Something like joy flitted through me. True. And yes, this is good.
I opened my beak and a warbling cry echoed in the heights of the room as I called out, my bird throat trying to make a word. Alex came out as “Aulkxsh.”
The door opened and my younger partner entered. “Dang, Janie. You look dangerous.”
Beast is dangerous. And beautiful, she thought at me. More beautiful than stupid bird.
Dang skippy, I thought back.
I warbled again, trying to say hello. It came out a rippling trill of Ls.
Alex carefully, slowly, raised a hand to my head and stroked my feathers. “You are . . . This is amazing. I wish—” The words broke off abruptly.
Alex wishes to be skinwalker, Beast thought.
Alex wishes to fly, I thought back.
Flying is stupid. Beast does not like to fly.
It’s the only way we’ll find EJ.
Beast chuffed in irritation.
I leaned into his hand and let him groom my feathers. Then I caught a flash of color from the open door and I hopped away, out the door and up onto the railing of the balcony. I looked back and said, “Aulkx, callll Evannnn. Remembbbber.”
“I remember,” he said from behind me. “And as Leo once wrote to you, ‘May your hunt be bloody. May you rend and eat the flesh of your prey.’”
With those words, and the memory of the bloodsucking fanghead foremost in my mind, I gathered myself and crouched until my knobby toes touched my breastbone, a position I might achieve in human form—if I broke my legs first. I leaped and threw out my arms. Not arms. Wings. Icy air caught beneath them and my wings beat down. Tips of flight feathers hit the earth and brushed through the snow on the second and third strokes. And then I was lifting, wind in my face, air thin and icy and very, very wet. I tucked my feet and angled my body, rising into the air with each wingbeat. The Anzu Mercy Blade Enforcer flew at my side.
Over the cell phone, I heard Alex’s voice, crackly and yet crisp in my Anzu ears. “Janie, I am tracking. Head to your two o’clock. You’ll see Asheville in the distance. Copy?”
“Coee,” I said in my bird voice, my wings carrying me onto a high-rising thermal. I tilted my feathers and found an air current that let me relax, soaring as the wind lifted me. Below me I smelled people and petroleum products and felt the power of the mountain ridges as the energies rose and built and as air currents met and twisted together.
Alex said, “I-40 should be visible beneath you about now.”
“Cokee,” I said, trying my bird voice again, trying to remember how I had communicated last time, how my mouth worked. It had seemed easier before.
To my side, the air currents underwent a sharp change and I compensated, looking that way. Gee flew to my side and a little behind, riding my draft. Letting me do the work of flying. Useless bird. I caught his eye and he opened his beak, giving a laughing squawk. I whirled. Batted my wings at him.
Gee tumbled in the air, all feathers and fluff. I laughed back at him and got an evil bird-eye in return. Then he laughed, a peculiar Anzu chuckle. “Urgggglllaaammmaaah’s body was always beautiful in flight,” he said, of the owner of the flight feather I had used to shape-change. “Your clumsy antics would make her laugh.”
I blew a bird raspberry at him with my beak and spiraled hard away. “Alexch? Where?”
“Perpendicular to your right,” Alex said, “is the North Swannanoa River. Upstream, you’ll spot the first of two stone quarries, may be hard to spot under the snow. Can you see them? If so, head to the farthest one.”
“I ssshee,” I said.
“Keep the Burnett Reservoir to your right, at about two o’clock.”
“Copy.” I found my voice in the guttural and tongue and throat possibilities of the Anzu physiology.
“Wedgewood Terrace wends to your left, with a stretch of road that is actually almost perfectly straight. A house roofed with red-clay tiles is on the right side of the street, new construction, about halfway between two right-angle turns. You see that?”
With my human eyes I’d have said no, the color hidden beneath the snow. But my raptor eyes picked out spots of red beneath the blanket of white. “I see.”
“Big Evan is standing in the middle of the road, waiting for you. He has the tracking device in his