Black Beast (5 page)

“I have him for AP sociology. He is
fine
. I think he works out. He's really buff—and young. He won't tell us his age, but I swear he's still in his twenties. Half the girls in our class want to boink him.”

Her tone left little doubt as to which half she belonged to. Catherine had to try hard to keep a straight face.

“Boink?”

“Boink, screw, fuck, do. Whatever.” She made the hand gesture again, suggesting she'd been watching too many re-runs of
Clueless.
“He's also the faculty adviser for the new club.”

“We have a new one?”

“It was on the morning announcements.”

“Oh.” Not surprising she'd missed that little tidbit of information then, since she usually arrived too late to hear them. Her attendance record bordered on truant.

“What do they do?”

“Who cares what they
do
? When you see the man in charge, you'll thank me.”

“I doubt it,” said Catherine.

“Yeah,” Sharon said, her face falling. “You're probably right. Chase is probably going to be there.”

That hadn't been what she meant, but it gave her pause. “He's in the club too?”

“Unfortunately. He has the biggest man-crush on Mr. Bordello. I bet it rivals the one he has on you. God, you should have heard him. Bragging about the meeting he was going to on Friday night. It was pathetic.”

“Friday night?”

It came out sounding more panicky than Catherine intended. Chase was coming out of the coffee shop, Styrofoam cup in hand, and was now making a beeline for their store.

“I swear, someone should tell the little jack-off that extracurriculars do not equate to having a social life.”

Something happened during that meeting. Or after it.

Sharon threw down the book she was holding. It hit the desk with a loud thump, and Catherine jumped. Her knee thwacked against the underside of the desk and her startled gasp turned into a hiss of pain. The minor injury was fading even as she became aware of the pain, but her regenerative abilities did nothing for her annoyance.

“I don't know about you,” said Sharon, “but I am
dying
for a machiatto.”

“The dying part could be arranged if you don't stop throwing shit,” said Catherine, massaging her knee for effect. It was what an ordinary human would do.

“I'm going to get coffee from next door. You want anything? The usual hazelnut latte?”

Catherine's anger hesitated like a wolfhound thrown off the scent. “Sharon.” There was a low note of warning in her voice, which was deeper than one might expect from a girl of her size. “Don't you
dare.
”

Sharon cheerily disregarded her. She was halfway out the door. Following up on her threat of an early lunch break, Catherine realized.

“Sharon!
Sharon
! As your supervisor, I order you to get your fat ass back in that chair this instant.”

A mother taking her young son to the library's reading room turned around, searching for the source of the noise, before quickly ushering her child onward. Sharon didn't even flinch.

“You're going to get us both fired, you bitch!”

She had the nerve to wave.
Fucking bitch.

Damn it. Chase would be here any minute and she didn't have time to hang up the sign and hunt down Sharon. And she certainly couldn't leave the register unattended. That really would get her fired.

She sighed, cursed. Pretending to be human sucked.

Chapter Two

As Chase Hill sauntered up to the desk, his face was lit up with such smarmy pleasure that Catherine wanted to bash his face in. She didn't like it when people—not just men—looked at her in that way. As if she could be bought, or owned. It wasn't just about sex, either. Not entirely.
There are more ways than that to sell your soul.

“Welcome to the Friends of the Library Bookstore,” she said, keeping her voice prim and her eyes cold.

“Catherine,” he said, as if they were long-lost friends. “I didn't know you worked here.”

Liar
. There was no way he hadn't seen her through the large double windows. “Do you need help with something?” She asked him.
Out the door, perhaps?

“Nah.” He seemed to completely overlook her frigid expression. “I'm just, uh, browsing.”

Great
.

Some of the shades had followed him into the building. Through the glass wall she could see the majority of them drifting in the corridor like dogs awaiting the return of a beloved master.

One of the creatures happened to glance in her direction as she looked. Quick, accidental coincidence. Its reaction, however, was not.

The shade went rigid, raising its head. Catherine caught a glimpse of a shadowy mass in profile that might have been a nose. Her breathing halted. It seemed to be—no, she wasn't mistaken—
sniffing
the air, scenting her.

Drunkenly, it swayed forward and glided closer.

No
.

Her hands moved from her lap to the desk as she readied herself to push from the seat. Her nails had sharpened, forming the beginnings of claws. She barely noticed. All her muscles were melting, melding, becoming liquid steel. Her weight shifted from her core to her legs as she prepared to spring and then—

And then what? You can't fight it. Not with Chase in the room. That would be breaking the First Rule, exposing yourself to a human.

Exceptions were made for self-defense, though.

Not for you, a delinquent shape-shifter.

Catherine was painfully aware of her throbbing pulse and how it made her feel like Prey. The only things in the room that had any meaning were the shades and her own frantically beating heart.

Would the Council grant her self-defense?

Probably not. They shamelessly discriminated against her kind. Her fingers dug into the wood hard enough to leave marks.
Fuck
, she thought.
What am I going to do?

From behind the stacks she heard Chase's disembodied voice say, “Did you, uh, watch that science-fiction movie that was on last night?”

If push came to shove, she could knock him unconscious. She had never killed a human, never had to. But death ran in her veins, and at times it was all she could do to contain it.

Catherine let her shields slip a little. Not a lot. Just enough that her aura whipped out and crackled, snapping out at the shade that had challenged her.

Rising to the threat.

I am deadly
, said Predator.
I'll tear out your heart and eat it, still dripping, while you watch. Fuck with me, and you die.

Like most defense mechanisms, this was merely a well-constructed lie. A bluff. But it worked.

The shade turned away. Losing interest. Saving face.

Catherine relaxed a hair, still tense and waiting just in case it was a feint intended to cause her to let her guard down. It might have been her imagination, since the shades didn't have faces or auras she could read, but she got the impression that the creature was…disappointed.

She would not let herself think about why. Without taking her golden eyes from the creature she said, “I'm not into science-fiction.”
My life
is
science-fiction.

Chase popped back into sight from the corner of the romance section—by far, the largest section in the store.

“What are you into?”

“Life,” she said shortly.

“Oh.” There was a long pause. He looked at her, up and down. “I like your, uh, bracelet,” he offered lamely.

She ran her fingers over the charms automatically. Her parents had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday; it had all twelve animals from the Chinese zodiac. She had been in the mind of each, at one time or another. Shape-shifters did not often give gifts—they didn't celebrate holidays in the same way humans did, preferring feasts to festivals—so the gesture was touching.

Red veins of annoyance infected her aura as a Predator silently bared her teeth. She did not appreciate Chase speaking of her prized possession so lightly. It conveyed a terrible lack of respect. The proprietary way he regarded her did not help matters. She wanted him to leave.