Touched with Sight (Shadow Thane)

by Nenia Campbell

  TOUCHED WITH SIGHT

  by NENIA CAMPBELL

  Nenia Campbell

  Copyright © 2014 Nenia Campbell

  All rights reserved.

  Dedicated to:

  Everyone who read Black Beast and liked it enough to take a chance on the sequel. You rock!

  Rules of the Otherkind

  First Rule: No Other may reveal themselves to a Human.

  Second Rule: Witches and Shape-Shifters may not fraternize with One who is not of their own kind.

  Third Rule: No Other may discuss Otherworldly matters within earshot of a Human.

  Fourth Rule: No Other may kill another member of the Otherkind.

  Violation of these Rules is punishable by lifetime imprisonment in the Northern Wastes—or Death. Any Titles or responsibilities to the Council will be forfeit.

  Chapter One

  Catherine Pierce.

  Crown Prince Phineas Riordan's hand clenched into a fist, snapping his pen. Ink sprayed over the hotel desk like glistening black blood. He didn't notice, not even when a few errant drops splattered his cheek.

  She had started as a routine investigation and ended as a thorn in his side. Right as his father began closely inspecting his work, to see if he was worthy of his seat on the Council, as well as the crown, too.

  Fate is the cruelest of mistresses.

  That cursed beast had first come to his attention while looking through the roster of Otherkind in Barton. She was a shape-shifter with nothing to mark her as out of the ordinary. Except—except—where her settled form should have been recorded, there had only been a taunting blank.

  Shape-shifters could Change at will until puberty, during which time they settled into one distinct animal. For identification purposes, those final forms were kept on file and closely monitored.

  But Catherine Pierce's was not listed among them.

  At first he thought it was a case of mere oversight or carelessness. But now, Finn was starting to suspect it was the result of something far more sinister.

  Because the shifter girl was no ordinary shape-shifter. No. She was a black beast, a shape-shifter who had no settled form. And why? Because there was witch blood running through her veins. Because someone, somewhere in her family tree, had fucked a witch and then carried the resultant offspring to term.

  Her very existence was a flagrant violation of the Second Rule—that shape-shifters and witches were forbidden to fraternize, because of the risks it posed to the truce. She should not exist. But she did.

  And now she was his problem.

  He could turn her into the Council. There was probably even a commendation in it for him, a feather in his cap. She had a penchant for trouble, after all. Changing where anyone could happen upon her. Sneaking out and breaking curfew. Threatening witches. Conspiring with members of her own kind.

  Finn closed his eyes, which had begun to throb.

  Little bitch, he thought. Not for the first time.

  Yes, he could turn her in. It was an option that grew more tempting by the day. The solution to his problems. And yet…he couldn't bring himself to do it.

  Not out of any sense of sympathy, but because he knew that if he turned the shape-shifter over to the Council they would commandeer her case.

  And he had already started to think of her as his.

  At some point, his contempt and utter loathing for her had taken root and blossomed into single-minded obsession. Hunting her in the woods had made that clear. He had been driven with the need to bend her to his sovereign will. To feel the force of his command.

  The feeling was far from mutual. Gods, when he had seen her with that oversized rodent, the way she was touching him, kissing him, something inside Finn had snapped. He'd gone into the hills that night and razed a patch of the woods she loved so much, and as he watched the trees crack and crumble to ash, the smoldering landscape echoed the fires he felt inside.

  Even in his dreams, she haunted him. Her, and that creature of darkness—the Shadow Thane. Hopelessly entangled in a tapestry of lust and violence. He awoke from these livid dreamscapes covered in sweat.

  He dreamed of her that first night when he retired to his bed drenched by rain, exhausted by the hunt, and yet oddly exhilarated by it, as well.

  He dreamed that the two of them, the shifter and he, were lying in a bed of furs in a palace made of starlight. Their bodies were a montage of sweat-slicked skin, striated by thin ribbons of shadow and light in the umbra of the flickering torches.

