by Jory Strong
Rebekka’s skin felt clammy, coated with guilt. The image from the Barrens rose in her mind, human bodies burning on wooden pallets, and, following it, the Elk she’d seen in Wolf lands.
She didn’t want to see evidence of the urchin’s horrible gift. She’d known when she elected to heal Kerr that any choice she made damned her.
But like that one, there was no denying Magena’s request. “I’ll go with you.”
Aryck helped her to her feet. She found comfort in the feel of his warmth at her side, in the way he threaded his fingers through hers.
Some of the guilt and fear lessened when they emerged from the dwelling and learned none of the Lions had been killed. But the horror remained at the sight of the hyenas who’d been slain when they left the forest and were attacked by the pride.
“Touch the dead first,” Magena advised. “So you’ll know the disease if it’s present in the Lions. I’ll order anyone who had contact with the hyenas to gather in one place, regardless of whether they have injuries needing a healer’s attention.”
Rebekka nodded her acceptance of the suggestion. She went to where the closest hyena lay on ground saturated with body fluids.
She crouched at the head. Aryck crouched with her, holding out his hand in an offer to take possession of her necklace.
Rebekka steeled herself for the awareness of plague that would strike when she gave it to him. Suppressed both gasp and shiver as it came.
This time relief was mixed in with awareness. She couldn’t be certain, but it seemed as though what she’d felt earlier was the same, as if the pocket of disease remained in the same place.
The thought gave her pause and made her palms dampen. If she had the courage, could she find the source and either heal the carriers or see them destroyed by the Weres?
Magena joined them at the side of the dead hyena. Rebekka let the question go, forcing herself instead to lay a hand on the animal’s forehead.
Like the Wolves, there was massive inflammation of the brain. But unlike them, it had manifested differently, into something like rabies and yet not rabies, even if the hyena’s unnatural behavior mimicked it.
Rebekka placed her fingertips on the hyena’s muzzle. Immediately there was the same horrifying sense of connection she’d experienced when she touched the Wolf pup, the same sense of recognition, as if the virus massed in the saliva and tried to come to her hand so she might carry it to another host.
The taste of disease filled her mouth. Thick and viscous.
She scrambled to her feet, managing only a few steps before bending over and retching.
Clamminess returned to coat her skin. She knew in that instant she couldn’t go on carrying the full burden of the secret.
Aryck enfolded her in his arms, nuzzling her cheek and whispering kisses across her ear. “What can I do to help you?”
“You’re doing it,” she said, pressing against him, hugging him tightly as his strength bolstered her own until she could move away and kneel next to a second corpse.
Magena and Aryck both joined her. She was conscious of the Lions milling, gathered and held in groups. Most of them remained in their animal forms, though the grand matriarch and shaman weren’t.
Fires had already been lit in preparation for burning the bodies. Rebekka touched the hyena’s forehead and muzzle before removing her hand and saying to Magena, “I needed to be sure. They both carry the same virus. It’s like rabies but not quite the same. Their saliva is full of it.”
“Do you wish to touch more of them?”
Rebekka couldn’t suppress a shudder. “No.”
She stood and looked down. But instead of seeing spotted fur and the distinctive shape of a hyena, she saw the slick black fur of a dog killed by settlement police years ago in the San Joaquin.
You brought the rabid dog here, little healer.
Forget now, until it’s time for you to join the game.
It was as if she’d come full circle, except this time she wasn’t the little girl told to forget or the adult who up until days ago didn’t know who her father was. She might be a pawn still, but even pawns had choices.
She glanced at Aryck, her eyes lingering on the amulet in his hand. She’d given him her body, taken the risk he’d turn away from her in disgust and call her a liar when he saw the tattoo.
He’d done neither. Now she had to trust he’d accept her once he knew she was fathered by a demon and gifted with something terrible by her father’s enemy.
In the distance she could feel plague, still seemingly where it had been before. It was only a matter of time before it spread.
“I’m ready to check the Lions now,” she told Magena. “One with an open wound would be best.”
“All but the most seriously injured healed themselves by shifting before I could tell them not to,” Magena said, worry in her voice as she led Rebekka to a tight knot of Lions surrounding a fallen pride member.
The young male was too weak to lift his head but his eyes followed Rebekka as she came to his side. Broken bones protruded from both front legs and blood pooled beneath his torn flanks and chest.
Despite his injuries, he was calm, trusting. She touched the places where teeth had ripped into his hide and found nothing but stinging pain. It was the same where the bones had been crushed and broken by powerful jaws.
Cautiously she said, “I’ll check others after I heal him, but I don’t sense any of the virus in his wounds.”
This is the same as what occurred on Wolf lands, Aryck thought as he surveyed the scene around him, the ground littered with dead and the pyres burning with those now being thrown to the fire.
This was the end result of weapons targeted at individual species. Only instead of Elk and Wolf, this disease was meant for Hyenas. There could be no other explanation.
The hyenas had stood no chance against a Lion group swollen to three or four times its normal number as the individual family prides gathered as they did each year at this time. And yet they’d come—infected by something like rabies but not contagious across species lines as rabies was—attacked, and been slaughtered because of it.
