In the Arms of the Beast

by K. A. Merikan

  Knight stood stiffly as if his muscles were calcifying. His face was a mask so tense each word he formed looked painful. “She was my sister. She didn’t know what she was up against.”

  Beast shook his head and grabbed at his hair. What were they to do? Now that Lana was dead, Baal would get someone else to do his bidding in a never-ending circle of betrayal and death.

  Nick appeared as if out of nowhere, rushing to the still body with eyes wide as saucers. “Lana? Who did this?”

  Nobody said a thing, but Nick must have spotted the gun in Joker’s hand, because he took two wheezing breaths and tried to land a punch. Joker pulled back and swung the firearm against Nick’s head, knocking him into the dirt.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Prospect!” Joker yelled, licking his lips and surely tasting Lana’s blood.

  Knight moved, as if the altercation were his cue. With a scream that came all the way from his broken heart, he threw himself at Joker, going for the gun. Joker grabbed Knight’s arm with a snarl, and they wrestled like a bear and a dragon in the white smoke.

  A flash of blue light made Beast squeeze his eyes shut, but when he looked at Joker again, the glow was radiating out of his eyes and mouth, as if there was an illuminated icicle buried inside him.

  Time stood still.

  “No!” Laurent yelled, but the moment Beast saw him run toward Knight and reach for the back of Knight’s vest, all of Beast’s brain power focused on Laurent, and he pulled him back with so much force he picked him up off the ground.

  Knight’s hair floated in the smoky air, but he stood firm like a statue with his fingers buried in the flesh of Joker’s neck. Joker choked, went pale, and grabbed Knight’s wrist, pushing at him with the other, but he had no chance.

  Knight squeezed the neck, squashing his throat as if it were made of paper, and shoved his elbow at Joker’s chest.

  There was no blood this time, but they all saw it. The sigils on Knight’s hands came to life, burning away skin with their blue fire. In that moment, Knight didn’t even appear like himself. A monster had lain dormant inside him, and now was its time to crawl to the surface, turning his host’s eyes into beacons of otherworldly light.

  When Joker opened his mouth wide, struggling for breath, Knight pushed his hand down his throat, all the way to the knuckles. It took only a moment, but when he jerked his arm back his hand was no longer empty. There was a little ball at the center of his fist, pulsing with frantic light until he crushed it with his fingers.

  Joker dropped dead into the puddle of Lana’s blood.

  “What have you done?” Laurent cried, writhing against Beast’s chest like an eel about to strike. “This is no way forward!”

  “This was the only way forward,” Knight growled, turning to them with his fists still clenched and glowing. His gaze met Beast’s in a silent challenge, waiting for his president’s verdict.

  Beast put Laurent down, but as soon as his husband was free, a punch to the breastbone briefly robbed Beast of breath.

  “We could have stopped it!” Laurent yelled, squeezing his hands into fists.

  “What if it was your mother?” Knight asked Beast, but kicked Nick who tried to kneel next to Lana. “Don’t touch her! Fuck off!”

  Nick let out a childish sob, and sat back in the dirt a few steps away from the bodies.

  “Knight? Are you okay? What’s going on? I heard shots,” Elliot cried from somewhere in the thick smoke, but Knight swallowed and shook his head, so Beast spoke for him.

  “Go to the car, Elliot. Knight’s fine.”

  Laurent covered his face, shaking his head. “What is wrong with you? You were friends! You should have stopped them!” he shouted, directing his anger at Beast.

  That was enough. Beast grabbed Laurent’s wrists and pulled him close, lowering his voice as he spoke from the depths of his chest. “It might have been you. A year ago, it might have been you, so shut up.”

  Laurent’s lips parted, eyes wide, but the message sank in. He’d also been a rat under Baal’s guidance, but unlike Lana, he’d only had himself to worry about. There was no high horse to jump on.

  Tension was palpable in the air, but Beast knew what Laurent needed. He pulled Laurent close, covering him with his arms and pressing his lips to the top of his head.

