Healer's Choice (2 page)

The Wolf complied, stretching out though her body vibrated with agitation.

Rebekka trusted Levi to have spoken the truth about what the Weres desired, but she couldn’t bring herself to use her gift without making sure the Wolf understood fully what her choice meant. “I can push the parts of you that are human back or I can push the animal away, so you’re one or the other. But if I change you, there’s no going back. You will remain in animal form or in a human one. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” The answer was growled with lips pulled back and eyes darkening with rage. “I am Wolf. My mate is Wolf.”

Rebekka looked up to find the male had moved close enough to attack. He was tensed, but she’d lived in the Were brothels since she was sixteen, and with Levi at her back she felt no fear.

She turned her attention to the female, reaching for calm and projecting it outward. She wasn’t telepathic but her gift allowed her to touch emotion, to use it when dealing with animals and Weres.

“This won’t hurt, but it’ll feel strange, almost like you’re a piece of clay in the hands of a sculptor.” She placed her hands on the female’s furred shoulder. “Try not to offer any resistance. It’ll go faster and be easier for both of us if you don’t.”

“I’ll try.”

Rebekka closed her eyes, gathering her will to her as though it were something with form and substance. Her fingers tingled where they touched the Wolf, but the feeling passed quickly. In its place came the stomach-dropping sensation of fingertips passing through furred skin, like the sliding of a blunt knife into soft clay.

She became both sculptor and tool with the use of her gift. It was a melding that took her completely, sucked her in and blocked everything external out.

It was instinctive, complex. In her mind she saw what needed to be re-formed, reshaped. She felt her will driving the human parts back and tugging the wolf forward, forcing change where it wouldn’t willingly come.

By the time it was done and her hands dropped to her lap, she was light-headed.

The Wolf sprang to its feet and backed away, telegraphing distrust despite Rebekka’s help. The male took his mate’s place, positioning himself on hands and knees rather than lying down.

Weariness washed through Rebekka. Sensing it, Levi said, “Take as long as you need. The Tiger, Canino, is accompanying Cyrin and me to Lion lands. The three of us will make sure you get back to the brothel safely before we leave.”

Rebekka reached for strength and found it. “I can keep going.”

She placed her hands on the Wolf’s back. Though his mate had spoken for him, she still asked if it was his choice to become fully wolf. He yipped in answer, howled, and once again Rebekka let herself become her gift.

The healing took longer. Rebekka knew it by the change in light, by the hunger pains reminding her it had been a long time since morning and breakfast.

As soon as she lifted her hands from the male’s fur he sprang to his feet. But unlike the female, he didn’t back away in distrust. He stared, intelligent eyes meeting hers, holding a promise that if it ever came to pass that she needed his aid, he would help her.

“Thank you,” she said.

He turned away then and, with his mate, melted into the darkening forest.

“You need food,” Levi said. “The others can hunt while I build a fire.”

Rebekka glanced at the three remaining Weres. They were all big cats.

Cyrin, Levi’s brother, had the flattened, maned face of a lion. His arms were furred, ending in paws with deadly, nonretractable claws.

The Leopard had animal arms, legs, head, and back but human chest and genitals. A short distance away was the Tiger, a beast from his armpits down.

Rage filled Rebekka looking at the men. It poured strength into her.

What had been done to these Weres was criminal. It should never have been allowed by the vice lords who ruled the red zone.

There were Weres in the brothels who were an abomination of shape, too. She knew some of their stories but none of them had been trapped and created through torture so they could be used for entertainment purposes.

“I can do another before eating,” Rebekka said. Her gaze fell on the Leopard. With only his chest and genitals human, he would be the easiest—or so she thought until he indicated his choice, to take a man’s form.

She was shaking with exhaustion by the time it was done, so tired it sounded as though the ocean thundered in her head. So weary she couldn’t find the strength to stand despite the smell of meat cooking in a fire pit.

“Thank you,” the Leopard said.

Curious, Rebekka asked, “Why?”

“Because I have people to kill and this form will serve me best.”

Levi returned to help Rebekka to her feet. The Leopard lingered only long enough to eat some of the cooked deer; then after accepting a knife from Levi, he, too, entered the forest, startling a bright red cardinal into flight as he passed under the branch it sat on.

Food restored Rebekka’s strength enough for her to heal the Tiger, Canino, and then Levi’s brother, Cyrin. Both chose to take their animal forms.

“Stay here for the night? Or go back to the brothel?” Levi asked.

Rebekka looked at the rapidly darkening sky. “I’ve been away too long. By now I’ll be needed in the brothels. If we hurry we can make it back to Oakland.”

BLOOD and bowel and death. The shallow grave was an afterthought. The burial meant to delay the discovery of the bodies, hiding scent until predators had destroyed answers to how and when and who, and nature had eradicated the trail leading back to where.

The attempt failed. In jaguar form Aryck could easily find the answers to all those questions. Even
why
didn’t evade him, not when he felt the same seething emotions over the presence of human intruders in territory held by the Weres.

Giving up the Jaguar’s black form, fur yielded to smooth, deeply tanned skin. Bones and organs reorganized, the pain sharp, excruciating, lasting only long enough to mark the transition between beast and man, to serve as a reminder of the covenant between his kind and the Earth that had given birth to them.

Aryck remained crouched at the graveside, looking down at the man and woman he’d unearthed. His pack mate Daivat’s scent rose, intermingled with that of the dead.

