The kitten padded over to where Catherine sat, frozen on the bed, putting one white paw on her leg. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was trying to comfort me. Maybe she was. Animals could pick on emotional nuances that were beyond the comprehension of most humans.
Catherine, I lo—
Her brain filled in the missing syllables before she could stop it.
Catherine…I love you?
Tiny paws scrabbled at her knee through the jeans. She shoved the kitten away, more roughly than she meant to, and the kitten went cartwheeling across the comforter, landing in a heap on the pillow. Her golden eyes looked at Catherine in a way that was distinctly accusatory.
Or maybe that was her own guilt looking at her. Guilt for the terrible thing she had done.
Catherine buried her face in the mattress and cried.
The kitten burrowed into the gap between her arm and face, and licked the salt from her cheeks. That only made Catherine cry harder. She didn't want to be comforted. Didn't deserve it.
Even though what had happened to David had been all her fault, he hadn't been angry with her. Not even at the end. He could have called his parents. He could have called for help. Instead, he had called her. To warn her. To tell her that he cared about her.
All this time, he'd cared about her. And the moment the two of them had finally managed to make everything right, he'd been spirited away. Stolen. By Slayers. And they'll kill him. She wanted to pray, pray to all her gods. Pray that he was still alive. But for him that might mean a fate worse than death. Shifter blood wasn't valuable, like that of the witches. The Slayers had no reason to kill them quickly or keep them. A silver bullet was expensive, used only as a last resort by the most experienced of hunters.
Catherine had heard horrible rumors about what the Slayers did to the shifters unlucky enough to be captured alive. As hard as she tried to shove those thoughts away, they kept coming back, knocking down her defenses as if they were no more than a house of cards.
Eventually, inevitably, she ran out of tears. Her eyes were crusty with salt, and sore—especially in the corners. Catherine could feel the wetness on her cheeks drying, stiffening into a sticky death's-head mask of anguish. When she licked her lips, she tasted salt.
Finally spent, Catherine rolled on her back and stared at the ceiling. Not being able to cry did nothing for the pain inside. She had no means of achieving cathartic release for the emotions that were threatening to devour her from within.
It's all my fault, she thought. I sent him to his death.
She didn't remember falling asleep but when she opened her eyes again the time on the clock had changed to 7:34:01. Outside her window, the sky was completely dark and covered with a smattering of stars. The kitten was wedged under her arm but had apparently gotten tired of being cuddled because she began to fidget, batting at Catherine's shoulder, claws retracted.
“Right,” she said. “You want food.” She used the wet kind this time, since that seemed to be the kitten's favorite. The poor thing deserved it for trying to comfort a monster like her.
While the kitten chowed down on her tuna-flavored hash, Catherine went into the bathroom and splashed her face, rinsing away the leftover makeup, the salt deposits, the cat slobber. Hard to believe that less than twenty-four hours ago she had practically floated home on a cloud of her own happiness. Hard to believe that the spectrum of human emotion could be so fickle, so cruel.
Her stomach rumbled. She found herself in the kitchen, suddenly, though she couldn't remember making a conscious decision to go there, let alone walking the familiar route through the house. Lucas was at the table, eating cookies without a plate. He startled when she came in to the room, relaxing when he realized she wasn't their mother. She was aware of his eyes on her as she reached for the package and took one of the cookies. She bit into it and made a face; it had the taste and texture of ash in her mouth.
“I thought you liked the chocolate chip,” he said, when she set the uneaten portion aside on a napkin. “Usually I have to tear the package away from you before you pig them all down.”
“I'm not hungry.”
Her brother rolled his eyes. “Gods, you must be sick, then.”
“Shut up, dick-sneeze.”
She threw the cookie and napkin into the garbage and got herself a glass of water.
Lucas shrugged at her silence and started playing with his phone. Still, she could smell his curiosity even as he texted his friends and feigned indifference. Curiosity got the best of him in the end and he said, cautiously, “Were you really going to join Sterling Rep?”
