In the Arms of the Beast

by K. A. Merikan

  Laurent took a deep breath and looked up, but stayed in Beast’s embrace. “Maybe we should wait instead of telling Mr. Magpie what happened last night right away? Just in case he does have unsavory intentions. And he’s poorly right now, anyway.”

  Beast nodded. “Okay, we’ll see if we can find another solution to this mess first. I’ll inform the others.”

  “Elliot told me there is a very old ghost who wishes to speak to us, and he believes the apparition speaks French. Maybe this man could shed a new light on our troubles. Would you go with me to see him?”

  It was like a breath of fresh air. Not angry words or accusations. Laurent offered a potential solution.

  Beast pulled Laurent into a tighter hug. “I would like that very much.”

  Chapter 8 - Beast

  It was difficult to stay hidden, even in a house as big as theirs. Even with so much terrain around it. As the club president, Beast needed to always stay alert, always be available for his men to contact, but at times the weight of responsibility became too much to bear.

  Sitting on a fallen tree close to the clubhouse yet obscured by bushes blooming with pretty white flowers, he could breathe freely at last. There was no one here to seek his council, no one to present him with expectations he needed to meet. It was him, his thoughts, and new duties he was still coming to terms with.

  He scrolled through a page of baby products on his phone. Laurent would surely insist on quality plastic that could be ‘passed on to next generations’, but Beast always thought kids didn’t need all that much to play with when they were little. All those expensive clothes and toys? To tickle the vanity of the parents.

  He sighed.

  Parents.

  He was to be a parent. How did it come to this? He loved Laurent and wanted to offer him everything there was to give to a partner, but this? This decision had been reckless, and now there was no way to take it back. When getting together with a man barely twenty years old, he hadn’t imagined the topic of children to come up. Not so soon at least. Then again, he hadn’t imagined he’d get married after just months either, so maybe Laurent had the power of talking him into anything.

  Even in his hideout, he wouldn’t be allowed the peace he so desperately needed. Knight waved at him, approaching through the grass with long steps. He smiled as if the world wasn’t in apocalyptic peril, and losing the Pigeon Heart had been just a tiny setback.

  “Hey there, Daddy! I’ve been looking all over for you. Should’ve known you’d be in your old spot. Have you ever noticed that you move with the seasons? It’s here in spring, then by the lake in the summer, in autumn, it’s usually the back of the garage, and then in winter, you tend to roam around the forest, because I’m guessing sitting in the snow might end up with your balls freezing.”

  Beast rubbed his eyes with his thumbs. Seemed that Knight knew him better than he knew himself, because he was, of course, right, while Beast hadn’t thought about his hermitage of choice all that much. “So you know I wanted to be alone, and you still came here,” he said, somewhat dryly.

  Knight let out a soft exhale. “We were supposed to have a chat with the ghost, remember?”

  Beast scowled. He did remember. It had been a few hours back, before he’d been forced to deal with a ton of real-life bullshit related to the money laundering. “Right.”

  Knight gestured for him to get up, but a sneaky smile was already stretching his mouth. “I know what’s going on! You’re getting cold feet, Daddy.”

  Cold sweat was an immediate presence on Beast’s back, and he rose, wiping bark fragments from his jeans. “Just tell me where they are.”

  “Oh, come on, you must want to talk about it. I know I do.” Knight pulled a hood over his head, looking as if he was a kid going on a ghost hunting adventure, not a seasoned criminal about to risk his life talking to a potentially menacing being from the other side.

  “Not really.”

  For a moment, they trudged through the damp grass in silence, but when Knight spoke next, he no longer sounded like his sole purpose was mockery. “Look, you know I practically raised some of my siblings. I’ll help with whatever you guys need, but you have to relax. You’ve been so tense lately I can hear you creak when you move.”

  Beast rubbed his jaw, following Knight down a barely-there path into the woods. The sun shone through the green canopies above and painted a picture that didn’t agree with their reality at all, as if Nature had no idea of the upcoming doom.