  A dark figure darted to Beast’s side like black lightning, but it wasn’t Baal, or a demon of his making. Shadow stared at them with his faceless head, liquid tar from head to toe. “What are you doing? Stop it. Whatever it is, stop! Your arguing is feeding the tree!” He pointed to the branches above, but it was when he noticed the bodies by his feet that he let out a screech that sounded like ‘no’.

  Knight kneeled, pulling Lana’s body off the grass. Beast wanted to say something to console him, but there were no words to repair what happened. Knight took a deep breath as he stood up, already stained red wherever her body touched him.

  “I’m… I’m sorry brother…” Beast trailed off when something passed right in front of him and hit the ground with a dull thud. A black apple laid at his feet.

  Shadow let out a strange, toneless shriek and darted off, disappearing into the smoke as if he evaporated and joined the fumes, but two seconds later, the pulsing beating against their feet whenever they got close to the tree picked up rapidly, and several more apples descended from the branches, even though there hadn’t been any fruit on the tree when the event started.

  Beast squeezed Laurent’s hand, cold all over. “Marcel. We need to get him away from here,” he said but the ground shook beneath their feet, and fleeing from the tree became too important to wait for an answer.

  “I’m sorry,” Laurent uttered. “I didn’t mean to yell.”

  But their argument could have only been a drop in the flood unleashed by murder and wrath. Black apples, swarming with worms, were like hail, and when one nearly dropped on Laurent’s head, Beast pulled him close and took the hit.

  “Knight, come on! We need to go.” Laurent pulled on Beast’s hand as the ground not only shook, but rumbled as if it were a giant’s hungry stomach about to open and swallow them whole.

  Knight remained still even when several fruits bumped off his head, and Beast felt his heart bleed. “Knight! Snap the fuck out of it. Get to Elliot. Lana wouldn’t want you dead!”

  But Laurent was already tugging him along as the tremors under their feet intensified. Beast might have gone back, but the ground between him and Knight cracked open like a pomegranate, scattering rocks everywhere.

  Time for thinking was over if he wanted to get Laurent and Marcel to safety. Beast sped up, all but smashing his body into their car once they reached it.

  Marcel was safe in the baby seat, but he wouldn’t remain this way for much longer if Beast couldn’t do something. But first, he needed Laurent in the safest place during the oncoming catastrophe.

  “Get to Magpie.”

  Laurent stilled, staring at Beast as if time had stopped. Beast hadn’t even noticed when the blue sky had turned gray, but the first drops of rain hit his skin, as if they were messengers of the apocalypse.

  “But… Beast. You cannot stay here.” Laurent squeezed his hand even as he opened the car with the other. His brown eyes were wide with fear so intense Beast was close to getting behind the wheel and driving off. But that was out of the question. Each of them had a job to do, and his was here.

  The earth roared, and the sound exploded through a crack that ran from the tree and cut the ground between their feet. Beast’s throat closed up, choking him, and he met Laurent’s gaze again. This time, he was certain what needed to be done.

  “I trust you. Take Marcel to Magpie. I will do what I can here.” Every fibre in his body longed to go with Laurent, but in the end he just gave him a kiss that felt so final Beast’s heart was raw when he leaned back. No matter how much Beast wanted to run to the other side of the world in hope of Baal being unable to reach them there, he had to depend on his husband.

  Let him dr
ive. Let him take Marcel. Let him leave the harbor.

  Despite the chaos, Laurent’s attention was on Beast, as if trying to remember every detail of him, in case this was the last time they spoke. But then something cracked, and it wasn’t the ground under their feet. They both looked at the egg. Beast’s heart could have as well stopped when a line appeared on the ruby red shell.

  The last time Laurent was so pale, so torn, so desperate, was when he’d told Beast about his pact with Baal, thinking he was signing his own death sentence. Beast’s only solace was that Laurent wasn’t going up in flames and smoke like he had back then.

  “Please, keep a cool head, and stay as safe as you can,” Laurent said with tears already welling up in his eyes. He pulled on his tie and opened a few top buttons of his shirt to reveal the tattoo they both shared.