“Hell no,” she said. “It's full of creeps and goody-goodys.”
The words were right, exactly what she wanted. The tone, though…it was all wrong.
Lucas regarded her for what seemed a very long time. Then he shoved the package of cookies aside. “Sterling Rep is the name of the club at my school, too.”
“Yeah, yeah. You told me. Run by some college douche named Mike, right?”
Lucas looked startled that she'd remembered, which made her feel bad.
“Is yours full of sleazy little wannabes, too?” she offered.
“Worse.” Lucas looked around furtively before dragging his chair closer to hers. “Much worse. It was awful.” Something in his tone made her want to shiver. “Everyone was smiling and talking and laughing but underneath it was different. They smelled…wrong. Off. Rotten. There were shadows in the room that nobody else seemed to notice, but nothing that could have cast them.”
Shades? Catherine wondered.
“And they were watching me,” Lucas continued, and his voice trembled a little, making Catherine realize just how much effort he was putting into remaining so carefully composed. “Beneath all those smiles and the smell of the carpet cleaner and the humans' scents, I could smell something horrible. Something bad.”
“What?” Her voice was so quiet, a human wouldn't have heard it. “What was it, Lucas?”
His too-young face was so grave and afraid. “Death,” he told her.
Death.
Darkness.
Another nightmare.
Catherine was getting better at recognizing them now. The nightmares were always accompanied by blurred edges, not soft, but jagged—as if she were peering through a fractured window—and tinged with a nauseating blend of unease and dread.
Looking around, she thought she might just be in the marble palace from before, but she wasn't quite sure. Everything was so dark now, without even a single candle flame to light her way. Even the pure white marble had been tinged with darkness, charred and stained by smoke.
She took a deep breath and stepped deeper into the gloom. That generalized feeling of horror, which Catherine couldn't attribute to anything in particular, accompanied her. The dream world seemed…corrupted. Not that it had been pure before, exactly, she thought with a shudder, but she could think of no other way to describe the changes that had transpired here.
Like the black magic, the bleak and looming scenery had become twisted by what she was only slightly loathe to call “evil.”
The sky was the dark russet of a blood blister, filled with black swirls of clouds. She could detect the burnt, sour odor of smoke everywhere, carried by stagnant air. It didn't quite hide the underlying presence of death and decay. Something that had been alive once was not any longer.
The garden she remembered was gone, razed to the ground. Even the phoenix roses, rising anew from the piles of their own ashes, hadn't survived. And after a moment, Catherine saw why. They had all been deadheaded. Decapitated.
She picked up one of the brown, wilted roses, and it crumbled to ash in her hands, giving off a faint, sweet scent. Like rotting flesh, she thought, a sickly feeling rising up in her. A pale memory of the haunting loveliness from before. Evanescent. Here today, but dead tomorrow.
She swallowed hard, dropping the blossom. It fell to her feet with the softest of sounds. Somewhere, a voice spoke, echoing through the ma
ny archways.
Come to me….
A plea? Or a trap? Prey was wary. Rightfully so, it seemed.
Catherine looked for a less claustrophobic entrance to the palace but couldn't see any others apart from the massive archway, which gaped like an open maw. She started to go back the way she had come, and the wrought-iron gates slammed shut in her face. Too high to climb. She grabbed the bars, intending to bend them wide enough to get through, and stepped away with a gasp. They had seared her skin like fire, forcing her to let go.
Silver. She glanced down wordlessly at her red, blistering palms. The bars were silver, tarnished and dulled so badly that they resembled iron.
The marks on her skin faded a little. Her fear didn't.
Clearly, someone—or something—intended her to go through the front door.
Her boots echoed hollowly off the marble tiles. It took her a moment to realize that she was following the witch's path to the southern tower, where he had unmasked himself as that horrific creature. A bolt of fear struck her down, hard, and she tried to halt her progression through the darkness, but her legs kept moving, like clockwork.
