Claiming the Jackal (5 page)

Chapter Five

Rana didn’t think her time in the jackal stronghold could get any better. She and Hector fell into a natural pattern over the next few weeks. After breakfast she’d work on transcribing the jackals’ medical history. Hector came to her late in the afternoon so that they could enjoy an early dinner then retreat to her chambers before he went out on patrol. She’d return to the lab to work on her spells and experiments until Hector and his men returned from patrol. Then they’d make love until they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

She’d even had a breakthrough with her experiments, a promising leap forward that hinted at a cure. If she could duplicate the results with her latest trial she’d know for sure. Until then, she’d refrain from reporting to Markus and Tia. The last thing she wanted to do was give them and the clan false hope.

As the day deepened to evening, her hopeful excitement had waned. Something was different, a portent she could feel deep in her magical bones. It weighed on her, scattering her thoughts. She couldn’t concentrate on translating the old healer’s notes. She couldn’t focus enough to practice spell craft. Even her experiments couldn’t hold her attention. All she could think of was one thing.

Hector. He’d quit her bed to go out on patrol and she’d wanted to call him back, but not for more kisses. For the first time she’d wanted to keep him safe. It wasn’t her place or her right to ask him not to go. Even if she had that kind of relationship with him, she wouldn’t ask it of him.

But something told her this time that she’d need use of her healing skills sooner instead of later.

Nerves jangling a warning tune, she staged her supplies. When there was nothing more to be done in preparation for an emergency she wasn’t even sure would occur, she entered the hall, pausing before the mural depicting the stages of the journey through the underworld. “Lord Anubis, keep your children safe,” she prayed. “Keep Hector safe.”

She made her way up to the main level, dread increasing with each step. Two groups had gone out on patrol, one led by Hector. They were tracking leads to a possible nest of the Lost Ones, and if they uncovered it, they planned to attack. She knew the jackals patrolled the city and suburbs nightly. She knew they had vehicles equipped with sophisticated monitoring and communication devices. She knew they were seasoned warriors, skilled and deadly. They had centuries of experience facing off against the Lost Ones. It was the reason for which they had been created. She knew this, but it did nothing to quell the worry bubbling inside her, did nothing to stanch the apprehension that skittered along her skin and filled the air like a poisoned fog.

Tia stood in the main seating area, Amarie beside her. The Anput gave Rana a brief smile. “You feel it, too?”

Rana nodded. “I couldn’t concentrate on work. Something is wrong or about to be wrong. I prepared the infirmary, just in case.”

Worry lined Tia’s features, making her seem older than Rana knew her to be. “Markus is in the communication room, in contact with both patrols. He’ll let us know if there’s anything to be concerned about. For now, I could really use a distraction. Tell me about you and the captain of the guard.”

A flush crept up Rana’s cheeks. “There’s nothing much to tell.”

“Really?” Tia’s eyes twinkled. “That bedchamber may be soundproof, but the infirmary isn’t. Neither is the kitchen.”

“Blessed Anubis.” She rubbed at her forehead. She wasn’t keeping her relationship with Hector a secret, but she wasn’t sure if it was something she wanted to share, something he wanted to share. “Hector and I are...enjoying each other’s company.”

It was the truth even if it didn’t convey the depth of connection she had with the captain. Anytime her thoughts weren’t on her work, they were on him. She enjoyed him so much that the idea of not being with him filled her with panic that brought on bouts of cold sweat.

Tia studied her. “So things aren’t serious between you two?”

Rana couldn’t answer that without lying, and Tia would know it for a lie the moment the words left her lips. She tried for deflection instead. “How can it be serious? I’m an Isis witch, not a jackal.”

That cold dose of reality cramped her stomach. She knew enough about Hector to know that he had little care for Daughters of Isis, and even less trust. It was why she had yet to tell him about her bloodline. Not only would it end their relationship, whatever sort of relationship it was, but it would also end her time here at the jackal compound. Her mission to stop Amansuanan was too important to jeopardize, not when her experiments had finally yielded some results she could take to Markus.

Markus chose that moment to race down the hall. “We have injured incoming,” he announced. Rana could feel his magic streaming from him, filling the main area. In moments the community house would be flooded with jackals. “At least one is severely injured, and one, Derek, is missing. When the injured are attended to, I’ll take Hector and some of the other guards back out to find him.”

“Markus.” Worry clouded Tia’s features as she took her mate’s hands.

“He’s my responsibility. I have to bring him home.”

“Of course.”

Rana cleared her throat of the sudden relief of knowing that Hector wasn’t missing or gravely injured. “With your permission, I’ll go ready the infirmary”

“Thank you, Rana.” Markus nodded. “The other priestesses who helped you before have been called. They’ll be down shortly.”

“Yes, sir.” Rana quickly retreated downstairs to don her scrubs. The three priestesses who’d helped her with previous medical emergencies entered the infirmary and she quickly directed them to prepare, standing ready at each bed.

