by Jory Strong
“Don’t touch them with your bare skin,” Aryck reminded the Jaguars shifting into human form around him. “Wait for the blankets and gloves to arrive.”
He crouched next to the still form of the oldest cub, hands clenching into fists to obey his own orders and keep from using them to determine the extent of the damage. Along the mental link with his father he sent images and a request for instructions.
Take them to the stream. Whatever weapon this is, Phaedra has determined it’s safe to touch the skin after it’s been washed off.
It would mean taking the boys farther from camp, extending their suffering before it could be relieved. Are painkillers being sent?
Yes, with instructions on their use.
How is Caius?
Phaedra has done what she can for him.
His father’s mental voice held no inflection, but it still conveyed a truth Aryck already knew. There was no guarantee any of the cubs would survive.
The Jaguars who’d followed with blankets and gloves arrived. Aryck felt his horror mount when the unconscious cub was lifted. The entire side he’d been lying on, including the fur on his face, had been eaten away.
He must have been first to fall into the crater, and if not the one whose body landed on the rusted canister and opened it, the one who’d been closest to it, with the others following him into the pit, perhaps landing on top of him so when it came time to drag him out, Caius’s strength had been drained.
There were teeth marks on the cub, indicating at least one of those wearing fur had helped. But given the damage Caius had sustained, and the fact he was in human form, with hands to grab and lift, he’d done much of the work.
Shock could account for the unconsciousness, as could concussion. Or there might be more serious injuries.
Aryck wrapped the blanket around the cub before scooping him up and standing.
Thanks to whatever painkiller they’d been given, the other cubs were now silent bundles in the arms of pack members.
“They need to be bathed as quickly as possible. We’ll go to the place were the stream pools in the cedar grove.”
“And the Tiger cub?” one of the Jaguars asked.
“He remains alive.” For now.
Caphriel’s Visitation
PROPPED up by pillows on her bed, Rebekka became engrossed in the journal. It was more than a healer’s collection of cures. It was a window into his soul, a view of a world where bombs might just as likely hold contaminants capable of slowly eating a person alive as be constructed to kill anything living while leaving buildings untouched.
She shivered, glad she hadn’t been alive in the final days of The Last War. And when reading about them became too much to bear, she closed her eyes, preferring a fantasy where she healed the Weres fully, allowing them to shift and escape the brothels and the red zone.
Sleep came, leaving her defenseless. It held her under with an unnatural awareness, a disjointed sense of being awake even while dreaming.
In that state she looked up from the journal and saw the urchin standing next to the bed. He was thin and scabbed and pale. His clothing nothing more than grubby rags.
Her heart raced in terror at the sight of him, its frantic beating beyond the fear of seeing a stranger in her room. He smiled then, making his face beautiful as he reached out and touched her before she could scramble away.
“Tag, you’re it,” he said, laughing, his voice following her as she tumbled into a nightmare she’d suppressed since she was eight years old, his touch ripping away the shield hiding the memory of her first encounter with him.
It was before Oakland, when her mother was a caravan prostitute. They were in the San Joaquin, sweltering in the heat, as nearby the drivers and guards worked on the broken bus.
She was hot and sweaty, but curious, so curious about a world she never got to explore. When they camped her mother made her stay in the old bus that served as a bedroom for the prostitutes.
At eight she already knew to stay out of sight of the men who snuck away to visit the brothel trailer. She’d already learned she’d be beaten, or her mother would be, if she let herself be found when the policemen came around to collect sin taxes.
With the bus broken down, the prostitutes sat under shade trees, some of them beading jewelry to sell, others sewing clothing or, like her mother, sleeping, while a couple of the teenage girls splashed happily in the deeper portion of a wide stream.
No one complained about the delay. They were all content to miss a day’s work underneath sweaty farmers and self-righteous businessmen.
Rebekka hoped the bus stayed broken. So far she’d seen a rabbit with a little white tail, two black squirrels, a deer with a spotted fawn, and five lizards.
She stepped into the stream and crouched down, turning rocks over and squealing in delight when a tiny crawfish darted away. A yellow salamander followed, then a frog, which she gently scooped up in her hands.
The joy of each new discovery made her unaware she’d wandered out of sight until she felt someone watching her. She looked up then and saw the urchin.
He stood on the bank, gaunt and ragged, a rat perched on his shoulder. With amusement dancing in his eyes he reached up and stroked his pet. His smile and her own curiosity held her in place despite the trembling of her limbs.
“Looks like I found your hiding place,” he said, his voice beautiful and terrible at the same time. “Welcome to the game.”
The rat jumped, sailing across the distance to land on her bare arm. Its claws and fur were ice-cold and the feel of it touching her skin filled her with nameless dread.
In her sleep, Rebekka’s heart sped up as visceral terror swept through the younger version of herself, so strong it freed her from the spot she’d been rooted to and sent her running back to where the prostitutes were rising, returning to the bus so they could be under way.
