Black Beast (14 page)

The first thing she did was change into warm flannels. She stuffed her wet clothes in a plastic bag so they wouldn't cause her other clothes to mildew. Then she tossed the bag into her hamper, taking care to bury it beneath a bulky sweatshirt. She'd wash them later.

Tomorrow, maybe, while her mother was at work.

She set her messenger bag on the foot of her bed, shuffling through the contents. Her homework was completely waterlogged. Gingerly, she picked up her Spanish homework between two fingers. All the ink had bled, turning the paper an interesting shade of tie-dye blue. It made a wet, slapping sound when she tossed it into the trash. She was annoyed, because she'd actually done the homework for once, though Ms. Bernhardt would never believe her.

Either way, she was looking at a zero.

Catherine pulled the spell book out of her bag, noticing for the first time that it had the word
Grimoire
printed on the front cover. Somehow, the book had managed to stay completely dry.

She set it on the edge of her desk, tracing the worked designs on the cover with a fingertip. The witch had known what it was, and he had wanted it badly. It was beginning to seem as if she really had stolen a spell book.

So why does
Chase
want it?

She searched “grimoire” on her laptop. The word came from old French, which made sense. It sounded French.

Grimoires dated back to the middle ages, and despite the fancy French name, it was basically just another way of saying “spell book.” Most of the books were shams.

But then, these were the dark ages; the same time period when leeches were considered a veritable breakthrough in medical science.

Even if the book was the real deal, Chase didn't strike Catherine as the type of person who was interested in the occult. There were people in her school like that. They wore all black, read a lot of Anne Rice, and smoked herbal cigarettes in the third-floor bathroom. Humans couldn't perform magic, though. The witch, at least, made sense.

He said something about a power source, though. About stealing magic. He had also said that it was a Slayer's spell book, and talked at length about black magic. She still wasn't sure what, exactly, black magic was. Only that it was bad, and that all the people trying to get their hands on the book had been equally so.

A knock sounded on her door. “Catherine?” It was her father. He must have just gotten home. Must have been later than she thought. He poked his head through the doorway. “Didn't you hear me calling?”

She shot a panicked look at the Grimoire, which she had foolishly left on her desk.

She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for the inevitable, “What is that—?”

Nothing happened.

She cracked open an eye, confused. Her father was still standing in her doorway, shifting foot to foot, an expectant look on his face.

Couldn't he see it? Her eyes flicked to the book, and then back to his face. Maybe not.

“Well? Don't look at me like I'm speaking Witchtongue. Are you coming or not?”

“Sorry. Yeah. I just kind of spaced out there for a minute.”

Now he looked suspicious. “What are you doing?”

“Just talking to friends.”

Catherine casually reached over to hit CTRL and TAB in unison. The screen flicked to her IM service, which she'd left running since the night before. There were a few angry flashing boxes she hadn't noticed. One of them, she could see, was from Sharon.

“Tell your friends goodbye and come down to dinner.”

“Okay.”

She poised the cursor over the X buttons. The boxes vanished with a single click.

If only the rest of life's problems were that simple.

•◌•◌•◌•◌•

Finn struggled, but the old tree held firm. The creature had been clever, manacling him to one of the ancient roots. With his arms bound over his head, he was left completely prone. He tilted his head back, trying to look over his arm. Where had she put the key? Gods, how he hated shape-shifters. Especially this one. His face darkened.

The things he was going to do to her—

But first, he had to get free. He could heat the cuffs, melt the metal off, but he'd be melting off his own skin in the process. A shape-shifter could heal from it. Slowly, painfully—but they would heal from it. A witch, however, would be condemned to the burn ward, like a common human.

“Graymalkin,” he snarled. “Where are you, you mangy cur?”

Two pointed ears appeared. Then, below that, the small, furry face. “What do you want?”

“Find the key, and get me out of here. Now.”

Every second of dalliance put more distance between them and the shifter bitch.

