Free Black Beast by Nenia Campbell

going to kill him
, she shot back to Predator, who made her skin vibrate with the force of her displeasure.
     
    Mistake.
     
    Catherine shook off Predator's annoyance and began to pull back the witch's cowl. He didn't like that; he exploded into motion beneath her, a cannon of pent-up energy and desperation.
He's stronger than I thought.
     
    Moving faster, Catherine peeled back the fabric from his head, revealing a shock of red hair.
Very distinctive. No wonder he tried to cover it up.
His face, fully bared to her inspection, surprised her a little. She had expected a witch from a dark fairytale, whose outside was as twisted and thorny as his crooked and capricious soul.
     
    But fairytales were, at best, dirty mirrors whose warped and pitted surfaces reflected a highly distorted view of the truth, quite different from reality.
     
    He was inhumanly, breathtakingly beautiful. A cold beauty, cloaked in cruelty. Cheekbones as sharp as the cutting edge of his knife. Hair like a bank of glowing embers. A harsh face softened only by his surprisingly full mouth and dark, velvety eyelashes as long as a giraffe's. And those
eyes—
     
    He cut them at her, his features distorted by hatred. As if he knew exactly what she was thinking—about his looks—about him—and didn't like it a bit.
     
    “Who the fuck are you?”
     
    The moment Catherine asked, she realized it was a stupid question. He couldn't tell her—and even if he could, he wouldn't. That he was here at all was cause enough. The reasons behind it were inconsequential.
     
    Catherine slid off him and ran, knowing that the moment he spit out the knife he was going to hex her, and that she did not want to be anywhere near him when that happened. Cuffing him to the tree had bought her some time, but not as much as she would have liked. Silver did not incapacitate witches the way it did her kind. Witches were only susceptible to iron.
     
    But having iron in her possession would be taken as an act of hostility.
Something else to be stacked against
me, she thought sourly. No exceptions made for self-defense.
     
    She had been running for close to five minutes when the ground beneath her feet turned frictionless. Her sneakers slipped and slid over the wet, icy ground. She hit the ice-glazed dirt like a felled sapling, all the air squeezed right out of her lungs.
     
    He'd managed to free himself. More quickly than she'd guessed, too. And he was mad.
     
    Catherine pushed to her feet and took off again. Her ankle seared like fire every time it hit the ground, making her eyes water and her stomach clench. It was healing already, though. Death, on the other hand—well, that was the one thing she couldn't recover from.
     
    I'm not going to die.
     
    The trees in front of her exploded into a raging holocaust, forming a solid wall of heat. Catherine froze, panting lightly. The witch wanted her to turn back. She had learned his tricks, and this time she was not fooled. If he was trying to herd her, to redirect her, this must be the right way.
     
    But there's only one way to find out.
     
    Her kind hated fire. She covered her face with her hands and ducked beneath the flaming branches. She heard them collapse behind her. Felt the heat, as thick as damask curtains, as she pushed through to the rush of cold air on the other side.
     
    The beasts inside her screamed. She smelled magic and knew.
He isn't finished.
     
    He pelted her with everything he had. Icy hillsides. Circles of fire. Torrential gales. She counted the elements. One, two—her breath caught—three. A Triad.
     
    No ordinary witch, then. He might have been telling the truth about being on the Council.
But he might not. He might just be a powerful Renegade.
     
    Night was falling, spreading as quickly as the roiling clouds above. Her clothes were tattered by this point, and soaked through, providing little warmth. Bits of ash were clinging to her hair and eyelashes like dirty snow, and when she cleaned out her ears