It’s what I did, or had done, prior to taking the gig as Leo’s Enforcer. I’d been a rogue-vamp hunter. And no way was I leaving home without the tools of my trade.
Packed, I left my room and skidded to a stop. My business partners were standing in the foyer just in front of my bedroom door. Alex Younger had a mulish set to his jaw, though at nineteen, he pretty much wore that expression all the time. Eli Younger, the elder Younger, stood with arms crossed, a speculative gleam in his eyes. I handed him the note.
He unclumped it, read the three sentences, and some infinitesimal hint of tension in his face relaxed. “Payback’s a bitch,” he said, giving the note back. And I wasn’t sure who was getting paid back: me for making a bargain, or Gee for enforcing it. “I guess you won’t be needing us?”
I shouldered my gobag. “I have no idea where we’ll fly for this hunt, but Gee said something about elk or moose when this first came up, so I’m guessing somewhere far north.”
Elk? Moose?Beast perked up.Mooses and elks are bigger than cows?
Pretty much, I thought back at her.
Do not eat note.
I chuckled and passed the grindy to Alex. To both of them I said, “Start your vacation early. Go play video games. Take in a movie, go visit Sylvia, start a new board game. Whatever. I’m sure I’ll be somewhere way off, where there aren’t many people. And then I have plans.”
“Fly for this hunt?” Eli quoted me.
“Yeah,” I said, going for casual. “Thought I’d try to shift into an Anzu.”
Things took place behind Eli’s eyes, things too fast to catch, but the tension was back, hiding beneath the skin of his face. “Watch yourself,” he said, heading up the stairs to pack a bag. “It’s hunting season in somenorthern states and it would ruin my weekend if you got shot out of the sky. I’d have to go find your body. Track down and kill whoever shot you. Spend the rest of my life in jail. Totally not in my long-term plans.”
“What my bro said.” Alex tossed me a box wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. I caught it as he continued, “But my game’s online, so I’ll be here. Keep your official cell on, and wear that.” He pointed at the box. “I can track you anytime you’re within range of a tower or within range of a satellite, which should be nearly universal coverage these days. If you stay too long in one place, I’ll assume you’re in trouble and send Captain America.” He thumbed at his brother.
—
Sunset had freshly bruised the skies. I was in the backyard, holding the Anzu feather, sitting on chilled boulders, naked except for my gobag (full of clothes, weapons, and equipment) and the necklaces around my neck. My gold nugget necklace and the new tracking necklace—looking like gold, but much more useful—and my gobag were extra loose. I took several slow breaths. Concentrated on my heartbeat. Let my shoulders droop. The first stars came out as the sky darkened. I dropped into a meditative state, reached down into the tip of the blue feather, into the snake that lives at the center of all creatures: the double helix of DNA, as understood by the Cherokee of my own time. My skinwalker magics rose, vibrant, luminous, the silver and gray of the Gray Between. I dropped deeper, into the dried flesh at the base of the feather.
Anzu genetic structure unfolded before me.
The DNA wasn’t a double helix, common to Earth creatures. It was a tangled mass of strands, spun in circles, glowing like glass, pale blue and green light. One ovoid spot in the slowly spinning circle was denser and darker. It opened its eyes and looked at me. Unfolded slowly. The genetic structure was a snake, holding its own tail in its mouth. Ouroboros, the name came to me. The ouroboros focused on me, in the Gray Between, a place where energy and mass are one.
The snake opened its mouth. Let go of its tail. And struck. Before I could jerk away, snake fangs pierced me. Pain shot through me as if I had been hit with a Taser. I screamed. Bones bent. Darkness took me, blazing and icy.
—
I woke. The night was cool, humid, strangely scented. Chemical stinks of exhaust, gasoline, diesel fuel, coffee, food, and hot grease were familiar, but sights and sounds were different. The world was orange and silver, my vision so intense it was like looking through a scope, each line of light and shadow vibrant and intense. Something moved. My eyes found it instantly. Even in the dark, I could see individual hairs on a small mouse, hunting along the brick wall, hear its nails click on the concrete.
The music from a club several streets over was a booming din that hurt my ears. The house band’s off-key rendition of “One Way Out” would have made the Allman Brothers cringe. A motorcycle engine in the distance was cutting out. Cars motored through the French Quarter. A jet overhead slowed, descending for landing.
I lifted my arms and my right fingers brushed the wall nearest, ten feet away. I jerked back, rolled to my feet, and looked around, my head swiveling and turning; I had shifted shape. A warbling sigh sounded in my throat as I took myself in.
I was blue and scarlet and some sort of glowing color that might only be seen in ultraviolet. The glowing feathers were up under my wings and on my belly. A darker version overlay the tips of flight feathers and tail feathers, glowing with black-light intensity to my bird eyes. My feet were long, with clawed toes, ten inches from back claw to longest toe claw, with glowing orange skin over knobby joints. My beak was pointed and curved, a vicious hook on the end. It matched my orange legs. I spread my wings again, carefully, inspecting sapphire flight feathers, with a band of scarlet near my shoulder and another on the back of my neck—which I could see with the head-swiveling thing I could do. I had a twenty-foot wingspan. I shivered, settling my feathers, and I could feel each one as it found its place. I was freaking gorgeous. I also wasn’t hungry, which was a change from all my other shape-shifts. Usually I had to fuel my shifts with prodigious amounts of food, but something about the soft-lit magic trembling along my wings suggested that I had pulled the energy from elsewhere.
Beast can kill many mooses with claws and strong beak, she thought.
My hearing grew clearer, sharper. People were talking everywhere. A whiteout of noise.
In the house, I heard Eli speak, his voice soft and dangerous. “Bro.” My head tilted that way. “You go out there and I’ll deck you.”
“But it’s been an hour. Aren’t you worried about her?”
“No.” But there was the sound of a lie in the single word. Aw. Eli was concerned about me. I should razz him for it.
But... I was shaped wrong to go inside. I was shaped wrong to open a door. I imagined raising my huge foot and trying to grip the doorknob. I laughed at the vision, the sound warbling, unexpectedly loud. The back door opened on the last note. “Jane?”
I froze. But... parrots could talk. I warbled again, trying to say hello. It came out a rippling trill. As Eli and the Kid raced out, I tried again, and this time, there were words mixed into the warble. “Thish ish warble warble intersh-ting.”
“Janie?” Alex asked.
