It was a submissive gesture and I had no idea what it meant. “You’re no help at all.”
He chuffed again and blew out a dog breath of contentment.
Together, we fell asleep.
CHAPTER 14
A Hunk-a-Hunk-a-Hot-Man
Just before dawn I woke again, Brute bouncing on my chest as if he were doing CPR on me. Chuffing that awful stench into my face. It was more effective than smelling salts at waking me up. “Gah! Get offa me, you stinky dog.”
He chuffed with laughter but backed away and sat. He weighed around three hundred pounds and I felt as if my chest had caved in. Trying to get my elbows under me sent shocks of pain around my ribs. “You’d make a sucky service dog,” I grumbled.
Brute was blocking the door with his body and teeth and big doggy grin, watching me struggle. I was hurting and I needed to pee. The fire was mostly coals; I was freezing and needed a coat and gloves. Didn’t look like the werewolf was going to help me with any of my needs.
“What?” I demanded, creaking into a sitting position, hoping my bones weren’t broken. “Owowowowow. I think you left bruises.”
Brute lay down and scooted on his belly toward me, pushing something with his front paws. It was the arcenciel scale. The scale was both clear and iridescent, the firelight bringing out shades of red and orange and yellow in the midst of the blues and greens. “You—correction—Hayyel wants me to do something with the scale, doesn’t he?”
Brute nodded, his big head moving down and up once.
I turned the scale over in my hands, feeling the pliable strength, tracing the ragged edge where the scale had been torn off. “Arcenciels can timewalk. It doesn’t even do anything to their DNA. Not that they actually have DNA as I know it, since they aren’t from Earth. There’s no way to know if their DNA might help me.” I pressed my own clawed fingernails against the scale. They didn’t penetrate. “Unless I look inside.”
Brute chuffed.
If I tried to become another sentient being, that would lead to madness, the kind of madness that made my kind into serial killers. But just to look inside the snake in the heart of things? That had never caused trouble before. It should be safe enough. Maybe. A small voice deep inside whispered that I was skirting the edge of the abyss again, but I decided to ignore it.
I crossed my legs yogi style, held the arcenciel scale in one hand, and dropped into the Gray Between. The scale sparked and grew hot as the silver energies rose around me and melded with the energies in my belly. I hesitated, watching as the rotating pentagram-energies inside me siphoned off motes of silver power from the Gray Between and added them to the pentagram. Was the new pattern a way to accumulate and store energy, or was it a toxic form of magical energy? I still didn’t know for sure, but I was betting on toxic. The pattern inside me grew brighter, the red and gray and silver motes shining like tiny stars. The scale mirrored the shape, a diffuse reflection of my own energies.
Which was when I noticed the braid of skinwalker energies and the two threads that portioned off. I had forgotten to remove the threads that tied Eli and Klaus to me. With the mental equivalent of scissors, I snipped each one. I couldn’t tell a difference, but it made me feel better to set them totally free.
Satisfied that I had rectified a potential problem, I concentrated on my energies and dropped deep inside myself. My DNA was in its new shape, four strands instead of two, tangled and twisted and knotted in places. Threads of broken DNA fluttered, looking tattered and frayed. I identified bits of my human body. Bits of Beast. And . . . bits of bloodhound. Bits of Bubo bubo. Bits of male sabertooth lion. Things I hadn’t looked for before, things that shouldn’t be here inside me.
Beast? Are you here?
I heard a soft padding, growing fainter as my Beast retreated. She wasn’t going to answer. I figured that meant she had something to hide. And it hit me. You, I thought, snarling. You brought all the extra DNA in. You kept the twisted DNA from the half-form. You . . . You dang cat!
She didn’t answer. I had to wonder how much of this extra DNA had been gathered upon orders of Hayyel and how