God's Eye (12 page)

For the remainder of the meal, she didn’t move. They spoke of the searches they would have to do. How he would gain access to the files he needed for his hunt. Unfortunately, she offered nothing that would make them the lovers they looked to be. He almost wished Zachary would come in and see them–although that would likely lead to another silent pissing match like the one they’d had in the hall the other day.

On the walk back he lost his focus on Katharine. Finally, she wasn’t touching him, wasn’t launching thoughts at him, thoughts that turned him inside out. Which was the root of all his problems. He’d been accused of liking human form too much. It was true, he did. There wasn’t much he could do about it, though he did try. But it didn’t stop the craving.

He’d almost been turned out after his last assignment. That final conversation still lingered in his thoughts, reminding him that it wasn’t his involvement that got in the way; it was his liking of it that did. The reprimand had been harsh:
It is your ambivalence that is the problem. You are neither here nor there. And you are just as likely to find human form and walk away as to stay and continue your work. I cannot depend on you, cannot predict you, and therefore cannot trust you. For as much as he pains me, I’d rather have Zachary. At least I know where he stands.

Though it was only words, the slap still stung, as it had been intended to. The knife twisted inside him; Zachary, who was clearly at odds with all of them, was preferred to Allistair because you knew what you would get. Perhaps it hurt more because he knew it to be a true assessment.

Allistair had sucked in air and clenched his teeth, making the effort to not retaliate. His rash responses and tendency to react rather than merely worship constantly irritated his betters. Even if he never managed to get the words out, the other still knew the thoughts were there. Allistair fought hard for control.

Then you do not need me.
He had pushed the words calmly past his mouth.

Of course not.

Though it was the response he had wanted, he’d had to fight down the bitterness.
And therefore, I am not assigned. So if I bring you one, then you will give me another chance.

Silence.

Allistair had posed the issue. Whether it would be allowed remained to be seen. Whether Allistair would follow dictates also remained to be seen. That was a total crapshoot. Both of them knew it.

I suppose.

Knowing that was as good an answer as he was likely to get, Allistair had set to dissolve himself out of the situation. But he was beaten to it. Without even a shimmer of air, the master was gone. Allistair had been left alone with only the thought of leaving still dancing in his head.

There was really no decision to make. If he simply brought another into the fold it would mean next to nothing. The lures and traps were already out there and humans fell–willingly–into them. They tended to stay within the fold and even set out to display the riches of their association, going so far as to recruit others. No, there was no glory in capturing what threw itself into the boat.

He needed to get one already devoted to the other side. Or pull one out of the opposing trap. That was where he could earn his stripes. How he would save himself. Why he desperately needed Katharine. And why he needed to remember it was all just a game. Katharine could be nothing more than a pawn to him. No matter how he craved her or how he burned for her. For he would surely burn if he failed.

Katharine had gone to sleep feeling good. Zachary hadn’t come over, but somehow she wasn’t as concerned about that as she would have expected.

Normally, when she was involved with a man, she worried. Her thoughts would turn negative before she stopped them. Why hadn’t he called? He was just next-door! If he was busy, was it with another woman? Why didn’t he want to see her? Didn’t he feel what she did?

With Zachary, it wasn’t that she didn’t care. Quite the contrary; she simply believed him. He said he wanted to spend the evening with her but had to catch up on work since he’d been missing so much time lately. Of course he couldn’t work with her around–they’d end up having sex and he wouldn’t get anything done. Though she had blushed when he’d said it so bluntly, she’d known he was right.

So she had watched some TV and had an overly casual night like she hadn’t had in a while. She pulled a Tupperware from the freezer and heated one of her frozen meals, noting that her supply wasn’t dwindling as fast as usual. She had sat around in her cotton pants with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, even though she knew it made her look like a teenager and all she’d ever really wanted was to be taken seriously. But suddenly none of that had mattered. Zachary was just next-door and he’d be back tomorrow–he’d said so. She had Allistair on her side at work and that was great. She held out hope that he would greet her in the morning by saying that he’d found the real crook. He would give her an unfamiliar name, and Mary Wayne would go down as a suspect who didn’t pan out.

Katharine had smiled as she’d eaten ice cream straight out of the carton, for once not afraid that her mother was frowning down on her from above, concerned even in heaven about her daughter’s poor manners. She had crawled into bed content as a ladybug on a rose and had fallen into a deep and soothing sleep of the kind she’d been lacking for a while now.

But sometime in the night, she sat straight up, screaming into the dark. Only no sound emerged from her throat. It couldn’t. Her mouth and her vocal cords couldn’t be made to work. The black was like a thick blanket wrapped around her and smothering her. As though her eyes were closed in the dead of dark, nothing helped push back the darkness. She blinked several times, noting the movement and finding no reassurance that even though her eyes were open, she could make out absolutely nothing. There was no edge of light at the seam of the window and the shade. No glow from the bathroom, where a tiny nightlight usually gave her a goal in the dark.

Growing more terrified as she discovered her absolute inability to see, Katharine tried again to scream, and again nothing came. She gave no care to waking her neighbors. She wanted them to come running, to help. So she worked her throat, having no concern for anything other than finding a response, a sensation. In a desperate bid for any kind of sensory information, her hands groped for the bedcovers beside her. But she found nothing–no covers over her legs, no sheets in her grip, no bed beneath her. As her lungs sucked in air, she heard the faint noise of her muscles moving oxygen into her system.

