Black Beast (10 page)

Catherine sloshed through the water. Moving through it hampered her speed, making her feel as if she was running from something in a nightmare. Everything felt too slow, everything but the water.

I have to get to higher ground.

She grabbed out, searching for handholds, but the dirt was loosely packed and crumbled uselessly between her fingers. She had to get out of here. Again and again, she reached out, searching for something solid. Her hand closed on solid root.
Yes
. She managed to heft herself up a few inches, gaining enough purchase that she was not carried off in the stream.
Almost there—

Another burst of water exploded between the trees, dislodging large chunks of wood and earth, sweeping them down in the current and taking Catherine along for the ride. It was taking her around the hill, to the side that wasn't visible from the highway.

Maybe the fire wasn't meant to kill me, but to herd me.

The current was too strong to fight against. She might have tried to Change into something that could swim or fly, but the transition from human to animal would leave her vulnerable, and Catherine was afraid she might drown. She tread water, and did her best to keep her head afloat. It was all she could do.

The water was a filthy brown from all the dirt and debris it had picked up as it swept through the ravine. She had no control over where she was going. It was like being strapped into a moving race car with the brakes cut and the steering wheel missing. Sharp rocks and tree branches lurked at every turn, ready to cut, gouge, and impale. Only luck kept her from smashing right into them. Luck—or something far more fickle.

And then something heavy slammed into the back of her head. There was a shower of sparks, and then everything went black.

•◌•◌•◌•◌•

He was lucky. The conditions of the storm provided him with the perfect medium to work with.

A thread of air woven into the flood spell, and a low-hanging tree limb crashed right into the back of her skull. The branch broke, falling into the water nearby with a splash, and the shifter's head snapped forward even as her body slackened and went limp.

“You killed her,” said Graymalkin. The sound of her voice was beginning to annoy him.

Had
he killed her?

Finn hopped along the rocks, but couldn't quite keep pace with the current. At a glance her chest seemed motionless but her kind was not so easy to destroy. Their healing abilities were surpassed only by vampires. A human might have remained unconscious for several minutes at least. She was already stirring, much to his relief. He hadn't killed her, after all.

“They're like cockroaches,” he said aloud, masking his emotions from his familiar with bravado. “They don't die.”

Graymalkin gave no indication that she believed him. Theirs was a relationship based on the courtesy of falsehoods, and so she looked the other way.

The shape-shifter was surprisingly small. Most were powerfully built, tall, and muscular. This one wouldn't come up to his shoulder.
The runt of the litter, perhaps.

If he could keep her from transforming, she would be easy to subdue. He had a pair of silver handcuffs hanging from his chatelaine. They often came in handy; shifters did not take kindly to law enforcement, especially not if the enforcer was a witch.

Images flooded his head, involving the shape-shifter shackled beneath him, both of them devoid of several crucial layers of clothing. They said the shape-shifters fucked with the enthusiasm of animals—if they didn't devour you with the enthusiasm of one first.

Many of them, it was said, had developed a taste for human flesh, which they had to force themselves to deny. Revolting.

But not revolting enough
, he thought furiously.

He hit her with another blast of air, plunging her beneath the churning waves. She clawed for the surface, grasping for something—anything—to hold on to, and finding only nothing. It pleased him to see her struggle; it mirrored his own inner-turmoil, and made him feel vindicated. And when she gasped for breath, choking, gagging, it was just recompense for the unwelcome tightness she had elicited in his pants.

“Was that necessary?” Graymalkin sounded worried.

Yes. She has no right to make me feel this way. None.

“Are you questioning my methods?” he asked icily.

Shape-shifters were forever testing the strength of their cages, unable or unwilling to believe in their confinement. They were free creatures, so they claimed.

During the War, some witches had experimented on their shape-shifter prisoners to test this theory. And there was, surprisingly, and element of truth to the claim. Freedom was as necessary to them as eating or breathing; without it, many of them wasted slowly away.

