Black Beast

by Nenia Campbell

  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.

  The witch should have known, then, that shape-shifters were notorious for harboring grudges that could span decades, hunting down offenders with the single-mindedness of a predator, tracking them across entire continents, even. What he had done to her was a grave offense; shifters had embarked on vendettas with far less provocation.

  It hadn't been a show of mercy on his part, either. No, he had been toying with her, like a cat with a wounded mouse—and he had enjoyed it, too. Catherine knew; she could smell his obvious pleasure, how it had bordered on the sexual. It had her feel ill.

  If the witch had been hunting her for sport that explained the stalling, but not why he had taken such great pains not to harm her. If he had only been trying to capture her, to dominate her, subjugation would have been simple. He was larger, and without her powers she was easy prey. He could have done worse, she admitted.

  Cruelty, then? That seemed closer than the other options, at least, but still wasn't quite right.

  She was glad when the bus pulled up to the curb. She handed the driver her crumpled, soaking fare and slunk towards the back of the bus. The rocking motions of the vehicle as it rolled over the bumpy road helped disguise the trembling in her legs. Even so, she had to cling tightly to the steel support rail to keep from sliding right off her seat. She was shaking so badly.

  For the first time in her life, she felt like Prey—and only Prey; it was a
sobering experience.

  Chapter Four

  Catherine had been careful on her way back home, doubling back multiple times to erase her trail, and to ensure she wasn't being followed.

  About the bus route itself she could do nothing—it was a fixed route, and it would be all too easy for the witch to track her on it. Luckily, the bus stop was several blocks away from her actual house, so even if the witch made it this far, he wouldn't necessarily find where she lived.

  But he knows my name.

  And that was a problem, him knowing her name. There was a grain of truth in Celtic folklore, that knowing someone's name let you own a part of their soul. It certainly makes you easier to find.

  And there was nothing to stop him from, say, using a glamor to make her neighbors think he was a human cop and then interrogating them about a delinquent and suspected vandal named Catherine Pierce.

  Fuck, she thought, with a bolt of real terror. He could find me by tomorrow.

  Maybe he wouldn't think of it. Witches weren't born hunters. Not like shape-shifters. The tracking instinct was not as ingrained.

  Don't need to think; common sense, Predator growled.

  Catherine looked up at the blank windows of her house. The lights were all off.

  Catherine's mother was an adjunct professor at a nearby college. Her father was a chemical engineer at the local power plant. Her mother had an early faculty meeting tonight and her father worked the graveyard shift, so neither of them were there to see her arrive in such a sorry state. Good. That gave her some time to think over her story.

  Her younger brother, Lucas, was home, but hopefully he was already in his room for the evening doing whatever middle school boys did in their free time.

  Yeah, fat chance.

  The moment she opened the door she caught sight of him standing there, arms folded. As if he were a miniature version of their father.

  “Mom told me to tell you that you're in huge trouble,” he said, “and you can forget—”

  His eyes grew big and round as he took in her torn and muddy clothing, the defeated expression on her face.

  “—borrowing the car,” he finished, his voice breaking. “Gods, what's happened to you?”

  “There's a storm,” she said tightly. “Biggest in years. Made the news and everything. Look out the window.”

  “But you're covered in mud and dirt and you—” he sniffed, frowning. “Is that smoke?”

  “No.”

  Lucas trailed after her through the kitchen. He was five years younger—and five inches taller. It was very depressing. It also made him difficult to ignore.

  “It is, isn't it?”

  “Fuck off,” she said, showing him her back.

  “Were you smoking?” When she didn't respond, he persisted. “Mom's going to kill you!”

  “I was not smoking, you little shit.”

  “Have you added arson to your list of misdemeanors?”

  Her behavior was common knowledge in the Pierce household. Lucas was the 'good' one. At least, he was never caught. She resented him; her parents often upheld him as an example, and she felt that as she was older, it should have been the other way around. Lucas knew this and he delighted in mocking her, but she often suspected he was envious of her, as well.

  Mostly because he didn't dare.

  “Go make love to a tube sock,” she suggested.

  “Seriously, what were you doing?”

  “Drop it, Lucas. I'm serious. Leave me alone.”

  “Tell me,” he whined. “If you don't tell me, you know I'm totally going to go to Mom.”

  “You'll bitch to Mom anyway.”

  “Maybe not.”

  He had her in the corner and knew it. She rolled her eyes, affecting weary insouciance. “I got caught in the storm, like I told you. There was a really tall tree nearby and lightning struck it. Hence the smoke, genius.”

  Catherine was pleased with herself. It almost sounded credible.

  Lucas's eyes went to the hall window that looked out at the street. A roll of thunder made the glass panes shiver in their frames. “Are you all right?”

  “Why wouldn't I be? It was the tree that got hit, not me.”

  “What about the mud on you? And the burrs?”

  Her smile faded, then disappeared entirely. “I fell.”

  “Where?”

  Gods, he was persistent. Maybe worse than their mom, if that was possible.

  She hesitated, trying to think of somewhere plausible she could have fallen, and Lucas pounced.

  “You were in the hills! You were,” he insisted, when she opened her mouth to argue. “I knew it! You smell like pine trees!”

  Catherine looked nervously at the door. “Shut up.”

  “You're not supposed to go there. Mom told you not to. And I bet you were shifting, t—”

  “Shut the hell up, dammit!”

  She clapped her hand over his mouth hard enough to leave a mark. His dark blue eyes regarded her with angry triumph over the wall of her fingers. But she wasn't seeing that. She was seeing his eyes closed—closed forever—his body cold, and still.

  If the witch found her family, he would not hesitate to use them against her. Witches were ruthless that way.

  Lucas tensed, smelling her fear. Then he licked the palm of her hand. Catherine pulled back her arm as if she'd been burned, cursing.

  “Don't you say a word—and don't fucking lick me.”

  “Mom's going to be so pissed, I bet she'll forget all about that D I got in math.”

  Not only would she be pissed, she was going to ask questions. Questions Catherine couldn't answer.

  Not without endangering the family.

  Family comes first, Predator agreed.

  Catherine drew herself up. “You better not.”

  “Yeah? Or what?”

  “Or Mom's going to find out what really happened to that so-called 'stolen' coat of yours.”

  Mrs. Pierce had bought Lucas an expensive Burberry coat. He didn't want to wear it because one of his douchebag classmates had told him that it made him look gay. Every morning they fought over it, until, one day, Lucas came home looking upset and told her the coat had been stolen.

  Catherine knew for a fact that it wasn't. She'd seen it stuffed into one of their neighbors' trash cans, mauled beyond recognition. Like a cat or a wolf had gotten to it. Probably, one had.

  One named Lucas.

  His eyes became slits. “You wouldn't.”

  “Try me,” she snapped.

  He called her a name their mother would have smacked him for. She held her ground. Lucas repeated the name, then marched into his room, slamming the door behind him so hard that she knew she'd won.

  For the moment.

  A moment's all I need.

  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?
<
br />   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.