Crowned by Fire

by Nenia Campbell

  The witch kicked and struggled but it was useless. Without his magic, he was as weak as a human. Weaker, even. He was gravely injured. The vampire would have no difficult bleeding him. And this time, Catherine suspected it wasn't going to be his wrist—this time, it'd be his throat.

  Catherine tugged on the fire extinguisher. It didn't budge, and left her even weaker, to the point where she had to hold on to the case to keep upright. She took a determined step forward and slipped on something wet on the floor. “Oh gods,” she gasped. The plinking sound wasn't him—it was her. She was literally skating on her own blood.

  She braced herself for the pain and gave a savage tug on the extinguisher that nearly bowled her over. But it had worked—she had the red canister in her arms. The warning label met her eye. “Contents under pressure.”

  The stake—that was why Graymalkin wanted her to get the stake. She wanted her to jam the stake into it, to use it as a missile. It was brilliant.

  But will it work?

  “The necklace, shifter.”

  Wincing, Catherine reached up and unclasped it with her good hand. Almost immediately, she felt her body whir with activity, like a factory restarting. Her strength returned, and the bleeding wounds on her neck and wrist finally started to heal. But she had already lost so much blood….

  “You only have one shot at this.” Graymalkin's voice floated through her ears. “Don't miss.” Then she threw herself at the vampire's arm, more of a nuisance than a real threat. Alec flung her aside, dropping the iron dagger he'd been about to use. She immediately released him, picking up the dagger in her jaws, and raced away with it.

  Alec cursed. Saw her shadow. Looked up.

  “A fire extinguisher?” he laughed. “Whose side are you on, babe?”

  “Not yours,” she said—and then she pulled the trigger.

  The stake shot out, along with the white froth of carbon dioxide. Alec screamed, clutching at his chest, the stake sticking through his fingers. His ruby eyes narrowed, and he grabbed Catherine by the throat, lifting her off the ground. Her feet kicked at the air. She gasped, choking.

  Shift, the animals screamed. Shiftshiftshift.

  But she couldn't. Something would happen. Something bad.

  Worse than death? It's your only chance. Fly.

  So she began to shift to hawk, but Alec must have had some other kind of silver charm because her feathers were sucked back into her body almost as quickly as they had begun to form.

  His fingers tightened. “You're not limited to one form? Impossible. You should have settled by now. How could you—” and then understanding dawned in his eyes. “Beast of shadows,” he whispered.

  She clawed at his hand, and he shook her.

  “I've changed my mind,” he said. “You die, too.”

  And then Alec's head and face becoming a glowing wreath of flame. It swept quickly through his body, and surely he should have died, but somehow he kept screaming. Catherine thought the image of the burning vampire would haunt her until she died, which didn't seem very far away, suddenly.

  Darkness consumed her, then, and she saw nothing more.

  She was so still.

  As still as death.

  Finn constructed a glamor around them, and called for a taxi. He didn't lower the barrier until they were inside the lobby of the hotel. This particular establishment was owned and run by the Council. They knew him well here, and he was received with the reverence that was his due.

  “Your Highness,” the scraping concierge said. “What are you doing with that vermin?”

  “This is a shape-shifter,” he said coldly. “Never seen one before? Then take a long, hard look. And when you are quite finished, find me a room before the next Great War.”

  The concierge nearly fell over himself in his haste to leave. Finn looked after him with disgust. Not even a low-level witch: he had been greeted by a human. Humans were terrible gossips. Of course, the concierge would be asking himself whether the rumors were true—like Alec, he thought grimly—and word would get out that he had—

  No. Word wouldn't get out. He would make sure of it.

  “Give me the key.”

  The concierge had returned. With a trembling hand, he gave it to Finn.

  “You will tell no one what you have seen here,” Finn told him in a low voice, injecting a bit of a compulsion glamor into it. His lips parted into a savage smile. “The Fourth Rule may prevent me from hunting down these creatures—” he lifted Catherine—“but it will not protect you.”

