Brute was blocking the door with his body and teeth and big doggy grin, watching me struggle. I was hurting and I needed to pee. The fire was mostly coals; I was freezing and needed a coat and gloves. Didn’t look like the werewolf was going to help me with any of my needs.
“What?” I demanded, creaking into a sitting position, hoping my bones weren’t broken. “Owowowowow. I think you left bruises.”
Brute lay down and scooted on his belly toward me, pushing something with his front paws. It was thearcenciel scale. The scale was both clear and iridescent, the firelight bringing out shades of red and orange and yellow in the midst of the blues and greens. “You—correction—Hayyel wants me to do something with the scale, doesn’t he?”
Brute nodded, his big head moving down and up once.
I turned the scale over in my hands, feeling the pliable strength, tracing the ragged edge where the scale had been torn off. “Arcenciels can timewalk. It doesn’t even do anything to their DNA. Not that they actually have DNA as I know it, since they aren’t from Earth. There’s no way to know if their DNA might help me.” I pressed my own clawed fingernails against the scale. They didn’t penetrate. “Unless I look inside.”
Brute chuffed.
If I tried to become another sentient being, that would lead to madness, the kind of madness that made my kind into serial killers. But just to look inside the snake in the heart of things? That had never caused trouble before. It should be safe enough. Maybe. A small voice deep inside whispered that I was skirting the edge of the abyss again, but I decided to ignore it.
I crossed my legs yogi style, held the arcenciel scale in one hand, and dropped into the Gray Between. The scale sparked and grew hot as the silver energies rose around me and melded with the energies in my belly. I hesitated, watching as the rotating pentagram-energies inside me siphoned off motes of silver power from the Gray Between and added them to the pentagram. Was the new pattern a way to accumulate and store energy, or was it a toxic form of magical energy? I still didn’t know for sure, but I was betting on toxic. The pattern inside me grew brighter, the red and gray and silver motes shining like tiny stars. The scale mirrored the shape, a diffuse reflection of my own energies.
Which was when I noticed the braid of skinwalker energies and the two threads that portioned off. I had forgotten to remove the threads that tied Eli and Klaus to me. With the mental equivalent of scissors, I snipped each one. I couldn’t tell a difference, but it made me feel better to set them totally free.
Satisfied that I had rectified a potential problem, I concentrated on my energies and dropped deep inside myself. My DNA was in its new shape, four strands instead of two, tangled and twisted and knotted in places. Threads of broken DNA fluttered, looking tattered and frayed. I identified bits of my human body. Bits of Beast. And... bits of bloodhound. Bits ofBubo bubo. Bits of male sabertooth lion. Things I hadn’t looked for before, things that shouldn’t be here inside me.
Beast? Are you here?
I heard a soft padding, growing fainter as my Beast retreated. She wasn’t going to answer. I figured that meant she had something to hide. And it hit me.You,I thought, snarling.You brought all the extra DNA in. You kept the twisted DNA from the half-form. You... You dangcat!
She didn’t answer. I had to wonder how much of this extra DNA had been gathered upon orders of Hayyel and how much had been the result of Beast wanting to be bigger, better, faster. And how much she wanted to have kits. If I couldn’t find a way to give her kits, would she be willing to kill me to get total control of her life again? I was a naturally suspicious and distrustful being and I felt a smidge of guilt for the untrusting thought, but then, Beast had often acted behind my back.
See scale,she thought at me.
I blinked and saw the reflection of my DNA buried in the pentagram energies in the arcenciel scale. My heart thumped unevenly, a hard, backward rhythm. My energies sped up. Unexpectedly, I fell inside the reflection of myself. Tumbled into the image of my energies in the scale. Rolled and hit hard against something I couldn’t see, some barrier that stopped my movement and left my soul bruised.
It was a backward, mirrored image, though not an exact copy. The reflection I saw was subtly different. Less frayed. Less broken. Less knotted. As I watched, a single strand changed position as if pushed by an errant wind. I considered what had happened, and I realized that the arcenciel scale was displaying a vision of my broken self.And maybe a map to fix things. A map of how to fix... me. Maybe that was the true power of the original shape-shifters. To shift directly from within. I sank deeper into the pattern, the image of myself in the scale.
I drew up the image of myself, as my DNA really was. I sank, deeper, darker. Into the seat of my skinwalker power. The ambient noise changed, echoing slightly, as if my breath and heart beat against stone walls. I opened my eyes to see my soul home. I imagined the two images and set them on the walls of my sacred place. Side by side. I found the errant strand that was, in reality, still broken inside me.
I glanced at the dome overhead. Hayyel’s wings were there, feathered and protective, but no way was I going to talk to the angel I distrusted. I thought about God, the creator God worshipped by the Tsalagi and by me, though I had lived a life of violence rather than the meekness I had been taught as a child.Okay, God. Fine. You say you’ll lead if I’ll follow. Let’s see whatchu got.
Gently I pushed the single frayed and flying strand of real DNA into place, matching the reflection that wasn’t. The small strand slid home with a certainty that spoke of belonging. If sound existed here, it would have clicked, like one of Eli’s guns into its holster. I pulled my hand back, almost shaking with excitement.
Arcenciels lived forever. They could walk through time, changing it as they saw fit. They could changethemselvesas they saw fit. They were true skinwalkers, able to shift shape without following the genetic pattern in bone or teeth or flesh, able to acquire and throw off mass, able to do all that and... and... walk through time, back as far as time went.At will.Oh...
I looked up at the feathered wings overhead. Hayyel might have had an agenda of his own, but he was also a messenger. I looked back at the two images on the wall of my soul. I realized I had waked with one hand still clasped. I looked down and opened my fist. Even in the vision of my soul home, I still held my own DNA. The perfect DNA from my childhood.Thatwas the healed vision in the reflection.
I had stumbled into it. This was... I had no words. This was important. Vital. Maybe my way out of dying.
But. I hadn’t stumbled into it.Brutehad shoved the arcenciel scale at me.
Hayyel had done this.
I saw my hand, my teeth in my palm. It was my human hand. Jane’s hand. Not knobby-knuckled and weirdly furred, but golden-skinned, slender, and strong.
But I wasn’t just Jane anymore. I was Beast too. If I chose the perfect DNA reflected from the teeth onto the wall, if I accepted healing, I might lose all I had become. I might lose Beast.
“If I heal the DNA, I might go back to what I was. I don’t want to be what I was. I’ve gained something over the years that I don’t want to lose.”
Jane gained Beast. Beast is stronger than Jane orPuma concolor. Stronger than screamer cat and skinwalker together.
“Greater than the sum of our parts.”
Beast thought about that, and I realized she was standing by my leg, not touching, but studying the pictures on the stone wall.Beast does not want to die. Beast does not want Jane to die, not even to have kits.Mountain lion and Jane are two. Beast is more than two. Beast is more than five.
