought out the cubs with her eyes, a soft sound of distress escaping with the first sight of them.
Horror filled Rebekka, though she’d known what to expect. They were nearly unrecognizable as something
living instead of slabs of skinned meat.
Pallets were positioned to allow family members to gather around them. Only the shape of their limbs told her four of them were in animal form while the fifth was a boy of about eight.
Unlike the cubs in jaguar form, there was only one parent present at the pallet the boy lay on. Tears streamed down the woman’s gaunt face, and she rocked, so lost in grief she seemed unaware of the activity going on around her.
Phaedra tended the cub. Rebekka went to her side, taking up a small cup and dipping it into the basin.
Aryck joined them, crouching next to Rebekka. “This is Caius. His mother is Deidre. She recently returned to the pack after losing her Tiger mate. Caius is like his father.”
Rebekka spared a glance at Caius’s mother. Pitying her at the same time she wished she could deliver a slap to turn Deidre’s attention to the child who needed her.
The neglect hadn’t just started. By Deidre’s rail-thin body and face, she hadn’t bothered to hunt or eat for weeks, if not longer.
Rebekka looked down at Caius. Aryck said, “If not for him, the others would be dead. Rubble gave way, creating a pit. They fell on an undetonated weapon. He went to their aid, first helping them to stable ground, then coming to camp. It was an amazing feat for one so young and badly injured.”
“I won’t let him die,” Rebekka promised, pouring the wash onto Caius’s legs.
Before she could use her hand to smooth it over the raw mess of exposed muscle and cartilage, Aryck’s was there, gently spreading it. This close to death or healing, there was little point in worrying about contamination.
She refilled the cup then emptied it, falling into an easy rhythm with Aryck as behind them the drums beat steadily, insistently.
The alpha joined them, taking a position next to Caius’s mother. He watched, remaining silent, his expression harsh. When they were nearly done bathing Caius’s front, he spoke directly to Rebekka, asked, “Does the wash work? Does it kill the thing eating him alive?”
A chill swept over her, the forerunner of a fear she refused to let take her, though it still revealed itself in fingers that fumbled, trembled slightly at the back of her neck as they removed the necklace.
Rebekka anticipated the icy bloom in her chest, but perhaps because she was surrounded by so many in desperate need of healing, it didn’t come when she handed the amulet to Aryck for safekeeping rather than risk it being stepped on or lost as she gave herself over to her gift.
She placed her hand on the cub’s raw torso, holding back her will to heal. The area beneath her fingers was streaked with infection, but compared to the hungry, buzzing energy coming from the cub’s back, it felt calm.
“Turn him,” she said, not wanting to tell them the wash was working until she could be sure.
Aryck and Phaedra repositioned Caius, exposing a back nearly as ravaged as his front. Rebekka placed only her fingertips on his skin.
There was no mistaking the source of the buzzing energy. Despite the lightness of her touch it felt as though she’d placed her hand in a swarm numbering in the millions.
Without her saying anything, Aryck took up the cup, dipping it in the wash and pouring it on the area around her fingers. Calm claimed the area instantly and it remained that way.
“It’s working,” she said, spreading the wash.
Caius began whimpering. His mother reacted to it, making low keening sounds until the alpha silenced her with a slap that brought her from her grief long enough to obey his command of silence.
When there was no trace of the hungry buzzing, Rebekka said, “It’s gone. I can begin now.”
Phaedra rose to her feet. “We check the others first, to make sure the things eating them are no longer present.”
Rebekka stood, appreciative of the older healer’s wisdom. The alpha accompanied them as they stopped next to each pallet and Rebekka touched the cub lying on it.
When they’d checked all of them, Rebekka turned, intending to go back to Caius. A man carrying a staff made of bones and wearing a Jaguar headdress that flowed into a furred, rosette-covered cape blocked her path.
Shaman, she thought as black eyes bored into her as if he tried to see into the depths of her soul.
He pointed to a cub lying on a pallet near Caius. “He is closest to death.”
Rebekka accepted the shaman’s judgment. She went to the cub and knelt next to him.
Phaedra joined her. “They are all weak and heavily drugged. They won’t be able to shift to speed the healing process.”
Rebekka had expected as much. She placed her hands on the cub, closed her eyes, and brought her will to bear.
Her gift manifested in the same way it had when she healed Aryck, in a taking, as if she was nothing more than a tool, a conduit for a power that burned through her like fire, demanding a price for using it, pain that had her gasping, crying, as it felt as though her skin was being ripped from her body at the same time bones in her chest shattered.
