Healer's Choice

by Jory Strong

  The man was more than willing. Since Phaedra sent him away he’d relived those moments of having Rebekka beneath him, her thighs spread and her body receptive, needy.

  He growled low in his throat, frustrated, not wanting to free her hands or to remove his arm from her waist. His mouth left hers and the growl deepened when she whispered, “The Wolves.”

  A flash of guilt made him bare his teeth. He remembered the urgency he’d felt, the fear he wouldn’t get her to Jaguar lands in time to save the cubs.

  “We’ll finish this later,” he said, nostrils flaring at her shiver of erotic fear and the look in her eyes that said she still needed to be convinced.

  He stepped back but couldn’t bring himself to release her completely, not when they would soon be in the presence of other males. Wolves. Enemies.

  Rebekka allowed Aryck to lead her to where the Wolves waited. Her thoughts and emotions were in too much chaos to protest the hand shackling her wrist as though she were a prisoner—or a prized possession.

  Her channel spasmed. No man had ever reacted to her the way Aryck did, as if she belonged to him and it was all he could do not to take her.

  She shouldn’t let it go further. Couldn’t. She knew it, but the minute he touched her, her mind shut down and her body ruled.

  They were wrong for each other. He was pure Were and she was a healer who lived in the outcast brothels. They had no future together.

  You don’t know that, a small internal voice claimed. You’re gaining allies. Phaedra. The parents of the Jaguar cubs. Aryck, whose father is alpha. Perhaps even the shaman and the Were ancestors.

  Hope fluttered through Rebekka’s chest with the memory of Phaedra’s words. Nahuatl has spoken to the ancestors and your continued presence on Jaguar lands won’t anger them.

  There’d been no talk of a time limit when she agreed to stay and share knowledge. And now, she was proving herself useful, an ambassador of sorts. What if—

  A cold weight settled in her chest. There were other considerations besides giving in to lust or chasing the dream of having a husband and children, a true home.

  “What do you know about the sick Wolves?” she asked.

  “Little more than I already told you. A mated pair with three grown and two young pups returned to the Wolves’ village and began convulsing. They quickly lapsed into unconsciousness. Poison was suspected but the Wolf healer found no trace of it. Their trespassing so boldly onto our lands means the healer can’t save them and the alpha worries for his pack.”

  They reached the gathered Wolves a short time later and, despite their coming in peace and asking for her help, Rebekka couldn’t suppress a small shiver at the sight of those in their furred form. Too many times she’d witnessed ferals running in packs and ripping humans apart in the red zone.

  “You have nothing to fear,” the man with them said, stepping forward. “I am Jael, the pack’s enforcer. Your safety is guaranteed.”

  A smile played at the corners of his mouth as his gaze flicked between her and Aryck, glancing down to the possessive hold on her wrist. His nostrils flared, taking in the scent of desire that no doubt still clung to them. But his expression quickly grew somber. “We need to hurry. I’m not sure even now we will make it back in time.”

  Eighteen

  AT least thirty Wolves milled around a home constructed of hides. All of them were in animal form. They bristled with hostility and suspicion, circled, some of the braver ones showing their teeth.

  A glance from Jael sent them backing away. He opened the flap and stepped aside to allow Rebekka and Aryck to precede him.

  It was roomy inside, large enough to house the family it belonged to. They lay clustered together. A man and a woman in human form, and from the looks of them Rebekka thought they were two of the adult offspring instead of the mated pair. The rest were furred.

  The Wolf healer was there, along with a shaman. Both were crouched on the opposite side of the unconscious family.

  The shaman wore a cape made of wolf hide. His hair was braided with beads made of bone. Scars marked his chest, as if a giant eagle had dug its talons through flesh and muscle and risen in flight with him, leaving him hanging, suspended in the air.

  The drum he held between his knees was stretched hide trimmed with wolf fur and decorated with bone beads. He struck it with his fingertips, pounding out the steady rhythm of a heartbeat as the Jaguar elders had done in the presence of the dying cubs.

