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We rushed after the pig.
I vaulted into the air and landed on the pig. Instead of feeling the hard earth beneath us, I felt the sensation of falling into nothingness. My stomach rolled, and I choked down the rising puke.
Light returned. I squinted until my eyes adjusted. The snowy forest floor was gone. In its place was a flat ground of dirt and patches of green grass. The cold air was now warm and arid.
I turned to find my target, except the pig was no longer a pig.
He was a man.
Was the pig’s nightmare that he would become human? I mean, I guess I couldn’t blame him. The human race had a lot to answer for, but at least the man wasn’t in danger of ending up on my breakfast plate.
At well over six and a half feet tall, the man towered over me. His dark hair was worn in two thin braids and topped by a headdress made of metal and black feathers. His shoulders and chest were covered by a half-cape of turquoise and other colorful gems, and rectangular metals.
He was either unaware of me or unconcerned. His head tipped back and looked upward. I followed his gaze to see a cloudless blue sky. Circling above us were five vultures.
Terrific. His nightmare involved getting eaten alive, ormaybe it was a Prometheus nightmare, where the vultures would gnaw on his organs only to have them reappear the next day and the whole tortuous sequence would start again.
I didn’t want to bear witness to any of it. It was time to put on my Melinoe crown.
I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, sir.” I stopped short of tugging on his loincloth. It looked a little on the flimsy side.
His gaze shifted from the sky to me.
“Can you speak?” I asked. If this towering inferno of a man oinked, I couldn’t be held responsible for my reaction.
He spoke. Unfortunately, it was in a language I didn’t understand, and I knew more than a few.
“I’m so sorry. Would you mind repeating that? My pig Latin is a little rusty.”
Fierce dark eyes stared at me as he repeated his answer. “¡Xinechpalehuia!”
I still had no idea. Whatever it was, he was passionate about it, or so said the multiple bulging veins in his neck. “My name is Lorelei. I’d like to…”
He grabbed me by the neck and squeezed. Not the introduction I was hoping for. There was no time for delicacy. I reached inside his head and yanked.
The blue sky disappeared, replaced by the forest canopy. Most of the branches were bare, leaving a direct line of vision to the dismal sky above. No vultures. Only a bright spot of red where a cardinal flew overhead.
“Go to sleep,” I commanded.
Beneath me the pig grew still, bringing me back to earth.
“Neat trick,” West said. “Where do you plan to lock him up?”
“You have a containment cell at the trailer park, don’t you?” I knew the Arrowhead pack kept special cages for werewolves that were a little too excitable during their time of the month.
West stared at the pig. “What if it uses its magic on us?”
“I’m working on that now.”
I couldn’t tell West about the nightmare, so I came at it from another angle. “I think he’s possessed by a spirit.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I think he tried to show me how he died.” I tried to recreate the word spoken by the pig man, but none of the letters I put together seemed to mean anything. I even spoke it into the phone to see whether technology could identify it but no dice.
“And came back as a pig?” He looked at me. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“Yes,” I said. There was no harm in admitting that much. “I wonder what the vultures meant.”