No sooner had they gotten into position than the infirmary erupted into chaos. She swung into action as the first jackals were brought in, ascertaining severity of injuries. Pushing everything else aside, she sank into the flow of healing, using magical and mundane means. She had no idea how long she worked as she directed the other priestesses’ healing abilities in an all-out effort to save the jackal warriors.

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t save the young jackal. The only thing she could do for him was make his final moments comfortable and be with him as Anubis claimed him.

Silence filled the infirmary as she withdrew her magic. Several guards took up what space there was around the beds, with mates sitting beside a couple of the injured men. She blinked back tears as she pulled the sheet up over the fallen jackal and called his time of death. Even though she’d lost patients before, mortality was never an easy thing to face. “Does he... Did Peter have a mate? Someone I need to talk to?”

“No, priestess,” one of the guards said, his face bleak. “I’m sure he appreciated having you beside him at the last. We all did.”

“I just wish I could have done more for him.”
One more life to lay at Amansuanan’s feet.
One more reason why this has to end and she has to be stopped.

She drew a steadying breath, wishing she knew where Hector was, wishing she could see him and know for herself that he was all right. But she knew her duty wasn’t done. “The rest of you should seek your beds. I’ll go report to Markus. Has he come back?”

“He’s back,” Tia answered. She sat in the only available chair, her features drawn with fatigue. “He’s with Hector in his office. They didn’t find Derek. I’ll come with you in case he needs me.”

“No, you won’t. You’re going home.” She held up a hand when Tia began to protest. “I’m pulling rank as clan healer. Amarie, take her home.”

“Yes, healer.” The female guard pulled Tia to her feet.

Tia attempted another protest. “But Markus—”

“Will understand,” Rana cut in, then gentled her tone. “You used a lot of energy tonight, more than you had to spare. Go home, or I will tell the Anapa why you’re so tired.”

With Tia headed home, the other clan members began to disperse. Rana dismissed two of the priestesses, leaving just Inari to monitor those too injured to be moved, disposed of her scrubs and cleaned up, then went to Markus’s office to make a report.

And immediately wished she hadn’t.

Chapter Six

Hector stalked across the polished wood floor, the sound of his boots an indication of his rage. “This has gone on long enough! For centuries we have been in defensive mode, engaging the Lost Ones as we encounter them while protecting the humans. The time for defense is past. It’s time for us to attack first!”

Markus sat in the chair behind his massive carved desk, his fingers steepled together. “How do you propose we do that? They use portals to travel. We don’t know where their lair is.”

Hector planted his feet. “We know who leads them. We know who controls them.”

Markus leaned forward. “Do you know where Amansuanan is hiding?”

“No.” Hector clenched his fists in frustration. “But I bet one of the Isis witches does.”

Something rolled through Markus’s eyes. “Which one?”

“I don’t know. One of the older ones who was around when Amansuanan was part of their circle. I find it hard to believe that none of them know anything about that witch or the one who escaped through the portal with her when we battled them.”

“High Priestess Aya is the oldest of the priestesses in her circle,” Markus said. “She trained with Amansuanan. Like me, she was there when we discovered the bodies of Sekhanu and High Priestess Asharet. She thought Amansuanan had perished in that attack as so many others, jackals and priestesses alike, had.”

“She could be lying,” he bit out. “They all could. No Isis witch should be trusted!”

The clan leader didn’t move, didn’t raise an eyebrow, but Hector felt the press of his anger all the same. “Tread carefully, Hector,” he said in a tone all the more dangerous for its softness. “Your Anput is a Daughter of Isis.”

The rebuke in Markus’s tone made Hector drop his gaze, as submissive as his anger would allow him to be at that moment. He’d lost a good jackal, several more were injured and one was missing. His failure to protect their people weighed heavily on him. He needed to do something, anything, and the fact that they had no leads, no clues to hunt down their enemies, chafed him.

Somehow he bit back his anger. “Our Anput pledged herself to you and the clan under Anubis’s eternal eye. We all know that you now have a blood bond with her, because we can feel her through the clan bond. She may be a Daughter of Isis, but she is a jackal now. One of us. I trust her. But I don’t trust the other priestesses. While it’s true none of them have done anything suspicious while they’ve been here, I’m not going to relax the guards watching them. I’m not going to trust them. Any of them.”

* * *

Rana leaned against the wall outside the office, her hands pressed to her mouth. Hector’s words shouldn’t have hurt her, especially after the way he’d acted with her in the infirmary. Still, his lack of trust, especially after she had been so intimate, so stripped bare with him, sliced through her. After all their time together, how could he still not trust her?

How can you expect him to trust you when you haven’t been honest with him?
a sly voice whispered through her.
Why haven’t you told him you’re her granddaughter?

