Healer's Choice (40 page)

Rebekka moved forward cautiously. Once again the breeze brought the sound of goats.

They bleated continuously. Sounds of agitation and distress.

The taste of sickness coated her tongue more heavily. It slid down her throat until she bent over and retched.

She forced herself forward. The rustling of animals hidden in the ruins grew louder.

An involuntary cry escaped when a burrowing owl launched itself upward in front of her like a warning to stop.

Her nerves stretched tauter. Just a little bit farther, she told herself again. Just until she reached the corner ahead.

Thick, wild grapevines began to dominate. They formed curtains in what might once have been windows and trailed across the path, making it treacherous.

As she drew near the corner she thought she caught the whiff of a campfire. She relaxed a tiny bit. The Jaguars cooked over fire pits. Surely any humans in the area would have eaten their meals earlier and doused their fires so they could take shelter.

Rebekka reached the corner and discovered just how badly she erred.

Men approached on another path, from the direction the earlier gunfire had come from.

In a glance she took in the black-and-white-striped uniforms that work-gang convicts wore in Oakland.

The deer carcass carried on a pole between two of them.

The militiamen accompanying them.

Before she could dart out of sight, a convict ranging ahead of the others noticed her. She turned and ran. Hoped they wouldn’t dare follow this close to full dark.

A shout told her otherwise.

Then racing footsteps.

A rifle fired a moment later, sending a bullet crashing into the rubble to her right.

She tripped on grapevines and fell. Scrambled to her feet but the delay had cost her.

She managed another few yards before one of the men tackled her, driving her into the ground.

Two others joined the first. Flipping her. Pinning her arms and legs. Tugging at her clothing. Rape on their minds and in their expressions.

Out of the corner of her eye there was a flash of white. She fought to escape even harder when she realized it was Caius barreling toward her.

Canino followed, and in an instant she was freed, though she didn’t dare rise to her feet. Machine gun bullets sprayed above and around her, shredding vines and ricocheting off stone.

The three convicts lay dead, killed by Tigers or the militiamen. She couldn’t tell without examining them, and didn’t care to. Her heart thundered and fear gripped her as she visually searched the ground near where Canino and Caius had disappeared into the mazelike ruins, desperate to see no evidence either of them had been hit.

“Grab her,” the militiaman holding the machine gun said, his eyes and body making a continuous sweep, his finger never leaving the gun’s trigger. “She goes back with us. She needs to pay for the trouble we’re going to be in because of her.”

“I like the way you think, Gregor,” the man carrying the rifle said, drawing close enough for Rebekka to recognize the Ivanov crest embroidered into his collar.

She scrambled backward. Desperate hope flaring to life. If only she could escape and take the information back to The Iberá . . .

He stepped between her and his companion, providing an instant of protection against the spray of machine gun bullets. When he jerked an amulet from beneath his shirt and glanced down to see if she was Were, Rebekka rolled to her feet and tried to dart away.

She made it only a few steps before pain splintered through her head. Unconsciousness followed.

THE closer Aryck got to the encampment, the more he feared for Rebekka. What did she hope to accomplish by making this trip?

Humans who would unleash the horrors she’d seen in Wolf and Lion territory wouldn’t be open to reason. She had to know that.

Suspicion tried to invade his thoughts as it had many times since it became obvious she was heading directly to the encampment. How did she know the way?

Aryck refused to contemplate she might betray the Weres. But the Lion enforcer who’d caught up and now easily paced him grew grimmer with each mile.

Full dark had arrived, a time when natural predators hunted, and Rebekka was defenseless against them save for the calm her gift allowed her to project. Above them the moon inched higher, slowly moving closer to when the Weres were to meet.

They’d already passed the turnoff leading to the ridge path and the place where the encampment would be visible. Aryck pushed on, determined they would find her safe and unharmed.

Hope surged through him at the sound of something coming their way and making no attempt at stealth. Caution dictated he take cover.

A glance to the side and Chátima pointed to where he intended to veer off the trail. Aryck chose a place opposite, in case ambush became necessary.

Both remained human. Both drew knives from sheaths worn at their thighs. Both readied themselves to attack.

What had sounded like one entity became two. Aryck cocked his head, interpreting the footfalls. Two and four, with the four-footed animal the heavier and both of those approaching close enough to hear them panting.

Aryck was already standing and hurrying forward when the Tigers came into view, Caius holding his side, the smell of human blood and sweat preceding them.

“What happened?” Aryck asked, reaching them a moment before Chátima did.

Tears rolled down the cub’s cheeks. A sob escaped. “We didn’t know the humans were so close until it was too late. They caught Rebekka when she tried to run away from them. They were holding her down and pulling at her clothes. Canino and I stopped them. But then the two with guns started shooting and we couldn’t get close again. One of them hit Rebekka so hard she didn’t get up. They left the dead humans but they took her with them to the encampment.”

Despite the pain stabbing through Aryck’s heart he knelt and pulled Caius into a hug. “You and Canino showed great courage to do what you did, and even greater sense to retreat and seek help rather than throw your lives away. Rebekka wouldn’t have wanted you to do that. We’ll get her back.
I’ll
get her back.”

“We should have caught up to her right after she left. She asked Canino to take the journal to Levi. Then we found her necklace hanging from a tree.” There was confusion and hurt in Caius’s voice, the pain of a boy who knew the sting of abandonment and loss.

“I’m sure she had a reason,” Aryck said. “We’ll ask her about it when she’s back with us, then warn her against going off alone again.”

