I squinted up at the sun, which was nearing the western horizon, and let a trace of amusement into my voice. “Several hours past.”
He shrugged. “Hours of a musician. Come to the club tonight. I have a solo set.” His lips turned up and his black eyes flashed in frank sexual interest. “You can dance for me again.”
I felt my blood warm at the possibilities in his gaze. “I’ll think about it,” I said, walking past him to where Bitsa sat patiently in the shade. Feeling the heat of his gaze on my butt as I walked, my face warmed. “But I’m not much for being a notch on a guy’s bedpost,” I said over my shoulder. “I think a player like you has enough of those.” I straddled my bike and helmeted up. “Let me know about the info.” I cranked up Bitsa and motored off, Rick visible in the rearview until I was out of sight.
I had studied the map, committing it to memory, and by sundown, I was naked, in the back garden. And Beast was ticked. Skinwalkers have the magic of sinking into the genetic structure of animals, sinking deep and changing form, from human to another, to match, exactly, the body of the other animal from the genetic structure up, copied from genetic material stored in bones, teeth, and skin of the dead.
I had been making shifts for eleven years and Beast had always hated it when I chose any shape but hers. Now, since the dream/memory of the making of Beast, I too was suddenly unhappy with the process. Itchy-uncomfortable. Okay, maybe guilty. The dream of the thievery had proved how Beast came to reside inside me, a theory I had never investigated, which made me a coward. To save my own life, I had stolen the body and soul of a living being. I knew, deep down, it was black magic—accidental, but no less dark for the lack of intent.
We—Beast and I—had learned to live together, to share her form and mine, but I was pretty sure she never forgave me for my sin of stealing her. The alliance was never easy, and when I chose another form to shift into, another animal, my fractured, doubled soul didn’t survive the transition intact. Beast was buried so deeply I couldn’t find her then, which meant I walked alone. When I shifted back to human, Beast always made me pay the price.
The price was even higher when I took a form that required a change of mass into something smaller or larger than Beast, because mass has to go, or come from, somewhere. The law of conservation of mass/matter held true, especially in skinwalker magic, so there was always the fear that I’d permanently lose all or part of myself or Beast when I shifted into a smaller body with a smaller brain, leaving so much behind. She hated it and always found a way to punish me.
As the sun cast golden spears across the sky, I sat on the topmost stone. It was warm, the heat comforting on my bare bottom, soothing. I opened the zipper bag containing my animal fetishes and pulled out a necklace. I set one of feathers and talons around my neck, and placed the gold nugget necklace on the boulder. It was too large for the form I chose.
I touched a talon. Closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the moon, larger than a sickle, growing toward fullness, on the horizon. I listened to the beat of my heart.
I slowed the functions of my body, letting my heart rate fall, my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep. Knees folded, arms at my sides in the humid air, I sat on the boulders. Nothing biological would work to steal mass from—even wood had its own RNA—but stone was clean, which was why I required it. Easy to steal mass from. Easy to deposit mass. When I was forced to risk it.
Mind slowing, I sank into the feathers and talons and beak strung on the necklace. Deep inside. My consciousness fell away, all but the location of this hunt. That 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. I dropped lower. Deeper. Into the bottomless gray world within me. And began to chant, silently, Mass to mass, stone to stone . . . mass to mass, stone to stone . . .
The drums of memory beat a slow cadence. The smell of herbed woodsmoke came on the air. The night wind of The People’s land brushed across my flesh. I sought the double helix of DNA, the inner snake lying inside the talons and feathers of the necklace. It was there, as always, deep in the cells, in the remains of soft tissue. I slipped into it, into the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts, the snake of DNA. I dropped within, like water flowing in a stream. Like snow falling, rolling down a mountainside. The gray place swarmed over me.