Black Arts

by Faith Hunter

  And the thing landed on me. Long and multicolored, like rainbows on white silk. No form, no shape. Just an impression of . . . something familiar. It wrapped around me and squeezed.

  Anaconda, some reasoning part of me thought. Contracting, squeezing, to kill. Snake! my Beast shouted. Anaconda! Something I had been sensing but not understanding for two days.

  Shift, Beast commanded. But I couldn’t shift. I was trapped in the light. I—

  A horn blew. Tires stuttered on the pavement as an antilock braking system took over. “Jane!” a voice shouted.

  But I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I was suffocating.

  And the change took me, carrying me into the gray place, into the calm of the shift and the painpainpain. But something was wrong. . . .

  • • •

  I/we were not alone in the gray place. Other was there as well. Gray-blue-green and sparking with energy like stars and moonlight. Smelling of lightning when it hit the earth and burned through sand, making glass in its own image. I/we swiped at the snake/energy of the other. Rainbow hues and ice shot through the gray energy of me/us, seeing with Jane-eyes and Beast-eyes together. Hot and frozen, sharp and ripping, tearing through us in the place that was not a real place, ripping, cutting, just as the pain of losing a mate did to us in the vampire’s den. Swiped back, using claws in the gray place, using gray-energy-claws as weapons against other. Felt/heard when other screamed with pain.

  Other’s teeth caught throat. Biting down. Coils of energy took us and wrapped us and tightened.

  Could die here.

  Felt/smelled/knew . . . Bruiser stepped into the gray storm that was us, here, in this place, his energies black and silver and the red of the forge. He waded into battle. Steel blade cut down into the storm of energies; sparks flew as steel met electricity. Bruiser’s blade exploded, metal shards flying. Was injured. But other was injured more.

  Beast clawed free from coils of energy. Through gray place. Pulled self into world, pain like claws hooked deep into flesh. Bleeding. Leaped out of Jane clothes, pushed out of boots and leather and steel claws and guns. Pain. Deep in bones. Hurt. Jane was gone. Asleep in darkness.

  Turned fast, long thick tail whipping for balance. Knew Bruiser was fighting other. He was pulled into gray place of change. Was injured. Smelled his blood. Smelled steel and lightning. Bruiser was screaming, like shout for war.

  Raced in, claws out, swiping into gray place. Into wild energy.

  Pain like burning in fire! Leaped back. Away. Shaking paw. Burned!

  Jane? Jane! Screamed, big-cat scream. War scream.

  Jane was still asleep in soul home. Did not wake. Could not help. And Beast could not help Bruiser.

  Backed slowly from gray place, from battle in here and not here, pawpawpaw. Did not know what to do. Snarled in anger and prey-fear. Saw Bruiser fall. Spun, paws on road. Raced away. Into dawn. Smelling Bruiser. Smelling his blood. Smelling a thing that was known but not known, a thing made of light and dark and of energy like the gray place of the change. A thing like Rick’s Soul.

  • • •

  Noon. Sun high overhead, or as high as time of moons that Jane called spring allowed. Heat and warmth and sun held us still, lazing on branch over black water. Below, water swirled with good-to-eat fish. Or alligator, good to eat, not good to fight in water.

  On bank of swamp, kill lay, buzzing with flies. Buzzards flapped in trees, smart birds to wait until Beast was finished with prey. Smell of pig blood and entrails was strong in nostrils. Good smells. Good hunt. Good prey.

  Beast?

  Jane.

  I . . . What happened? Something landed on us. Jane stirred in remembrance. Bruiser. Is he—

  Thing attacked us. We are safe. Bruiser is not safe. Rick is gone. Mate is gone.

  Jane did not answer, silent like black water, slow and cold with winter rains. After long time, Jane thought, Was that Rick’s Soul that attacked us?

  No. Have thought like Jane thinks. Hard to do. Thing was same . . . species, Jane calls type of animal. But was not Soul.

  Jane sighed in mind. Soul. Not Rick’s Soul.

  No. Rick is gone.

  Yeah. He is.

  Big-cats do not mate forever.

  I know. I know. I’m done grieving. I have bigger problems than a cheating ex-boyfriend and a catwoman in heat.

  Or we can find mate-Ricky-Bo and take him from lie-false-bad mate. Kill lie-false-bad mate.

