A necklace of claws, bones, fierce teeth—Edoda settled it over my head onto my shoulders. “Reach inside,” Edoda murmured. “Breathe inside. Into we sa, into the snake within.” The snake in the skin of the cat . . . Magic tingled along my sides, into my fingers as I slid down, inside the bobcat pelt. Dreaming. Floating in grayness.
Drunken, drugged, a distant voice thought. Mild surprise merged with the drumbeat. I saw the snake resting below the surface, encapsulated in every cell of the hunter cat. In its teeth and bones, in the dried bits of its hardened marrow. A snake, holding all that we sa was. The awareness of where the cat and I differed. Where we were the same. And how easy it would be to shift from my shape, into the bobcat. So simple. With understanding came purpose and desire. Clarity. The longing to shift into the snake within we sa. The desire to become bobcat.
My first beast. My first shift. I let go. I melted, as the stone melted in the cavern above. Taking the shape of bobcat. Pain radiated out, like spokes of the white man’s wheels. Yet distant, caught up in the drums, and so, not quite a part of me. The shadows on the stone merged and glittered, gray and dark and light. All color bled out of the night. And I was bobcat.
The world was grayer, duller to my eyes. But when I took my first breath as we sa, the scents exploded inside me, heavily textured and layered, yet distinct. Smoke, sweat, bad teeth, bear fat, white man’s whiskey, blood, herbs. Hunger tugged at me.
I tilted my head and looked at my father, my pointed ears and tufts of curling ear hair moving shadows on the stone. Edoda, beside me, had shifted as well. The beast he had chosen was tlvdatsi, mountain panther. Killing eyes met mine, round pupils in amber irises. Marauder claws flexed and stretched on the earth. I hunched, making myself small in fear.
Beneath the smells of fire, dancers, and the cat, my father’s scent was all but lost. All but. Not quite. I breathed him in, Edoda caught beneath the pelt of the shift.
My father was there, clinging to humanity as he looked out at the world through the eyes of predator death. Purring, he nudged me, forcing me to my feet, four legs offering better balance than two. I followed him through the no-longer-so-dark cave, into the night.
Scents and sounds were volatile, intense, so full of power they felt like knife wounds. Air touched my pelt, telling me everything about the world around me. The direction of the wind. The moisture content in the air. The nearness of storm clouds. The season of the year. The last rain was still wet in the dirt beneath my padding paws. I heard the running feet of rodents, an owl overhead in a tree, two does up the ridge, chewing. The owl lifted wings. Night birds hunted and called. Every sense was powerful and concentrated. I flexed out my claws, smaller versions of Edoda’s, but no less dangerous to my own prey.
Edoda, tlvdatsi, led me into the rhododendron thicket, trunks writhing from bare earth, leaves forming a canopy less than the height of a man above, teaching me to hunt. I followed, watching, scenting, hearing, learning how to bring down a rabbit. My own prey sat still as stone in the brush. Until a fear-crazed rush. I leaped. My claws sank deep, teeth ripping into the back of its neck. I gave the small prey a single shake, breaking its spine. Edoda teaching me to kill and to eat. The feel-taste-scent of blood and food, the crunch of bone and hot meat.
The night closed in with the taste. All scent wisped away. I lay on the couch in my freebie house, eyes closed. I remembered. I knew. I knew what I was, from the very beginning. When I appeared out of the forest I wasn’t the twelve-year-old girl the white authorities had thought I was. I was far . . . far older. And I had spent a much longer time in Beast’s skin than I had thought.
I shivered. I opened my eyes. To meet the vamped-out gaze of a far greater predator, canines exposed, lips drawn back in a slight snarl.
CHAPTER 12
Naked vamps. And the food was naked too
I should have been alarmed. Terrified. Instead, I stretched and sighed. My pain was gone. I flexed my fist, inspected my arm, watching the play of whole muscles beneath unblemished skin. I tugged gently, suggesting by the action that Leo release me. Not fighting him, not jerking free, none of the motions that prey might make. I knew better than to fight myself free from a predator. Attack or play dead if one wanted to stay alive. Edoda’s lessons. Returned to me. A gift of this predator. This killer. So, gently, calmly, I pulled my arm free of his grip. And Leo Pellissier slowly began to seep back into his own eyes.
I smiled at him. And saw surprise swim into his gaze.