CLOAKED in light, Addai witnessed events unfold among the Jaguars. In thousands of years of existence he had yet to tire of the beauty and the savagery of those this lush planet gave birth to.
In the challenge circle the fire burned and the shaman chanted softly in supplication and sorrow as he reached out and placed his hand over his son’s heart, ceasing its beat with a spoken word. Preferring to halt the stain he feared would only deepen and spread outside of Were lands.
He knelt next to the son he’d slain, a father who’d administered harsh punishment, hoping to gain salvation for his child’s soul in the wake of what the ancestors’ judgment meant, what Addai knew to be truth.
Daivat lied when he said the woman was willing. He lied in saying she died first and at the hands of the human male.
The wind brought the scent of brewing infection and the raw smell of a living creature turned into meat. Addai watched the still form of the injured child being carefully placed on a blanket and the makeshift stretcher lifted so it could be carried to the healer’s home.
As the boy and those attending him disappeared from sight, leaving only the shaman and the corpse in the clearing, speculation edged out Addai’s pity. He contemplated the possibility the Djinn were responsible for the child’s condition. They were capable of great cruelty in the ruthless pursuit of their goals.
A smile of amusement curved his lips. Then again, his kind was capable of an equal ruthlessness.
Addai looked toward the path the Jaguar, Aryck, had taken. He paused long enough to wonder if the other children survived and if the enforcer would prove himself worthy in the days ahead. Then he descended, taking flesh, the essence of light becoming the form of a man.
Nahuatl gave no sign of being aware of his presence at the edge of the circle. The shaman’s song to his ancestors continued, rising and falling, pitching higher with each new refrain until it reached a crescendo and ceased with the plunging of a ceremonial knife into his dead son’s chest.
Bone and muscle gave way with the force of the thrust and the sharpness of the blade. A new song began as Nahuatl pulled the heart from its mortal cavity and threw it into the flames.
The taste of blood and fire coated Addai’s tongue.
He laughed silently, appreciative of the drama, the rite.
The passion of faith.
When the heart had been consumed in a hungry blaze, the shaman turned, Jaguar cape swirling, the snarling headdress hiding everything but the dark eyes of a man who spirit-walked among the dead.
“You asked for a sign that the things revealed to you in the shadowlands, and the part you will play in their unfolding, are true,” Addai said, letting all Earthly pretense fall away in a spread of white wings and a haloed show of angelic glory. “I am that sign.”