by Faith Hunter
Already it felt weird walking on two legs, as Beast moved up from the deeps into my thoughts. Barefoot, the wild grasses sharp and cutting on my calves and thighs, the rough surface of the earth rocky beneath my tender soles. I returned to the Paint Rock and the stack of raw, bloody steaks on the ground.
Beast wanted to lick them. I held her still, though my stomach was rumbling. I was panting, salivating. Hungry, she thought. Because Beast is something outside my skinwalker nature—an independent entity who shares my body and, more and more often, my mind—I don’t have complete control over her. And I know, in my bones, that if other skinwalkers exist, they don’t have a Beast-soul living inside. We had ended up together through an accident, if black magic can be accidental, and thinking about it always left me feeling uneasy.
I pulled the go-bag over my head and positioned my gold nugget on its double gold chain, swinging free. Together, they looked like an expensive collar and tote, making Beast look like an escaped exotic pet. I leaned into the Paint Rock and scraped the gold nugget across a space unmarked with human names, depositing a thin streak of gold. The gold was like a homing beacon, among other things, a way to find my way back, if I was lost after a hunt.
Yesssss. Hunt, Beast thought at me. She was ready to scope out the territory, unfamiliar hunting ground, though it was close to Asheville and seemed like a location we might have explored. Naked, I sat on a sun-heated stone and closed my eyes, feeling the power of the world in this place, the strength of the breath of mother Earth. I shivered in the remnant heat. Holding the fetish necklace, I closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the moon, rising above the horizon. I felt the beat of my own heart, and Beast’s. She rose in me, silent, predatory.
I slowed the functions of my body, let my heart rate decrease, let my muscles relax, the rock wall against my back, facing the moving water. Mind clearing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, as I always did, so I wouldn’t lose it when I shifted, when I changed, because oftentimes, right after a shift, Beast had complete control, while my own spirit and mind slept. I dropped lower, deeper, into the darkness within me where old pain and memories swirled in a shadowed world fouled with blood and fear. The night wind on my skin cooled. The river whispered a susurration, leaves moved and sighed. Memories firmed, memories that, at all other times, were half forgotten, both mine and Beast’s.
As I had been taught so long ago, I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake of DNA, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow. For my people, for skinwalkers, it had always simply been “the inner snake.”
I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts and I dropped within. Like water trickling through cracked rock and down a mountain. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold as winter. The world fell away. I was in the gray place of the change.
My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped. My bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Painpainpain, like a knife, cut between muscle and bone. My ear tabs bent and twisted, listening, and my nostrils widened, drawing deep.
She fell away. Night was fierce and bright in mountain hunting place. Crags and cliffs rose all around, with water flowing fast, earth breathing. I drew in air over tongue, a long scree of sound. Scents long remembered filled nose and mouth and mind: thick mist above river, air scented with taste of home. Smell of soil and fire. Plants strong with fall seeds. Old smell of rabbit. Blood from cow, old and cold. I panted. Listened to sounds—music from far, far away, sound of car along gravel road, not close but coming. Streams talking softly in mountain-water tongue, so different from bayou-water tongue. Familiar sound of home. Gathered limbs beneath me and padded to dead meat. I ate.
Later, moon still high, I cleaned paws and claws and groomed face and whiskers free from cold dead cow blood and hot deer blood. Yearling buck walked along road where I ate. Buck had never smelled big-cat before. Was not afraid. Stupid deer. Good meat. Fresh hot blood, good blood from easy hunt. Beast was good hunter. Full belly.
Hunt now? Jane said in back of mind. Hunt for wolves. Search for scent of grindylow.
I rose and padded away from wide river, into darker night under trees. Found trickling creek and followed it uphill, past campground, into wild country. Smelled scent of wolf. They had been here.
How long ago? Jane asked, her thoughts excited.
Two days and two nights. Have not returned.
Can you tell how they came in here? What roads did they use?
Turned and turned, sniffing wind. Small road is high in hills. Smell of gasoline and man chemicals that poison the earth.
Can we go there?
