Touched With Sight (6 page)

And his eyes—his eyes were completely black, and slick, so dark that not even light escaped.

He blinked, giving her a glimpse of crystalline lashes, and grinned.

Catherine took a step back and realized that she hadn't stopped screaming only because of the hoarseness of her throat. She closed her mouth, but the panicked whimper continued to reverberate in the confines of her chest like a growl.

He laughed again, a soft, gentle sound. One of his hands, long-fingered with gnarled black nails, tilted her face up to meet his, and bile stung her throat as she wondered if this thing intended to kiss her. “Such an intriguing creature. I will say this for the old gods. They were aesthetes. Not very practical, but the effect is rather pleasing all the same.”

She slapped his hand away. The thought that this might make him angry didn't even cross Catherine's mind. His touch was so much worse, like death itself.

The Shadow Thane grabbed her by the throat, lifting her up easily. The sleeves of his long black robes rustled with the sudden movement, sliding down to reveal more of that char-streaked white flesh. “You must be destroyed.”

Her head slammed painfully against the wall. Catherine saw stars.

“
But first—you have something of mine. I want it back.”

“
I don't fucking have it.” Her snarl turned into a sob when his nails drew blood.

“
I can't sense it. I know you're lying, but…you've done something to hide it.”

“
I don't know what you're talking about.”

His fingers tightened around my throat. His nails were very sharp, drawing blood where they dug into her flesh. “I can tear you apart, from the inside, out.” His voice was no longer melodic and pleasant. Now it was a hiss that scratched against the inside of her skull like broken glass, and she felt liquid warmth trickling out of her ears, and smelled the hot, coppery tang of blood.

Catherine clawed at his hands, and beads of a black, viscous substance welled up. Where it touched her skin, it burned like fire. Black magic, she thought, with horror. Black magic runs through his veins.
Oh my gods, what is he? What the fuck is he?

“
Make it easy on yourself,” he suggested, waving a sharp finger in front of her face. She swallowed convulsively as he traced the swell of her lower lip, before circling her cheeks, her eyes. “Tell me where the book is, and you will get a quick, and painless, death.”

Outside, she heard a strange cry. High and keening, like the sound of a French horn.

“The dragons come,” he said, an affectionate smile lighting up his horrible face. “Because your blood draws them here. Perhaps…” he looked down at her, arching an eyebrow as he looked at her with those coal-black eyes “…you'd like to see them…up close?”

And then she was falling, falling to the dark water below—

—where the dragons waited to devour her….

Chapter Five

It was a dark night, and cold. Wreaths of mist clasped the hills, and left beads of moisture hanging suspended in the air like fairy lights where they reflected the moon. Finn had expected the Pierces' house to be warded, as many of the Otherkind's were. It wasn't.

Child's play.

He fashioned a key of ice from the vapor in the air, breathing it into solidity with a rush of ice-chilled wind. It was exquisite, as fine as crystal, shaping itself to the interior of the lock perfectly, but he didn't have time to appreciate his work; the key was made out of ice, and would soon melt and lose its shape. Impossible to trace. The basis of the spell's appeal.

Finn shut the door behind him with an inaudible click and leaned against it for a moment. Not a creature stirred, except for his own heart. Shape-shifters were highly territorial and did not take kindly to trespassers. In the past, he'd been forced to hunt down shifter fugitives and bring them in for a bounty. The shape-shifters had always resisted capture.

Always.

The wind he conjured up cushioned his footfalls, allowing him to stalk as silently through the house as any hunter. And tonight, he was the hunter—and she, the quarry.

And the book
, he reminded himself. That's what he was here for. The book. She couldn't be trusted to guard the tome. Not when there were so many others seeking it out, as well.

If she was not a practitioner of black magic, or affiliated with the Slayers, Finn wasn't sure why it had chosen her to be its keeper—because it
had
chosen, there was no question of that—but whatever the reason, he doubted its veracity. No good could come of her keeping it.

He glanced around surreptitiously. The furnishings were worn, but of passable quality. A vase of fresh flowers stood on an end table in the foyer. He could smell their cloying sweetness from where he stood and could only imagine its potency for the shifters. Perhaps it was to mask the odor of exhaust from the nearby roads. Or to deaden the senses entirely.

There were portraits on the walls. A wedding picture. The two children, in various phases of childhood and adolescence. An ordinary dwelling to any untrained eye. They were taking their role of Glamor seriously. What a pity their daughter stood to compromise everything they'd attained.