Arrogant fool
, Aryck thought, lips tightening into a grim line as he surveyed the carnage.

He reached in and grabbed the man’s blood-drenched shirt. Pulled the corpse from the shallow blanket of earth with easy strength.

The head dropped as though it would follow the shower of dirt back into the grave. It remained held to the body by sinew alone, a testament to the powerful swipe of Daivat’s claws in what would have been a fatal strike, though whether it had come first or last was unanswerable.

The human had been mauled. He’d been attacked in a rage Aryck knew stemmed from an urge not only to drive out an intruder but to prove himself, to issue a challenge to both the interlopers and, subconsciously, to the pack’s alpha.

Aryck released the corpse. It landed on the rich loam of the shallow hole with a soft thud.

He took more care with the female, rising to his feet as he lifted her. Her skirt fell open as he stepped backward, stirring the air and adding the smell of sex to that of death.

Aryck placed her on the ground before returning to his crouch. The front of her blouse was torn and, like the skirt, opened to leave her bare and exposed.

Bruises marred her skin. Black and yellow. Purple. Old and new alike. A long history of them on her arms and legs.

His gaze flicked to the dead man in consideration, then back to the woman. Between her pubic mound and left hip she bore a tattoo, a solid circle of black with a bloodred symbol set in its center.

Dried semen on her inner thighs told a complex tale. Not a single man, but many. All of them human. Except one. Daivat.

Was it rape? Aryck growled low and deep in his throat. The thought of it was abhorrent, regardless of the species involved in the act.

He studied the woman, looking for evidence to either condemn or vindicate Daivat of at least one of his crimes, then growled again in frustration at not finding any. Neither his jaguar senses nor his human ones could tell whether she’d given herself to Daivat willingly or not.

The blood on her clothes and skin belonged to the dead man. Her death had been as quick as her companion’s, but not as messy, a snapped neck instead of a throat ripped open.

Both killings happened more than a mile away in a tangled stretch of wild grapevines. And like the burial place, the attack was on Coyote land. It was forbidden territory to any Jaguar except those sent for the purpose of gathering information about the humans who’d arrived in a caravan of heavy trucks.

Their encampment was guarded by uniformed men anxious to send bullets into live targets. The rattle of machine guns cut across the valley daily, scattering predator and prey alike with random bursts of violence and the senseless brutality that was the hallmark of the only-human race.

Aryck rose from his examination of the female. He wondered what Daivat’s explanation of events would be.

Entering the forbidden area alone was enough to warrant punishment. Killing the humans without sanction, then hiding the deed rather than coming forward and explaining the necessity of it, made what he’d done worse.

Weres were three-souled. Man soul and beast soul living harmoniously and perfectly entwined in the physical world while the eternal soul resided in the shadowlands with the ancestors.

In another Were, killing and hiding the deed might signify the beginning of a rogue state, an imbalance or separation of the man and animal souls. Aryck didn’t think that was the case with Daivat.

This challenge had been a long time in coming. It was inevitable, but only a fool blinded by arrogance would issue it now, and under these circumstances.

Pure jaguars were solitary creatures by nature, with males fighting to establish and defend their territories against other males. In Weres the animal need of their beast soul was tempered by their human one. It drew them together into communities, for fellowship and safety and to keep from losing themselves in beast form and beast mind. Even so, an alpha couldn’t afford to show weakness or he would find himself challenged by another male.

Aryck’s fingers flexed in jaguar reaction, instinctively preparing for a fight as he reached mentally for the pack’s alpha, his father, Koren.

The ability to communicate telepathically was rare among Weres, but it ran strong in his father’s bloodline.
You found something?
Koren asked without preamble.

Yes.
Aryck transferred images and perceptions to his father, starting from where he’d come across Daivat’s scent and traveling to the kill site, before ending with what he’d discovered in the shallow grave.

Prostitute
, his father said at the sight of the woman’s tattoo.
There are settlements in the San Joaquin still following many of the laws enacted during The Last War.

Though he didn’t elaborate further, Aryck knew his father hadn’t lain with one of the prostitutes, but had seen the tattoo in the days when he himself was an enforcer hunting Weres who fled a death sentence. The mating bond between his parents had been so strong that even though his mother died giving birth to him, his father had never sought another female, much less a human who sold herself.

No. Dispose of them as you see fit. Daivat remains away from camp. I will summon the pack to the challenge circle and confront him with his crimes once you’ve both returned
.

Aryck’s fingers flexed and phantom claws emerged. Inherent in his father’s words was a warning he should be ready to serve as the pack’s enforcer.

The mental connection fell away, leaving Aryck to contemplate the corpses he’d unearthed. Jaguars carried their dead high into the trees in a place deemed sacred by a shaman. They left them for the carrion birds and insects to pick clean, then for the sun to purify. Later, those bones that could be gathered by the elders were placed in the ancestral cave dug deep in a steep hillside.

He was no shaman to know the disposition of these only-human souls. Nor did they matter to him. Pack came first, and these dead represented nothing but danger to his kind.

He and Daivat had both covered their tracks to this burial site. Still, until more was known about the human encampment, Aryck was hesitant to leave the bodies so close to it. If there were gifted humans among those who’d invaded Coyote lands, it was possible they could find these corpses.

Even in the cities, where rule of law was said to prevail, Weres were protected only while in human form. Evidence of a jaguar attack might well offer an excuse for those in the encampment to come hunting with their guns, killing his kind regardless of whether they wore fur or not.