by Jory Strong
He could see she did, that despite her request she’d known what his answer would be. Accepted it.
Pride made him release her and turn away.
This is her choice, he told himself, leaving her without a backward glance.
Thirty-one
REBEKKA hadn’t thought she had any more tears to shed. But when she knelt next to Caius and solemnly took the amulet he’d found in the woods and kept safe for her, a new wave of pain washed through her and she felt the tightening of her throat.
His lips trembled and his chin jutted out. He already saw good-bye in her tearstained face and the shaking of her hands.
“I have to go back to Oakland,” she said, her tears starting to flow again. “I’m needed there.”
He swallowed, his small frame stiff as he tried to face yet another loss in his life. “Will you come back when you’re done? And teach me to read like you promised?”
Rebekka wanted to say yes, even if it meant returning and finding Aryck mated to a Jaguar female. But she knew there was every chance she would be killed if Allende found out she was helping the prostitutes escape. And if she managed to avoid death, there would be other cities, other places.
She’d been created for a purpose and given a choice whether to embrace it or turn her back on it. She’d been forced to choose between the two things she had always wanted the most, and now she had to live with the choice, though it felt as though her heart was being ripped from her body.
Rebekka pulled Caius into a hug. “I can’t promise anything except that I’ll try to come back for a visit.”
Caius gave a sob, his arms tightening around her and her shirt growing wet as he cried. Canino joined them, rubbing his side against them. Circling, purring in an offer of comfort and solidarity. Then finally butting his head against Caius’s back and pressing his nose into the cub’s armpit as if to say, “Enough is enough. You’ve got me.”
Rebekka ended the hug. Words clogged in her throat. She couldn’t bring herself to say good-bye. “You two should get back to Jaguar lands,” she said, trying for a light tone and failing, though her effort was enough to help Caius stop crying.
He took a long shuddering breath and offered a tremulous smile. “I asked Phaedra if she thought I should take Canino to my house again. She said yes. She said it’d be a good thing to do every day if Canino is willing to let my mother chase him away.”
“I’m glad,” Rebekka said, managing a wobbly smile, though she felt frozen in this final moment of good-bye, the last of them before she and Levi began the trip to Oakland.
Caius didn’t move away and neither did she. Canino came to the rescue again, pushing between them, grumbling deep in his chest and using his sheer size to reposition Caius so he faced Jaguar lands.
Rebekka swallowed hard and willed herself to turn toward where Levi waited and, beyond him, the Wolves who would ensure they made it to the border of Were lands safely. She forced herself to take one step, and then another, and another, to not turn around and look back one last time. She managed it until she heard the sound of running footsteps behind her.
She turned in time to have Caius barrel into her. He gave her a fierce hug. Then just as quickly released her and ran to Canino, climbing on the Tiger’s back so Rebekka’s last memory of him brought a smile instead of tears.
They traveled in silence. The Wolves almost never visible. Levi respecting her privacy, her need to deal with her heartbreak on her own, though she knew he wanted to ask what had happened to make her leave Aryck and the Were lands when she could have stayed.
Whether it was because of her father’s gift, or her desire to escape thoughts of Aryck, Rebekka kept moving forward, her endurance matching the Weres’. Surprising them.
For a time loss drove her on relentlessly, barely allowing for eating or drinking. Denying the possibility of sleep and making her push the others to keep running through the night rather than stop.
And then it was anger keeping her going, that Aryck hadn’t been willing to accompany her to Oakland, even for a little while. If he’d said yes, then he would know her reason for leaving and understand the choice she made.
Finally it was hope, excitement. Anticipation making it impossible to slow or stop until they reached the border of Were territory and the Barrens were visible in the distance, and, beyond them, Oakland.
She thought the Wolves accompanying them would leave without speaking. Other than appearing to mention the proximity of water or to call a halt long enough to cook and eat whatever game they’d killed, there’d been little sign of them.
Instead Jael emerged. He took her hands in his and met her gaze with piercing gold eyes, searched for something before giving a small shake of his head and saying, “I don’t understand your choice but may the ancestors welcome you again to our lands, and if the Jaguars are so foolish not to make you one of them, then become Wolf.”
He released her hands and turned, loping back into the forest. She and Levi traveled through the area where the ferals roamed and finally entered the blackened destruction of the Barrens. Levi broke his long silence then, asking, “Do you want to talk about it?”
She could hear compassion and caring in his voice, as well as anger and the desire to tear Aryck apart, with human fingers and knives if lion claws and teeth weren’t available. She took Levi’s hand, felt a lump rise in her throat at the prospect of returning to the place where it had begun, where she’d first seen the Jaguar barely clinging to life.
“Let’s go to the shelter we spent the night in,” she said, unsure of what would be involved in healing Levi and not wanting to do it out in the open.
He glanced upward and frowned. Opened his mouth, no doubt to say they could make it to the brothel if they pushed, but she stopped him by saying, “I want to try to heal you.”
She couldn’t tell him more, but he knew. It was there in his eyes, in his hoarse whisper. “The witches spoke the truth about your gift?”
