The Beast

by Shantea Gauthier

  I was assaulted by odors when I opened the door, some pleasant and some unpleasant, all very strong and the effect was sickening. A young black man sat on a tall stool behind the counter wearing a brightly colored head wrap, a black tank top that revealed skinny arms and jeans with deliberate holes in the knees that must have cost extra.

  "Looking for anything specific?" he asked, not looking up from the textbook on the counter. He pulled a cap off of a highlighter and dragged it across a line of text.

  "Um, coffin nails?"

  He pointed with the back end of the highlighter to a wall with little bags of "CURIO" hanging on it. He wasn't what I'd expected. I don’t know exactly what I expected, but he wasn't it. Maybe if he was older, in colorful robes to match the head wrap he would look like an African mystic. Or maybe he should have just been an old Chinese man with a ferret on his shoulder or something. Not some kid studying for Algebra.

  I found coffin nails in cute little packages that listed simple "bad magick" spells that could be cast with them.

  "Offense or defense?" the kid asked.

  "Defense?"

  He flashed a white smile at me. "You sure about that?"

  "Yeah." I just wasn't expecting you to care.

  "Against what?" he set the book aside and joined me at the wall.

  "Vampires?"

  He smiled compassionately. "It's okay. I'm young, but my grandad was a voodoo priest in New Orleans if it makes you feel any better."

  I eyed him suspiciously.

  "Look, I know my stuff. Is it general protection or something specific?"

  I crossed my arms and leaned back on one hip. "Vampires," I repeated.

  "Psychic vampires or literal blood-suckers?"

  "Literal blood suckers."

  "What do you want coffin nails for?" He looked at the package in my hand dubiously.

  "My friend gave me cross made out of them for protection. I lost it, so I figured I need a replacement."

  "Hm. I've never heard of that before."

  I shrugged. "It's worked so far.”

  He laughed. "Hey, I'm not gonna try to convince you otherwise. How far are you willing to go for the sake of protection? We've got long garlic, wild rose branches, holy water, all kinds of crosses, but it sounds like you've got that covered. We’ve got silver wire you can use to bind them together, too. And silver chains and jump rings to hang it on."

  "I guess I'll take a chain," I said. "And maybe some wire. A few inches?"

  "Six inches should be plenty," he said. "It won't cost you that much. I'll just throw in the jump ring. Even the silver ones are cheap, they cost us like five cents. We have dried garlic flowers too, to keep vampires away. A lot of people think that the garlic bulb will do it, but it's actually the flowers that do it. They're a symbol of purity."

  He held up a plastic bag with dried white flowers in it. "Three bucks?"

  "Sure, why not?" I conceded. He flopped it onto the counter.

  "Also, if you know where the vampire's grave is you can bury a wine bottle there for six weeks and anyone who drinks from the bottle will be protected. We don't sell wine though."

  Someone else came out of the room. She looked more like the kind of person who I would have expected in a shop like this, in colorful skirts and rings on every finger. They could have been related except that she had lighter skin and light brown, almost blonde hair and big, hazel eyes.

  "Hey," she greeted.

  "Hi," I said.

  "Do you want your palm read?"

  "Um, no," I said. "I really don't have time."

  "Come on," she said. "It'll take like two minutes."

  "How much?" I asked. I could spare two minutes for the kid.

  "Thirty bucks." That I could not spare.

  "No thanks. I'll just take this stuff and get going."

  "Okay, fine," she said, throwing her long curly hair back. "I'm bored. I'll do it for five."

  "I really don't have much money."

  "I'll do it for free. Come on, let's see it. Sit down. Let Madame Maxine see what your future has in store. Dominant hand, please."

  She looked too young to be Madame anything, but I sat in the stool and held my right hand out.

  She traced the lines on my palm with a fingernail. It tickled, but I held it still.

  "What's your name?" she asked.

  "You can't see it?" I quipped. She shot me a look that could kill. "Sorry. My name is Jade."

