Granted by the Beast

by Hamilton, Rebecca; Kressley, Conner;

  Fact was, I would fight for him until the end. And, even though he didn’t love me, I knew he would fight for me, too. He had proven that much. He had risked his life for me time and time again. Even now, in our darkest hour, he didn’t flinch once as he faced the incredible odds to keep me safe. But why?

  “Are you sure about this, Abram? If you don’t break the curse tonight, it can really never be broken?”

  He gave a solemn nod. “I would still have the days, same as now. But that would be it for me. The hopes of reclaiming nights as a man will be gone forever. All chance for redemption will be lost.” He looked down at his clawed hands and let out a sound between a growl and a sigh. “But that doesn’t matter now.”

  “Of course it matters,” I said, determined not to let his lack of feelings for me alter my feelings for him. I took his hands in my own, claws be damned. “There has to be something we can do. Anything. Just tell me what.”

  “You shouldn’t concern yourself with this, Charisse. There’s too much going on, too much at stake. The curse is the least of my concerns.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t be,” I said. “And you shouldn’t have started whatever mystical clock you did by bringing Satina back.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you right now,” he answered quietly, recognizing the tone in my voice.

  “Too bad.” I ran hands through my hair, shaking out my natural curls and trying to reset my tired brain. “I’d rather not be running from a Frankenstien’s monster-esque mob, but we are where we are.” My voice was lower now, more sincere. “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “I understand that. And I also understand that you didn’t do anything to deserve it. You were born into this life.” He was barely able to keep his human form now, struggling as he was against his beastly nature. “But I will keep you safe,” he said. “I swear it.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” I said, my voice breaking. “I know you’ll do everything you can to keep me safe. But I didn’t ask you to. And I certainly didn’t ask you to give away your one chance at happiness to get it done.”

  “Charisse—”

  “No.” I threw my hands in front of me, no longer willing to let the elephant in the room remain unseen. “I get that you don’t love me and, if you give me a little time to process that, I might even be able to understand it. But what I don’t understand—what I’m not sure I’ll ever understand—is why you would do something like this for someone you didn’t even care about.”

  His eyes shot open. The entirety of his morphing body tensed. “Why would you say something like that?” He moved closer to me. “Why the hell would you even think something like that?”

  I bristled as he neared me. It was strange. Hours ago, his body felt like home to me—that safe place I had spent my entire life looking for but had never found. And now, with this newest revelation, I couldn’t think of anything more ludicrous.

  “You know why,” I said. “You don’t love me.” Anger started to pool in my gut and bubble up like venom through my throat and out my mouth. “I scoffed at Satina when she compared me to all your other conquests. I actually thought there was something different about me, about us. But I was wrong. I didn’t think someone could touch someone the way you touched me and not feel anything behind it.”

  His mouth, almost completely a snout now, clenched together. With pain etched in his face, he transformed his face back into human form. “I know you think you know everything. God knows you’re stubborn enough to think you can see every piece on this chess board. But there are some things, Charisse, that are even above that beautiful, hard head of yours.”

  “You either love me or you don’t, Abram. Love isn’t a complicated thing. It’s there or it’s not.”

  A loud shuffling sounded from far off.

  “They’re coming,” Abram said, crouching into a feral position. “We need to get into the house.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “There’s no time for that. Get on.” He leaned over, motioning for me to climb on his back.

  I didn’t move.

  “Damn it Charisse! Get on my goddamn back!”

  Again, I didn’t move.

  “Do you want me to beg to save you?”

  I didn’t answer. The rustling just got louder, signifying that the mob, or at least part of it, was getting closer.

  “Fine,” he growled. “Get on my back. Please.”

  Hiding a smirk, I climbed on. He let go of all his resistance and shifted completely from man to beast as he darted off toward the house. My heart sped in tempo with his thundering footsteps, and my hair whipped behind me. Something about being carted around by Abram made me feel alive in a way I really never had before. Or maybe that was just Abram himself.

  We burst through the doorway like a pair of twin bullets. He shrugged me off of his back, placing me gently on the floor and nudging the door closed behind him with his snout.

  He was all beast now—all strong hind legs, massive thighs, and thick, luscious fur. He glared at me for a moment with those familiar eyes, perhaps expecting me to be disgusted at the sight of him. But if that’s what he was looking for, he was going to be sadly disappointed.

  The beast was Abram, and Abram was the beast. They were interchangeable to me now, one as much a part of the man I loved as the other.

  Looking away from me, he padded up the staircase on all fours. His paws hit heavy as he neared the top.

  I followed him, settling in front of the room that once held Satina.

  As soon as we stopped in front of it, Abram began to morph back into the man I knew.

  “Magic,” I answered, putting it together. “This room is magic, too?”

  He stretched, brushing off the last bit of monster as the man fully emerged. “I told you that magic is about balance. Even curses like the one that affects me has to be equal parts light and dark. The room in the Castle held the darker magic that fueled the curse. It wanted me to suffer. When it believed keeping me alive would accomplish that, it was happy to accommodate, but when it realized…when it realized how you felt, it wanted you to die so that I would live on in agony. That’s why it dispersed when it saw that the mob was its best chance to see you dead.”