He walked up the stairs, still carried by the air. For a human, the old boards would have creaked. Part of the charm of these old houses was the additional benefit of their creakiness providing a first line of defense against intruders. Magic was the ace in the hole.

Finn found himself in a long hallway, lined with more portraits. The children were older here, the girl recognizable as the woman she now was with her cat-like stare and her gypsy locks. The boy, with his fair hair and blue eyes, was her opposite. Finn wondered if the mother had strayed in her youth, whether the older child was the product of an illicit liaison with a foolish witch.

It might be worth looking into.

A sudden burst of loud snoring gave him an unpleasant start. Scowling, he peered into the doorway from where the sound was coming from—her parents, as it turned out. The boy's room was next, redolent of unwashed clothing and sweat, and something else, which made Finn wonder, with disgust, whether the child had taken to marking his territory. Disgusting creatures.

The last bedroom, then, must be hers.

Soundlessly, he opened the door and entered her room. It was sparsely decorated, with bare white walls and furniture that appeared to have been handpicked by her parents—it matched the haphazard décor downstairs, as if everything had been lifted from a consignment store.

Clothing was scattered around the room. The desk was piled high with jewelry, clothes, and papers. And large, precariously stacked towers of books. She did have a number of books, which surprised him. She had led him to believe that she was a simpleton, and a fool.

There was only one book in particular that interested him, though.

His eyes narrowed. Where had she hidden it? Gods, her room was a mess. That was only to be expected. She wouldn't want to risk leaving the book out in plain sight. Perhaps this was all a clever ruse to thwart him. In which case, he could very well be here all night.

And then he caught a glimpse of that familiar aura. The glimmering black particles were shifting listlessly around her book-bag. She hadn't hidden it at all. Just crammed it into her school bag, where any Slayer could—and
would
—have found it.

Foolish savage. He wanted to strangle her.

She made a low sound that caused the hairs on his arms to stand on end. He reached for the hilt of his sword, and then relaxed when he realized that she was still asleep.

The sheets were tangled around her legs, and rustled as she shifted to her side. She was wearing boxer shorts and a threadbare tank top. One of the straps had slid down her shoulder in a way that seemed deliberately coy. The sleeveless garment drew attention to the muscles in her arms, and the fullness of her breasts, where they squashed against the mattress. Her legs were also quite defined, and what he could see of her midriff looked flat and toned.

No wonder she had escaped him in the woods.

Even with the silver, she had bested him—and faster than he'd believed humanly possible.

But the little bitch isn't human.

His eyes had adjusted to the point where he could make out every curve and contour of her body through the cotton—the ridges of her abdomen, the swell of her hips, the indents her erect nipples made in the fabric—and he was finding it hard to look away from the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. There was something perversely satisfying about this. Watching her sleep.

She was tense, as if she could sense his presence even while unconscious and it left her with the distinct impulse to run. But she couldn't run from him now. Not with the barrier of consciousness standing solidly between them. Shape-shifters didn't like being made to feel vulnerable—and few things left one more prone than slumber.

Her mouth drew back into a grimace, lips parted to reveal teeth only a little sharper than the human norm. A silent hiss. Finn stepped closer, not heeding the implicit warning. When he was close enough to touch, he ran his thumb down her throat and felt her pulse kiss his skin. Her skin was damp with sweat and a few strands of her hair stuck to his hand.

He wondered who the witch in her family line was, whether it was someone he knew.

That's why her eyes sear and burn
, he thought.
She has witch eyes
.

His hand encircled her throat.

Black beast.

Reviled creature. Creature of legend.

I could kill her.

For that, he would receive a commendation. Especially if he brought the body back for study. But the thought of her, lifeless, as some laboratory specimen, made him indignant. His eyes fell to her lips. The silver handcuffs weighed heavily at his side.

I could
take
her.

The thought came to him, unbidden, and with such intense abruptness that it felt for a moment as if it could not possibly be his own. Finn found himself standing over her, as if he had been propelled, standing close enough now that he could almost taste her lips on his tongue. He might have done it, too, if he hadn't heard a soft hiss, and remembered the dream—the dream in which he had fucked the girl, and she had turned into that creature—and her body had morphed into a swarm of writhing shadows that permeated his body as if he were something they could devour. Finn reclaimed his sanity in that instant, but his fingers were still wrapped around her throat.

