Black Beast Read online

  Black Beast

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Black Beast by Nenia Campbell

  BLACK BEAST

  by NENIA CAMPBELL

  Nenia Campbell

  Copyright © 2014 Nenia Campbell

  Published on Smashwords.

  All rights reserved.

  DEDICATED TO...

  imaginations everywhere.

  “In trials of ir'n and silver fain

  “The dead will rise and walk again

  “The blesséd few that touch the light

  “Will aid the war against the night.

  “But one by one they all will die

  “Without a cause to rule them by

  “As Darkness spreads across the land

  “He'll wield the oceans in his hand.

  “Five warriors will oppose his reign

  “And overthrow the Shadow Thane

  “They come from sides both dark and light

  “The realm the mortals call “twilight.”

  “A magus crowned with boughs of fire

  “Will rise like Phoenix from his pyre

  “A beast of shadows touched with sight

  “Will claim a Dark One as her knight

  “The next, a prophet doomed to fail

  “Will find her powers to avail

  “The final: one mere mortal man

  “Who bears the mark upon his hand

  “The circle closes round these few

  “Made sacred by the bonds they hew

  “But if one fails then so shall all

  “Bring death to those of Evenfall.”

  —from the Exegesis

  Chapter One

  Finn pored over the file on the desk. His heavy breathing stirred the papers. In his head was a snarl of forbidden thoughts and desires.

  To hell and back with this, he thought.

  Before him was a roster of all the Otherkind in Barton, a small California town of no consequence that had become a hotbed of strange Otherworldly activity. The files were classified and meant for Council use only, though he did not limit his usage and perusal of them as such.

  He had paged through it several times and could have recited the information inside from memory. Slayers were migrating to Barton in droves. That was odd in and of itself, since the Slayers were normally content to stay in the bigger cities. More quarry there, to make quota. And a bit of petty lucre.

  Finn knew a thing or two about that. He was well-acquainted with ill-gotten gains as both the trader and the goods. He often worked in the capacity of a bounty hunter and before that, once, he had been a slave. Sometimes, he could still hear the screams.

  Pray to your gods. Perhaps they will turn over in their graves.

  Or perhaps not.

  Otherkind were leaving. Or disappearing, in some cases. No forwarding address. Nothing. Witches and shape-shifters both, vanishing without a trace.

  Finn rubbed at his lower lip in thought. That could be construed as hostile. By law, all Otherkind were required to keep the Council notified of their location at any given time. Part of the truce that had been negotiated after the War. Supposedly it kept the dissidents from organizing.

  In reality, the law was intended as a choke-chain to curb the shape-shifters, whose territoriality made them difficult to reckon with. Witches had no such problems. They didn't used to, anyway.

  Karen Shields's name leaped out at him from the file. Many knew her as the daughter of Lincoln Shields, one of the esteemed members of the Council. She was also in the running for a seat, although if one were offered to her it was unlikely that she would ever take it.

  She was Finn's fiancee. They had been betrothed at a young age. Informally, though there was nothing casual about the arrangements at all. Their union would be heralded in all the great houses for many years to come.

  Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy culling.

  It was life, and death, and all that spanned between.

  It was his birthright.

  The Riordans were an ancient and noble line of witches who could trace their lineage all the way back to the nobility of fifth-century Ireland. For hundreds of years, the most powerful witches of each clan had been wed to one another, knowing that with each successive generation they were one step closer to creating perfection.

  Most witches could only master one element. The dedicated could usually manage two, and they were known as Diads. Triads could master three elements. Then Quads, the rarest, had command over all four.

  Phineas Riordan's father, Royce Riordan, was a Quad. He never let his son forget it—especially since Finn was not. No, he still struggled with earth. The filthiest element, the element of the wilds, of the base…of the shape-shifters.

  A shudder tore through him.

  And yet, the element eluded him, resisting capture, slipping through his fingers like so much water. It was an irony made more cutting by the fact that water, for him, was so fluently commanded. Only air was simpler. Even fire, the most difficult and mercurial element of all, had been a cinch in the face of this stubborn, unprepossessing element.

  We hunger in earnest for that which we cannot consume.

  The sycophantic masses praised him for his considerable prowess, responding to his power with the jealousy, awe, or even outright fear that were all his due. But until he could master earth, he would never be good or worthy enough.