There was no gentle guiding, no concentrated effort to eradicate infection and repair places where bone and soft tissue had been eaten away, no conscious choice to cover exposed muscle and sinew with skin and fur. But the pain lessened as those things happened. And as the pain diminished she became aware of drums beating, those in the small room seeming to echo elsewhere, in a place beyond her physical ability to hear them.
The phantom beats faded completely as the end of pain signaled the end of the healing. Exhaustion swept in. Rebekka managed to open her eyes in time to witness the joy on the faces of the cub’s parents as they pulled him in jaguar form onto their laps and held him to them in a hug.
Tears streamed down the mother’s face. The father swallowed several times and yet his voice was still clogged with emotion when he asked, “Can we take him home?”
“Yes,” Phaedra said, standing, helping Rebekka to her feet.
Even with the healer steadying her, Rebekka swayed. She had no sense of how much time had elapsed, only that her clothes clung to her, drenched in sweat.
It took tremendous effort to take up a position next to another cub. A cup was pressed into her hand. She drank the bitter stimulant, but its effects barely registered this time. When the cup was empty, Rebekka braced herself for the pain to come, then leaned forward, willing herself to somehow find enough strength to heal the remaining cubs.
Aryck forced himself to stay at Caius’s side as Rebekka was led from pallet to pallet. He kept his back to her, not wanting to see her pain, not wanting to see her exhaustion or the way her shirt clung to her, stirring possessive, protective instincts he was no longer positive belonged solely to the Jaguar.
He’d wanted to view her as a human using her gift only for the promise of wealth. He’d thought to use her physical weakness when compared to his kind to counter the Jaguar claim of mate. But those defenses had crumbled during their push to arrive in time, and disappeared completely when he’d seen what it cost her to heal. She was no less dedicated than Phaedra.
Caius’s whimpers signaled greater and greater pain. “Stay with us,” he murmured, afraid the cub’s Earth-bound souls would give up this world and join the eternal one despite Nahuatl’s chants and the beat of the pack’s drums.
Koren crouched beside Aryck, placing a hand on Caius’s forehead, as if he too felt the cub’s tenuous hold on life and was offering his strength, his will, to the boy’s. Eyelids opened, holding fear and pain, an unspoken plea for release.
“Fight the call of the ancestors,” Koren said. “The others have been healed, you will be as well.”
Rebekka joined them, so weak her eyes were barely open as Phaedra helped her take up a position next to Caius. The Jaguar soul rose in Aryck, demanding the human form act, using arms the beast didn’t have to lift Rebekka and take her to the cabin that was also Jaguar den.
When Aryck refused to act, claws raked through his chest. He ground his teeth together, that and the clenching of his hands into fists the only external sign
of the battle being waged inside him.
A sharp glance from his father made him redouble his efforts to suppress the Jaguar. The Jaguar fought back when Rebekka began the healing with a soft cry of pain, her continuous trembling sending it into a frenzy.
The only escape was to stand and walk to the other side of the room. Leaving Phaedra’s home would be better. Aryck knew it, and yet he couldn’t force himself through the doorway.
He concentrated instead on the beat of the drums. Watched from a distance as inch by inch Caius was healed, his skin slowly reappearing to cover exposed muscle and bone until no trace of the destruction was left.
Rebekka collapsed and Aryck was by her side instantly, lifting her into his arms without it being a conscious decision. Phaedra motioned toward a small room. “Put her on my bed. I will make her comfortable.”
The Jaguar growled in denial, so loud in Aryck’s mind that when he felt his father’s eyes boring into him he was afraid the sound had escaped. He braced, expecting to hear a sharp mental command along with a private snarl of displeasure and warning.
Help came from an unexpected source. Nahuatl said, “I made the house behind mine ready for the healer, as the ancestors bid me to do when they showed me her face and gave me her name.”
Daivat’s house. The son made outcast.
Aryck’s sweat chilled on his skin. The threat held in the reminder of Daivat’s fate helped drive the Jaguar’s desires back, caging them in bars of ice, though it didn’t force the two Earth-bound souls into a harmonious weave.
“Take her there,” Koren said. And come to my home immediately afterward. “Phaedra will accompany you so she can make the healer comfortable.”
Aryck didn’t dare respond mentally for fear the Jaguar would choose that moment to issue a challenge. He gave a slight nod, accepting his father’s spoken command as well as the one sent privately.
He left with Rebekka in his arms. Phaedra joined him, carrying a basin and a soft rag.
Daivat’s home was similar to his own. One room with a large bed made of piled woven blankets and bison pelts, a place used more to experience the sensual pleasures that came with coupling in human form than to sleep in.