Black Beast Read online

  I'm not that lucky.

  And yet, it seemed her luck was changing. But for the better—or for the worse?

  The car fishtailed in the street, swinging back around in her direction. And then the driver slammed down on the poor gas pedal, and the car approached her doing close to seventy, accelerating the entire time. Catherine wasn't human, but that car was packing enough force to kill her before she had a chance to heal. This time, it was clear the driver meant to hit her.

  She braced herself as it surged forward, ignoring the screams of the humans around her, and pushed up on the cement barrier for a boost as she jumped—and the wind seemed to carry her, to push her up, up, towards the sky—and for a few seconds Catherine felt truly weightless, cradled safely in midair—before landing with a metallic thunk against the hood of the car, knees bent, palms splayed out against the windshield in a defensive crouch.

  Catherine lowered her head against the flying debris as the car tore through the cement barrier she had been standing in front of mere seconds before, sending up bits of concrete, broken glass, and twisted shrapnel. The windscreen was tinted, but she could see the people inside.

  They had red eyes. Red as blood. Red as rage. Red as the most visceral of lusts.

  Details from her dream flooded back, even as she tried to tell herself it was impossible.

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

  The driver moved in reverse again, sending the collected students scattering like quail, before gunning forward and sending her flying from the car. The front of the truck was all beaten in.

  She hit the remainder of the cement barrier hard enough to take the wind right out of her lungs.

  She crumpled to the ground like a crushed soda can. Groaning, she dug the heels of her palms into the grass and tried to push herself back up but her shoulders buckled. Pain licked at her spine with forked tongues of agony as she collapsed back in the mud. It hurt to move, to breathe.

  Definitely a bruised rib. Maybe a cracked vertebra or two. At least nothing seems broken.

  Not that it would have mattered a whole lot if it had. Either she would heal, or she wouldn't.

  The squeal of retreating tires made Catherine jerk her head around. The car was speeding off. Mud was caked strategically over the license plate. That was no accident, and neither was the hit-and-run.

  Someone had been trying to kill her.

  •◌•◌•◌•◌•

  Finn lowered his hands, which were glittering with particles of magic. He felt exhausted.

  Graymalkin stared up at him, her ears flat against her head. Her eyes were narrowed slits. She did not speak in public, though no ears—human or otherwise—but his could have heard her. Old habits died hard. In response to her unasked question, he inclined his head slightly.

  You have broken the rules.

  The accusation made a bitter smile surface on his lips.

  Only if I'm caught.

  That was the difference between him and the girl. He was never caught.

  You were once, Graymalkin reminded him. And because her pain was his, the thought was devoid of the scorn he would have read into the words, had they been spoken by any other.

  The smile disappeared and he felt the dark clouds rise up inside him, making his aura flare in violent arcs as lethal as any solar storm. Fire, water, and air, woven together in intricate strands of magic, pulsing with power in its rawest elemental form.

  He had been weaker then, more boy than man.

  They had branded the marks of the slave into him with iron, and for the rest of his life the memory of it would be tattooed into his skin. Cut into him with the intent of bleeding him dry. And in doing so, the fools had set a part of him free. Their torture had brought him to limits he hadn't even known he'd had. And he had surpassed it, overcome it. He was a phoenix of blood, rising from the ashes of those who had fallen and suffered before him.

  Those who sought mercy from him would find that their pleas fell upon deaf ears.

  And oh, yes, blood had spilled that night, and not all of it his.

  Sometimes, in the darkness, he could still hear their screams. Their voices, split and reedy, flaking from throats that wept dried blood like old, cracking paint.

  He could be as cruel as any shape-shifter. That was his secret, his one cross to bear. That he had gotten a taste for blood-lust and found its flavor suited his palate all too well. Perhaps that was why, in the darkest regions of his frozen heart, he so desired to fuck one of them.

  Only a beast of blood could give him the soulless debauchery that he so craved.

  The car sped off. The metal infrastructure of most vehicles blocked his magical abilities, but he had still been able to glimpse the dark auras of the creatures within. Not vampires, their aura was not right, but something similar. Something, perhaps, worse.

  He had heard that vampires in transition could still walk in the daylight, though the poisons gnawing carnivorously through their system were weakened by the sun's rays.

  It appeared that he was not the only one who had a bone to pick with the shifter girl.

  Why did you save her?

  Graymalkin? Or his own doubts? Was there any difference between the two? Lately, it seemed as though the boundaries between them were wearing thin. He walked away from the site before the shifter could spot him. The humans wouldn't see through his glamor, but for whatever reason, it seemed as if the shifter girl could. Another mystery, added to the growing list.