  The concierge paled.

  “Do you understand?” Finn asked, lazily.

  “Y-yes, Your Highness,” said the concierge. “I will inform the staff.”

  “I don't want to see you in my sights again,” Finn said. “Nor any other human.”

  “No, you won't. Your Highness,” he added quickly. “We'll be invisible.”

  “Get out.”

  He went.

  Finn took the elevator up to the top floor and found the room that matched the key. He had been given one of the suites, apparently, if the needless opulence was any indication. It was wasted effort; he had grown up in the midst of far greater splendor, and its value was wasted on him.

  He went straight to the bed and set the shifter down with care that betrayed his mask of indifference. He cut open her dress and began dressing her wounds with a careful detachment that bordered on clinical. Graymalkin watched him from the floor. “Is she going to be all right?”

  Finn traced the gash the vampire had torn into her throat, letting his fingers fall to the red marks the silver necklace had seared into her skin. Her body was starting to heal, but very slowly. She was breathing, but very shallowly, and beneath her dark complexion was the pallor of shock.

  “You know how resilient her kind is,” he said. “They are very hard to kill.”

  “That isn't what I was asking,” his familiar said, though he already knew. “When are you—”

  But he saw the question she was going to ask before it left her lips, and fury filled him. He lowered his mental shields and battered her with his most painful memories, knowing she would experience the agony as if it were her own. She flinched, but stolidly returned his gaze.

  “It doesn't work on me anymore, Phineas. You've had horrible things happen to you, and you have done horrible things—but it's all part of who you are. Who I am. I've accepted the truth, even though it hurts. When are you going to do the same?”

  “Get out,” he said, in the tone he'd reserved for the concierge.

  She left.

  To the shape-shifter, he said, “Wake up.”

  Her eyes remained closed.

  Finn slapped her. Redness pooled in her cheek, but she didn't stir. Over the buzzing silence in his ears, he could hear only his own breathing. Hers was too faint.

  “You belong to me,” he said. “I had plans for you. By all rights, you are mine.”

  He stared at her. Her wounds continued to heal, fighting a silent battle against time. The rag he had used to clean her wounds was now a muddy pink. He let it fall to the expensive rug, uncaring of whether or not it left a stain.

  “The moment I saw you, I knew I had to have you; and I knew I would kill to keep you.” He glanced around the room to make sure Graymalkin was gone. Her consciousness had receded from his. She was nearby, but at the outer limits of their mutual sphere of awareness.

  “You saved my life. Why did you do that, shifter mine? Why salvage what's past redemption? If I killed you now, I would be doing myself a favor. I should kill you. I warned you I might.”

  Finn pushed her hair out of her face, then knotted his fingers in the strands.

  “I could have you,” he growled. “And you would not be able to tell me no.”

  He felt the darkness inside him coil up in anticipation. Take her, it whispered. Do it now.

  Finn released her as if he'd been burned.

  “I kissed you once, and the sky tore asunder. I kissed you twice, and you ne
arly died. My thoughts of you are tinged with darkness.” He paused, and the air shuddered with anticipation. What happens if I kiss you thrice?

  He cupped her face in his hands, and sealed their mouths together, kissing her as though trying to draw life itself from her lips.

  He kissed her—and a pile of cold ash exploded into a black inferno.

  He kissed her—and one of the damned suddenly veered towards the City of Angels.

  He kissed her—and the veil between two disparate worlds tore in a shower of light and shadow.

  “Catherine,” he said, in a voice he did not recognize as his own, “Wake up. Please.”

  The sky was a velvet mass of indigo studded with rhinestone starlight. They seemed to glitter too brightly, too aggressively, to be real. Flawless. Things that were real had flaws. That was a big part of what made them so endearing, because humanity was also flawed, in and of itself. Here—wherever here was—there were no clouds, no haze, no pollution; the air was as clear as crystal and tasted sweet.

