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the area set aside for play. The scent of sweat and blood and sex hit Rebekka.
    “This way,” he said, placing a hand on her back and guiding her, his presence a deadly deterrent.
    They walked past men and women gathered around prostitutes bound onto pieces of equipment, gagged and made helpless.
    Servers moved among the clients, selling liquor that would erode all boundaries and control by morning, the waitresses and waiters themselves available for a price.
    Jewels glittered in the low lighting. It took money to play here, not as much as in the buildings across the street with their private entrances and suites so the rich and powerful could do exactly as they wished with no audience and no threat of discovery, but enough to make this a favorite of the younger sons of wealthy families, many of them guardsmen.
    Ahead a crowd gathered in front of an open-faced dungeon. As Rebekka neared she heard girlish laughter, then several female voices shouting in unison, “Twenty-eight!”
    It was followed by the sound of a whip cracking, by delighted giggles, and another count. “Twenty-nine!”
    At “Thirty!” the crowd began wandering off, the show complete.
    Rebekka’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of the Lioness, Kala, chained to the gray wall. Her back was raw hamburger with tawny fur mixed in, her tail striped with blood and bent at odd angles, cut and broken by the whip. Clear, curved nails extended from human hands, claws unsheathed in reaction to the pain.
    A human woman stood admiring her work, hands bloody as they caressed the whip she held. Her friends protested when the bouncer went to Kala, unlocking first one manacle and then the other. He ignored them, and when Kala slipped into unconsciousness as he scooped her up in his arms, they, too, wandered off, reliving their fun in animated conversation.
    Hate raged in Rebekka, listening to them. For a shimmering instant she allowed herself to imagine healing Kala, making her purely Were so the Lioness could hunt down these women and slaughter them.
    The force of the desire to see it shocked her. A chill swept down her spine, stripping away some of the shield she’d managed to erect against the demon’s mention of her father. A single act of violence was all that was required to turn her gift into a thing causing pain and suffering.
    Kala’s low moan allowed Rebekka to block out thoughts of the demon and once again escape into purpose. She followed the bouncer to a camouflaged door and keyed in the code, opening it so he could enter. After placing Kala facedown on a blanket left ready on the floor, he asked, “You want her tethered?”
    Rebekka glanced at the restraints set in the floor, then at Kala’s stillunretracted claws. Healing unconscious Weres and animals was always dangerous.
    Awake she could touch emotion, instill calmness and trust long enough to repair damage and end pain, though she rarely needed to do so with the prostitutes since they knew her. But without the connection, she risked being attacked with the sudden return of her patient’s consciousness, especially when rage and remembered suffering would be at the forefront of their minds.
    Kala moaned again. “Can you stay a few minutes and hold her arms to the floor?” Rebekka asked as she knelt next to the Lioness.
    The bouncer answered by crouching down and pinning Kala’s wrists. Though he appeared fully human, he was stronger than one. A big cat of some kind, she guessed, but like the reasons for his being in the red zone, he wouldn’t reveal his animal form unless forced to.
    Rebekka placed her hands on Kala’s back and closed her eyes. She called her gift to life by willing flesh and muscle to mend, urging skin to be covered in sleek fur.
    When it came to those trapped between forms, she could heal their injuries but couldn’t alter how they wore the mixture of animal and man. She could offer those like Kala a choice between appearing fully human or fully animal, but it came