He didn’t believe it could be coincidence that two previously unknown diseases had struck so soon after the humans trespassed and began salvaging in Coyote lands. It was clear to him they were meant for the Weres.
A glance around and he knew it was clear to the Lions as well. Several males climbed to high perches in the eucalyptus trees. They wore skin instead of fur, and each carried a drum strapped to his back.
Their hair was in dreads, marking them as the shaman’s apprentices. And though Aryck had never witnessed it, the Jaguar elders occasionally told stories of days long gone, when humans from Europe arrived and brought with them diseases that wiped out clans and packs and tribes. When drums beat, not in a summoning of the ancestors but in a shaman call for others to enter the shadowlands and share news of the danger threatening all of them.
War with the humans now seemed inevitable. Those in the encampment would die and eventually someone would come in search of them.
The Weres could ensure there was no trace of their involvement, but they couldn’t hide the truth. Not when there were gifted humans who could enter the spiritlands and speak with those killed, and necromancers who could summon any souls that lingered and hear their testimonies.
He sought Rebekka with his eyes and found her a distance away. Pride filled him as he watched her healing the last of the Lions who’d been too severely injured to change forms.
She would survive the ancestors’ trial. He didn’t doubt it, not after all she’d done for the Weres.
He’d expected to have more time with her before he told her what Nahuatl and his father said. He’d thought after a night of lovemaking his confidence would be hers and she’d want to stay and be his mate.
There was no delaying it now. Duty to the pack required him to accompany the Lions as they followed the hyenas’ trail and sought evidence it had crossed a human’s
.
He felt sure they would find it, and when they did, he would need to return to Jaguar lands. After the human encampment was destroyed, except for those left behind to patrol, the Jaguars would move to their winter camp.
For Rebekka to accompany him, she would have to agree to go through the rite. It could be done in their winter territory. There was a sacred grove of trees and a cave where the bones of the Jaguar dead were placed.
Worry crept in as she finished her task and came to him. He’d wanted more time, but even as he pulled Rebekka into his arms, Chátima, the Lion enforcer, was at his side, saying, “We leave now to see what we can learn by following the hyenas’ trail. You’ll accompany us?”
“I’ll catch up to you. I need to speak with Rebekka first.”
Aryck led Rebekka to a place where they could speak privately if they were careful to keep their voices low. After fastening the amulet around her neck he took her hands in his. They trembled as if she feared what he might say, and her eyes held a worried, haunted look.
Every instinct demanded he soothe and reassure. Comfort and drive all fear from her life.
He leaned in, touched his mouth to hers. Licked the seam of her lips.
She opened for him on a low moan. Her tongue greeting his, sliding, twining, making him begin to harden.
He deepened the kiss. Extended it. Drew it out and never wanted it to end, though he knew it had to. Others depended on him for their safety, their lives.
His lips clung to hers. He couldn’t seem to pull away and so he said what he had to against the sweet softness and carnal temptation of her mouth. “If we find evidence the humans are responsible for the disease on Were lands, we will destroy the encampment. If that happens, the Jaguars will retreat to the most remote and inaccessible portion of our territory. I want you with me. I want you to be my mate.”
In anticipation of her reaction, he freed her hands and imprisoned her in his arms. “But you must agree to go through the Rite of Trial before you can return to Jaguar lands.”
She stiffened, her hands going to his chest, pushing. “Haven’t I already proven myself to the Jaguars?”
“Yes, but without the approval of the ancestors you can’t be made part of the pack.”
“The same ancestors you claim are responsible for making outcasts? You speak of them as though they’re divine beings who have the right to judge. As if in death they’re somehow more infallible than in life.”
Fear of losing her filled Aryck. He was handling this badly. Desperation seized him and made him speak without thinking. “Will you still wish to be my mate if I’m made outcast by the ancestors? Do you want to one day offer me the same choice you gave Levi?”
As soon as the words were out he knew it’d been a mistake to say them. He slammed his mouth down on hers to prevent her from answering, to keep their argument from escalating as it had the first night she was in Jaguar lands.
He kissed her with all the raw emotion churning inside him. Knowing he had to leave, not just to see to his duty, but before he made things between them worse. Before she gave him an answer he didn’t want to hear.
Against her lips, he said, “The ancestors had a hand in your being brought to Were lands. It was because of them I went to Oakland instead of another male from our pack. It can’t be coincidence you’re here, at this time when your gift is desperately needed. They will judge you worthy. I’m sure of it. Think on it while I’m gone.”
With one last kiss he released her. “You are the only female I’ve ever considered taking as a mate,” he said, then turned and loped away, telling himself he hurried to follow the hunting Lions, and not because he was afraid to stay longer.
Is Aryck right? Rebekka wondered, watching him move with easy grace through the eucalyptus grove. Did the ancestors who played such an important role in the lives of the pure Weres mean for her to be Aryck’s mate? She’d had a similar thought. Only instead of the Were ancestors, she’d been thinking of her father.