There was only a moment’s relief in the knowledge that she had heard her own breath, that she was somewhere and she was alive. As soon as she relaxed, even as slightly as she did, she sensed it. There was something in the room with her. To her right. Against her will, her head turned, as if she might see it, as though it were safer to face it, unseeing, but head on.

She knew with certainty that it wasn’t human. And, with the same clarity that came from somewhere she had never acknowledged, she knew that it could strike faster than she could think and more harshly than she could begin to imagine.

It breathed beside her, not moving air at all, but waiting, watching her. In her blindness, Katharine could sense its curiosity at her fear. She turned her head, knowing she would be looking right into its eyes were she able to see. Her heart, too terrified to speed up, maintained a slow steady rhythm that she knew the beast could hear from where it sat. The creature was unbelievably large and yet would still be stunningly swift. She perceived this with a new sense from somewhere deep in her, someplace far more elemental than she would have ever believed she possessed. The beast was fatal when it chose to be, and it had killed before, without remorse.

Still, Katharine longed to see her captor. Even knowing it wasn’t human, her brain believed that if she could only see, she could stand a chance. Part of her mind nagged her, reminding her that she didn’t stand the slightest chance at all–sight or not.

So she sat and breathed and waited.

Slowly, as eons passed, she felt, even if she couldn’t see them, the changes that took place a hair’s breadth beyond the reach of her fingertips. The beast’s breathing became oxygen-based, its movement shifted air, it began to take shape and take up space. So she blinked, again and again, until finally cracks of blue came to her in a square to her left. A yellowish rectangle formed in the distance. Her brain worked, frantically testing and discarding ideas until she recognized the blue outline of the window shade, leaking light from the marina beyond. The yellow was the glow in her bathroom from the partially open door.

Grasping in abject fear, she found her hands were wound into her blankets in a death grip. She hadn’t moved her hands at all; the covers must have been held tightly all along. But she only just now felt them. Slowly she breathed the room into focus. Corners and outlines formed as she watched, as though the mantle of darkness over her had thinned enough to see through and then, finally, had disappeared.

Katharine looked around the room, afraid of the last turn of her head, but she did it anyway. As she looked back to the right, back to where the beast lay waiting, she finally saw him. What must’ve been over two hundred pounds of lean muscle flowed under thick black fur. The mouth parted for the movement of air, stark white teeth gleaming in the faint light. Lean legs sat poised, deceptively looking almost relaxed, but ready to spring at the slightest signal. Green eyes, so deep they bordered on black, looked directly into hers. Watching her. Waiting.

Katharine didn’t move–or at least she tried not to. But she was human, solid, of the land in a way she had never comprehended until she faced this beast that wasn’t. It had changed while she couldn’t see. It hadn’t wanted her to know anything of what it really was, and this wolf that sat before her was more like a projection than a being. It wasn’t real; this was only the image
it
wished her to see. But only minutes before, it had sat a breath beyond her in its true form. Whatever that was. Katharine still didn’t know. She fought with herself over whether she did want to know. And whether she was better off if she didn’t.

She was more than certain it could hear her heartbeat, and maybe her thoughts.

Nothing in the steady stare gave away anything she could use. Knowing nothing else to do, Katharine stared back. She held herself motionless, her breathing so shallow that she verged on passing out. Still she didn’t give away more than a blink. Still, the creature watched her with knowing eyes and Katharine waited, wondering when she would die, but not how.

The teeth revealed the source of her death. She’d seen wolves before, but this was more like a hell hound. The teeth were whiter than any feral animal’s could possibly be. They were longer than anything the Nature Channel had ever showed. And what little she remembered of biology told her that all this creature’s long, sharpened teeth, not just the canines, were for tearing flesh. Its coat was a shade of ink that caught no light. What little there was in the room should have gleamed off the thick fur; instead, light disappeared into the animal, never to return.

But it was the eyes that were most unnerving. The green eyes were the only thing that reflected light, and they did it with an eerie glow. They held an intelligence far beyond her own.

Then, she must have done something–breathed too loudly, moved slightly, something–because the beast took a step toward her.

An untamed cry tore through the room as the beast’s jaws widened. Only the sensation she felt in her throat told her the sound was her own. With the noise, the spell was broken. Katharine was suddenly terrified, and her body broke free of her control. The whimpering began in earnest, pleading noises leaking from her lungs into the preternaturally still air. Her hands twisted at the covers and her feet scrambled for some kind of purchase that would propel her away from the beast.

Still it approached. One thickly padded paw after another, each placed meticulously on the carpet, it came toward her. She slammed into the wall behind her, she was struggling so hard to get away. But she had come to the edge of her space. Unlike this creature, she was defined by her physical world–and therefore trapped by it.

In tracers and rushes of heat, she felt its breath slide across her. At last she gave in, gave up, and squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to witness her own demise, not wanting to participate in it at all. The teeth were near her skin, she could feel the breath so close, in and out, in and out against her cheek. Her body trembled, her jaw quaking, and she didn’t fight it. Couldn’t.

Katharine.

It came to her–her own name on a sweet wind from somewhere beyond her terror. She wanted to open her eyes and search for the source of the sound. But she wasn’t sure it was a true sound, only that she had registered it. Someone had whispered to her, her own name, in a dulcet silence. But the sound had come from far away and the beast was close. Too close to ever find out who had called to her.