  With matching yellow eyes, the Wolf shaman’s face so closely resembled that of the healer next to him that Rebekka thought they must be brother and sister. Neither spoke as she knelt beside the female who’d been in human form when she slipped into unconsciousness.

  The scent of urine and released bowels was strong, clinging to the sick, though they’d been washed by the healer.

  Aryck crouched to Rebekka’s right, Jael to her left.

  “The family returned to their home in wolf form after being gone several days,” Jael said. “If they were showing signs of illness, no one noticed. They weren’t here long before the pups began convulsing. By the time our healer answered the call for help, only one of the adult offspring remained standing, and he wasn’t able to shift to human form to answer her questions. He appeared disoriented. Within minutes he seized, then lapsed into unconsciousness. Since then there have been other seizures, milder than the first one.”

  Rebekka moved closer to the two pups. They were the same size. Twins. She had no experience with Were young other than the Jaguars, but based on their appearance she guessed they weren’t much older than Caius when in human form.

  The only hint they were alive came with the slight rise and fall of their chests. As she watched she saw pausing in their breathing, as if their bodies forgot it was necessary to sustain life.

  A glance showed the same thing happening in the five adults, regardless of their form. Something toxic, she thought, something affecting their nervous system.

  She was grateful for Aryck’s presence next to her, for the heat radiating off his body as she lifted her hands, removing the amulet and handing it to him for safekeeping. Even braced for the frigid iciness, its blast was so intense she gasped.

  This was plague. Virulent. Infectious. And despite the depth of their unconsciousness, the Wolves stirred, as if they would come to her, as if the virus itself knew her.

  Horror and dread and gut-knotting guilt nearly overwhelmed her. The taste of disease filled her mouth.

  She remembered the urchin’s breath. His ice-cold lips against hers. I’ve given you a piece of myself.

  Rebekka forced herself to touch the pup’s torso. There was a sense of invasion, of hunger. It pulsed, built, grew more intense as she slid her hand upward, stopping when her palm rested on his forehead.

  This was where the disease struck, attacking the brain, shutting down bodily functions. It was encephalitis, or something like it.

  She slid her hand down, along the muzzle. The sense of being connected to the virus intensified, as if it was concentrated there in the saliva, pooled to spread to other entities instead of throughout the body.

  Rebekka closed her eyes. Gathered her will and gave herself over to her gift.

  She was spared the pain that had accompanied healing the Jaguar cubs and Aryck because the Wolf pup felt no pain. But she experienced the same sensation of being a tool, a conduit. Heat poured through her unchecked and uncontrolled, filling her chest and eradicating the numbing cold before traveling down her arm and through her hand.

  This time the rush of power came with a greater awareness. She heard the shaman’s drums, and in the distance an echo of them that made her think of the Were ancestors, of the eternal soul Aryck claimed lived among them. She felt as though a part of her slid into the pup, her gift and will only names she’d used to define a piece of her own soul.

  Infection burned away in its path. Damaged tissue was repaired and restored.

  The pup roused, fully healed. Jumped away fro
m Rebekka and barked in alarm at finding her there.

  The break in physical contact was like a dousing in frigid water. She turned her attention to the pup’s twin, healing him then moving on to their adult siblings and parents.

  If not for Jael’s presence, the roused Wolves would have attacked. That was always the risk when healing the unconscious. A command from their enforcer and they took a human form.

  Worry and guilt made Rebekka feel like vomiting. She shook, not just in the aftermath of using her gift, but with knowledge that there was sickness nearby. It stretched like an ethereal string across the distance. She could tell its direction by the cold spear lodged in her chest like a pointer set in a compass, the density of it warning there had to be a number of those infected by the virus.

  Desperate, not wanting to believe she’d brought plague with her, Rebekka latched onto the hope this was just a random pocket of infectious disease, as the guardsman in the Barrens claimed happened from time to time. The diseased were east and north, instead of west, where Oakland was.

