Jory Strong - Healer's Choice

“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.