Beauty In The Beast
Title Page
Chapter 1 – Belle
Chapter 2 – Grimm
Chapter 3 – Old Magics
Chapter 4 – Beauty
Chapter 5 – Travel
Chapter 6 - Beast
Chapter 7 – Illiya of Bucuresti
Chapter 8 – London
Chapter 9 – Our New Life
Chapter 10 – Perchta's Garden
Chapter 11 – Styche, the Trickster
Chapter 12 – The Black Crypt
Epilogue
Urban Fairytales: Beauty In The Beast
By Erik Schubach
Copyright © 2017 by Erik Schubach
Published by Erik Schubach on Smashwords P.O. Box 523 Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026 Cover Photo © 2017 Yuliya Yafimik Photography / ShutterStock.com license
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST EDITION ISBN 978-0-9985110-2-3
Chapter 1 – Belle
I huffed in frustration as I stared at my cell phone. Snow asked from where she sat on the floor by the fireplace in the farm cottage we were using in Northern England. “What is it, Parker?” Her voice reverberated in a strange oscillating tone that filled the air with power. Daria raised her head from where she laid on the floor at my feet, her fangs bared and dripping saliva as she let out a guttural and threatening growl. She sensed my aggravation. My heart sank, she was showing more and more animalistic behavior since the death of her mate and our friend and leader, Mari. Even when she was in human form on the full moons, she never spoke now, and never bothered even dressing. I reached down from where I sat on the little loveseat with Ella-Marie laying her head in my lap, and scratched the great wolf between her ears and told her, “Shhh... it's ok Daria.” The huge silver-grey wolf, whose pelt was tipped in black, looked up at me then settled her head back on the floor, with her eyes open and watchful. My heart still hurt so much from the death of my friend, Maireni Damaschin. I had never thought it possible, the Red Hood was larger than life, and she seemed an unstoppable force for good. But she sacrificed herself and her blood to close the gateway to the realm of demons before they could overrun the planet. We had been tracking the demon responsible for that transgression and for the new plague of human-demon hybrids that was sweeping the world, Styche the Trickster. In time, it would be a curse that would surpass the near-destruction of the human race of the lupus contagion. Except now, Styche was not bound by a human and was able to wreak havoc at will, and this new plague was not bound to the lunar cycle like that of the werewolves. It would take him a couple years to amass the power he needed to reopen the portal to hell. In the meantime, he is keeping us busy chasing our own tails by unleashing his new contagion at random points around the world. At least the humans are learning to battle these hybrids just as they battled the wolves before this. And the great walled cities like Seattle and London were taking in as many of the uninfected as they could as more cities erected great walls. But unlike the werewolves, a small number of the hybrids could fly. So the containment wasn't as foolproof as before. More powerful firearms with immense stopping power have been constructed, and all the major cities now had incursion response forces. But whenever magic was involved, which is becoming more and more common as the demon hybrids are starting to develop their own powers the longer that remain in the human realm, we Avatars are called upon to stem the tide. We are a shadow of our former strength. With our heavy hitter, Katiana, our Goldilocks, in hibernation after the battle where the Red Hood fell, with no idea when she will awaken... Our tactical and strategic leader dead, it was becoming harder and harder for us to repel the attacks on the human population. I glanced over at Gretta. We have been depending more and more upon the formidable power she wields in her Perchta, Nature Goddess form. But she is getting further and further lost in it. She is more a hybrid being like my Ella-Marie now. Two people sharing the same body. But they are both the same person in their case, and they both love Rachel with all their hearts. She was looking at me with concern, her small antlers now a hands width from her radiant white hair with three small prongs. Her voice always hummed with power now as she tried to find her way back to her Gretta Snow aspect. She was running her fingers through Rachel's hair, much to her mate's delight. And as much as we depended on her in battle, the group was depending on me more and more to fill the void of coordinating our group. I had been their anchor before this, keeping these women with otherworldly abilities grounded, reminding them of their humanity. But now I was taking on more and more leadership role since we all felt lost without Red. That thought made me swing my gaze over to Eve in her red cloak. She stood sentinel as the new Red Hood, selected by the cloak and compelled to don the mantle and its power as the new Red Hood. As part of the balance of the original werewolf curse, there must always be a Red Hood. Mari had been the fourth to wear the cloak, now Evelyn was the fifth. She still looked so unsure of herself and almost ashamed that she wore the cloak which we all felt had been a part of Red. But she fought valiantly on every occasion we were called upon to protect the weak and innocent. Almost like she was trying to prove herself to us. She doesn't realize we all love her, she is our sister... and it in some small way, she kept Mari alive in our thoughts. She laid back into Rapunzel's