  Tremors wracked her as she turned to Aryck. Her fingers clumsy in her haste to take the necklace from him.

  Once it was in her possession the chill dissipated and the sense of disease disappeared. But their absence granted only a small measure of relief.

  “What was wrong with them?” Jael asked.

  “A virus attacked the brain. It was concentrated in their saliva. That’s how it spreads.”

  In wolf form pups licked their parents’ lips to elicit attention or food. Submissives did the same to more dominant animals.

  They greeted and groomed one another. Shared prey and water. All of it having the potential to spread the virus.

  If instead of going directly to their home, this family had stopped and interacted with others when they returned to their village, the entire pack would have died.

  Rebekka’s stomach cramped with nausea. She couldn’t admit to knowing there were others who were sick, didn’t dare risk letting them know there was a connection—even a tenuous one—between her and a plague. And yet she couldn’t ignore it, letting it spread.

  As much as she wished it was otherwise, there were no cures for this contained in the journal. Her mouth went dry as she scrambled to find the right words and the best way to convey the danger. She was spared by the Wolf healer, who also realized a risk to the pack remained.

  The healer spoke to the oldest of the family members, a man with silver streaked through his hair. “Did you return because you felt the beginnings of illness, Gaetan?”

  “No.” Gaetan indicated one of the twin boys. “Until Jakob began convulsing, there was no warning anything was wrong.”

  “Your family became ill within minutes of each other. It makes me think you were exposed at the same time. And also that the incubation period doesn’t vary, despite differences in weight or age.”

  The Wolf healer met Rebekka’s eyes as if seeking her agreement. When Rebekka nodded, the healer asked Gaetan where the family had been.

  “We hunted to the east, in the meadow near Bear lands,” Gaetan said, naming the direction Rebekka felt the sickness coming from. “We ate rabbits as we caught them. At dawn yesterday we took down an elk cow while wearing our fur.”

  Gaetan frowned. “She was easy prey. Not something a Wolf questions. We fed and slept and fed, none of us changing forms. When little of the carcass remained, I decided to return home, thinking it had been a good outing for the pups.”

  Rebekka’s throat grew tight with the remembered scene from the Barrens. “In the city, those in power burn the bodies of anyone or anything they believe might carry an infectious disease.”

  “A wise precaution,” Jael said. “How many were in the elk herd, Gaetan?”

  “Ten.”

  “It’s likely they are all infected. If there’s a chance they carry something that might wipe out the pack, then we have no choice but to kill them all and burn the bodies.”

  “Let me try to heal them first,” Rebekka said.

  Jael turned toward her. “You and Aryck may accompany us, but I make no promises. I won’t put the pack or its members at risk.”

  THERE was little left of the elk carcass Gaetan and his family had feasted on. Jael ordered it burned where it lay at the edge of the meadow, leaving two Wolves behind to carry out the task.

  None of the Wolves was in animal form. Like Jael, each carried knives at their thighs. The blades were augmented by other weapons: crossbows, regular bows, wrist-braced slingshots, long spears with barbed steel points, and several rifles.

  An hour after leaving the kill carcass, they found another dead elk. Scavengers were already busy at work.

  Meat bees and flies buzzed around and on it. Two turkey buzzards hopped away, not taking flight until the Wolves were close enough to make them prey.

  It was impossible to tell how the animal died, but there was a single set of wolf tracks leading away from it. Jael’s eyes met those of a man who looked several years younger than him and shared a family resemblance.

  Brother, Rebekka thought, seeing something pass between the two of them. She turned her head and caught Aryck watching the exchange with interest, guessed, like he and his father, the Wolves communicated telepathically.

  A signal from Jael resumed the hunt. They moved steadily upward, toward a ridge.

  Away from the meadow the land grew increasingly dry and hot. Unlike the dense pockets of forest surrounding the Jaguar and Wolf homes, the soil beneath Rebekka’s feet was fragile, supporting the growth of scrub and manzanita and very little else.

