Blood Cross (Jane Yellowrock 02)

Beast rose into my eyes, pressed against my flesh. It was the full moon and she was ready to hunt. To kill. To be Big Cat.

 

When I was centered, my beast close to the surface, our minds mingling and twining like our souls, reveling in the coolness, I checked the zippered leather bag and made sure my stakes, derringer, cell, and lightweight clothes were there. This time, instead of hanging it on my neck, I tucked it into the larger zippered bag, and added my vamp-killers, several more stakes, and a vial of holy water to it. Pushed the GPS device and the velvet bag containing the sliver of the Blood Cross into pouches. When I closed the satchel, I was doubly careful to make certain that it would stay closed, keeping my treasures safe.

 

I had never hunted with such a large bag on my Beast back, and wasn't sure how this was going to work. But I hadn't ever fought three sane witch/vamps either, and I needed all the help I could get if I found them and was forced to act alone. I adjusted the bag, the gold nugget necklace, and the new silver chain with the rune around my neck. This could get awkward. I had a mental image of Beast tripping over the bag strap and going for a tumble.

 

Beast snarled, miffed that I'd think she would be so clumsy.

 

My bare bottom on the rough bark, my feet shoved into the damp soil, I gripped the gold nugget, holding it firmly, thinking of the rocks in the garden of the freebie house. Thinking of Beast.

 

I held the necklace and closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the full moon, high above me. I listened to the beat of my own heart. Beast rose in me, silent, predatory. Crouched, claws out, eyes staring at the world.

 

I slowed the functions of my body, slowed my heart rate, let my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep. I lay forward on the tree, breasts and belly scraping on the rough bark in the humid air.

 

Mind slowing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, so I wouldn't lose it when I shifted, when I changed.

 

Kits. Find the kits. Keep them alive.

 

I dropped lower, deeper, into the darkness inside where ancient, nebulous memories swirled in a gray world of shadow, blood, uncertainty. I heard the memory of a distant drum, smelled herbed wood smoke, and the night wind on my skin seemed to cool and freshen and whirl about me. As I dropped deeper, memories began to firm, memories that, at all other times, were half forgotten, both mine and Beast's.

 

As I had been taught so long ago by my father, by Edoda, I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow.

 

Vaguely, I thought it felt easier since I went to sweat, and went to water. Much easier to find the snake, even at a distance from my mountains and my natural hunting ground. The snake opened before me, thousands, millions, all alike, caught in the cells of the fetish necklace.

 

I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts and I dropped within it, like water flowing in a stream. Like snow rolling down a mountainside. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold; the world fell away. And I was in the gray place of the change.

 

My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped up. My bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Pain, like a knife, slid between muscle and bone. My nostrils widened, drawing deep.

 

Jane was gone. I hunched on downed tree of former hunt. Found balance. Night came alive--wonderful, new scents, heavy on air, thick and turning, like Jane dancing to drums and music. Soil, birds, prey smells, trees--many more-than-five trees--but forest was still small; not like my hunting ground in mountains. Only tiny patch of hunting ground here. Too close, I smelled humans. Rabbit. Opossum. Mold. Blood. I panted. Listened to sounds--cars not too distant, music closer, voices talking, muffled.

 

Gathered limbs beneath, lithe and lissome--always remembered her words for me. Good words. I liked.

 

No ugly man-made light here, no shadow-stung vision. Clear night and moon, bright. More stars above than at her den. Good place to become Beast. I stretched. Front legs and chest. Pulling back legs, spine, belly. Delicately, with killing teeth, lifted necklace she dropped. Fetish. Bones of a big cat. Set fetish on her clothes.