I lifted a paw and put it on his hand, holding it down. Alex turned to me, smelling of bacon and pancakes and maple syrup. He smelled delicious and Beast wanted to lick him, but I held her back.
“Not Beast?” he asked.
I shook our head.
“You need to talk?” He pushed the specially modified keyboard at me. I chuffed and shook our head.
“In Jane form?”
I nodded once.
“Go shift. I’ll find the boys. We’ll be ready.”
I dropped down and trotted to the suite I shared with Bruiser. It was upstairs in the left wing of the inn, and it was huge, two times bigger than my bedroom in the house in New Orleans, and the bathroom was lavish. Everything about the inn and winery was luxurious and extravagant. Ilay on the floor of the bath and thought about my own shape. The one with cancer that was slowly dying. The pain wasn’t bad this time. Surprisingly.
—
I woke on the icy tile of the shower and pushed myself to my knees. Then to my feet. And held on with all my might. I didn’t intend to stay in human shape long. The pain was too horrible. I shoved my hair behind my ears and secured it with an elastic. I dressed and made my way to the elevator, because the stairs were beyond me.
I entered the office and sat gingerly on the sofa. That and the coffee table and the office desk and chair was all the room held for the moment, though more furniture was on the way. Eventually. Eli slid a plate of scrambled eggs onto the coffee table in front of me and placed a mug of hot mint chocolate in my left hand, a handful of ibuprofen tablets in the right. He had dozens of supplements on order, natural stuff to help with the pain, but the ibuprofen was all I had for the moment. I threw them back and drank down the chocolate. It tasted delicious, but my appetite was decreasing and the nausea was increasing. It wouldn’t be long before I wouldn’t want to eat, or be able to eat.
I heard Bruiser come in. “What’s happening?” he asked as I wolfed down the eggs. He smelled of snow-skiing and spice and alcohol from a hot toddy.
“Janie came in from hunting and wanted to see us,” Alex said.
I swallowed. Between bites, I told them about the memory I had discovered, giving them as much information as I could and as much detail.
“Government? Military? Private research facility?” Eli asked.
“Didn’t feel exactly like either,” I said. “Maybe a private lab with ties to the military? Or something like that? Or not?”
“Can you figure out a time for this memory?” Alex asked. “Maybe by the computer screen you saw?”
“The monitor was a small square with a green screen, no graphics, black type. The screen was part of a grayish box like an old—very old—PC. There was a large computer housing and the keyboard was in a large housing too. Lots of wires. No mouse.” I finished off the eggs. “The unit’s parts were all different colors of gray. Nothing matched exactly.”
Alex nodded. “Probably a hand-built system using whatever parts they needed. That was common in the late seventies and early eighties. So were green screens.”
“That gives us a starting point. How did you get out?” Eli asked. He pushed my empty plate away and replaced it with a pad and a pencil. “How much of the compound did you see?”
“I can’t draw worth crap.”
Eli lifted his eyebrows just a hair, a challenge.
“Fine. Okay.” I took the pencil. But the pain in my belly was growing and I couldn’t stay in this form long. And I wanted some sweet time with Bruiser before I had to shift back or die. I sketched out the cage room, the hallway, the rooms to either side, labeling them according to smell. “I went up two flights of stairs. Maybe three. I found a rooftop entrance covered with snow.” I drew the rooftop and the wall. “Then the roofs to the left, the fence, and the woods. The approximate location of the creek where I... where Beast killed Charles.”
There was a time when I wanted to believe that Beast had never eaten human flesh. That time was long past.
“To be clear. She ate Charles?” Bruiser asked softly.
I felt a little light-headed and a little nauseated. Maybe the sickness. Maybe the recognition that I was a monster. “Yeah.”
Eli grunted one word. “Good.”
“I hope he didn’t give her indigestion,” Bruiser said.
They were trying to tell me it was okay, no matter what Beast did. That Beast and I were the same being and not the same being. I had to look at life differently from an ordinary human.Right.I managed a laugh, more breath than anything else. “Right,” I said aloud. “Okay. I’m thinking this happened a decade or so before I became human, but I had to be human age of around twelve because there was no mass transfer.”
“When you walked out of the forest with bullet wound scars on you,” Eli said, thoughtfully.
