Black Beast (30 page)

Later that night she slipped out of bed fully-clothed. Carrying her sneakers beneath her arm, she tiptoed down the hallway to the stairs. Her parents and brother were snoring in their respective rooms. Hopefully the noise would mask any sounds she made during her escape. Her father, an Alsatian, had exceptionally good hearing, even for a shape-shifter.

As she locked the front door with a key that she'd filched from the key cupboard in the kitchen, the cold permeated through her clothing, chilling her skin. The sweatshirt she'd added was barely warm enough. Catherine wrapped the sleeves around her hands like mittens to keep out the bite of the air.

How was she going to get to the school? It would take her half the night to walk there, and taking the bus this late was out of the question. The witch was still out there. She wasn't going to wait at the bus stop alone like a sitting duck.

Bike, she decided. At least then, she'd be in motion.

She unlatched the side gate and walked through to the backyard. Her bike was propped up against the fence, beside the blackberry bush, where it had been sitting, collecting dust since last summer.

She straddled the seat and wheeled her bike out of the grasping, thorny branches, half-riding, half-walking. As she pedaled, she grew more at ease. Just in case, though, she did a few practice turns in the cul-de-sac. The pumping motions of her legs gave her something apart from the cold to focus on.

Being out at night was a different kind of experience. Even though she was taking the same route to school that she always had, she was no longer seeing it through the grimy windows of the bus. She could feel the wind in her face as she rode along, hugging the curb since her bike didn't have reflectors. Animals were chattering away in the bushes that were still damp from the rain. She could hear the creek, the sound of the rushing water much louder than usual. It faded away again as Catherine got closer to the main roads.

Barton Academy was quiet and foreboding. The slate gray bricks glowed with an odd luminescence in the blue-white light of the moon. Cypress trees sheathed the school, swaying back and forth like dancers undulating in the mist and wind.

Catherine locked up her bike at one of the racks and approached the fence cautiously. All of the gates were shut. Heavy padlocks dangled from the latch. She didn't want to Change out here, in the open, so she decided to scale the fence. There were two of them, back to back. One was made out of iron. The other was a steel cage topped with small curls of barbed wire.

The barbed wire of the second fence scratched up her wrists a little, but the wounds weren't severe and they would heal. Already, the cuts scored were starting to look less inflamed. By tomorrow, they'd have faded completely.

Catherine rubbed at her wrists—the closing skin was beginning to itch—and headed towards the dome-shaped science building. She kept her senses peeled, scanning for any signs of intruders.

Something's in the bushes
, said Prey.

The janitors were always complaining about the rodent problem.

It sounded too big to be a rat or squirrel, though.

The noise had come from the direction of a secluded alcove sectioned off by a small, red-brick planter box in an L-shape filled with boxwood and shaded by mulberry trees. The shadows of the trees stretched out grotesquely in the unflattering orange light of the single streetlamp across the road. Her eyes narrowed as she counted the shadows. Six trees…seven shadows.

The black shadowy figure leaped out as soon as she registered its presence and grabbed her. Fast. Very fast. Slayers? The red-eyed men? The witch? Her first impulse was to scream, which she did. Loudly. The second was to Change into a more formidable opponent. She wasn't going down without a fight and her enemy had made the fatal mistake of taking her on alone.

The shadow let go of her waist the moment she started to Change into one of her beasts, holding up its hands in the universal gesture for surrender. “Catherine, it's me. Don't attack.”

“David?” The word was almost unrecognizable coming from her only partially human lips.

It was David.

He was wearing dark jeans and a black sweatshirt, and his sneakers had made no sound on the pavement as he closed the distance between them. Catherine watched in mute disbelief as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He pressed a few buttons and then she heard her voice coming out of the speakers, tinny and oddly girlish.

“Hi, David. This is Catherine. I'm just calling to let you know—”

“I couldn't believe it the first time,” was his explanation. “I had to play it twice.”

He snapped the phone shut, cutting off Catherine's voice mid-syllable.

“You have a lot of nerve.”