And her eyes—they snapped open upon that impulsive bit of contact. He heard her intake of breath as she was jolted awake, instantly. Her eyes widened as she stared at him, incredulous, horrified. Not just that, he thought. There was something else there, which he couldn't put a name to, but that resonated with something dark and twisted that lay buried deep inside him.

“
You—”
she said, or he thought he heard her say.

It was hard to tell, because an instant later he was gasping from the pain lancing his spine as he collided with something cruelly hard. It was the wall; she had kicked him all the way across the room. A second throbbing, between his legs, made him retch. “Fuck,” he said hoarsely.

Over the throbbing in his cock, he was dimly aware of her saying, “What the
fuck
are you doing here, witch?”

He cut his eyes towards her. She was on the bed, crouching, with her hands curled over in a way that reminded him a bit of a hulking ape. She hadn't Changed over, though—not yet.
Because she's afraid?
Perhaps the looming threat of the Council's intervention kept her in check.

Quietly, Finn performed the curing spell that would ease the splinters of pain in his groin. She had grazed him there so quickly, he hadn't even noticed at first, although the end result was plenty disarming. Water magic was healing, and the spell did the trick quickly, to the point that he was almost as good as new. He let his aura flare in warning as he straightened.

“I think you know why.”

He brandished the book at her, and was gratified to see her flinch.

She was out of bed in an instant, her feet gliding soundlessly across the floor as she hit the wooden boards in a silent spring. Her movements were too choreographed to be human, more like a series of rapidly shuffled stills than actual movement. In seconds she was scarcely two feet away.

“
You were watching me sleep.”

“
Considering where best to plant my knife,” he said, pleased when she recoiled again.

“
I know what you were considering,” she snarled, and Finn found himself on the defensive once more, wondering how much of his indecision she had been conscious enough to process.

“
Typical shifter,” he said, “turning everything into filth and depravity.”

“
You're the one in my bedroom,” she growled, with emphasis on the possessive pronoun.

She had a point. Finn looked at the book, and decided to change the subject. “How fortunate then that I was the first. You made it so easy. What could you be thinking, leaving this out where anyone could simply walk in…and take it?”

“Give it back.”

“
You're in no position to make demands of me.”

“
Some might call it self-defense.” The deep, guttural voice belied her small frame.

“
That sounds like a threat.”

She took a step towards him, swaying a little as if drunk. Her eyes, however, remained unclouded, and were as sharp and intent as the first rays of dawn breaking upon a polished blade.

“And if it is?”

His cock began to throb again, but not in pain this time. She might be base—but she was also attractive, and so untouchable.

He let the book fall to the floor with a low, hollow thud that made her jump.

This is a nightmare.

The thought calmed her nerves at first, which were thoroughly rattled from seeing her pursuer leaning against her wardrobe. In her bedroom. Looking as if he belonged there. Predator railed against that. The witch had no right to be here. None.

She wanted to believe that this was a nightmare, but to let herself be lulled by that belief would be fatal. Because after nights of hunting with the fire and ice in her dreams, he had returned in the flesh.
And this time, the bastard isn't going to give me the chance to perish twice.

And then he had dropped the book.

Leaving his hands free.

It was a threat even a human could understand.

The witch moved quickly for his kind but Catherine was faster. She slammed her foot into his side. The flash of pain that lit up his face made her bare her teeth with savage pleasure.

“
Like that, witch?”

The flare of his aura was the only warning she got. Suddenly, she was thrashing, and clawing, all to no avail. Ozone burned the air and seared her nostrils. The witch had surrounded himself with an invisible, impenetrable bubble wrought of magic and air and she was—shit, she was stuck.

“Fuck.” She yanked her arms. Stuck fast. They wouldn't budge.

The witch reached out easily, tugging her towards him. Catherine recoiled instinctively, digging her heels into the carpet. Her muscles strained and she felt her body weight shift, but it was as if she had done nothing at all.

He pulled her inside with him, and the magic tickled her skin unpleasantly, raising the small hairs as if  she'd stepped into a field of static electricity. Here, in this small enclosed space, his aura was overpowering. She could scarcely breathe, the stench of ozone was suffocating.

“
Let go of me,” she said.

He pressed a cool finger against her lips.

“Enough. You wouldn't want to wake your brother, would you?”

Catherine froze. In spite of herself, she hazarded a glance at the door.