I remembered, but . . . I also knew the depths of revenge and treachery. Uncertainly I asked, “You’re sure? It’s mine?”
“That is what the Keeper of the Secrets of the Skinwalkers said.”
I accepted the small, fractured length of bone and teeth, holding it on my outstretched hand. Holding a memento of the before times. A piece of myself.
Bruiser asked, “Do you think there might be enough genetic material?”
When I didn’t answer, Bruiser said, “Can you use the genes in these teeth to shift into a healed you?”
I considered them. “I don’t know. I’d likely be five years old. If there was enough viable genetic material to find a pattern.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you can merge the DNA with your own. Clean yours up.”
I looked at Bruiser. And let a small smile onto my face.
“Will you try?” he asked. “I have searched for you all of my life. I don’t want to lose you now.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “I’ll try.”
Relief flashed across his face, like the sun peeking between storm clouds, and quickly gone. “Good. Will you marry me? The Roberes will write up a binding prenuptial agreement to protect your holdings and your status as Dark Queen.”
My throat hurt, but I managed wryly, “It’s immoral, and against the law, even in Alabama, to marry a five-year-old child.”
“If you shift into a child, then I’ll wait until you grow up. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
Aya closed my fingers over the bone and teeth. “I can’t promise anything,” I said. “But I’ll try to heal my body.”
“And you’ll marry me?”
“I will. But not until we see if this thing works,” I said. Bruiser’s face fell. I tucked the teeth and bone back into the medicine bag. Closed it up in the white box.
“So what now?” I asked them. “I’m heading to the mountains, to Robbinsville, North Carolina. I’d planned to shift there and let my Beast wander the mountains.” And maybe track down Uni Lisi, Sixmankiller, the evil woman who had set me on this blood path, and kill her. Didn’t say that.
“We have a Bell Huey waiting in the parking lot,” Bruiser said. “Room enough for us three. And the bikes. Mine is in there already, waiting for Bitsa. You can get to the mountains in style. And fast.”
I nodded, thinking, feeling the paper of the white box in my fingers, the hope inside.
Hate helo-copter, Beast said.
I know, I thought back. But Beast is best hunter. Beast can hunt for a way for me to live.
She thought back at me, The I/we of Beast is not prey. We can find a trail through dense brush that is Jane’s sickness. We can defeat timewalking death.
Yeah. We are. We can. We can do this.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s make this happen.”