Crowned by Fire (2 page)

“
She is a seer,” he said. “We only share half our blood.”

The tightness in his voice made her wonder. “Which half?”

His hands tightened on the wheel. “She's a bastard of my mother's. She takes after her side of the family, which makes her tolerable—and she happens to owe me a favor.” He glanced her way. “I intend to take her up on it.”

“
Is she expecting us?”

The witch shrugged. “She is a seer.”

So basically, what he was saying was that he had looked down upon this half-sister of his forever because she shared only half of his noble blood. Now he was about to impose upon her because of some long-ago favor he had probably done by complete accident anyway. And to top all this off, she didn't even know they were coming.

Catherine growled. “You're a huge dick, you know that?”

“You're too kind,” said the witch. “I didn't think you'd noticed.”

“
You are the most frustrating person I've ever met.” Catherine put the empty tin of Spam in the plastic grocery bag. “I have half a mind to rip your face off.”

“
We both know you won't.”

“
If you hadn't cursed me, you'd be
dead
.”

The witch laughed. “And if you were not so useful, my treasonous little shape-shifter, you would spend the rest of your life cuffed and collared in silver, with all your beasts locked away.” His smile disappeared. “I'd make you wish you were dead.”

“Such an esteemed member of the Council,” she said, “hiding behind your threats. Without your magic, you'd be nothing but a glorified human.”

She was pleased to see his lips tighten.

“A weak, sniveling human,” she continued, ruthlessly. “Pathetic and inferior in all ways. I'd bet microns wouldn't be small enough to measure your limp little dick.”

“
Open your mouth,” he said. “I'll stop the car. Let's find out.”

“
Fuck you
.” She slashed him with her fingers. She had just enough time to see the blood trail down his alabaster cheek before the blood curse took hold and she collapsed back against the window as pain exploded behind her eyes, rippling down her face as if it was melting off like hot wax.

The fucking curse. She had lost a duel with him, and this was the price she'd been forced to pay. It was a bond of indenture, one that could not be broken except by death. Any physical harm he sustained at her hand was returned to her twofold.

“You little
beast
,” she heard him saying over her moans. “You bitch. You—”

“
Phineas!” Graymalkin howled, “Car!”

The witch floored the brakes, bringing the car to a screeching halt. The tires of the Honda spun out, so they were stopped perpendicular to the double yellow lines of the otherwise deserted freeway, leaving them in the perfect position to be T-boned by incoming traffic. Catherine rubbed at her throbbing forehead, still cursing.

In front of them was two-toned Studebaker, burnt sienna on the bottom, and a weather-worn salmon on top. The backing lights came on, glowing like eyes, as it slowly approached Catherine's car. The bumper sticker read simply, “Psalm: 12:16.”

“
Psalm twelve-sixteen?” Catherine read aloud, glancing at the witch. Her eyes were blurry from pain. She suspected it was from the bible, but was drawing a mental blank.

The witch didn't take his eyes from the Studebaker as he recited, “'The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.'”

Mr. Bordello had spoken those very words earlier that evening right before he attempted to sacrifice a young witch on an altar of bogwood with an iron dagger.
Shit
.

The doors of the car opened. A man and a woman got out of the vehicle. The woman was blonde, hair pushed back bandana. She was wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket, and cowboy boots with a thick rubber heel.

The man looked Latino. He was dressed almost identically to his female companion, except the boots were more masculine, less expensive-looking, and he had a shotgun strapped across his back.

“
That's not legal, is it?” Catherine asked hoarsely, unable to take her eyes off the gun. Slayers sometimes had weapons loaded with enchanted ammo. Black magic was created by spinning witch blood through an iron centrifuge, until the magic particles imploded, creating something dark and evil. It gravitated towards magic like two poles of a magnet, guaranteeing that whatever bullet anointed with it never, ever missed.

“
It is if it's unloaded.” The witch's face was dark. “I don't think we're so lucky.”

Catherine didn't think so, either.
And it never bodes well when we're in agreement.

The woman sauntered over to their vehicle and looked through the dashboard at Catherine and the witch, bathed in the glow of the Studebaker's taillights. Without a word, the woman pulled two rolled up pieces of paper from a drawstring pouch at her
waist and let them unroll themselves as if she were a warden of the wild, wild west. Catherine would have laughed at the bizarreness of it, if she weren't so frightened. She was staring at a picture of herself, done in black and white, the ink slightly blurred.

They said that you couldn't put a price on life. Well, somebody had done just that to hers. She was worth ten thousand dollars dead or alive. The witch was
worth ten times that—but only alive. Bitterness welled up in her.

Something else to feed his ego.

“They really captured your good side,” she said sarcastically, to hide her fear.

“
Shifter, shut up,” said the witch.

The male Slayer reached over his shoulder for his gun without breaking eye contact. It was as heavy a threat as the gun that was now in his hands, and Catherine found herself growing angry. “Step out of the car and no one gets hurt. We can all go home happy.”

Some of us one hundred and ten thousand dollars happier than others
. Catherine eyed him incredulously. Did he take the two of them for complete morons?

Perhaps the Slayer saw her scorn even through the glass. His eyebrows angled down. “We can do this the hard way, or the harder way.”

He must have known what she was—
who
she was—or else there was no way he would have thought her able to hear him through all those layers of glass and steel. She started to Change, and the Slayer began firing homemade silver shells through the windshield, the moment her skin turned orange and fibrous.

Distantly, she was aware of the witch cursing and throwing up an arm to shield himself from the glass as he fumbled with his seat belt buckle. The door opened, and he tumbled out, where the male Slayer was already circling around to receive him.