lap, looking my way, as Raz played that silly game she was addicted to on her cell phone, Platypus Battles. I shrugged and said, “Saddle up. That was the ADI, a wave of about fifty hybrids are sweeping down this way from Diggle. There are about twenty farms separating us, if the residents haven't evacuated, that number could be seventy or more by the time they reach our location. They lost a chopper to relay the intel. Avatar Defense Initiative soldiers are inbound from Aston-Under-Lyne, to back us up and take down any stragglers.” Everyone was on their feet in the crowded space, checking weapons and gathering gear. I put a pin on the map as I geared up. There was something about the random locations Styche was infecting humans in that nagged at the back of my brain. I just couldn't shake that it didn't quite feel random to me as I surveyed the pins, most of which were in Europe. I held my hand absently down as Ella-Marie looked at the map and said in her Cockney accent, “What is it, love?” It was something Mari had told me one time in a story about the Red Hood, but I just couldn't connect it. I shook my head in frustration as Daria stepped beneath my hand and I buried my fingers in the soft downy undercoat fur of her neck. I was about the only person our wolf friend listened to anymore. She fought like an animal now, ferocious and almost mindlessly killing. Unless one of the more human people of our group, like Gretel, were in danger, then she'd fling herself in front to the oncoming danger. I sighed then turned from the map and lost myself in Ella-Marie's seeking eyes? My heart always sped up, and my breathing increased when those blue pools that held the spark of heat from the two halves of my love's heart were trained on me. She could start a fire of need inside me with just a glance. She asked again, the French accent accompanying the slight wave I felt as Marie came to the forefront, “What eez eet, my Parker?” I shook my head again and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “It's nothing. Just a feeling. We can talk about it later.�
� She looked concerned and just nodded, a cute crease between her eyes, then I felt the wave again, and Ella gave me a single nod. I asked, “Everyone have their coms and emergency packs?” I blushed, and Ella-Marie hugged me to her when everyone droned out, “Yes, mother.” I chuckled. “You're all not as funny as you think you are.” Amanda teased as she stepped past with Robyn while she skillfully holstered her two Sigs in her shoulder rig, “Of course we are.” She gave me a peck on the cheek, and Robyn rolled her eyes at everyone's banter. I guess being not quite human, our elven archer felt us all silly. We headed out to the vehicles. Rachel and Amanda mounted up in the driver's seats of the two military transport vehicles that were loaned out to us, as the women with more magic sat in the far back as not to disrupt the electronics of the trucks. Snow just kissed Rachel and leapt into the air. One instant she was Gretta Snow, the next she was a white crow, winging into the sky to be our forward scout. Ella looked at the old World War Two Norton 16H sidecar motorcycle with an almost sexual appraisal. A farmhand in the area lent it to her for our patrols. It wasn't the Harley we had to leave behind in Seattle, but I'm thinking it came a close second to her. She swung her leg over the seat as I got into the sidecar. Daria flowed into the cramped space and sort of pooled around me like a heavy and overly warm blanket. Then with a single kick of the starter, the old one cylinder engine roared to life. The look on my girl's face as she revved the motor was one of pure excitement and reverence. I frowned. It was the same look she gave me when we were alone in the bedroom. Then I chuckled as I realized I was getting jealous of a motorcycle. Then we were off. The sudden acceleration snapping my neck back and pushing Daria and me back in the seat. We left a rooster tail of dirt and pebbles behind us as we sped off to the north, the two trucks following behind. I looked down to see Daria's lips peeled back and her fangs showing. She enjoyed the hunt far too much now. I was so worried we were going to lose her to the werewolf soon and she won't want to come back from it. I tapped her nose, and she looked back at me, looked sheepish then whined a little as she settled her head on my lap. I scolded, “You don't need to be so excited about this. Remember, they were all people before the contagion took them, they aren't monsters by choice. We kill because it is necessary to prevent the rest of the world from succumbing to it, not because we want to.” She narrowed her eyes at me then exhaled hot breath onto my leg and nodded once. I leaned down and wrapped my arms mostly around her neck and whispered, knowing she could hear me over the roar of the motor, “We all miss her, Dar. But we don't want to lose you too. We love you.” She stopped breathing for a moment then relaxed into the hug. I think she was crying, but I didn't look, I gave that to her. We roared past abandoned farms, but some had farmers still tending their crops, defying the evacuation order. I shook my head. As admirable as it was to keep producing foodstuffs for the local populace during what people are now calling the Demon Times, it is also foolish. People were too used to how things used to be during the centuries of the Lupus Contagion. Where you only needed to fear just three nights a month, and the infected would return to