“Yes,” Chloe said, brushing her fingers across Rebekka’s hair in the same way as she’d done to the boy.
Rebekka rose from her crouch. Face-to-face, she and her mother were the same height.
Chloe caressed Rebekka’s cheek with her fingertips, her eyes meeting Rebekka’s, searching for something. “You’ve gotten more beautiful since the last time I saw you.”
“I look like you.”
Her mother’s smile held more sadness than happiness. They were so close in appearance it was obvious they were mother and daughter. Not sisters, but only because Chloe’s early life had aged her.
“I saw the expression on your face when you greeted the girls,” Chloe said, her voice soft. “You could have the same thing I’ve found here. There are single men in the Fellowship who would make good husbands, good fathers. You could live with us until you settled on one of them and married. Your house could be attached to ours. The girls would love having a big sister. I would love having my oldest daughter here, where her soul would no longer be in peril.”
Rebekka took her mother’s hands in hers. She rubbed her thumb against the crosses branded into her mother’s skin—self-inflicted in the ecstasy of worship. Her gaze flickered over the deep wooden boxes running along one wall, their tops covered in mesh to prevent the rattlesnakes they contained from escaping and curious children from getting bitten.
The Fellowship took the teachings of Mark 16, starting with the fifteenth verse, literally. For them, signs followed those who believed and were saved, confirming the Word. They could speak in tongues, cast out devils, and lay hands upon the sick. They could drink deadly things and take up the handling of serpents and no harm would come to them.
“I can’t,” Rebekka said. It wasn’t just a matter of not accepting her mother’s faith, but of not being willing to turn her back on the Weres.
The Fellowship would limit the use of her gift to the healing of their livestock and pets. Should she be in Oakland, fulfilling the mission to go out and preach, her talent might be bartered for things the community needed—but it would be used only on animals, not on Weres.
She touched the plain gold circle of her mother’s wedding band. The pressure to remain faithful and uphold God’s laws, along with the long days of working together in groups often segregated by gender, made infidelity rare in the Fellowship. But while women and children weren’t a man’s property, they still came under his authority.
Rebekka looked up from her study of her mother’s hands. There was no gentle way to ask the questions she’d come here to ask. “Tell me how I came to be born.”
Her mother pulled away, flinching from memories of the past. She picked up the toddler, hugging him to her chest as if he were a shield against the pain.
“I knew this day would come. He said it would, when you were an adult. He told me I was to answer your question then, only then, or I would be sorry for breaking our agreement.” Her arms tightened, making the toddler squirm and try to get out of them.
“I’ve dreaded it. Feared it. I’ve prayed it would never happen because if it did, it could only mean he intends to use you for some purpose.”
“He, meaning my father?”
“Yes.”
“What was his name?”
Chloe gave a harsh laugh. “John. They were all named John.”
She set the toddler down among wooden blocks, then crossed to a worktable where handmade patterns were pinned to pieces of dark material. She took up a pair of scissors and began cutting.
Rebekka followed, remaining quiet as the stiffness slowly left her mother’s posture. The scissors were laid down, though Chloe continued to stare at the fabric.
In a quiet voice Chloe said, “I grew up in a poor settlement near Sacramento. There were five children in the family. Two boys and three girls. The land my parents worked would support the boys when they took wives and started families, but not the girls. I was the second girl, not favored as my older sister was. My parents contracted me to a brothel owner in exchange for enough money to provide a dowry for my sister so she could marry well.”
Chloe picked up the scissors. Put them down again.
“The settlement I grew up in was on a caravan route. Four times a year the traveling brothel stopped there. The year you were born, my father came to where we were camped. He didn’t acknowledge me as his daughter. Instead he acted as though I was something dirty, beneath contempt, as if I’d chosen to become a prostitute.”
There was pain in Chloe’s voice, angry bitterness. “He came to offer my younger sister to the brothel master so he could buy livestock as a christening gift for my brother’s first son. We didn’t have room for another prostitute. But another caravan would come. And another, and eventually my sister would be made a whore. She was only two years younger than me, my closest friend when we were growing up. The one person in my family who loved me back.”
Chloe turned then, facing Rebekka. “A man approached me the day after my father came to the campsite. He wanted me to become pregnant with his child. Abortions were mandatory for the prostitutes in the caravan. But he’d made arrangements with the brothel master—the older brother of the one you might remember—so I’d carry to term and be allowed to keep the baby. He offered enough money so my younger sister would be able to pick her own husband and never have to fear for her future.
“I accepted his offer, though he was in no hurry to consummate the deal. He delivered the payment to my sister, even waited until her engagement was announced before leading me away from the caravan.
“He gave me something to drink and impregnated me. I was only with him the one night. Most of what happened is blurry, except afterward, before he took me back to camp. He told me you were to be kept safe and taught to read, and if I failed to protect you while you were in my care, he would learn of it and kill me.”
Her gaze dropped to the place where the mark of a prostitute had been forcibly inked onto Rebekka’s skin. A hard shiver went through her, as if she was still frightened after so many years.
Rebekka thought of the dream-restored memory and the stark terror on her mother’s face after the tattooing. They’d begun living in Oakland shortly after it happened.
She took Chloe’s hands again. Squeezed them in reassurance. “Was he human?”
Wariness entered her mother’s expression. “None of the amulets reacted in his presence. Most of those traveling in the caravan thought he was a gifted human, a sorcerer or a warlock.”
“And you? What did you think?”
Chloe’s shoulders slumped as if to allow a heavy burden to finally slide off them. “When he was on top of me, there was something inhuman in his eyes. It was almost as if he despised doing the very thing he’d paid to do.”
“One last question,” Rebekka said, wanting to free her mother from the torment of the past and not sure how much more she herself could bear knowing. “What did he look like?”
“He reminded me of a bird of prey. Sharp featured. His hair done up in hundreds of braids, each one of them with black and red beads woven in.”
Light-headedness would have dropped Rebekka to her knees except for her grip on her mother’s hands. She’d thought him a Were outcast the day he’d come out of nowhere and saved her from being raped, eviscerating her attackers and painting the alleyway red with their blood before telling her to seek out Dorrit.
Now the image of his fingers ending in deadly talons was overlaid by another, different only in color, a dark hand wrapping around her throat, a razor-sharp claw digging into her flesh, slicing through it with ease. Pulling away so a forked tongue could lap at blood-covered fingers. Your father’s involvement is a surprise. He had no love for humans when I was last among my kind.
“I promise, just one more question,” Rebekka said, her voice a whisper. “The day I was tattooed, did a rabid dog come into camp?”