He laughed at that. “Go inside, before I follow you in.”
His voice was low and husky, full of devilry, daring me to do just that, but I opened the screen door and closed it behind me. His fingers curled around the decorative metal bars as he stepped up to it.
“See you tomorrow?” I nodded. “Listen for me tonight.”
“Jai…”
He just laughed, stepping away and waving goodbye.
“Well, girlfriend, you look like you’re on cloud nine,” Janey said, cocking her hip. “That went well?”
“No, then yes.”
“Well, as long as you had that last bit. Wanna debrief over some double chocolate ganache ice cream? Tell Aunty Janey if he tastes as good as he looks?”
“Oh, fuck yes.”
I slept lightly that night, the sound of a storm stirring at the periphery of my dreams, until I heard him. He howled, claiming this land, me. Max jumped off the bed, trotting over to the window to take a look. I followed him, wrapped up in a cocoon of blankets, and stared down at the back paddock. There he was, limned in silver in his wolf form, sending out one more call before turning and loping away.
Chapter 11
“So we’d like to take you through a basic extraction process,” Hollingsworth said as we stood in his fancy lab. “I thought we’d use Ms Bruce to settle the animal before he’s tranquilised.”
“Shannon?” Stuart said with a frown. “The work she does is indeed miraculous, but not enough to have an effect on a pissed off Siberian tiger.” We all eyed the beast in question, pacing back and forth in a smaller holding pen that Hollingsworth’s men had corralled it into.
“I wasn’t thinking of Kazimir,” the man replied, placing a proprietary hand on the cage, only the thick layer of glass or Lucite enough to stop the animal’s claws from raking him in two. Nick and I jerked back when the animal reared up and slammed his paws into the cage wall, just behind the man. “Gaden, the snow leopard is smaller and more manageable.”
“Still, no staff of mine is going to be put at risk,” Stuart said, stepping forward and crossing his arms.
“There will be no risk,” the man replied. “From my understanding of the process, Ms Bruce doesn’t need to actually touch the animal. I’d like to see if she can have an effect on the animals from outside of their cage. We will obviously be using a tranquiliser dart, but calmer beasts are much easier to hit.”
“That OK, Shannon?” Stuart said.
No, no, it wasn’t. I looked at the animal in question. Unlike Kazimir, he shrank back against the sides of his cage, holding himself in as tight a ball as possible. His muzzle flexed regularly, showing us his viciously sharp teeth.
“I don’t know how useful I’ll be,” I said with a shrug, and then moved slowly towards him.
I avoided eye contact. Cats were not a fan of it, since they saw it as aggressive behaviour, so I assumed the same with their bigger cousins. I slunk over to the cage, trying to find the calm pool of power deep inside me I’d need to draw upon, but the tiger’s muffled roars and the sounds of the other animals in the distance were distracting. I chanced a quick look at the leopard, who watched me with big eyes, twitching with my every step. So I came to a stop just outside his cage and waited, head down, just focussing on my breathing for a moment.
It had been a tough thing to bring forth when I was a kid, and my nan spent many years training me to tap into my power, so now it welled up as soon as I paid it any attention, spreading my awareness outward.
Fear filled the air with an acrid stink, and my mouth flooded with saliva as it hit my nose. Anger slashed through that, smelling metallic, like water on hot metal.
Don’t get caught up by what they’re thinking or feeling, my nan had said. Push past and into them.
So I did. Calm, I pushed. Calm, calm, calm.
My gift, it wasn’t a matter of just pushing what I wanted onto an animal. I would have to search for the instinctive responses that got in the way of what I was trying to achieve, and then find a way to either shift them or exaggerate other instincts to counter them. So as I delved into the cat’s mind, my eyes staring at the beautiful rosettes on the plush fur, I assumed I’d find a lot of protective instincts, overloaded by the experience of being held in captivity.
That was not what I found.
Memories bombarded me, of the men this morning herding the animal into the chute that led to the cage. They hadn’t been cruel with the prods they’d used, blunt lengths of wood slotted between the bars to get him moving, but he’d found their presence unbearable. He was being forced onwards again, into a confined space that made his fur stand on end, stinking of chemicals and man.
Beyond that, I pushed. Let that go. Show me home.
Home?
I went stock still at the sound of the voice in my head, creaky and scratched with disuse. If I’d been expecting it, this would have been when I pushed forward, imposing my will on the animal.
But I had to be excused. Animals, in my experience, didn’t talk back.
I forgot all of my rules, staring straight into the animal’s eyes, and he returned my gaze.
Yes, I said, my mouth going bone-dry. Show me home.
We want to anthropomorphize animals, see the narrowing of their eyes, the opening of their mouths as some kind of like emotional response to ours, find other examples of similar consciousness. I knew that wasn’t the case. Animals’ minds were much more complex and alien than that. I knew in theory that the pack’s minds would be like this if I reached out and touched them in animal form, but had never, ever tried.
“The old men, the alphas…” Nan had told me one day as we were sitting out the back of our house on a blanket in the summer sun. “They tolerate us.” My eyes had jerked up, the pack being venerated figures in my childish mind at the time. “They have a greater strength, speed, killing power than us, have survived too much to let the likes of us control them.” Her eyes met mine, deep brown and holding a world of wisdom within them. “You’re starting to learn how to assert your will against animals.”
She nodded to the little wren that flew in looping circles around our heads, then waved a hand to break the hold I had over it.
“Never direct that against the pack. Never. It’ll be the death of you and your line if you do, make no mistake. You may have a friend in Jasmine and the other girls, but all of that will go away if you try to control them. We can influence animals, and they lack the awareness to feel our incursions. Not so the pack. They feel the fingers of our power in their beasts’ brains just as we begin to twist them to our will. Traditionally, our kinds have avoided each other, but I like it here.”
I watched Nan cast an eye over our land.
“The pack gave me these lands, let me stay here in return for my help. They’ve given us honorary status within their number, not so much as an honour, but to give our power a place, rules, a structure to work within while we’re on their lands.” She turned back to me, staring now as if to make sure I understood. “You use your powers against a shifter? You’re dead.”
You want to see? came the snow leopard’s voice. See this.