by Jory Strong
The captain knew quite a bit more. It didn’t take long before the sound of typing stopped and the movement of his eyes indicated he was reading.
When he looked up he said, “I found his notes. The super-virus targeting werewolves was placed in a small pond. It degrades fast outside of a host. It should be inert, and any wolves or elk infected by it dead at this point. Bait of some type was used to infect the hyenas. Radek didn’t have time to distribute it to more than a single pack. I’m sure Captain Nagy would be willing to order his men to hunt—”
“The hyenas have been dealt with,” Aryck said, his voice harsh.
“Then that leaves only the third super-virus. It was being fed to the goats. I can attest that none of them have left the encampment.”
Captain Orst straightened and directed his attention to Radek. “Radek Ivanov, I am placing you under arrest. You have the right—”
Gunfire silenced him, its thunder throbbing through the room as Radek toppled backward with a hole in his forehead.
Aryck surged forward, knife drawn but halting almost instantly as Nagy’s weapon lowered. The militia captain said, “I think you’ll agree, Captain Orst, it is in the best interest of all the Founding Families that there be no mention of plague and no mention of what was found at this site. As far as my men and I are concerned, Radek died in a fire started most likely by drunken carelessness and which spread quickly, creating chaos and panic and also drawing predators to the area. Pardons and a payment of coin will erase any memory of flaming arrows.”
Captain Nagy holstered the pistol and walked to the door. He opened it long enough to retrieve the gas can he’d ordered put there.
Uncapping it, he moved to the desk and upended it so gas spilled over the computer and canisters and into the drawer. Radek’s body was next.
“We will evacuate at dawn,” Nagy said. “Considering the likelihood there are other caches of bioweapons here, I suspect the Weres will have no objection to us planting ordnances and detonating this excavation site.”
He shook the empty can and tossed it aside. A small smile played at his lips as he turned and faced Orst. “I suspect the Ivanov and Iberá patriarchs together wield enough power to have these lands declared off-limits to humans seeking to run salvage operations in them.”
Rebekka couldn’t read Orst’s expression. She didn’t know how he felt about Nagy’s approach to justice. His voice was without inflection as he asked Aryck, “Is this solution acceptable to the shapeshifters?”
Aryck hardly dared to believe the threat to the Weres could be over and they could resume living as they—
A glance at Rebekka halted the thought. No, not as they always had.
He touched his mind to his father’s, getting the same answer he would have given had he been alpha. “It is acceptable to us. We’ll remain to witness your departure and will follow you to the border of the lands we claim. As long as no one offers us a threat, safe passage is granted.”
“Fair enough,” Orst said.
Captain Nagy pulled a pack of matches from his pocket. Lit one and dropped it into a pool of gasoline on the desk.
It ignited in a whoosh of flame and heat, making the Jaguar snarl and demand retreat. Aryck took Rebekka by the arm and guided her toward the door, but neither of them left until after Nagy set multiple fires and both he and Orst exited ahead of them.
Orst departed to spread news of the evacuation and an agreement with the Weres for safe passage. Nagy gave the same order to the five militiamen but remained with Aryck and Rebekka, escorting them out of the encampment only after the building Radek had occupied had been reduced to smoldering ash and pieces of charred wood.
Aryck led Rebekka away from the gathered Weres, taking her to a small pond surrounded by oak trees draped in Spanish moss. He desperately needed to be alone with her, to celebrate their survival with the touch of flesh to flesh, to lovingly chastise her for scaring him so badly.
Rebekka undressed with the unselfconsciousness of a Were, discarding her clothes and wading into a pond shallow enough to hold some of the day’s heat at its edges, and pockets of warmth a little deeper. Aryck halted her with a hand on her hip, stopping and turning her.
The water settled into smooth calm around them at waist height. Cicadas and crickets and frogs renewed their songs. In the distance, an owl hooted.
“You’re hurt,” Rebekka said, smoothing her fingers over the cuts he’d gotten when he crossed over the concertina wire, then leaning in, taking his breath away as she touched her mouth to his chest and arms, healed him with the brush of her lips and the sensuous wet glide of her tongue.
He’d thought she would revile him for slaughtering the goats. Instead, she’d changed the course of the night and the fate of both Weres and humans. And now she tended to him, treated him as a Jaguar female wearing fur would treat its injured mate.
“I’m sorry—”
Rebekka stopped him by lifting her arms and putting them around his neck. By touching her mouth to his, preferring a different kind of conversation.
Words seemed unnecessary, an intrusion that would shatter the peace of the setting and the time they had together before they had to face questions about their future.
Aryck responded like a man in the grip of a desperate hunger, taking control of the kiss and pulling her against him so tightly their bodies touched in an unbroken connection. Heat poured into her, filling her breasts and turning her nipples into hard, aching knots before sliding into her belly. Her clit. Her labia.
He grew hard and it was impossible not to rub against the smooth, heated length of his cock. Her nether lips became swollen, parting in readiness.
She captured his tongue. Sucked. Reveling in the way his hips jerked and a low moan joined the night sounds.
His hands roamed. Settled again on her hips. Lifting then lowering her onto his cock.
