much had been the result of Beast wanting to be bigger, better, faster. And how much she wanted to have kits. If I couldn’t find a way to give her kits, would she be willing to kill me to get total control of her life again? I was a naturally suspicious and distrustful being and I felt a smidge of guilt for the untrusting thought, but then, Beast had often acted behind my back.
See scale, she thought at me.
I blinked and saw the reflection of my DNA buried in the pentagram energies in the arcenciel scale. My heart thumped unevenly, a hard, backward rhythm. My energies sped up. Unexpectedly, I fell inside the reflection of myself. Tumbled into the image of my energies in the scale. Rolled and hit hard against something I couldn’t see, some barrier that stopped my movement and left my soul bruised.
It was a backward, mirrored image, though not an exact copy. The reflection I saw was subtly different. Less frayed. Less broken. Less knotted. As I watched, a single strand changed position as if pushed by an errant wind. I considered what had happened, and I realized that the arcenciel scale was displaying a vision of my broken self. And maybe a map to fix things. A map of how to fix . . . me. Maybe that was the true power of the original shape-shifters. To shift directly from within. I sank deeper into the pattern, the image of myself in the scale.
I drew up the image of myself, as my DNA really was. I sank, deeper, darker. Into the seat of my skinwalker power. The ambient noise changed, echoing slightly, as if my breath and heart beat against stone walls. I opened my eyes to see my soul home. I imagined the two images and set them on the walls of my sacred place. Side by side. I found the errant strand that was, in reality, still broken inside me.
I glanced at the dome overhead. Hayyel’s wings were there, feathered and protective, but no way was I going to talk to the angel I distrusted. I thought about God, the creator God worshipped by the Tsalagi and by me, though I had lived a life of violence rather than the meekness I had been taught as a child. Okay, God. Fine. You say you’ll lead if I’ll follow. Let’s see whatchu got.
Gently I pushed the single frayed and flying strand of real DNA into place, matching the reflection that wasn’t. The small strand slid home with a certainty that spoke of belonging. If sound existed here, it would have clicked, like one of Eli’s guns into its holster. I pulled my hand back, almost shaking with excitement.
Arcenciels lived forever. They could walk through time, changing it as they saw fit. They could change themselves as they saw fit. They were true skinwalkers, able to shift shape without following the genetic pattern in bone or teeth or flesh, able to acquire and throw off mass, able to do all that and . . . and . . . walk through time, back as far as time went. At will. Oh . . .
I looked up at the feathered wings overhead. Hayyel might have had an agenda of his own, but he was also a messenger. I looked back at the two images on the wall of my soul. I realized I had waked with one hand still clasped. I looked down and opened my fist. Even in the vision of my soul home, I still held my own DNA. The perfect DNA from my childhood. That was the healed vision in the reflection.
I had stumbled into it. This was . . . I had no words. This was important. Vital. Maybe my way out of dying.
But. I hadn’t stumbled into it. Brute had shoved the arcenciel scale at me.
Hayyel had done this.
I saw my hand, my teeth in my palm. It was my human hand. Jane’s hand. Not knobby-knuckled and weirdly furred, but golden-skinned, slender, and strong.
But I wasn’t just Jane anymore. I was Beast too. If I chose the perfect DNA reflected from the teeth onto the wall, if I accepted healing, I might lose all I had become. I might lose Beast.
“If I heal the DNA, I might go back to what I was. I don’t want to be what I was. I’ve gained something over the years that I don’t want to lose.”