I glanced back at the small church and started up the truck, driving away as the last notes of the last song poured through the open, stained-glass windows, along with the stained light. I had a search of a different sort to begin.
A half hour later, after a stop at an Ingles to purchase ten pounds of raw steak, a dozen granola bars, and a roll of paper towels, I turned off the paved road near Hot Springs, onto a well-kept gravel road, still some six mountain road miles from the site I had decided to search. It was near the Rich-Laurel Wildlife Area, on a little feeder creek that emptied into the French Broad River. There were no people close by. It was late and the weekend campers were long gone; the few hard-core campers were gathered at their tents, fires burning merrily here and there, easy to spot and easier to avoid in the dark.
I maneuvered out of the campground, parked out of the way, and got out to reconnoiter, leaning against the armored vehicle, the metal warm beneath my skin, wild grasses moving against my skirt and boots. I let Beast rise slowly to the surface, her senses expanding. I could discern her heartbeat, slower when at rest than mine, beating strongly beneath my own, a mystical sensation, powerful in my memory. The night, dark beneath the overhead foliage, grew perceptibly brighter as my pupils widened with Beast-sight. My lips parted and drew in air over tongue and through my nose, the way big-cats scent, though I had no scent sacs in the roof of my mouth like Beast.
Even to my human nose the night breeze was sun-heated and rich with the perfume of the earth, river-wet from the French Broad only feet from me. Fish and water plants. Warm stone and old campfires, turtles, wild undergrowth mixed with escaped garden plants, basil in flower and something spicy-bitter. But no human scent nearby. No human sound or voice carried on the air. I was alone. I started to pant in the warmth. The engine pinged softly beneath my hands.
Good night for hunt, Beast thought at me. Moon is big, like pregnant doe.
I carried my supplies to the base of the Paint Rock. The red rock cliff was jagged and broken, rising a hundred feet or more above the French Broad River. It was once covered with ancient paintings, paintings that predated the Cherokee, drawn in red pigments, but time and the elements and the stupidity of man had erased most of them. Humans had spray-painted their names and ancient-looking figures over large parts of the fractured surface. But with the breath of the river flowing across the earth, the place still had power.
I opened the steaks and dropped them on the smooth earth at the base of the massive rock, the meat still chilled from the store’s refrigeration. With the roll of paper towels, I cleaned my hands and put the wrapping and foam containers into the grocery bag and sealed them. Carried the trash back to the SUV.
I stripped in the front seat and left my clothes in a pile on the floor, hoping no one would tow my vehicle, but not really caring if they did. Grabbing up my supplies, I stepped from the SUV, barefoot and soundless, my travel pack under one arm. Opening the zipper bag containing my fetish necklace, I set the necklace of the Puma concolor over my head. It was made of the claws, teeth, and small bones of the biggest female panther I had ever seen, the cat killed in Montana during a legal hunt, the pelt and head mounted on some bigwig’s living room wall, the bones and teeth sold through a taxidermist. The mountain lion was hunted throughout the western United States and thought to be extinct in the eastern states, though some reports said they were making a comeback east of the Mississippi. One could hope. I didn’t have to use the necklace to shift into this creature—the memory of Beast’s form was always a part of me—but it was easier. I locked the SUV.
Already it felt weird walking on two legs, as Beast moved up from the deeps into my thoughts. Barefoot, the wild grasses sharp and cutting on my calves and thighs, the rough surface of the earth rocky beneath my tender soles. I returned to the Paint Rock and the stack of raw, bloody steaks on the ground.
Beast wanted to lick them. I held her still, though my stomach was rumbling. I was panting, salivating. Hungry, she thought. Because Beast is something outside my skinwalker nature—an independent entity who shares my body and, more and more often, my mind—I don’t have complete control over her. And I know, in my bones, that if other skinwalkers exist, they don’t have a Beast-soul living inside. We had ended up together through an accident, if black magic can be accidental, and thinking about it always left me feeling uneasy.