Catherine exploded out of the car as an angry, fury mess of ravenous teeth and claws. Since the silver slugs were not enchanted—gods be praised—they were easy enough to miss. The male Slayer muttered an oath and stopped firing, for the moment. Silver was almost more than he could afford, and he resented her for forcing him to waste them.

She couldn't get too cocky, though. The woman had a knife she'd unstrapped from her calf. Catherine glared at her. The female Slayer glared back, determined, but scared. Catherine could smell her fear—it came off her body in waves. Watching the knife, Catherine circled her warily.

That makes two of us.

The witch had taken on the male Slayer, presumably because silver bullets did not affect him and would be easy enough to treat with his curative water spell. But the man had come prepared for that, as well, and produced an iron pipe. The witch could not enchant the pipe—iron repelled all magic—so he was trying to hit the Slayer. But the Slayer kept whacking the witch's spells away, like a baseball player nailing ball after ball, forcing the witch to dodge his own incantations as they blew up in his face.

Pain. Catherine let out a choking yelp. The knife had gouged her side. Shallowly—nothing vital had been hit. Not a silver blade, either, or she would have been forced out of the Change. Her fault. She hadn't been paying attention.

Catherine backed away and swiped at the female Slayer's unprotected stomach. The woman turned away, and Catherine's claws hooked into the leather jacket instead as it swung with the woman's movements. She yanked on her paw, and yowled.
Stuck
.

“
Let go!” the Slayer shouted, slicing at Catherine's paw fiercely enough to make the tiger yowl again in pain. The battle continued, with Catherine trying to free herself and parry her attacker at the same time. Her face, neck, and paw were getting slashed pretty badly—at one point, the Slayer came close to gouging out an eye.

Eventually, it was going to occur to the female to go for the man's gun. She needed to get free. They were standing too close at the moment for her to put any real momentum behind her attacks with the knife, but a gunshot at this distance would be lethal.

Catherine leaned forward, putting more weight on the human. She felt the flesh yield easily to her great mass, felt bones and muscles strain and shift. She weighed roughly one hundred and forty pounds in this form, more than most people could bench press. The woman fell backwards, just as Catherine intended, throwing out her arms to break her fall against the blacktop. It looked like it hurt. Catherine imagined it probably did.

Her paw came free with a loud rip. A swatch of leather was still attached to her claws. Groaning, the Slayer pushed herself up again as Catherine swiped her paw against the tarmac, trying to dislodge the leather scrap.

The Slayer looked down at her stomach, where the leather was torn away to reveal a tight red shirt, and she met the tiger's eyes angrily. “Oh, you fucking bitch. I could just
kill
you. This jacket cost two hundred dollars!”

It had also saved her from being eviscerated.

The Slayer produced another knife and ran at her. Catherine had to give her some credit—it took  guts to charge a fully grown Bengal tiger. Guts that were soon going to be strewn over the deserted street like Christmas decorations.

But to her surprise, she found herself being forced back. The Slayer was clearly right-handed, but adept with both. Catherine struck again and the woman blocked the attack, crossing both knives with a grating sound that shed sparks, catching Catherine's paw between them. Fur singed, and she felt the sting of the blades as they gouged her flesh.

Catherine withdrew, hastily, as the Slayer slashed upwards. Had the two blades actually connected, the blow would have done serious damage. Severed nerves and tendons. Maybe even severed her paw. Bits of her fur had fallen to the ground in orange and black tufts from a series of close-calls, only to be carried off by the wind.

“
You are so dead,” the Slayer was saying. “I'm going to buy two jackets with the money I get from bringing you in. No—three jackets. Maybe even a fur coat or two,” she added, giving Catherine a once-over with a sneer.

Catherine gritted her teeth. This was bad. She was exhausted and losing blood. Not a lot, but enough to concern her. If the Slayer kept scoring her hide like this she was going to have to revert to another form—but she'd have to switch back to her human form in the interim, and that would leave her vulnerable—and naked.

Another slash of the blades, at her face this time, and an inch of whisker was lopped off. Catherine hissed. She gnashed at the air, catching the Slayer's wrist between her jaws. The Slayer's eyes opened wide in surprise and Catherine's did, as well. That move had been more the tiger's than her own—the tiger had had enough of this pesky hairless creature with the two sharp claws and the loud, nasal voice.

The knife fell from the woman's fingers and hit the road with a clang. Catherine met her eyes. Perhaps the Slayer saw something inside the tiger's amber gaze that scared her—a lack of the humanity that had been in there before—because she dropped the other dagger. “Don't,” she said, “oh, God, don't. Don't do it, please. Don't take my hand.”

It was tempting. She did taste delicious. Catherine ran her tongue over the fingers and the woman began to sob loudly.
What are you doing?
What the fuck are you doing?

She released the woman with a snort, and gathered up the daggers in her teeth. She couldn't allow herself to lose control like that. Not again. Not after what happened before. She leaned up to drop the blades into the open window of her car.

Something whizzed by her, so close that the tufts of hair around her cheeks rustled in the wind.
What was that?
And then pain scalded her from all directions, and she cried out, and when she did, it was human. The fucking Slayer had a filigreed lasso.

“
I should have bitten off your fucking hand after all, you coward,” Catherine said.

That made the blood rush from the Slayer's face. Then she collected herself and pulled the chain tighter, making the silver links dig punishingly into Catherine's arms and ribs.

“The poster said dead or alive,” the Slayer said. “Dealer's choice.”

Catherine struggled, but the bonds held tight. She sucked in a breath when the Slayer reached into the open car and produced what looked like a harpoon. It had a barbed silver tip. “Let's see how many organs you can lose before you die,” she said grimly.