by E. A. Copen
“Right. Now, imagine pouring that ice back into the tray and freezing it again. You get new ice made from the old. It’s death and rebirth. That’s the natural order of things.” He turned back to me, a serious look on his face. “But in Galunlati, there are some beings that don’t break down. Old gods like Uktena and Coyote and Thunderbird. They don’t die and get reborn. They are stuck there until the whole world is reborn in the end of days.”
“It’s what, then? A prison for the old gods?”
Sal shrugged. “It’s just a story, meant to explain why there aren’t any giant snakes and coyote men walking around.”
I sat down and stared at my bare feet on the carpet. “Let’s say hypothetically that it isn’t just a story, that Galunlati is a real place and Uktena really was trapped there for thousands of years, unable to be reborn. Then, one day, she suddenly escapes. What do you suppose would happen?”
“Hard to imagine, but I’d be pissed when I got out, or at least desperate to stay out.”
Both of us looked at the doorway to the kitchen this time. “She admitted to biting Valentino—which I’m still not sure is true—but when I asked her about it, she just said, ‘the bite is medicine.’ Any idea what that means?”
Sal sat down on the sofa next to me with a low grunt. “Well, medicine has a lot of meanings. Could mean it’s like an aspirin, which is probably what you think of, but medicine is also a poor translation for helping and sometimes luck. If I clean a cut with peroxide, it’s medicine. If I put a bandage on it, that’s medicine. If I hold a dying man’s hand as he passes, that’s also medicine. Taking various hallucinogens, good music, a hot bath on a cold day, giving a fatal dose of morphine to someone who can’t be saved so they feel no pain. Medicine might also mean something like finding yourself in a time of turmoil.”
I thought about it for a moment. If anyone had been through a hell of a lot over the last year, it was Valentino. Losing his brother, almost losing his son, working to hide his child from the government after their breeding permit had been denied, hearing that his alpha had incurable cancer. But how did a venomous snake bite help with any of that?
I was thinking so hard, I didn’t notice the smoke until the smoke alarm went off. “Shit!” I shouted and jumped from the couch. “The pancakes!”
Coughing, I forced my way into the kitchen and rushed to turn off the stovetop. Once that was done, I flipped on the fan and fought open the kitchen window. I heard Sal open the front door and sliding open other windows. Hunter’s feet padded down the hall in a panicked pace until Sal shouted for him to open some windows. Then, they retreated and more windows slid open.
Through all of it, Zara sat at the table, hands over her ears.
I tugged out one of the kitchen chairs and stood on it. It wobbled ever so slightly under my feet while I fought with the smoke alarm to get it to shut up.
Once the smoke finally cleared, and I dumped the charred remains of my cooking outside, I returned to the kitchen and sat down, exhausted from coughing. Sal came into the kitchen but hung near the doorway, eyeing Zara with suspicion. Meanwhile, Hunter went about getting himself a few pop tarts, which he stood in the corner eating while staring at Zara. After a few heavy looks from me and Sal, Hunter decided it would be best to retreat to his room.
I turned to Zara and put a hand on her arm. She was stiff, her eyes wide and fixed on Sal. “It’s okay, Zara. This is my friend, Sal.”
She stood and padded across the floor in bare feet to stand in front of Sal, apparently uncomfortably close. He leaned back away from her, but she didn’t get the hint. Instead, she grabbed his arm and lifted it, caressing the inside of his forearm.
“You’re like me.” She smiled up at him.
“Um...” Sal looked at me but I shook my head. This was all his to sort out.
Sal gently took her hands, pulling them from his arm and holding them. “Not quite. I’m only half Shoshone. My father was white. Can you tell me a little about where you’re from?”
Zara looked around as if she were just seeing my kitchen for the first time. “I don’t know. It’s been so dark. I only remember a little.”
Well, I thought, at least he’s getting more coherent answers out of her.
“Right. What about last night? What happened last night?”
