by Rowan Casey
The first shot slammed into the monster’s thick neck where it met the shoulder. The monster roared and stopped trying to pin down the quick and elusive Beast, charging straight at Perce. Saplings and small trees snapped out of its way like kindling and it churned up the ground, dirt flying as it dug in and flew at him in a rage. Inky blood flowed down its shoulder.
It was hurt, but mostly angry, the shot not slowing it at all.
Perce squeezed off his second shot in the space between one heartbeat and another. This one hit it full in the face just above its roaring mouth. The rifle was shooting high and Perce hadn’t quite adjusted his aim enough.
The shot stopped the monster’s charge as it reared back in pain. Though the wound didn’t kill it, it confused the monster, its own blood spurting and blinding it as the rifle round smashed bone and furrowed flesh.
Behind the monster, Perce saw a white glow grown and form into a wall that stretched out and was met by a golden glow.
Dani’s magic joining with the Questing Beast’s power.
The demon monster sensed it. It twisted and howled, charging Dani as she raised her arms, her golden light suspended now like a net between her and the Questing Beast.
“Slow it, the net isn’t big enough,” Dani yelled.
Perce took his final shot. He aimed low and shot the demon monster full on in its keister. Its hind end collapsed on it as the monster screamed. It twisted around and an inky tentacle coalesced from its stinking miasma of shadows and flew at Perce.
He tried to dodge but wasn’t fast enough on his tired feet. The tentacle caught him in his injured shoulder and wrapped around his neck, yanking him forward off his feet. Perce bashed at the tentacle with the rifle barrel, using it like a club, but to no avail. He dropped the rifle and clawed at it. The world started going dark.
His vision narrowed to a ruined face leaking oily blood and a gaping maw of nightmare teeth. Beyond the monster, Perce saw the golden glow rising over its head. He braced his feet against its chest as it tried to pull him into its jaws and jammed his hands into the mess of its face.
The tentacle slammed him into the ground and his whole body went numb. Perce stared up at all his nightmares combined descending down upon him and hoped that he’d bought enough time for Dani to live. Hoped the Questing Beast would take care of her.
Golden fire spilled over the monster, engulfing it. The demon thrashed and then was gone as though it had never been, between one terrified breath and the next.
Perce stared up at the suddenly blue and empty sky. He was afraid to move his fingers in case they didn’t respond. It’d be ironic, he thought, if he’d survived all this just to be paralyzed. Maybe Grimm could fix that.
A wet, raspy tongue grazed his arm as a huge white form crept up to his side. Feeling tingled through him and he felt the cuts in his shoulder healing. It was a strange, almost itchy sensation.
“I’m keeping her,” he informed Dani as she knelt next to him. “And you have a stick in your hair,” he added as he smiled up at her.
“I feel like I have an entire forest of dirt and twigs on me,” Dani said. “You can’t keep her. She’s a bear-sized cat fox beast. How will you explain that to Customs?”
“I’m going to name her Snow, because she’s white and pure like snow, and we’re going to be best friends,” Perce said. He felt giddy and knew some of it was likely shock. Some was just pure joy at surviving a fight, or really three fights, that he hadn’t expected to win.
Some of his giddiness was from facing his worst fear, the family curse, the Questing Beast, and realizing that it wasn’t anything to fear at all. He searched Dani’s face, hoping she felt it, too. They’d won. They had the part of the key they needed. They’d faced their personal demons as well as real ones. They’d won.
Perce sat up as Dani got to her feet.
“What happened to that monster?” he asked.
“I am not sure. I think it was the Veil but I have to ask Grimm when we see him,” Dani said. “It felt like with the Questing Beast’s help I was able to make a portal of sorts. I think I pulled the demon back behind the Veil. It’s definitely gone.”
“That’s a good trick to know. Good thing we had Snow here. Know. Snow,” he said. “Hey, I rhymed. Ready to go, Snow? I did it again!” He got to his feet and grinned at Dani, his mask fitting more comfortably, falling into old habits, old patterns.
“She can’t come with us,” Dani repeated.
Snow shook herself and seemed to shrink down, folding in on herself until she was only a little bigger than a large house cat. She looked up at them with her crystalline green eyes and made a sound approximating a cat’s meow.
All the tension and fear that Perce had been carrying in his heart bubbled out as laughter at the look on Dani’s face. After a moment, even Dani smiled, then chuckled and shook her head.
“I can’t win with you, ever, can I?” she said once he’d stopped laughing.
“Never,” Perce said. “Let’s go get Sophie out of that tree.”
“I can’t believe you left her in a tree.”
“There were hell doggies. I had to. I can only handle rescuing one damsel at a time.” Perce picked up the shard of Blade and carefully wrapped it in what was left of his shirt. Fighting demons was tough on clothing.