Catherine's heartbeat picked up when she reached the parapets. They were grooved, the notched stonework meant for archers to hide behind as they shot at invaders attacking from below. Had this palace been under siege? If so, had it even had the chance to defend itself? There was no sign of a struggle. Life didn't usually cede to death so easily.
Maybe they got caught unawares.
Or maybe all evidence of resistance had been completely obliterated.
Faced with no other choice, Catherine climbed the steps to the tower.
There were no cobwebs, now. Flickering torches were in the bronze sconces, casting a wavering light over the halls that made the shadows dance and twirl. The room was empty, too. No telescope. No books. No dead animals.
Catherine made her way to the window and looked out. The countryside she remembered was gone, engulfed by a pitch-dark sea. And there were creatures, bathing in that black and mired seascape. Beautiful, frightening creatures that shimmered wetly beneath the blood-red sky.
“Glorious, aren't they?”
Catherine stiffened but didn't turn around. “What are they?”
“Dragons.”
He was right behind her. She felt his hands settle on the sill, close to her own.
Penning her in.
“They're supposed to be dead,” she whispered, unable to take her eyes off them. “All of the dragons were killed as part of the first truce.”
“No. Not dead. Asleep. Waiting for the summons that would free them from their rest.”
A pause.
“It's very hard to kill old magic—and yet…so very simple to render it dormant.”
She had the feeling that he was talking about more than dragons now.
Catherine bit her lip, refusing to cower. The sinister feeling streamed from him.
“What are you?”
“I'm the Shadow Thane.”
He spoke the words as if they should have some sort of significance. They didn't.
Do they?
“What's a Shadow Thane?”
“There can be only one.”
She started to turn around and he caught her, keeping her from glimpsing his face.
And his hands—his hands were so cold that they burned.
“I am the rightful ruler of this world And now that I, too, have awakened, like my dragons, I have come to take back what is mine.”
“You killed everything?”
“No.” It sounded like he was smiling. Gods…he was sick. He actually found this amusing. “Only the followers of the old ways and their gods.”
“Gods don't die.”
He laughed quietly. “That's almost true. But I see that somehow even you managed to slip through the Twilight and into my world. An act of carelessness on my part, I'm afraid. I thought I'd taken care of everyone from Evenfall.”
“What are you talking about?”
His hands dropped from her shoulders then, and Catherine spun around. When she saw who—what—had been holding her, touching her, her mouth dropped open, and she screamed.
He'd been human, or something like it, once. Something beautiful. That was obvious from his face, and the exquisite structure of it. But darkness had distorted his features, ravaged them with wear and time, making him repulsive to look at. The cheekbones were very high so sharp that she bet even diamonds would chip on their chiseled planes, with black veins of infection coursing through his white skin like the striations in exotic marble. He had thin, cruel lips and pointed, white teeth, although their tips were stained with a dark substance the color of dried blood.
And his eyes—his eyes were completely black, and slick, so dark that not even light escaped.
He blinked, giving her a glimpse of crystalline lashes, and grinned.
Catherine took a step back and realized that she hadn't stopped screaming only because of the hoarseness of her throat. She closed her mouth, but the panicked whimper continued to reverberate in the confines of her chest like a growl.
He laughed again, a soft, gentle sound. One of his hands, long-fingered with gnarled black nails, tilted her face up to meet his, and bile stung her throat as she wondered if this thing intended to kiss her. “Such an intriguing creature. I will say this for the old gods. They were aesthetes. Not very practical, but the effect is rather pleasing all the same.”
She slapped his hand away. The thought that this might make him angry didn't even cross Catherine's mind. His touch was so much worse, like death itself.
The Shadow Thane grabbed her by the throat, lifting her up easily. The sleeves of his long black robes rustled with the sudden movement, sliding down to reveal more of that char-streaked white flesh. “You must be destroyed.”