  His familiar was still waiting for a response.

  There were many answers. None of them right. Primarily, he had saved her because he needed her alive. But that was circular reasoning. A fallacy.

  Finn paused a long moment.

  Because now she owes me a debt.

  •◌•◌•◌•◌•

  The school propelled into motion.

  Several people called the cops. Two girls ran up to her, asking if she was all right, and did she want to go to the hospital? The very thought made Catherine blanch.

  “No.”

  She jumped to her feet, backing away to their dismay. Too late, Catherine realized she should have feigned a limp or other such injury. Though that might make them more persistent….

  “Thanks, but no. Definitely not.”

  “But you might have a concussion,” one of the girls protested, “or a hemorrhage—”

  A boy nearby cut Nurse Ratched off mid-diagnosis. “Where did you learn the Matrix moves?”

  “Um—”

  The bus was pulling up in front of the school. Catherine ran for it, breaking through the throng of people, ignoring the girl who said, “You shouldn't move, you might have spinal cord injuries—”

  There were other whispers, too, many of them unkind.

  “Who tried to run her down? They should get a medal!”

  “Don't say that! I think they were really trying to kill her!”

  “Serves her right,” the first voice said, now sullen and slightly chagrined.

  She collapsed on the first available bus seat, her face dewy with sweat.

  Someone had just tried to kill her and she had smelled magic in the air. Was it the same witch as from before, or were there two disparate parties working in tandem? Catherine thought to the men with the red eyes in the car and in her mind, Prey yowled.

  The fanged ones, Predator thought, bristling its agreement.

  But they couldn't go out in daylight.

  The creatures of her nightmares also had red eyes.

  Coincidence?

  Catherine was starting to think there was no such thing.

  Her suspicions were reinforced when the bus arrived at the library and she saw its adjacent bookstore crawling with cops. Her heart leaped right into her throat. Someone must have blabbed. Told them where I work. They're going to interrogate me.

  She could imagine how that conversation would go.

  “Do you have any enemies, miss?”

  Just a red-eyed vampire who att
acked her through dreams, her ex-best friend's parents, a Triad witch, and about eighty-five percent of the student body. Apart from that—no.

  “Just one second, miss. Stay calm. We'll get you the help you need.”

  Yeah, no, that wasn't happening.

  But if she played reticent, that would only arouse their suspicions further. And if the human cops focused on her, her whole family could be compromised.

  Keep calm. You have the forest in your blood.

  She left the bus, very slowly, bracing herself. Head held high, she walked towards her workplace and prayed—prayed to every god she knew, living or dead, that her cover would not be blown today. Perhaps the gods stirred, roused just enough to open one ear to her request, because the human cops paid her no attention at all. She couldn't believe her luck.

  As Catherine walked to the automatic doors a young policeman was on his way out. He was too busy talking into a cell phone to pay her much notice. They collided. Now he noticed. His eyes flicked up, widening a little. Oh gods, she thought. Oh gods oh gods oh—

  “I'm so sorry,” he said, straightening hastily. “Excuse me.”

  And he walked away, leaving her awash in relief—

  Which quickly morphed into dread of a different kind as she realized the policemen were all coming from the direction of the library bookstore. The puzzle pieces clicked together in her head with frustrating belatedness. Myrna had called earlier to tell her something awful had happened.

  Was it…?

  Could it be?

  No. No way.

  Running now, nearly stumbling over the glossy obsidian tiles, she skidded to a stop in front of the open doorway to the Friends of the Library store. Myrna, who was now standing in the midst of the ruin that had once been her workplace, turned around and gave a start when she saw Catherine standing there. Too shocked to announce herself, Catherine could only return her look with one of numbed dismay.

  The bookstore looked as though a cyclone had passed through it. A cyclone of malicious sentience, allowing for as much destruction as possible. The trolley with the new releases had been overturned, spilling books and cassette tapes across the aisle. Books were scattered everywhere, pages ripped, entire shelves emptied out. All the cupboards were hanging open. One of their doors hung loosely from its hinges, swaying from the draft Catherine had brought in.

  I've brought in more with me than just the wind.

  Somebody had been looking for something.

  Catherine thought she had a pretty good idea as to what that something might be.

  “Catherine!” Myrna said, startling a plainclothes cop into taking a picture of the ceiling instead of the smashed-in shelf. “Oh, thank God you came. I can't get a hold of Sharon—that girl, I swear—but you see what I meant, it's…it's simply awful. I can't believe it.”