  No. Jane looked away, into the dark of me. No. Tell me about Bruiser.

  I/we smelled his blood on streets when Beast became alpha.

  Okay. I guess we don’t have a phone.

  Beast snorted. Beast cannot carry phone. Beast cannot dial phone. Beast cannot talk on phone. And Jane cannot be alpha until sundown.

  Yeah. There is that pesky problem with shifting into you in daylight.

  Beast twitched ears. Am alpha. All day. We have prey to eat. Water to drink. Alligator to fight if Jane needs blood and battle.

  I’ll pass, thanks, Jane thought.

  We can go to Aggie One Feather’s den. She is there now.

  Yeah? You planning on eating her?

  No. Snorted with amusement. Old and stringy human.

  I promise to not tell her that.

  Beast chuffed with laughter. We are close. I will take us there and shift near stinky-smoke-fire-hot place.

  Thanks. The closer the better. I don’t have any clothes, you know?

  Jane should keep Beast pelt and claws instead of human skin.

  I’ll take it under advisement. And, Beast? Thank you.

  • • •

  I woke as the sun set, a hot red ball in the chill sky, tinting storm clouds vermilion, cerise, plum, and black-grape-purple. Tints that promised a long, wet, stormy night. I was on my side, lying in a painless location, on sand instead of pine needles, which was a kindness Beast seldom offered me. The sweathouse was just in front of me, smelling strongly of smoke from a long-burning fire. The scents of shrimp and hot peppers also hung on the air, coming from the small house nearby. Maybe étouffée and rice. Hot coffee.

  I lay in the hard-packed sand, the night air wafting over me, currents cold and leisurely. I felt almost detached from my own inner pain. I was hungry. I was always hungry after a shift and I usually tried to stuff myself with grains and protein. Tonight, if I went into the sweathouse, there would be nothing to eat. Aggie One Feather liked me fasting when she took me through journeys into my own past, into memory dreams. Which had been both joyful and terrifying experiences.

  In the last months, since I came to New Orleans, I had taken a lot of those journeys. Buried deep inside me, I had met the memory of my father and my grandmother. Had found what I was. Discovered the evil that I might become.

  Since then, I had killed the only other skinwalker I had ever encountered. Had met potential mates. Had been bound to the Master of the City. Had found a family of sorts with the Younger brothers. And had lost Rick.

  And maybe . . . maybe, had lost my God.

  I lay on the cold sand, wondering if God heard me anymore. If he, the Elohim, the singular-plural God worshiped by the Christians and the Cherokee both, though by other names, even knew that I was alive. If he recognized what I was. Wondering if he had even created me, or if my kind had come into existence through some dark magic, as the legends had told. I shivered. “Do you hear me, God?” I asked into the night.

  Instantly I remembered the resistance of steel slicing through flesh as I helped to kill my first man. God didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure he ever would.

  Pulling my hands under me, I got up, my muscles aching, something I seldom felt after a shift. I went to the back of the sweathouse and turned on the spigot, holding on with one hand to the corroded metal as well water sluiced over me, cooling, raising pebbles of chill bumps on my skin. Physically, I didn’t need a shower, but I wanted it. Wanted the drench of icy water over me, my hair loose and long and plastered to my body. I shivered hard, my stomac
h cramping, thigh muscles quivering with cold and the shock of the shift. When I felt cleaner, I shut off the water and shook out one of the simple, long, unbleached linen cloths hanging on the hooks. Long-legged jumping spiders fell, and scampered away. I shook it hard, to make sure they were all gone, before I tied the linen around me.

  Barefoot, I went to the house, stepping gingerly across the shells in the drive. I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. It opened almost instantly. I made out the features of Aggie One Feather in the dark. Smelled the étouffée, the shrimp and spices potent on the night air. Before she could speak, I said, “Help me. Please.”

  Aggie stared at me, taking in the long wet hair, the clothes that came from her sweathouse, the bare feet, and probably the desperation that sat on me like a bird of prey with its talons digging deep.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  “Why should I help you, Jane Yellowrock, of the Tsalagi?”

  I was too tired to even feel the shock of her question, the shock of her, maybe, not helping me, and I whispered into the night, “Because I’m lost without your help.”