  “I don’t want to talk about it because it’s a difficult situation. We’re dealing with Baal now. He should remain our focus,” he said so firmly it left his throat achy.

  “It was Laurent’s idea, wasn’t it?” Knight asked, for once leaving Beast space to think about his answer.

  Beast exhaled. “It was a spontaneous decision. It felt right at the time, and now I... just don’t know.”

  “You haven’t talked about this before? I know it’s silly, cause he’s such a baby sometimes, but Laurent does have a traditional view on many things.” Knight peeked at him, as if he were trying to gouge Beast’s opinion without pressing for answers.

  “What are you trying to say? That he sees me as his wife, who he doesn’t have to ask for an opinion, or something?” Beast snapped, but he knew he’d overdone it when he saw Knight’s scowl.

  “Wow. Okay, is that how you see it? Maybe you two should clear the air real fast, because all I wanted to say is that it might be obvious to him that the two of you should have babies. He actually suggested to me once that there’s no time to waste. You know, since you’re already in your thirties.” The smile was back on his face. Idiot. Of course he found it hilarious.

  “Maybe. And I suppose I’m the idiot, because I could have said I needed time to think about it, but then he looked at me, all disappointed, and I didn’t stand my ground.”

  He wouldn’t have voiced it to anyone, but he occasionally worried what would happen if he refused Laurent too many times. Laurent was a beautiful young man with a multitude of choices. What was there really to keep him at the side of a professional criminal with a burnt face if he couldn’t get what he needed out of a relationship? Affection could only get them so far if what Laurent needed was children.

  Knight shoved his hands into his pockets and they walked is silence for a while. “Do you want kids? I know it’s kinda late to ask that, but what you want should matter too.”

  Beast stopped and raised his arms before letting them drop. “I know that this is such an obvious thing to most people. But I just... don’t know. I can’t say I ever actively thought about wanting them. But now it’s done. There’s a fetus, and it’s developing, and Laurent wants to keep it, so that’s what’s going to happen.”

  Knight sucked in his bottom lip and pushed back his long hair. “Hate to break it to you, but if you want to have Laurent, you will have to be a father to that kid. You need to deci—”

  The thought of not having Laurent in his life was so nauseating Beast shook it right off. Laurent was his purpose, the love he’d been waiting for all his miserable life, and he would stand by him whatever happened. But that didn’t make the whole egg-pregnancy any less weird or stressful. “There’s nothing left to decide anymore. But we’ve been together for less than a year, and we’ll already have another person within this relationship. I feel like I haven’t had enough of him yet.”

  Knight smirked. “Ah… So that’s it. You’re already jealous of his attention. I can see what you’re saying, but the idea is that this kid won’t just be his. You’ll take care of him together. And when you need time off, there’s always uncle Knight.”

  Beast looked at him. “What would you have done in my place?”

  The smile briefly froze on Knight’s lips. “Oh. You know, I’ve always been safe for a reason. And I’m positive Elliot wouldn’t want to share me with anyone, so that’s out of the way.”

  Beast shook his head. “Great. That’s exactly the support I needed.”

>   “I’m no dad-material. I’ve done my share of parenting before I even moved into the clubhouse, but you’ll do great. Look how well you’re handling a teenager.”

  Beast couldn’t have glared at him with more contempt even if he wanted to, but Knight didn’t seem at all bothered and followed the path into a narrow ravine that smelled of damp dirt and the ferns that created a thick carpet on both its sides.

  “Have you already thought about a name?”

  Beast chewed on his lip. He was having a hard time calling the egg a ‘baby’. How was he to make up a name for it? “We’ll see once it hatches.”

  Knight shook his head with a thoughtful look at the clouds. “‘Hatches’. So weird, right? My sister had a baby a few months ago. You know, Lana, and she named him Xavier. What’s up with that? I bet Laurent would want to call your kid something fancy too, like, Rupert, or Colette.”

  Beast scowled. “Jesus Christ. My kid won’t be called a name from a period drama!” He shut his mouth when they exited the ravine and walked into a small clearing where Laurent and Elliot stood facing an old stone well, which was buried low in the tall grass.

