Crowned by Fire (3 page)

Oh shit. Her stomach clenched as the Slayer approached.

“
Witch!” she screamed. He had finished with the man, who was collapsed at his feet, but didn't seem to hear her.
Or maybe he did, and he just doesn't care
.

“
For fuck's sake, Finn!
Help me!
”

Now he turned around. He glanced at her bound arms, and then at the Slayer with her silver harpoon.

“But you're handling it so well.”

The Slayer jabbed with the harpoon and hit air, because Catherine had let herself roll to the ground. But that was a trick that could only work once; she had only served to put herself in an even more vulnerable position than before.

“Finn,
please
.”

She didn't want to beg. She also didn't want to die.

The witch gave a long-suffering sigh. To the human he said, “Do what she says. Put down the harpoon.”

“
What do you care, witch?” The Slayer kicked Catherine in the kidneys with the toe of her boot, and without her strength to act as counterpoint, the blow had the same affect that it would on any other human.

Catherine cried out, curling into a ball to protect her side. “You hate the vermin as much as we do. Used to hunt 'em down yourself.”

It was true. One of the ways a new witch might test their powers would be to hunt down a shape-shifter, to kill them with the element of their choice. Fire. Water. Wind. Earth. So many ways to die, all of them cruel, all of them painful.

All for sport.

His eyes flashed. “I won't ask again.”

The Slayer brandished the harpoon at him, instead.

“It will have no effect on me,” said the witch, in that same dead voice.

Catherine saw the woman's eyes go to her fallen companion. He was still alive, stirring now, barely conscious. He had been burned badly, his face a red mess of broiled skin and raw, oozing blisters. His hand was the worst: a blackened stump, the fingers charred clean off, flaking into ash where live nerve endings and muscle once thrived.

His gun had melted, spattered with a silver liquid that was hissing ominously. There was more of it at the Slayer's feet, hardening even as she watched, etching itself into the dirt. It wasn't just silver
liquid, she realized. It was liquid
silver
.

“
Do you know what the melting point of silver is?” he asked, almost pleasantly.

The Slayer looked at Catherine, who shrugged, and then back at the witch.

“It's roughly one thousand, seven-hundred and sixty-three degrees Fahrenheit. If you tried to touch it, your hand would be vaporized. Few of my kind are able to command that level of energy. But I can.”

“
You're bluffing.”

The witch laughed, and goosebumps rippled down Catherine's arms, because his laugh didn't sound sane. And then—his aura—it
exploded.
Blue flame arced up the spear causing the metal to drip downwards in ropy strands that looked like glass.

The Slayer screamed and dropped the harpoon as fire surged towards her face, causing first-degree burns just from the sheer heat of the air. Whatever the fire touched, it liquidated, and the silver spread out in sizzling, glittering fingers, making the dirt bubble and burst. Catherine backed away from it with a sob, all the hairs on her body standing up on edge.

I had no idea…no idea that he was
that
powerful
.

“
Your friend thought so, too. And now he is short one hand because of it.” He bared his teeth. “The savage might not have taken your hand, but I will. And I might force you to eat it instead, to feel it burning you alive from the inside out. What do you think of that, you putrescent scum?”

The Slayer retched. The hand in question was red as her face—it, too, had been seared by the heat all the same. She would need to visit a hospital, and soon. If not for her own sake, then for the male's, whose condition was beginning to look alarming.

“What are you?” the woman whispered, crossing herself.

The witch's smile disappeared. Flames whipped around him. “Annoyed. Would you like to see what happens when I am angry? You're about to.”

She uttered a scared cry and started dragging her companion towards the car.

And Catherine felt her wits begin to leave her as this new threat walked towards her.

The shifter tensed as he came near. Possibly because she wasn't wearing any clothes, or because he had chosen to approach from her left only to circle around behind her, out of sight.
Or
, he thought, remembering the small sob that had escaped her when he melted the spear,
because she finally sees me for the threat that I am.

Finn knew exactly what he was doing. He had hunted down her kind for years. He knew how to intimidate as well as any of their alpha males, how to threaten, how to induce capitulation. She was trembling visibly, and when he ran his knuckles down her spine she flinched, struggling to sit up. “What are you doing?”

“Untying you.”

The silver chain had knotted up and caught. The Slayer had pulled it very tight; he hooked a finger around the chain, eliciting a cry of pain. It was digging into the shifter's skin. His nails were too blunt to pick apart the knot, so he grabbed the knife from his belt and started sawing through the section he'd selected.

An errant breeze kept blowing her hair into his face, or into the path of his hands. He moved it back over her shoulder each time, letting his fingers drag over her skin, raising a path of goosebumps.
But why?
He wondered.
From fear…or lust?

“
Aren't you done yet?” she snapped.

He leaned down, so his words were spoken directly into her sensitive ears. “Shall I leave you like this?” he said, so softly that no human could have heard him.

She fell into silence. The knife was almost through the silver links now. They were densely woven, true, but silver was fragile, and his blade was sharp.

He slipped the chains off her body and the moment they were off, she wasted no time scrambling to her feet, guarding the injury the Slayer had inflicted with her boot.

“You shouldn't joke about that.”