Because she was afraid.

She closed her eyes, trying to absorb that simple truth. In her three hundred years, she’d traveled the world, done things, seen many more. She’d been in countless dangerous situations in the quest to grow her skills and her craft. She shouldn’t have been afraid, but she was.

This was home. Here she had purpose, direction, a place. The Daughters had a number of healers in the circle, some as good as she at their craft, a couple better. She wasn’t needed there and, if she was honest with herself, had preferred to spend more time away from the circle than be an integral part of it. The jackals needed her, and being needed felt good. If they discovered the truth...

If they discovered the truth, her short stay here at the jackal stronghold would be over. No one would want the direct descendant of their mortal enemy tending them at their most vulnerable. Her relationship with Hector would be over.

Hector. How would he react? Rana’s stomach cramped with uncertainty. No, not uncertainty. Given the rant she’d just overheard, she had a good idea of what Hector’s reaction to her confession would be, and it wasn’t pretty.

It was time to face reality. What she and Hector had was a wild fantasy, passionate and so very satisfying. It was also a fling, transient, temporary. It had never been about forever. It had never been about falling in love, joining as mates, having children. Even if she’d found herself dreaming of just that.

Stress clawed at her insides as she rubbed a hand over her forehead. Fatigue beat at her, making it difficult to think, and she desperately needed to think. She needed rest. She needed time to build up her emotional defenses. She needed time to plan what she would say, how she would say it and when. She’d hope to have time to use the results of her experiments to come up with a charm that would make the jackals impervious to the Lost Ones, an amulet that would help them defeat Amansuanan. Success would have secured her place with the clan, and perhaps they would have even forgiven her for her bloodline. She just needed more time. Unfortunately, time had run out.

“Rana.”

She froze at the order implicit in Markus’s tone. Belatedly she realized that he’d probably scented her, if he hadn’t heard her approach. She still wore her surgical scrubs, streaked here and there with jackal blood. She could only hope that he hadn’t realized how long she’d stood in the hallway, and that her eavesdropping had been unintentional.

Squaring her shoulders, she stepped into the office. The hallway on the lower level of the community house was decorated with scenes of Anubis guiding a soul through Duat, a soul she’d discovered was Sekhanu, the founder of their clan. Though parts of the underworld were scary, especially if one didn’t have the proper spells to safely maneuver, the images had been painted to comfort, to show that Lord Anubis was in control and those in his care safe.

Here, Anubis was not only in control, but also in a place of power. In a recess against the back wall, two columns carved with hieroglyphs of praises to Anubis flanked a life-size statue of the god of death. The lighting made it seem as if the jackal-headed god was striding out of the darkness, ankh in his right hand and a staff of power in his left, ready to dispense justice and determine a person’s fate.

The desk stood in front of it, so the person behind it in the bloodred leather chair had Anubis at his back. It dominated the rest of the room, intricately carved from dark bronze wood. A laptop and a lamp were the only objects on its surface, but it didn’t need anything else. A sitting area composed of a couch and two chairs took up the far wall, but this area was the focus. It was a place of power, a place of hard decisions and swift action.

Two guest chairs in the same bloodred leather sat on the other side of the desk. Hector stood between them, his bearing military straight, but Rana could almost feel the barely leashed rage that boiled inside him. She strengthened her mental shields, hoping to dampen the effect his anger had on her, knowing she wouldn’t be successful. They were intimately connected now. She had few defenses when it came to this man.

“I’m here, Anapa.”

“You have something to report?”

Report. Yes, that was why she’d come here, not to find Hector. Turning around, she straightened her shoulders, her gaze pinned to a point above the jackal leader’s left shoulder. “Yes, I assumed you’d want a status report on the injured.”

“Of course.” He gestured to the chair. “You must be exhausted. Have a seat.”

“No, but thank you. If I sit, I might not get back up.” Besides, Hector stood next to the chair. She couldn’t be that close to him, as angry as he was. She didn’t know if he’d want her, an Isis witch, that close. His anger beat at her like a giant’s fists, threatening to shatter defenses already stretched thin by the magical and technological healing she’d done.

“All of the injured have been stabilized,” she said, scrubbing her hands down her face. “Those who were functioning under their own power and minimally injured went home. Two are in critical condition and will be kept overnight to be sure they are out of danger. Inari will monitor them for a few hours while I get some rest.”

“I’ll have two of the men stand guard,” Hector said, his voice a low growl. “The priestess doesn’t need to stay.”

Rana kept her gaze on Markus, ignoring the stab of hurt Hector’s words had caused her. “If you feel it is necessary,” she said, surprised at how even her tone was. “However, considering that you don’t have any jackals with medical training, and they therefore couldn’t discern the difference between severe indigestion and a heart attack—and Inari is a nurse in a human hospital—she will stay on duty and monitor our patients until I can take over.”

