Healer's Choice

by Jory Strong

Full dark had arrived, a time when natural predators hunted, and Rebekka was defenseless against them save for the calm her gift allowed her to project. Above them the moon inched higher, slowly moving closer to when the Weres were to meet.

  They’d already passed the turnoff leading to the ridge path and the place where the encampment would be visible. Aryck pushed on, determined they would find her safe and unharmed.

  Hope surged through him at the sound of something coming their way and making no attempt at stealth. Caution dictated he take cover.

  A glance to the side and Chátima pointed to where he intended to veer off the trail. Aryck chose a place opposite, in case ambush became necessary.

  Both remained human. Both drew knives from sheaths worn at their thighs. Both readied themselves to attack.

  What had sounded like one entity became two. Aryck cocked his head, interpreting the footfalls. Two and four, with the four-footed animal the heavier and both of those approaching close enough to hear them panting.

  Aryck was already standing and hurrying forward when the Tigers came into view, Caius holding his side, the smell of human blood and sweat preceding them.

  “What happened?” Aryck asked, reaching them a moment before Chátima did.

  Tears rolled down the cub’s cheeks. A sob escaped. “We didn’t know the humans were so close until it was too late. They caught Rebekka when she tried to run away from them. They were holding her down and pulling at her clothes. Canino and I stopped them. But then the two with guns started shooting and we couldn’t get close again. One of them hit Rebekka so hard she didn’t get up. They left the dead humans but they took her with them to the encampment.”

  Despite the pain stabbing through Aryck’s heart he knelt and pulled Caius into a hug. “You and Canino showed great courage to do what you did, and even greater sense to retreat and seek help rather than throw your lives away. Rebekka wouldn’t have wanted you to do that. We’ll get her back. I’ll get her back.”

  “We should have caught up to her right after she left. She asked Canino to take the journal to Levi. Then we found her necklace hanging from a tree.” There was confusion and hurt in Caius’s voice, the pain of a boy who knew the sting of abandonment and loss.

  “I’m sure she had a reason,” Aryck said. “We’ll ask her about it when she’s back with us, then warn her against going off alone again.”

  He set Caius away from him and said to Chátima, “The Tigers will accompany us to the meeting place.”

  “Agreed.”

  They backtracked. Then took the trail that climbed out of the Coyotes’ ruin-filled valley, finally reaching the ridge where the other Weres waited.

  The mental link with his father allowed for the easy transfer of information. What surprised Aryck was arriving to find his father had openly revealed their ability to communicate by sharing what Caius had said with the others.

  “I intend to go after her as soon as my duty here is finished,” Aryck said, keeping his voice from offering a challenge, though inside the Jaguar seethed at the delay even as the man knew it was necessary.

  The Wolf alpha was the first to respond. “We owe the healer a debt. If we decide to eradicate the settlement tonight, then our attack can begin after you’ve freed her. If necessary, the Wolves will provide a distraction.”

  Koren folded his arms across his chest as if to bar the part of him that was father instead of alpha from expressing itself. “We, too, owe the healer a debt. We will also allow enough time for her to be recovered.”

  “We will as well,” the female Lion who acted on behalf of the grand matriarch said, sparing the Hyena, Coyote, and Bear alphas a quick glance before pointedly turning her attention to the encampment. “Unless there is an objection, let us agree to the Jaguar enforcer going first, and then to seeing this thing done tonight. There is no advantage in waiting and every reason to eliminate the threat to us immediately.”

  It took less than five minutes for the alphas to reach agreement, and only another twenty for the enforcers and the men who would go with them to settle on a strategy for attack.

  As Aryck started toward the path that would take him to Rebekka, Nahuatl stopped him. “Perhaps she went to the encampment to meet someone but was intercepted by others unaware of her purpose. Are you so sure you know her heart?”

  A knot of pain formed in Aryck’s chest as he flashed back to his last conversation with her. He wasn’t sure of her heart when it came to him. But for the Weres, especially the outcasts, he had an answer. “Yes.”