  He had been born to and bred for success. Finn slammed his fist on the table, rattling the various paraphernalia set out for him to do his work. Failure was not an option. To even consider it was blasphemous. Had anyone suggested it to him, even in jest, he might have killed them on the spot, and the Fourth Rule be damned.

  Royce's word was law and none dared oppose him, not even his own son. On the day of Finn's inauguration, when he finally claimed his own seat on the Council, his father had only said one thing to him:

  “Don't make me regret this.”

  It was as if his father had cracked him open, to examine all the faults that lay within. As if they were no more than so many twisted, degenerate pearls before one pompous, vainglorious swine. If Royce knew how deeply ingrained his debauchery was, he would have amputated him from the line before the rot could take root, and lead to gangrenous family ruin.

  One day, Finn would take his father's place. But when that moment came, he wanted to make damn sure that he was a Quad. Damn sure. The legacy of the Riordans would carry on. No one would compare him to his paterfamilias and find him lacking. That was his duty.

  Everything else came second.

  He ran his fingers over the edges of Karen's picture. The photo on file did not do her justice. She was as beautiful as she was ruthless. A mate, the shifters would say. A union based less on love and more on sex and dominance. The phrase had a grain of salacious truth to it, although any real interest she had in him was superseded by her desire for power.

  Not that she was without her charms. She had many, most of which he was intimately acquainted with, and she was a powerful Diad. But women were as pernicious as a bed of vipers.

  And speaking of vipers—

  He flipped to the secti
on on shape-shifters.

  The facial features of those profiled became less fey, more robust. He was fascinated and repelled in equal parts. Witches were gracile and androgynous, whereas shape-shifters had a wild, blatant sexuality that was almost obscene, making it impossible to look away.

  No matter how much he wanted to.

  Finn exhaled slowly.

  He didn't, though. That was the problem.

  Each section opened with backgrounds on the family, with multiple indexes identifying extended family members. Marriages and children were tracked, listed in long, winding footnotes that appeared hastily tacked-on.

  He turned past several families that were well-known to him in his perusals. A number of shifters preferred to live as their beasts, switching to human form only as a necessity. The Glamors, however, were shape-shifters who preferred to live as humans and assimilated to human lives, trading freedom for security.

  The Van Sants, the Vasquezes, the Trans, the Pierces. There were only a handful of Glamors in Barton. The fact that Barton could claim four families despite its size was quite a feat considering their relative scarcity.

  Finn frowned. The last entry had a tag denoting an edit. I authorized no edits for this file.

  There were several notes delineated in the margins. Handwritten memos, glittering with trace elements of magic. Frowning, Finn leaned closer.

  He knew this part of the file well. The Pierces had a delinquent daughter, guilty of multiple infractions of the First and Third Rules. She was several years his junior, attractive by their standards. That wasn't what had caught his attention—at least, not at present.

  All fully developed shape-shifter had a beast, and the girl's should have been recorded. She was of age. He knew she was of age. But in the space where her animal should have been, it said only UNKNOWN.

  The word, with its faint ringings of failure, rattled him. Unknown. How did I not notice this before? The gods knew he had studied this file more times than he could count. Was it a clerical error, perhaps, or something far more careless? Even sabotage? His eyes hardened. Whatever it was, it needed rectifying.

  It was time to pay the little shifter a visitation.

  •◌•◌•◌•◌•

  A voice had been screaming into Catherine Pierce's ear the whole way to work. A field mouse, specifically. Prey never liked being out in the open. A harmless walk in the park became a march to the death. Enemies were everywhere, lying in wait. One only need let their guard down for a second before getting torn to pieces.

  She paused, tilting her head in a twitchy, mechanical way that looked decidedly not human—though thankfully no one is around to notice, she added to herself—performing a cursory scan up and down the empty street.

  The Prey alarms went off a lot while she was outside. Every time a car whizzed by or a shadow passed overhead; every time a loud noise sounded with no discernible cause; every second of every day, that little voice was nattering at her, flooding her nervous system with adrenaline, as it was so certain it was about to die.

  Catherine was surprised Prey's caterwauling had made it so far past her highly discriminatory thalamus. She was used to tuning Prey and the other voices out. She would have gone mad otherwise.