  She was trapped beneath him, with heavy silver bangles around her slender wrists, as he took her, over and over again, his mouth muffling her cries, crushing those sinful lips of hers like petals, tasting her sweetness, her scent, and, when he bit down, her blood.

  Take it, he'd hissed. Take it all, shifter slut. Abase yourself before your king.

  She never spoke in such dreams but Finn found that didn't matter all that much, because his narrowed focus never extended to include her voice. It was only her body that he wanted—and her submission.

  When he came inside her, it was as if he had purged himself of all his sins. As if bringing her to climax allayed the shame and guilt he felt at breaking the Second Rule, even in his dreams, because her pleasure made her complicit. A co-conspirator.

  Once sated, he found himself able to concentrate his attention on the rest of her. He did not have to use his imagination when memory served just as well. When the shifter had shed her clothing to Change in the woods, he had been standing sentry among the trees, as silent as the earth.

  But a good deal less unmoved.

  Her breasts, especially, had been a prominent fixture in his fantasies ever since he had first glimpsed them in the gully, and seen the way the damp screen of her t-shirt molded to her nipples. He tasted them now, his lips as gentle as his cock had been cruel, and in the dream she shuddered, but did not tell him to stop. She never did.

  So Finn didn't—and he moved lower, down the curve of her belly, and into the thatch of dark curls that covered her sex. He combed the hair aside, searching for her vaginal opening with his nimble fingers, and then, keeping her spread with his other hand, sealed his lips over her clit with the intention of making her scream.

  And she did, but her voice was not her own, and when she climaxed shadows poured forth from her body and into his throat, and where the darkness touched it cut as if he had swallowed a mouthful of broken glass.

  Choking, Finn reared back from her, and found himself staring into a face that was no longer human.

  Black eyes, with lashes of ice, and skin the color of a subterranean creature that had never known the light of day, greeted his horrified eyes. The creature looked upon him, and smiled a lipless smile, baring teeth as sharp as blades.

  Finn might have cried out if he could, but only blood escaped his lips, spattering his naked thighs with liquid warmth that had already begun to cool.

  “A magus crowned with boughs of fire.”

  The creature had started to declaim, burning bright with tongues of flame that crawled around its body like serpents forged in the very bowels of hell.

  The eyes flashed with irony at his helpless confusion, and something darker, evil.

  “Will rise like Phoenix from his pyre.”

  He had enough time to think, What—? before being consumed by the rush of flames.

  He had awoken with a raging erection, drenched in sweat, pulse racing. His familiar, Graymalkin, nudged his consciousness, asking him what was wrong and he thought, she didn't share the dreams. Which was odd, because in their thoughts, they shared everything.

  Not this. She doesn't see. She isn't part of—

  But the thought ebbed away al
ong with his receding dreams, and was lost to the dark depths of his subconscious. But not forgotten. Not entirely.

  At his desk, Finn drew himself up and found the palms of his hands coated in ink. In the cheap lighting of his bedside lamp, it looked very much like blood. Possibly the dream was nothing more than mere shame manifesting itself as a lurid wet-dream—but then, he had never been a believer in coincidence.

  Catherine's alarm went off at 6:30, causing her to groan inwardly. Too early. She slammed the “off” button, then massaged her temples. She had gotten approximately two and a half hours of sleep. Her head seemed to have expanded overnight, filling with pressurized air that concentrated behind her eyes and made them feel like two balloons about to burst.

  Her trusty bottle of extra-strength aspirin was on the other side of the room, though.

  Fuck it. She slid out of bed still dressed in the clothes she'd worn the night before. They had gotten dirty and rumpled from breaking into the school, and her sleeve had been torn by the metal fence. She would be able to sleep in an extra ten minutes if she didn't change, but there was no way the other students—the girls, anyway—would fail to notice her wearing the same outfit two days in a row.

