His heart felt like lead in his chest, a sorrow deeper than he’d felt in a long time weighing on his spirit. He didn’t know exactly when he’d started to care, but he was quickly realizing that he did. He cared a great deal.
Finally, she lowered her hands. The sadness in her eyes brought him up higher on his knees so he could cup her face in his hands, brushing away a tear with his thumb.
“Tell me,” he whispered.
She didn’t say anything, just stood from the table. He followed her as she made her way through the kitchen to the living room. His eyes briefly danced over the now familiar art. He’d searched this room thoroughly and found nothing. Where was she going?
Ana continued through the room and opened the door that he knew led to the basement. He frowned. There’d been nothing down there but a dirt floor and the water heater. Curiosity aroused, he followed her down. She paused in the middle of the basement and knelt on the dirt floor. He watched, fascinated, as she began to dig. After just a few inches, he saw the door.
It was a small square, maybe two feet across. When she’d finally brushed enough dirt off of it, Ana grabbed hold of an iron ring and lifted the trapdoor. The wood creaked, an eerie sound in the dark basement, lit only by a small window at the top of one wall. Without looking up at his face, Ana lowered herself onto a ladder and descended into the hole.
Brec held his breath as he followed her. A vague sense of unease tickled his spine. He had a vague thought that he didn’t know what was down there, but quickly shook off the idea that she may have a weapon. If she wanted him dead, she’d have let him drink the hemlock.
A metallic clicking sound drew his attention to an electric lantern in her hands. The soft glow lit her face, making her white-blonde hair look golden and her icy blue eyes the warm blue of a spring sky. The sight almost took his breath away and he had just a moment to wonder what she was like when she was happy. She looked at him for a moment and there was another emotion in her gaze along with the sadness—fear.
Before he could ask her what she was afraid of, she turned and walked farther into the secret room. When the lantern’s glow touched the far wall, Brec’s breath caught in his throat.
The skins. Two seal-skins, three wolf pelts, and a giant fur that had to be a brown bear’s hide lay scattered on the floor. Silver and black, white and grey, and a deep forest shade of brown. They lay like ghosts in the dim light, pointing their accusing fingers at the woman holding a lantern in her trembling hand.
The soft emotions he’d felt for Ana just moments ago wavered in the presence of the damning evidence. The sight of the skins put images in his mind of the victims. Where were they now? How long had they been without their skins? Were they alive? He swallowed hard. Were they sane?
Memories of what it had felt like to lose his skin attacked his mind like a swarm of angry insects. Devastation, pain, and a misery so thick it choked the air from his lungs had claimed him body and soul. He hadn’t even gone twenty-four hours without his skin, and yet the thought of never getting it back had nearly been enough to drive him mad.
He turned to Ana, not knowing what expression he wore on his face. As much as he didn’t want to push her into a complete breakdown, he was horrified. He’d known all along that she’d stolen skins, but somehow seeing the evidence made it all more real. If not for the intensity of her pain, clear as day in the red puffiness around her eyes and the sparkle of her tears in the lantern’s light, he may have forgotten his healer’s ways and given her the punishment such a crime deserved.
The smell of hemlock drifted by his nose, thrown up by his mind as a sensory memory. Ana was going to kill herself if he left. He knew it with a certainty he didn’t quite understand. He stared at the skins, trying to shake off the feeling that he was looking at dead bodies. Had their owners survived their loss?
I have to get those skins back to their owners. He glanced back at Ana. If I leave, she’ll hurt herself. Indecision threatened to tear him in two. Finally, he rubbed a hand over his face and turned to Ana.
“This isn’t a reason to kill yourself,” he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. “We’ll give them to the clairvoyant and we’ll find the owners. You can’t go back in time, but you can do what you can to make amends.” He stared hard into her eyes. “Ana, we can make this right.”
Her eyes were wide, frozen like saucers. With every syllable he uttered, she nodded, but the movement was a little too quick, a little too shaky. He looked down at her hands, noticing how the lantern shook with her trembling arms. Another worm of dread, crawled through his stomach.
“Ana, what else aren’t you telling me?”
“You can leave now,” she sputtered, the words exploding with a muffled sound as if her throat had closed up. “You have the skins, you can go.”
He frowned, trying not to make any sudden movements that might scare her. Her face had gone white as a sheet, even in the electric glow of the lantern. She looked absolutely terrified.
“Ana, I’m not leaving you like this,” he said gently.
“Why?” she shouted.
He froze and stared at her. The trembling in her body had grown worse and she watched him like a ghost that had risen from its grave to seek vengeance on her.
“Ana, calm down. It’s me, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Get away! Just leave, leave now! You have what you wanted, get out, get out and leave me alone!”
He took a careful step closer. “Ana, you’re upset. Let’s both just calm down and talk about this.”