Beast is good hunter. Can go where I please. I padded through dark woods, leaping from stone to stone or high into trees, following scent on ground from high in air. Wolves had to walk on ground, and could not hunt from up high. Could not leap as Beast did. I had hunted and killed wolves long ago, wolves who had killed Beast’s prey in the hunger times. Pack hunters, I spat, hissing. Hate pack hunters. Thieves of food.
Found place where man had fouled the earth, dumping poisoned blood of machine onto ground, stink strong in air. Jane had tried to explain about machines. Not alive. Not dead. But machine has blood and hard parts like bone, and sometimes growls and is sometimes dead but not dead, like vampire. Confusing. Man is confusing. Man’s world is confusing. And dangerous. Sniffed machine blood. Old and bitter smell.
A four-by-four, off-road vehicle, Jane thought. They’re illegal in the parks. Either the wolves came in on little-used roads and the rangers didn’t catch them, or this is private land.
Trotted farther on flat place along hillside. Smooth like road but grassy under paws.
Old logging road, Jane thought.
Logging humans stole trees from land. Was reason two for hunger times. Fire that followed was three. Killed mountains for many-more-than-five years. No live prey anywhere. Man is stupid. Man is dangerous.
Jane did not respond. Soon found place where wolves changed from man to wolf. Old bloody bones scattered on ground. Cold, old chickens, wrapped in smelly plastic. Blood full of water and smelling rank. Looked back at logging road, thinking. Man-wolves came here on machine, like car but not like car. Changed. Hunted. Came back, got on machine, and left. Why? I asked Jane. I do not smell blood from hunt. They did not bring down prey.
Jane drew in air like hiss of snake. They came to make more. They came to turn humans. They entered campground on, Jane tried to count back days, but was tired and confused, maybe Friday night. Crap. They were here and they bit someone and they left. They bit a lot of people that night.
And people are gone. Full of werewolf sickness. No way to track who they bit.
Jane cursed. Some words are bad, some are not, but all are just words. Humans are confusing. I headed along wolf trail, following scent and spoor. Found two places where humans had been bitten. One was abandoned house, full of mold and roaches and rats. Human man had been sleeping there, had not bathed, had fouled his own den for days. Jane called him squatter. Wolves had bitten him and left. Man had left too, stinking of blood and fear. Outside, smelled where he had gotten in car and driven off.
Impossible to find, now, Jane thought at me. It’s like an epidemic. If he gets away, and he turns furry, he’ll try to bite humans. Crap, crap, and double freaking crap.
Moved on, following scent trail. Other place was campsite near river. Man and woman had been together. They had fought wolves. Both had died and been eaten.
No one had discovered bodies. Humans cannot smell fresh death. Humans do not see when buzzards mark place of the dead. Jane would tell humans. Snarl on face, I left and padded to river to wash old human blood from paws. Dawn was not far off. The mist of river had risen, as if trying to reach up to clouds pushing in through the sky where sun
fell at night. I stepped into river and drank, letting water wash paws, cool belly. And leaped onto rock, then to another, and then a hard, strong leap to middle of river, to a boulder larger than the others, gray and brown in the night. Standing high above water, to see world. Good place to see the sun.
* * *
The sun was rising over the eastern curve of the river when I shifted back, in the middle of the river. Beast had lain down on a night-cool rock out in the open, the river rushing around the boulder, a soft, pulsing froth. She had watched the sky lighten to a dull gray, her belly still full. Happy. Ignoring my pleas to return to land. And at the last moment, before the sun’s rays slanted over the earth, she had let me shift back. And there I was, in the middle of the French Broad River. Naked and exposed. And no way back to shore without a river-swim rock-crawl. Beast thought it was funny, her hacking laughter clear in the back of my mind. I’m not sure if her sense of humor is peculiar to her or is shared by all cats. I have a feeling that it’s a little bit of both and that my own sense of justice and making the punishment fit the crime had altered her cat-humor.
