Lightning cracked in the distance and thunder rumbled. The rain warmed. Or maybe I was just getting colder. Dying. Yeah. That.
Bruiser and I passed through one of the arched doorways and into the center of what must have been the sanctuary. He stumbled over the fallen rafters and knelt inside the charred walls. The brick still smelled of soot and fire and wounded earth, which felt perfect for me.
Rain grew harder. Bruiser set me down on the wet earth and lay me over on my side. My body was frozen in the position in which he had been carrying me, a semi-fetal position. As he eased back, away from me, on his knees, I could feel the rain on that side of my face. It felt heated. Where the rain hit into the mud, droplets shot up in the air and landed on me, adding mud to the burns and the clothing that was melted into my skin.
Eli spread one of his metallic, heat-retaining blankets over me, and I heard him say, “Molly called. I’m going to get her.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Bruiser asked.
“She says the lightning bolt did something to her magic. She says she can help. I don’t think we can turn down any help that’s offered. Back in a bit. Keep her alive.” I heard him jog back to the street, his boots loud in the mud and standing water.
The lightning bolt did something to her magic? I remembered the vision of wings, white and black, snowy owl and crow, fighting. Had the lightning offered everyone in the witch circles a choice? Had the triple circles and the wyrds done something unexpected with us? Something planned and used by . . . someone?
Darkness found me again, and I slept beneath the metallic blanket, watched over by Bruiser. In the shadows of uneasy sleep, I dreamed and remembered dreams. I saw the cavern of my soul home, as if from the outside, the wings fighting, light and dark. Lightning flashed again and again, in dreams and in reality, rousing me, but I was only pulled under into dreams again. The pain came in waves and spikes, as if I were still in the midst of the lightning strike, hanging between heaven and earth.
I woke when the rain slowed, to see Bruiser kneeling in the mud beside me, his eyes closed and lips moving. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like he might be praying. For me. My heart stuttered and paused and stuttered back into some kind of rhythm again, but not a normal rhythm. This one hurt and rambled and stumbled. Time was out.
I struggled to find breath to speak. “You got a knife?” I asked him, my voice an ugly croak.
Somehow he heard me over the pattering rain and bent over me, his knees in the mud, a small blade in his hand. “Do you want me to cut some of your clothing loose? It’s . . . tight.”
Swollen. He meant that I was swollen and leaking and ruined. “No,” I managed. And lifted my hands to his in a fast move that sent pain rocketing through me. And impaled my hands on his knife.
“Jane!” He jerked back and away.
I chuckled, a sound more sob-like than humorous. “Poke the iron discs into the wound,” I ordered. Lightning flashed and thundered down. Close, like a punctuation to my command. Rain followed, hard and pelting once again.
There was a long hesitation; then Bruiser was holding my crusted-together fists in both of his. He bent his head over mine, his mouth at my ear, and said, “Love, are you sure?”
I smiled and felt, for the first time, my tusks. I was still in my half-beast form and my canines were shaped like tusks. Weird. And he still called me love. “Yeah. Blood and iron. Do it. Please.” I couldn’t feel it when he pressed the iron discs into my flesh, but I saw it. The moment it was done I closed my eyes.
My words mangled by my puma mouth, I called, “Creator God.” Lightning struck close by and I felt the tingle of electricity as it flashed through the ground and through the standing water. I spoke on, stumbling on the words, finding the right phrases, “Cold iron, the iron spike of Golgotha, three cursed trees, a once-black-magic diamond that now glows white and pure, my blood, my skinwalker flesh, and lightning are all in the same place.” I had to stop to breathe, to give my heart a chance to catch up. “An angel of light and an angel of death fight in the space between worlds, fight in the Gray Between that is within me and in the shadows of my soul home.” While I breathed again, I searched through my fractured Cherokee memories and my childhood memories for prayers and finally came up with, “Creator God, El Roi—the god who sees me. Yehovah.” I paused, panting, remembering the fragment of a dream from days ago. Remembered that the Tsalagi had words for the Almighty. I said, “Yehowa, Edoda,” and two words for Great Spirit came to me: “unequa, adanvdo.” And words for angels: “Anidawehi—” I stopped again, to catch my breath. My heart was stuttering inside and the pain was building. I had to finish it right then. “All that is good and all that was evil, or had been used for evil, are now inside my body, surrounded by my blood, my . . .” I searched for the right words and settled on: “my sacrifice of pain. Unequa, anidawehi, let me die or help me. Help me and set me free as War Woman.” The words were soft, half growling.
Once again, lightning struck, slamming into the ground only yards away. The power of it sent electric shivers through me. Bruiser yelped and rolled back. My loose hair stood on end despite the rain, and my skin crackled with the pain of electricity, but it seemed to help, and the Gray Between finally opened.
Beast?
Change. Now! she thought at me.
I reached inside, down into the marrow of my/our bones, searching for the snake that lies within each cell of the body, the twined snakes of DNA that make each of us what we are. Beast’s and my genetic material, our DNA strands, were twisted together in places, into tripled strands that looked like nothing on this earth. My heart skipped a beat. Sped fast and skipped several. Heart pain spread through me, adding to my anguish. I was dying. Seemed I was doing that an awful lot lately. It meant I didn’t have time to separate the strands. I had to use what I was offered. I took the tripled strands in my mind.
Somewhere close by, I heard shouting. A scream of pain.
Wings fluttered over me, feathers white and black, the roar of battle, of swords clashing, of the stink of old blood and ozone. A vision of black shadows and bright light flashed past, interwoven and forever divided. My choices caused this battle. Or not. Maybe they just contributed to it. Or maybe the fight had been going on for eons, in the spaces between worlds, and I was no more than a single grain of sand on the shores of war.
I yanked on the strands.