“It’s your fault you know,” she gasped. “It hurt before, but I just pushed it away. I didn’t think about it, tried not to feel it. I just tried to fix it, tried to heal it or replace it, anything to move forward and just keep trying.”
Her teeth chattered as if she was cold. Adrenaline raced through his system and he had to fight to keep from tackling her. She had the look of someone who was about to do something drastic.
“Then you came along,” she accused, thrusting the lantern out at him. “You wouldn’t let it go, wouldn’t let me just push it away. You kept reminding me and reminding me and reminding me. You just kept talking about it.” A broken sob punctuated her sentence. “Why wouldn’t you just stop talking about it?”
“Ana,” he said softly.
She stared down at the lantern as if seeing it for the first time. Her eyes widened and she looked down by her feet. A painting leaned against the dirt wall and when she saw it a high-pitched scream ripped out of her throat. Brec’s eyes widened, his heart pounding as she darted across the room with the lantern, putting it down as far away from the painting as it would go.
He stared at the painting that had seemed to catch her attention. It was a beautiful landscape, painted in bright vibrant colors. A midnight blue sky sparkled with hundreds of tiny silver stars and a full moon shone down on a perfect blanket of snow. Black tree branches broke up the stark white ground, lending slashes of darkness to the gorgeous night. He didn’t recognize it as he had the art on the first floor, but there was something about it that tickled the back of his mind.
He stepped toward the painting and reached out one hand to touch the frame. He glanced back at Ana, but she was standing in front of the lantern, staring down at the electric flame. Her body was tense like a coiled spring ready to explode and he had the unnerving thought that she seemed afraid of the faux fire. She stared at it like it would move if she looked away.
Shaking his head, he turned back to the painting. The way she’d stood in front of it made it seem important somehow. He just couldn’t see why. Frowning, he tilted the painting forward, trying to angle it to best catch the light.
A flash of white caught his eye. He pulled the painting forward a little more, looking to the floor behind it. His stomach dropped. White fur. A pelt, fox it looked like. Nausea rose in his throat as his eyes traveled in horror over the edges of the skin. They were black, rough and ashen. The fur was destroyed.
That’s wha
t she was hiding he thought dumbly. She destroyed one of them. He slid the painting to the side and propped it against the wall so he could kneel down in front of the fur. He didn’t have to touch it to know it couldn’t be saved, but part of him needed to be sure.
A blood curdling scream erupted behind him. He turned just in time to see Ana catapult herself across the room, hands outstretched and fingers curved like claws.
“Get away from my SKIN!”
Chapter 21
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, she’d turned her back on it, she’d walked away from it. She’d only wanted to get the fire away, it kept flickering, dancing like it would come closer and burn the rest of it away. It was supposed to be a fake flame, nothing that could burn away her fur. Still, the way it moved and danced . . . it might be trying to trick her. Pretending to be a faux flame so she would turn her back and let it consume her skin like a flesh eating demon. She just wanted to make sure it would stay on the floor, far away from her fur. She’d turned her back and now he’d found it. He’d found it and he was holding it and he was going to take it away.
Panic blossomed in her chest and swelled until she couldn’t breathe. Tears of misery blinded her and she collapsed to the ground just in front of him. Ignoring the dull pain in her knees as she hit the dirt floor, she fixed her eyes on Brec.
“Oh, please, give me my skin back,” she sobbed. She held out a hand toward him, begging him to have mercy. “Please just give me back my skin.”
Tears poured down her cheeks, revealing Brec’s face before a second wave could well up again. The selkie stared at her, his eyes wide and glittering with tears, his mouth slightly open in shock. He watched her crouch on the ground and his hands holding the fur began to tremble.
“Oh, Ana,” he choked. “I didn’t know. By the gods, I swear I didn’t know.”
She held her hands out, staring into his eyes, beseeching him. His words didn’t make any sense, it was all just white noise until she had her fur back.
“Please, give it back.”
He raised her fur and held it out to her, handling it like it was made of delicate snowflakes that would melt away. Her arms shook violently as she reached for it, but as soon as the skin touched her fingertips, the trembling stopped. She held her breath as she brought it closer to her chest, holding her eyes open wide to slow the rush of tears.
It was like holding the hand of a dying loved one. She looked at the pure white fur, outlined by jagged black burns and felt the heavy weight of loss. Hot tears slid down her cheeks as she carefully brought the skin to her chest, careful not to handle it too roughly for fear that the edges would crumble and leave her with even less. She held it to her and began to whisper as she rocked.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay . . .”
The room plunged into darkness. A small part of her mind was aware Brec had turned out the lantern, but she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she had her skin.
Strong arms slid under her legs and back. Ana closed her eyes and stroked the center patch of unharmed fur, relishing the softness of it. Her skin. She sighed and let her head fall onto Brec’s shoulder as he eased her into his arms and started for the ladder.
