It didn't take long to reach the body. The grave was shallow; and once he hit that pocket of muddy soup, he knew he had arrived. Nora had changed substantially in the short time since returning to seed. Her supernature worked against her in death, accelerating the decomposition process. She was like a floater now: soft and rancid, bloated with scavengers and gas. She was barely recognizable as a woman at all, much less the woman he loved.
When he took her in his embrace, her flesh sloughed off in spongy, liquefying slabs; the fatty tissues beneath hung loose as well, muscles already going adipocerous, like candle wax made of lye and tallow. Her once-beautiful hair came out in knotted clumps, dragged down by its own sodden weight, leaving naked skull behind. Vic whined and hugged her fiercely to his charred and blackened breast, marking himself with her stench. Carrying her essence with him into battle.
But when he tried to touch what little remained of her face, it came away like wet tissue paper in his hands. Vic stared at the maggot-slick deathmask beneath it.
It could have belonged to anyone.
AND THERE WAS something in the howl that rose up now— something haunting and heart-rending in its expression of irreversible loss—that Syd could not help but identify with. It spoke to his love of the women here with him. It spoke to the deepest part of himself.
It meant that he and Vic had something in common, after all.
His clothes, all at once, had become too constricting, and every fiber of his flesh felt like bursting into flame. At last, the time had come. He stood and wordlessly began to disrobe. Any residual embarrassment at stripping in front of Gramma Mae burned off in the urgency. There was nothing she hadn't already seen.
Besides, she was disrobing too.
While they undressed, he stared at Jane. Her eyes, in the dim light, were luminous pools, unwavering in their focus upon him.
"You know what you have to do," Mae said. She dropped her clothing to the floor. As she stood, he saw that her weathered flesh was covered with scars: the raised welts of long-healed bites and slashes, each one marking the ghosts of battles past.
Syd nodded, peeling off the last of his clothing. He stood naked before her. Mae came to him, a small cloth pouch in her hands. She reached inside, pulled out a small stoppered vial. The vial was strangely familiar; Syd thought of Nora and shuddered.
"Remember," she said, "in the end, it's not so much a matter of finding it as it is of letting it come to you."
She uncapped the vial, then tipped a quantity onto the crown of his head. The oil was sharply bitter, sweetly pungent, wild-smelling. It burned his skin as it soaked in.
"Just let it out," she told him, began daubing oil at his chakra points: the center of his forehead, his throat, the center of his chest, then down to his belly and on, all the way to his root chakra. Syd tensed up as she neared his crotch.
"Relax," she said, reaching between his legs. "Don't forget to breathe. . . ."
As the front door exploded, directly above their heads . . .
. . . AND VIC DIDN'T understand why they bothered, it made no sense at all, it barely even slowed him down. Just as the pain meant nothing to him. Just another ridiculous makeshift matchstick obstacle.
Like anything in the world could stop him now.
He moved straight past the shattered storm door, great wolf-goblin body surreal against the quaint Americana he now so pointedly destroyed, lashing out to smash all the accoutrements of domestication he passed: rustic antiques decked with pewter and chintz, all the homey little touches that really made a cage a cage.
Laying waste to this worthless crap collection was one thing. But as Vic moved deeper into the house and caught a whiff of the old woman, he started going really crazy. The drying flora hanging from the eaves were enough to give her away, along with the wheat braidings and corn dollies and assorted other bits of funky pagan kitsch.
But more than that, Vic could smell her power. The reek of it made his hackles rise and his flesh writhe. She was trying to help them, that bitch, and for that he would make her pay. Vic would split her open and floss with her withered fallopian tubes.
Just as soon as I find you . . .
SYD CLOSED HIS eyes, began taking deep measured breaths. The biting aroma filled his head. He asked what was in it, and she explained. Herbs. Roots. Blood from each of the women.
All, in their own way, centering him.
Facilitating the Change.
Mae continued to anoint him, her movements quick but unhurried, all the while murmuring softly to herself. Her method was in marked contrast to Nora's; it was controlled and deliberate, with a quiet, intensely focused sense of purpose. By comparison, he and Nora had been like a pair of preteens with a Ouija board: dilettantes and dabblers in an art they barely grasped.
Still, he couldn't help wishing she would hurry things up a little.
Upstairs in the living room, something crashed and shattered. "Here," she said, handing him a small piece of root. "Chew this."
Syd took it, sniffed. It smelled horrible.
"Just do it," Mae urged. "We don't have much time."
The root tasted as bad as it smelled. As he chewed, his mouth flooded with bitter saliva. He looked down at his naked body; it seemed to glitch momentarily, as if slipping in and out of focus.
"What is this?" he asked. The words came out slurred, like he was talking through a mouthful of Novocain.