  Catherine was sitting on a grassy knoll that was just high enough to provide the perfect vantage point for stargazing. The hill broadened closer to the base, where it was engulfed by a dense labyrinth of pines and firs. There was something about this forest and the way the trees grew so densely together that not even light could pass through their interlocked boughs that made her think of the fairy stories she had read as a child. Stories about maidens locked in towers, cannibalistic witches, and humans-turned-animals that all seemed to take place in the same dark wood.

  It's beautiful, isn't it?

  Catherine wheeled around as well as she could while sitting down. But nobody was there. The words weren't spoken; they echoed like a memory, and were accompanied by the spicy-sweet scent of juniper berries.

  Almost too beautiful. It's almost frightening, how alive it is.

  “Why? What's down there?” Catherine nodded at the woods. They were still now, serene under the starlight. She imagined that things might be a little different beneath the shadow of the canopy.

  I wasn't talking about the forest.

  Silence dusted the hilltop once more, as light as powdered snow. This place was beautiful, but she didn't belong here—what was she doing here?

  “You remind me of—” The image forming in her mind burst like a bubble, dissolving into a thousand shimmering fragments that vanished even as she grasped at them. “Someone,” she finished, frowning.

  Perhaps.

  Catherine stared hard at the sky. It seemed to change color several times as she watched, shifting from color to sepia, like two overlaying photographs, both old and new. “Have we met?”

  Not as such, no.

  “But you're just like—” Catherine ran into the same immutable wall as before.

  Sometimes the thoughts just beneath the threshold of our consciousness are the hardest ones to recognize.

  What the fuck was this? The Zen of Alice in Wonderland?

  “Where am I?”

  A place most of us have forgotten to reach. It's deep inside all of us, locked away in a tangle of briars we create; thorn by thorn, branch by branch.

  Some manage to glimpse its horizon in dreams. Others, where the boundaries between mind and spirit are the thinnest. But the journey to and back grows more difficult with age—until, suddenly, it doesn't.

  Catherine didn't like riddles. She never had. “You mean like a dream?”

  There was a slight pause. More like…a place of rest.

  A place of rest…where boundaries between mind and spirit were thinnest. A spike of fear corkscrewed in her chest, close to her heart. It all came back—the gash in her throat, the blood loss, the darkness. “Does that mean I'm dying? That I'm…dead?”

  Not necessarily. A cool breeze tickled her cheek. Fate has great plans in store for you.

  “That reminds me of a curse the Chinese have,” Catherine said flatly. “May you live in interesting times. Nothing good ever comes of being fucking fated.”

  You still have a sense of humor. That's good. It means you haven't lost hope.

  Catherine drew in a deep breath, even though part of her wanted to scream.

  “Even if this is a—what did you call it?—a place of rest, what's the point in me being here? If I'm dying, then the gods know I'm beyond the help of a little R&R. And if I'm not…then I don 't want to be a pawn in some dead Goddess's games.”

  Dead?

  Catherine quickly crossed herself. “Or sleeping.”

  At least then you'd know that you tried. Forfeiting—that's the same as giving up.

  “No, it's not,” Catherine said, too harshly. “It's knowing when you can't win.”

  Even before you've started fighting?

  “I wish I never found that damned book,” she muttered. “It's ruined my life.”

  But there's so much more at stake here than that. Your Finn—he's beginning to understand that.

  “He's not mine.”

  No? Do you want him?

  “No,” Catherine said flatly. “I do not.”

  But if you thought you had a chance, even one chance—even knowing that you would be risking everything, always, in a life defined by extremes—would you take it? Would you take him?

  “I don't love him.”

  That isn't what I asked.

  A sardonic laugh escaped her. “Are you asking if I'd fuck him? If I've imagined fucking him? Then yes. I have. But he's more trouble than he's worth.”

  We might not be able to move the stars, but we can rename them, organize them in different ways.

  One of the luminescent spheres over Catherine's head glowed more brightly.

