Mind clearing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the excitement of a hunt. I dropped lower, deeper, into the darkness where the lost memories of my first human life swirled, broken and jagged in a gray world of shadow, blood, uncertainty. I heard a distant drum, smelled herbed wood smoke, and the damp heat of the night beaded on my skin. As I dropped deeper, memories began to firm, memories that, at all other times, were submerged, both mine and Beast’s, memories that had been brought closer to the surface by time in a sweat lodge with a Cherokee elder and shaman, Aggie One Feather. Guilt struggled with the relaxation of the change. I hadn’t been to Aggie’s in a long while. Beast dug in with her claws, forcing me back.
As I had been taught by my father so long ago, I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the fetish necklace, the coiled, curled snake, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow. Science had given the snake a name. RNA. DNA. Genetic sequences, specific to each species, each creature. For my people, for skinwalkers, it had always simply been the inner snake, the phrase one of very few things that was certain in my past.
I sank into the marrow hidden in the fetish bones. I reached into the snake and dropped within. It was like water flowing in a stream, a whirling current. Like snow beginning a slow roll down a mountainside, gaining momentum, a tongue of destruction swallowing everything in its path. Grayness enveloped me, a cloud of energy sparkling with black motes, bright and cold, as the world fell away. I slid into the gray place of the change.
My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped. And 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 fell away. Night was rich with wonderful scents, heavy and heady and speaking of life. I panted, soft hacks of sound in the back of my throat, and listened, ear tabs twisting left and right. Hum of cars, notes of music, laughter of humans, animals rustling. Good sights, better with cat eyes, brighter, clearer. Good smells, better with cat nose. I hopped from rocks. Sniffed at food. Curled nose and snout. Old, dead, half-cooked meat. Dead prey. Soon would hunt, would tear flesh from bone. But stomach ached. Shifting took much from us. I ate.
Belly full, I stepped to top of rocks, broken and sharp, and leaped to top of tall fence, brick warm and high like limb in sun. Dropped down, into yard. Small dog living there was asleep and safe. Easy prey, but Jane says no. Only opossum, deer, nutria, rabbit. Wild prey.
I padded around house to street. Crouched beneath big leaves of plant, good hiding place. Smelled of Beast spoor. Stared into street. And saw man. Standing in shadows across street. Watching Jane house, her den.
Not Rick, though Rick had stood in night and watched Jane house before they mated. This was man from fight place, man who was man and not man, man with blue and purple magics on his skin. Man who smelled wrong.
How did he find me? Jane asked.
I sent her mind picture of big-cat sniffing spoor.
The son of a gun put a find-me amulet or a tracking device on me or Bitsa. I never even thought to look. I’m getting sloppy.
I sent her mind picture of blue magic on her hands like mist moving on ground.
Gee spelled me, Jane growled, and followed me here. She went silent a moment. The house wards felt it. That was that odd electric pulse.
I hacked in agreement and padded back, to alley, over wall, and up another street. Man-city was never silent or dark, but night was better than day to run through streets and find truck to ride, like claws in hump of bison, into the country. Trucks everywhere, not running in packs like deer or elk cow and young, but each like solitary hunter, going its own way. I chose small one that smelled of bread and fried potatoes and leaped onto top, heading across river.
When I jumped from truck into shadows, I was far from city, and smells were rich and thick as fresh blood, good smells, not man smells. Opossum, wild dog and feral cat, water birds. Wet smell of turtle, frog, rat, dead things stinking. And ... deer scat.
Mouth watered. My territory. Hunting grounds I marked as my own. Good place to hunt. Half a moon since I claimed it. I paced slowly away from street, into woods, marking ground with scent, rubbing musk glands onto brush, scraping bark from trees with killing claws as a sign. Mine. My hunting grounds.
Water smell was everywhere, still and stagnant with dead plants, thick with small moving things. Smell of alligator. Wanted to hunt alligator, but didn’t want to get in water. Alligators big in water, bigger than Beast. Fast. Pelt hard as bone. Deer better. Followed deer scent into woods, heavy with piney smells, summer flowers, trace of skunk on breeze.
Inside forest, on edge of lake, smelled deer, saw hoofprints, two-toed, in mud, from empty-moon-night. Last night. Counted smells and scents. Was more-than-five deer, more than Beast could count. Jane used numbers of more-than-five, not Beast.
But deer had not come to drink tonight. Odd. I crouched and breathed in feel of wind. Touch of moonlight dim under trees. Stars, many overhead, not like man-cities with man-lights on poles and houses. Water dark and deep, with stars in them too. Remembered when kit tried to catch stars in water. Got wet. Good hunter now, left stars in water and followed deer into night.
Later, hoofprints dug deep into ground. Running. Smell of deer in fear. On top of deer track was new scent. I stopped. Tested air, drawing in scents over tongue and through nose, long scree-sound of tasting-smelling. Growled. Hissed. Knew this scent. Wolves. Found prints, wide and big as Beast’s, claws digging deep. Wolves running. Chasing Beast’s deer.
I tightened body, curling shoulders in to protect spine, paws close. Remembered long ago ... Wolves stole hunting territory, stole prey, making Beast hunger, belly hurting. Wolves and man brought hunger times, killed off good things to eat. Hunger times bad, like deep hole with no way out. Remembered. Hissed in anger. My territory! Wolves again hunted on big-cat-spoor-marked ground. Stole Beast-prey. I raised my head and screamed, she-cat sound, echoing back over water, through trees.