Black Beast (12 page)

“I don't give a fuck about
you
.”

She stopped struggling, though. The instincts for self-preservation were strong.

Catherine stared at the crystal, watching the aura pulse and swirl in time to her breathing in a way that seemed vaguely obscene. The witch's eyes never left her face, and that felt obscene, too. He seemed to be searching for a reaction of some kind, and his focus was so intense that she was finally forced to turn away.

The crystal was only a little less intimidating. It wasn't actually black, as she had first thought, but filled with those strange particles. There were so many that they were all pressed up against the walls of the colorless mineral from within, struggling to get out it seemed.

They were attracted to her, to her aura. To her body.

What would happened if the crystal cracked and the particles broke free? The witch had said that they would kill her—and him. Would they consume her, devouring her like a ravenous beast incapable of satisfaction?

The witch was regarding her through narrowed eyes. With the dangling chain in hand, he looked like a hypnotist from the turn of the century.

“Your aura reacts to this crystal the same way a witch's would—why?”

“I don't know.” She couldn't look away from the necklace. “I haven't done anything. I don't know.”

“I think you know more than you're letting on.”

Catherine shook her head viciously. “
No
.”

It was obvious he didn't believe her.

He tucked the necklace back into his pocket and fiddled with his belt. She sucked in a breath, terrified anew, and the terror stayed with her as he pulled out a silver blade from a discreet leather sheath.

“Do you know what this is?”

Cuts inflicted by silver did not heal at a normal rate. Anything he did to her would last. She would wear the scars for the rest of her natural life.

“Last chance.” He waved the blade in front of her.

He was going to do it. He was going to cut her, for reasons of his own. Reasons that had something to do with the ice in his voice and the madness in his eyes.

Her body blurred into motion before she was even fully aware that she had made a decision. She tackled him, and the witch went down. Silver had no effect on her body's mass. She was small, but compact. Shape-shifters had low BMIs. Their metabolism was constantly going to feed their bodies with energy.

The witch was knocked supine, in an ungainly sprawl that left him spattered with mud. She found the keys to her cuffs on his belt and unsnapped them quickly, shackling his wrists together instead while doing her best to ignore the burn of the silver. He started to curse her, and she shoved the knife down his throat, handle-first. A last-minute mercy.

Predator chuckled in her head, pleased. She had been pacing in the cage of Catherine's body and now she was free. Free, and vengeful. Her aggressor was stretched out, prone, beneath her, and she was ready to ravage him with all the leisure accorded to her by time.

My kill
, she purred.
All mine, mine, mine.

The witch was choking. She pulled out the blade a little, holding it in place so he wouldn't spit it out.
We're not going to kill him
, she shot back to Predator, who made her skin vibrate with the force of her displeasure.

Mistake.

Catherine shook off Predator's annoyance and began to pull back the witch's cowl. He didn't like that; he exploded into motion beneath her, a cannon of pent-up energy and desperation.
He's stronger than I thought.

Moving faster, Catherine peeled back the fabric from his head, revealing a shock of red hair.
Very distinctive. No wonder he tried to cover it up.
His face, fully bared to her inspection, surprised her a little. She had expected a witch from a dark fairytale, whose outside was as twisted and thorny as his crooked and capricious soul.

But fairytales were, at best, dirty mirrors whose warped and pitted surfaces reflected a highly distorted view of the truth, quite different from reality.

He was inhumanly, breathtakingly beautiful. A cold beauty, cloaked in cruelty. Cheekbones as sharp as the cutting edge of his knife. Hair like a bank of glowing embers. A harsh face softened only by his surprisingly full mouth and dark, velvety eyelashes as long as a giraffe's. And those
eyes—

He cut them at her, his features distorted by hatred. As if he knew exactly what she was thinking—about his looks—about him—and didn't like it a bit.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The moment Catherine asked, she realized it was a stupid question. He couldn't tell her—and even if he could, he wouldn't. That he was here at all was cause enough. The reasons behind it were inconsequential.