  His eyes flickered to the floor.

  “Which of course means that this room holds the light side of the magic. It stands to reason that this aspect of the curse yearns to see my redemption. To that end, it’ll do everything in its power to keep you safe.”

  “Should have brought us here first then,” I mumbled.

  “It wasn’t clear then,” he said, and he sounded sort of…hopeful.

  Please don’t let him be guessing all this.

  “So now it’s clear?” I asked skeptically.

  “Aspects of the curse only reveal themselves when the curse is at its most powerful, which only happens when—”

  “When the bitch who cast it comes back from the dead and starts a magical timer?” I asked.

  He grinned, pushing the wooden door open. “You learn quickly.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said, thinking of all the things I hadn’t learned quickly enough.

  Abram gestured for me to enter the room, and as soon as I crossed the threshold, I felt the magic pouring into me. It comforted me, made me feel whole, made me feel at peace.

  But was this true peace, or was this an illusion like the last time?

  It was then, in the midst of that clarity, that a question filtered its way into my mind. “Why did the curse want me to die?” I asked. After all, my love alone clearly wasn’t enough. “You said the outcome is already in stone, isn’t it? What does the curse know that I don’t?”

  I turned to Abram. He was still on the other side of the doorway. The look on his face both troubled and soothed me. It was clear and full of the sort of stoic and tempered joy that only existed when you realized you had found the best the world has to offer…and that you were sure that you were never going to see it again.

  �
��I wish I could answer that,” he answered. “More than anything, I wish I could tell you.”

  In that moment, I could sense the truth of his feelings burning under my skin. I knew him as I knew myself. It was mystical, cellular, beyond bone deep. And I knew that he loved me. I just knew it. It was in the way he spoke to me, in the way he drove my passion and allowed me to stoke his own. It was in his voice, in his gaze. It was as singular and real as my own name.

  There was something about all of this that I didn’t know, something that would make sense of this whole thing.

  “Please, Abram,” I said, shaking my head. “Just say it. Whatever it is, just say tell me, and we’ll figure something out. We’ll fix it somehow.”

  He swallowed, and his head shook a fraction of an inch. “I am fixing it, Charisse.”

  The tone of his voice and the expression on his face sent a panic into my chest that I couldn’t explain. I started back toward the door, back toward him. “Abram, what are you doing?”

  “What I have to,” he said.

  Then he slammed the door shut.

  I rushed toward it, but I already knew what I would find. The door wouldn’t budge. Like before, I was trapped inside, protected by magic that I knew nothing about.

  “Abram!” I screamed. “Abram, open this door!”

  He was going to do it. He was going to keep me safe by any means necessary, even if that meant facing that mob by himself.

  “Abram!” I screamed, beating so hard against the door that I thought I heard something in my hand snap. “Abram! Would you listen to me damn it? For once, just listen to me!”

  Tears streamed hot down my cheeks. My heart shattered into so many pieces it might as well have been dust.

  “Abram!”

  No answer. He was gone. And I knew where he was going.

  I rushed toward the window, wiping my eyes and looking past the nearly full red moon that graced it, a perfect match to the one back at The Castle.

  The mob had gathered outside. All of them. The entire town littered the ground, armed with pitchforks, rifles, and other weaponry.

  Blinking through fresh tears, I saw Abram walk out the door and into the yard, already morphing into the beast.

  The crowd reared back, but soon overcame their fears and pushed forward. Shots fired at Abram, and I beat against the window. Maybe I could jump through it, the way Abram had back at the Castle.

  But I knew better.

  I wasn’t as strong as him, and the truth was, if this room didn’t want me to get out, then I wouldn’t.

  All I could do was watch. Watch the man I love fight. Watch the people I grew up with try to kill him.

  “Stop!” I screamed. But no one listened. Did they hear me? Could anyone even see me?

  I slapped my hand over and over again on the glass pane, but no one so much as looked up at me. The glass rattled and my palm stung, but it was useless.

  Bullets collided with Abram, and his body lunged backward.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Howling loudly, he lunged forward, but he didn’t attack. Didn’t defend himself. Didn’t even try to run. A swing with a baseball bat to his hind leg hit so hard that the crack could be heard over the cries and shouts of the mob. Another person—this time someone I didn’t recognize—swiped at him with a kitchen knife, but the man kept too far a distance to make contact.

  But the more people who braved their assault on him, the more people who found the courage to do the same. Soon the town had swallowed him up. My fingernails dug into the old window frame, splintering against the soft wood. Pain cut off the air to my lungs as they kicked him, punched him, stabbed him. Seeing the blood matting his fur did something to me—changed me. This was a nightmare. I couldn’t cope.

  I ran back to the door and tried it again, rattling the doorknob and banging on the wood. “Please, please,” I shouted. “Open.”