  "Well, Miss Jade, I can see that you have a very short temper and very hot explosions."

  True.

  "You are a loving, open person, but you only recently started to feel comfortable expressing it."

  True.

  "You are afraid of something. Oh, I guess that would be vampires. Sorry, that was a little obvious. You are also afraid that someone close to you is betraying you. Oh, no, wait, someone close to you is betraying you. Maybe both. Do you suspect someone of something?"

  I nodded. She was either just learning the art of palm reading or she made her money by being a cutesy scam artist.

  "Well, they're probably guilty," she smiled. "But they love you more than you love them."

  She crossed her long legs and squinted at my palm again. She frowned, looked up at the boy, and looked back down at my palm.

  "What is it?" I asked, suddenly alarmed. Was she really gifted? Could she see what I was?

  She smiled. "Looks like you have no children yet, but you will have three. And they will be exceptional at athletics. They'll inspire you."

  "Anything else?"

  "No, that's all. You'll live a long happy life with your future babies."

  I smiled back. "Thanks."

  "No problem. If you're really looking for protection, you might look into crystals though. We have some pendants and stuff or just giant crystals." She waved a hand at a jewelry case.

  A pendant with a rainbow of stones caught my eye, but the price tag caught my eye too and I looked away. "I think I've got more than I can afford already. You take credit cards, right?"

  They nodded in unison.

  I paid for the stuff which was stuffed into a little black plastic back. "Come by again," the boy said.

  The girl mumbled something and he pushed her gently. She pushed back and slid the jewelry case open. She reached in and pulled out the pendant I had been eying. "Here," she said. "Take it."

  "I can't afford this," I said. She placed it in my hand anyway.

  "No but you need it," she sighed. She pointed at a tiny white stone. "That's alabaster. It's very magically powerful. It’s for purification, protection and innocence. The green one under that is peridot. It's for clarity. The one under that you should already know."

  "It's jade," I said. It was the tiniest piece of jade I'd ever seen, but it was jade.

  "That draws money and courage. It's so small it's hard to see the coloration but that’s leopard jasper in the middle there. It's for animal magic and for invisibility or anything that requires being unseen."

  Animal magic? Could she really know what I was?

  Her smooth round fingernail touched an orange stone. "That one is the main reason I'm giving it to you. That's sunstone. It's for courage, strength, and because it's got the word sun in it, it will help protect against vampires. And it's all set in silver, obviously."

  "Really," I said. "I can't take this. It's too-."

  "It's too expensive," she said. "Take it, go with God, whatever." She waved a hand dismissively and went back behind the curtain. The boy smiled at me.

  "Come by again," he said, and went back to his studying.

  chapter 19

  I couldn't reach Simon. He didn't answer my text messages or my phone calls. I knew that he was hiding for a reason, but something told me that as my pack, and maybe even my Alpha, he wouldn’t be able to stay away for long. “Madame” Maxine’s words kept coming back to me. He’s probably guilty. Of what? Of running back into the woods and killing a human? Was he capable of something as horrible as
that? He’d said that it was in his blood to help a human in trouble, like it was as unavoidable as a sneeze, but I was a werewolf too and I didn’t feel the same way. I felt like I could kill a human in a heartbeat if I wanted to, maybe even if I didn’t want to.

  Before night fell, I sprinkled the garlic flowers around the house along with an entire five pound can of salt. Something I read online said mustard seeds supposedly keep vampires away, so when I found a little long forgotten spice jar in the kitchen, I slung them around outside as well.

  Slightly reassured, I went inside and turned the TV on. I kept it on a channel that I knew wouldn't turn into news, but I wasn't really watching. I pulled the coffin nails out of the little plastic bag and pulled four out. I laid them, two by two, in a cross. I reached back in the bag for the wire and when I touched the little coil wrapped around a piece of cardboard, my fingers tingled. It didn't hurt, but it had that feeling like licking a battery. My bones hummed.