She let him ease her onto the rungs, still cradling her fur as she climbed out of the hole. The air above was colder and she pressed her cheek against her fur, remembering how warm she used to be when she wore it. She’d run through the snow on even the coldest Alaskan nights and still she hadn’t been the least bit cold. Her skin protected her, warmed her. It had been like paradise.
When Brec finally climbed out of the hole, he picked her up again. It was strange to have him carry her so much, but she didn’t feel like walking anyway. She didn’t feel like moving. The whole world had become surreal and it seemed like all that was left to do was hold her fur and have a nice cup of tea.
Brec carried her upstairs to her bedroom. As he lowered her onto her pillow, the scent of lavender drifted up to her nose. She vaguely remembered putting the dried flowers there, an old folk remedy for bad dreams. Still, she didn’t need them anymore. The next time she closed her eyes, there would be no dreams.
I wonder if Brec will be sad? Her gaze followed the selkie as he left the room. He was a healer, one of the greatest. And handsome. She closed her eyes, letting her mind wander down any path it saw fit. She’d been fighting for her sanity for two years. She was tired.
She pictured herself with Brec, imagined laughing with him as she had earlier. If things were different, she would have liked to try settling down with him. Maybe he would have trained her to be a healer too. She could have become one of those wonderful beings who took away people’s pain instead of causing it. She smiled to herself. That would have been nice.
After a minute Brec returned. She opened her eyes to find him holding something big and dark in his hands. He settled on the bed behind her and unfurled the bundle. Surprise widened her eyes as his seal-skin rolled out and lay over them like a blanket. Her heart ached, touched by this sign of trust. He’d hidden his skin from her after that first night. She didn’t blame him, of course, but seeing him bring it out again pleased her. A pleasant warmth filled the air under the skin and she sighed.
He pulled her into the curve of his body and her grip on her fur tightened as she tensed in confusion. When his arm curled around her waist, moving achingly slowly so that he didn’t disturb the fur she still clutched to her chest, she cleared her throat.
“What are you doing?”
He tucked his chin over her head and sighed. “You’re going into shock. You have to stay warm. I—fuck.” His grip around her tightened. “Ana, I didn’t know.”
She could hear the threat of tears in his voice. Confusion furrowed her eyebrows and she frowned. “You keep saying that. And you sound sad. What’s wrong?”
“I thought you were human. All this time I’ve been telling you how horrible it is for a skinwalker to lose his fur, how much pain and suffering you’ve caused. I’ve gone on and on about it and all this time you’ve known exactly what it was like because you—”
He stopped talking and buried his face in her hair. His breath feathered across her neck and she sighed. That felt nice.
She cuddled into her fur. A pleasant numbness was creeping over her, leaving her mind and body far away and unimportant. Why hadn’t she found this peace before? If she’d known giving up would feel so wonderful she would have done it in the beginning.
“Ana?’
“Mmm?”
He hesitated as if he were about to ask her to reveal a big secret that he wasn’t allowed to know. “What happened?”
His fingers brushed against the burned edge of her fur and a painful spark of fear sizzled down her spine. She tightened her grip, pulling it away from him.
She answered only to distract him from trying to touch her fur again. Besides, the memory couldn’t hurt her anymore now. It would all be over soon.
“I met a man in town. He was good-looking and nice so when he asked me out I agreed. We dated for awhile and he fell in love with me.” An image of her former beau hovered in her mind’s eye, but no emotion came with it. She saw his blond hair and blue eyes, chiseled face and strong jaw. He’d been handsome to be sure. Unfortunately, a pretty face couldn’t replace what he’d taken from her.
“One day I came home and he was in my house.” Memories of that day began to flow back faster now. She could smell burning fur, hear the crackling of the fireplace. Horror threatened to pierce her bubble of not-feeling and she tucked herself harder against Brec, relieved when he curled himself around her even more. “He’d found my skin. He said he knew what I was and he knew why I’d refused to marry him. He said I could never be happy with him while another life waited to lure me away.” Tears slipped from her eyes. “He’d thrown it into the fireplace.”
Brec’s body froze.
Ana waited for the horror to swallow her, as it usually did when she remembered that day
, but it didn’t come. She stayed safe and warm in her bubble, unaffected by emotions or memories. Even with the tears streaming down her face she felt . . . nothing.
“I dove into the fireplace and pulled it out, but I was too late.” She looked down at her fur. “It wouldn’t work anymore.”
“And the man who did this?”
“Dead.”
He nodded, nuzzling the back of her head as he did so.
They were both quite for awhile. Ana’s mind wandered to the kitchen and she idly wondered how long Brec would insist on staying. She didn’t think he’d let her drink her tea while he was here and she didn’t want to wait too long. Her fingers stroked her fur. She’d waited long enough.
“Ana, why didn’t you tell me?’
“Tell you what?”
Under His Skin Page 17