Pain flickered across his face. He wet his lips, wincing at the feel of them—she could imagine the sting of his rough tongue as it chafed the still tender skin.
Frowning, but still more asleep than awake, he ran his hand over his scored chest in a brief and simple movement that made Catherine's stomach twist at the unconscious sexuality of the act. Because she was attracted to him; he was the perfect mate for a beast of prey—strong, brutish, dominant, and just capricious enough to be interesting.
But for a human, those traits were not so flattering. That was the problem here. And just as soon as she realized that, the witch opened his eyes and his mouth curved in sleepy satisfaction when he glimpsed her sitting there.
The sheets pooled around his waist as he sat up. His well-muscled abdomen flexed very nicely, but she was not interested. Her curiosity insofar as it pertained to his body had been more than satisfied last night.
And speaking of satisfaction, the look on his face was starting to make her feel a little sick. “You look like you tried to fuck a barbed wire fence,” she told him pettishly, in an attempt to knock the smile from his battered lips.
It didn't work. “Nothing a simple healing spell won't fix.” He said another one of those short, simple spells and his fingers turned a glowing blue. She recognized it as the water-based curative; he had used it on her once.
Catherine watched the witch smooth his hands over some of the cuts and bruises, though for some reason he left his scratches and his mouth unhealed.
“We are in trouble.”
“That is nothing new.” His eyes devoured the parts of her that weren't covered by the sheet. “And I don't quite recall it giving you such a pressing sense of…urgency.”
So that was his game; he was trying to humiliate her into submission. But she didn't care that she was naked and he could stare until his eyes fell out of his head, for all she cared. She was far more concerned with the consequences of what they had done. They had broken the Second Rule:
Witches and Shape-Shifters may not fraternize with One who is not of their own kind.
Actually, they had broken a lot of rules, but thanks to the witch, that was the offense that would have the Council in an uproar. As if the Council needed another excuse.
Gods, she could still feel the heavy stares of disgust. The phantom weight of their narrowed gazes stuck to her skin like a sticky film she couldn't brush off. How could he have done that? How could he have kissed her like that?
Don't go pointing fingers. Look at what you just did.
But she hadn't fucked him while the Council watched.
You might as well have. Sleeping with their prince was the best way of flipping off the witches you could think of.
Was that it? All she could remember of her mindset was that she had been angry and drunk. Had she done all this in a single petty act of revenge?
Not a single act. You fucked him more than just once.
Catherine was starting to hate the voice in her head.
“You know, I used to spend hours imagining what it would be like—what you would be like.”
“That's kind of pathetic,” she told him.
He drew a single finger up her throat, tilting up her chin, and his touch made her breath come up short. He leaned in, and Catherine felt his warm breath on her neck tickling the place she had begged him to bite her during climax.
He wanted her again. How could he want her again?
“You exceeded my expectations.”
Catherine swallowed as his teeth closed over her earlobe, and stared at one of the yellowed walls.
“And—” he chuckled; without moving away from her ear, he ran his hand up her thigh through the sheet “—I possess an exceptionally vivid imagination.”
This is bad. She tugged her head out of his very loose hold. Very, very bad. “I'm sure you do,” she said haughtily. What are you doing? “I wish I could say the same.”
The witch blinked and let his hand fall back to his side. His assessment of her had morphed into his more familiar guise of ill-concealed scorn. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that alcohol can make you do some very stupid things.” Catherine raked her hair out of her face and winced: something crusty was caught in the strands. She hoped it was only blood. “Incredibly stupid—”
Her back hit the floor. “Did I not please you?” the witch demanded, swinging over her pinned hips. “I am sorry. You had no complaints before.” There was a dangerous glow in his eyes. “In fact, I believe you started this game.”
“And now I'm finishing it.” Catherine dug her nails into the marks on his shoulder and he hissed and pulled away.
She gave him a look that fell short of conveying her disgust and grabbed her messenger bag. “Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it at least.” She did up the buttons of her shirt she could find. “Because this can't happen again.”
His eyes narrowed as she stepped into her underwear. “Do you really believe that I'd let you go?”
“I'm not going anywhere,” she said. “But I'm not fucking you again, either. You're too cold, too proud, and too cruel.”
Finn stood up, letting the sheet fall from his body. “You think I'm too cruel. You—a creature that adheres to the rules of Darwin and no other. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. Fuck or be fucked. You dare—”
“Yes,” Catherine said. “I do.” She belted her jeans and left the motel room without a backwards glance.
She didn't intend to go far. Alcohol may have led her to this particular juncture, at least in part, but she needed to think about her present situation, and what she was going to do about it.
She shouldn't have drunk as much as she had; she had placed too much confidence in her metabolism and ended up overloading her system. But dammit, she had been nervous and the Council had been making her so tense.
As if that weren't enough, the witch had kissed her in front of those fucking Council members. Catherine shuddered at the memory; she had been shocked by the passion and urgency of the kiss—it seemed beyond him.
And she would never forget the look on his father's face. Such an utter look of loathing. It was clear where Finn had learned his elaborate displays of abhorrent contempt.
