“You and me, we weren’t . . . going steady, or whatever. And I didn’t have any choice in the matter, once I was infected with the were-taint, but I cheated on you. I knew it even when I was sick. I was used to talking my way into women’s good graces and beds for information. It was easy; always had been. And I paid the price for it. I lost my humanity—”
“Maybe,” I interrupted.
“Maybe,” he conceded. “Probably, if the pain of the last full moon was an indication. But I also lost you. And that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. I cheated on you, and yet you came and got me out. You saved my life.”
“Maybe,” I said again.
He chuckled, the tone mocking, and I hitched a shoulder. The were-bitch’s dead body had been crumpled at Rick’s feet when I found him. If the werewolves had found her, they’d have killed him without a second thought, holding him responsible. I found her, and Rick, first.
“But you don’t have the wolf-taint. You’re infected with black were-leopard,” I said. And that was the sticking point. The were-bitch had raped him. I knew that from the smell on the mattress in the hotel room where he had been tortured. But Safia had—
“I was infected, but not by sex. We didn’t—” He stopped. “It never went that far. Safia bit me.”
I blinked, letting my eyes go unfocused, putting the timeline together. It fit. It was possible. My mouth opened slightly. I inhaled, feeling the air move through me. Tension, anger, jealousy, and something even more primitive, lifted off me, as if a rotting, uncured pelt had been resting on my shoulders, and had then fallen away. Deep inside, my Beast began to purr. She smelled the truth of his words. “Rape isn’t cheating,” I whispered. “And were-taint makes humans crave sex.” I turned and met his eyes. “Not your fault. Not your guilt.”
He shrugged, clearly holding himself responsible still. “Your turn,” he said.
I came back to the table, and sat on the edge of the hard, concrete seat. I was as far from him as I could get and still be at the table. “What do you want to know?” I hedged.
He laughed, the sound free and easy. He looked so good sitting there, the black T-shirt accenting his olive skin, the tips of the cat-claw tats and scars peeking beneath the sleeve of one bicep, the white and jagged scars marring the flesh on his other arm. He bent up a knee and clasped his hands around it. “I’ll likely turn furry eventually, into a black were-leopard, maybe one with a wolf tail or wolf ears. I’m not human. Neither are you. What are you? Start there.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it when nothing came out. Opened it again. Blinked slowly. The Big Talk. “Uhhh . . .” Rick chuckled again. I smiled and shook my head, looking away from him to the view. It wasn’t often that I said the words aloud. I took a breath and said, experimentally, “What do I smell like?”
Rick shook his head. “I knew you weren’t gonna be easy, not you.” When I didn’t reply, he said, “I haven’t turned yet. My sense of smell is heightened but not what it will be. Maybe,” he said, beating me to the equivocation. “But you smell like big-cat. Mostly. Like Kem, but not like him. Like a bird. And like a dog. Just a whiff. But mostly like big-cat. You’re not a were.”
“No,” I said. My mouth went dry. “I need something to drink.” Before he replied, I was up and inside, my head in the drink cooler. I stayed there too long, cooling off, but eventually, the sales lady called out to me. I made my purchases and came back out with two colas. I put his on the table and opened mine. Drank half of it and still felt dry-mouthed. I took a breath and blew it out. “I’m a”—the words were raspy, and I had to stop in the middle and take a breath—“a skinwalker.”
Rick nodded, sitting there, looking calmly at me. “Did you try to turn me,” he asked, “when we had sex?” There was no accusation in the words, just honest questioning.
I thought about being offended, but I had sex with him without telling him anything about me, which was a form of lying. I’d lied once so I might lie again, right? “I can’t turn anyone. I was born this way.”
“Okay. I’ll buy that. Black magic practitioner?”
“No!” I stood fast. Inside, however, Beast hacked with derision. Stole my body. Stole my soul. Jane is killer. Worked black magic. I forced her down, and myself back to the seat. I put my hands on the table, fingers splayed, staring at them instead of the man I had lied to. And who had lied to me. Things were so screwed up.
“My kind were the protectors and the warrior leaders of the Cherokee for a thousand years, until the white man came. The word Cherokee once meant people of the caves, or people who came from out of the ground. Something like that. They were cave dwellers; skinwalkers kept them safe. Then the early Spanish came, and, I think, brought some contagion, maybe. My kind started to die out. Started to turn to the dark arts. But we don’t have to do evil. I don’t have to.” Beast didn’t respond to my claim this time; she was too tightly focused on Rick.