Catherine slid off him and ran, knowing that the moment he spit out the knife he was going to hex her, and that she did not want to be anywhere near him when that happened. Cuffing him to the tree had bought her some time, but not as much as she would have liked. Silver did not incapacitate witches the way it did her kind. Witches were only susceptible to iron.

But having iron in her possession would be taken as an act of hostility.
Something else to be stacked against
me, she thought sourly. No exceptions made for self-defense.

She had been running for close to five minutes when the ground beneath her feet turned frictionless. Her sneakers slipped and slid over the wet, icy ground. She hit the ice-glazed dirt like a felled sapling, all the air squeezed right out of her lungs.

He'd managed to free himself. More quickly than she'd guessed, too. And he was mad.

Catherine pushed to her feet and took off again. Her ankle seared like fire every time it hit the ground, making her eyes water and her stomach clench. It was healing already, though. Death, on the other hand—well, that was the one thing she couldn't recover from.

I'm not going to die.

The trees in front of her exploded into a raging holocaust, forming a solid wall of heat. Catherine froze, panting lightly. The witch wanted her to turn back. She had learned his tricks, and this time she was not fooled. If he was trying to herd her, to redirect her, this must be the right way.

But there's only one way to find out.

Her kind hated fire. She covered her face with her hands and ducked beneath the flaming branches. She heard them collapse behind her. Felt the heat, as thick as damask curtains, as she pushed through to the rush of cold air on the other side.

The beasts inside her screamed. She smelled magic and knew.
He isn't finished.

He pelted her with everything he had. Icy hillsides. Circles of fire. Torrential gales. She counted the elements. One, two—her breath caught—three. A Triad.

No ordinary witch, then. He might have been telling the truth about being on the Council.
But he might not. He might just be a powerful Renegade.

Night was falling, spreading as quickly as the roiling clouds above. Her clothes were tattered by this point, and soaked through, providing little warmth. Bits of ash were clinging to her hair and eyelashes like dirty snow, and when she cleaned out her ears later that evening, she would find that the wax, too, had a grayish tinge.

Cramps were beginning to pinch her flanks. She ignored them, focusing all her attention on the ground beneath her feet and any unpleasant surprises it might bring. She would not be surprised again. The witch had allowed a lull in his attacks, leading her to believe she was safe on one of the steeper hillsides. And then, halfway down, it metamorphosed into a subzero hell. She had slipped and fallen, and been gouged at by the sharp rocks waiting below. Both her knees had been ripped open. They still hadn't quite healed. She was lucky her head hadn't split, too, like a rotten melon.

Catherine had never faced an adversary so deadly. The poem by Robert Frost came to mind.
Fire and Ice.
They'd been discussing it in English two weeks before. Except if the witch had his way with her, she doubted she'd have the luxury of perishing twice.

She was shivering by the time she made it to the bus station, and not just from cold. She was muddy and her jeans were stained with blood. It was dark, though, and she had arranged her flannel shirt to hide the worst of the damage.

People stared at her. She could smell their unease as the desire to do good warred with the inherent fear for one's own safety. They imagined that they could see something about her. Something wild, dangerous.

It made them afraid enough that none of them bothered to ask if she was all right or in need of any help. Catherine had the sinking feeling that if the witch showed up at that moment to finish her off not a one of them would have rushed to her defense.

There was a deep, booming rumble that seemed to shake the ground. At first Catherine thought it was the witch, but then she saw the white light whip across the sky, and for a second everything was lit up as brightly as day. A few seconds later, there was another rumble. The lightning chaser came faster this time, and left purple splotches dancing playfully before her eyes.

Catherine rubbed at her arms. The hairs were standing straight up, reacting to the electricity in the air. She could smell ozone, hot and acrid. It reminded her chillingly of the witch's scent. Her pulse spiked at the memory. Why had he let her escape?

He had quoted all the textbook slurs at her, brought the requisite silver. But he knew more than just the basics. He had known exactly how to intimidate her, and had tried to exert dominance over her, which suggested a more in-depth study of her kind.