The arcenciel pulled another armful of mud from beneath the boulder, or what was left of the boulder from the last time I had borrowed mass from it. I’m a skinwalker, and when I need to take on a form that is bigger than my own mass, I borrow it from something with no genetic material of its own. Hence, boulders that get busted.
A storm front had stalled over the gulf region, and it had been raining for so long that the earth beneath the pile of rocks was muddy, and the stone was slowly sinking. In another twenty years, the pile of once-massive stones that I had managed to break and crack and shatter would disappear beneath the surface of the alluvial mud. Faster if the arcenciel kept up her digging. With a sudden move, the boulder rolled toward her and dropped into the trench she had dug, trapping her hands, wrists, and lower arms. The creature screamed and writhed, jerking her body, and I had a spike of visual memory, intense and sharp, of a . . .
A fox caught in metal teeth, trying to rip off its leg and be free. Stinking of fear and blood and death. A man was above it, watching.
Trap, strange thing inside me thought.
From high above, saw weapon crash down on fox, shattering fox skull. Blood flew. Man’s back paw stamped down, pushed down hard beside metal teeth. Trap opened. Beast’s eyes went wide, staring. Interested. Man pulled fox free. Man stood and stuffed dead fox into bag at waist. Reset trap and put small piece of meat in center. Scattered leaves over it. Man walked away, boots loud in brush.
A white man. Yunega. A trapper, strange voice thought.
Man stank of whiskey, blood, unwashed body. Beast studied steel cage of death. Trap. Remembered the way yunega had freed dead fox.
Beast can do that. Free trapped prey. Eat those that Beast wants. Others go free, strange thing inside of head thought. Strange thing with strange thoughts. Should not be inside with Beast. Strange thing that struggled to be free. Struggled to see through Beast’s eyes. Struggled to be like alpha in pack. Beast should be alone. Beast pressed paw onto strange thing in mind and it went still. Beast leaped from rock ledge and landed beside trap. Picked up stick and dropped onto trap. Steel teeth clanged shut.
Beast reached in and sniffed stinky meat.
Bait, strange thing inside thought.
Bait, Beast thought back, testing meaning. Ate scrap of meat. Beast hungered. Keeping paws on matted leaves, Beast followed yunega. Will eat all bait. Will not hunger.
“Jane?”
I blinked, the world whirling around me. Eli had my upper arm in his fingers. Steadying me. “Sorry. Tell you later,” I said. Stepping carefully off the back end of the porch, I placed my feet on the wet grass. Rainwater squished up through my toes, cool and fresh. The arcenciel whipped her head to me and her eyes glowed. She hissed again.
I showed my empty hands. “No steel,” I said, thinking of the trapped fox. “I can help you get free.”
The juvie went still, the way water goes still on a full-moon night, reflecting everything, black and white and harsh with shadows. “Free?” Her voice was raspy and coarse, as if she hadn’t used it in a while. “Free is . . . safe. Free is . . . desired.”
“Uh-huh. Right.” I had no idea why the arcenciel didn’t simply change shape and get free that way, but she didn’t. Body balanced, knees slightly bent, I took a step toward her.
The arcenciel said, “I will never be free.” She shifted shape into light-dragon form, rainbows sparking off her like sparklers and fireworks. Her dragon form was feathery, luminous shades of the rainbow sparkling with brighter motes. Her cotton candy hair flew on an unseen wind, white, stripped with red and black and brown.
In the instant she shifted, I realized several things, all of them what Beast had been trying to tell me: The arcenciel had been luring me in. This was a trap. The skull was bait for me. The arcenciel had come for me as well as the skull. And I was too stupid to figure out what the ancient memory had meant. Deep inside, I felt Beast chuff with delight. Beast is best hunter. Good fight with light predator.
The light dragon launched herself at me. But before she hit, she was back in human shape. She slammed into me, elbow to my gut. I oofed in pain and flew back with her, feet in the air, to the ground, into the mud. She landed atop me, the elbow still in my gut. Something tore inside.