“If you ever call me a damsel again, Perce Pellin, I will break your face,” Dani said. “And I rescued myself. Well, with a lot of help from Sophie.”
Perce grinned and led Dani away from the wrecked clearing, Snow following silently in their wake. As they walked, she asked him about Bertha and then told him how she and Sophie had overpowered and killed one of the demon brothers to escape their prison. His admiration for Sophie grew even as his heart ached. He couldn’t stay here in this forest, this wild place with kind people and a beautiful, brave woman waiting in a tree for him to return.
Their quest was over. He would have to leave. For the first time in his life, Perce almost wished he could send Dani back to L.A. on her own and stay to live his own life.
A Knight didn’t have their own life. Not until their duty was done. Perce didn’t let himself think about after. Thinking about the future had only ever brought him pain.
Chapter Fourteen
They found Sophie still in the tree and got her down. She stared from the Questing Beast to Dani’s scarred but healed leg with questions in her eyes and told them to start at the beginning.
Dani did most of the talking as they walked through the quickly warming forest. Perce noticed she left out a lot of details like Grimm, the Knights and the Veil, but she gave Sophie enough to explain some of it, telling her about the family curse and how demons were going to use them as a sacrifice to get a magical knife blade. She told Sophie that Snow was her witch’s familiar who had come to her in her hour of dire need, which was a bald lie that Perce could almost admire. Dani had already told him that Sophie thought she was a witch, so the lie made sense.
It twisted him up inside to lie to Sophie, however, but he pushed down his apprehension in favor of preserving peace. She wasn’t of his world, no matter what her great-grandfather had done or not done. Sophie had a chance to live a happy, normal life. He couldn’t bring her any further into this than he already had. It wasn’t fair to her or her family.
They returned to town the long way, cutting around the southern edge so they could approach Bertha’s from behind and avoid prying eyes.
The boys spotted them as they walked out of the woods. Carl dashed back into the house while Oliver ran to greet them, smiling shyly up at Dani and looking curiously at Snow. He didn’t speak.
Bertha was up and doing much better, though she’d clearly been wrecked with worry. Dr. Zhou insisted on looking over all three of them. Sophie managed to gently talk him into not calling the Mounties, saying the situation had been managed and there was nothing a cop could do.
Their healed wounds confused the doctor, but he looked at Perce, then at Dani and shook his head. “I’v
e seen a lot of things in my life,” he said, leaving it at that without further explanation. They were both too tired to press him.
After wolfing down a quick meal, all three of them crawled into their respective beds. Bertha had spent the time waiting for word cleaning up the broken furniture and blood so they had clean sheets to sleep on.
Snow chose to crawl in with Perce, leaping up onto the bed as though she had always been a house cat. She started to purr as he crawled under the covers.
“I don’t know what to make of you,” Perce told her. “But I’m keeping you close. I think we’re linked, you and I.” He hoped Grimm could tell him more after he saw the Beast. Exhausted, he sank into sleep.
Dani couldn’t sleep. She’d tucked the t-shirt-wrapped Blade into her pack and now lay on her bed, her hand wrapped around the comforting weight of her pentagram medallion, her mind racing.
She wished she could leave Perce here in Benderlake. He fit here, for all his preternatural powers. He loved the woods, the wilds. She had a feeling that he could love Sophie, too, if he’d let himself. She’d glimpsed bits of the old Perce, the curious, clever boy she hardly remembered from before he drowned. For a little while, fighting side-by-side in the forest, it was like she had that Perce back again. This place, she was sure, somehow brought out the best of him. Maybe it could heal him, restore some of who he could have been had circumstances and their destiny been different.
She was tired of woods. Tired of wilderness and quiet. Dani wanted to go back to the city, to feel the life and noise and beat of tens of thousands of people sharing love and life and knowledge. She remembered how she felt seeing the ocean for the first time after they’d arrived in Santa Monica. She’d realized how small she was, how her life was a spark among millions. The world was big, so much bigger than her tiny cabin upbringing.
Once the quest was done, once they had saved the Veil, she thought she might want to go to college. Get a teaching certificate perhaps or learn to code for computers. Get a little apartment on the beach and learn to dance. She could visualize that life for the first time since she was a little girl dreaming of a place that wasn’t about church and destiny and hunting.
She could almost see a life where she and Perce weren’t joined at the hip.
Dani rose from her bed and crept through the Jack and Jill bathroom to look in on Perce. He had the blackout blinds pulled but enough light filtered in that she could make out his sleeping shape and the green gleam of the Questing Beast’s eyes as Snow raised her head and met Dani’s gaze.
She wasn’t sure what to make of the Beast. She’d heard the Lady of the Lake’s warning and thought it meant death. She was learning that prophesy wasn’t always so cut and dried. This creature had no evil in it, not that she could tell. No ill-intent. Instead its aura glowed with a purity that Dani had never felt. Whatever the Questing Beast was, it was a part of them both, intertwined with their lives and bloodline forever. Dani had felt its light and power when they joined to fight the demon.
