The Beast Within

by SL Perrine

  “Who the hell are you?” John asked, still standing in front of his family with his arms now outstretched in front of them. The man who stood in front of them was just a boy; barely eighteen. That made him not nearly as scary as the monster he was before. “Who are you?” John repeated himself when the boy didn’t answer.

  “I’ll answer your questions if you can answer mine,” the beast said. “My name is Ty. Where the hell am I?”

  “Welcome to Earth, demon boy.” Xander, not viewing this new form of the monster as a threat, slammed the dagger onto Renee’s dresser. He looked back at the boy once more before he sauntered off to his room.

  “Wait… What?” Ty asked the others, looking around in confusion.

  “Don’t know how else to say this, but the passage is not working. The sigil isn’t working and we couldn’t get back when we tried, which means you can’t get back,” John explained and paced in the small room. He scratched at his head when Renee stopped him, grabbing him by both of his arms.

  “Dad?” She pulled him away from his thoughts long enough to look at her.

  “Yeah?” he asked, contemplating pulling away from her again.

  “Where’s mom?”

  The recognition in John’s eyes startled his daughter as she realized what must have happened. “With the passage closed and the monster in human form, that must mean we were cut off from the magic of the other world, which means–”

  “Which means she’s stuck there, and he is stuck here,” Renee finished her father’s thought. A sense of dread thumped into the pit of her stomach as she looked back at the intruder.

  Chapter -3-

  Renee was fifteen when the first monster woke her while she slept. It was a difficult scene to witness as a young girl. She had watched her mother slay a beast, who crawled from the pits of darkness into her room, through a magical portal in the back of her closet. Her mother tried to explain how the beasts existed and how they could "sense" her because of the family she was born into. When she thought of that moment, she vaguely remembered nodding, lying down, and going back to sleep.

  The next morning, her mother was in her room with a strange knife, carving the sigil of luce into her closet door and every other door in the house. She said it was a sigil of protection for their family, and the "beasts" wouldn’t be able to sense them as long as they were inside the house. Over the last year, her mother trained her to protect her family and said she was born to protect the world from them. Renee, now sixteen, still didn’t know the full meaning of her mother’s words. She often wondered why those sigils were not on the doors of the house prior to that day. She also wondered how her bloodline was special enough that the beasts would look for her, though she never asked.

  Xander spent the better part of the evening pacing around the house. John did the first thing he always did when something needed answers. He lost himself in the many books he had on the subject of mystical creatures, magic, and other worlds. Renee kept a close eye on Ty, who had no problem standing still, looking out the window for more than two hours. She studied him from her seat at the dining room table. The main area of the house was completely open, allowing them the ability to see him wherever he moved–if he had moved. In the same aspect, Renee could sit a room away and keep a watchful eye on him. She didn’t know what type of power he might have with the passage down, and if her father was right, they had no access to magic from their side anyway.

  There was speculation her mother may have gotten out of another door. She had gone off on her own in search of someone. She was always searching for someone. John thought maybe she’d sensed what was about to happen and was able to break free. If not, she was stuck in a world not her own with those things. Who knew how many of them roamed the lands of that place–not that she would know what it looked like. Her mother would never let her go. She always told her it was too dangerous for her.

  "We should just kill him." Xander pulled a steak knife from the butcher block and pointed it in Ty’s direction from behind the kitchen island. “Isn’t that what we do? We kill them.”

  Renee stood a room away from either of them, but still in-between. She had a sudden, overwhelming feeling to protect Ty. "No... Nobody is going to kill him. As of right now, he's not a beast. He's a human," Renee told him.

  John, in a sort of trance, took the knife from Xander's hand and placed it back in the butcher block, all while holding a big brown leather book. He moved back to his desk in the corner of the living room and mumbled to himself.

  “But he’s a demon. We kill them any other time.” Xander sulked.

  John said nothing. He kept reading as if he were all alone in the house. Renee figured he would spend every hour of every day with his nose in a book, if not for the pesky need to sleep, eat, and keep up with proper hygiene. Just when she thought she would have to reason with Xander, John turned to them.

  "He's not in his normal form," John stated.

  "We already know that, dad," Renee chimed in as she stepped away from the table. The need to protect him caught her off guard. She felt like running away; as far away as her two feet would take her. Unfortunately, she couldn’t leave Ty with Xander. The urge to protect him remained. It was something she’d have to figure out, but much later. In the meantime, she would keep him within her sight.

  The current task at hand was finding out what was going on. It wasn't as if they had a direct line to the dark side. She had already realized the enormity of the situation because if he was stuck there, with them, imagine the number of others like him who may have been stuck as well. The entire world could be in danger. Renee suddenly felt very small in her little corner of the earth. How did her mother expect them to protect something so big? Were there others like her and her mother? Again, another question she never bothered to ask.

  John cleared his throat and glared at his daughter for interrupting him. "What I mean to say is that he's not in his normal form. The beast..."

  "Actually, we are called mietitore.” Ty stood, looking out the window.

  “Well, you looked like a minotaur,” Xander shot back with a dirty look.

  “Xander, please.” John turned to his son.

