The knowledge came to her not just because there was no battle between shaman and ancestors, no drums beating in either this world or the place Aryck called the shadowlands, but because the boy’s need didn’t absorb her gift. Touching him didn’t stop the frigid emptiness from spreading, as if some unseen cavity was opening up inside her.
She remembered thinking as she healed the Wolves that her will and gift were just another name for a part of her soul. So she concentrated, consciously gathering what she’d always called her will, and it was like reeling in a part of her that traveled outside of her body and was her gift.
Heat replaced the icy emptiness until the only reality was the sick Lion. Then, as she’d done with the Wolves, she looked for the source of illness and its cause.
She touched the teen’s lips and jaw and throat for infection pooled in saliva. His forehead for the encephalitis-like inflammation. She found neither.
Her hand moved lower and he moaned in pain when she reached his abdomen. There was infection there. By the amount of it she thought it had been building for some time, perhaps ignored while he was in lion form, or perhaps—
A memory clicked into place. She recognized the ailment as a burst appendix. It was rare among Weres but she’d encountered it once before, soon after moving to the brothel Dorrit managed.
Rebekka drew on the power that had first come to her after accepting the amulet, pulling heat from the core of the Earth—or perhaps the fires of a demon-filled hell—to burn away the mass of infection rather than call on the boy’s own body to fight it.
Time lost all meaning. Nothing existed outside of healing until the boy rolled away, breaking the physical contact.
Reality returned in a rush of frigid cold and horror. Outside the dwelling came a hyena’s scream abruptly ended.
The feeling of ice in Rebekka’s chest grew muted, diminished as though the danger close by had melted away, the intensity fading with the deaths of the hosts carrying it. What remained felt like a single shard driven through her heart, leaving her with a sense of it well beyond the eucalyptus grove, somewhere deeper in the forest. It winked out completely when she took the amulet from Aryck.
Rebekka started to rise to her feet. Magena stopped her with a touch to her arm. “What was wrong with the cub?”
“A burst appendix causing a large pocket of infection.”
“Good,” Magena said but didn’t relax. “Will you accompany me outside to examine the dead and injured?”
Rebekka’s skin felt clammy, coated with guilt. The image from the Barrens rose in her mind, human bodies burning on wooden pallets, and, following it, the Elk she’d seen in Wolf lands.
She didn’t want to see evidence of the urchin’s horrible gift. She’d known when she elected to heal Kerr that any choice she made damned her.
But like that one, there was no denying Magena’s request. “I’ll go with you.”
Aryck helped her to her feet. She found comfort in the feel of his warmth at her side, in the way he threaded his fingers through hers.
Some of the guilt and fear lessened when they emerged from the dwelling and learned none of the Lions had been killed. But the horror remained at the sight of the hyenas who’d been slain when they left the forest and were attacked by the pride.
“Touch the dead first,” Magena advised. “So you’ll know the disease if it’s present in the Lions. I’ll order anyone who had contact with the hyenas to gather in one place, regardless of whether they have injuries needing a healer’s attention.”
Rebekka nodded her acceptance of the suggestion. She went to where the closest hyena lay on ground saturated with body fluids.
She crouched at the head. Aryck crouched with her, holding out his hand in an offer to take possession of her necklace.
Rebekka steeled herself for the awareness of plague that would strike when she gave it to him. Suppressed both gasp and shiver as it came.
This time relief was mixed in with awareness. She couldn’t be certain, but it seemed as though what she’d felt earlier was the same, as if the pocket of disease remained in the same place.
The thought gave her pause and made her palms dampen. If she had the courage, could she find the source and either heal the carriers or see them destroyed by the Weres?
Magena joined them at the side of the dead hyena. Rebekka let the question go, forcing herself instead to lay a hand on the animal’s forehead.
Like the Wolves, there was massive inflammation of the brain. But unlike them, it had manifested differently, into something like rabies and yet not rabies, even if the hyena’s unnatural behavior mimicked it.
Rebekka placed her fingertips on the hyena’s muzzle. Immediately there was the same horrifying sense of connection she’d experienced when she touched the Wolf pup, the same sense of recognition, as if the virus massed in the saliva and tried to come to her hand so she might carry it to another host.
The taste of disease filled her mouth. Thick and viscous.
She scrambled to her feet, managing only a few steps before bending over and retching.
Clamminess returned to coat her skin. She knew in that instant she couldn’t go on carrying the full burden of the secret.
Aryck enfolded her in his arms, nuzzling her cheek and whispering kisses across her ear. “What can I do to help you?”
“You’re doing it,” she said, pressing against him, hugging him tightly as his strength bolstered her own until she could move away and kneel next to a second corpse.
Magena and Aryck both joined her. She was conscious of the Lions milling, gathered and held in groups. Most of them remained in their animal forms, though the grand matriarch and shaman weren’t.
Fires had already been lit in preparation for burning the bodies. Rebekka touched the hyena’s forehead and muzzle before removing her hand and saying to Magena, “I needed to be sure. They both carry the same virus. It’s like rabies but not quite the same. Their saliva is full of it.”
“Do you wish to touch more of them?”
Rebekka couldn’t suppress a shudder. “No.”
She stood and looked down. But instead of seeing spotted fur and the distinctive shape of a hyena, she saw the slick black fur of a dog killed by settlement police years ago in the San Joaquin.
You brought the rabid dog here, little healer.
Forget now, until it’s time for you to join the game.
It was as if she’d come full circle, except this time she wasn’t the little girl told to forget or the adult who up until days ago didn’t know who her father was. She might be a pawn still, but even pawns had choices.
She glanced at Aryck, her eyes lingering on the amulet in his hand. She’d given him her body, taken the risk he’d turn away from her in disgust and call her a liar when he saw the tattoo.
He’d done neither. Now she had to trust he’d accept her once he knew she was fathered by a demon and gifted with something terrible by her father’s enemy.
In the distance she could feel plague, still seemingly where it had been before. It was only a matter of time before it spread.
“I’m ready to check the Lions now,” she told Magena. “One with an open wound would be best.”
“All but the most seriously injured healed themselves by shifting before I could tell them not to,” Magena said, worry in her voice as she led Rebekka to a tight knot of Lions surrounding a fallen pride member.
The young male was too weak to lift his head but his eyes followed Rebekka as she came to his side. Broken bones protruded from both front legs and blood pooled beneath his torn flanks and chest.
Despite his injuries, he was calm, trusting. She touched the places where teeth had ripped into his hide and found nothing but stinging pain. It was the same where the bones had been crushed and broken by powerful jaws.