Healer's Choice

by Jory Strong

  The water was shallow and the bed rocky. But the breeze carried her scent and it grew stronger with each step he took. He loped, his heart pounding not from exertion but from anticipation, from the knowledge he was only moments away from her.

  He would never let her ago again. Regardless of what had happened to her since being taken prisoner, he wouldn’t leave her side or let her push him away.

  She was his mate. He knew now the true depth of the word.

  He rounded a curve and heard her running out of sight ahead of him. She was whimpering in pain, her breathing coming in fast pants.

  A cry of denial screamed through him. Remorse followed when he realized the sound of his splashing pursuit had reached her, driving her forward in fear for her life.

  He stopped. Shifted. Yelled, “Rebekka! Rebekka! Stop. It’s me.”

  Rebekka stumbled and nearly went down to her knees at the sound of Aryck’s voice. It can’t be, she told herself, afraid she was hallucinating, then worse, that maybe with the taint to her gift came madness, insanity.

  A chill swept through her. She kept going, only to falter when she heard him say, “Please stop, Rebekka! Let me catch up to you. I was with Levi earlier. I know you healed him. I know you can stand before the ancestors. The brothels are locked down, and Levi’s gone to the Iberá estate to ask for help freeing the outcasts.”

  She did stop then, her grief over the loss of her gift making it impossible to go on. She stepped onto the bank and turned. Waited, almost expecting a phantom, a spirit apparition, not the flesh-and-blood man who appeared moments later, moving so stealthily she hadn’t heard his approach.

  “Aryck,” she whispered, tears freed with the reality of his presence.

  He closed the distance between them at a run. Discarding the clothing collar steps away from her before hugging her to him with a fierceness at odds to the trembling of his body.

  She held him just as tightly. Didn’t try to stop crying as she closed her eyes and pressed her face to the crook of his neck, breathed in the scent of him, allowing herself the illusion everything would be all right now.

  “You came after me,” she said, touching her mouth to the bite mark on his skin, remembering how he’d wanted her mark on him.

  “Too late,” he said, loathing in his voice. “I failed you again. First in letting you leave without me, then in not getting here in time to protect you.”

  Her throat went tight imagining what would have happened if he’d been on the Constellation with her when Kala arrived. He’d be dead. Led into an ambush because of the knife held to her throat, or killed by a bullet where he stood on the deck.

  At least this way he lived. Even if she could no longer enter Were lands, or be his mate, or heal, at least he hadn’t lost his life because of her.

  “You came after me. I’ll never forget it,” she said, her heart breaking with the knowledge she was only going to lose him again.

  She lifted her face, wanting one last kiss, needing to soak in a little more of his body heat to offset the chill at her core. Through the blur of tears she saw the starkness of emotions laid bare, love and desire, remorse and gratitude.

  And then his mouth was on hers, his tongue thrusting, rubbing against hers, emotional hunger rousing a physical one in a burst of hot flame centered between her thighs.

  Her hands roamed his back. His did the same to hers, their lips parting only long enough for him to rid her of the dead man’s shirt so they were skin to skin.

  He hardened against her belly and she desperately wanted to feel him inside her, his body joined to hers. But when he lifted her, as if to thrust into her where they stood, her thoughts flashed to the Were ancestors and reality drenched her like frigid water.

  “No,” she said, stiffening in his arms, hating the pain that returned to his eyes at her rejection.

  “Give me a chance to prove myself to you,” he pleaded, his voice gravelly with unshed tears.

  “It’s too late,” she whispered, understanding Aryck’s respect of the Were ancestors and his fear of being made outcast in a way she hadn’t until she healed Levi.

  She saw the shimmer of tears on his cheeks as he allowed her to see what the thought of losing her did to him. “It doesn’t have to be too late. I’ll stay with you. I’ll work with you and Levi to help the brothel workers escape Allende.”

  “My gift is useless now. Tainted because I killed a man. I can’t go before the ancestors again. I can’t return to Were lands. I can’t be your mate.”

  “You killed to save your life; how can it be wrong?” Aryck asked, challenging her in the same way she’d challenged him about the outcasts.

  He pressed kiss after soft kiss to her cheeks, her lips, her ears, trying to convey the strength of his belief and his refusal to accept defeat when it came to her. “No Were, living or dead, would judge your soul tainted for defending yourself. If you doubt it, I’ll bring a shaman to you. I’ll go before the ancestors myself on your behalf and ask for a judgment.”

  Her arms tightened around his waist. “They can’t help. I’m not Were.”

  Aryck touched his forehead to hers. “Then we’ll go to the witches. Levi took me to the Wainwright house. We bargained with them to find out if you lived and where you were. I’ll bargain with them again if it means we can be together.” He thought he saw a flash of hope in her eyes, then wondered if he was mistaken when he felt the subtle bracing of her body.

  “What if the cost of restoring my gift is that after Oakland I have to go to another city, and then another, and another? Twice I’ve met my father. He says he’s not demon, but I have no proof he’s telling the truth. He paid my mother to carry me to term and keep me safe while I was still a child. He created me for a purpose.”

  “Then I’ll come with you and keep you safe. I’ll help you with your work and at the same time continue lobbying for an alliance among all Were groups.”

  “And if the witches can’t help me? If Nahuatl or another shaman says you’ll be made outcast if you remain with me?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ve already given you my heart and my body, my Jaguar soul and my human one. You’re my mate, Rebekka. Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be, in life and in death.”