Catherine wasn't sure what to think when the witch used that wind spell to relay his father's terrible words. She knew she shouldn't be surprised—Royce Riordan was well known for his hatred of her kind, and had sent out his son on more than one occasion—but hearing the king of the witches commissioning her own death was another matter entirely. And now we're flying in the face of another war.
A pair of hands shot out of the darkness and grabbed her. Catherine gasped, shocked—but not afraid, at least not at first. Humans were constantly underestimating her because of her small stature, only to receive a nasty surprise later.
No, the fear came only when she realized that she could not fight her attacker off. He or she was too strong. And there was only one creature stronger than a shape-shifter.
Dextrous fingers unbuttoned her collar. She growled when she felt the hand close around her chin, yanking her head roughly to one side in order to bare her throat. So that's how they're going to kill me. They sent a vampire after me. Her heart lurched wildly. “Fucking leech.”
The vampire's movements, neatly choreographed up until that moment, faltered, and the vampire leaned in, bringing his face out of shadow and into the light of the motel's flickering neon sign.
Catherine stared at him, wide-eyed, taking in the slanted eyes, the full mouth, the olive tints beneath that deathly pallor, the face she would have recognized anywhere.
It took her a moment to remember how to speak.
“…David?”
Even though his vision was clearer, sharper, and brighter than it had ever been as a shape-shifter, David still couldn't believe his eyes. He had to blink several times to make sure that it really was Catherine who he had pinned against the filthy brick wall of the filthy motel.
That it r
eally was Catherine whose shirt he had all but ripped open while ignoring her obvious terror.
That it really was Catherine who he was looming over like a creature in a monster movie, mere inches away from sinking his teeth into her firm, golden skin.
Just like biting into a nectarine.
David backed away from her as if she'd shocked him, and in a way, she kind of had. Gods, he thought. I can't believe—I almost— Although he no longer had a pulse, his skin buzzed with agitation. Fuck.
“David.”
He jolted a little. She was reaching up with a shaking hand to touch him, to stroke his face. Her fingers hesitated over his skin, close enough that he could feel the warmth.
But she didn't quite dare, and that was a good thing because all he could see was how juicy her veins looked, how easily her supple skin would yield to the needle-sharp tips of his fangs, how the blood would be almost scalding.
And the taste—
He pressed his lips closed obdurately. He would not bite Catherine. He would not.
“David.” She wet her lips. “You're a vampire.”
“Yes,” he said quietly, because this was true; he was.
Catherine hesitated, and then slid one of her arms through his. David was as cold as she was hot, and the temperature difference of their skin gave him a slight erotic shock. He was so much stronger now, too; it would be so easy to hurt her, even by accident. Too easy.
In a daze, he let himself be led back to the motel and wondered what he was going to do. She had no idea how delicious she smelled. Like sweet, raw meat, lightly salted.
David shuddered violently. He had just learned how to gain control of his blood lust—now, with the reappearance of his childhood friend, all of the control he'd had to fight for, inch by inch, was about to snap.
She was frowning to herself.
“'One week before his blood was spilled,'” she muttered, “'and one week hence his heart has stilled.”
The reference to blood gave him pause. “What?”
Before he could think to stop her, she pressed two of her fingers to the underside of his throat. He wrapped his hand around her wrist, and she looked at him, startled.
“You don't have a heartbeat.”
David closed his eyes briefly, steeling himself. Gently, very gently, he lowered her wrist to her side. “Please.” Now that he was a vampire his voice was a little deeper, though he wasn't sure why. “I only have so much control.”
He saw her eyes widen in fear, the pupils contracting. She pulled her other arm from his and David was sorry, but it was for the best—or so he told himself. Having her near was too much temptation, more than he could bear.
Catherine opened the door to one of the motel rooms. She didn't quite turn her back on him and that made him sorry, too, because it meant that, subconsciously at least, she no longer trusted him. And why would she? We're no longer equals—I am her hunter, and she…is my prey.
“So much has changed,” she was saying. “There's so much I need to tell you, so much I want to ask you—”
David froze. The moment he stepped into the room, he was hit by the smells of blood, sweat, sex, and magic. He nearly fled—but then he remembered that he didn't need to breathe. He still did, mostly from habit and because it still felt uncomfortable not to, but he no longer needed to, and in fact, it was easier to sneak up on prey if he didn't.
Stop thinking like that.
David stopped breathing and was able to enter the motel room. Catherine stood a respectful distance away, watching him warily. She could sense his predatory nature and was responding to it perfectly, doing her best not to trigger his instincts. If only she knew how deeply they go—
A bitter laugh escaped him at the irony of it.
The bathroom door opened and a man stepped out, cutting David off mid-chuckle. “Who is this?”
He was maybe an inch taller than David himself, with bright red hair, and fair skin—the kind that burned in the sunlight that David would no longer be able to see. Ever.
He was wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else, and David's utter lack of interest in his bared throat and open wounds led him to suspect that the red-haired man was a witch. He stared at the scratches on the witch's chest. Wait.