  REBEKKA swam upward to consciousness with nausea and panic pressing in on her. She fought back the urge to vomit, terrified of dying with it filling her throat, blocked from escaping by the gag tied brutally around her head.

  She was bound, wrists to ankles, and lying on her side. Frantic sound, a sense of urgency, pounded into her, slicing through the pain in her head and bringing her fully awake.

  The pungent scent of goat surrounded her. Their frantic bleating and repeated battering at the fence separating them from her brought horrifying knowledge racing with it.

  Plague. They were ripe to deliver it.

  Voices expanded her awareness beyond the goats and their desperate, instinctive desire to get to her. This close to them it was harder to call back the part of her soul that was her gift. She managed it, but her control wouldn’t last.

  The animals quieted. A black mouse decided to change hiding places. It darted past her, its fur brushing her forehead, the soft feel of it taking away the stabbing pain that remained from the blow.

  Rebekka sought out the voices through slitted eyes, careful not to let the two men who argued a short distance away know she was conscious. One of them was the militiaman who’d carried the machine gun. The other wore a rich man’s clothing, though she didn’t recognize him.

  She closed her eyes again, listened as the stranger said, “I told you not to leave the herd unattended.”

  “And I got tired of listening to them. I got tired of smelling goat piss and stinking like it. I wanted to do some hunting, and I padlocked the door shut to keep your precious herd safe. You should be grateful I went after deer and bagged something better. It saves you the cost of a prostitute. For now anyway. Down the road I’ll expect you to let me have one of them—call it hazardous duty pay, a little bonus to compensate me for the shit I’ve had to deal with.”

  “I’m the one who decides what your services are worth.”

  An ugly laugh met the comment. “Are you, Radek? The Ivanov patriarch pays my salary. Your brother Viktor gives the orders I say ‘yes Sir’ to, not you. If you and I didn’t share a common interest when it comes to liking women dead at the end of our fun, I wouldn’t be standing in this shit hole. I’d be in my nice bunk fantasizing about killing the whore underneath me while I pounded into her with my cock.”

  Someone banging on the door jerked Rebekka’s eyes open. A voice from the other side yelled, “Get out here, Gregor. Now. Captain Orst wants to see you. He wants to hear what you’ve got to say about letting three convicts die and why you and Morse left their bodies behind. I want to know the same.”

  Hope surged to life inside Rebekka at the mention of the guardsman she’d met in The Iberá’s study. It had to be the same man. He must have accompanied the convict work-gang. It wasn’t unheard of when their labor was contracted out.

  She struggled into a sitting position, grateful her hands were bound to her ankles in front of her instead of behind. She tried desperately to get the gag out of her mouth, and, finding it impossible, to wriggle to a place where the man at the door would see her when it opened.

  Her control of her gift slipped. The goats resumed bleating frantically and trying to escape their pen. The taste of disease filled her mouth and clung to her nostrils, bringing with it another nearly overwhelming urge to vomit.

  “Get out here, Gregor!”

  “Go,” Radek said, moving the short distance to Rebekka and using his foot to send her sprawling backw
ard. “I don’t want to deal with that prick Orst tonight, or my brother’s lapdog Nagy. Take care of your mess or you won’t get to have fun with your prize.”

  The militiaman left.

  Radek bolted the door after him then paced in agitation back and forth between Rebekka and the pen.

  He cursed Gregor and Orst and Nagy. Muttered about changing his plan, about the goats not being completely ready, about the wisdom of freeing a couple of them since there were tigers in the area.

  Desperation seized Rebekka. Somehow she had to escape and get to Captain Orst. She had to tell him Radek was purposely letting plague loose. She had to stop the Weres from attacking the encampment and slaughtering innocent people for something only Radek was responsible for.

  His head whipped around suddenly, catching her looking at him.

  Fear entered his expression. It scared him that she’d overheard his mutterings. That she might have guessed what he was doing.

  Radek came over to her. He drew the pistol from a holster at his side and pressed the barrel to her forehead.