Zara smiled sweetly and tilted her head to the side. “There’s so much sun here. I was warm for the first time in so long, a little too warm. I thought I would go for a swim in the river. As I stood in the river, braiding my hair and singing, a little boy came. I turned around to smile at him and...” She broke off, her pleasant smile fading.
The memory made her eyes widen in terror. “He came.” She pulled one hand from Sal’s grasp and raised it toward the ceiling. “A black shadow above hides the sun. Suddenly, it’s cold and there comes a great wind. He screams in the sky and his eyes flash. I’m afraid. The boy is afraid, too.” She lowered her hand and clutched it in a fist next to her heart. “I change to protect the boy from him. The sky opens and he lashes out at me. Rain, thunder, and lightning threaten to tear me apart. We fight, just as we used to when the world was new.”
She looked at Sal a moment before turning a half circle. “I turn. The water is everywhere. The boy is gone and now there is a man. No, not a man. A man-wolf. I’m even more afraid because I don’t know this man-wolf and I can’t see him anymore because of the clouds and the lightning, which hurts so badly. This man-wolf is screaming and he jumps into the water at me, so I bite the man-wolf.”
“I’d probably go after a giant snake, too, if I thought she was a risk to my child,” I said. I supposed it made sense. She had no way of knowing Valentino was Leo’s father, but something about the whole performance didn’t sit right with me.
“The man-wolf tastes of fear, pain, loss,” Zara continued. “This man-wolf is in great pain in his heart, so much that it’s destroying him.” She raised her eyes to mine. “I give him the medicine through the bite so he won’t be in pain anymore.”
I heard Sal draw in a sharp breath, but I shook my head slightly to let him know not to interrupt.
“Zara,” I said gently, “my friend and I are a little lost. We’ve never seen a woman change into a giant snake before. We’re not sure it’s really possible.”
Zara turned on Sal. “You do not believe it’s possible? You who change under the moon? How can you not believe?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe,” Sal explained. “It’s just that in my world, you’re a bedtime story. A legend. Like Santa Claus. Everyone knows the great snakes of legend aren’t real. It’s just stories.”
Zara cocked her head to the side. “Why would parents lie to their children and tell false stories?”
“Well, to get them to behave.” Sal glanced back at me, clearly looking for my input.
I stood from the table. “We use stories as a learning tool. A lot of stories and legends have a deeper meaning, a warning or an explanation for something our ancestors didn’t fully understand.”
“I see,” Zara said, but she frowned as if she didn’t. “You don’t believe me. You don’t think I can turn into a snake.”
“It is kind of hard to believe.” I shrugged. “If you could show us, that would make things easier.”
She was silent for a long time, probably thinking it over. Maybe she was trying to work out a way to lie her way out of it, which was exactly what I expected her to do if her claims weren’t true. If she showed any hesitation at all, I figured she was lying. Sal wouldn’t even need that much to know. He could smell lies.
“I will show you,” Zara conceded with a nod of her head. “But it can’t be done inside. I will need to be near the water. And if he shows up, it could turn dangerous for you all very quickly.”
“Who is he?” Sal asked.
Zara looked at him as if he were the crazy one. “He is the storm, of course.”
Sal and I exchanged glances, but it was him who spoke first. “Okay, then. The sun is up and
the water’s receded a little. Let’s go see what you can do.”
Zara stood up and I cringed to see her hair matted with maple syrup. At least the water would clean that out a little.
I grabbed my coat from the hanger in the living room and an umbrella because it looked like it was threatening rain again and walked out the door with a werewolf and a snake shifter.
Chapter Nine
We took Sal’s truck out closer to the river. There were a few people out and about on the way, picking their belongings from where they’d washed, but the further away from the main road we went, the fewer people we saw. The river was still out of its banks, but it wasn’t rushing anymore, just flowing as it normally did.
Sal parked the truck in shallow water and turned to Zara, who sat between us. “Is this good?”
Zara nodded. “Yes, it’s fine.”
Sal put a hand on her arm when she moved as if to get out of the truck. “There’s just one more question I need you to answer before we do this. I need you to tell me what you meant when you said the bite was medicine.”
