Black Beast Read online

  And then, when she reached the last corner of the room, she gasped in horror.

  Hawks and sparrows, frozen behind glass cases, lynxes and leopards caught in mid-prowl. Boars and wolves with their maws open, snarling at an unseen enemy, all of them heavy with the rot of death. She could smell their lingering terror, too, and knew that each one of them had suffered.

  She backed swiftly away from the grotesque sight, unable to get their glassy eyes out of her head, which, despite being lifeless, somehow managed to plead for a mercy far too late in coming.

  “You can't collect them if they're still alive,” said the witch. His eyes swept over their inert forms, and his lips curved into an odd sort of smile at the sight of the hawk. “That one reminds me of you.”

  The comparison made her feel wildly ill. “You killed them—for sport?”

  “I would have thought that a hunter such as yourself would understand.”

  “If we kill, it's because we're forced to. Not for fun.”

  “I disagree. People idealize nature, shifter mine. In the distance, it's picturesque, quaint. One takes a snapshot, slaps it on a postcard, sticks it in a photo album. Yes?” He glanced at her; she didn't respond. Shrugging, he continued, “But nature isn't so pleasant up close. It's full of things that bite and scratch, and creep and crawl; it is a killing force as deadly as any armament.”

  “So you destroy it?”

  “No. I subdue it. Capture it.” He grabbed her by the shoulders from behind, forcing her to look at the display. “I turn life…into art. Into still life.” He shook a little as he said it, and she realized that he was laughing.

  “That isn't funny!” Catherine was shaking too, and not just from rage. “You think nature is so horrible? Where do you think your powers come from?”

  “The Sky.” That threw her for a moment until he added, “if you were at all familiar with mythology, you would know that witches got their powers from the sky god, and shifters got theirs from the earth goddess. We,” he concluded, with arrogance, “are ethereal, whereas you are quite literally bound to the wastelands from whence you sprang.”

  “Nature might be a bit savage but at least there are rules. What you're creating is chaos.”

  “But chaos is a part of nature. The opposite of order, of rules. Just as death counteracts life. As dark counteracts light.” That seemed to strike him as funny, because just then, he began to laugh.

  He headed towards the telescope.

  “The woods really are lovely from a distance, though. Especially at night.”

  Catherine's stomach clenched as though in a vise. “No,” she gasped. “Don't.”

  The menacing eye of the telescope leered at her, and for a moment, she swore it winked.

  The witch bent to look through the scope. He whirled it around, pointing it at her in jest.

  “You are lovely from a distance, just like your precious woods. But you're stuck in the twilight.”

  “Please.” She wet her lips. “P-put that down. I—I want to get out of here.”

  “Out?” he lifted his head. “There's no way out.”

  An animal scream cut through the silence. She thought it was from the mounted beasts, and as the sound grew in volume and urgency, and she became aware of the rasping burn in her throat, she realized the scream came from her. But that awareness was delayed because—because there was something sticking out of his eye. Frosted and pale blue in the gray misty light, it looked like a splinter of glass. It stuck out of his pupil, an iceberg in a pitch-dark sea.

  She swallowed hard as he blinked, his lid somehow passing through it, and the thing—vanished.

  No. Not vanished. It was still there, inside him, corrupting him from within. It was breaking down, fragmenting into pieces, traveling through his veins, en route for his heart. She lurched towards him, and her fingers pushed through his vest and shirt, deep into his chest. She could feel his beating heart, shockingly cold beneath her hands, and the sharpness of the splinter buried inside it like a dagger, as the pieces of ice reconvened and hardened.

  “Almost got it.”

  But he tugged her hands away.

  “What are you doing?” She struggled futilely. “Let me go! I almost had it and you just—no.”

  He cupped her face in his cold, cold hands, touching his forehead to hers. Her words evaporated at the unexpectedness of the contact, and the horror of his next words, “Let me keep you.” His breath was like rime against her lips. “Let me tame you.”

  “No,” she choked.

  And the world exploded into thousands of shards of glass, leaving behind a terrifying blankness as they stood alone and isolate, adrift in a sea of white. The man standing before her was no longer the witch, was no longer anything that Catherine had words for, except, perhaps, fear.

  His hair was dark black, dripping into his crimson eyes like strands of oil. His alabaster skin was pale and unwrinkled, but there was something in those empty eyes that said he'd been around the world a couple of times or more, and had found it rather dull, all the same.

  “A beast of shadows touched with sight, will claim a Dark One as her knight.”

  His voice had a dreadful sing-song quality.

  “Stop it.” She took a step backwards. Tried to take another, but there was nowhere to go. The whiteness shifted into tangibility with nary a seam, and appeared to be holding her prisoner.