human for the rest of the time. This infection took them completely, and there was no coming back from it unless we could finally put an end to Styche. If they were found by any of the hybrids, they would just join their numbers until the entire Earth was overrun. Snow started circling ahead of us then winged back diving at incredible speed, right for Rachel's truck. At the last instant, she was Gretta again as she slammed into the bed of the truck, her feet denting the metal. She said into coms, “The hybrids are just over the rise, but there is something wrong. There seems to be some sort of infighting.” We started slowing, and Daria leapt gracefully out to run beside us until we stopped. We all did a coms check and checked our weapons as we approached the top of the hill and into the Peak District National Park. When we started getting into the thicker forest at the top, we stopped the vehicles and dismounted, and looked down the hill. We heard a commotion and saw a hybrid go flying back through the trees, wailing and roaring until its body struck the trunk of an old oak tree with such force that it most likely shattered every bone in its body with a crunch and a wheeze. It was true dead as we could see the gruesomely grafted demon flesh melting off of the poor man it had been, into puddles of black ichor. What in the hell had hit it? That was akin the force of one of Ella-Marie or Kat's punches. We all hesitated as we looked around to the broken and bloodied bodies of at least a dozen or so humans strewn about the clearing below. They were all covered in the black sulfurous sludge of their demon aspects, which were melting away as they changed back to human after death. It took a lot of damage to kill a hybrid. We heard a horrendous bellow, it sounded like a thousand voices screaming and moaning in anger, torment, and elation, followed by four hybrids breaking out into the open as they came running out of the forest below. They seemed desperate and were looking back, and they looked... frightened? The trees were cracking and we could feel the ground vibrating even up at our vantage point. Something was chasing them! What on this Earth could possibly frighten a demon? Daria's ears flattened against her head, and her tail went out behind her as she started a threatening growl. Something had her hackles up beside the few demons below. Her growl was vibrating through the air as she peeled her lips back. Those of us with them drew our weapons. I clenched and unclenched my fists ready to engage the enemy as they came. Ella and Daria didn't bother to wait. My girl just started striding down the hill with her signature cocky confidence, cracking her knuckles. I could feel the very Earth being pulled into her as she prepared for battle. It always gave me the sensation of sinking into the ground. I was the only one who could truly feel the entire effect of her magics like that. Daria just paced her in a crouched hunting posture. Snow stepped beside me, asking nobody in particular while she swung her sniper rifle down the hill and peered through the scope as we heard another bellow and crashing of trees, “What is that?” Then with a tremendous crash that accompanied the felling of a large aspen tree, a beast like no other charged into the clearing below, overrunning the fleeing hybrids. Trampling some to death under its immense hooves and slamming another with its shoulders so hard we heard the snapping of bone from where we stood before the terrified hybrid's lifeless corpse was flung off into the woods. The last hybrid just hung limply from the gnarled and twisted blackened horn on the head of the full demon we saw before us. This was no hybrid! I stood eight or nine feet tall, it's blackened flesh oozing blood and ichor, and it seemed to be rippling. Snow pulled back and gasped. It's hide looked to be made of dozens of human limbs, burned by hellfire and writing in pain. There was agony in the beast's bellow of rage. I could feel that rage wash over me like a wave, and it incensed me, pushed me to want to attack anything and everything. I could barely control my response. But as it thrashed its head to fling the body off of its horn, I saw other hybrids on it's back and sides, shredding chunks of flesh from it. It reared up on its hooves as I realized it was some nightmarish version of an immense unicorn. I blinked. But why was this demon attacking the hybrids, and they it? It shook itself, its black mane of singed hair spraying blackened blood around it like a poisonous mist of decay. This movement shook off the three remaining hybrids. It came down with a ground shaking stomp, crushing two beneath its hooves. Then charged the remaining one which still had a claw full of its flesh, feasting on it. The hybrid let out a screech and whimper as it tried to flee just to be skewered through its back as the hellish horse charged it. They slammed into an oak, the gruesome horn impaling the tree and it shook the branches all the way to the top. I saw the tree's bark blackening around the horn, as the sickness of the damned, seeped into the wood. It gave a vicious shake of its head and tore through the old oak like it was made of paper mache. It was terrifying and fascinating, and I couldn't pull my eyes from the hell-spawned nightmare given life. Then it was silent below except the sound of Ella-Marie's steady footsteps in the forest as she marched down to face the apparition, our wolf stalking silently beside her. I looked back. “Rose?”