She moaned. Wrapped her legs around his waist.
His mouth never left hers as he took her in fast, hard thrusts. Not coming until she’d cried out in release.
They were both breathing fast when he freed her mouth. He bit her shoulder then, a sharp rebuke instantly soothed with the swipe of his tongue. “I’ve never known fear like I did today, when I crossed your trail and realized you were heading in the direction of the encampment.”
Her heart dropped to her stomach. She’d hoped to delay reality, to delay the truth. But she didn’t shy away from it. “My gift doesn’t just allow me to heal. What I said to Captain Orst, about the goats drawing me to the encampment because they were diseased, is true. But there’s more to it. If they’d been free instead of penned, I could have drawn them to me, though I wouldn’t have done it intentionally. By the time I got to them, I’d learned how to control that part of my gift.”
Speaking the words out loud, she realized somewhere along the way she’d stopped thinking of the urchin’s gift as something terrible. It made her a weapon, but one that could prevent those, like Radek, from using plague to kill the Weres.
“It’s a dangerous gift to have,” Aryck said, no censure in his tone. He touched his mouth to hers, nibbled on her bottom lip. “And a secret best shared only between mates unless there’s need for others to know.”
Her heart soared, and she decided to give him the rest of the truth. “My father isn’t human. I’ve seen him only once, when he saved my life and told me I’d find work and protection in the Were brothels. I think he’s a demon.”
Aryck buried his face where her neck met her shoulder. Inhaled deeply and said, “Whatever your father might be, you smell fully human to me.”
A small growl followed. “And you smell of other males. If they weren’t already dead, I’d have to leave so I could attend to the matter.”
Without warning he went over backward, submerging them both before letting her go and becoming a jaguar. As a playful cat he swam in circles around her, brushed against her, repeatedly requiring her touch until finally nudging her back to shallow water.
Rebekka rose up on her knees. His sharp intake of breath brought a smile to her lips, as did the way his cock became more engorged, straining away from his body as if begging her to take it into her mouth.
She placed her palms on his thighs and felt the slight trembling of a man waiting for pleasure to be given freely rather than demanding it. She rewarded him for his restraint by touching him, sliding a hand between his thighs to cup his testicles as the other took him, thumb brushing against his exposed cock head.
His moan sounded loud in the quiet hush surrounding them. His hips bucked, driving his penis through her fist and sending a rush of feminine satisfaction all the way down to her toes.
She leaned forward, heard his breathing become harsh even as he tried to close the distance between his cock and her mouth with another thrust.
A dart of her tongue, a quick swipe, and she shattered his control. His fingers tangled in her wet hair to prevent escape. His body curled over hers, and his voice was little more than a growl when he said, “Now, Rebekka.”
Her channel spasmed at the rough command. Arousal escaped her slit to join the water wetting her inner thighs.
She waited for his hands to tighten in her hair before she yielded. But even then she denied him. Her tongue laved instead of darted, the slow swirl offering torment instead of relief, the warning press of her teeth keeping him from simply taking.
Waves of lust forced the air from Aryck’s lungs with each slick glide of her tongue over his cock, leaving him panting, nearly mindless with the urge to push through kiss-swollen lips and into the hot cavern of her mouth.
White-hot need defined him. Much more of her torment and he would be the one on his knees, begging her to take him. Suck him. Please.
Already the word trembled on his lips. He said her name instead, putting an edge of threat into it, a promise of retribution.
She took more of him. Because she needed, she wanted, and not because he’d commanded it.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t diminish the roar of pleasure rushing from his cock to his head. It didn’t slow the quick, shallow thrusting of his hips.
On a moan he gave himself over to her ministrations, lost himself in a release he couldn’t hold back.
As he’d thought would happen, she brought him to his knees. Only rather than making him beg, she pushed him over to lie in the water, muscles lax and heart thundering, a smile on his face and a contented purr rumbling though him.
Aryck welcomed her when she settled on top of him, a sensual, feminine blanket that covered him nicely. He trailed a finger down her spine, looked deeply into her eyes.
She was aroused. As needy as he’d been.
Her nipples were pebbled points pressed to his chest. Her vulva swollen and hot against his cock, her thighs splayed and resting on either side of his in unconscious pleading for him.
A human male couldn’t have answered her silent call, but for a Jaguar—especially one who’d nearly lost the female he wanted as a mate—it was easy. He hardened at smelling himself on her, at brushing his lips across hers and tasting himself there.
It was darkly carnal—to want to imprint himself on every one of her senses—but all aspects of his soul demanded it.
He rolled so she was underneath him, hands supporting her upper body so she was only partially in the water. He cut off her surprised laugh and turned it into a sigh of pleasure by filling her with his cock.
“That feels so good,” Rebekka said, the throbbing ache between her thighs soothed by having him inside her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, touched her lips to his.
Each of his thrusts sent her spiraling upward. And with every rub of her nipples and clit against his wet skin, she surrendered to sensation—and ultimately to an ecstasy that sent her soul flying as his penis pulsed in long, hot surges of release.
Only reluctantly did she let her arms and legs fall away so he could move to his side. She sat, content to stay in the warm water rather than sit naked on the ground out of it.