  The path to Paradise begins in Hell.

  “No matter what happens, we will meet again,” Laurent said, but took a step closer to the open car.

  Beast gave him one more kiss and ran into the smoke with determination roaring in his chest.

  Chapter 24 - Laurent

  Laurent stomped on the gas pedal when the crack in the asphalt overtook the car, speeding straight for the clubhouse like a lightning bolt. He’d never driven at over thirty mph, but the risk of crashing meant nothing in the face of the death and destruction behind him. Perhaps this wasn’t Baal’s doing? Maybe God’s wrath for making all those pacts with a being so evil has caught up with them, and there was no way to stop the doom? Laurent clenched his teeth and let the machine carry him forward at a speed that felt unnatural for a couple of heartbeats.

  With his hands steady on the steering wheel, he bolted through the woodland, past the head of the rift that parted the ground as if it were made of wafers. When a blue light made Laurent shut his eyes, he thought it was the heavens raining lightning on the earth, but a brief glance into the rearview mirror revealed the truth that was even worse.

  The glow, the same Knight’s fists emitted when using his powers, flashed from the open cleft, already trembling like air over open fire.

  Laurent was so shocked by the image that he barely missed a tree as the road bent toward the gates to club grounds. Breath caught in his throat when he turned the wheel, and for the briefest moment, when centrifugal force dug its claws into his insides, he was more than convinced that he and Marcel both would come to an anticlimactic end, just minutes from reaching their goal.

  Past flashed in front of his eyes. The blurred image of his mother standing by the fire in the only room of their home, her face—no longer clear—as she squeezed Laurent’s hand, saying goodbye. Father waving at Laurent while the ship departed from the harbor at La Rochelle. Dead travelers thrown into the waves. Rats. The smell of unwashed bodies. A country where people spoke languages he didn’t understand. His first night at Mr. Barnave’s, sleeping on the cold floor, and with no food in his stomach. Learning the alphabet and maths. Watching sailors bathe in the river while hidden in the bushes. The tingle of attraction when William Fane discreetly touched his hand. Baal. A world that was familiar yet alien.

  And then, Beast, protecting Laurent from King, showing him kindness even when that wasn’t in his own interest. People who liked him around even when he didn’t have much to offer. Kisses. Beast’s arms around him. Home. Safety. Family.

  Love.

  He sucked in a gulp of air so huge it hurt his lungs when he realized the car wouldn’t tip over, and instead dashed past the gates, but the moment Laurent crossed the borders of the club grounds, the light changed, as if he’d left the bright spring day behind and had entered a world-sized circus tent that filtered the light into a dim red glow that colored the clouds above purple.

  Laurent dashed out of the woods and into the vast grassy area, only to see someone leave the eastern wing of the clubhouse. It was impossible to tell who it was from so far away, but before Laurent could have come close enough, lightning erupted in a vicious sequence between the thick clouds, and the ground under the lone person parted. Laurent didn’t even get to hear their final scream.

  The noises coming from the closed backpack kept Laurent on edge, but he tightened his hands on the wheel and drove, drove as fast as he could toward the palisade-surrounded encampment Magpie called his temporary home. Blue lightning tore through the red sky, spreading its arms over the firmament in a weave so dense Laurent half-expected the coloring to fade, ripped to shreds by the electric blades. But that wasn’t happening, because none of this was a special effect in a moving picture.

  It was reality.

  The world was about to end before he had truly started living with Beast and Marcel as a family.

  His thoughts were with his husband. He didn’t even want to imagine what Beast could be going through. Horrific visions of the acidic resin spilling on Beast and burning his already scarred skin made Laurent tear up and regret not staying. Maybe he should have at least made that last kiss longer, communicate all his love for Beast with touch. For all he knew, it could have been their last moment together, and it tore his heart to pieces.

  He parked the car in front of the tents so abruptly dirt splattered the palisade, and he was glad for seatbelts because otherwise both he and Marcel would have been lying outside the car among shards of broken glass.