  As they crested the ridge she saw a copse of trees in the canyon below, its location indicating a spring. They climbed downward, traveling on narrow, well-worn paths.

  Rebekka was fairly certain they were moving east and north. She felt sick with the knowledge that if she removed the amulet, they wouldn’t need to travel at all; the elk would come.

  Guilt tried to work its way into her consciousness. She beat it back. I’m doing what I can, she told herself. Nothing good would come of revealing her secret.

  Her memories circled repeatedly. From urchin visits to the encounter with her father, to the things the Wainwright witches had told her and given in payment, to what her mother had revealed. Her father might be demon, but the urchin was clearly his enemy, and an enemy to the Weres as well.

  The journal in her pocket was a weight against her thigh, making her think of the Jaguar cubs, who would have died without the knowledge contained in it. Just as her father had once saved her from rape and sent her to the Were brothels, he’d been responsible for the protection offered by the amulet and the deepening of her gift because of it. He was allied with the Wainwright witches. He had to be. Was it such a stretch to believe he meant for her to be here now?

  A glance at Aryck and a flutter went through Rebekka’s chest. Or was she only looking for a reason to give in to the feelings she’d experienced since the first time she truly saw him as a man?

  He turned his head then, meeting her eyes. Heat came. Instantly. Flushing through her with memories of waking beneath him, of the promise in his eyes when he’d pinned her against the tree.

  She dropped her gaze. His hand stroked down the length of her spine in a silent message. Later.

  Prints in the mud around a spring indicated the herd had been there. No one drank.

  They kept going, coming to what was little more than a watering hole. There were additional tracks, including those made by a heavy vehicle.

  Aryck knelt down to study a partial human shoeprint at the edge of the water, glanced up to the spot where dirt and crushed scrub told a tale of vehicles stopping and turning around. “The humans from the encampment were here.”

  “Several times,” Jael said. “They’ve explored other areas as well. This is the deepest they’ve come into our lands.”

  Aryck considered his father’s suspicions when it came to the Wolves and the human interlopers. There had long been distrust
between the various predatory groups. Some of it was rooted in history, and in the case of the Lions and Hyenas, by genetics, but much of the pressure came from territorial disputes.

  Pure animals were held in check naturally. Their numbers rose and fell according to what the land could sustain.

  They starved when there was not enough food. Females didn’t go into heat, or the offspring they gave birth to were so weak they didn’t survive into adulthood.

  It was not the same for Weres, especially those belonging to the dominant groups. Having the ability to reason put them at an advantage. Being able to shift form gave them an edge. It also meant their numbers could increase radically, and often did when females got pregnant while in their animal forms.

  Wolves could give birth to upward of fourteen pups. It was perhaps one reason werewolves had starred in so many human stories well before the supernaturals made their presence known.

  The predatory Weres controlled the size of their packs by splitting and taking over new territory, driving away those in possession of the land they wanted or—if necessary—fighting, reducing their numbers in the way humans had always done, through warfare.

  For the same reasons predatory Weres did not associate with those who became prey in their animal forms, they did not intermingle much with other predators. Doing so increased the risk of interbreeding and, with it, of family alliances being formed that would lead to divisiveness in the pack should the two groups go to war. It was easier to kill a stranger than someone you’d shared food with or seen with their children and mate. And with prey, better not to realize after the fact that you’d eaten a friend.

  Aryck glanced at Rebekka. He could still feel the imprint of her body against his, could still taste the kiss they’d shared. It took only the thought of her to make his cock start to harden.

  Days ago he would not have believed such a thing was possible. Days ago he’d recoiled when the Jaguar called her mate.

  A question slid into his consciousness, similar to the one that had risen as he ran to intercept the trespassing Wolves. Had the ancestors revealed Rebekka’s existence and sent him to her for a greater reason than just the healing of the cubs?