  “You have not spoken truth to me. You have kept truth far from me. You have lied. Why should I help you, Jane Yellowrock, of the Tsalagi?”

  I realized she was asking something ritualistic, something important. And if I answered wrong, I might never get her help again. I laughed, the sound broken and croaking, like a raven dying. What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?

  “When I was five years old,” I said, “I led my grandmother to two men, the two who killed my father and raped my mother. She took them. I don’t remember how. She kept them in a cave.” I laughed again, the sound now like the cawing of crows on a battlefield crowded with the dead. “I watched Uni lisi, the grandmother of many children—my own grandmother—kill the first man. When she hung the second man over a pit of stones, she gave me a knife. I helped her kill him.”

  Aggie drew in a long breath. It sounded like pity and pain, as if she suffered with me. But not for long. She wanted truth? Well, I was tired of hiding it, not saying it aloud to any who asked.

  “I’m over a hundred and seventy years old, as close as I can guess. I walked the trail of tears with The People before my grandmother helped me to escape. I’m a skinwalker.”

  To give her credit, Aggie didn’t go pale or back away as if she were facing a crazy woman. The silence between us stretched, like drops of sweat from a prisoner’s back, long and thick and gelatinous. “You are not u’tlun’ta. You are not the creature called liver-eater. Spear Finger. You do not kill children and eat their livers or kill the sick and steal their hearts.” She said, her tone growing vehement, “You do not!”

  Hearing the certainty in her tone, seeing the belief on her face—belief in me—I closed my eyes. A sound, equal parts fear, pain, and relief, ripped from my throat before it closed up again. Tears tore out of me, the tissues of my throat rending and rough, tasting of my blood as I struggled to breathe past the obstruction blocking my airway. I couldn’t name the emotion that raged through me. Too intense for peace. Too raw for acceptance. Maybe redemption of a different sort from what I’d experienced so far in my life.

  I felt as if I’d been crying for days. I hated crying. Hated it. I’d been depressed not that long ago, and this felt a lot like that, a black cloud filling me. But this jag didn’t last long. As quickly as it started, it ended, and I found myself leaning against Aggie’s house, exhausted and empty. “Sorry ’bout that,” I said, my voice a croak.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked gently. I shook my head no. “Go to the sweathouse. I’ll be there soon.” I started to push away from the wall and Aggie said, “God does not condemn the children led into deeds by a War Woman. Such actions are not evil.”

  I stopped. “But does he condemn the adult who looks back and remembers? And is glad?”

  “You were baptized, yes? Poured in the blood of the sacrifice? The redeemer does not condemn his own. He sees only his own blood when he sees you. Not the blood of those you have killed.” She closed the door in my face. I blinked, hearing her words again. He sees only his own blood . . . Broken, as if I hadn’t healed from a beating, I turned toward the sweathouse. And a vision of myself I didn’t know if I could stand.

  An instant later she opened the door again. “You need to tell someone you are alive?”

  “Ummm.” I wiped my eyes and they ached as if I’d been staring at the sun too long. “I’d love to borrow a phone.”

  Aggie opened the door wider. “Make it fast and go back out. Be quiet. Mama is watching Wheel of Fortune reruns.”

  Standing in the hallway, I dialed home and didn’t bother to respond to the hello. “Have you heard from Bruiser or Rick?” I asked, Aggie’s old-fashioned landline phone cradled between ear and shoulder as I braided my hip-length hair.

  Eli said softly, “Good to know you’re alive. George crashed on your couch about an hour ago. Evan is playing his flute, trying to heal him.”

  Bruiser is alive. My fingers twisted in my hair, pulling on my scalp as I breathed out in relief.

  “Rick is a no-show here,” he added. “Are you okay?”

  “Ducky. Bruiser. Details.”

  “Bruised,” he chuckled sourly at his own play on words. “Blood loss. Strange abrasions over his throat and back and one leg. Looks like he lost about twenty pounds. He keeps mumbling your name and stuff about snakes.”

  I closed my eyes in relief. And if a rather loud voice was shouting in the back of my head that I had left him to die and shouldn’t be so worried now, I was able to shove it down along with all the other stuff I’d have to deal with someday.

  “So tell me how your bike and your gear ended up scattered all over the street.”

  “Bruiser’s snake. Or . . . I don’t know what it was, but it kinda looked like a snake. My bike?”