“It is medicine. It brings an end to suffering, through death or change.”
“Change?” I asked. “What change?”
She turned toward me. “The Change.”
Sal tightened his grip on her arm. “Valentino is already a werewolf. He’s not going to change into something else, especially not some kind of snake shifter.”
“He will change or he will die.” She pulled away. “I didn’t say he would become a snake. Only that the bite changes you. Now, do you want to see or don’t you?”
I opened my door. By the tone in her voice, I knew she wasn’t going to oblige any more questions. Her warm, innocent voice had shifted into something cold and deadly. I knew better than to push.
Zara got out after me and stepped barefoot into water that was ankle-deep. Luckily, I’d opted for an old pair of black boots I had in my closet rather than my normal tennis shoes. The water only got in if I sloshed through and it splashed up over my ankles. Zara didn’t seem to mind getting wet. She slogged through the water, going deeper until the murky river water was up to her knees. Sal and I hung back, watching her as she turned in the water, staring at the ripples she made.
“Do you think she can do it?” I asked, leaning closer to Sal.
“I know she thinks she can. And she does smell like powerful magick. I’m more worried about what she’s saying about this bite. She’s not denying she meant to kill him, but she’s acting like she was doing him a favor.”
“She said he was in enough pain it was destroying him.” I turned to study Sal’s face. “Was everything okay with him? Was he in any trouble?”
Sal shrugged. “I mean, he lost his brother not long ago, and he’s got Leo. Recession is hitting hard and work is getting scarce, so Nina took extra work, but I don’t think they’re in dire straits.”
That sounded plausible. I knew how much I’d paid for my last set of repairs, and I also knew the pack’s funds were dwindling paying for Chanter’s treatment and previous hospital stay. That didn’t affect Valentino directly, though. On the outside, he and his family were picture perfect, middle-class werewolves. As history often shows, however, the version of ourselves that we present to the world is often very different from who we are when no one is looking.
“What about his marriage? Him and Nina getting along fine?”
Sal opened his mouth and drew in a breath as if he were about to say something, and then quickly clamped his jaw shut to think on it some more. “They fight,” he acknowledged after a time. “If you asked anyone but me, they’d probably write it off as normal stressed out new parent stuff, but I’ve got my own theories.”
“What kind of theories?”
“Well, for starters, Nina’s not what you’d call settled. You know the story about how her and Valentino even got together?”
I shook my head.
Sal sighed. “Nina had just graduated beauty school and wanted to go celebrate with some friends who were vacationing in Mexico. Chanter forbade it, but that didn’t stop her. She went and didn’t come back for most of a year. When she did, it was with Valentino and a wedding ring. Now, don’t misunderstand. Valentino’s here legally. He was born in the U.S., but apparently spent a lot of time south of the border getting into trouble.”
“Nina likes the bad boys, huh?”
“Nina likes danger,” Sal said, shaking his head. “It attracts her like flies to a horse’s ass. She likes danger and Valentino’s turned into a family man. She’s bored. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to end a marriage. But I don’t know that they were there yet.”
He was quiet for a long moment and we watched Zara spinning. The movement was hypnotizing, like watching a skilled dancer, but her movements were simpler.
“You know, you can’t live without a little pain,” Sal said. “If we were all happy all the time, what would be the point? It’s all part of the package. Pain, death, heartache, loss. Maybe she just doesn’t understand that. Maybe that’s what she thought she was freeing him from, the pain of loss and heartache.”
We stopped chatting because Zara stopped spinning. She looked up for a long moment and then began stripping off her clothes. So far, I hadn’t seen her do anything out of the ordinary but spin in circles without getting dizzy.
When she had all her clothes off, she closed her eyes and sat down in the water, which came up to her chest. After a long moment, she went rigid and fell into the water, mostly submerged. Sal darted forward to pull her out of the water, but stopped near where she’d been sitting. He bent over and ran his hands through the water.
“What’s the matter?” I took another step forward into deeper water, cringing as the water washed into my shoes.