The water wasn’t high enough to swim, and the light wasn’t bright enough to see through the surface. By the time I was back to shore, I was bruised and bleeding from contact with underwater rocks, had a scrape on one shin, and was half drowned from falling into holes with no apparent bottom. Wet and smelling of river, I opened my go-bag, pulled out crushed, wet, wrinkled clothes and flip-flops, and dressed in the golden light, hoping no one was up and about to see me. Dang Beast.
Dressed, wet hair hanging down my back like a tangled skein of wet wool yarn, I made my way back to my car. I was lucky. It was still there, but with a parking ticket under the wipers. It was a whopper, but I’d bill it to Leo, and he’d pay, especially once the dead campers were reported. I found my fetish where Beast had dropped it and scattered river sand over the dried beef blood. Inside the car, I ate granola bars and drank a liter of water before driving back to the hotel, just missing rush hour traffic. Carrying the trash, two fast-food bags of Mickie D’s, and my other clothes, I tossed the keys to the valet with a ten. “Keep it handy. I’m leaving in twenty minutes.”
After a fast shower, stuffing my face with six McMuffins to ease the hunger of a shift, and changing into more professional clothes—jeans and a tee, all dry, with green snakeskin Lucchese boots that added three inches to my six feet, I drove to the sheriff’s office to report the dead campers. Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office was in Asheville city proper, on the corner of Haywood and Carter streets. I walked in, one of the fast food bags under an arm, just after shift change to find the place hopping and looking well funded, despite government budget cutbacks. The tourist trade had been up all summer and tourist tax dollars had helped offset the decreased county and state taxes. Tax dollars that would evaporate if the wolves weren’t stopped soon.
I handed my card to a female deputy at the check-in window and asked to see Grizzard. When she looked pointedly at the bag, I thought how easy it could be to conceal a gun in a food bag, so I opened it and let her have a look. I tilted it to her with a little shake, and said, “They were for Grizzard, but he’ll never know he’s one short. They’re a little cold, but have one.” I didn’t have to twist her arm. Rule number one, if you want a favor from a cop, bring food.
“He’s in,” she said, buzzing me in, taking a breakfast sandwich as I passed, and giving directions. She was eating when I headed for the stairs and the bowels of the building. I wasn’t searched or stopped, and tucked my hands into my jeans pockets, bag smashed under an arm as I meandered, relearning the layout of cop-central. I found the office and stood in the empty, dusty, secretary/receptionist/junior deputy’s nook of a workspace, listening through the walls as Grizzard blessed out a deputy and an investigator for a crime scene chain-of-custody failure. He sent them out with two admonitions. “Whyn’t you both not be so damn stupid next time.” And, “Make sure the assistant DA knows about the evidence problem you pissants made.” Our sheriff had such a sweet mouth and easy-going temper.
I turned away as the county cops left, as if studying an old-fashioned corkboard on the wall, and let the men get out of sight before tapping on the door. Grizzard was standing slump-shouldered behind his desk, his belly stretching apart the buttons of his dress shirt. He wasn’t getting fat, but it looked as if it had been a while since he worked out. Maybe a while since he slept, by the dark cir-cles under his eyes. He looked up at me, straightened his back, pulled in his belly, and grunted. “Whadda you want. It better be to tell me you found the werewolves.”
“Not quite.”
He must have seen something in my eyes because he closed his, dropped his head, and let out a pent breath. “What?”
“I was trying to track the wolves last night and I found a house where the wolves bit a squatter. And a campsite—” I stopped, remembering that Beast had wandered through the site. Her paw prints would be there. I closed my mouth. I hadn’t thought this through.
“And?” Grizzard was now watching me closely, too closely.
My silence had stretched too long. Except for bald-faced and obvious lies, I had no idea how to explain big-cat prints. Again, I was flying by the seat of my pants, depending on luck. The silence stretched, I flushed, and Grizzard looked suspicious. Into my memory, Beast shoved the bobcat tree markings I had seen Sunday. I had an out. “You have two dead campers,” I said. He flinched. “My GPS wasn’t working, but I can show you the location on a map. It’s just off the French Broad, downstream of Paint Rock, outside of Hot Springs.”