Hector growled, but remained silent.

Markus glanced from one to the other, his gaze measuring. Then he turned to Rana. “It’s just a precaution. Jackals can be unpredictable when they’re injured.”

Blood flooded her face. Markus’s explanation was as much an excuse for Hector’s behavior as it was an explanation. Hector didn’t trust priestesses to watch over his injured, even though she and the others had treated almost every jackal in the clan over the past few weeks. She supposed she couldn’t blame him, but surely he knew by now that all of the Daughters of Isis were not like Amansuanan! She wasn’t like her grandmother.

It didn’t matter. Not to Hector, whom she’d let into her bed and her heart. She’d thought, she’d hoped, that things had changed, that Hector had changed. He hadn’t. Hatred still blinded him, hatred and a renewed thirst for revenge. He wouldn’t let it go, which meant that she would have to.

Rana’s defenses began to fracture.
Hold on
, she told herself.
Just a few minutes more
,
then you can be away from them.
Away from him.

She lifted her chin, her attitude directed at Hector, but her words for Markus. “I will inform Inari so that she’s aware of this unpredictability. One of the jackals has a mate and she is staying at his bedside. The other man might appreciate the presence of another jackal nearby. I’ll need at least four hours of rest before I can attempt healing again. It would probably be good to institute a rotation of guards until my patients can be released. That way we can be assured that everyone is protected from...unpredictability.”

Falling back on the training that allowed her to treat patients in a war zone and other harsh conditions, she continued, “The jackal who didn’t make it—”

“Peter.” The word was a snarl from Hector’s throat. “The jackal murdered by that witch bitch’s Lost Ones is named Peter.”

“I know his name.” She swallowed. “I can ready Peter’s body, but I don’t know what you do with your dead—”

Hector snarled again. “We take care of our own.”

The force of Hector’s fury hit her defense, causing her to stagger back a step. She clenched her hands into fists, her nails digging so deeply into her palms that she drew blood. The physical pain erected a barrier against the mental anguish, though she knew her meager defenses would crumble if she had to take much more.
Hold on
, she told herself again. “Thank you, Rana, but that’s not necessary.” Markus ran a hand over his face. “You are clearly exhausted from tending our people. This, however, is a duty that falls to the Anapa and Anput. Hector, gather our clan.”

Hector spun on his heel, heading for the door without a word. If he spared her a glance, she didn’t know, since she kept her gaze on Markus’s desk. The last thing she wanted to see was the hatred and anger on Hector’s face. She especially didn’t want to see it directed at her.

Hurt pressed down on her, sapping what little energy she had left. Her head, her back, her heart, they all ached. As much as she understood Hector’s anger, she didn’t understand the ferocity of it. Surely Markus had more reason to be angry, but he’d married Tia, granddaughter of the High Priestess. If he didn’t carry hatred in his heart, why did Hector?

She couldn’t look at Markus, sure her misery was clear on her face. “Thank you, Anapa. If you have no further need of me, I’ll retire.”

“Rana.”

She paused. “Yes?”

He gestured to the chair. “Sit.”

This time, the order was clear. She sat. Silence built as Markus regarded her, his expression measuring. She fought the urge to squirm, unsure of why he had asked her to remain behind.

“You care for him, don’t you?”

She released a shaky sigh. “Pretty sure
care
is too weak a word to describe how I feel about Hector, but yes. I care. More than I should, but I don’t think it’s enough.”

“I’d hope it would be.” Markus sighed, too. “I had hoped that your relationship with him would dull his fury, which is why I didn’t put a stop to it. Though he wasn’t born the day we lost our leader Sekhanu, he’s been at war since he came of age. Two thousand years of fighting Lost Ones, of fending off attacks from rogue witches who wanted a jackal pelt for their dark spells.”

She recoiled. “There are dark witches out there using jackals in their spells?” Bile rose in her throat.

“There are,” Markus answered, his expression grim. “Hector has been fighting them for centuries. He lost his father to them, and nearly lost his brother Alonso to the Lost Ones’ curse. As captain of the guard, I send him out to battle daily. You can understand why he thinks of an Isis priestess as enemy first. His rage is consuming him alive. It weighs on him.”

“I know.” She looked down at her fingers knotted tightly together in her lap. “I heard his report to you. His anger is the one thing I don’t think I can heal.”

“Perhaps.” His amber gazed pierced her, seeing right to her soul. “You need to tell him, Rana. I will not have you continue to deceive my captain.”

He knew.
Dread coiled in her stomach as silence fell thick and absolute between them.

“Sir?” Her voice was a squeak.

“Tia told me of your relationship to Amansuanan and Cassandra when you asked to remain here in the jackal compound,” Markus said. “Yes, she is a Daughter of Isis, but she’s my wife, and Anput of this clan. My Anput and I don’t keep secrets from each other, especially those that could endanger our people.”