"Kava kava. Very mild. Just loosens you up a little."
"Is this what makes it happen?"
"No." Mae shook her head. " You make it happen. Now close your eyes. Empty your thoughts."
Syd did so: closing his eyes, letting his mind go blank and still. The destruction moved down the hall, searching. Gramma Mae scooped up a handful of earth from the floor, began rubbing it on his arms and legs and chest.
"There are lines of power that link your spirit to the earth," she told him. "Find them. Trace them to your core."
And as Syd reached inside, fire began to light up and down his spine: spreading through his arms and down his legs, coming out the soles of his feet, reaching into the soil upon which he stood. A greater power waited there, swelling just under the surface: a vast and swirling sea of energy, to which he was connected, and which connected him to all things.
Syd tapped into it, instantly felt his limbs go loose and wobbly, as if suddenly buoyed by some powerful inner current. His head filled with stars, went vertiginous, whirling. Mae appeared alongside him, helped to lower him to the floor. She was much stronger than she looked. Her gnarled hands were calloused, her fingertips smooth and pebbled as a dog's paw.
His own hands and feet were tingling, the nerves itching as if awakening from a long and deadening sleep. Syd brought his fingers up, stared in amazement as the whorls and peaks merged and receded, like ripples on the surface of a pond. ,
Then disappeared before his disbelieving eyes.
Taking his identity with them.
Upstairs, Vic had found his way to the kitchen. The sounds of destruction paced him, sliding under the basement door. From her pallet, Jane whimpered, high and faint.
"Just remember," Mae said. "Your heart is the key."
Then the basement door blew open . . .
. . . AND AS HE came down the steps, then rounded the corner, he saw the two bitches huddled at the cellar's far end: one young and familiar, one very, very old, neither of them looking too happy to see him.
And, hoo doggies! it was tough to rightly assess just how bad that made him feel.
He would fuck them both, he decided right then. He would do it just for the hell of it: gobble their life-spark even as he made them spread that one final time, before death took them over the last plateau.
But first, he would make them watch what happened to their boy.
Which raised the very important question: where was their boy? Had he snuck out the back? If he had any brains, then yes, he probably had, though Syd hadn't exactly struck him as the brainy type. He guessed he'd
just have to crack that skull and see for himself . . .
. . . and suddenly there was a dark form rising from the corner; but instead of stopping where it should have stopped, it just kept getting larger and larger.
Until its proportions were utterly wrong.
Until it was nearly as huge as himself . . .
. . . AND IT WAS SO easy, so easy to do. Like falling off a bicycle, once you understood the secret. There was your true nature—your irreducible essence—and then there were just all the obstacles you threw in your own path. Like fear of the unknown. Like thinking too much. Like blindly doing what you're told.
Like joining the herd in turning its back on the powerful truth of its animal heart.
But those days were gone forever.
Syd felt the fires of Change roar through him; and for the very first time, he stayed out of their way. Letting them liberate his spirit, burn down the walls of imprisoning flesh. His new body rose from those glorious flames, reinventing itself in a matter of seconds, seizing the reins of his destiny.
He looked down at the handcuffs still binding him. Flexed. The shackles fractured and burst, fell away.
Syd stepped from the shadows, and into full view.
Like Vic, he was fearsome, fangs bared in his massive, capacious jaws; but that was where all physical similarities ended. His form, like Jane's, was sleekly lupine, his pelt jet-black, silver-threaded; his features, like Jane's, were more wolf than monster. It was such a different manifestation of the Change that it took even Syd by surprise. Vic, on the other hand, looked like he'd been lightly napalmed: mangy fur singed to blackness, polka-dotted with sores.
Vic squared off, at Syd's advance; and then suddenly, he smiled. It was a nasty grin, meant to destabilize Syd, but it was also completely sincere. Syd could see, in that moment, that Vic loved this shit. He lived for the kill. He was in it for the mayhem.
That was fine, to Syd's way of thinking. Right now, he was living for this shit, too. He threw the smile right back at Vic.
From there, it all happened with terrifying speed.
There was no hesitation, no snapping, no baiting. There was no one and nothing to hold them back. Vic dropped to all fours and launched himself forward. Syd matched him and met him halfway.
First blood was drawn in the very first second: Vic's jaws, clamping down on Syd's hunched shoulder blade. Syd smelled his own blood, and the pain was galvanizing. He went for Vic's throat.
Then Vic bit him again.
And this time was worse: at the base of the neck, the fangs sinking in deeper before tearing loose. Syd felt ganglia shred and moist fascia wrench free. The pain and terror were blinding. He yipped and lashed out, caught Vic's ear and removed it. Vic howled.
And then he bit him again.
