Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Floods had uncovered it, hidden it, and uncovered it again. And though the trees had been raped from the earth by the white man, thoughthey had trampled all over the chasm, they had missed it. The boulder was still here.
    My feet, precariously perched in the mud, slid out from me, and I sat down hard, landing with a
splat
in a runnel of water. A roar of white water sounded nearby, running off Horseshoe Rock above, the runoff grown to a river in the rain. Leaves bowed down, and droplets still drummed, and creeks appeared that had been empty only moments ago. Long minutes passed. I leaned a shoulder against the white quartz stone. Lifted a hand to rest against it, my fingers splayed on the cool stone.
It’s real. . . .
    Rain raced over me, dribbled through my fingers onto the quartz. I’d found it. I had found the place of my dream. The only thing I had of my past. The one thing that the voice that possessed me and I agreed upon. This rock.
    What had happened here? How long ago?
    A shiver caught me up. I was so cold. My fingers were blue gray against the white quartz. I stood and moved uphill to a slightly more level place and stripped, tossing my wet clothes across a branch, careless even with the jacket and boots. I opened my knapsack and pulled out my sleeping bag, glad that the pierced and tattooed greenie who sold it to me had insisted that I buy the best rainproof brand. I dried off as well as I was able and climbed inside the bag, zipped it closed, and tied off the hood that protected my face. A mini-tent.
    Encased, I curled into the fetal position and stared at the rock, unable to take my eyes off of it. My shivering eventually eased. The day died. As long as there was light, I stared at the white quartz boulder. With the thin vein of gold running up its side.
    Dreams began the moment darkness fell, the night wet and chilly and utterly black. I was so deep in the chasm that there was no sky, no moon, no stars, not even clouds to spit out the rain. Yet rain still fell. My body vibrated, shuddering with tremors that I felt in every muscle, every nerve fiber, every cell. My flesh sparked and tingled, itching and painful, like a bad sunburn.
    In my dream I untied the sleeping bag and looked down inside. At my body. If clouds were made of light instead of water vapor, they would look like this, like me, all sparkly silver, thrust through with motes of blacknessthat danced and whirled. The vaguely human-shaped mist coalesced, thickened, and eddied around me.
Was
me.
    In my dream I stared as night rain beat down on the sleeping bag. I saw the snake in my body, deep in my cells, thousands of snakes, millions, each a double helix of snakes, twisted and writhing. And I saw the other snake, in my memory. The snake of the voice. The snake of the presence.
    And I . . . shifted. Changed.
    The grayness enveloped me. My body bent and flowed like water—or like hot wax, a viscous, glutinous liquid, full of gray light and gray shadows and black motes of power. The bones beneath my flesh popped and cracked. Pain arced through me like lightning. I heard my grunting scream, muted for lack of breath. The agony was a blade, slicing me bone from bone, nerve from nerve, fiber from fiber. Agony that went on and on. Whirling like a tornado of torture.
    My breathing changed.
    The light that was my body grew brighter, the dark motes within me darker.
    Both began to dissipate. I slept.
    Day came slowly, rain dropping with sharp
splat
s onto the wet ground. Night bird sounds gave way to morning birds.
    Hard to catch. Not enough to eat. My stomach rumbled, low growl of the hunter.
    I crawled from bag, leaving behind earrings and gold necklace on wet cloth. I stepped from the sleeping bag, unsteady on four feet. Paws. With claws. I flexed my claws out, happy to see them clean and bright, slightly yellow in pale dawn. It had been long. Many years. Many moons. She was in control too long this time.
    I—Beast—stepped