• • •
Noon. Sun high overhead, or as high as time of moons that Jane called spring allowed. Heat and warmth and sun held us still, lazing on branch over black water. Below, water swirled with good-to-eat fish. Or alligator, good to eat, not good to fight in water.
On bank of swamp, kill lay, buzzing with flies. Buzzards flapped in trees, smart birds to wait until Beast was finished with prey. Smell of pig blood and entrails was strong in nostrils. Good smells. Good hunt. Good prey.
Beast?
Jane.
I . . . What happened? Something landed on us. Jane stirred in remembrance. Bruiser. Is he—
Thing attacked us. We are safe. Bruiser is not safe. Rick is gone. Mate is gone.
Jane did not answer, silent like black water, slow and cold with winter rains. After long time, Jane thought, Was that Rick’s Soul that attacked us?
No. Have thought like Jane thinks. Hard to do. Thing was same . . . species, Jane calls type of animal. But was not Soul.
Jane sighed in mind. Soul. Not Rick’s Soul.
No. Rick is gone.
Yeah. He is.
Big-cats do not mate forever.
I know. I know. I’m done grieving. I have bigger problems than a cheating ex-boyfriend and a catwoman in heat.
Or we can find mate-Ricky-Bo and take him from lie-false-bad mate. Kill lie-false-bad mate.
No. Jane looked away, into the dark of me. No. Tell me about Bruiser.
I/we smelled his blood on streets when Beast became alpha.
Okay. I guess we don’t have a phone.
Beast snorted. Beast cannot carry phone. Beast cannot dial phone. Beast cannot talk on phone. And Jane cannot be alpha until sundown.
Yeah. There is that pesky problem with shifting into you in daylight.
Beast twitched ears. Am alpha. All day. We have prey to eat. Water to drink. Alligator to fight if Jane needs blood and battle.
I’ll pass, thanks, Jane thought.
We can go to Aggie One Feather’s den. She is there now.
Yeah? You planning on eating her?
No. Snorted with amusement. Old and stringy human.
I promise to not tell her that.
Beast chuffed with laughter. We are close. I will take us there and shift near stinky-smoke-fire-hot place.
Thanks. The closer the better. I don’t have any clothes, you know?
Jane should keep Beast pelt and claws instead of human skin.
I’ll take it under advisement. And, Beast? Thank you.
• • •
I woke as the sun set, a hot red ball in the chill sky, tinting storm clouds vermilion, cerise, plum, and black-grape-purple. Tints that promised a long, wet, stormy night. I was on my side, lying in a painless location, on sand instead of pine needles, which was a kindness Beast seldom offered me. The sweathouse was just in front of me, smelling strongly of smoke from a long-burning fire. The scents of shrimp and hot peppers also hung on the air, coming from the small house nearby. Maybe étouffée and rice. Hot coffee.
I lay in the hard-packed sand, the night air wafting over me, currents cold and leisurely. I felt almost detached from my own inner pain. I was hungry. I was always hungry after a shift and I usually tried to stuff myself with grains and protein. Tonight, if I went into the sweathouse, there would be nothing to eat. Aggie One Feather liked me fasting when she took me through journeys into my own past, into memory dreams. Which had been both joyful and terrifying experiences.
In the last months, since I came to New Orleans, I had taken a lot of those journeys. Buried deep inside me, I had met the memory of my father and my grandmother. Had found what I was. Discovered the evil that I might become.
Since then, I had killed the only other skinwalker I had ever encountered. Had met potential mates. Had been bound to the Master of the City. Had found a family of sorts with the Younger brothers. And had lost Rick.
And maybe . . . maybe, had lost my God.
I lay on the cold sand, wondering if God heard me anymore. If he, the Elohim, the singular-plural God worshiped by the Christians and the Cherokee both, though by other names, even knew that I was alive. If he recognized what I was. Wondering if he had even created me, or if my kind had come into existence through some dark magic, as the legends had told. I shivered. “Do you hear me, God?” I asked into the night.
Instantly I remembered the resistance of steel slicing through flesh as I helped to kill my first man. God didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure he ever would.
Pulling my hands under me, I got up, my muscles aching, something I seldom felt after a shift. I went to the back of the sweathouse and turned on the spigot, holding on with one hand to the corroded metal as well water sluiced over me, cooling, raising pebbles of chill bumps on my skin. Physically, I didn’t need a shower, but I wanted it. Wanted the drench of icy water over me, my hair loose and long and plastered to my body. I shivered hard, my stomach cramping, thigh muscles quivering with cold and the shock of the shift. When I felt cleaner, I shut off the water and shook out one of the simple, long, unbleached linen cloths hanging on the hooks. Long-legged jumping spiders fell, and scampered away. I shook it hard, to make sure they were all gone, before I tied the linen around me.
