Healer's Choice (9 page)

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 suffering, 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.

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.

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 . . .

She thought about the wedding bands that so often glinted in the subdued lighting of the brothels. Even Levi, who routinely slept in Feliss’s room and intended to buy out her contract, took what was offered free by the prostitutes.

Hopelessness settled like a heavy weight in Rebekka’s chest. She knew there was a difference between intimacy and sex, believed the act itself was meaningless for those who visited the brothels. But she wasn’t sure a man was capable of being faithful to only one woman over the course of a lifetime together. And she didn’t think she could handle that kind of betrayal by someone she’d given her heart to and created children with.