  Xander had reluctantly given Ty a shirt, jeans, and shoes to wear. The jeans would have been the right length if they were four inches longer. Renee could see every ripple of muscle bleeding through the navy blue T-shirt, where it was stretched thin. The shoes remained in the corner of the living room. Ty preferred to remain barefoot rather than try them on.

  “Well, whatever you’re called, here, we call you a beast,” Xander said.

  “Xander, give him a break for a minute while we try to figure this out, okay?” Renee let her gaze slip from the man in her brother’s clothes and remembered her father and his book. “Dad, you were saying?” she said, eager for him to be the one talking instead of her. She could feel the heat rush to her face each time Ty caught her looking at him, so she lowered her gaze to her hands and let her father speak.

  "I was saying that if he's not in his form, and the sign of luce has disappeared from every door–not only in our house, but I'm betting from everywhere–then maybe there's a magical power outage,” John finished.

  “Really, that’s your best guess for why I'm stuck here? A magical power outage is absurd. Our worlds don’t exist because of magia. Magia, or magic as you call it in this world, exists because my world exists. Humans don’t have magia,” Ty stated in haste.

  “I don't understand. What do you mean?” Renee asked.

  He still looked out the window, but Renee could see the look of exhaustion on his face. “I mean that in order to have magic here, people here must be able to wield it. Humans do not have magic. We are born with it.” He sighed and turned his back to them. “Your sigil of luce, or light magia, hides your bloodline from us, just as our sigil of buio, dark magia, hides our bloodline from you and all the other light fighters.”

  “Light fighter? What’s a light fighter?” Xander’s curiosity
got the better of him.

  “Don't you see, Xander? We’re the light fighters. Is that right?” Renee asked Ty.

  “Not all of you are light fighters. Just the women of the ancient bloodline. The light fighters have been hunting mietitore for a century. It’s our curse,” he said it so low, Renee even had a hard time hearing him. The look he wore was of sadness. He wasn’t aggravated or angered to be stuck where he wasn’t wanted.

  “Yes, because you metit...oh whatever, have been coming here to kill us for centuries,” Renee said. “Your beastlike form is not exactly friendly.”

  Ty looked at her, laughed, and turned back to the window.

  “So, what you’re saying is you want to kill all our women before they can kill you? Is that all this is? Kill or be killed? Does anyone even know why?” Xander asked.

  Ty laughed again, still staring out the window. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. It’s a bit more complicated,” Ty stated.

  “How much more complicated?” Xander asked him.

  “More than I can explain right now.” Renee heard the frustration in Ty’s voice. “In our world, Pylira, we don’t look as beasts. We look like this,” he said, turning around and motioning to his current appearance. “This is how I always look in my world, just as you do.” He turned away with an almost sad expression on his face. “We don’t come here to kill anyone. We are in search of someone who has been lost to us.”

  Renee relaxed for the first time since he reanimated. The more he spoke, the more he sounded like anyone else she knew. She hesitated for a moment, but then sagged into the sofa. She was a few steps from where he stood.

  “If there are no sigils, and he looks like his normal self, then does that mean the portal between the two worlds is gone?” Renee turned and asked her father, who was nose deep in a book.

  “That seems to be an accurate notion.” John closed his book and set it on his desk. “All we can tell for certain is that he’s stuck here now. Whether magic is not here with us, I don’t know. However, the magic that held open the passage, at least, is gone. Or else, it would still be open.”

  “Okay, so what do we do now?” Renee asked as her father rummaged deeper into his stacks of books, which took up half of the living room.

  “I don’t recall anything like this ever happening before,” John said as he continued to flip through his library. “I just don’t know.” He sat down at the desk and let go of the book he flipped through.

  “That’s because this has never happened before.” Ty sunk down to rest atop the sofa’s arm. He sat there for only a minute before standing back up at the window. He looked uncomfortable.

  “And how do you know that?” Xander asked from behind the refrigerator door.

  “Since the first conflict between us, I have never seen this. That’s how I know,” Ty answered.

  “Wait… how old are you?” Xander let the door slam closed and walked towards the living room.

  "My age is undefined. I have been alive for centuries."

  “Well, you look like you're seventeen,” Xander said with a mouth full of food.

  Chapter -4-

  “Renee, you’re ogling again.” Callie’s teasing interrupted my thoughts.

  It seemed like it was just yesterday. Maybe because he didn’t look any different, or it could have something to do with the fact he hadn’t said a word to me since the first day we met, almost a year ago.

  It didn’t take long for him to settle in. He had taken up residence with others like him and moved into a house four blocks down the street from me. Somehow, because of my bloodline, I can tell who is actually a reanimated mietitore.

  Everyone else in town seemed to be put under a spell from that day on, having no knowledge of when or how certain kids moved to town. It was as if their memories had been tampered with. Of course, nobody ever outright asked Ty when he moved into the big house four blocks from me. If you did ask, they’d believe any story handed to them. It was that weird.