  And the egg was there too, of course, hidden in the backpack Laurent now wore every single day. It obscured the patches on Laurent’s back, the ones that proclaimed him as Beast’s ‘property’, and even though he knew it didn’t mean anything, it still felt like a metaphor.

  Despite the frustration bubbling up inside, Beast didn’t wish for Laurent to fall and break the damn thing but was already considering the need of getting a more secure carrier, especially that the freaky egg seemed larger every day.

  “You made it. Finally!” Laurent smiled and walked up to Beast for a kiss that soothed his strained nerves. “We were getting cold out here, so I worried the baby might be freezing too. But I covered it with an extra blanket.”

  Knight pulled Elliot in for a brief kiss, but his gaze soon sought out Laurent’s. “The baby? When are you going to call it something more personal? Let me see it.”

  Laurent got flustered as he took off the backpack. “Well, I like to call him Marcel.”

  Beast just stared. When did that happen?

  Knight smirked at him. The bastard. “Oh, is that so? Classy. Not ‘William’? After all, he was the one who indirectly brought you two together.”

  Elliot pushed at Knight’s chest, but his boyfriend laughed it off. “Seriously? That fucker needs to rot, his name forgotten.”

  Laurent rolled his eyes. “The name is actually that of Fane’s last victim. A poor young man, who did not get to live the life he deserved because of that monster. Naming our son Marcel, will honor him.”

  Beast kicked a small stone hard enough for it to hit the side of the well. “You didn’t really mention this before.”

  Laurent opened the backpack and unraveled the egg from the blanket so that Knight could see it. “Someone had to make a decision, and you were stalling. Calling it ‘the egg’. That’s not a nice way to think of our son. What if he heard you?”

  Beast’s mouth felt stiff when he spoke. “It’s a fetus. It’s not going to understand what we’re saying. And besides, we live in uncertain times. I don’t want to name him when I don’t know how long this whole thing will last, or what its gender’s going to be!”

  When Knight picked up the egg, Laurent wouldn’t stop watching him, as if he expected their friend to drink their kid for breakfast. “Of course it will be a boy. He’s made of you and me. What else would he be?”

  Elliot snorted, running his finger over a ruby-colored pattern on the shell. “Will he be gay then? Since he’s made of you both and all that?”

  Laurent’s face flushed. “Did you notice how fast it’s growing?”

  Beast had to smirk, even though the topic Laurent avoided was so very sensitive, and in a way even painful. “Would that be a problem to you?”

  But Knight wedged himself into the conversation yet again, carefully weighing the egg in his hands. “Growing egg. So freaky. You two have to make everything weird.”

  As if Beast needed that on his plate too. “How about we get on with what we came here for?”

  “Yes, exactly. The egg might by unusual, but it will produce a perfectly normal child, I’m sure of it,” Laurent said, forcing Knight to put it back into the blanket.

  “As in, you want him to be straight?” Elliot added with his usual tact.

  Laurent zipped up the bag with a groan. “Ours is not an easy path to follow, so yes, despise me for it all you want, but I wouldn’t wish it on our son.”

  The uncomfortable silence only added to Beast’s own sense of disillusionment. “Great. Unexpected pregnancy with a gay man who wishes his kid was straight. And we could have just spoken to the goddamn ghost instead.”

  “Of course I will love him either way,” Laurent mumbled, hugging the backpack, but the damage had been done.

  Knight patted Laurent’s head. “Just messing with you. Don’t worry so much. Okay. Ghost time. Elliot, are you set?”

  Elliot looked at the other side of the well, his mouth turning into a scowl. “You think he smelled as badly as he looks?”

  Beast had no reference for what his friends were seeing, but Knight’s barely held-back snort told him all he needed to know before it was verbalized.

  “He’s dressed in dirty leather and fur. And his beard’s so dirty it has those weird knots. You know, he’s like a crazy trapper from a pulpy western.”