Rebekka became aware of the stench of burning flesh. She thought back to the bodies in the Barrens on her way to the Fellowship, and the moment in the garden when Brother Caphriel had offered to change the nature of her gift. But at a cost.
The Were ancestors were no different. Phaedra had admitted as much. There is always a price to be paid where they are concerned.
Would standing before them lead to her becoming a healer who could make those Weres trapped between forms whole, as Annalise Wainwright prophesied? Or would it only take her farther away from being able to help them, just as going with Aryck would take her farther from Oakland?
Or would it lead to nothing but her death?
“Choices,” Rebekka murmured. At least she remained certain about one of them. She could do something about the threat she felt in the distance. She could prevent another slaughter while she came to a decision about Aryck and the rite.
She wasn’t afraid of going alone. The Weres knew she was in their lands and Aryck’s scent would identify her. She was far more frightened of what she’d find and that it might be virulent and fast acting, delivering death to anyone with her before she could prevent it.
Her hand dropped to the journal in her pocket. It was too valuable a thing to take with her as she sought out the plague. Levi already carried the coins she’d gotten from Aryck in the Barrens. The trick would be in giving him the book without rousing his suspicions. If he knew what she intended, he would accompany her.
The answer came to her when she saw Caius and, nearby, Canino. She hurried to the Tiger, pulling the journal from her pocket as she did.
Canino rumbled a greeting. She held the book out, asked, “Will you take this to Levi for me?”
The Tiger got to his feet and gently took the journal between his teeth. His tail flicked in the direction of the cub like a lure as he trotted off.
Caius bumped against Rebekka’s leg then bounded after Canino. Rebekka left, doing her best not to draw attention to herself as she headed toward the nearest place where eucalyptus trees gave way to denser forest.
She expected to hear the pounding of footsteps or Levi’s voice yelling for her to stop. But somehow she made it, slipping among mistletoe-laden oak and startling a cardinal from its perch.
Rebekka dared to look back. There was no sign of pursuit.
Her hands lifted to the amulet. She took it off, holding it up, studying it.
The black feather anchored on either side by red beads swirled and fluttered in a tiny breeze, shimmering in a spectrum of light and color. She hesitated, gathering her courage and her resolve.
Don’t be a coward, she told herself. If she was to do this thing, then she needed to be fully committed.
She hung it from a tree branch. As soon as her fingers left it, awareness came like a frigid arrow pointing her in the direction she must go.
The first step away from the witches’ protection that had come to symbolize her father’s as well was the hardest. And the ones that followed weren’t much easier.
She refused to look back, even when the drums began beating behind her.
Twenty-six
ARYCK knelt near the abandoned den area. The smell of hyena was strong, and in the concentration of urine marking their territory, so was the stench of disease.
The irony of it being this pack wasn’t lost on him. Not so many days ago he’d stood on the rise above and tossed the bodies of Daivat’s victims to the hyenas.
Today there were other victims. Pups and those already weakened by age, along with several of the males he’d thought were new to the pack.
Disease had taken some of them. Violence had taken others.
This was Jaguar land and the moment he’d stepped onto it he’d touched his mind to his father’s. With a thought, he let Koren see the scene before him.
Though it was their land, neither protested when Chátima rose from his position next to Aryck, saying, “I’ll leave men behind to burn the bodies. The rest of us can spread out, tracking
the individual pack members.”
It was a good plan. And it quickly yielded results. Within minutes a Lion roared in discovery, bringing the hunters to the place where a human’s scent lay heavily around a tree.
Aryck undressed and shifted to jaguar form. A leap, claws digging into bark, and he was climbing, following the scent upward into the concealing branches, then out onto a limb where the man had lain, masturbating and leaving semen on the leaves, making Aryck spit in distaste.
Below him several of the Lions had changed as well, their lips pulled back and noses close to the ground to read the story they found there. Aryck backed up, retracing his movements until he could jump.
He landed near his pants and shed his fur in favor of being able to speak. “A man watched from above.”
One of the Lions also took a human form. “There are footprints in the dirt here. The impressions are deeper arriving than leaving. He carried food and left it for the hyenas, then waited to make sure they took the bait. The smell of hyena and lack of remains makes it impossible for me to be sure what he fed them. Perhaps it was a woman’s corpse, or possibly she handled the meat and cut herself while doing it. There was a trace of her scent, that’s all.”
Aryck met the eyes of the Lion enforcer. “The humans either came to Were lands with the intent of killing us or they found something in the ruins they excavate that allowed them to do it.”
“Agreed,” Chátima said. “Waiting them out is no longer an option.”
Aryck conveyed what they’d discovered to his father. Koren said, It’s good you have already made overtures toward alliance. Nahuatl answered the drums of the Lion shaman and found Wolf, Bear, Hyena, and Coyote gathered in the shadowlands. We will meet tonight, shaman, alpha, and enforcer, each trio accompanied by fifteen armed warriors. With safe passage granted directly through each other’s lands, we can react quickly to the threat the humans pose.
An image of the place accompanied Koren’s words, along with the position of the moon to fix the time. I will speak in favor of attacking immediately. The elders are in agreement. I think the other alphas will come to the meeting with the same intent.