The Beast was a creature of the Veil, she was certain, but she wasn’t sure what that meant exactly or what it meant for her and her twin. It was a question that perhaps Grimm could answer.
Dani nodded to the creature and slipped back to her room, hunting only elusive sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
Dani had called Grimm and arranged a flight but even Grimm couldn’t fast-track an unregistered pet across the border. After much arguing, Bertha intervened and said that Snow could stay with her and the boys.
Perce looked at Snow and raised an eyebrow. In answer, the Beast jumped up into Oliver’s lap and started to groom herself.
“Take good care of her,” he told Oliver.
Tentatively, Oliver stroked a hand over Snow’s soft, white fur. He looked up at Perce with grave eyes and nodded solemnly.
Dani looked like she might object but instead she pushed her lips together and nodded also.
Perce understood. He hated to leave Snow behind, but he intended to return after the ritual was complete. He had to fulfill his quest, then he could come get his cat, and maybe win Sophie over.
“I’m getting one of those phone things,” he told Dani as they gathered their stuff. Samuel would be there to drive them back to Whitehorse any minute.
“A cell phone?” she asked, giving him a skeptical look.
“Sophie says I can use the video to call her and we can see each other, like we’re on little TVs. Doesn’t that sound great?” Perce said. He also intended to use the phone to do things like learn what kind of music he liked, read books, maybe learn another language. He wondered if he could learn Hän online. Maybe he’d ask Sophie to teach him more once they were talking over the phone.
Dani shook her head. “Sure, sounds great,” she said.
They had quite the send-off crew. Dr. Zhou was there to see them off as well as Bertha, the baby, both boys, and of course, Sophie.
Her face was still bruised but a long night of sleep and a shower had done her good. Perce didn’t think he’d ever met someone so beautiful and brave and kind. His sister was likely alive because of Sophie’s courage. Sophie couldn’t begin to understand what that meant to him.
Sophie and he walked a little away from the group as Samuel loaded Perce and Dani’s packs into the back of his truck.
“I wrote down your number,” he said, patting his jeans pocket. “So I can call once I have one of those phones. I’ll make sure it can call Canada. I wrote that down, too, in case.”
“I look forward to it,” Sophie said. She took a deep breath and then stepped forward, embracing him quickly. “You aren’t half the fool you think you are, Perce Pellin,” she murmured in his ear, her warm vanilla scent folding around his senses like a blanket.
Perce couldn’t stop himself from flinching at her words but he quickly covered it by wrapping his arms around her in a return hug. He wasn’t brave enough to sneak a kiss, not with her whole family watching.
“Mahsi’ cho,” he said into her silky hair. “You helped save us and I will never forget.”
Sophie pulled away from him and he saw her dark eyes were bright with unshed tears. This felt far too much like goodbye to him, a permanent goodbye. He knew it likely was, but prayed that fate would be kind to him. Kind to all of them.
Dani chose to ride in the back with him. She leaned against his shoulder as the truck bounced down the road away from Benderlake.
“I’m sorry you had to leave Snow,” she said.
“I’ll get her back. She’s the Questing Beast, right? That means I can go on another quest to get her out of Canada. Or maybe come back and win the damsel and we’ll live happily ever after like in the story books.” Perce grinned down at his sister.
“I told you not to use that word,” Dani said with mock sternness.
“You said not to call you that and I didn’t.” He made a face at her.
Dani laughed and reached up to flick the tip of his nose before she settled her head on his shoulder.
“Never change, Perce,” she said with a chuckle. “You just go on being you.”
“I’ll do that,” Perce said softly. For her sake, he would never change. He’d give his life for her’s in every way, forever. Anything else was the dream of a man who had other choices to make. A man who didn’t exist.
He watched the town fade from view, replaced by trees he might never see again. Deep in his heart, Perce felt a twinge as the dim light of hope for something different, an end to his endless quest, faded away.
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The Veil Knights Series
The Circle Gathers (Book 1)
Hound of Night (Book 2)
Cloak of Fury (Book 3)
The Questing Beast
About the Author
Rowan Casey is the pseudonym for twelve New York Times, USA Today and Amazon bestselling writers w
ho have come together to create the Veil Knights shared-world experience.
With more than ten million copies of their books in print around the world, they include Lilith Saintcrow, CJ Lyons, Joseph Nassise, Steven Savile, Annie Bellet, Jon F. Merz, Pippa DaCosta, Robert Greenberger, William Meikle, Steve Lockley, Hank Schwaeble, and Nathan Meyer.
For more information, visit
authorrowancasey
www.rowancasey.com
[email protected]
Copyright Information
The Questing Beast
Copyright 2016 by Rowan Casey
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.