He sat as well, pulling her onto his lap. “You’ve proven yourself to the pack and to the ancestors. The Were owe you a debt they can’t repay. Stay with me. Be my mate. If my father still insists you go through the Rite of Trial, then I’ll leave his pack and form my own.”
He pressed a kiss to the place where her neck and shoulder met, sucked on the mark he’d left there. “I wouldn’t have considered it possible, or even wise before, but with you as my mate, Lions, Wolves, even Hyenas might be drawn into the same pack. We could include them, furthering the idea of alliance and cooperation.”
Rebekka’s chest expanded with hope. Her lips trembled, and the words, when she could speak them, were barely more than a whisper. “And the outcasts trapped in the brothels, those not condemned by pack law?”
The instant tension in his body and tightening of his arms around her answered before he did. “If they are willing to go through the rite, they will be allowed onto our lands. Those the ancestors judge as worthy will have a home with us and be protected against recapture or retribution as a result of their life among humans.”
Her heart slowed to a painful throb. “Very few survive the rite.” And Levi wouldn’t be one of them.
“They could be given time before the rite, instruction, a chance to do things that would gain favor in the eyes of the ancestors.”
A breeze picked up, coming from the direction of the encampment, and as if speaking about the ancestors drew their attention, Rebekka thought she heard the beat of drums.
Aryck nuzzled her ear. “You hear them?”
“Yes.”
“Those belong to the shamans. There are six of them. If the elders possess stories of hearing so many shamans representing different Were groups calling upon the ancestors as one, they’ve never shared them with the pack. This is a time of great change, perhaps with the possibility of redemption for the outcasts you care so much about.”
He kissed her shoulder. “If you’re one of us, an alpha’s mate and a pack’s healer, a human whose presence in Were lands has already spawned a legend to be passed down for generations to come, then surely you are also fated to help the outcasts find a way to come home.”
Annalise Wainwright’s words whispered into Rebekka’s mind, speaking of war and alliances being forged, of healers who would emerge so those Weres trapped in an abomination of form would be made whole.
Hope returned in a crawl, too tentative to give voice to. Desire followed as Aryck’s tongue traced the shell of her ear and he murmured, “We’ll talk again about our future after the encampment is gone. Until we return to witness the departure of the humans, I intend to show you what it means to be claimed by a male Jaguar.”
AT dawn a plume of dust marked the convoy of trucks on their way to Oakland. Only two jeeps remained, positioned well away from the encampment, their drivers waiting for the command to leave.
Captain Orst leaned against the back of one vehicle. Captain Nagy stood several steps away from the other.
As Rebekka watched, a man wearing the Ivanov uniform exited the encampment. Two others came afterward, followed by a fourth and a fifth.
The last of them to leave stopped in front of the militia captain for a conversation. Captain Nagy gave a brief shake of his head, accompanying it with a gesture toward the jeep closest to them.
The man walked over to it, spending a minute doing something Rebekka couldn’t see. When he turned back toward the site, she guessed he must have a control unit in his hand, given the antenna jutting from it.
He seemed to do a count of the men gathered around the vehicles. Then satisfied, he looked forward, at the site, and yelled, “Clear!”
The word rang through the abandoned valley and was followed seconds later by the thunder of explosives. Concrete shattered and dirt erupted, reaching skyward as if a volcano spewed its unheated contents in one mighty heave.
Clouds of debris billowed outward for a short distance. And from the swirling mass, a figure emerged, an urchin dressed in gray rags with a rat sitting on his shoulder.
Fear tore through Rebekka at the sight of him, and, sensing it, Aryck’s arms tightened around her. He nuzzled her ear, murmured, “We’ll face my father and Nahuatl together.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, guessed the alpha and shaman were approaching, and knew by Aryck’s reassurance that he didn’t see the apparition standing amidst the destruction.
The urchin reached up and stroked the rat. “Game over,” he said, his image blurring into the dust created by a second explosion. “For now, Healer.”
Addai
LIGHT coalesced in front of where the urchin stood with debris billowing through his noncorporeal form. It bent and twisted into a human shape silhouetted by glorious white wings. Gained presence without becoming flesh by drawing color through it while remaining diffuse, transparent to eyes seeing only what had a physical reality.
You always did have a touch for the dramatic, Caphriel, Addai said, the words spoken on a plane unheard by the mortal.
And you weren’t always a fool for lost causes. Does this form suit you better, brother?
The grubby child with the rat perched on his shoulder transformed into a man astride a horse. He spread his arms wide and lifted his face to the sky. And death sat upon a pale horse, given power to kill with sword and plague and pestilence and disease, and with the wild beasts of the earth.
Addai shook his head. The quote grows tiresome. As does this often-repeated conversation. But I’ll say my lines so we can move beyond them. You won’t go unchallenged. You won’t succeed in the task assigned you.
Caphriel morphed again, from a horseman of the Apocalypse to an angel whose resemblance to Tir was unmistakable. Ah, brother, even if I’ve yet to discover the source of your motivation, I’m glad you continue to cling to your delusions. You and those you call allies won’t wrest this world away from our father, but the game between us helps pass the time.