David's eyes sidled back over to Catherine and this time he registered her clumsily buttoned blouse, her tangled hair, her tightly clenched hands that were a perfect fit for the lacerations on the other man's torso. With the crumpled sheet, the scattered clothing, the scent of sex—suddenly, the scene took on an entirely new and horrific context.
Oh, Catherine, no. How could you?
“David.” Catherine took a step toward him and he stiffened in alarm, but she didn't move any closer and he realized that she was speaking for the witch's benefit. “David wasn't dead. He was turned into a vampire.”
He told her I was dead?
The witch looked at him with an expression of such dislike that David was tempted to spring. If he had been human or shifter, he might have. Instead, he leaned back against the motel door, shutting it with his body weight.
“What a surprise,” the witch said, folding his arms.
David inclined his head. “I'm so sure.”
“What happened? How did you—?” She waved an ineffective hand at him. Apparently she didn't want to say what he was aloud. “I thought…you were killed.”
David pushed off from the door. Both Others tensed, and he suspected that if he so much as veered in Catherine's direction that the witch was going to curse him. Smiling thinly, he sat down on the edge of the mattress.
“That was the plan, initially. I was heading home from the school and was blindsided by a group of Slayers. The one with the funny name—Emilio Bordello—he organized the attack. But he didn't kill me.”
“Why?” That from the witch.
David shrugged. “I appeared to be somebody's payment. Blood money. I was delivered to a vampire, who proceeded to drain me of blood until I was about a hairsbreadth from death. The vampire decided that I might be more interesting like this. Or else he didn't want a corpse on his hands.”
“Can you still Change?”
He felt a hollow ache where his heart once beat. There was a term for that, he'd learned it in Bio. Phantom limb syndrome. Sometimes, after body parts were severed or removed, their ghostly impressions remained in the nerves.
“No,” he said sadly.
Catherine shook her head. “If you weren't dead, why didn't you come back? Your parents—they were so worried. I was so worried. Even knowing you were…that you were a vampire would be better than thinking you were dead.”
“Oh yes,” David said flatly, “I'm sure my parents would have been thrilled to see me like this. A fledgling vampire, with no self-control, mere feet away from their young son.”
“Samuel,” Catherine whispered. “But you love him—”
“I was kept in a cage pending my transformation, like an animal. For the longest time, it was as though I had lost my mind. I could barely remember my own name, let alone who I had been, or who my family and friends were. All I could think about was hunger—hunger and satisfaction.”
He looked at her sharply. “Remember how humans used to smell to us? Imagine that, multiplied a hundredfold. Now imagine that you're starving, and half-mad. That's what it's like, being in the same room with you, with any shape-shifter, and I actually know who you are—”
David hadn't realized he was standing until he saw a bright flash in the corner of his eyes. The witch had activated some sort of spell. “Stay away from her.”
He had backed Catherine against the wall.
“It was terrible,” he said, turning his back on her. As a predator, he could afford that simple luxury. “The things I was forced to do. The things he forced me to do. He found them funny, Catherine. He kept me in a state of near starvation for weeks because it amused him to see me tear living creatures apart.”
“You seem to have adapted well enough,” said the wi
tch with a sneer. His hands were still glowing, which made him suspect that the witch was looking for a fight.
“It was that, or die,” said David. “And it is surprisingly hard to convince the body that all hope is lost. When it comes down to brass tacks, we will do almost anything to stay alive. Anything.”
“Oh, David—”
“It's strange that I'd run in to you here, of all places.” He could see the throb of her pulse in her throat, but as long as he didn't breathe he couldn't smell her, couldn't taste her. “What brought you to the City of Angels?”
“The Slayers found me, too. We—” she glanced at the witch “—fought them, and ended up escaping Barton with one of their spell books. But they tracked us south, and we ended up taking refuge in a mall.”
“And met up with a vampire. Who almost killed you.” David didn't miss the look the witch shot him.
He let his face become a blank mask. “I see.”
“The spell book is in the hands of the Council, and out of the Slayers' for good,” Catherine said, speaking faster, “but now it looks like we're about to have another war.”
This was news to David. He leaned forward. “Why?”
“Because of my father, Royce Riordan,” said the witch. “He has always had a penchant for hypocrisy, but this time he ventured too far. He decided that your friend needed to be assassinated.” His eyes didn't leave David's when he spoke, as if he were expecting some kind of response.
“Are you expecting me to bow to you?” David asked idly, smoothing his hand over the mattress. “I won't. You aren't my king. I bow before no one but my Master.”
The look on the witch's face was priceless. What a shame that it didn't last long. “You don't exactly seem surprised.”
“By what?” David asked, “the idea of war? There have been wars since humans first evolved enough to understand the meaning of hostility. Shape-shifters and witches have never coexisted, and these last few decades have been so thick with hatred and resentment that you could cut through it with a knife and spread it on toast.”
His eyes grew veiled as he glanced towards Catherine. “If you meant by who you are, no. Even if I hadn't seen the uniform crumpled on the floor, there are few witches who would be so amenable to the company of a savage.”
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