Graymalkin eventually located the key in a clump of wet grass. She dropped it into his palm, taking care to avoid the mud. His fingers closed over it and he fumbled with the cuffs. Anger made his movements clumsy. Eventually there was a click as the locking mechanism released. He glanced at his familiar sidelong as he tore the cuffs from his wrists.

“I suppose you think I deserve that.”

It didn't matter what she did or didn't say, though. He could still read her mind.

“Impudent furball,” he muttered.

What should have been a routine assignment was quickly proving far more complicated than he could have anticipated. Not only had her animal been omitted from the records, she was also dabbling in black magic, and had an aura similar to a very weak witch.

Or one of the human Talents.

He shook his head. That wasn't the point. The point was that she was dealing in the one form of magic that was outright forbidden by the council. A magic that, until now, he had thought limited to Slayers, and those who sympathized with their cause. And if a shape-shifter was playing with their books, and associating with their members, he had to wonder if perhaps the vermin were in the process of negotiating some sort of alliance against the witches. Blood for blood.

So he chased her. He rode the wind as he hunted her down, throwing spell after spell at the flickering shadow her form had become in the darkness of the storm. Air, water, and fire—they were all his to command, and he used each of them to pound her into submission, until the air was so thick with magic that he could scarcely breathe, and the woods began to take on the surreal, shimmering quality of a dream. Or a nightmare.

Part of him knew he was out of control, that if he kept this up, he was going to kill the bitch. Part of him knew this, and part of him didn't care. She had injured his pride. So, too, would she be injured. And if he succumbed to the anger, and his desire for revenge, the other, more troubling desires faded into the backdrop of his murderous passions.

But the girl was half-wild, and had the woods on her side. She eluded him, and eventually, she got away. Finn paused at the threshold of the woods, breathing hard. Lightning cracked open the sky, and its light gave him hard edges, making it seem as if he'd been ripped out from the pages of a storybook, and left to flutter, displaced, through the world of the humans.

He considered meeting with Karen but the idea was distasteful to him. Failure still clung to him like a tenuous film. And when he thought of his fiancee's lithe, pearlescent body, his mind kept flickering back to the shifter's taut, muscular build, only half-hidden beneath her damp and tattered clothing. When her fingers touched his skin, his cock strained against his pants.

Just the memory of it made him short of breath, half-drowned in the flood of ghostly sensation. He had never had a reaction that strong to anyone, male or female, witch or shifter. He recalled the black magic, and wondered if perhaps this wasn't the cause of a spell meant to rob him of his wits. That explained everything. And with conviction, came sweet relief.

Graymalkin shook her head. “How is it possible to hate something so much, and still desire it?”

Her question was meant to be rhetorical, he knew, but he answered her, regardless.

“The gods have a sick and twisted sense of humor. It's why they were killed.”

•◌•◌•◌•◌•

Catherine slept fitfully that night.

The dreams consumed her, making her relive nightmares that existed well outside her mind.

Being hunted, being chased—all of that was a part of nature. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. And while frightening in its own way, Catherine accepted this as a normal mode of life. Or at least, the animal parts of her did. Even Predator accepted the fact that Prey sometimes got away, and that there were bigger Predators out there that could push you around, even make you into Prey. That might even kill and eat you. But being trapped….

Every shape-shifter was born with the taste of freedom in her mouth. Cutting off that freedom and holding her captive was the ultimate cruelty. The Council claimed that the Keep was meant to hold all Others who broke the laws, but when it had been designed, it had been designed with shape-shifters clearly in mind. The vampire guards, the too-small cells, the silver bars—

The iron infrastructure had been added only as an afterthought.

When that witch had snapped those silver cuffs around her wrists, she had nearly lost it. Catherine had had brushes with silver in the past, yes, but this was the first time she had ever been exposed to so much and so close. It had sucked all her powers away, leaving her feeling powerless and exposed, caught in the middle of a vacuum. Her senses, the vibrant, pulsating energy that defined her, he'd taken it all away with a mere flick of the wrist.

She woke up covered in a thin sheen of sweat, heart pounding.

The first thing she did was check her wrists. They were unshackled, she was free, but she could still make out the ring of blisters from where the metal had burned her skin.