Rose was already moving forward, and she flung her arms wide, and black vines and brambles tore out of her chest. I winced, knowing she felt them tearing through her flesh every time. She formed a barrier of poisonous vines, in a forty-five-degree funnel, ending at us, which stretched out as far as she could see. Any living thing, and most demons, which came in contact with the neurotoxin-laden vines and thorns would suffer an excruciating and sudden death. The beast below spun toward us and then bellowed again. The sound felt as if it were trying to strip away my very sense of being. The tortured screams of countless souls of the damned singing in chorus, in the fury and elation of battle, of death. It started charging at Ella-Marie, lowering its head to point that godforsaken blackened horn at her and the grey werewolf. Ella rolled her head on her shoulders and cracked her knuckles again an yelled out a challenge, “Come on you wanker! We're standin' right here, let's do this!” Then she charged back, cocking a fist in preparation to strike, Daria at her side, snarling and snapping her powerful jaws and bounding toward the monster. Snow was taking aim, and we all hesitated when we heard a sweet voice calling out, “Be at peace.” A small woman stepped out of the brush below, directly between the charging beast and Ella. I screamed, “Miss! Run!” Oh, my god, she was going to be trampled, or worse! She held a hand back toward us, palm out as she just stood there, her eyes locked on the terrible beast as it continued its charge. My girl readjusted so she could attempt to get in front of her before it was too late. I was running down the hill to the girl. She said again, “Be at peace. Our enemy is dead. Come back to me.” The hellish unicorn hesitated and slowed. Then as it reached her, it reared up, windmilling its massive hooves just inches from the unmoving girl's face. She had no fear of the demon. She reached out a hand as the monster landed back on all fours. It bellowed at her, her hair blew back from the force of the challenge. She laid her hand on the side of the beast's muzzle, and it shimmed nervously but didn't pull away. My girl stutter-stepped and slowed to a stop behind the girl when she saw the impossible sight which I was watching in disbelief. Daria stopped too, looking beyond confused as to what was transpiring. The girl smiled and laid her forehead against the beast's, just below the horn which was dripping with human and demon blood. She said in that soothing voice again, “Come back to me. Come on, calm yourself, I'm here. Come to me. I love you.” The writhing skin of the horse demon wavered, and it seemed to be shrinking in some way. Pulling back into itself, as though it were consuming its own essence. It pulled back from her and bellowed a challenge again and mock charged, stomping its hooves. The woman gave a bubbly laugh that was all silver chimes and amusement. “Oh, so terrifying. Be at peace, Illiya. Come back to me. Give me your rage and pain.” It nuzzled her and Daria growled. The woman placed a hand on the smaller horse's muzzle, and then looked back. She was quite stunning, and evoked the type of innocence you only read about in storybooks. She chastised our wolf, “You be still too. I can feel your pain from here, you have some of my Illiya in you. Let me bring my girl back to me, and we can talk.” Then the most shocking thing happened, even more shocking than this girl speaking of love to a demon. Daria whined then trotted up to her and sat. The girl just closed her eyes and laid her forehead against the writhing, blackened flesh of the demon again, and stroked the bloodied fur gently as it consumed itself. Its form bled away as it mewled at her, then the mewling turned to sobs as a naked woman lay before her. She just held her and stroked her hair as she said soothingly, “It's alright Illiya, I'm here, I've got you.” And she just held the crying woman as we all arrived and stood around the two. I just blinked in disbelief as the frightened woman nodded and held the newcomer tightly, almost desperately. Had this girl just soothed the tortured soul out of a demon? We all turned to Robyn as she asked the fearless girl who held the sobbing woman, shock coloring her tone, “Belle?”
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