  And in a way, that changes their properties almost as much as moving them would. You can't beat Fate, either. But it's possible to cheat her a bit if you're brave enough—and quick enough.

  Catherine stared at the blue star that had been singled out, wondering if she was imagining that it had gotten larger. “What does that have to do with the witch?”

  Maybe everything. Maybe nothing.

  The star was definitely expanding, lighting the long tunnels her eyes had become with sapphire light.

  Don't be afraid to name the stars, Catherine.

  “Wait,” Catherine said, “one more thing—”

  What? The echo was fainter now, scarcely a whisper.

  With effort, she said, “Who is the Shadow Thane? Is it Finn?”

  Straining, she waited, listening, but if there was a response, she didn't hear it.

  And then—light.

  Chapter Seven

  Catherine shot up in bed, taking the sheets with her. Sheets. She lifted her head. She was in a massive fourposter she didn't recognize. With the curtains drawn, it created the impression of being walled in on all sides by shadow. Her breaths began to come easier once she had parted the curtains. No cosmos. No forests. No voices. She was safe—

  Until she realized that, beneath the sheets, she was completely nude. Maybe not so safe after all. What the fuck? Catherine wrapped them around her body, kicking the bed curtains out of her way. Her rash gesture had revealed a room whose cost per night was probably tantamount to her sheets' thread count.

  Unless she was still dreaming after all.

  She felt like she was looking at the physical manifestation of fall. A burnt-orange rug covered the floor, patterned with mulberry and oak leaves. The images looked so real that when she slid her feet off the mattress to the floor she half-expected to hear them crunch. The workmanship was incredible, and wasn't limited to the rug, which felt solid enough beneath her feet and not at all dream-like.

  The walls of the room were white until about halfway to the ceiling where there was a mottled design of red and gold, patterned in a way that was vaguely arboreal. Even the bed stayed true to the theme, with the wooden bed posts' elaborately carved ivy leaves. The exquisite detail was meticulously adhered to, right down to the veining of the leaves. Even the sheets were embroidered with little red flowers that ha
d bright purple centers. Scarlet pimpernels, she thought they were called; they had grown in the garden of her parents' Victorian. Each crosshatch was so small and precise, the stitches might as well have been done by faeries. Maybe they had been.

  Catherine tried one of the doors; it opened into a hallway that crackled with purple static and wouldn't let her through. When she tried to force an entry, pain whipped at her skin. She slammed the door closed. She was trapped here, then—unless there was another way out. The next door was a walk-in closet and the final was a large bathroom.

  With its glass, crystal, and pristine white marble accents, the toilet, sink, and tub looked as if they had been chiseled from blocks of ice and half-thawed snow. The temperature was about five degrees cooler in here, too. She shivered as she studied her reflection in the mirror's etched surface. The gash on her throat was gone.

  She lightly touched the healed skin, and tensed when she heard a soft, scratching noise coming from the other room. “Catherine?” It was only the witch's familiar, but meant that the witch was somewhere nearby. “Are you awake? Catherine?”

  “I'm in here.” Her voice was sleep-roughened, and didn't do much to conceal her irritation. She had yet to forgive the witch's familiar for her betrayal.

  As though sensing her ire, the kitten rubbed her head against Catherine's bare ankle in greeting when she stepped into the room. Catherine pretended she didn't notice, although her heart twisted a little in sympathy when she saw those small brown ears curl down.

  “You must be hungry.” Catherine said nothing, though her stomach gave a loud, revealing rumble. “Breakfast is on the table.”

  She sounded calm, which meant that this place was safe—safe enough—and that they weren't being held here against their will. At least, Graymalkin isn't. She had no illusions about whether the witch would falsely imprison her if he thought it would be worth his while. Which prompted her to ask, “What's wrong with the door?”

  “It's warded. Nothing comes in—or out. This place is a hotspot for Slayers.”

  Catherine set her teeth. She wished Graymalkin's argument didn't make quite so much sense; she wanted to feel justified in her anger. “How long was I out?”