Rules could box one in as ruthlessly as silver bars. Psychological imprisonment was no less uncomfortable than its physical counterpart. In some ways, it was even worse; it provided the illusion of physical freedom, but garnered none of the benefits of it.

The Council was growing concerned.

A flurry of desperate movements directed Finn's attentions elsewhere. His lips parted in a cruel sneer. The shape-shifter was trying to grab onto a branch. Casually, he moved it out of reach with a bit of wind.

“Are you going to get her out?”

“She's moving downstream. The flooding doesn't extend that far.”

He was determined to put the shape-shifter in her place. However stupid her kind was, she had to have figured out by now that the flooding was not a natural occurrence, and that she was victim to his whims.

Council business always took precedence, of course, but if he took a bit of pleasure in making her squirm in the process, he couldn't be faulted. Not as long as he upheld the treaty. And rules were bent as easily as they were broken, if not more so.

He jerked his head downstream.

“
Let's go—quickly, now.”

•◌•◌•◌•◌•

The water coughed Catherine into a Douglas fir.

The springy branches cushioned her from most of the force of impact, but that didn't mean that it didn't hurt. It did. The long green needles stabbed at her skin, her face, eliciting an unpleasant stinging sensation.

She hit the ground with a wet slap, face and clothes streaked with mud and dirt and soot. Refuse was tangled up in the wet curls of her hair. Mud and water were everywhere. She could feel the stiffening sensation of it on her skin as it began to crust over and dry.

Fuck this
. She yanked off her flannel over-shirt and used it to towel herself off. The cold winds nipped sharply at her bare arms. She ignored it, gritting her teeth hard enough that her jaw ached from the pressure.

Part of her wanted to burst into tears. Shape-shifters were not inhuman, despite what the witches wanted to believe. They were caught somewhere in between. She might have the instincts of an animal, but emotionally she was very much like a typical human teenager. And right now, she was hurt, confused, and frightened.

Catherine drew in a breath, and the iciness of it seared her lungs.
Don't panic, you can't afford to panic.
She was in the middle of a clearing, surrounded on all sides by trees. It had a man-made feel to it—the shrubs were curbed just a little too neatly to be natural—and she suspected it might be a campsite. There was one around here, if she remembered correctly, and the circular arrangements of rocks suggested campfire remains.

No campers here now, though. She was alone. And looking around, she decided that there was a definite reason so many horror movies took place in camps.

She tilted her head back and sniffed. She could still smell ozone but not as closely as before. She walked out of the clearing, picking her way through the brush. Her footsteps were muffled, almost soundless. She knew exactly how to skew her weight to keep the loose twigs and grit from snapping beneath her feet.

Water dripped continually from the branches above her head, spattering her upturned face. She didn't mind; the water beading around her nostrils heightened her sense of smell. The trees were thicker here. Denser. Wilder. There wasn't a path in sight, but she could smell the highway: motor oil and exhaust.

Catherine tied the flannel shirt around her waist. She was back to where she had started, but the flow of water was starting to trickle out. Still vicious enough that she wouldn't be able to head back the way she came without slipping and sliding in the mud, risking her own death.

And the storm was rolling in full force, now. She didn't trust her flying abilities in the face of it. With her lucks, her wings would be rent feather by feather.

A cloud of ozone-scorched magic hung low in the clearing, suffocating her with its noxious potency. She had seen witches before, of course, but never while they were actively engaged in offensive combat.

It was more difficult to laugh at their cowardice and mock their inferior strength after seeing such power displayed. Even without much prior experience, she knew this witch was very, very strong. His very presence weighed down upon the forest, crushing it. The magic squeezed her lungs until she could scarcely breathe.

He wasn't just hunting her. No, this was a battle for dominance. She recognized the signs.

Danger
, Prey squeaked.

Predator stomped on Prey, silencing it for the moment. Courage shot through in trembling veins in the absence of that voice of doubt. Her head, freed from panic, cleared a little.

If the witch intended to kill her, he would have done so already. But he hadn't escalated it to that point. Not yet, anyway. For now, it appeared that she was supposed to fight back. He was trying to provoke a response.

But why? To force a Change?