  “What happened?” she asked, when she could finally speak. “Someone broke in?”

  “Yes, through the side window.”

  Someone had taped a piece of cardboard over the jagged hole to keep out the wind and rain. There was no glass on the floor, not anymore. Someone must have swept up the pieces.

  “Was anything taken?”

  “No. The cash register had some bills in it still, and our collection of rare books is still intact.”

  They both turned towards the locked case. It had been smashed and sifted through like everything else in the room, but not a single book was missing.

  Myrna shook her head. “Those books are worth a lot of money. The police said that this was a textbook case of petty vandalism, probably a local gang, but if it was a gang, why was nothing stolen? What did they want?” Her voice rose with her frustration. “Who would rob a library?”

  Someone crazy. She thought of the witch, of his burning green eyes. Someone desperate.

  Someone looking for a book. A very special book. And they must have been furious when they had discovered that it was no longer here.

  Perhaps it hadn't been the witch, after all.

  Catherine found herself recalling Chase. His desperation to get his hands on the spell book.

  He'd practically waved money in her face.

  And then there were the red-eyed people who had tried to kill her before she made it to work.

  She thought of the book, back in her bedroom, with its strange black aura that had matched those behind the tinted windows of the car.

  Her meddling was the catalyst.

  It's all my fault.

  Chapter Ten

  Myrna was still talking but Catherine was no longer paying attention. Her meddling in the affairs of the otherworldly had spilled into the human world. She had to make this right. The continued safety of her family depended on it. Her own safety depended on it. But how?

  “I'm going on lunch break,” Myrna said at last. “Lord knows I need one. I have my cell phone. The police chief said he'd call back. If he does, redirect him to me.”

  She was leaving? Good, that would give her time to think. Smile in place, Catherine nodded and said nothing.

  “You can look through the new arrivals. See what's worth keeping. But don't touch anything. It's evidence.”

  All of it? “Look but don't touch. Got it.”

  With a final mistrustful glance that suggested she knew she was being mocked, but couldn't quite put her finger on how or why, Myrna left. Her red VW pulled out of the lot at a snail's pace.

  She thought of the witch, and how he had flushed her out of hiding through fire and flames. Maybe there was a way to do the same with the would-be thief.

  The moment Myrna's car was out of sight, Catherine got down on hands and knees, searching through the rubble for the bookmark with Chase's number. She finally found it beneath a small mountain of books that had tumbled from the counter. The writing was smeared but still legible.

  Taking a deep breath, Catherine picked up the phone and dialed the seven digits.

  The phone picked up on the second ring? “Hello?” There was no mistaking that nasally voice.

  “This is Catherine. I'm calling from work.”

  “Catherine!” He sounded genuinely pleased to hear from her. She wondered if he got many phone calls from girls. She wondered if he got many phone calls at all. “Have you started studying for that lab yet? It's, uh, pretty lucky how we got the two smartest people in class as our lab partners, huh?”

  She stared at the back wall, furious with the fresh reminder of David's cowardly betrayal.

  But Chase was quick to bring her back to the present. “Did you, uh, want something?”

  “Yeah. It's about the book, the one you wanted to talk to me about?”

  He almost squealed, he was that excited. “Did you price it?” His voice was aggressively eager. “How much is it? I can come over now if you want—”

  “I—ah, yes. I mean, no. No, actually, there's a problem.”

  “What?”

  She held the phone away from her mouth to draw in a quick breath. Hesitation could be taken as a sign of weakness. She could hear Chase's indignant protests even at this distance.

  “It turns out the book was fairly valuable. Not like a first edition Joseph Conrad—” she faked a laugh “—but it was a collectible item and last night, somebody—a local gang probably, the police are saying—broke into the store and stole it.”

  If Chase was innocent, he would believe her. He would be disappointed, yes, but reasonably complacent. After all, these things could happen to anyone.

  On the other hand, if he was guilty, he would know for a fact that the book hadn't been stolen—at least, not by a gang—because he would have already tried to steal it himself and found it missing. He would, naturally, suspect her.

  She only hoped that he did so in a way that proved damning.

  Chase still hadn't said anything. Telephones were difficult for Catherine because while she was free to interpret the hidden nuances in the speakers' voices, she couldn't see or smell them. People's bodies betrayed so much more than their voices, es
pecially if they were practiced liars.

  “Are you still there?”

  Just when she was about to hang up he said, “Yeah. I'm still here.”