  “Busted. I don’t know how bad. Jodi let me pick it and your gear up. You need to call her. But first, debrief me.”

  Bitsa! some small, bereaved part of me howled. I shoved it down inside too and, concisely, I filled Eli in on the fight and how I’d spent the day—which felt weirder than anything I had ever done before. I wasn’t sure how to be honest about being in Beast form; saying the words made me feel as if I’d eaten something slimy. But Eli seemed to take it in stride, or maybe he was standing bug-eyed on the other end of the line and I just thought he was nonchalant. I ended the debrief with “I won’t be home soon. Some stuff I need to take care of.”

  “Okay. Call Jodi. She has news she won’t give me. Or maybe she wants to schedule mani-pedis and facials.” He ended the call. I didn’t call Jodi. I knew there wasn’t time. And I didn’t want her to have access to this number in relation to me. Her news or spa-day plans would have to wait.

  CHAPTER 17

  Killer Only, Killer Only, Killer

  The sweathouse was still hot. Aggie had done an all-day ritual for someone, several someones by the sweat-stink on the air. I had to wonder how much she had left inside herself, drained of the toxins, yes, but also all the minerals that allowed a heart to beat and muscles to contract and expand.

  Not choosing one of the log benches, I sat on the clay floor near the circle of stones that marked the fire pit. Heat radiated from the clay and the stones and the old coals. I shivered hard once more, and started to sweat as my body reacted to the change in temp.

  From the metal bucket nearby, I took tinder—dry slivers of wood—and used them to brush away the coat of ash on the coals, dropping the curls of cedar into the red heat. The room brightened as the wood caught the flame, and I added more tinder, then larger pieces—stems and twigs. The flames seemed to dance with the shadows along the walls, a dance of day and night, of good and evil, like the dance of light energy and dark energy in physics, moving to an unheard beat. Sweat pearled and trickled down my spine in the heated room. I added a split log of hickory. The flames licked into the wood.

  I was surprised that Aggie had let me use her
phone. Usually the elder would tell me to put the things of the earth away, to concentrate on my breathing and the emptiness inside me. So I tried to do that now. I blew out my breath, trying to find a calm center in the darkness that swirled through me like a storm.

  Aggie One Feather opened the door and slipped inside so fast that the heat didn’t escape. She settled across from me and blew out a breath that sounded both tired and satisfied. “You came. You spoke truth. This is good.”

  I shrugged, my drying hair sticking to my sweat-damp skin. I leaned back, my body resting against the log bench.

  Aggie swiveled to her side and hit a button, turning on the old boom box. The sound of a tribal flute skirled into the room. “Close your eyes. Breathe, as I have taught you. Slowly. In and out. In . . .” We both inhaled, slowly to a beat of three. “. . . and out.” We exhaled together to a beat of three, syncing our breathing. “In . . . and out. In . . . and out.”

  We went through breathing exercises, which were a lot like yoga breathing, and I began to relax. The room darkened as the wood burned down. Outside, I heard a barred owl calling, hooting over the sound of the music. The track changed to drums, soft and slow, and I felt my heart rate slow to match.

  My eyes were half-closed when Aggie dropped something on the fire. Bright flame burst out, devouring dried herbs. I breathed in the scents of rosemary and harsh sage and tasted something bitter in the back of my throat. Aggie poured liquid into a wood cup. I didn’t ask what was in it. I drank it down, the bitter substance like gall.

  And I remembered the first time I tasted gall. I was standing beside my father, his tall form blocking the sun. Before him were two trees, a length of rough board spanning them, the horizontal surface taller than my head.

  “A tsa di,” he said, speaking the language of The People, which, in my memory, I understood as fish, “must be cut fresh, cleaned well, cooked and served quickly, or dried over a smoky fire for winter stew. In cleaning, the gall must be removed whole, not cut with the blade, or the bitter taste will pass through the entire fish and it will be no good to eat. Just as a bitter heart will poison an entire human, so the gall will poison the entire fish. Here. Taste.” He squatted and pressed a yellowish white blob to my lips. The taste spread through my mouth and I spat. Edoda, my father, laughed, the sound filled with tenderness. “As with all things, aquetsi ageyutsa, my daughter, there is both good and bad in the a tsa di.”