  The DNA of countless beasts lay dormant inside her, waiting to be accessed. All Catherine had to do was look at a photo once, although video or real life worked better, and form the animal's image in her head.

  Then, the Change came, as swift and fast as a cobra. She would know—after all, she had been one.

  The trouble was, the voices of the beasts spoke to her, whispered to her, all the time. So often, and in such great number, that she was forced to divide the voices into two distinct categories for brevity's sake.

  Predator and Prey.

  Prey was being unusually aggressive today. Ordinarily it was content to curl up into a terrified ball in the back of her skull and whimper quietly.

  Not today. No, Prey had been chattering at her from the moment she took her first step out the front door this morning. Was something wrong?

  Yes, Prey whined, Danger everywhere, all around us.

  I wasn't asking you! She imbued the thought with a bit of Predator's fury and Prey cowered, receding.

  Good, she thought. Still channeling Predator, she whipped her head towards the rustling bushes, hazel eyes glinting with filaments of light.

  The bush in question was a juniper hedge. Its branches stretched over the grainy sidewalk like the grasping arms of a panhandler. Furtive, nervous sounds came from within. Probably small birds or mice.

  Other Preys. Predator was dismissive. Small Preys. Not worth the time it takes to catch them.

  Prey slouched off, leaving jagged, fitful spurts of baleful fear in its wake. Catherine was concerned. Prey was rarely so adamant. Not while Predator was there.

  She shook herself. Her hands, when she thrust them into the pockets of her jeans, were cold.

  The air grew heavier, thicker as she walked. It wasn't due to the humidity. No, this was more forceful, more tangible. It was almost as if someone—or something—were physically holding her back.

  Who would dare?

  Beneath the sleeves of her flannel shirt, her skin buzzed and prickled with gooseflesh. The air was cracking with enough static to spark a flame and her own aura was discoloring, reacting with electrical and chemical bursts. As she watched, the nebulous haze surrounding her split off into hair-thin fibers.

  Only magic could do this.

  Only a witch would dare.

  She stiffened. “Is someone there?”

  Her voice came out as a squeak. She winced, cleared her throat, and tried again.

  “Hello?”

  Over the pounding of her heart she thought she could make out soft breathing. Measured. Not quick and halting like hers. Breathing like a hunter.

  I'm not Prey.

  Catherine fingered her cell phone.

  She could call the police if she needed to. If someone was following her with the intent to do harm they would quickly find out she was nobody they wanted to mess with. Those who had underestimated her small stature in the past had not made the same mistake twice.

  Her small smile disappeared, and her lips turned down. If what she suspected was following her was actually following her, the cops wouldn't do much good.

  But what would a witch be doing here, of all places?

  Hunting, Prey whispered back. Hunting us.

  Witches weren't predatory. They hid behind their magic as a shield to compensate for their lack of physical prowess. Also, they were arrogant, Machiavellian.

  In a fight between a shifter and a witch, the shifter would often win—but only if they could keep the witch from speaking, usually by severing the throat or tearing out the tongue. If the witch was powerful enough, and quick enough, physical size didn't matter. Catherine had heard of the horrible ways the witches could kill their victims. Cooking them alive from the inside out, restricting oxygen flow through the nasal and oral passages by creating a vacuum, drowning them with vapor pulled from the very air.

  It made fights between shifters look almost humane by comparison.

  Of course, the Fourth Rule forbade all that.

  But there are always exceptions.

  Not me, she decided. I'm not going to be the exception.

  She quickened her pace, trying not to rub at her arms and make her unease known. Her pursuer followed, and so did his electrifying presence. It was all she could do not to run.

  Soon, her breath came quicker, and all she could hear was the rhythmic pounding of her blood in her ears and the sibilant whispers from the trees. Runrunrun. She was very relieved when she arrived at the library unscathed.

  Before walking through the automatic doors, she glanced over her shoulder. The bushes across the street were still. Silent. Everything as it should be.

  Except for a faint whiff of ozone, carried on the wind.

  You're losing it.

  Was she?
<
br />   You're delusional.

  She didn't feel delusional.

  But then, she thought, wasn't that the point?

  •◌•◌•◌•◌•

  His first move in Barton was to see Karen. He didn't particularly wish to, but he knew the move was expected of him, and it would placate her and her powerful family.