  The feeling stopped fairly quickly and I started to wrap the nails together. My first attempt fell apart immediately and my second attempt wasn’t much better. It took an hour just to get to that point, and I was getting tired and hungry. A quick search on my smart phone didn’t get me any instructions that I could figure out. I started some water for pasta and hunted Sandra's hot glue gun out of the hallway closet.

  The cross wasn't very pretty, but it eventually held together with a glob of hot glue and some sloppily wrapped wire. Satisfied with my handiwork, I let it harden while I finished cooking the pasta. The cartoons on TV were comforting. It felt like the days when I lived alone and everything wasn't out to kill me.

  I ate the entire box of pasta with a stick of butter, half a can of parmesan cheese and some salt and pepper. Feeling sick, I plucked the little web-like strands of glue off of my new cross and put it on the chain. The nail cross laid flat against my chest just under the hollow of my throat while the expensive pendant with all the stones hung in my cleavage and shifted this way and that when I moved.

  I muted the TV but kept it on, not yet willing to completely give up the digital company and opened the book Sandra gave me and settled down to relax.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, the frigid air conditioner blasting in my face woke me up and sent me to my warm bed. In the morning, I thought of what a special occasion actually sleeping at night had become. I pulled the blankets over my head. The only thing more special than sleeping was sleeping in.

  A message notification on my phone woke me up again. I looked at it quickly, hoping that it was from Simon. It wasn't. It was from Hannah, reminding me that I started the new job the next day.

  I wondered how many people actually forgot that they were hired there. Apparently enough to warrant the message.

  Since I was awake, I decided to check my email. I didn’t even make it to my inbox.

  "The Beast is Dead!" the headline of my homepage shouted.

  “Am not,” I grumbled.

  The picture in the article showed an enormous dead mountain lion lying next to a sheriff’s boot. It looked twice the size of the man standing next to it, but there was only a twelve inch ruler and the boot to compare it to. Its tan fur was smooth over its face and along its body except for around its neck where it fluffed out like a lion’s mane. Its eyes were closed, thick black lines across its face and its mouth was open, revealing long, frightening teeth.

  “The terror stalking the hills has been shot and killed by local authorities. The menacing mountain lion has killed its final victim and will go down in history as one of the most prolific serial killers Los Angeles has ever known.”

  I thought of how many kills the Beast was supposed to be responsible for. “Most prolific” was probably a bit of a stretch. So was a mountain lion, even one of this size.

  There was a quote from a biologist claiming that “when the natural prey starts to diminish, it would not be unheard of for these animals to start looking for prey closer to civilization, resulting in cougars in our own backyards.”

  I skipped down to the comments.

  “Fake!”

  “Thank god it’s dead that thing killed my Fluffy!”

  “That thing killed my mom!”

  “That’s not the beast, the beast is a devil monkey.”

  “DEVIL MONKEY!”

  “It is incredibly rare for mountain lions to attack people. There has only been ONE confirmed mountain lion attack in Los Angeles since 1890. Fact checking. It’s called the internet, people. You’re already on it. And they don’t eat bone. If that pussy cat is the Beast, then I’M a devil monkey!”

  I chuckled at that and started looking up pictures of mountain lion victims and Devil Monkeys.

  A knock at the door startled me.

  A young man, maybe twenty, maybe younger, with a binder in his hand stood on the other side. Part of me wanted to say no thanks to whatever he was selling and send him on his way. The other part of me wanted to punish him for ruining my perfect morning.

  “Hi,” he began. “My names is Raphael, I’m part of a program that helps support students like me-.”

  “Have you seen the pictures of the Beast?” I interrupted.

  He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, obviously not sure how to respond. If he'd had any sales training at all, it didn't include how to deal with a completely unrelated response. "Uh… no, but I heard about it on the radio. It was a mountain lion, wasn't it?"

  "So they say," I said. "What do you think?"

  "I uh," he looked down and apparently remembered why he was at my door. "It's a really great opportunity…"

  "I'm not interested," I said.

