Crowned by Fire Read Online Free

brandished the harpoon at him, instead.
    “It will have no effect on me,” said the witch, in that same dead voice.
    Catherine saw the woman's eyes go to her fallen companion. He was still alive, stirring now, barely conscious. He had been burned badly, his face a red mess of broiled skin and raw, oozing blisters. His hand was the worst: a blackened stump, the fingers charred clean off, flaking into ash where live nerve endings and muscle once thrived.
    His gun had melted, spattered with a silver liquid that was hissing ominously. There was more of it at the Slayer's feet, hardening even as she watched, etching itself into the dirt. It wasn't just silver liquid, she realized. It was liquid silver .
    “ Do you know what the melting point of silver is?” he asked, almost pleasantly.
    The Slayer looked at Catherine, who shrugged, and then back at the witch.
    “It's roughly one thousand, seven-hundred and sixty-three degrees Fahrenheit. If you tried to touch it, your hand would be vaporized. Few of my kind are able to command that level of energy. But I can.”
    “ You're bluffing.”
    The witch laughed, and goosebumps rippled down Catherine's arms, because his laugh didn't sound sane. And then—his aura—it exploded. Blue flame arced up the spear causing the metal to drip downwards in ropy strands that looked like glass.
    The Slayer screamed and dropped the harpoon as fire surged towards her face, causing first-degree burns just from the sheer heat of the air. Whatever the fire touched, it liquidated, and the silver spread out in sizzling, glittering fingers, making the dirt bubble and burst. Catherine backed away from it with a sob, all the hairs on her body standing up on edge.
    I had no idea…no idea that he was that powerful .
    “ Your friend thought so, too. And now he is short one hand because of it.” He bared his teeth. “The savage might not have taken your hand, but I will. And I might force you to eat it instead, to feel it burning you alive from the inside out. What do you think of that, you putrescent scum?”
    The Slayer retched. The hand in question was red as her face—it, too, had been seared by the heat all the same. She would need to visit a hospital, and soon. If not for her own sake, then for the male's, whose condition was beginning to look alarming.
    “What are you?” the woman whispered, crossing herself.
    The witch's smile disappeared. Flames whipped around him. “Annoyed. Would you like to see what happens when I am angry? You're about to.”
    She uttered a scared cry and started dragging her companion towards the car.
    And Catherine felt her wits begin to leave her as this new threat walked towards her.
     
    The shifter tensed as he came near. Possibly because she wasn't wearing any clothes, or because he had chosen to approach from her left only to circle around behind her, out of sight. Or , he thought, remembering the small sob that had escaped her when he melted the spear, because she finally sees me for the threat that I am.
    Finn knew exactly what he was doing. He had hunted down her kind for years. He knew how to intimidate as well as any of their alpha males, how to threaten, how to induce capitulation. She was trembling visibly, and when he ran his knuckles down her spine she flinched, struggling to sit up. “What are you doing?”
    “Untying you.”
    The silver chain had knotted up and caught. The Slayer had pulled it very tight; he hooked a finger around the chain, eliciting a cry of pain. It was digging into the shifter's skin. His nails were too blunt to pick apart the knot, so he grabbed the knife from his belt and started sawing through the section he'd selected.
    An errant breeze kept blowing her hair into his face, or into the path of his hands. He moved it back over her shoulder each time, letting his fingers drag over her skin, raising a path of goosebumps. But why? He wondered. From fear…or lust?
    “ Aren't you done yet?” she snapped.
    He leaned down, so his