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Smells and smells and smells. Snuffled in scents and blew out, dewlaps fluttering. Snorted. Scented in again. I was Beast, but not Beast. Something was wrong. I smelled female human, scent strong and powerful. Layered beneath her were smells of many other humans. Strong, vital, sick, old, young. Many humans. Much smell of fish. Rain. Female human scent was familiar.
Oh. Jane’s scent.
Jane woke slowly in brain of dog, stunned, as always, by overwhelming power of scents around me/us. I chuffed, Beast’s sound different from Newfound-land-dog’s mouth. More . . . doggy. Do not like dogs.
Beast? Jane murmured into the deeps of mind.
Beast is here. Ugly dog. Tilted big dog head. Not as ugly as last dog. Good smells. Good fish smells. Feed us? Am hungry.
Eli said he’d have food, Jane thought back, trying to remember why I/we were in this form. The smells nauseating to her, too strong, disorienting.
As Jane struggled to get her bearings, Beast stood on the covers of the bed, stepped to the floor, and went to the doorway, where I/we rose on my/our back legs to make me/us taller.
What are you—? Stop!
I snuffled with laughter and tapped on door with claws. Ugly black claws, hard and short and not made for hooking prey.
Door opened. Kid smell swept out.
Lunged inside. Knocked Kid down. Stood over him huffing into his face, drooling on his jaw.
“Holy crap. How can you have dog breath?” Head tucked, he rubbed his head on the floor back and forth as if to protect his throat and get away at the same time. Stupid prey move. Should attack instead. Alex Kid shoved with his hands into our belly, making us oof out a breath. “Ugh. Get off me!” he shouted. Loud in dog ears.
Stepped to side and chuffed up at Eli. He was leaning against wall, shoulder taking his weight, smelling of laughter, small smile on his face. He looked to us. “Did you sign a no-pets clause on this room?”
Jane took over for us and snorted with laughter. Shook head, like human shakes head. Eli held out a leash. Again Jane shook head. I trotted back to deeps of mind and let Jane take over.
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I wanted to say the ambush wasn’t my fault, it was a big-cat move, but I was laughing too hard. The Kid’s body odor was strong enough to choke a goat—or a Newfoundland—this morning. No more snack foods for him. He stank of the house-made, Cajun-style rémoulade sauce and fried fish and obviously hadn’t showered today. Or last night. Ewwww. And then I smelled eggs cooking.
Eli bent and put a plate of microwaved eggs on the floor beneath my head. Like maybe two dozen eggs. And they must have been delicious because I inhaled them—probably nearly literally because dogs don’t have a great sense of taste to complement their great noses.
While I changed, Eli had been loading up the SUV and we were ready to go. Rather than stay near the Kid, I licked the egg plate clean, trotted out the door and down the stairs to ground level, and leaped into the backseat. From the seat, I jumped over onto the gear in the very back. And we were off.
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The rented airboat was loud. Like really, really loud, when Eli cranked it over. There was no ear protection for dogs as part of the rental, so I’d just have to stand it. The craft was a wide, flat-bottomed johnboat, powered by a gasoline engine and a wooden, aircraft-type propeller in a massive cage. It had two bench-style seats, the back one mounted higher than the front one, with the accelerator and the steering mechanism—a long handle that operated rudders—located up at the backseat.
I leaped onto the front seat and shoved Alex off it, forcing him to sit up behind me with his brother on the backseat. Eli clearly had a massive sinus infection because he was able to ignore Stinky beside him. I let Eli strap me into the seat belt, figuring that a sideways spin might slide me right into the water without it. As we took off from the dock, I stretched out on the seat I had claimed, closed my eyes, let my tongue loll out, and took in the wind. It buffeted my facial hair, flopped my ears back, caressed my face, and filled my nose with goodgoodgood smells, and I was in doggy heaven.
Even Beast seemed okay with this form. Inside me she rolled over and lay on her side, eyes closed in enjoyment.