  Her heart thundered in her chest. The bleating of the goats was so loud she wasn’t sure anyone would hear the sound of gunfire over it.

  His finger tightened on the trigger then released it. Tightened and released again as if he was working himself up to pulling it.

  Pounding on the door made his hand jerk. Rebekka whimpered, knowing she would be dead if the knock had come an instant earlier, when his finger touched the trigger.

  “Who is it?” he yelled.

  “Gregor.”

  Radek let him in, the pistol still in his hand.

  “Enjoying a little foreplay?” Gregor asked, his smile sickening Rebekka, sending dread crawling through her. She’d seen the same look on other faces after they’d picked a prostitute and made their bargain with the madam.

  Radek moved into the doorway. “No one else comes in here tonight. And you don’t leave.”

  “Morse is owed a little fun with her. He’s the one who hauled her back.”

  Radek cast a glance at Rebekka, visibly calculating the risk. “Just him. Have your fun tonight. Dead or alive, she leaves the encampment tomorrow.”

  Gregor laughed. “She’ll be gone. I think we both know which way it’ll be.”

  He locked the door after Radek left, unzipped his pants, and pulled out his flaccid cock as he walked toward her.

  Her terror projected onto the goats. They hurtled themselves at their pen with renewed agitation.

  “Shut up!” Gregor screamed, his penis remaining limp in his hand.

  Twenty-eight

  ARYCK dropped soundlessly to the ground. Blood seeped from small cuts on his chest and arms where spikes of metal from the concertina wire on top of the encampment walls had pierced the thick leather hides he’d laid on top of them.

  Light blazed around only a few buildings, powered by generators that would be easy to disable. Lanterns bobbed in the darkness, marking the places where men patrolled and making them easy targets.

  When the first of them fell, the others would riddle the night with machine gun fire. If they weren’t already doing it after seeing amulets blaze to life in the presence of Weres.

  There would be dead on both sides before this was over. Rebekka won’t be one of them. She would be safe outside the fence before the attack started.

  A short distance away the goats continued to panic at having picked up the scent of so many predators closing in on them. He’d heard them from the place Rebekka was taken to the ground, smelled them on one of the men who’d been there and left alive.

  Aryck’s lips pulled back in a feral promise of retribution. It was the same man who’d hidden in the tree and masturbated as the hyenas ate the deadly gift he’d left for them.

  Aryck pulled the knife from its leg sheath and moved toward the goats. His progress was slowed by the need to stay clear of amulets set throughout the encampment, as well as those worn by the men patrolling in groups of three and four.

  He was within sight of the building housing the goats when Rebekka’s scent reached him, wafting through slits in the boards and laced with pain and fear.

  Man and Jaguar screamed in silent fury, but hurried footsteps kept Aryck from racing forward.

  He ducked behind a pile of dirt left next to a hole leading into a room once buried but now cleared. A human passed close enough for him to know the man had been one of the two responsible for bringing Rebekka to the encampment.

  Aryck launched himself, as silent in his two-legged form as he was in his animal one. An amulet at the front of the man’s shirt flashed red, but before he could sound a warning, the blade in Aryck’s hand sliced through flesh and muscle and blood supply as easily as a jaguar claw through hide.

  Sheathing the knife, Aryck took up the dead human’s gun. He checked to make sure it was ready to fire, delayed only long enough to drag the body to the excavated hole and tumble it in, hoping to delay discovery long enough to set Rebekka free.

  Anticipating the door would be locked, he ran the remaining distance, used momentum to force his way into the building and Jaguar agility to get out of the doorway. A glance was all Aryck needed to take in the scene. To see Rebekka’s bruised face and the cloth keeping her screams silenced, her shirt hanging open after she had been chased and knocked to the ground, a man reaching for a machine gun, his zipper down and his tiny cock hanging limp.

  Fury engulfed Aryck. Rage overwhelmed reason and eradicated any thought of remaining undetected. He aimed and pulled the trigger, the bullets making the man dance backward until the gun was empty.