David didn't sound angry, though, even if the words were. He sounded tired, worn-out.

Catherine felt her heart pounding as she folded her arms. “I thought you'd want to know.”

“Yeah, I gathered that from the message. Didn't you stop to think that I'd look less guilty if you hadn't warned me? Surprise is the most difficult emotion to fake.”

“Maybe I don't give a shit about you.”

David sighed. “Let's get this stupid plan of yours over with so we can both go home.”

Catherine wondered how David had gotten here so fast. She hadn't seen him while riding her bike and he didn't have any scratches from the barbed wire, like she did.

“I drove,” he said, when she asked, “And then I Changed to climb over the fence.”

He had stolen his parents' car. And then he had Changed—in public. He was worse than she was! She wasn't sure whether this knowledge was comforting or disturbing. What kind of closet psychopath was she dealing with here?

Absently, she said, “I'm surprised you came.”

“Well, I didn't think you were this serious about it. I thought you were showing off. But then I heard about how your workplace got trashed and that someone actually tried to run you down in the school parking lot yesterday…” Perhaps he could smell her unwillingness to talk about it, because he trailed off. “It would have been irresponsible of me to let you do this alone.”

“You thought I was showing off? How could you think that?”

“Please. You mean you weren't trying to bust my balls with that speech about how you're a suave rule-breaker and I'm just some hopeless geek?”

Fuming, Catherine turned around and walked faster, grateful for an excuse to turn her back on him so he wouldn't see the blush of anger discoloring her cheeks.

Did David seriously just utter the words 'bust my balls'?

“Catherine!” David said, in an exasperated voice. “I wouldn't be here if I still thought that.”

“I'm going to shift something small,” she announced, interrupting him. “Then I'm going to crawl under the door, unlock it, and let you in.”

“All right, whatever. You're the boss.”

She shot him a quick look, wondering if he was being sarcastic. His face was so resigned that she dismissed the notion. She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and concentrated on an ant. That was easy. Ants were one of those creatures that seemed to be everywhere. And they had a knack for getting into places where they weren't wanted. Places like science laboratories.

David watched with interest as she Changed. He grew taller and taller, before fracturing into several giant Davids as her eyes split to accommodate the multiple lenses of the ant. His mildly interested expression flickered, betraying a brief look of disgust.

“Help me, help me,” she squeaked, just before her larynx disappeared. But she wasn't sure whether or not he heard her.

Catherine started for the door and paused. Her antennae twitched.

Was that…food?

Yes. She could smell the food. A sweet. She could take the sweet and bring it to the queen. The queen would be happy. And she really, really wanted the queen to be happy.

With a sense of duty firmly instilled in her, Catherine headed towards the sweet. Then stopped, confused. No. There was something else. Something else she had to do.

Bring the sweet to the queen!

No. Something else. Something that didn't involve the queen.

But everything involved the queen—didn't it?

No.

Gods. She would rather take a thousand screaming Preys than the overbearing hive mentality of one stupid ant. Catherine crawled towards the door, bobbing her head. She had to open the door for David so the two of them could get to work. That's what she needed to do.

The ant was perplexed and wondered if perhaps David was the queen.

In spite of the horribleness of the situation, Catherine nearly laughed.
Yes, David is the queen.

But if David was the queen, wouldn't he want the sweet?

Catherine wavered, nearly doubling back. Luckily, she caught herself just in time.

Stupid ant.

She Changed back so quickly that she got a headache. She was in the science room. She was also naked. David had her clothes. For several seconds, she deliberated about what to do (“He'll look!” “No he won't. He's David.” “He's still a boy – he'll LOOK!”) and came to the conclusion that if she was going to be all girly and squeamish about this, she might as well call it quits right now. So what if he fucking looked? She had the right number of everythings in the right number of places. If he made a snide comment, she'd deck him in the face.

She hid behind one arm as well as she could while opening the door for David. He was standing stiffly, staring down at the ground fixatedly, though he looked up when he heard the knob turn. His face was saturated in relief. Then he colored and looked away, shoving her clothes at her.