Barefoot, I went to the house, stepping gingerly across the shells in the drive. I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. It opened almost instantly. I made out the features of Aggie One Feather in the dark. Smelled the étouffée, the shrimp and spices potent on the night air. Before she could speak, I said, “Help me. Please.”
Aggie stared at me, taking in the long wet hair, the clothes that came from her sweathouse, the bare feet, and probably the desperation that sat on me like a bird of prey with its talons digging deep.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Why should I help you, Jane Yellowrock, of the Tsalagi?”
I was too tired to even feel the shock of her question, the shock of her, maybe, not helping me, and I whispered into the night, “Because I’m lost without your help.”
“You have not spoken truth to me. You have kept truth far from me. You have lied. Why should I help you, Jane Yellowrock, of the Tsalagi?”
I realized she was asking something ritualistic, something important. And if I answered wrong, I might never get her help again. I laughed, the sound broken and croaking, like a raven dying. What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?
“When I was five years old,” I said, “I led my grandmother to two men, the two who killed my father and raped my mother. She took them. I don’t remember how. She kept them in a cave.” I laughed again, the sound now like the cawing of crows on a battlefield crowded with the dead. “I watched Uni lisi, the grandmother of many children—my own grandmother—kill the first man. When she hung the second man over a pit of stones, she gave me a knife. I helped her kill him.”
Aggie drew in a long breath. It sounded like pity and pain, as if she suffered with me. But not for long. She wanted truth? Well, I was tired of hiding it, not saying it aloud to any who asked.
“I’m over a hundred and seventy years old, as close as I can guess. I walked the trail of tears with The People before my grandmother helped me to escape. I’m a skinwalker.”
To give her credit, Aggie didn’t go pale or back away as if she were facing a crazy woman. The silence between us stretched, like drops of sweat from a prisoner’s back, long and thick and gelatinous. “You are not u’tlun’ta. You are not the creature called liver-eater. Spear Finger. You do not kill children and eat their livers or kill the sick and steal their hearts.” She said, her tone growing vehement, “You do not!”
Hearing the certainty in her tone, seeing the belief on her face—belief in me—I closed my eyes. A sound, equal parts fear, pain, and relief, ripped from my throat before it closed up again. Tears tore out of me, the tissues of my throat rending and rough, tasting of my blood as I struggled to breathe past the obstruction blocking my airway. I couldn’t name the emotion that raged through me. Too intense for peace. Too raw for acceptance. Maybe redemption of a different sort from what I’d experienced so far in my life.
I felt as if I’d been crying for days. I hated crying. Hated it. I’d been depressed not that long ago, and this felt a lot like that, a black cloud filling me. But this jag didn’t last long. As quickly as it started, it ended, and I found myself leaning against Aggie’s house, exhausted and empty. “Sorry ’bout that,” I said, my voice a croak.
“Have you eaten?” she asked gently. I shook my head no. “Go to the sweathouse. I’ll be there soon.” I started to push away from the wall and Aggie said, “God does not condemn the children led into deeds by a War Woman. Such actions are not evil.”
I stopped. “But does he condemn the adult who looks back and remembers? And is glad?”
“You were baptized, yes? Poured in the blood of the sacrifice? The redeemer does not condemn his own. He sees only his own blood when he sees you. Not the blood of those you have killed.” She closed the door in my face. I blinked, hearing her words again. He sees only his own blood . . . Broken, as if I hadn’t healed from a beating, I turned toward the sweathouse. And a vision of myself I didn’t know if I could stand.
An instant later she opened the door again. “You need to tell someone you are alive?”
“Ummm.” I wiped my eyes and they ached as if I’d been staring at the sun too long. “I’d love to borrow a phone.”
Aggie opened the door wider. “Make it fast and go back out. Be quiet. Mama is watching Wheel of Fortune reruns.”
Standing in the hallway, I dialed home and didn’t bother to respond to the hello. “Have you heard from Bruiser or Rick?” I asked, Aggie’s old-fashioned landline phone cradled between ear and shoulder as I braided my hip-length hair.
Eli said softly, “Good to know you’re alive. George crashed on your couch about an hour ago. Evan is playing his flute, trying to heal him.”
Bruiser is alive. My fingers twisted in my hair, pulling on my scalp as I breathed out in relief.
“Rick is a no-show here,” he added. “Are you okay?”