“You came after me. I’ll never forget it,” she said, her heart breaking with the knowledge she was only going to lose him again.
She lifted her face, wanting one last kiss, needing to soak in a little more of his body heat to offset the chill at her core. Through the blur of tears she saw the starkness of emotions laid bare, love and desire, remorse and gratitude.
And then his mouth was on hers, his tongue thrusting, rubbing against hers, emotional hunger rousing a physical one in a burst of hot flame centered between her thighs.
Her hands roamed his back. His did the same to hers, their lips parting only long enough for him to rid her of the dead man’s shirt so they were skin to skin.
He hardened against her belly and she desperately wanted to feel him inside her, his body joined to hers. But when he lifted her, as if to thrust into her where they stood, her thoughts flashed to the Were ancestors and reality drenched her like frigid water.
“No,” she said, stiffening in his arms, hating the pain that returned to his eyes at her rejection.
“Give me a chance to prove myself to you,” he pleaded, his voice gravelly with unshed tears.
“It’s too late,” she whispered, understanding Aryck’s respect of the Were ancestors and his fear of being made outcast in a way she hadn’t until she healed Levi.
She saw the shimmer of tears on his cheeks as he allowed her to see what the thought of losing her did to him. “It doesn’t have to be too late. I’ll stay with you. I’ll work with you and Levi to help the brothel workers escape Allende.”
“My gift is useless now. Tainted because I killed a man. I can’t go before the ancestors again. I can’t return to Were lands. I can’t be your mate.”
“You killed to save your life; how can it be wrong?” Aryck asked, challenging her in the same way she’d challenged him about the outcasts.
He pressed kiss after soft kiss to her cheeks, her lips, her ears, trying to convey the strength of his belief and his refusal to accept defeat when it came to her. “No Were, living or dead, would judge your soul tainted for defending yourself. If you doubt it, I’ll bring a shaman to you. I’ll go before the ancestors myself on your behalf and ask for a judgment.”
Her arms tightened around his waist. “They can’t help. I’m not Were.”
Aryck touched his forehead to hers. “Then we’ll go to the witches. Levi took me to the Wainwright house. We bargained with them to find out if you lived and where you were. I’ll bargain with them again if it means we can be together.” He thought he saw a flash of hope in her eyes, then wondered if he was mistaken when he felt the subtle bracing of her body.
“What if the cost of restoring my gift is that after Oakland I have to go to another city, and then another, and another? Twice I’ve met my father. He says he’s not demon, but I have no proof he’s telling the truth. He paid my mother to carry me to term and keep me safe while I was still a child. He created me for a purpose.”
“Then I’ll come with you and keep you safe. I’ll help you with your work and at the same time continue lobbying for an alliance among all Were groups.”
“And if the witches can’t help me? If Nahuatl or another shaman says you’ll be made outcast if you remain with me?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve already given you my heart and my body, my Jaguar soul and my human one. You’re my mate, Rebekka. Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be, in life and in death.”
Aryck took her lips in a kiss that conveyed the strength of his conviction even as he silently begged her to believe in him despite his failing her, to feel for him what he felt for her. He plundered her mouth with the thrust of his tongue against hers, boldly claimed her as belonging to him, and didn’t stop until she was clinging to him, her body melded to his in a softening that shouted acceptance.
He didn’t know how desperately he needed to hear the words until she whispered them. “I couldn’t tell you why I had to leave Were lands, not if I wanted to be able to heal Levi and the others. I hated leaving you. I hated knowing my choice hurt you. I love you.”
“Weres rarely speak of love,” he said, tenderly brushing his lips against hers. “We say instead, everything I am and have belongs to you.”
“It is so among the Djinn as well,” a male voice said, and Aryck spun, putting himself between Rebekka and the sharp-featured man who’d managed to sneak up on them.
“My father,” Rebekka murmured, touching Aryck’s shoulder and stepping to the side.
The man registered as human on every one of Aryck’s senses. But there was no doubting he was something else when in the blink of an eye he became a cardinal, and then the tiger whose scent was left behind with Melina’s corpse, and then a man again, only closer, a step away, as if he’d moved when he had no form.
Aryck’s fingers flexed in Jaguar reaction, but he neither attacked nor stepped backward as the stranger studied him with critical eyes, judged him, then ignored him completely in favor of directing all his attention to Rebekka.
“In every way you have made me proud, daughter. Our kind has always tested their children. Even those born in our prison kingdom set deep in the ghostlands must prove their worthiness. No one will ever question the rightness of entering your name in the Book of the Djinn.”
He stepped closer, curled his fingers around Rebekka’s upper arm, pulling her toward him. The Jaguar soul rose in challenge and growled in warning while the human one snarled and took possession of her other arm.
Rebekka’s father ignored the display. “The enforcer spoke the truth. No Were, living or dead, would judge your soul tainted for defending yourself.
“So it is for the Djinn too. At the moment, your spirit is locked in a human shape, but you are not limited by the rules applied to the gifted. Because you’re of my House, I can make you mārdazmā, Djinn, able to shift between living, sentient forms. You are only so limited because an ancient enemy’s blood runs diluted in your mother’s line, commingling with mine, though it’s his blood that allows you to stand in the entranceway between ghostlands and shadowlands.”
Rebekka glanced at Aryck, tugged on the arm in his grip until he loosened his hold on it enough so she could slide her hand into his before meeting her father’s eyes again. She knew the face of one of his enemies and was sickened by the possibility of being related to an entity who could so casually use plague for nothing more than entertainment purposes, but she forced herself to ask, “The urchin with the rat on his shoulder. Who is he? What is he?”
There was a glorious flash of light as if in answer, and standing next to her father was Tir—not as he’d been before, but in his true form, an angel with black wings spread, the light shimmering off them in the same way as it had the feather on the amulet she’d worn.
“My brother,” Tir said, and Rebekka knew his name, had noticed the likeness when he appeared at the Fellowship of the Sign and offered to cleanse her gift of any taint.
“Caphriel.”
Tir inclined his head. “I was once like him. But now I join others of my kind in an alliance that will see the return of the Djinn and a change in who rules this world. Araña and I will come back to Oakland in the future. Aisling and Zurael remain there. Seek any of us out if you need us.”
He disappeared in another flash, and her father leaned forward. “To those willing to make the greatest sacrifice should go the greatest rewards. My spirit to yours, daughter.”
He touched his mouth to hers as he had in Lion territory. And it was like being on the receiving end of her own gift.
Power poured down her throat, raw and primordial. Like molten stone coming from the Earth itself. She healed as though she’d never been injured. The place where her skin was inked in a prostitute’s tattoo burned as if it was on fire. And at the very last came knowledge of his name. Torquel en Sahon.