Eileen Wilks: Humon Error

Well, she had been little, and lacking in empathy.

She was close enough to touch him now. Only he wouldn’t hold still. He moved slowly—now bending, arms spread, now straightening with his back arched and his head flung back. But he kept moving, and she followed him around in his circle, trying to find an opening.

She couldn’t see much of his face. The bear’s pelt he wore was shaped into a crude hood that hid everything his beard didn’t. But surely this was K. J. Miller. The build was right, and the beard, which was almost as dark as the fur he wore—black in the dim light, except where the fire struck orangey red highlights. That gorgeous fur dragged in the dirt behind him in spite of being bunched up at his wait with a rope belt.

She didn’t have to worry about the belt. The hide didn’t have to fall away from him entirely. It just had to stop being fastened by that clasp . . . which was silver, about three inches long, with a narrow metal rectangle with leather ties at each end that were threaded through holes punched in the pelt.

She just had to cut one of those ties. Just one. Even if she touched him. Even if he felt it and saw her, if she cut the clasp away he couldn’t change to a bear.

He could probably still kill her, even as a human.

Never mind that. He’d stopped, arching his back, raising his hands high—

Arjenie darted in, knife out. And tripped over the sleeping child.

She hit the ground rolling. That was automatic, part of the training Benedict had given her, and wouldn’t he be glad to see it had taken so well? Except for the tripping part, but she’d held on to the knife and she hadn’t sprained her stupid ankle, so she stopped rolling and gathered herself, getting her feet under her . . . and looked up. And up. At nine feet of truly pissed-off bear, reared up on two legs, snarling, and looking around. Sniffing the air.

He didn’t see her. Relief blew through her like a whirlwind, making her shake. She’d tripped, but she’d barely touched him and he didn’t see her, only now he was a bear, and this was going to be so much harder.

Someone stepped into the clearing at the far end, coming from the sacred grove. Sammy. He was dirty and pale, his jacket torn—when had that happened?—and looked so terribly ordinary in his black watch cap and jeans. He chanted softly.

The bear did see him. It dropped to all fours and charged.

Arjenie ran after it. As if she could do anything, anything at all, to stop that flesh and blood locomotive running twice as fast as she could, and Sammy just stood there, chalk pale but still chanting . . .

The bear slowed. Stopped. Wrinkled its nose, shook its head. And advanced slowly, clearly puzzled.

It had worked! Oh, praise the Lord and the Lady, or maybe Coyote, who’d taught Sammy the trick. Bears don’t rely on vision nearly as much as they do their incredible sense of smell.

At this moment, Sammy smelled exactly like a female bear. In heat.

The bear was deeply confused. As for the man he’d been a moment ago . . . none of them knew how much man remained. A skinwalker didn’t hold on to as much of himself when he changed forms as lupi did. With every change, Nettie had said, more of the man was lost—and what remained was often mad. They had no way of knowing how many times K. J. Miller had used his bear form, how much of him was looking out of the bear’s eyes now, able to reason that just because this odd-looking animal smelled like a possible mate didn’t mean he was one.

Sammy kept chanting, but his pitch changed. A different chant now. Arjenie kept running. She had to do this quickly. The others would be coming, and once the wolves arrived there would be fighting. The child could be hurt or killed. The lupi, Benedict—any of them could die.

The bear circled Sammy slowly.

Where was the clasp? All she saw was bear. Huge, enormous, furry bear. Was Sammy doing the chant wrong? How could she—

Something glowed at the bear’s throat like an LED light. That was it. That must be it.

The bear stopped. It growled low in its throat, angry that it couldn’t figure out this odd bear/not-bear standing so still in front of it. This time Arjenie didn’t hesitate. She threw herself onto her knees in front of the bear and reached up with both hands, reached into the thick fur and at the bear’s neck, breathed in its foul breath as its jaws parted in shock at her touch, found the clasp with her left hand as it looked down at her and saw her and such teeth, such big teeth it had as it lowered that great head at her. And she slashed the leather tie.

Oily black smoke, incredibly foul, boiled down into her face, into her lungs, making her eyes burn. She coughed, blinked her streaming eyes, and looked up at a naked madman.

He crouched over her, his hair long and stringy, eyes wild with rage, snarling as if he was still a bear, his hands reaching for her.

A wolf howled from a very short distance away.

He jerked, looking over his shoulder.

Two wolves shot into the clearing—one silvery, one grizzled gray and tan, both of them sleek and dangerous and so beautiful they almost took her breath away.

They were also ohmygod fast.

The madman who had been K. J. Miller howled in rage, a sound that didn’t belong in a human throat. He must have known he wasn’t a bear anymore, though must have retained some of the man because he yanked off the belt, let his bearskin fall, and took off running. Running away.

That wouldn’t work.

“Arjenie,” Sammy said urgently, kneeling beside her. “Arjenie, are you okay? He didn’t get you anywhere?”

“Yes. I mean no, he didn’t get me, and yes . . .” A third wolf raced into the clearing, moving slower than the first two—who whooshed past Arjenie and Sammy like cars on the highway. The third wolf was slower because he ran on only three legs. He was black and huge, and her eyes teared up with joy at the sight of him.

A small white shape shot out of the trees behind the black wolf. Barking shrilly and running after him.

“Yes,” Arjenie told her cousin, grinning like a fool. “I am fine. I am perfectly, wonderfully okay now.”

Arjenie was right, Benedict thought as he washed down the last bite of his coffeecake with a sip of coffee. Christmas morning at the Delacroix homestead was a riot of unrestrained greed. Not to mention chaos, noise, and tons of ripped wrapping paper.

That paper had mostly been gathered up now, and some of the legions had dispersed to other parts of the house, with a few venturing outside now that the sun was out.

Some, not all.

“Look, Uncle Benedict! Look!” Malik dodged a girl cousin, a bicycle, Havoc, and two adults on his headlong run to Benedict—who had somehow become an uncle to every child here in the past three days. “I figured it out! See, if you kill enough of the aliens, then blow up one of the wheel-shaped spaceships, you get a laser beam. You’ve gotta see what it does!”

Obediently Benedict looked. The boy’s parents had given him a new iPod. Benedict had learned about that ahead of time and had gotten him a gift certificate to download the game of his choice. His choice seemed to involve a great deal of shooting and killing of aliens.

It was fun. Benedict had racked up a decent score when a voice said, “Scoot over, bud. You’re in my spot.”

Malik look up at Arjenie. “But we’re playing Space Wars .”

“You’re still in my spot.”

He heaved a great sigh but got up. “We’ll play more later,” he assured Benedict, who handed him back his iPod.

“How’s the leg?” Arjenie asked softly.

“Not bad.” Hershey had loaned him a pair of crutches he’d used a couple years ago, after being tossed off a horse. Benedict had used them for two days but the healing was far enough along now for him to dispense with them.