“I won’t know until I attempt it,” Rebekka said, her palm growing damp against his. She didn’t think her father had lied, either about the gift or not being demon, but she couldn’t be sure.
Levi gave her hand a squeeze before releasing it. “It will only take a few minutes to get to the shelter. Should we walk?”
His nervous anticipation matched hers. She laughed, doubting she could walk now that she was so close to realizing a dream she’d had from the moment she’d stepped into a Were brothel and seen what life was like there for those trapped between forms.
“Race you,” she said, feeling carefree, joyous in those moments it took to reach the structure of narrow passageways formed by twisting, rusted steel.
They climbed slowly, careful of the jagged edges. She avoided the tearing of flesh even as memories of Aryck sliced through her with each step.
He made his choice and I made mine, she told herself, but the anger she’d managed earlier was gone, leaving an aching, empty place behind.
Despite her attempts to suppress the pain, her eyes grew wet with tears as they entered the room where she’d healed Aryck. A sob escaped when Levi hugged her to him, his hand stroking her back, his cheek against her hair.
“This is why you left, isn’t it? To heal the outcast.” She felt him swallow. “To heal me.”
“Yes.”
“And Aryck feared the ancestors’ wrath? He forbade you from doing it?”
“He doesn’t know. I couldn’t tell him unless he left Were lands.”
“Then how—”
“I can’t explain.” She tightened her arms around him in a silent plea for him to accept without questioning further.
“Aryck is a fool for letting you go. And a coward for not being willing to see for himself what it means for outcasts to live among humans.”
Part of her wanted to agree, to fill the empty, aching place with hate or anger, to use those emotions to eradicate the feelings of love and the pain of loss now accompanying it. Instead she found herself defending
Aryck. “He’s needed in Were lands. I think if the Weres are going to survive the war between supernaturals that Annalise Wainwright told me about, then they need to be united.”
Somehow, speaking the words out loud erected a barrier, walling off everything except hope and anticipation. “Ready to try this?”
Levi gave her one final hug before dropping his arms and stepping back. “What do you want me to do?”
“Sitting would be best. Or lying down.”
He stripped out of his clothing and put them on the floor, using them as a pad to sit on beneath the hole in the ceiling that allowed a beam of light to stream in.
Rebekka sat down cross-legged in front of him. Her hands lifted to the amulet, intending to take it off as she’d once had to in order to heal, but when her fingers touched the beads that were the same size and color as those braided into her father’s hair, she hesitated.
The first time she’d healed after getting the amulet had been in this place, and her gift was changed. She’d suspected then that the amulet was tied to her father. Now she was sure of it.
Guided more by instinct than anything else, Rebekka left the amulet on. She gathered her will, imagined Levi as a Lion as she placed her hands on his shoulders and closed her eyes.
Nothing happened.
There was no tingling sensation followed by a gentle, unconscious blending of purpose and a desire to render aid as she’d once experienced. Nor was there the taking, as if she was nothing more than a tool, that she’d come to expect.
Rebekka exhaled on a sigh, thinking perhaps she’d been wrong about the amulet after all. Her hands slid from Levi’s shoulders to his chest and her breath caught at hearing the faint beat of distant drums.
Her mouth went suddenly dry. Her own heart began thundering as various pieces of what had been an unsolvable puzzle fell into place.
The reason why she couldn’t attempt this on Were lands.
The reason why outcasts who entered Were territory had to seek out the shaman.
The reason why she was accepted without undergoing the Rite of Trial but warned against the dangers of coming back to the human world and the risk of having her spirit corrupted.
And the reason why Levi had been warned against presenting himself for judgment in Lion territory. So he could face the ancestors now, her desire to heal him leading to this moment, this choice, because this was not to be a healing of the body, but a healing of the soul, and her gift had been changed to enable it
Her eyes opened and went to Levi’s face. His features were taut, his jaw clenched and breathing carefully controlled. She licked dry lips, knew the answer by what she saw in his face but asked the question anyway. “You hear them?”
“Do it, Rebekka. I’m willing to be the first so you’ll know what the cost is to yourself and to others.”
Once again she closed her eyes, consciously allowing her right palm to slide lower. The beating grew louder, more insistent, and when her hand finally lay over Levi’s heart, the surge of power came like a wind at her back, pushing her spirit from her body and against a gale force battering her as if trying to keep her from answering the call of the drums.
Gray nothingness swirled around her, and she knew, from her visit with Aisling the night before she and Levi entered the maze to free Cyrin and the others, that this was the ghostlands. Fear tried to turn her back, but she’d endured too much since the Wainwright witches set this in motion with their summons and the offer of the token, and she’d lost too much to turn away from the path now.
The drums called and she willed herself toward them, felt a spike of primal terror when out of nothingness an opening formed in front of her, a yawning chasm filled with howling, shrieking wind, a place symbolized in the physical world by a dark cave filled with sun-bleached bones.
She entered it and took form. Became transfixed in horror, unable to look away from the throbbing, pulsing heart she held in her hand. Levi’s.
The sound of chanting joined that of the drums, broke her trance and pulled her deeper into the cave until she reached a fire, and around it men and women representing Weres of more species than she could count.
