Okay. I guess we don’t have a phone.
Beast snorted. Beast cannot carry phone. Beast cannot dial phone. Beast cannot talk on phone. And Jane cannot be alpha until sundown.
Yeah. There is that pesky problem with shifting into you in daylight.
Beast twitched ears. Am alpha. All day. We have prey to eat. Water to drink. Alligator to fight if Jane needs blood and battle.
I’ll pass, thanks, Jane thought.
We can go to Aggie One Feather’s den. She is there now.
Yeah? You planning on eating her?
No. Snorted with amusement. Old and stringy human.
I promise to not tell her that.
Beast chuffed with laughter. We are close. I will take us there and shift near stinky-smoke-fire-hot place.
Thanks. The closer the better. I don’t have any clothes, you know?
Jane should keep Beast pelt and claws instead of human skin.
I’ll take it under advisement. And, Beast? Thank you.
? ? ?
I woke as the sun set, a hot red ball in the chill sky, tinting storm clouds vermilion, cerise, plum, and black-grape-purple. Tints that promised a long, wet, stormy night. I was on my side, lying in a painless location, on sand instead of pine needles, which was a kindness Beast seldom offered me. The sweathouse was just in front of me, smelling strongly of smoke from a long-burning fire. The scents of shrimp and hot peppers also hung on the air, coming from the small house nearby. Maybe étouffée and rice. Hot coffee.
I lay in the hard-packed sand, the night air wafting over me, currents cold and leisurely. I felt almost detached from my own inner pain. I was hungry. I was always hungry after a shift and I usually tried to stuff myself with grains and protein. Tonight, if I went into the sweathouse, there would be nothing to eat. Aggie One Feather liked me fasting when she took me through journeys into my own past, into memory dreams. Which had been both joyful and terrifying experiences.
In the last months, since I came to New Orleans, I had taken a lot of those journeys. Buried deep inside me, I had met the memory of my father and my grandmother. Had found what I was. Discovered the evil that I might become.
Since then, I had killed the only other skinwalker I had ever encountered. Had met potential mates. Had been bound to the Master of the City. Had found a family of sorts with the Younger brothers. And had lost Rick.
And maybe . . . maybe, had lost my God.
I lay on the cold sand, wondering if God heard me anymore. If he, the Elohim, the singular-plural God worshiped by the Christians and the Cherokee both, though by other names, even knew that I was alive. If he recognized what I was. Wondering if he had even created me, or if my kind had come into existence through some dark magic, as the legends had told. I shivered. “Do you hear me, God?” I asked into the night.
Instantly I remembered the resistance of steel slicing through flesh as I helped to kill my first man. God didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure he ever would.
Pulling my hands under me, I got up, my muscles aching, something I seldom felt after a shift. I went to the back of the sweathouse and turned on the spigot, holding on with one hand to the corroded metal as well water sluiced over me, cooling, raising pebbles of chill bumps on my skin. Physically, I didn’t need a shower, but I wanted it. Wanted the drench of icy water over me, my hair loose and long and plastered to my body. I shivered hard, my stomach cramping, thigh muscles quivering with cold and the shock of the shift. When I felt cleaner, I shut off the water and shook out one of the simple, long, unbleached linen cloths hanging on the hooks. Long-legged jumping spiders fell, and scampered away. I shook it hard, to make sure they were all gone, before I tied the linen around me.
Barefoot, I went to the house, stepping gingerly across the shells in the drive. I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. It opened almost instantly. I made out the features of Aggie One Feather in the dark. Smelled the étouffée, the shrimp and spices potent on the night air. Before she could speak, I said, “Help me. Please.”
Aggie stared at me, taking in the long wet hair, the clothes that came from her sweathouse, the bare feet, and probably the desperation that sat on me like a bird of prey with its talons digging deep.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Why should I help you, Jane Yellowrock, of the Tsalagi?”
I was too tired to even feel the shock of her question, the shock of her, maybe, not helping me, and I whispered into the night, “Because I’m lost without your help.”
“You have not spoken truth to me. You have kept truth far from me. You have lied. Why should I help you, Jane Yellowrock, of the Tsalagi?”