  Taking out the egg was another matter altogether. The backpack was now so heavy Laurent could barely carry it on his own, so he called for help as soon as he noticed Malachite standing by the gate of the camp as if the sky were still clear.

  The ground shook so abruptly, the tremor brought Laurent to his knees. He hit his head on the side of the door, sending a tearing ache through his skull, but when he saw the gap that had earlier swallowed a person widen and move farther toward the front of the clubhouse, toward him, he dragged himself right back to his feet.

  He was about to reach for Marcel again when the wooden gate guarding Magpie’s glampsite burst open, and the man himself strolled out in silk pants and an open robe, still in the process of wiping his face with a towel. His damp hair was combed back, as if he’d been resting after a long bath, but there was no trace of relaxation in Magpie’s posture. He tossed the towel at Malachite and ran up to Laurent.

  “What’s… where is Marcel? What did you do?” he shrieked, looking around as if the earth shaking for the past ten minutes was news to him.

  Laurent dreaded the rumble somewhere far away in the sky, knowing it was only the prelude for yet more unnatural lightning. The earth beneath them growled, hellhounds surely digging their way up to the surface.

  “Help me carry him!” Laurent repeated, opening the passenger door. “We don’t know what else to do. The egg has cracked. Lana has betrayed us, she’d made a pact with Baal to protect the trees, and now this hell broke loose because two people got killed.”

  As sad and afraid as he’d been, the prospect of losing more than they’d already had made Laurent focus on the present. He pushed Lana’s dead eyes, Joker’s bloodstained face, and even Knight’s sorrow to the back of his mind. There would still be time left for mourning, if the world survived.

  Magpie went so pale Laurent couldn’t believe human skin was even capable of showing that kind of strange purple-gray hue. “No. No. How could this happen? The trees were weakened. Incompetent creatures! That’s what you all are,” he roared, regaining the color to his face. He pushed past Laurent and hauled up the backpack, staggering as he moved it away from the car. His eyes darted toward the fractured ground, which at this point was emitting the same icy glow as Knight’s sigils, but as soon as he placed the backpack in the grass and unzipped it, the tension in his shoulders eased somewhat.

  “It’s… not cracked,” Magpie said in a whisper that was barely audible as the wind began to howl. “It’s hatching.”

  Laurent’s heart might have stopped beating for a second, and he stared down at the deepening crack in the shell, unable to speak. This wasn’t how he’d planned the hatching. They’d intended to
keep the egg on a pile of warm comforters, between Beast and Laurent, so their son could learn associating their scent with safety. But Beast wasn’t even here, and there was a risk that he’d never see the baby they’d created. He could die not even knowing if Marcel was safe or not.

  Grief was a physical pain in his chest, but it sobered him up, and he fell to his knees next to the beloved egg. “I should have never brought him into this world when I knew we still had to face Baal. I’m so selfish.”

  Magpie’s lips remained still when he took in the ruby shell, which cracked on the side, sending glitter-like dust into the air.

  Laurent shrieked, but Magpie placed his hand on the other side of the shell, as calm as if he’d forgotten about the raging storm above and the ground breaking apart. “Perhaps, but it’s here. Our baby,” he whispered as the fracture budged. The child was pushing at it from the inside.

  It didn’t matter how strange it all was, or how rapidly the world around them was falling apart. When Laurent glanced at Magpie’s amazed expression, he felt warmth spread in his heart. The demon took off his robe despite the wind branding his bare skin with goosebumps, and spread it on the grass to transfer the egg onto the black silk.

  “Is there anything more we can do? Maybe I could still reach Beast. A trick to fight the tree roots? Please, Jasper, there must be something,” Laurent said, but his eyes never left the cracks spreading all over the shell.

  But Magpie was too taken by the miracle unfolding before their very eyes to think of matters as trivial as the end of times. He didn’t even flinch when the right side of the facade Laurent remembered from William Fane’s house collapsed into the cleft between two bulging rims that used to make up the yard in front of the clubhouse.

  Dust blew their way, but even as it clung to Magpie’s wet hair, he touched the shell with utmost gentleness, before pulling on either side of the gap to open it further.