Broken Soul (JY 8) by Hunter Faith

Author:Hunter, Faith [Hunter, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Urban, Fiction
ISBN: 9781101636190
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2014-10-07T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Talk to Big Bird

As soon as the dizziness cleared and my head stopped being filled with images and scents, I stepped down from the bed. I had to change the sheets. Buy a new bed. Scrub the bathroom. Good oogly moogly, this place stank.

I made it to the door and scratched on it with my paw. Then, just for fun, I barked, a long arrrooooo of sound. Alex, smelling of garlic, onions, sweat, deodorant, and growing boy—a toxic mixture—opened the door and stared down at me, his eyes big as always when he saw me in a different shape. I considered letting go some gas—a doggie way of stating an opinion on any number of things, but I thought better of it. I walked into the kitchen and ate the raw hamburger that Eli put on a plate for me. The energy required by shifting always left me starving and I hadn’t had to tell my partner. I butted his leg in thanks and he scratched my ears, a familiarity I’d never have permitted in human form but which felt perfect in dog form.

Back in the living room, I stepped up on the sofa and sat, my tail thumping, staring at Eli. Who smelled wonderful to my dog nose, and made me wonder how Bruiser might smell, which nearly made me drool. Associations in bloodhound form were so totally different from human or Beast shape. All the senses were closer together, interwoven, more intricate, and so much more intense, that I could see how easy it might be to let them take over and to lose myself in the textures and blends of scent patterns. I realized that Eli was talking and I woofed to show I was ready for a sniff test.

Inside me, Beast growled. Ugly dog. Good nose, on ugly dog. She thought a moment, and added, All dogs ugly.

Eli came at me with the sealed baggie and I pulled my head away for a moment, already almost overcome by the smells as he pulled the Ziploc open. I shook my head, my ears flapping, and gave a little sneeze to clear my nose before sticking my head forward and my snout into the baggie. I took a small sniff. Then another. And another, breathing deeply as the smells found new places in my doggie brain, forming associations with other scents from the last time I was in this form, from times I took other forms with good scent noses, and also from when I was human—nose-blind, I understood. Humans had so little understanding of the smells of the world around us that if we were sightless, deaf, and unable to touch at all, that isolation might show the difference between a human’s ability to smell and a bloodhound’s ability.

I learned all I could from the bloody cloth, lifted my head from the baggie, and trotted back to my room, closing the door with my nose.

* * *

I was sitting on the bed, firmly in the gray place of the change, when I felt the magics.

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