Jory Strong: Healer's Choice

Torquel let the body fall to the ground. “This one has served its use. If my daughter survives, I’ll not risk her life and all we’ve worked for by leaving this enemy in place.”

“So I see. I will tell Tir to be ready to finish his part in this.”

THE arrival of the tusked madam cut Aryck’s penance short. She stopped in front of him and spoke as if discussing business with a brothel visitor but her words were directed at Levi. “I smell Jaguar. He’s the one?”

An upward flick of Levi’s eyes answered her question. She said, “Allende knows. His men are here. As soon as one of them finds me, I’ll be ordered to lock down the brothel.”

A brief hesitation and she added, “They brought the body of a Doe with them. Feliss is dead.”

“Come with us, Dorrit,” Levi murmured, lips barely moving.

“It’s too late. Do what you can for those of us trapped here but don’t put Rebekka at risk.”

She moved on, stopping to talk to others, customers and prostitutes alike, as if merely making her rounds.

Regret slammed into Aryck. Shame, for a lifetime of judging those he knew nothing about.

“Let’s go,” Levi said, escorting Aryck along public and hidden walkways until finally reaching an exit doorway guarded by hard-eyed Jackals who let them pass to freedom.

Away from the brothel the scent of grief and fear poured off Levi. Breaking into a run he said, “We may already be too late. The moment Allende learned Rebekka can stand before the ancestors and return an outcast’s eternal soul to the shadowlands, he would have sent his men to capture her.”

Aryck stumbled. Shocked despite having guessed Rebekka was responsible for the change in Levi.

“This is why she left,” he said, feeling the sting of failure as he remembered eyes wet with pain, silently pleading as she asked him to come back to Oakland with her.

“She couldn’t tell you. She shouldn’t have had to.”

Hostility was back in Levi’s voice.

“I won’t fail her again,” Aryck said. “I’ll give up my life before I do.”

The Lion didn’t respond, only continued running. The salt-laden scent and the sound of water lapping against metal and wood and rocky shore intensified as they neared the bay. They entered the metal ruin of what had long ago been a port for container ships from around the world, and soon came upon a body.

Levi glanced down at it, his steps faltering, though he didn’t stop. Aryck followed, dread arrowing straight through him at the sight of the outcast female Lion.

They cleared the last of the metal jungle. A boat bobbed gently where it was tied to the dock. The cabin door stood open. Even at a distance the only feeling emanating from the Constellation was one of emptiness.

Agony clawed up Aryck’s throat, making it impossible to call Rebekka’s name. He reached the boat and climbed aboard. The healer’s journal lay on a seat, as if she’d been reading it but laid it aside before she was taken.

Seeing it abandoned nearly drove Aryck to his knees. Hopelessness and failure tried to crush him. He shook them off, refusing to acknowledge the possibility it was already too late.

He’d found her in the encampment and saved her before she could be raped. Against all odds they’d not only left it alive, but because of her, the threat posed to the Weres was over and the slaughter of innocent humans avoided.

This wasn’t a world he could navigate. For a second time Aryck swallowed his pride where the Lion he’d once thought less was concerned. “She must have allies who can help us find her. Who do you suggest we approach?”

“There are only two choices. The Wainwright witches, who drew her into their games and dangled the lure of being able to heal the outcast in front of her. Or the Iberás, one of the Founding Families. They’re rich and powerful, with allies in the Guard and no doubt spies in the red zone.”

“The witches first,” Aryck said, spitting the words.

“There’ll be a price to pay,” Levi warned. Adding a challenge. “Are you willing to pay it to get her back? I am.”

Aryck’s lips pulled back, baring his teeth. The Jaguar rose in his eyes, staring down the Lion. “She’ll never belong to you. She’s my mate.”

“If she’ll have you,” Levi said, satisfaction in his voice at having baited Aryck.

Aryck reverently picked up the journal, the movement loosening Rebekka’s scent and making him wish the warmth trapped in its cover came from her holding it and not from the sun.

REBEKKA sat between the two Weres who were Allende’s personal guards. On either side of the car, there was nothing but the forest that began where the red zone ended to the north.

She thought they must be going to Allende’s estate but it barely mattered to her. She felt overwhelmed with grief at Feliss’s death, with the shock and hurt of Kala’s betrayal, and the sense of failure at having so quickly been discovered and captured.

The events at the dock played over and over in her mind. Silently she berated herself for ignoring the tiny, hesitant internal voice urging her not to take the Constellation in until Levi returned.

The thought of Levi jarred Rebekka out of failure and pain-induced apathy, bringing with it fear, not just over her own fate, but his. Had Kala told Allende about his involvement? Was he already dead?

Sweat trickled down her back and sides at the prospect of being at Allende’s mercy. He wasn’t known for his compassion.

She took a deep breath, fisting her hands in her lap so tightly her short nails dug into her palms. The physical pain helped. It reminded her of all she’d endured.

Since Levi, she’d healed many, many others, not all of them brothel workers. Most were like Feliss, victims instead of victimizers. Those who’d been born with a part of their soul wandering in the ghostlands instead of cast there by the ancestors. But some had deserved their fates.

What she’d felt as she held their metaphysical hearts had been an agony more excruciating than what she’d endured on Levi’s behalf. Though in the end, after she’d witnessed the events of their lives, she’d felt their redemption was equally deserved.

A shudder went through her. There was a difference between pain borne psychically and that endured physically. If Allende intended to kill her, she’d already be dead.

Death was too quick a punishment. And she was still a valuable tool even if she couldn’t be trusted.

Bile rose in her throat as she imagined what he’d do in order to make an example of her. He had only to say the word and she’d become a prisoner in the brothel, forced into serving as healer as well as prostitute.

Rebekka looked out the window, wishing desperately her father would appear. Surely he hadn’t abandoned her now even if she hadn’t seen the cardinal since making her choice to return to Oakland.

If only she could summon him. He’d saved her twice already. He’d touched his mouth to hers and given a part of himself.

My spirit to yours. Surely that meant they were somehow linked.

Could she find him? Signal her need for him in a way similar to how she’d been led to the infected goats?

Rebekka gathered her will and closed her eyes. Focused on him only to have nothing happen.

There was no tingling, no surge of power, no icy emptiness in her chest. She realized then why he’d refused to give her his name when she’d asked for it, guessed that with it, she did have the power to call him to her.

Her mouth went dry as another possibility came to her. Each visit to the Were ancestors had started the same way, with the ritual question, “You ask us to render a judgment?”