Some wore headdresses and capes, as Nahuatl did. Others were marked by facial brands, as the Lion shaman was. Still others wore beads of bone in their hair and bore scars across their chests as she’d seen on the Wolf shaman.
Rebekka became aware of her own nakedness then. She wore nothing except for the amulet resting against her illusionary flesh. And as the fire glinted off the ancestors’ eyes, she knew instinctively that without her father’s protection she could be harmed in this place.
The chanting stopped. The beat of the drums faded to the background as did all of those gathered except for a man draped in the pelt of a bear.
His face was hidden, though yellow eyes shone through the snarling headdress. His human arms disappeared into folds of fur so his hands and fingers become bear claws. “You ask us to render a judgment?”
His voice was a deep growl that seemed to be picked up by wind and carried throughout the cavern. Yes was on the tip of Rebekka’s tongue, but unbidden she remembered the argument she’d had with Aryck, her claim that not all outcasts became so because of the ancestors, and her belief that Levi didn’t deserve this fate, not when he could have chosen a lion’s form as Cyrin had and been free to live among the Were.
Hoping in being bold she wasn’t damning Levi further, Rebekka said, “I’m here to heal a soul.”
Yellow eyes gleamed. “As long as your gift remains untainted by evil, you have that power.”
A furred arm lifted and pointed to the opening behind her. “The part of the Lion’s soul once living among us now roams the ghostlands. If you choose healing over judgment, then you must be the one to suffer the pain that comes with bringing it back to our world.”
The conversation with her father whispered through Rebekka’s mind. The remembered shine of approval in his eyes when she’d asked, “And the cost to me of making a Were whole?”
No more than you can bear. Nothing the life you’ve led hasn’t prepared you for.
Since accepting the amulet she’d endured pain, accepted it as the price to be paid for the use of her gift. “I choose healing over judgment.”
The drums grew louder in response. Their beat was joined by human voices, rising and falling in a chanted song as the Bear ancestor stepped forward.
“Know this, then. Those you stand with draw our attention to them by accepting what you offer. You might come before us by your own choice to heal, but there are others who come at our bidding, and kill at our command. Pass this warning on to the ones who would benefit from your gift, so they can understand the risk accompanying their redemption.”
He jabbed one end of the staff he carried into the fire then touched the other to Levi’s heart. Flames engulfed it, a searing agony Rebekka felt not in her hand, but in her chest.
She fell to her knees, screaming as her heart burned. Her voice blended with the drum and song, becoming part of a spirit wind that poured from the darkness and plunged into the ghostlands in search of Levi.
She knew the moment he was found because with the pain came images from his life since being made outcast. Terrible scenes of being tortured and twisted into a monstrous shape.
With it came the horror of witnessing the same thing happening to Cyrin. The cruelty perpetrated on them both and that Levi had perpetrated in turn, when insanity and hate made him truly soulless as he hunted those who ran the maze.
Tears streamed from Rebekka’s eyes. She fought the urge to curl into a ball, to hide from the dark evil that could find its way into even the best of hearts.
She was struggling to breathe when the pain stopped abruptly, the fire in her chest and hand suddenly doused. She felt wind on her face and saw through puffy, swollen eyes a figure coming toward her, man shifting to lion and back again in endless succession. Levi.
He reached her and took her hand. The drums ceased, as did th
e world around them.
Rebekka opened her eyes. A lion lay next to her, his breathing as fast as her own, his heart pounding against her palm.
“Levi,” she whispered through parched lips, hardly daring to believe it had been real and they’d both survived the attention of the Were ancestors.
She rose to her feet when he did. Felt herself calming as he shook and stretched, padded around the room and pounced, barely missing a scurrying mouse. A smile formed, his happiness in wearing fur again after so long making the memory of the pain she’d endured fade along with the scenes she witnessed.
He returned to stand in front of her. Changed. The transition seemingly easy.
Joy lit his face and he hugged her to him. His tears wet her neck. “I can never repay you for this, but I’ll spend a lifetime trying.”
She hugged him back. “Not a lifetime. Help me in Oakland. Then go back to your pride.”
There would be other places; she knew it with certainty. Her father hadn’t created her to help those in Oakland, only to turn her back on Weres elsewhere by returning to Jaguar lands and becoming a mate and mother.
Sadness threatened to eclipse joy at the thought of Aryck. She suppressed it ruthlessly.
Even if she could go back in time, she’d make the same choices if they led to this moment. “If we hurry, we can get back to the brothel before dark.”
“Not the brothel,” Levi said, releasing her and getting dressed. “Araña’s boat.”
Rebekka frowned and followed him out of the room, once again moving slowly down the staircase and through the narrow, twisting passageways. “I could start with those who look human and have earned the right to work more flexible hours. They could slip away at dawn and not be missed for a while.”
Levi shook his head. “It’s too risky to go to the brothel and be trapped there by the night. I can’t hide my scent. The longer I’m there, the quicker the change in it will be noticed. Those who know about the Rite of Trial will guess I’ve gone through it and wonder why I’ve come back. The reason will become obvious when the brothels start emptying.