For one brief, horrifying moment I wondered just how badly I could have damaged the world around me if I’d tried an external magic rather than one as internal as shapeshifting, and then the world, in the form of Tia Carley’s lupine self, came up and laid the smacketh down.
I was already on the floor, flat as I could get, as if spreading myself thin might reduce the raging strength of sensory attack. She landed on me with a crunch, and to my eternal gratitude, it appeared my sense of touch hadn’t been blown beyond the edge of coping. Possibly being hit by a semi and then thrown into a wall had already pushed it beyond its ability to respond any further, but I didn’t care. At least there was one aspect of a too-loud, too-vivid, too-smelly world I wasn’t entirely inundated by. Heartened by that one small gift, I surged upward, shaking Tia off before she got her teeth into me. Teeth, ugh: I bet my sense of taste had been upgraded, too, and I gagged on the memory of the theater door handle.
The world seemed a little less overpowering once I was back on my feet. I shook myself, then let out what was meant to be a barbaric shout, something to expel excess energy from within me. It came out a series of tripping howls and yips, not very barbaric at all, though it was plenty wild, and to my huge relief, it did batter down some of the extreme-sports levels of attention I was paying to everything.
And like it had physical presence, it dampened some of the fire. Inside a breath or two, the air was cooler, smelling less of flame and smoke and more of terrified, unwashed humans. I sneezed, made a mental note to apologize to Morrison for laughing at him when we’d walked through the stinky sections of Underground, and staggered in a clumsy line, trying to shake off the last of the blowout’s after-effects.
Clearly they’d only affected me. My head was still ringing when Tia slammed into me from the side, knocking us both into sooty but not-flaming firewood. I caught a glimpse of one of the caged men above me, his expression twisted with bewildered relief: whatever was going on, he wasn’t going to roast to death in the next three minutes, which made his life a whole lot better than it had been thirty seconds ago.
Which made my life seem a whole lot better than it had thirty seconds ago. I twisted under Tia, got my teeth dangerously closer to her jaws, and then for the first time in my life, found myself in the middle of a dogfight.
I’d seen them, of course. Usually just brief spates, two animals suddenly making themselves a single roiling ball of teeth and claws and snarls. Nobody in their right mind wanted to get in the middle of that: it was obviously dangerous, and a fire hose seemed like the best way to break it up.
From inside, a fire hose seemed like the best way to break it up. I had no idea how to win this fight, but I didn’t have to: my coyote brain knew exactly what to do in a tussle with another dog. Tia moved one way; I was there to meet her. I jerked another direction; she was there to stop me. Claws and teeth flashed, striking scores. Fur flew, and the animalistic scent/taste of her blood settled in my teeth. We smashed into the wicker man’s foot, a fact I knew only because the guy inside it screamed.
Tia, infuriated, broke from me to go after him. I jumped after her, astonished at how far I could move in a single leap, and bore her to the ground with my superior weight. She flipped on her back before I could get my teeth into her neck, and we were at it again, muzzles in each other’s faces, canines slashing and trying to hit vulnerable territory.
Then as fast as we’d come together, we broke apart again, both of us circling and snarling, waiting for another moment to attack. My lungs burned with effort and every nerve in my body was ratcheted up as I slunk around, head lowered, ears back, teeth bared.
It felt fantastic. It felt brutal, ugly, dangerous, alive, and I didn’t know if it was the animal or the human in me that loved it. I feared it was the human: animals didn’t fight for fun, not like this. They fought for dominance or survival. I didn’t think they walked away from fights triumphant, not the way people did, and I didn’t know if the warrior’s path I was on meant if it was okay to revel in warfare while in animal form.
Tia came at me one last time, and it ceased to matter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Smoke and flame and blood: those were the scents in Tia’s fur and in the whole of the cavern. I had no time to look, but I thought the reprieve was over. Whatever my little magic overload had done, it hadn’t put all the fire out, and it was picking up speed again. I had to quit screwing around, for all that torn fur and blurred vision and general heaving and panting suggested I hadn’t been screwing around at all. Part of me screamed to finish it, to end the battle in as brutal and final a manner as necessary.
But I was a human in coyote’s clothing, and like it or not, Tia was at least partially human under her own lupine coat. Decent humans did not go around killing one another. But we weren’t exactly in the right physical forms to sit down and discuss the matter, and I seriously doubted Tia would shift back to her beautiful naked human self if I went that route. In her shoes—or paws—I’d just jump on me and rip my throat out. Which, as far as I could tell, pretty much left me with the option to do unto her before she did unto me.
I’d already shot somebody this week. I was not delighted with the prospect of causing grievous physical harm, by which I meant almost certain death, to a second party inside forty-eight hours.
Knowing I would lose time and ground, knowing I would almost certainly regret it, I went within and whispered, Rattler? Raven? Guide me?
We ssstrike, Rattler replied instantly. He was a white streak against blackness in my mind, barely there, as if he, no more than I, hadn’t yet fully recovered from the blast at the theater. But he was confident in his response, which was more than I could claim. We hunt, we shift, we heal. Life is sssacred, shaman. Yours no lessss than othersss. Theirsss no lessss than othersss, and I knew he meant the men trapped in the wicker man above me. You did not ssstart this battle, he told me. There isss no shame in finishing it.
Good enough, from a predator. I repeated Raven?, and my other guide soared out of darkness, power flexing with each beat of his wings.
It shed light on a field of war. There was nothing familiar about it, none of the tanks or guns or trenches from the past century or more of warfare. Instead, a few surviving horses picked their way across bloody, mashed-down grass, and whickered in distress at the bloody short swords and leather armor that lay on and around innumerable human bodies.
Ravens by their dozens dropped to those bodies and sank talons into dead flesh, then rose again with souls clawed in their feet. They winged into the sky as if burdened by the weights they carried, and one by one winked out, carrying the dead into another world. They returned as rapidly as they’d left, falling to earth again and again, ferrying mortal souls into and through the Dead Zone to whatever lay beyond.
And when their duties were done, when no more souls were left to draw from one world to the next, they quite horribly landed on the bodies and began to gobble the choicest bits: eyes, torn bellies, tongues from open, once-screaming mouths.