  Aryck tossed it aside and hurried to Rebekka. She was standing, tugging off the gag, hastily putting her shirt to rights.

  Koren’s mind touched Aryck’s in instant communication. We’ll divert their attention elsewhere.

  “Let’s go,” Aryck said, wanting to shake her, kiss her, punish and cherish her all at the same time.

  Rebekka resisted when he tried to hurry her toward the door. “The goats are diseased,” she said, halting him in his tracks. “They carry something that will kill Tigers, maybe other things. There’s a man here I trust. A captain in the guard. He promised The Iberá if I ever needed his aid, he’d give it. Leave. I’ll find him. I’ll—”

  The Jaguar snarled at the very idea. The man growled, “I’m not leaving you.”

  There was no time to argue. No time to deal with the threat the goats presented except one way.

  Lanterns lit the small area. Barrels of fuel were stored against one wall like a private hoard.

  Aryck picked up the dead man’s machine gun. Despite what he felt for Rebekka he had a duty to the pack.

  He jerked her to his chest, clamping her there.

  “Forgive me,” he said, doubting in his heart it would be possible for her to do, but pulling the trigger anyway, and killing the goats with the sweep of his arm.

  She stood stock-still when he released her. Didn’t move again until fire raged in the pen, consuming straw and eating at corpses alike. Then she ran for the door.

  He followed, grabbing her arm and dragging her into the darkness, away from the building that rapidly became engulfed in flames.

  In the distance arrows tipped with fire rained down on the encampment. Wolves howled and Hyenas laughed. Lion and Jaguar roared while Coyotes sang and humans yelled.

  He feared she’d curse him, revile him for what he’d done; instead Rebekka turned into him, pleaded with her eyes and voice. “Let me find Captain Orst. I can stop this. I can make sure there’s no more virus and the person responsible is punished. There’s no need to kill innocent humans and start a war that will lead to Weres being legally hunted. Please, Aryck. Leave. Trust me to do this.”

  Every instinct demanded he get her away from the encampment. Both Jaguar and man bridled at the ease in which she seemed to think she could send them to safety while remaining in danger herself.

  He should say no. But he found he couldn’t.

/>   “We’ll look for this Captain Orst,” he said, sending a message to his father to have those outside continue providing a distraction instead of attacking in earnest.

  Rebekka closed her mind to the carnage they left behind. There was nothing she could do for the goats. Nothing she could change.

  Despite the horror of what Aryck had done, she understood his actions. She accepted the necessity of it. Leaving the animals alive was too great a risk.

  She had no time to heal them if Radek was to be stopped and war against the Weres avoided. And yet her heart wept all the same. She could have healed them. If not for their trying to get to her, Gregor would have raped her.

  They found Captain Orst shouting orders to men in black-striped clothing. He turned when Rebekka called his name, shocked recognition coming to his face as he saw her step into the light.

  Immediately he strode toward her. The amulet lying against his chest flaring when he was steps away.

  He started to draw his weapon but stopped when Rebekka said, “Radek is responsible for the trouble with the Weres. He let plague lose on their lands. Elk, Wolves, and Hyenas have been affected so far.”

  “You have proof?”

  There was no hiding the truth, no need to now that she’d gained a measure of control when it came to bringing the sick to her. “My gift drew me here. The goats being guarded by Gregor were diseased. I’m the reason the three convicts he was with earlier are dead. They caught me in the woods. The Were protected me against being raped but couldn’t stop Gregor and his friend from bringing me here. I was in the building when Radek was there. I heard him mumbling to himself.”

  “Remain here,” Orst said, turning and walking away, disappearing from sight for moments that seemed to drag even as they made Rebekka’s heart race and her mouth grow dry.

  He returned accompanied by six men wearing the uniform of the Ivanov militia, including one wearing a captain’s stripes. Radek was with them.

  Aryck forced her behind him, keeping the machine gun aimed at the approaching men. “Do you continue to trust him?”