The woad ring in her teeth, Beast backed partway down the pillar and then leaped, free-falling toward the cave floor twenty feet below. Where a silver snake with one huge green eye was coiled, looking up at us, ready to strike.
CHAPTER 10
You Can Try, Witch
Midair, Beast whirled her heavy tail and torqued her body, pushing off the pillar with her back paws, launching herself out and to the side. In a movement worthy of a kung fu special effects movie, she spat out the ring and whipped her body around, catching the snake behind the head. She bit down. Metal and bone crunched, green blood splattered and filled her mouth. Beast whipped her whole body side to side, lashing the snake, thrashing its head against the floor, breaking its spine in a dozen places. Death tremors twitched through its long tail. The emerald slit pupil in the single green eye widened and went still.
The woad ring had gone dull and grayish. The stink of burned hair disappeared. The snake was dead.
Just to be certain, Beast ripped out the snake’s vertebra and spat bone, green blood, and silver scales to the floor. She settled to the cave floor to groom herself. Her tongue was rough and coarse, and pulling green blood and blue woad off her pelt.
Oookaaay. I can’t complain.
Beast is best hunter.
Yes, you are. But we’re still left with my hand all bent back and broken. Andwhatis with that stink of burning hair?
We can shift now. We can become Beast. The Gray Between is ours again,she thought.
I studied the ceiling. The dark mote was still there, but instead of a strong pulsing, it was fluttering, as if Beast’s rough treatment of the woad ring and removal of the chain had damaged it somehow. I remembered it spurting, as if it was alive and had been injured. I pushed to our feet and moved slowly to the other side of the fire pit, to see the mote from that side. There was a small blackened mark there, like a scar.
I went back and pawed the ring. Part of it was missing.What happened to the blue ring?
Beast ate it.
Was that wise?
Tasted of blood of Anzu.Beast chuckled.Makes Beast strong.
I didn’t like the idea of her swallowing the magic of another creature, but it was a bit late to argue about it.What about the smell of Bethany?Bethany was a vamp priestess and she took the termnutcaseto new and whacky heights.
Bethany meant to watch, like ambush hunter. Bethany has not done so.
So she, what? Forgot about us?
Beast does not know.
But... her magic. Is it dead?
Beast looked away, bored with the topic. Or she didn’t know the answer and wouldn’t let me know that she didn’t know. Dang cat.How about the burning hair?I asked again.
Jane has hair.
Yeah. Dang cat was messing with me.Fine. Ducky. Let’s try this thing.
I padded back to the fire pit and lay down on the cool stone floor. Closing my eyes, I searched out, not my own DNA, but the vision of myself in my human form. I felt the Gray Between as it erupted out of my breastbone, high,near my throat, and spread around me with cool, sparkling radiance I could feel, even sightless. The shift began with my spine and ribs, bones cracking, snapping in two, and reforming. I opened my mouth to scream, but had no breath for one, my lungs half collapsed as they changed and reshaped. This change was as painful as my shifts used to be, and as slow, a ripping, tearing transformation. I opened my eyes as the bones in my left hand and arm, and even higher in my shoulder, began to reform, reshape, realign, and snapped into place. Human.Better,I murmured to Beast.Much better.
And then I remembered one of theTsalagiwords for the double helix of genetic material. The snake.I-na-du.The snake in the heart of each creature. And I had to wonder whose DNA Beast had just broken. Or healed.
***
I came to in the sweat house, the coals burned low, into deep red heat, the rocks discharging the same heat outward. The first thing I noticed was that I was pain free. Salt-caked. Stinking. I rolled my body over and took a good long look at my hand. Human. Mine. I checked out my feet and knees and thighs, and peeked down through the neck opening of the sweat-soaked gown. Human.Thank God.
My BFF was gone. Aggie was sitting against the far wall, her back ramrod straight and pressed firmly to the wood, as far from me as she could get and still be inside the sweat house with me. I cleared my throat, which felt like two pieces of chamois buffing together. I was seriously dehydrated, and when I spoke, my voice was coarse and gritty. “So. Now you know my deepest darkest secrets.”
“I doubt that.” She sounded wry, not terrified.
“Well, all the ones that are fit to be aired in public.”
