Bison ranch is there—she turned to look in the direction of one of three bison ranches in the area—to setting sun.
If I’d been human-shaped I’d have sighed, butPuma concolorsdidn’t sigh. With just a hint of irritation in my mental tone, I thought,Those bison are not wild animals. They are...I tried to find a word she understood...pets. We don’t kill pets.
Beast chuffed in disgust.Stupid pets. Stupid human rule. Beast will hunt cows with trees on head. Beast will kill cows with trees on head.
For the record, that’s probably bulls with horns, but whatever.
Beast looked back down.Beast sees deer tracks in snow. Smells deer on wind. Will hunt deer.
Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Go for it.
I caught a glimpse of Brute, the white werewolf, in the trees off to our left, his body blending into the drifts, following us, his path at a pincer angle. Beast would never admit that she liked hunting with the werewolf, but she did. She moved more slowly, allowing him to catch up to her. Shethought,Brute is stupid werewolf. Brute is slow werewolf. Beast is best ambush hunter.
Uh-huh, I thought back again.
Thirty feet up, she stepped on a limb. It gave, cracking, a sharp sound like a gunshot. She froze into stillness, eyes taking in her options. The branch looked like the other winter-bare limbs all around, but it cracked again. It was dead. Pieces fell, spinning for the ground.
Trickster tree!Beast took two quick steps back, gathered herself, and leaped to another tree, and then another. Behind us, the branch where she had stood fell and crashed to the ground.
Her claws gripped and shoved as she raced down a strong branch, closer to the ground. Though her paws were designed to prevent snow accumulation, ice tried to wedge into the paw pads. More than five trees away from the trickster tree, she stopped and shook her paws, one at a time, slinging the snow away.
She leaped again, landing on a lower limb with that cat balance and grace no human could ever master. I hunkered down in her mind and let her hunt, my thoughts wandering. We did a lot of that these days, me hiding in Beast’s body, her in control, making the decisions, chasing deer in the mountains of Appalachia, annoying the white werewolf who had come to live with us. With the exception of picking on the wolf, she acted like a housebroken Big-Cat. She was having a ball, loving every minute of it.
I was bored outta my mind.
Spotting Brute, who had moved ahead, taking an animal path between bushes, Beast moved upwind, through tree branches, following the deer tracks below, in the latest snowfall. It was midwinter, in a year that had already recorded more snow than the usual thirteen inches, and we had two more months of winter left. If the weird weather pattern continued, it could be a record-breaking snow-year for the Asheville, North Carolina, area. The human members of our family were currently out snow skiing and snowboarding and having a blast while we hunted. I couldn’t bring myself to care about the snowfall. Or much of anything these days.
My human body was dying and my Beast body was the only part of us that was healthy. So while my clan worked on the property and buildingsthat I had bought with the Dark Queen’s cash, and played in the snow, and tried to figure out how to heal me, I got to let Beast hunt, twiddle my virtual thumbs, think about the failure of the Sangre Duello, and delve into memories best left untouched.
It was like picking a scab just to see it bleed. It was stupid. It accomplished nothing. It didn’t help me heal. But since me actually healing and not dying from the cancer growing in my human belly was unlikely, staying in Beast’s body beat living sick. For now.
Beast caught the scent of deer, ripe and pungent.
She crouched, her tail held tight to her torso, as she paw-paw-pawed ahead. Her back paws landed in the prints of her front paws. She was silent, unseen, moving high in the trees. Below, Brute glanced up and flicked an ear to the far left. Beast flicked her tail in response. Still hunched, she eased along an oak branch that brought her close to a springhead and a runnel of water, the deer tracks leading directly there. Temps were cold enough for the rivulet to be frozen over, but the springhead pumped still-liquid water to the surface where it puddled in a slight depression in the ice before it ran off and froze in a tangle of ice threads leading to the frozen creek below.
Brown color and movement drew my attention.
Beast was tightly focused on the movement between the trees where a hugely pregnant doe, a mature doe, and two almost juveniles were pawing at the ice. One was a male. Smalltocksof sound echoed as the more mature deer pawed, teaching the younger ones how to get at water in winter, their two-toed feet scratching and beating at the springhead, widening the depression of clear water.
Beast watched, studied the position of the deer, where their eyes were pointed, where their ears twitched. She listened to the steadytockingsound, considered the direction of the wind. These were all things she did unconsciously as she waited on the wolf to get in position behind the small male deer. She had taught Brute—by fighting him away from a doe, leaving bleeding scratches in his white fur—which of the herd to hunt and eat. She always saved the females and took down the males, even when she was hungry. Beast was patient. Deeply focused on the deer.
Since I wasn’t interested in the kill scene and the feasting that wouldfollow, I seized the opportunity and slid into Beast’s memories, the ones she kept from me to keep me safe. Or to hide truths from me. Having lived inside her brain for so many decades, I was curious as a cat. I slid through memories of hunting for catfish in a bayou. Landing on a boar and suffering a dangerous injury. Fighting an alligator, a big honking alligator.Stupid cat.I found older memories of other hunts.
Deeper, in a shadowy corner of her mind, I found a memory I should have known about. In it, Beast was racing away from a hunter.
—
Smell of white-man on wind. Stink of white-man-guns.Hate white-man. Hate white-man-guns.Needed kit sleeping in mind, but did not wake her. Raced for river.Fastfastfast.Over broken stone and fallen trees. Leaped high to top of rock pile.
Felt sting. Heard sound of white-man-gun.Boom.
Rolled in midair, tumbled off. Falling. Hit ground. Smelled blood. Was sick. No. Not sick. Wounded. Was shot by white-man-gun.
Pain clawed through insides. Got to three paws, one front leg hurt. Blood flowed fast over chest pelt and to ground. Crawled toward river. Could hear water. Roar of water, like sound of Big-Cat purring. But Cat was dying, not purring. Fell. Landed in snow. Blood everywhere.
Needed sleeping human kit to wake. Sank claws into sleeping human kit in mind.Wake up, Wesa. Need you.
What?Human kit curled long front paws and put to eyes. Cleaning eyes awake.