  Elliot’s mouth thinned, but he closed his eyes and reached above the well, taking painfully slow breaths. The silence stretched, and it seemed that even the birds and insects in the trees around them held their breath.

  Elliot’s shoulders hunched in the strange silence. His head dipped forward as he raised his hands closer to his face, moving each finger. When he turned, his face no longer was his own either. The features remained the same, of course, but the stern expression and wild gaze were so beyond his usual repertoire Beast stepped closer to Laurent, feeling his heartbeat quicken. They should have left the egg with Jake and told him to guard it in his gargoyle form.

  Laurent frowned when Elliot opened his mouth, his voice deep and raspy, as if it weren’t used very often. “It’s French, but slightly different than the version I know,” he whispered but followed it up with translation. “He says his name is Theodore, and that he’s the first one. The one who started it all, the one who made the first pact with Baal.” He entwined his fingers with Beast and squeezed. “He heard a voice speak to him from a hole in the ground, and that was Baal. He covered the crack in the ground with a stone so he could keep the demon’s power to himself. He’s carved Baal’s sigil on it. After that, he served Baal until his death.”

  Beast watched Elliot’s every move, as did Knight who stood closer, without a hint of smile on his face. The uneasiness of it all got to him too, no matter how beautiful the colors and smells of the forest were. “Ask him what he knows about Baal’s plan.”

  When Laurent spoke French, a wave of tenderness overcame Beast, and no matter how silly it was, he wished to pull Laurent behind him, just so that he didn’t have to face the dangerous man occupying Elliot’s flesh. A cool blue glow appeared in the corner of his eye when Knight pulled off his leather gloves, revealing the sigils. He was ready to intervene if needed, and the ghost took notice, assessing him with a wary stare that looked unfamiliar on Elliot’s usually open features.

  Laurent swallowed. “The trees feed on human darkness, he says. And on the blood provided by Knight. When they bear fruit, their roots will tear the earth apart, opening a physical passage to the Other Side.”

  Knight cleared his throat. “That’s… enigmatic. Is it because he’s French?”

  Beast shook his head, but his gaze was trained on Theodore, who sank lower until he sat on what was left of the well with both hands grasping the inner edge of the circular structure.

  The ghost’s eyes were drawn to the pulsing sigils on Knight’s hands, and an unpleasant smirk twisted
his face as he spoke in a low, somewhat melancholic tone.

  “He says it’s literal. He’s seen the beginning of this ritual in his lifetime,” translated Laurent before suddenly looking at Knight with worry that had Beast’s guts twisting. “He says his wife was like you, but when he realized what the devil wanted, he—”

  Theodore’s next words made Laurent stiffen. He swallowed and hugged the egg. “He killed her and then took his own life, regretful that he ever sought the demon’s aid.”

  Beast took a deep breath as his brain toyed with this new information. “And it’s happening all over again.”

  Theodore’s eyes briefly settled on him, and he nodded, as if he understood Beast’s meaning from the tone of his voice. But then his eyes darted back to the sigils, and one hand dove into the well. It happened so fast Beast only had enough time to pull Laurent behind him when he saw the glint of metal in Theodore’s hand.

  But it wasn’t the egg he wanted.

  With a sharp cry, Theodore charged at Knight.

  Chapter 9 - Laurent

  Within the blink of an eye, Elliot became a raging demon, baring his teeth and swinging the rusty blade at Knight, who retreated, even though he could have taken control of the situation without much effort. A well-placed punch could have subdued the ghost’s fury, but his soul temporarily resided in Elliot, and it was clear as day to Laurent that Knight couldn’t bring himself to hurt him.

  “I will not allow this travesty! My wife did not die so that the devil can flood the world with evil!” Theodore screamed, forcing his raspy voice through Elliot’s throat in his old-timey, heavily accented French. “Shut up when I’m speaking!” he yelled at the well out of nowhere.

  Knight clenched his teeth, taking a long step back when Theodore sent Elliot’s long arm after him in a stabbing motion, remaining hunched over and hissing like a cornered animal.