“
What?” Finn was finding it difficult not to stare. Her nipples were hard, puckering from their contact with the chilled, misty air. When he let his eyes fall, once, briefly, they snagged on the dark triangle between her thighs. He drew in a breath and looked away, disgusted by her, and by himself, and by how badly he wanted to
take
her until there was nothing left. He met her eyes again and saw them flicker, as if she wanted very badly to look away. There was a flush in her cheeks, and her mouth was tight.

It was as if she had been placed on this earth to tempt him.

“Imprisoning a shape-shifter.” It took him a moment to realize what she was responding to. Her face was pale; the silver had drained the flush in her skin, making her look sickly and sallow. “That kills us, you know.”

He did know. He knew that all too well. He had done it.

Finn grabbed her by the arms, painfully conscious of the fact that she was still nude, and that her bare breasts were crushed against his chest. The skin of her arms burned hot against his palms, and the heat of her was making him sweat through his clothes.

“
Why don't you defend yourself properly?” he demanded.

“
If I don't fight, I die.” She looked away. “If I fight, and I kill, I become what I hate.”

“
Circle of life,” he said, tossing off the phrase most shape-shifters were quick to use in their own defense. “You can't fight what you are.”

“
No.” She jerked free—and that never failed to surprise him, how much stronger than him she was, despite being so much smaller in stature and size. He watched her unlock the door and unzip her backpack, slipping a light dress over her head. She stepped into a fresh pair of underwear and pulled them up beneath the hem of the skirt in a show of modesty that seemed almost superfluous. “It doesn't work like that. It doesn't have to.”

“
You were born a killer, and you'll die a killer,” he told her. “Fight that, and you'll die sooner, although we all die in the end.”

“
I don't believe that.”

“
I've watched you narrowly avoid death four times now,” Finn said. “What does that tell you?”

“
That you're bad luck.”

He slammed his fist against her car, and she jumped. “You are going to
die
.”

She turned around, and seemed surprised to find him standing so close. Surprised and alarmed. She was so vulnerable, this shape-shifter. Her large, hazel eyes were so artless, so innocent, that they stripped her soul of all artifice.

“Are you planning on killing me yourself, witch?”

He had tracked down hundreds of shape-shifters, hauling them in to meet their fate—and their deaths. But in all those years of hunting, he had never met a shape-shifter quite like this one. She was a Glamor, and they made a point of assimilating to humankind, which perhaps explained why. She was very good at pretending, but even she couldn't quite hide the instincts that boiled beneath the surface, cresting at her most vulnerable.

Shape-shifters were social animals. Though territorial, they were fiercely protective of their families and their mates, and felt such losses acutely. Catherine had lost both her mate and her family in one sweep, and it had left her devastated.

It would be so easy, he thought, to get her to let down her defenses, to allow him to get close. As much as she hated him, she had no one else. When she had been trapped by that Slayer, she had even called for him by name.

Finn reached out, and she flinched when his fingers touched her lip. She had a soft mouth. Memories of what it had felt like, crushed against his in a burst of heat and yielding tenderness, had kept him awake with thoughts of having her in bed.

Or out of one.

“I should.”

The belated answer to her question fell from his lips like pebbles into a still pond, and a startled shudder rippled down her shoulders. He increased the pressure as he traced her mouth, and she sucked in a breath, tickling his fingertips. Her nipples pushed against the bodice of the dress as her stubborn body responded to his touch.

Finn stepped closer and ran his thumb along the neckline of her dress, and as he did, the inside of his wrist brushed against her nipple. His cock jerked in his pants as he felt the fabric-covered nub rub against his skin. She made a low sound in the back of her throat as his erection moved against her belly and she tried to back away, but he had her pinned against the car. For once, there was nowhere to go.

The shifter turned her head away, putting distance between them the only way she could, and that subtle gesture of submission made him even more determined to get his way. He cupped her throat, stroking the underside of her jaw the same way he stroked his familiar, as he pressed an urgent kiss to the bared expanse of her throat.

He groaned a little as she made another one of those quiet, keening sounds that didn't sound at all human. Her flesh was hot, and he could feel her pulse beating like wings beneath the fragile skin. He licked his lips. The heat of her skin seared him even through his pants. He could only imagine what it would be like without a stitch of clothing between them. She was like a half-tamed beast, unsure of whether to approach or flee.

What to do with the remaining half? Coax out her wildness, or curb it?

Finn kissed her neck again, harder this time, using his teeth to trap her flesh in place so he could suck the pinioned skin into his mouth.
I want her just like this.

The shifter flinched again, and then batted him away—hard. Hard enough to activate the curse. The hitch that entered her breathing had everything to do with pain, and nothing to do with arousal. She met his knowing gaze with violent eyes. “Keep your fucking glamors to yourself.”

Finn shook his head as she escaped to the driver's side. He had used a glamor on her only once. But she had been flaunting her disdain for him publicly, when they were supposed to be putting on a front for his investigation.

And so he had kissed her.

He had kissed her, and she had let him because he had worn down her defenses with a spell of compulsion. Something she seemed unlikely to ever forgive, given her pride, and her vehement dislike of his kind.

And yet, just now she thought he had been using a glamor once more. To seduce her. Which meant she had feelings for him that she assumed couldn't be real. Without any magic, with his body alone, he had caused her to want him, to want to be
kissed
by him.

His satisfaction faded. She would never believe it. Despite their superior senses, shifters, like humans, could be incredibly blind, seeing only what they wanted to see. She would accuse of him of bewitching her, and her hatred of him would only grow.