Her head slammed painfully against the wall. Catherine saw stars.
“But first—you have something of mine. I want it back.”
“I don't fucking have it.” Her snarl turned into a sob when his nails drew blood.
“I can't sense it. I know you're lying, but…you've done something to hide it.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
His fingers tightened around my throat. His nails were very sharp, drawing blood where they dug into her flesh. “I can tear you apart, from the inside, out.” His voice was no longer melodic and pleasant. Now it was a hiss that scratched against the inside of her skull like broken glass, and she felt liquid warmth trickling out of her ears, and smelled the hot, coppery tang of blood.
Catherine clawed at his hands, and beads of a black, viscous substance welled up. Where it touched her skin, it burned like fire. Black magic, she thought, with horror. Black magic runs through his veins. Oh my gods, what is he? What the fuck is he?
“Make it easy on yourself,” he suggested, waving a sharp finger in front of her face. She swallowed convulsively as he traced the swell of her lower lip, before circling her cheeks, her eyes. “Tell me where the book is, and you will get a quick, and painless, death.”
Outside, she heard a strange cry. High and keening, like the sound of a French horn.
“The dragons come,” he said, an affectionate smile lighting up his horrible face. “Because your blood draws them here. Perhaps…” he looked down at her, arching an eyebrow as he looked at her with those coal-black eyes “…you'd like to see them…up close?”
And then she was falling, falling to the dark water below—
—where the dragons waited to devour her….
Chapter Five
It was a dark night, and cold. Wreaths of mist clasped the hills, and left beads of moisture hanging suspended in the air like fairy lights where they reflected the moon. Finn had expected the Pierces' house to be warded, as many of the Otherkind's were. It wasn't.
Child's play.
He fashioned a key of ice from the vapor in the air, breathing it into solidity with a rush of ice-chilled wind. It was e
xquisite, as fine as crystal, shaping itself to the interior of the lock perfectly, but he didn't have time to appreciate his work; the key was made out of ice, and would soon melt and lose its shape. Impossible to trace. The basis of the spell's appeal.
Finn shut the door behind him with an inaudible click and leaned against it for a moment. Not a creature stirred, except for his own heart. Shape-shifters were highly territorial and did not take kindly to trespassers. In the past, he'd been forced to hunt down shifter fugitives and bring them in for a bounty. The shape-shifters had always resisted capture.
Always.
The wind he conjured up cushioned his footfalls, allowing him to stalk as silently through the house as any hunter. And tonight, he was the hunter—and she, the quarry.
And the book, he reminded himself. That's what he was here for. The book. She couldn't be trusted to guard the tome. Not when there were so many others seeking it out, as well.
If she was not a practitioner of black magic, or affiliated with the Slayers, Finn wasn't sure why it had chosen her to be its keeper—because it had chosen, there was no question of that—but whatever the reason, he doubted its veracity. No good could come of her keeping it.
He glanced around surreptitiously. The furnishings were worn, but of passable quality. A vase of fresh flowers stood on an end table in the foyer. He could smell their cloying sweetness from where he stood and could only imagine its potency for the shifters. Perhaps it was to mask the odor of exhaust from the nearby roads. Or to deaden the senses entirely.
There were portraits on the walls. A wedding picture. The two children, in various phases of childhood and adolescence. An ordinary dwelling to any untrained eye. They were taking their role of Glamor seriously. What a pity their daughter stood to compromise everything they'd attained.
He walked up the stairs, still carried by the air. For a human, the old boards would have creaked. Part of the charm of these old houses was the additional benefit of their creakiness providing a first line of defense against intruders. Magic was the ace in the hole.
Finn found himself in a long hallway, lined with more portraits. The children were older here, the girl recognizable as the woman she now was with her cat-like stare and her gypsy locks. The boy, with his fair hair and blue eyes, was her opposite. Finn wondered if the mother had strayed in her youth, whether the older child was the product of an illicit liaison with a foolish witch.
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