Jory Strong: Healer's Choice

Daivat’s gaze shifted to meet Aryck’s. It burned with a desire to fight a battle for dominance, one heightened by Melina’s presence at Aryck’s side, by her shameless pursuit of another when she was also letting him mount her.

“The enforcer has failed our pack,” Daivat said. “It’s time another took his place, someone who has already shown courage and gotten closer to the humans than he has. I issue challenge.”

“A man who stands accused of law breaking has no right to do so,” Koren said, his voice little more than a rumbling growl. “You claim your motive for entering Coyote land was pure, done for the benefit of the pack. Yet the taking of the human female and the death you left in your wake are both signs of one on the rogue path. There is also the curious lack of the amulet. By your actions you could be cast out, but I will let the ancestors judge your heart.”

If Daivat feared the ancestors’ judgment, there was no sign of it in his scent or expression as he was forced backward when those gathered moved forward, not stopping until they were standing shoulder to shoulder just steps away from a circle marked in the dirt.

Aryck stripped off the shorts, entering the challenge circle naked. Heat from the fire at its center stroked his skin in a deadly caress, reminding him that he, too, would soon be in the presence of the ancestors and subject to their judgment.

The shaman, Nahuatl, joined them. Black eyes stared out through a snarling Jaguar headdress. The hide it was attached to formed a patterned cape and matched the silver-clawed gloves he held, both pairs of them altered to fit human hands.

Nahuatl sang an invocation over the gloves, offering Daivat first choice of them then giving Aryck the remaining pair. When they’d put them on, the shaman stepped from the circle and began a different song, one meant to draw the ancestors’ attention.

Pack elders standing at points marked north, south, east, and west struck the drums they carried, a heartbeat rhythm tying pack to ancestors, symbolizing the fragile, ethereal barrier between life and death and between the two worlds.

Daivat lunged quickly, attacking immediately, as if he wanted to have the battle over with before the ancestors arrived.

Aryck danced away, retreating, sweat already coating his skin from the fire’s heat.

“Coward,” Daivat baited. “Is this why you’ve brought nothing back? Why we still know nothing important about the humans?”

“And you know more after covering the female and filling her with your seed instead of Melina?”

Daivat closed the distance instantly, swinging savagely. Mercilessly. Making Aryck regret answering taunt with taunt as silver-tipped claws tore through the flesh of his upper arm.

In the center of the challenge circle the fire flared at first blood and the heat grew more intense. Around the circle the elders responded by increasing the tempo of their strikes against the hide-covered drums, driving the combatants’ heartbeats into a faster pace.

Aryck’s blood mixed with sweat, no longer a sheen coating his skin but drops pouring off him like sacrificial rain.

Nahuatl began chanting welcome to the ancestors, and Daivat struck again.

This time Aryck was ready. He deflected the attack, ducking and swiping across Daivat’s unprotected belly before moving out of range.

Fear flashed in Daivat’s eyes at the opening of his skin. He came at Aryck fast and hard.

Aryck scored another hit, raking claws along Daivat’s forearm but sustaining an injury as well.

The silver burned as it cut through the skin over Aryck’s collarbone. He hissed in reaction, bared his teeth against the pain.

His heart thundered in time to the nonstop beat of the drums. His blood poured down his chest in a tide of red.

Heat from the fire siphoned strength and will. Aryck fought the effects of it and attacked.

Daivat snarled and leapt at the same time as Aryck did.

Talons grazed Aryck’s cheek, leaving a clawed trail. He twisted, savaging Daivat’s side.

The fire flared higher, drinking the spray of blood and demanding more of it.

Nahuatl’s voice rose, moving from welcome to a prayer for judgment.

Aryck and Daivat circled each other, and as they did Daivat’s form changed. Fur replaced the skin on his arms and face and chest, turning him into something neither man nor beast.

Chant and drumbeat ended, the abrupt silence signaling the fight was over.

There was no sound other than the crackle of flame and the panting of the combatants.

Around the circle the pack members’ expressions were grim, condemning. Nahuatl stepped forward, hands out to accept the gloves. When he held them he said, “Change,” and Aryck did so, accepting the sharp pain with welcome as his bones and organs reorganized and he became Jaguar.

In front of him Daivat remained standing, trapped between forms. Judged so all who looked at him would know the ancestors had sundered Daivat’s eternal soul, casting it out of the shadowlands as unworthy to live among them.

Koren spoke. “I name you outcast. Leave Jaguar lands before sunset or be hunted and killed.”

A cry followed the pronouncement. Not one of protest but the terrifying wail of a cub in grave peril.

The circle dissolved immediately. And as Caius came into view, horror filled those gathered, pulsing and vibrating in the air like a living thing. The Tiger cub was in human form, the skin on his arms and torso and face an open, hungry wound.

The smell of vomit and raw, exposed muscles reached Aryck even as Caius crumpled to the ground before the first of them could reach him. In a thready, pain-filled voice the cub whispered, “I tried to help them.”

He succumbed to shock and unconsciousness before he could say more. But Aryck knew by them Caius meant the four Jaguar cubs he so often trailed.

At a caution from Phaedra, the healer, Caius was left where he lay until a blanket could be brought to serve as a stretcher, and leather gloves put on in case his skin was contaminated.

Around Aryck others changed form to lend their noses in retracing the cub’s route. Lead , Koren said. Others can follow with blankets and gloves. I will remain here with Phaedra so you can report what you find and she can advise you on how to proceed.

Aryck loped out of camp in answer, his fight with Daivat forgotten.

CLOAKED in light, Addai witnessed events unfold among the Jaguars. In thousands of years of existence he had yet to tire of the beauty and the savagery of those this lush planet gave birth to.

In the challenge circle the fire burned and the shaman chanted softly in supplication and sorrow as he reached out and placed his hand over his son’s heart, ceasing its beat with a spoken word. Preferring to halt the stain he feared would only deepen and spread outside of Were lands.

He knelt next to the son he’d slain, a father who’d administered harsh punishment, hoping to gain salvation for his child’s soul in the wake of what the ancestors’ judgment meant, what Addai knew to be truth.

Daivat lied when he said the woman was willing. He lied in saying she died first and at the hands of the human male.

The wind brought the scent of brewing infection and the raw smell of a living creature turned into meat. Addai watched the still form of the injured child being carefully placed on a blanket and the makeshift stretcher lifted so it could be carried to the healer’s home.

As the boy and those attending him disappeared from sight, leaving only the shaman and the corpse in the clearing, speculation edged out Addai’s pity. He contemplated the possibility the Djinn were responsible for the child’s condition. They were capable of great cruelty in the ruthless pursuit of their goals.