  She grabbed the bottle of aspirin and crunched two dry, wincing at the bitter taste. If she didn't want to get caught, she needed to stay low-key.

  Every muscle ached as she trudged to the bathroom. She had Changed into three animals last night, which was already taxing, and her lack of sleep hadn't helped. She stared blearily at her reflection, at her grayish pallor and bloodshot eyes.

  I look like crap.

  But then—she felt wonderful.

  And why shouldn't she feel fucking wonderful?

  After years of hate and regret and awkward moments of eye contact in the halls, she had her best friend back. She had a boyfriend, maybe—a good-looking, kind, intelligent boyfriend who knew her about as well as possible and wasn't turned off by what he saw. If anything—in the mirror, her lips curled—it seemed to make him like her more.

  Her smile slipped. What's the catch?

  There had to be a catch. As a shape-shifter, she had spent her whole life exposed to the hidden realities of life that so many humans were blind to—willfully, or not. Nothing was ever as it seemed on the surface.

  And she was afraid. Afraid—not just of the usual things, or even the big things—that this fleeting happiness was a trick. That she would go back to school and find David acting aloofly polite towards her once more. She didn't think she would be able to withstand the agony again after such a reprieve.

  'Better to have loved and lost,' her ass. Anyone parroting that little platitude had obviously never lost anyone of consequence. No one who was suffering from heartbreak could be so pithy or cavalier.

  On Catherine's bed, a small kitten stirred awake with a rumble of contentment. The kitten blinked her eyes and dashed off Catherine's bed, butting her head lightly against Catherine's ankle as she got dressed.

  Catherine had found the kitten on her roof one night, mewing from the storm drain. How she had gotten herself stranded there was a mystery. So was her lack of fear. Most animals reacted to shape-shifters with a mix of hostility and wariness.

  Catherine loved animals, so this was heartbreaking. After spending so much time in their heads, she understood them better than most humans ever would. She scratched the kitten behind the ears, grateful that there was at least one beast who could tolerate her. Soon, her palm vibrated with purrs.

  “Did I imagine it?” she murmured. “Did last night really happen?”

  The kitten mewed and ran over to take up her post at her plastic dish. Apparently, she had no interest in the theoretical. Catherine dumped a generous portion of kibble into the bowl. “Some help you are.”

  She said it with a smile, though, and went through the rest of the day with a sort of guarded optimism that was tinged with dread. Biology—the one class she had with David—was at the end of the day, and by the time her music class rolled around, she was literally squirming in her seat.

  Her teacher, Ms. Carter, sighed, and said, “Miss Pierce, you are throwing everyone off the count with your constant wiggling. Keep your butt in your seat, please.”

  They were in the middle of playing Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, a syrupy, annoyingly self-congratulatory piece that made Catherine want to go jump in a lake.

  She couldn't help fidgeting, which made her angry. So did the teacher's authority—Predator did not like it, and wanted to move even more aggressively out of spite. Prey was not fond of the attention, either.

  It didn't help when Maria Evans turned around in her seat and chimed in. “Yeah, I can hear your chair squeaking. It's messing up my flute solo.”

  “No. Your flute is thirty-five cents flat,” said Catherine. “You just suck at tuning.”

  “Don't listen to her,” said her second chair and best friend, Angel Ruiz. “She's just jealous. She's awful. You're ten times better than she is.”

  They all knew this wasn't true. The only reason Catherine was dead last was because she hadn't bothered turning in an audition tape. Her flute was never out of tune, and it was a never ending source of frustration to Maria, who couldn't figure out why.

  Sure enough, after peeking discreetly at a tuner, Maria immediately began screwing the head of her flute into the body to make it sharper.

  Overshooting it, thought Catherine, wincing a little when Maria played a brief arpeggio as a test. But Maria's human ears couldn't tell the difference.

  “Enough chit-chat,” Ms. Carter said. “From the top, people. Da capo al coda.”