“Hot Springs?” Relief poured off of him in an aromatic wave, pheromones that scented of something like joy. Gruffly, he said, “Why didn’t you take it to Madison County sheriff’s office? You’re wasting my time, Yellowrock.”
Madison County. Well, crap. “Yeah, that’s my goal in life, Grizzard. To tick you off as often as possible.” I let a hint of a smile out with the words and he grunted again. I extended the crushed bag of Mickie D’s finest. “I never met the Madison County sheriff. I have no idea where his office is and no time to hunt it down. I’m giving you the info and you can do what you want with it. And to make your day even better, it might be on park land, so you can split some more jurisdictional hairs.” My smile fell, as I remembered the campsite. “It was bad, Sheriff.”
Grizzard cursed and rubbed his hand over his face. He smelled of old sweat and failed deodorant and, on his breath, rancid coffee and fast food. “And that’s the best you can do for a bribe?” He indicated the bag, still outstretched, with a little finger toss, his voice carrying amused remorse—joking, but maybe only a little.
“Yeah. I’ll try to make it steak next time. Take ’em.” Grizzard took the bag, opened a McMuffin and ate it in three bites. I heard his stomach rumble in relief. “When’s the last time you ate a real meal?” I asked.
“Before werewolves started eating people. That takes the joy out of food.” He opened another sandwich and took a bite, disproving his own theory about his appetite. “Okay,” he said through a bite of my cheap bribe. “Show me.” He raised his middle finger to a tri-county map hanging on the wall. I didn’t think the middle finger was an accident.
Turning my back to him, which Beast didn’t like, I found the bend in the river, the junction of Spring Creek on the far side. I pointed. “Campsite’s here somewhere. Away from the river.”
Grizzard pulled up an aerial view on his laptop and it was detailed enough for me to find what might be the rock I woke up on at dawn, not that I shared it with him. I pointed to a smaller area, thinking I recognized a tree that was now larger than when the shots were taken. “The house where the squatter was bitten is . . . here.” I shrugged when Grizzard tried to pin me down more than that. I wasn’t gonna do his job for him, and besides, mountain lions don’t do GPS.
“Park land is close, but so are some private parcels,” he said, sounding frustrated. He dropped into his chair and dialed an old-fashioned phone
, calling the park service, where he spoiled the ranger’s breakfast, requesting he drive to the site and check it out. When he hung up, he drummed his fingers, thinking.
I would hate being a cop. The sitting around waiting would drive me nuts.
Next he called the Madison County sheriff, who turned out to be a woman. I heard her voice on the other end of the phone, direct as a drill sergeant and nearly as earthy. Grizzard addressed her as Scoggins, and I had a mental picture of her, with steel gray hair, a muscular body, and the posture of an aggressive alpha dog. Just my nerves talking, but it seemed to fit the voice. She cussed as she took down info and sent a deputy out along Paint Rock Road to liaise with the ranger. She cussed as she arranged radio frequencies so they could manage a four-way chat without being overheard by John Q Public. While they talked and arranged and cussed some more, Grizzard ate, managing to down two more sandwiches.
I brought him a coffee when his voice started to sound dry. The good little helpful citizen, yeah, that’s me. I smothered my impatience and waited.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Who? Bit? You?
I heard the park ranger gag when he described the site over the four-way chat line. It was on park land, but just barely. The deputy wasn’t much better, sounding young and full of horror.
Then, in the background, I heard the ranger say, “There’s fresh cat tracks. Like a mountain lion. Huge paws.”
Grizzard lifted his eyes at me, holding me pinned. I tried to look surprised and innocent. “No mountain lion sign in the state,” he said, “not in nearly a hundred years. The record kill for bobcats, though, is something like forty-eight pounds.” He added thoughtfully, “Lynx have bigger paw pads.” He shook his head. “But unless it’s got rabies or distemper, no bobcat or lynx attacked, killed, and ate humans. Mountain lions, though—”
I shook my head, interrupting. “Wolf tr—”