  My voice was strained and cracked, my body weak, my mind a swirl of confusion and anger and hurt. I stumbled back to the window, falling to my knees at the sight of him. They had backed off now to observe their damage. He staggered sideways. Someone threw a stone at him, and he yelped.

  No one wanted to go through with it. No one wanted murder on their hands, even with such a beast as they believed him to be. For a moment, hope bubbled up through my heartache. But through the blur of my tears, I saw the one person who could shatter all that hope in an instant.

  Ester.

  Ester, with a gun in her hand, marching up to Abram with the barrel already pointed down and finger on the trigger. She didn’t even look like herself. My body tensed.

  Ester, please. Don’t.

  I shook my head as though I could will her to stop. This couldn’t be happening. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? He was already a heap on the ground, bloody, broken, barely able to move.

  But Ester didn’t stop her advance—didn’t even flinch—as she fluidly approached the beast.

  With a swift, almost graceful motion, she took aim at his head and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 31

  I watched Abram’s body fall lifeless to the ground and, as it did, reality twisted into a dark and unsettling thing.

  Things would never be the same.

  My body shut down. The pain in my chest was so strong that I couldn’t feel if my heart was still beating, but if it were, each beat would be hopeless anyway. My soul had been shattered, and I felt the pieces of me scattering away from my body, leaving behind only the sinking feeling of dread that weighed my every limb.

  My hearing went out. Could a gunshot do that, or was I in shock?

  The crowd dispersed—Ester with her horrible gun and the rest of the townspeople behind her, ambling away as though they had awoken from a spell. They had done what Dalton implored them to. They had killed the beast. Their nightmare was over, and mine was just beginning.

  I stared in trembling, core-quaking silence as they filtered back into the woods, so much more ceremoniously than they had come. Marching victoriously back to the safety of their beds and leaving Abram to rot in the night air.

  Bile rose in my throat. They had won. It was over.

  Expect that it wasn’t.

  Dalton was still out there, hiding somewhere, waiting for me to appear. It was only a matter of time. He would find me, kill me, drain me, and then live forever, enjoying the spoils of his victory. But only if the third beast didn’t get to me first.

  And the thing was, I didn’t care. I was already dead. Everyone I had ever loved was dead, save for Lulu, and if my track record were any indication, it would only be a matter of time before she was killed, too. Because death followed me, wherever I went, and there was no denying that now.

  The yard was empty. Only one piece of evidence remained to indicate what had happened here. I bit down on my lip to brace myself as I turned to face it. To face…him.

  I swallowed hard as my gaze drank him in. He was still a beast. Was he not going to transform back? Would this be how he would spend his eternity—in the body of an animal, afforded no more dignity than a dog who had been hit by a passing car and pulled off the side of the road to die? Body battered. Limbs bent at impossible angles. Blood everywhere. All the signs that life had been present but was not anymore.

  I stared hard, willing him to breathe, praying to see that rise and fall of his chest, clinging hopelessly to that thread of hope, knowing if anyone could survive this, Abram could. And yet knowing no one could survive this.

  Everything was still. The yard. The leaves in the trees. And worst of all, Abram. So peacefully, painfully still. The realization of how true his death was rocketed into me like a missile.

  I turned my back against the window and slid to the floor, by body plastered against the damn wall.

  This can’t be happening.

  I repeated the thought like a mantra, over and over, again and again. And nothing changed. I was so crippled with emotion that even my tears escaped me. There was nothing left. My enti
re being was evaporating around me, my mind and emotions at war, pulling me in every direction.

  All the fire that blazed within me while Abram was fighting for his life was now extinguished. He was dead, and he was taking my will to live with him.

  Let Dalton come. Let all the beasts this world had to offer come for all I cared. What more harm could they do to me now? In less than five minutes, everything had changed. All hope had been erased. All of my worst fears had been realized.

  Just five minutes ago, Abram had been standing before me, his chest heaving with determined breaths. How could those breaths be his last?

  My senses started to return. First with the sound of my pulse in my ear, a rushing, shushing sound. An agonizing reminder of life. I dug my nails into the wood floor beneath me and pressed the back of my head hard against the wall.

  Abram, no.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and the burning tears that had been floating in my subconscious came streaming out, reminding me I was still alive to cry. To feel. Alone.

  The more I wanted the pain to end, the harder I cried. I was hyperventilating, and this was even worse than when cancer stole my mother from me. I choked on life’s air as I gasped for breath.

  I had the fleeting thought of getting up. Of pulling myself together. Of just stopping crying long enough to breathe. But those thoughts only made me hurt more, made my cries flood faster, made the ache spread farther in my chest.

  Like an insult, the door clicked and creaked open, releasing me from my prison. I didn’t bother to open my eyes. I wasn’t ready to see life beyond that door. I just shook my head and curled into myself.

  “I know you must be disheartened.”

  The voice tore through my mind. Whipping my eyes open, I looked toward the source of the noise.

  Satina stood at the doorway, still wearing the dead girl’s body and looking every bit as refreshed as a girl coming off a week long Daytona vacay.

  I licked my dry lips, trying to find the will to speak. “How long have you been standing there?”