  When it was finally time for biology, Catherine was surprised to see a bunch of her classmates clustered outside the lab. Normally there wasn't any wait; they just went right inside since the lab stations were already set up from the previous classes.

  “Door's locked,” Johnathon Ramsey said, as she tried the handle with an audible click. She had to curb her strength—if she wasn't careful, she could break off the knob, and that would attract undue attention.

  A lick of apprehension went through her. She slowly let her hand fall to her side. “Why?”

  “Dunno. Ellen tried to go in earlier, but Hauberk slammed the door in her face.”

  “It's true,” Ellen said, in her chipmunk voice. She looked at Catherine nervously—she was friends with Bonnie Sung, who didn't like Catherine and nutured that same dislike in all her minions—but the desire to gossip overrode any compunctions she had about talking to her. Catherine found herself inordinately pleased by this. It was a bid for social dominance, and she had come out on top. “He wouldn't even let me talk with him about my make-up test!”

  One good turn deserved another. “That's fucked up,” Catherine said sympathetically.

  Ellen gave her a grateful smile tinged with nervous guilt as she looked around for Bonnie.

  Making sure the alpha female isn't around.

  “I think if fifteen minutes go by and the instructor doesn't show, we get to leave,” Johnathon said hopefully. “I could head over to the Doughnut Shack, maybe get some hot chocolate.”

  Food sounded good. Especially while pent up in a school full of humans, who smelled a little too much like meat. But she tried not to think about that. “Doesn't that rule only apply to college students?”

  “Like a simple rule's ever stopped you before, Pierce,” he said, laughing—and she felt a rush of fear, wondering if he was implying that he knew she had broken into the lab, after all. But how could he?

  “There's no way I'm sticking around this place if I don't have to,” he continued. “You, of all people, should understand that. This is my class of the day. After this, I'm done.”

  Catherine nodded, not committing herself. She was watching the other students guardedly, gauging their reactions, wondering how much they were getting out of this discussion. From their glazed expressions, not much. She let herself relax a little.

  Johnathon leaned back against the wall. “M
aybe we should all go for doughnuts. You, too, Pierce. And the Tran Man, if he's here—” Johnathon looked around quickly “—doesn't look like he is, though. Weird. Don't think I've ever seen him miss a class before.”

  “Yeah, where is David?” Ellen piped up. “I wanted to ask him a question about the test.”

  “I don't know, I'm not his keeper,” Catherine said, more harshly than she'd meant. She was wondering the same thing.

  “But you are his partner,”Johnathon pointed out. “You'd think he'd have warned you if he was gonna pussy out on the day of the dissection.”

  “He didn't tell me anything. Maybe he's sick. He'd better be sick,” she added. Internally, she was reeling.

  Was this about what happened last night? Had David thought over what he'd said to her and changed his mind? That fucking coward doesn't even have the guts to face me, she thought, furiously.

  But maybe it wasn't a betrayal. Maybe something else had happened. Something…worse.

  She didn't have to try hard to fake her confusion and anxiety. The other students seemed to chalk it up to nerves about doing the dissection without David. Thanks to Hauberk, her low grades weren't exactly a secret. At any rate, it made them leave her alone.

  “I wish we didn't have to do this lab,” one person said. “I've been having nightmares about it.”

  Be careful what you wish for. Especially out loud. Few creatures turned upon one another as quickly, and with as little prompting, as humans.

  The door opened exactly a minute shy of the requisite fifteen minutes. Johnathon opened his mouth, perhaps to give voice to his disappointment, though he shut it like a trap when he saw Mr. Hauberk's face—grim, furious, his eyes as cold as gray marbles behind his wire-frame glasses.

  “Come in.” His tone brooked no argument.

  Hell, thought Catherine.

  There were some hushed groans of disappointment but they all filed in quickly and quietly, Catherine included. Mr. Hauberk was one of those teachers who always looked annoyed but today his expression went beyond irritation—he looked positively enraged.