That night she dreamed of plague, of thousands dying of infectious disease, of whole cities filled with the dead. She woke screaming so many times the others insisted she be drugged. And the next day—
A shudder nearly woke the adult Rebekka. In her sleep she whimpered, remembering herself as a child climbing out of the hiding place that was also where she slept. She’d been groggy from the drugs. Otherwise she would have made sure it was safe to leave the bus.
The police from a nearby settlement were there, four of them collecting the sin tax. They saw her before she could retreat. Caught her before she could escape.
It was an area where the ultraconservative and the religious ruled. They followed the old laws, requiring prostitutes to bear a tattoo, not so much because they feared disease, but because it was a mark of shame meant to deter patrons and protect the unwary from marrying a whore.
She fought them as they tugged her clothing aside to look for the tattoo. And when they didn’t find one, their leader ordered her marked.
Her mother struggled, the caravan guards holding her back. She pleaded with the policemen, begged them with tears streaking down her face. Told them her daughter was no prostitute.
Their leader quoted the scripture of Exodus. “He doesn’t leave the guilty unpunished. Unto the third and fourth generation, He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents.”
Rebekka screamed as they held her down. The needles pierced her flesh repeatedly, until the pain and horror were too much for her young mind.
She escaped into her memories, leaving her body behind to wander through the woods where she’d seen the deer and rabbit and squirrels. And when it was over the police collected the sin tax for the “new whore.”
Her mother gathered her up, held her tightly as they both cried. But where the child Rebekka had thought her mother’s trembling and tears were like her own, the dreaming adult saw terror on her mother’s face.
She looked around and saw the black dog, remembering it now. It came from the woods, sickness radiating from it, and something inside her unfurled. The desire to ease its sufferin
g, the first stirrings of her gift.
The settlement police saw the dog, too. They fired on it with their guns, killing it, but not before it had bitten one of them.
“You brought the rabid dog here, little healer,” the urchin said, suddenly there, standing next to her mother though no one else seemed to see him.
He smiled and stroked the rat on his shoulder. Leaned forward and laughed when she struggled wildly, her mother’s arms preventing her from escaping.
“I’ve given you a piece of myself,” he said, his ice-cold lips touching hers, breath tasting of disease slipping into her mouth as his words slid into her mind. Forget now, until it’s time for you to join the game.
Rebekka woke retching. Shivering. Coated in cold sweat.
The healer’s journal tumbled to the floor as she rolled off her bed, disoriented, shaken by the dream.
She bent down and picked up the book. Smoothed a bent page with a hand that trembled before closing the journal and putting it into the pocket of her pants.
“It was only a dream,” she whispered into the silence of the room, telling herself the horrors she’d been reading about before falling asleep had triggered the nightmare memories of being held down and tattooed, telling herself the encounter with the demon and his talk of games had woven the image of the urchin into her dream.
She told herself that, and yet the scent of disease filled her nostrils. The taste of it coated her tongue, driving her to the bathroom to brush her teeth and rinse her mouth.
In the mirror above the sink her face appeared haunted, frightened. A hard pulse beat against her throat, visible evidence of a heart that wouldn’t stop thundering in her chest.
Knowledge pounded in her skull even as she clung to denial. There were diseases with no cure. There were others where survival was possible only for those with enough money to pay for the cost of doctors and hospital care.
She shuddered, remembering the nightmare within the nightmare, the images of thousands dying from plague, of whole cities full of the dead. It was like some of the scenes from the healer’s journal, she argued with herself. But she couldn’t shake the need to escape her room and clear the images from her mind with fresh air.
Thinking of the men who’d attacked the night before, and her promise to Levi to stay in the brothel where it was safe, she paused long enough to stop by Feliss’s room and borrow a distinctively patterned cloak, hooded so its wearer could shield hair and face.
It was a ploy used by the Weres to routinely wear something identifiable when they left the brothel, so other times they could slip away unnoticed by wearing a concealing garment associated with another should overinterested clients or those with grudges be watching for them.
Rebekka used the private exit, first checking to make sure no one loitered in the alleyway between brothels before stepping through the door.
The smell of warm dirt and brick filled her lungs. Relief poured into her but it was short-lived.
Cold blossomed in her chest, while at the same time her fingers warmed, tingled in the same way they did before she used her gift. A small cry of denial escaped when a rat entered the alleyway. Bile rose in Rebekka’s throat along with horror at the sight of the open sores on its body.
It came toward her as no normal animal would have, so intent on reaching her it didn’t notice the scrawny feral cat that rounded the corner seconds later to pounce and kill and carry away its prize while Rebekka was still wrapped in the horror of a nightmare made real.
Without conscious thought she turned and fled. Terrified of remaining in the brothel and bringing death to the Weres trapped by both their forms and their debts to Allende.
Six
THE blood red of the cardinal’s feathers drew Rebekka’s attention like an omen waiting for interpretation. It perched where a raven had on her last visit to the witches’ house, a glossy black bird of death that had shifted into a supernatural being so powerful at masking his nature not even Levi could see beyond the human facade.