He set Caius away from him and said to Chátima, “The Tigers will accompany us to the meeting place.”

“Agreed.”

They backtracked. Then took the trail that climbed out of the Coyotes’ ruin-filled valley, finally reaching the ridge where the other Weres waited.

The mental link with his father allowed for the easy transfer of information. What surprised Aryck was arriving to find his father had openly revealed their ability to communicate by sharing what Caius had said with the others.

“I intend to go after her as soon as my duty here is finished,” Aryck said, keeping his voice from offering a challenge, though inside the Jaguar seethed at the delay even as the man knew it was necessary.

The Wolf alpha was the first to respond. “We owe the healer a debt. If we decide to eradicate the settlement tonight, then our attack can begin after you’ve freed her. If necessary, the Wolves will provide a distraction.”

Koren folded his arms across his chest as if to bar the part of him that was father instead of alpha from expressing itself. “We, too, owe the healer a debt. We will also allow enough time for her to be recovered.”

“We will as well,” the female Lion who acted on behalf of the grand matriarch said, sparing the Hyena, Coyote, and Bear alphas a quick glance before pointedly turning her attention to the encampment. “Unless there is an objection, let us agree to the Jaguar enforcer going first, and then to seeing this thing done tonight. There is no advantage in waiting and every reason to eliminate the threat to us immediately.”

It took less than five minutes for the alphas to reach agreement, and only another twenty for the enforcers and the men who would go with them to settle on a strategy for attack.

As Aryck started toward the path that would take him to Rebekka, Nahuatl stopped him. “Perhaps she went to the encampment to meet someone but was intercepted by others unaware of her purpose. Are you so sure you know her heart?”

A knot of pain formed in Aryck’s chest as he flashed back to his last conversation with her. He wasn’t sure of her heart when it came to him. But for the Weres, especially the outcasts, he had an answer. “Yes.”

 

REBEKKA swam upward to consciousness with nausea and panic pressing in on her. She fought back the urge to vomit, terrified of dying with it filling her throat, blocked from escaping by the gag tied brutally around her head.

She was bound, wrists to ankles, and lying on her side. Frantic sound, a sense of urgency, pounded into her, slicing through the pain in her head and bringing her fully awake.

The pungent scent of goat surrounded her. Their frantic bleating and repeated battering at the fence separating them from her brought horrifying knowledge racing with it.

Plague. They were ripe to deliver it.

Voices expanded her awareness beyond the goats and their desperate, instinctive desire to get to her. This close to them it was harder to call back the part of her soul that was her gift. She managed it, but her control wouldn’t last.

The animals quieted. A black mouse decided to change hiding places. It darted past her, its fur brushing her forehead, the soft feel of it taking away the stabbing pain that remained from the blow.

Rebekka sought out the voices through slitted eyes, careful not to let the two men who argued a short distance away know she was conscious. One of them was the militiaman who’d carried the machine gun. The other wore a rich man’s clothing, though she didn’t recognize him.

She closed her eyes again, listened as the stranger said, “I told you not to leave the herd unattended.”

“And I got tired of listening to them. I got tired of smelling goat piss and stinking like it. I wanted to do some hunting, and I padlocked the door shut to keep your precious herd safe. You should be grateful I went after deer and bagged something better. It saves you the cost of a prostitute. For now anyway. Down the road I’ll expect you to let me have one of them—call it hazardous duty pay, a little bonus to compensate me for the shit I’ve had to deal with.”

“I’m the one who decides what your services are worth.”

An ugly laugh met the comment. “Are you, Radek? The Ivanov patriarch pays my salary. Your brother Viktor gives the orders I say ‘yes Sir’ to, not you. If you and I didn’t share a common interest when it comes to liking women dead at the end of our fun, I wouldn’t be standing in this shit hole. I’d be in my nice bunk fantasizing about killing the whore underneath me while I pounded into her with my cock.”

Someone banging on the door jerked Rebekka’s eyes open. A voice from the other side yelled, “Get out here, Gregor. Now. Captain Orst wants to see you. He wants to hear what you’ve got to say about letting three convicts die and why you and Morse left their bodies behind. I want to know the same.”

Hope surged to life inside Rebekka at the mention of the guardsman she’d met in The Iberá’s study. It had to be the same man. He must have accompanied the convict work-gang. It wasn’t unheard of when their labor was contracted out.

She struggled into a sitting position, grateful her hands were bound to her ankles in front of her instead of behind. She tried desperately to get the gag out of her mouth, and, finding it impossible, to wriggle to a place where the man at the door would see her when it opened.

Her control of her gift slipped. The goats resumed bleating frantically and trying to escape their pen. The taste of disease filled her mouth and clung to her nostrils, bringing with it another nearly overwhelming urge to vomit.

“Get out here, Gregor!”

“Go,” Radek said, moving the short distance to Rebekka and using his foot to send her sprawling backward. “I don’t want to deal with that prick Orst tonight, or my brother’s lapdog Nagy. Take care of your mess or you won’t get to have fun with your prize.”

The militiaman left.

Radek bolted the door after him then paced in agitation back and forth between Rebekka and the pen.

He cursed Gregor and Orst and Nagy. Muttered about changing his plan, about the goats not being completely ready, about the wisdom of freeing a couple of them since there were tigers in the area.

Desperation seized Rebekka. Somehow she had to escape and get to Captain Orst. She had to tell him Radek was purposely letting plague loose. She had to stop the Weres from attacking the encampment and slaughtering innocent people for something only Radek was responsible for.