  Aryck took her lips in a kiss that conveyed the strength of his conviction even as he silently begged her to believe in him despite his failing her, to feel for him what he felt for her. He plundered her mouth with the thrust of his tongue against hers, boldly claimed her as belonging to him, and didn’t stop until she was clinging to him, her body melded to his in a softening that shouted acceptance.

  He didn’t know how desperately he needed to hear the words until she whispered them. “I couldn’t tell you why I had to leave Were lands, not if I wanted to be able to heal Levi and the others. I hated leaving you. I hated knowing my choice hurt you. I love you.”

  “Weres rarely speak of love,” he said, tenderly brushing his lips against hers. “We say instead, everything I am and have belongs to you.”

  “It is so among the Djinn as well,” a male voice said, and Aryck spun, putting himself between Rebekka and the sharp-featured man who’d managed to sneak up on them.

  “My father,” Rebekka murmured, touching Aryck’s shoulder and stepping to the side.

  The man registered as human on every one of Aryck’s senses. But there was no doubting he was something else when in the blink of an eye he became a cardinal, and then the tiger whose scent was left behind with Melina’s corpse, and then a man again, only closer, a step away, as if he’d moved when he had no form.

  Aryck’s fingers flexed in Jaguar reaction, but he neither attacked nor stepped backward as the stranger studied him with critical eyes, judged him, then ignored him completely in favor of directing all his attention to Rebekka.

  “In every way you have made me proud, daughter. Our kind has always tested their children. Even those born in our prison kingdom set deep in the ghostlands must prove their worthiness. No one will ev
er question the rightness of entering your name in the Book of the Djinn.”

  He stepped closer, curled his fingers around Rebekka’s upper arm, pulling her toward him. The Jaguar soul rose in challenge and growled in warning while the human one snarled and took possession of her other arm.

  Rebekka’s father ignored the display. “The enforcer spoke the truth. No Were, living or dead, would judge your soul tainted for defending yourself.

  “So it is for the Djinn too. At the moment, your spirit is locked in a human shape, but you are not limited by the rules applied to the gifted. Because you’re of my House, I can make you mārdazmā, Djinn, able to shift between living, sentient forms. You are only so limited because an ancient enemy’s blood runs diluted in your mother’s line, commingling with mine, though it’s his blood that allows you to stand in the entranceway between ghostlands and shadowlands.”

  Rebekka glanced at Aryck, tugged on the arm in his grip until he loosened his hold on it enough so she could slide her hand into his before meeting her father’s eyes again. She knew the face of one of his enemies and was sickened by the possibility of being related to an entity who could so casually use plague for nothing more than entertainment purposes, but she forced herself to ask, “The urchin with the rat on his shoulder. Who is he? What is he?”

  There was a glorious flash of light as if in answer, and standing next to her father was Tir—not as he’d been before, but in his true form, an angel with black wings spread, the light shimmering off them in the same way as it had the feather on the amulet she’d worn.

  “My brother,” Tir said, and Rebekka knew his name, had noticed the likeness when he appeared at the Fellowship of the Sign and offered to cleanse her gift of any taint.

  “Caphriel.”

  Tir inclined his head. “I was once like him. But now I join others of my kind in an alliance that will see the return of the Djinn and a change in who rules this world. Araña and I will come back to Oakland in the future. Aisling and Zurael remain there. Seek any of us out if you need us.”

  He disappeared in another flash, and her father leaned forward. “To those willing to make the greatest sacrifice should go the greatest rewards. My spirit to yours, daughter.”

  He touched his mouth to hers as he had in Lion territory. And it was like being on the receiving end of her own gift.

  Power poured down her throat, raw and primordial. Like molten stone coming from the Earth itself. She healed as though she’d never been injured. The place where her skin was inked in a prostitute’s tattoo burned as if it was on fire. And at the very last came knowledge of his name. Torquel en Sahon.

  When he stepped away from her she looked down. Where the ugly black circle and red P had once been, there was now an image of a cardinal, its wings outstretched.

  Her eyes lifted to her father’s face. He said, “Among the Weres there is no true, unbreakable mate-bond until a child is conceived. Among our kind it takes only the sharing of breath, done with absolute conviction and intent.

  “The Were ancestors have already chosen the Djinn as allies. We cement it with the uniting of our children. You are but one of them. The responsibility that comes with your gift does not preclude having children or spending time in Were lands.”

  He tilted his head in Aryck’s direction. “Is he your choice then, Rebekka en Sahon, daughter of the House of the Cardinal?”

  “Yes. He’s my choice.”

  “So be it then. I will enter his name next to yours in the Book of the Djinn.”

  Her father disappeared as suddenly as he’d arrived.

  Rebekka turned toward Aryck, going willingly into his arms. “It’s not over,” she said.

  “No, it’s just beginning. There are brothel workers to liberate and heal. There is justice to be served on the man who wasn’t there when you killed his companion.”

  Rebekka started to tell him about the club, only to realize there would be time for it later. This moment belonged to them.

  “My spirit to yours,” she whispered, touching her lips to his, sharing breath.

  She felt the bond slide into place and, when the kiss ended, saw evidence of it in a small cardinal on his skin, its wings outstretched above his heart. And in the look in his eyes as his voice sounded in her mind. Become Jaguar. Mate with me. Love me.

  Yes, she said, changing as if she’d always had another form.