  “You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?” He walked around her, describing a half circle, navigating easily through the space that kept her hopelessly immobile. “You don't even know why I'm here.”

  “It's a dream. It's just a gods-damn dream, and when I open my eyes, I am going to wake up, and this whole fucking mess will all be gone!”

  When she opened her eyes again, he was inches away. He bared fangs. “Boo,” he hissed.

  Her scream, rather than echoing, was sucked into an unseen void. It made her feel quite small.

  “I suppose there's really no use trying to persuade you…” he said sadly. “You're from the lighter side of Twilight. I can see that now.”

  And he smiled, a genteel smile that was so out of place in this context that it seemed almost obscene.

  “I'm afraid I'm going to have destroy you.”

  She instinctively covered her face with her hands as he rushed her, and something speared into her gut, and made it impossible to scream, or breathe, or even bleed—

  And then, everything faded to black.

  Chapter Eight

  Rain was pouring outside, hitting the window with a sound like a snare drum. It wasn't nearly as bad as the tempest from several days ago, but it was still formidable. Water dripped from the trees, pooled in the streets, and coursed into the gutter in white-capped rivulets.

  Catherine reached up to touch her throat, and found only smooth, unbroken skin.

  Just a dream.

  And yet…

  And yet…

  That dream. That dream. Half-faerie tale, half-horror story. What had it been trying to tell her?

  Run, Prey supplied, scrabbling around her amygdala with tiny rodent feet. Run! Run! Run!

  You're not helping! She snapped at it.

  Beyond the glass, set against the dreary gray of the moody sky, the rolling hills on the horizon looked fantastically green. Catherine could imagine the fertile sanctuary that lay just beyond the secure fortress of the hills, curtained in trees, with only the sky as a ceiling. Her heart ached with loss, but remembering what had happened in the woods before dispersed some of the longing.

  What if the witch was still watching her, and waiting for a chance to get her alone again? Going to the gully would be a really stupid move on her part. And besides, it was forbidden. Her mother would kill her if she thought she'd been Changing where any human could stumble upon her.

  The dream, she decided, was just that. A dream. And a definite sign she should change her before-bed reading material. No more Gothic literature.

  Catherine pulled a wind
breaker on over her shirt and, after a pause, grabbed one of the power bead bracelets that she'd purchased at a garage sale. Onyx, for self-control. Not that she was superstitious, but she had a feeling that she was going to need every ounce of it today.

  Mrs. Pierce was already dressed for work when Catherine shuffled downstairs. Even though her mother was 5'1”, two inches shorter than Catherine, all of her students were deathly afraid of her. Some of them even claimed that when she was angry, her eyes changed color—although this was frequently attributed to the lighting.

  “Going to work early?” Catherine asked. Pretty casually, considering a) there was a psychopathic witch after her, b) she'd just had the worst nightmare of her life, and c) she wasn't allowed to Change anymore, which meant she had no way of ridding herself of the burdensome stresses of a) and b). All things considered, she sounded pretty calm.

  She received a glare. “A friend of mine had a family emergency. I'm proctoring the exam.”

  “And I bet her students are so grateful to you,” said Catherine, with a shiny smile.

  “Remember what we talked about yesterday,” said Mrs. Pierce. “No shifting.”

  “I remember.” Technically that wasn't a lie.

  “Good girl,” her mother said wearily. “Do you need money for the bus?”

  Catherine paused. “You're not going to let me borrow the car?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? What's the point of having my license if you won't even let me drive?” Catherine folded her arms over her chest. “I even pay for my own gas, so it's not like it costs you a thing! Or are you just trying to take away all my freedom? Is this another one of those punishments you forgot to tell me about?”

  Lucas shot them a curious look as he meandered into the kitchen in his pajama pants. His eyes were still heavy from sleep. Mrs. Pierce flicked her eyes at him long enough to say, “Lucas! Put on a shirt!” She could see him consciously decide not to get involved as he bolted up the stairs.

  To Catherine, she said, “Don't be so melodramatic. You can drive when it isn't raining. The roads are always most dangerous during the first rain after a heavy dry spell. And what are these alleged punishments you're talking about? Since when have I ever punished you without telling you why?”

  Catherine said nothing.

  “I can't just let you run wild because Goddess knows how you'd turn out then.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said sarcastically. “I might go to some bar and end up becoming some vampire's blood whore.”

  Her mother's face went purple with rage. “Catherine Diana Pierce!”

  What? Thought Catherine. We're supposed to pretend like these things don't happen? That if you ignore them hard enough they cease to exist? Bull-fucking-shit.

  That was what made them so scary. The fact that they could happen to anyone. One day, you could be walking down the street like it was any other day. The next, you could be locked up in some psycho's basement, or dead in a ditch somewhere. Here today, gone tomorrow.