The conversation she’d had with Annalise Wainwright on that day swept into Rebekka’s thoughts like an icy wind.
There’s a war brewing between supernatural beings, not unlike one occurring at the dawn of human creation. It will be fought and, depending on its outcome, the world as we now know it may change again. As alliances are forged, healers will emerge who can make those Weres trapped in an abomination of form whole. You are one of them.
If I’m willing to pay the price.
There is always a price to pay.
Rebekka’s hand closed on the engraved pentacle in her pocket. It was the Wainwrights’ token, given to her first in summons, and then as a sign of alliance.
She’d come here instinctively, without conscious decision. Being able to call the diseased to her would be a death sentence. If the humans didn’t kill her, then the Weres trapped in the brothels would. But now Rebekka trembled as she forced her gaze away from the cardinal and to the house in front of her.
Dark stones absorbed the sunlight. A myriad of small windows, each with elaborate glyphs carved into their frames, made her think of soulless eyes looking out on the world.
Did she dare tell the witches what Abijah had said about her father? Or about the being who appeared as an urchin and claimed to give her a piece of himself? Did she dare reveal the cold blossoming in her chest, the tingling warmth in her fingers that had preceded the appearance of the rat?
Rebekka’s stomach tightened into a knot. The Wainwrights offered an elusive promise that she might become a healer who could make those Weres trapped in an abomination of form whole, but she couldn’t bring herself to trust them.
She might be gifted, but she’d lived among Were outcasts since she was sixteen and had absorbed their suspicion of witches. She might be human, but a childhood among prostitutes had set her apart from all society but that of the brothels.
The back of her fingers brushed against folded paper, the pages she’d torn from an old journal on the Iberá patriarch’s desk just before her escape from the estate. The pages held an account of urns said to hold trapped demons in them, and except for her soul, her life, and her gift, they were the only thing of value she could use in a bargain with witches.
Desperation kept her from turning away. And when she felt cold blossom in her chest like a hand unclenching while at the same time warmth spread through her fingers, fear for those in the brothel made her take a step forward.
She opened the sigil-inscribed gate and entered the witches’ domain. The sense of cold and warmth vanished, as if the wards set in place prevented her from drawing the sick to her.
On the porch she grasped the ring held in the mouth of a brass gargoyle. Used it to announce her presence.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught the red flash of the cardinal taking flight. She turned her head slightly, in time to see a thin boy of eight or nine running down the street.
He had the look of a street child instead of one who belonged in the area set aside for the gifted. For an instant he reminded her of the child she’d seen the previous night, shortly before she and Levi were attacked near the brothels.
The door opened and there was the familiar crawl of magic over Rebekka’s skin. Rather than usher her into the house, Annalise’s attention remained on the boy until he disappeared around a corner.
“The Church has watchers posted now,” she said. “Father Ursu still hunts for you in the hopes you’ll lead him to the others.”
Not the Weres she and Levi had helped free from the maze, but Araña and, through her, Tir, a being Rebekka now knew was more than human, just as she knew the Church sought him because they believed his blood healed and with it they could perform miracles to strengthen their hold on Oakland.
Fear tightened its grip on Rebekka at the thought of ending up in the Church’s hands. But better theirs—where death would come after torture proved her worthless to them, or they discovered she could bring plague to the city—than to learn the vice
lords who ran the gaming clubs and had profited from the maze were after her.
Annalise stepped back out of the doorway. “The matriarch will wish to see you. There are allies we can call upon on your behalf, beings who can turn the Church’s attention away from you.”
The knots in Rebekka’s stomach grew worse. She made no response as she followed Annalise down a hallway lined with prewar artwork.
Paintings of glorious color and celebration hung on the walls. Depictions of naked men and women dancing, coupling in ancient rites of fertility and worship.
The sound of a baby crying loosened the bindings of fear and worry. It filled Rebekka with soft, impossible longing.
Unable to resist, she stopped at an open doorway and looked inside. A girl, no more than seventeen, picked up a tiny infant and quieted it with the offer of a nipple.
“My grandson,” Annalise said. “Born yesterday.”
There was love in her voice. Its presence and the sight of the baby held against its mother’s breast sent an ache through Rebekka’s heart.
She wanted a child of her own, a family that included a husband at her side, a helpmate and partner to share her life with and serve as a safety net so no son or daughter of hers ended up living in the street or selling themselves to survive.
It was a dream she rarely allowed herself. The human men she encountered regularly were those who visited the brothels. She’d never accept one of them.
Among the gifted humans, she doubted her talent would help overcome the stigma of being the daughter of a prostitute, of growing up in a brothel and then continuing to work in them, caring for Were outcasts.
And the Weres who called the red zone home … Marrying one of them was to be trapped between worlds, just as they were. It meant hardship not just for her as a human, but for any children who might come.
There was a time, at the very beginning of their friendship, when she might have considered such a thing with Levi, but …
