Jory Strong - Healer's Choice

It was a dream she rarely allowed herself. The human men she encountered regularly were those who visited the brothels. She’d never accept one of them.

Among the gifted humans, she doubted her talent would help overcome the stigma of being the daughter of a prostitute, of growing up in a brothel and then continuing to work in them, caring for Were outcasts.

And the Weres who called the red zone home . . . Marrying one of them was to be trapped between worlds, just as they were. It meant hardship not just for her as a human, but for any children who might come.

There was a time, at the very beginning of their friendship, when she might have considered such a thing with Levi, but . . .

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.