  Catherine stormed out of the house, letting the door slam behind her. The windowpanes rattled precariously and she heard her mother shouting at her, telling her to be more careful. She knew she was in deep trouble. She hadn't seen her mother that angry in a long time, though why that, of all things, had set her off, she had no idea. Maybe it was menopause.

  Maybe I'm tired of being careful. Maybe I want to do something reckless. To live out in the wild, and Change from animal to animal. To live the way I'm meant to.

  She exhaled in annoyance, looking around. To her right was a gurgling creek. Shading the water were white alders with their flat leaves that looked like fish scales, and gracefully bowed willows. Catherine picked up her pace as the road grew muddier, the brown pools sucking greedily at the soles of her sneakers. Goosebumps prickled up and down her arms. She felt…watched.

  Danger! Prey cried.

  Shut up! Catherine snarled.

  Prey retreated to a mouse hole in her brain and peered out at her fearfully, nose quivering. Satisfied that she had silenced Prey, Catherine dug into her jeans for her phone. Since she was stuck out here, in the middle of nowhere, she figured she could call her boss and tell her she was going to be late. If someone decided to shank her, at least Myrna would hear her scream.

  Using her windbreaker to shield her phone from the rain, Catherine scrolled through her list of contacts until she found the number for the library. “Come on,” she mumbled. “Come on.”

  “You have reached the number for the Barton Public Library,” the automated female voice said. “Our hours are between nine A.M. and ten P.M. To be connected with the front desk, press one. To leave a voice mail, press two. If you would like to reserve one of our conference rooms, press three—”

  Catherine cursed under her breath.

  Finally, after being put on hold again, Catherine got put through. “Friends of the Library, Barton Public Library,” Myrna said solicitously, “How can I help you?”

  Catherine swiped water from her nose with the back of her hand. “Myrna, it's Catherine—”

  “Is it? Oh—oh, thank God. I was just about to call you.”

  “You were?” The book—the book? “Why?”

  “Something awful has happened. I'm trying to get in touch with all my employees.”

  In other words, me, Sharon, and the weird old guy who collects our used magazines.

  “Where are you now?”

  Where did she think she was? “At the bus stop on my way to school. By the way, I might be a little late today. This weather—”

  “Catherine, this is the third time you have been late to work in the last month.” Myrna paused. “But that's beside the point. I need you to come in as soon as you get out of school. Do you understand?” The panicky note was back full-force. “I'll compensate you for your time.”

  Catherine could see the bus around the corner, blurring around the edges from the rain. She fished in the pocket of her windbreaker for the fare, trying to keep her bag looped over her shoulder at the same time. “I get out at three-thirty,” she said cautiously.

  It it was a real emergency, she could always cut study hall.

  “I'll be here.”

  She could hear a muffled exclamation of surprise, voices murmuring in the background.

  “I have to go. A customer just walked in and I'm supposed to keep the line open.”

  Keep the line open? Wasn't that what you did in emergencies?

  Catherine was left staring stupidly at the phone as it abruptly went dead in her hands.

  Myrna had never offered her paid overtime before. She wondered what had happened. Must have been pretty bad if she was calling her. She wasn't exactly employee of the month. Even though all the old gods were supposedly asleep or dead, Catherine often felt as though there must be a patron god of irony.

  •◌•◌•◌•◌•

  With no other leads, he fell back upon Karen again. This time, she showed a distinct reluctance to meet with him. A reluctance that was an insult to his pride and for that reason alone, he insisted. They eventually decided on a small motel across town from his, where no one who knew them would bear witness to their meeting.

  She sat on the edge of the bed looking wan as she ran her slim fingers through her dark hair. The shades were drawn, the lights off. The room plunged in a darkness that was almost replete, save from the faint glow emanating from their bodies.

  “You were insistent on this meeting.” It was not an outright accusation, but it was close.

  The look he gave her was dark. “You enrolled in their school as an assigned watch.”

  “I am aware.” Karen sighed impatiently. “My lab partner, he reeks of black magic.”

  That gave Finn pause. “A human?”

  “Yes. And I've seen shades skulking around the school.”

  “Have you questioned them?”

  “The idea of a sacrifice seemed unwise.” She knew, as well as he, that the only way to communicate with the dead
was over freshly spilled blood. Karen was right—if she was caught, people would start asking questions. That was the last thing they needed.

  He was having a hard time taking her seriously. She was treating this like a meeting between two enemies. A negotiation laden with traps.

  “Have you found anything of import?” Finn didn't bother keeping the sarcasm from his voice.

  Her lips made a moue of amusement but her face was cold. “You want news of your shifter.”