  In the small town of Cherry Valley, only five of them were there. Two of them were adults and the other three were children, or at least the human equivalent to teenage children. I remember Ty saying he was centuries old, but the fact he looked like a seventeen-year-old was probably why his “family” enrolled him into school. In the last year, we had only said “hi” to each other passing in the halls. Even though I’d been told I should hate his kind, I couldn’t help wondering how he and his family were coping with being in our world. It was about the same way my father, brother, and I were coping without my mother. We looked for her over six months. Finally, my dad said that was enough. He told us if we didn’t stop looking and work on opening the passage, we would never be able to find her.

  “Are you gonna eat that?” Callie sat to my right, poised and ready to take the muffin from my tray.

  “Callie, you don’t need the carbs,” Robin said with a roll of her eyes. She was the captain of the cheerleading squad. Therefore, it was her mission to keep us all on track. We had been on the squad together for five years, since the seventh grade. Even before that, we cheered with the local rec center. At the beginning of our junior year, Robin was selected to be captain. I couldn’t tell if it was her no-nonsense attitude about school spirit or her brunette Barbie-like figure that had gotten her the position. She had been on an ongoing diet for the last nine years.

  Callie, on the other hand, was a more full-figured gal. She wouldn’t trade her pom-poms for anything, except maybe a chili dog with the works. It’s not like she was rotund, but the way Robin saw it, we all had to be a size two or smaller. If she knew what size I was, she’d have kicked me off three years ago. Even with Robin’s constant mocking, Callie was still a lover of food–mostly the deep-fried variety. I still thought she was a blonde bombshell. She never seemed to gain an ounce. If I’d eaten like she did, I’d definitely be kicked off the squad.

  “No... I’m not going to eat it,” I said, and Callie grabbed the blueberry muffin off my tray before I finished my sentence. She scarfed it down before Robin could protest further.

  “Don’t suck your teeth at me, Robin. I’m not dieting. I don’t plan on starving myself for anyone,” Callie said as she picked the blueberries from the muffin and ate them. “Besides, we work out so much I couldn’t gain a pound if you paid me.” Callie plopped the last bit of muffin into her mouth. She closed her eyes and made an exaggerated movement with her mouth, saying the muffin was pure joy.

  “I’m just trying to make sure the squad stays in top shape. Lena graduated and left me the position to carry on the legacy. I have to get us to nationals this year.” She stopped picking at her veggie platter and looked at Ty and his friends.

  “What’s with them, anyway?” She motioned in their general direction. “You’ve been staring at that guy for months now. I don’t see the attraction.” Robin snorted.

  “If you like him, Ren, you should go talk to him.” Callie pointed out, picking leftover blueberry from under her fingernails.

  “No... That’s not it.” I pulled my hair over one shoulder and adjusted in my seat. The cafeteria was full and noisy, as always. Regardless of the clutter in the giant room or the halls of the school, I could always pick him out of the crowd. It was as if he had a homing device planted in him and I owned the only GPS navigator. “I guess I’m just curious about them. All of them.”

  “Why on Earth would you be? They’re a bunch of low-life wannabes. Don’t concern yourself with those less deserving of your time.” Robin spun in her chair, putting her back to Ty and his friends. “It is curious though, how his family did just kind of pop into town one day without notice. I mean, when anyone else moves to town, we usually have the 411 of who’s on the way before they themselves decide to look our way.” She absentmindedly twirled her hair around her fingers. “With the smallest community ever, it’s hard for anyone to do anything without someone finding out about it.” She jumped from her seat. “Well, see you in bio,” she said as she left the table, t
ray in hand, and headed for the garbage cans and the exit.

  “She’s right, you know.” Callie was always the voice of reason. “Nobody in town really knows anything about him or his brothers. I guess I can see why your curiosity has you staring at him every chance you get.

  “I don’t,” I snapped at her a bit too harshly and swung my head back in her direction. The motion of doing so made me realize I had unintentionally been looking his way again.

  “Calm down. I’m just teasing. He’s a good-looking guy, and I could think of other far worse people to look at.” She motioned to a table commonly referred to as a rejects anonymous meeting.

  We disposed of our trays and headed to our next class. Callie, Robin, and I had been friends since we were five. It was our very first day in kindergarten when we connected over crayons and naptime stuffed animals. Since then, we had always found each other in the same classrooms throughout the years, until our freshman year in high school.

  Robin was never as committed to her classes as she was to the field. If she maintained her C average, she didn’t work hard for the former. A C was the bare minimum required by all athletes to maintain their positions on a school team. She was very committed to her squad, however. She never allowed us to perform a routine twice, not even at games. She also insisted we all maintain a healthy lifestyle on and off the field.

  Callie, on the other hand, was a pure nerd at heart. She loved her books; loved Newton’s Theory of Relativity more than her own family. I don’t recall her ever getting less than an A in every class. As far as the school was concerned, we were on the same level. If she could have graduated and continued to cheer for the Cherry Valley Cheerleaders, she would be in her junior year of college by now. She may have been smart, but she enjoyed the popularity just as much. Even so, no one could ever use any of their lame blonde jokes on Callie. She didn’t act the part to fit in. That was probably one of the reasons why the jocks she liked never seemed interested.