  "Okay, thank you for your time." He walked away, looking defeated. Maybe that was his tactic. Look pathetic; stay-at-home widows will feel sorry and buy from you.

  I shook my head and shut the door.

  Being alone is overrated. I can't believe I used to prefer this.

  I considered going out, but didn't want to pay for the gas so I went back to my computer and decided to look up the original Beast. As soon as I started typing, it made a suggestion for "The Beast of Gevaudan."

  Almost all of the articles I read didn't bother offering an explanation for the "sixty to more than a hundred" attacks caused by the beast. They only dismissed all of the suggestions of the past. They seemed to agree that some people thought it was a wolf-dog hybrid acting under the influence of its serial killer master, some thought it was a striped hyena, and some people thought it was a new species. They agreed on very little. They all seemed to agree that the attacks started in 1764 and in 1765, a hunter shot, killed and stuffed a wolf, trying to pass it off as the Beast. The attacks continued until 1767 when a different hunter shot and killed a different animal. The animal was preserved in France until it was either lost or destroyed. It may have or may not have been positively identified as a striped hyena.

  I started watching clips of documentaries that all seemed to just glorify the mystery of it, and then I started watching clips of hyenas. I watched a video of a herd of wildebeest, a few lions, and some crocodiles fighting over a baby wildebeest. I watched a video of a man on a bicycle who was stopped by a buck jumping on him out of nowhere. I watched a video of a man falling on his bicycle and breaking his shoulder. And from there I started watching videos of kittens doing cute things.

  By the time I realized that I was wasting my entire day- it was almost dark. I still hadn't dealt with Simon. I called him, but he didn't pick up. I sent him a text which he didn't answer.

  Then I closed my eyes and tried to think into his brain the way he did when we were in wolf form. I felt something, but the silver on my chest started to hum and I couldn't focus.

  I looked at the necklaces, wondering if the tiny stones truly held any magic or if they were just rocks.

  I called Simon again. He didn't answer so I left a message.

  "Hello, Simon. I'm sorry that I accused you unfairly, but you aren't exactly doing a good job defending yourself. A
nd you did kind of turn me into a monster. Sandra is out of town for a few days so I'd really like to talk with you about this. Or even not talk about it. We can talk about other things. Or nothing. I don't want to be alone. Okay… bye."

  I hung up the phone and looked at it as if it was the one that betrayed me instead of my own stupid voice. So much for being strong and demanding an answer.

  I ate a light dinner of a rotisserie chicken and a loaf of French bread and then tried to go to sleep.

  I really didn't want to be alone and it took a long time to finally fall asleep. Every sound in the night was a vampire coming for me or a Beast that I wouldn't be able to fight off.

  I dreamed that I was on a bright green hill in France and it was 1765. Dead mountain lions piled up around me, and when I saw a blonde maiden in a green dress, I slowly raised my arm to point at her. From my side, a striped hyena the size of a horse wearing spiked armor shot like a bullet and tore her to shreds. Little pieces of green and white fell like confetti. Then the lion-baboon beast turned to me and snarled.

  I woke up in a cold sweat. Swift firm knocks landed on the door.

  I sat up in the darkness. Another set of knocks. The clock told me that it was too early for any kind of normal, acceptable social call. My eyes grew wide, taking in the darkness and I slid off of the bed, reached under the mattress and extracted the vampire's hand gun. I'd been to a shooting range twice with an ex-boyfriend years before and I wasn't even sure how to tell if the safety was on, but I wasn't about to let that show.

  I went for the door and through the translucent curtains I saw flashing lights.

  Police?

  I slipped into the kitchen and carefully set the gun into a ceramic jar with the word "FLOUR" embossed into its surface. The hideous jar was finally good for something.

  Heart pounding, I went to the door.

  Another round of knocks made me jump.

  A pale, curly haired officer greeted me. "Sorry to bother you so late ma'am. Are you Sandra Smith?"

  "No," my throat was dry and my voice stuck in my throat.

  "Is she home?" his eyes scanned the dark room behind me. There were three other officers outside.