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.”