And then he bit him again. And again. And again. Until Syd was streaming from a half-dozen holes, strength and confidence spurting red from the chinks in his armor. He had never fought as a wolf before; he didn't know dick, and it showed. Vic, on the other hand, was a consummate pro . . .
. . . and then suddenly, the old wolf appeared: strategically worrying Vic's flanks from behind, despite its age and smaller size. Vic turned on her, roaring and Syd seized the opportunity to tear a sputtering chunk his from neck.
And then Vic went wild, abandoning all caution, shaking her off and plowing face-first into Syd. Syd rolled onto his back, frantically brought up his legs to defend his exposed underbelly. His claws raked tracks across blistered tissue. Vic yowled and lurched forward, moving in for the kill.
There was a blur of motion, then: a gray streak, aimed right at Vic's throat. Mae came within an inch before he seized her by her open jaws: wrenching them wide, cracking them like a walnut. Gramma Mae shrieked as her skull bisected. Death was instantaneous. But momentum lingered on.
And as Vic fell back, propelled by Mae's hurtling corpse, Syd threw himself desperately forward. Catching Vic's charbroiled belly momentarily exposed. And burrowing deep inside it . . . . . . and there was no death more intimate, no murder more complete, than devouring from within. To gnaw through the bowels of another—to feel oneself being eaten alive—was the essence of the dance at its most fundamental.
Syd buried his face in Vic's belly, ripping into the weakened flesh. Claws tore at his back. It didn't matter a bit. His razored fangs hacksawed straight up the abdominal cavity, slicing through innards and soft belly-sausage, until they found what they were looking for . . .
. . . until they locked on Vic's thundering heart . . . . . . and it was hard to remove, to tear loose from its moorings. The muscle was strong. It held on. It fought
back. Syd bit down and shook, ignoring his own pain, ignoring the great howl that welled up within . . .
. . . and this time, the black heart wrenched free, collapsing within his crushing jaws. Syd pulled it out, felt the hot gushing muscle deflate. The nature of Vic's tremors dramatically shifted, from desperate resistance to anticipation of death.
Syd withdrew his gore-drenched maw abruptly, the better to look Vic in the eye.
Then he spat out the heart, like the poison it was.
Vic stared at the heart, at the sputtering hole. Then his eyes rolled back, empty. He teetered. And fell. He was dead long before he stopped twitching, the soul outlasted by involuntary muscle response.
Syd remained standing, just long enough to make sure.
And then he was falling as well. . . .
48
THE WORLD WENT black, phased out, bled back again.
Syd felt his physiology shift rearranging itself even as the bloodlust receded, like a red tide returning to the sea. The tide pulled at him, beckoning. Inviting him to join it, and sink into its peaceful, thoughtless depths.
A sound like distant thunder rumbled across its surface; a storm on the far horizon. Beneath it, all was black and still. Syd closed his eyes, panting, soaked in blood and sweat.
Dimly, he heard his name being called. When he next opened his eyes, he saw a flickering mirage with Jane's face on it. She was human, too, or nearly so. Or maybe he was dreaming.
He heard his name again, realized, no, this was real. He shook his head. When he looked again, he saw Jane: her features now clearly human, pale and trembling. She was crying, and trying to sit up.
Trying to get to him.
Syd moaned, pulled himself upright. As he did he saw Gramma Mae's body, lying on the floor. She had not reverted. Her back was to him, the pelt ragged and bloody.
A wave of sadness and regret washed over him. I would like to have known you better.
She died to save them, he knew. To save him and . . .
"Jane," he murmured, crawling through a haze of pain. She cried out in response. The old woman's words came back to haunt him.
Do you love her?
Yes, he knew. Yes. Unquestioningly. If he lived, he wanted to be with her. If he was to die, he would do it by her side. They were the most complex equations of which he was capable, just at the moment. Maybe later he could think of something else.
The last few feet were the hardest of all. He could see Jane's eyes now, though they swam in a fog of pain. He kept thinking about secrets, and trails left behind.
He closed his eyes, saw men with guns.
It could not be allowed.
As Syd made it to where Jane lay, he realized that the police would come eventually; the police always do. But when he thought of the toolshed out back, the little kerosene lamp and the big can that fed it, he knew that the firefighters would never make it here in time. And that even if they did, their trucks would never make it up that damned hill.
It guaranteed that the inferno on the mountain would be complete. That, once alight, the cabin would gladly take its mysteries with it.
That the secrets would remain secret.
It was a comforting thought, as he gazed into her eyes. There was a whole world out there that they could disappear into. In a little while, they'd rise, and do what they had to do.
>
But for the moment, at least, it was enough to reunite with his lover.
Holding each other, as best they could.
And licking each other's wounds.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Part ONE
Nora
November
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
PART TWO
Jane
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER
26
27
28
29
30
31
33
Animals Page 41
