Sir John said, “They don’t know themselves, in the beginning. They’re not a person or an animal or a demon—they’re something new.”
I swallowed. “So—how long until she’s—”
“It took years, for Lily.” In his face I saw my own lonely, barren future. Not a life, really, but only a long wait. “Then once she could control her shape, I decided I would find the answer, no matter the cost. I was a knight, wasn’t I? That’s how a knight proves his love: on a pile of corpses.” He paused and regarded me, mouth slanted. “You’d have made a hell of a knight, butcherbird.” It was not a compliment, but only a grudging recognition: like for like. “Now, let’s get back to—fuck.” I heard it a second after he did: a heavy tread, coming nearer.“Run!”
I ran. I pelted down the mountainside, heedless, briar torn, Sir John at my heels. Behind us ran something on four legs, now six. Her breath heaved unevenly, from lungs that shrank and swelled.
“Don’t stop! Keep—”
But I lost the rest of Sir John’s sentence, because the ground gave way beneath me. It was one of those old metal houses, hidden beneath the kudzu. The tin had gone lacy red with age, and it swallowed my right leg past the knee.
I wrenched at it, twisting to look over my shoulder. The metal bit deeper. I screamed.
May’s red, red eyes fixed on me. With love maybe, or with hunger, or maybe she could no longer tell them apart. She stopped running and sank into a mountain-cat prowl, shoulder blades rolling.
Sir John swore and slid to a stop. He knelt between May and me, rifle already at his shoulder. A flash of gold at his mouth: two bullets clenched between his teeth.
I said“Don’t!”and he said, around the bullets, “Shut up.”
May didn’t slow. A pair of tusks pushed through the flesh of her jaw, sharp as snapped femurs.
But then, for the second time, I saw Sir John’s hawk stoop from the sky. She hit the ground hard, and when she rose she was no longer a hawk. She was a hulking, furred thing, ursine, but long legged. Ram’s horns spiraled at each ear; plates of hide lapped down her chest. This was what a demon would be if we let them live, I thought: change by choice. What could be more dangerous?
The bear-demon said, in a woman’s hoarse voice, “John, go.”
Sir John said, “Fuck you, my love,” and did not move.
May had paused, as one predator pauses when it meets another. The bear lowered her head. May lifted her tusks.
Then, abruptly, in a blur of whipping limbs and torn flesh, our wives collided. I saw horns buried in a soft white belly; teeth closed around a throat; bones cracked beneath hooves.
It was a fight without fixed form, a battle without end. They slashed, bit, clawed, rent. Every time they should have died they changed instead, slipping out of one form and into another, because they had to. Death, now, was the bride, who could not keep hold of her shape-shifting lover.
The enclaves were right, to fear demons. They were a new kind of creature, born for a new kind of world. And it would not be easily conquered.
I became aware of Sir John pulling hard beneath my elbows. My leg scraped free of the metal, leaving long strips of meat behind it.
“Can you run? Good, then—”
“John!”
A woman’s scream. I turned. May had grown a dozen equine legs and pinned her opponent to the earth. John’s wife was shifting fast—skin, scales, fur, feathers—but her limbs were tangled inthe kudzu, crushed by massive hooves. May was crouched over her, watching her with mad red eyes. From her forehead, a single white horn began to grow.
Demons could be killed, of course—a quick decapitation, a shot through the brain before it could form a replacement. Sir John would know better than anyone.
He ran to his wife. His rifle would have been quicker, but perhaps he doubted his aim. Or perhaps he was through adding corpses to his pile.
He was fast—much faster than me, a little faster than May. But not fast enough.
He threw himself over his wife just as May struck. The point of her horn entered his back beneath his scapula and emerged between a pair of ribs. I heard the hollow mineral scrape of bone on bone as the horn withdrew.
A woman’s scream, high and hoarse. No, not a scream—a wild animal keen. A hawk’s cry, a vixen’s wail, a dog’s howl: a menagerie in mourning, from a single mouth.
May retreated from the sound, shaking her head from side to side, as if it bothered her. As if she knew, somewhere beneath the churning surface, what she’d done.
The keening went on and on, eerily constant, from a throat that tore and bled and remade itself. Sometimes there were words tucked inside the sound—John, mostly, andno, andI’ll fucking kill you—and sometimes not.
May was driven back, hissing, tossing her head. She was a great cat, back arched, and then a six-legged wolf, snarling, and then finally, the antlered elklike creature with a feathered face. She looked at me, and the feathers rippled across her eyes. Shrike black—because she knew me, still.