“Can you shift into any animal? Tiger, sparrow, catfish?” He hesitated. “Mountain lion?”
“I need bones or skin to change. I use DNA to adopt the shape I want. I can’t change mass very well. It’s dangerous. So I stay with animals of my mass most of the time.” He wasn’t looking at me like I was an escapee from a supernat zoo. That did happy weird things to my insides, and I clenched my hands into fists before relaxing them again. “I’ve never tried water animals. Only land mammals. Rarely birds. We were protectors so predators are easier.”
I stopped. He’d asked about mountain lions. Though he’d been on the brink of death, Rick had seen me in my Beast-form once, the first time I’d saved his life; I’d made a habit of that lately, in between occasions of leaving him in danger. I knew what he was asking.
I drained the rest of my drink. “I usually choose mountain lion. And yes, that was me you saw when the sabertooth attacked you.” I’d been at a larger mass than my own, thanks to a glitch in the shifting process. That was what I was calling it, a glitch. Not a Beast-took-control-and-forced-a-mass-change-to-the-top-of-the-genetic-range-situation, which was
closer to the truth.
Rick nodded, which I saw in my peripheral vision. I risked a direct look at him. His eyes were steady, calm, nonreactionary. “Have you been in counseling or something?” I blurted.
He laughed and said, “No. Not unless you count Kemnebi’s drunken ramblings. Not since I woke up sick, in pain, and bleeding, with the Mercy Blade. Gee DiMercy talks a lot, and I was too sick to push him out of the room, so I listened.” He waved that away, wry, self-deprecating. “But I’ve had time to do a lot of thinking.” He bent over the table and rested his weight on his elbows, chin in hand, holding my gaze. “Time to get over the anger. Time to remember. So that was you.”
He was back at the memory we shared of Beast. Rick being attacked by a shape-changer in sabertooth lion form. Me saving him. Beast having forced the mass increase was the only reason I’d been big enough to fight the sabertooth lion off.
“Yeah. Me. I chased the sabertooth off you and got help.”
He nodded. “Okay. So if I go furry, can you do the whole black leopard thing?”
Beast moved closer inside me, padding, shoulders hunched, belly tight against me, the way she would hunt unwary prey. I smiled slightly. “If I have the bones or skin or teeth of a female black leopard, yes. Probably.”
Good mate. Strong, Beast thought.
“A real one?” he asked. “Not the bones or teeth of a were-female. Not Safia’s bones?”
“No! That’s black magic.” And besides, I wasn’t sure how the DNA of a were differed from the DNA of a normal animal or mundane human or skinwalker. And I wasn’t curious to find out. “I can become a real black leopard. If I want to. If I have the DNA material. Soooo. Are we . . . good?” I asked, not sure what I meant by that. Beast hacked in amusement. I ignored her.
Rick extended his hands across the table and I placed mine into them. “We’re good. Or as good as we can be until we find out if I survive the next full moon, furry, or not. Till then, it’s a good day to be outside and free.” He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed the back of my fingers. His lips were warmer than a human’s and soft, and something melted inside me. Beast purred. This man was one of very few people on the face of the earth—to include Molly, her husband Evan, and Angie Baby—who knew I was a skinwalker. And he was okay with it. His scent warmed as if he knew my thoughts, and he pressed my Leo key chain into my palm. “Let’s go for a ride.”
We helmeted up and I followed Rick’s red crotch-rocket Kawasaki out of the small parking lot and up and down switchback roads. We didn’t talk. We roamed the hills, catching one another’s eyes, much like mated big-cats might, pointing to prey and old barns and cabins covered in undergrowth. We followed the scent of grindy and once of werewolf until it faded.
At the first shadows of night, we were back at the campground. I keyed off Fang, set the kick, and straddled the bike while the engines cooled, studying Ricky Bo. While I watched, he secured his bike for the night, his movements more graceful than once upon a time. Though he hadn’t gone furry, he was picking up the traits of a cat: stealth, grace, improved senses. He unstrapped his helmet and I pulled off mine. His hair swung forward, damp, matted by sweat.
I caught the scent of him, musky, salty, cat, all male. I stood and took a step toward him. He met my eyes for a single moment. Heat flared between us, and I was in his arms, his mouth on mine. The world tilted, my hands clawing under his shirt. I was slammed against something hard. Pinned. Bark gouging through my leather jacket. I curled a leg around his, pulling him close. Breath hot. Tongue and mouths and the rising scent of musk. One hand cupped my head. The other my butt. Pulling me close into him. Grinding.
“Get a room,” someone said. Too close.