“She’s gone. There’s nothing here.”
Screw it. My socks were already wet. I trudged through the water to stand next to him. Sure enough, there was no sign of Zara. Movement to my right caught my attention. Something caused a series of ripples in the water. I backed away from it, but Sal stayed where he was.
Suddenly, a massive shape shot out of the water. It was taller than Sal, who stood at six and a half feet, and at least a half a car wide, easily large enough to swallow a person. A rainbow of shining scales reflected the tiny bit of sun that had managed to poke through the clouds. The head was diamond shaped with slits for eyes and dark, curved fangs. If that wasn’t threatening enough, the massive serpent also sported a sixteen-point set of antlers. Massive, feathery wings of the finest polished silver spread out from the large snake’s back and beat once with nearly enough force to knock us over. The snake reared back with a hiss and used the wings to propel itself further out of the water.
I stood there in awe, jaw agape. I’d seen a lot of things that could change shape, but never anything like that. Even werewolves had to obey the basic laws of physics when changing shape. They didn’t get bigger or heavier. But Zara had gotten a hell of a lot larger.
Zara twisted and turned her head to the sky as thunder rumbled. Clouds blew in without wind and lightning flashed. I grabbed for Sal’s hand and squeezed as Zara began to writhe and shriek at the coming storm, sending waves as high as my waist.
“What’s happening?” I shouted over the cacophony of sound.
Sal braced himself against the rising waves. “I think we’re about to find out who he is.”
Just as Sal spoke, a dark shape swooped out of the clouds faster than any bird I had ever seen. It raced down, a black streak, and plunged at Zara, who screamed. A bolt of lightning shot down out of the clouds behind the black streak, striking Zara between the wings. The electricity danced over her scales as she squirmed and jerked against it. She was helpless, but the black bird didn’t let up. It climbed into the skies again in a spiral and halted at the cloud line where it hovered a long moment. I swear, in that moment, the creature glared straight at me.
I’d seen those electric blue eyes before.
The black bird spread
its wings and let out a thunderous cry, and I don’t just mean that the screech was loud. I mean thunder literally rumbled out of this bird’s throat, loud and deep enough that it shook the ground. Then, it dove back at Zara with lightning crackling under its wings.
“We have to do something!” I shouted. “He’s going to kill her!”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea!” Sal answered.
He was too late. I was already sprinting deeper into the water.
I don’t know what I thought I could do to keep a mythical demigod creature from battling another. I was way out of my league here. The only thing I knew how to do was read auras and I didn’t need that to know either one of them could easily crush and kill me. Still, I wasn’t about to stand by and let anyone die on my watch, criminal or otherwise.
I fought forward through the water until I was right next to Zara. The electricity in the air made my hair stand on end. I waved my arms and shouted, trying to draw the attention of the giant, black bird as it swooped down. “Hey featherbrain! Down here!”
Zara suddenly turned and lashed out, driving her face toward me at breakneck speed. The only thing that kept me from being bitten was that the bird swooped down in front of her and spewed lightning from its beak directly into her face. The move sent her scrambling backward, screeching so loud it made new ripples in the water. The bird hit her again with more lightning from its beak, driving her back further. She crashed to the ground, making the mud under my feet tremble.
Like some sort of giant worm, she bored face-first into the mud, sending up massive, thirty-foot waves. As one of them rushed toward me, I remember thinking, Huh, so that’s where those giant waves came from.
I stood in the shadow of a massive wave, staring up at the sticks and debris caught up in it. A new sort of silence settled in, along with a chill that reached deep into my bones. Once that thing hit me, it’d pick me up too. While I could swim, I was no champion swimmer. It was likely that I would drown.
Thunder suddenly shook the silence and the black bird dove out of the sky. Talons grasped the back of my coat and tugged me into the air a foot, then five. Ten. In mere seconds, I looked down in a panic as I watched the waves wash over the front of Sal’s truck. Sal disappeared in the water and I frantically searched the ground for any sign of him. I twisted to search to my right and the fabric of my coat tore, prompting me to be still.