Jory Strong - Healer's Choice

Strung on leather with knotted black beads along its length was an amulet that reminded Rebekka of dream catchers she’d seen in history books. It was made of supple wood and woven string. At its center were two red beads on either side of a small black feather that seemed to shimmer and cast off a thousand different colors.

“The pages you brought have value. It’s fair you be given something in return. This amulet offers a measure of protection for one with your gift. Blood is required to bind it to you.”

Rebekka rubbed damp palms against her pants. She couldn’t trust the witches with the remembered encounter with the urchin, or how the rat had come to her in the alleyway, and yet she also couldn’t afford to turn down the amulet and what protection it could offer. “I accept.”

Annalise drew a silver athame from a sheath on her belt. Rebekka’s stomach cramped at the sight of the sigils running the length of its blade. She held out her hand anyway.

Annalise leaned forward, making a shallow cut across the lifeline on Rebekka’s palm. Blood welled up quickly, unnaturally.

“Take the amulet now,” the matriarch said.

Rebekka did. She gasped as fire streaked through her, going from her hand to the center of her chest. And when she opened her palm, she found the cut completely healed, the red beads woven into the weblike design of the amulet darker, dry, as if they’d absorbed her blood.

Hands shaking slightly, she lifted the necklace and tied it around her neck. At some hidden signal, Annalise rose and helped the matriarch to her feet.

“Come,” the matriarch said, “Annalise and I will escort you to the back door. It’s hidden from the Church’s watchers. Do you wish for us to intercede on your behalf?”

Rebekka licked suddenly dry lips. “At what cost?”

“A favor owed.”

Rebekka only barely suppressed a shiver at the thought of being in their debt. She’d brave a return to the Iberá estate and ask for the patriarch’s intercession with the Church before she promised a favor to witches.

“No,” she said, and on the heels of her answer came a stirring of hope that they’d lied about her father being demon. It would serve their purpose to make her believe it, to pull her deeper into their elaborate web.

“As you wish.”

Levanna Wainwright allowed her granddaughter to support her as they slowly left the room. Rebekka’s refusal of help brought a stirring of worry, a tiny measure of pity. So many children of the Djinn died during their testing.

It was only afterward, when the fullness of the pattern was revealed, that the choices, the places where failure originated or might have been averted, could be identified.

Not that it mattered to those administering the tests.

A waste , the matriarch thought, her hand tightening slightly on her granddaughter’s arm. A terrible waste .

In this she was glad she was born human and gifted, and when it came to those of her family, her will—Anna’s will—ruled. Occasionally magic took one of them, or they died at the hands of their enemies, but their testing was meant to make them stronger, to determine position in coven hierarchy, not to separate out the weak, often at the expense of their lives.

Theirs was a harsh world, one where everything came at a cost. She’d learned the lesson well enough when she was in her teens, on the fateful night of her initiation ceremony.

She’d thought to show herself powerful enough to one day become not just matriarch of the Wainwright coven in Oakland, but of all those covens bound to the Wainwrights. And so she had. But at a price that altered not only the course of her life, but the destiny of the covens.

How foolish the girl born Anna Wainwright had been. Proud and headstrong and overly confident.

She’d thought to free a demon contained in an urn and command it. Instead she’d died at the hands of a female Djinn.

If it hadn’t been for the quick action of those gathered, she’d be in the ghostlands, her spirit bound to that of the Djinn who killed her, her body nothing but a collection of ashes in the Wainwright burial vaults.

She and the Djinn were still bound and, ultimately, when the thread tethering the both of them to the mortal plane—as Levanna—was finally and irrevocably broken, she and the other—Levaneal en Raum of the House of the Spider—would enter the spiritlands as one, their souls forever tangled unless the battle they prepared for was won and the Djinn once again claimed Earth as home, ruling it with those allied to them.

As they stepped out of the house and Rebekka passed them, the matriarch felt only a coldness of purpose in the other, Levaneal. A ruthlessness tied to ancient memories of friends slaughtered or made prisoner by the alien god’s army of angels.

Rebekka’s death would mean nothing to the Spider Djinn. The healer was only important if she proved herself worthy of her Djinn parentage, if the thread of her life strengthened the fabric of a future that had been in the weaving for thousands of years.

“Take the path through the thornbushes,” Annalise told Rebekka, drawing the matriarch from her thoughts. “It leads to the other side of our garden and onto the next street. If you change your mind and wish us to arrange for the Church to stop pursuing you, come back.”

With a thank-you, the healer hurried off. Shades of brown and a swirl of gray in the matriarch’s mind, offset by a flash of red just beyond the fence marking the warded boundary.

The emotionless resolve defining Levaneal’s spirit presence gave way to a burning, hungry desire to be among the Djinn again. A face rose from ancient memory, spilling the image of a sharp-featured man into the matriarch’s mind. Torquel en Sahon of the House of the Cardinal.

Surprise at his continued presence flickered though the matriarch, the emotion echoed by the other. In the eyes of the Djinn, Levaneal was tainted, feared.

This was the first time Torquel had approached directly, risking what few of his kind dared. It made the matriarch wonder if perhaps he had grown tired of losing the daughters he created with human women.

Few of his kind managed more than one or two children, either in this world or in the Djinn kingdom deep in the ghostlands. But since shortly after the initiation ceremony that left Anna’s soul bound to Levaneal’s, five of Torquel’s daughters had come to this house before Rebekka. All of them had failed their testing and died.

With a tightening of her fingers on Annalise’s arm, the matriarch said, “Take me to where he waits.”

ONLY a will honed over thousands of years of existence and tempered by being a healer prevented Torquel en Sahon from retreating as the old witch whose foolishness in youth had cost the Djinn one of their own approached. With each step she took he fought against retaking the form of the cardinal and escaping the presence of the ifrit— one of the soul-tainted, a being whose name was crossed through in the Book of the Djinn and whose spirit couldn’t be guided back and reborn into a new life.

He stood his ground by reminding himself the loss of the Djinn whose name was no longer spoken had ultimately served The Prince’s vision. Only by forming alliances with those they would have seen destroyed in the past would the Djinn return to Earth.

The Wainwright witches served as intermediaries. Even so, as the ifrit drew near, he couldn’t stop himself from turning his face away to look in the direction his daughter had gone.

He’d taken no pleasure in her creation. In truth, he preferred not to remember any of the human women he’d lain with.

Rebekka was the last of his children. Out of all of them, her gift as a healer held the most promise.