by A. W. Cross
19
Beast
The girl was gone. I searched for her. I hunted. But it seemed she might be gone for good. That might be my fault—along with all the rising panic and all the rumors of death.
I had to bring it to an end somehow.
Killing the mongrel didn’t help. It might have before, but now, with the girl gone, it seemed all my old plans had been ruined. Killing someone else wouldn’t solve anything, but there was part of me that still craved it. I wanted the sense of power and control the deaths had given me before.
And I was certain, that if I played it right, if I found the right target, somehow, I still could fix everything. Somehow, I would find a way.
The beast still lived inside of me, and it always found a way to take what it wanted.
20
Beauty
On the hill, wind rushed through the tall grass. Too tall. Normally, the flock would have made short work of all that greenery, but now our field seemed as sad and neglected as Howl’s castle. I brought Bullet up to the much-too-quiet barn.
A rifle cocked from inside. “Who’s there?”
It took me a moment to place the voice. Then I took another step to find his familiar brown eyes, though the rest of him had changed. Besides the red vest of the revolution, he had at least a week of scruff on his chin and wore his hair so long he had tied it back.
“Philippe. You scared me.” Philippe Beaumont was the son of one of my father’s friends—another shepherd in a neighboring village. We traded a few sheep over the years and hired each other as hands for heavy shearing and kidding days. I never did much with Philippe alone, as he was almost ten years older, but I always thought fondly of him. Like an older cousin.
“Isabelle.” He immediately lowered his gun, and I saw that he wouldn’t have been able to fire it anyway. His left arm was in a sling. He had just been waving the thing around like a prop, hoping that would be enough to scare any brigand away. “I’m sorry. I looked for you and your father. But when no one answered—it was so late, I didn’t think you would mind if I stayed in the barn.”
“No, that’s fine. I just got back myself.” I got off Bullet to give him a rest. I still needed to wash and I needed to sleep. I might even be able to find something in the house that wasn’t berries. Maybe some of Old Rose’s jerky.
I stepped past Philippe to enter the barn, and even though I was expecting it, its stark emptiness still cut like a knife. Ruby, Duke, Nutmeg—all of them were gone.
It seemed the reverent silence of a graveyard.
“What happened?” Philippe asked behind me.
“My father died.”
Philippe sucked in air. “I’m sorry, Isabelle. Did you have to sell the flock?”
Well, someone certainly had. And I didn’t want to look at their empty outlines in the straw any longer than I needed to.
I spun back around. “I need a few hours to rest, and then, I’m going to the village. Are you heading that way too?”
Philippe nodded, turning his head down. “I’m not much use in the capital anymore with my arm, and with spring here, I just figured it was time.”
That couldn’t be right. “You mean there is still fighting?”
“Some. But I know I’m not the first one back.”
No. Jean was. But he said the only reason he came back was because the fighting was over. Or, at least, that’s what I thought he had said. I really needed to talk to that boy.
“Well, if you’re passing through our village, we should go together. There has been some trouble with wolves, but I’ll trade you the gun for the horse, and we should be just fine.” My arm and leg still pained me on occasion, but nothing was broken. I could walk, and I could shoot.
“You mean a wolf got Edgar Berger?”
I heard the surprise in his voice, and even though it might not have been the most tactful way to ask, I understood his confusion. I never would have thought a wolf could match my grizzly father either. But a wolf like Howl . . . that was something entirely different.
Philippe shook his head. “I can’t have you walking while I ride. I hurt my arm, not my pride.”
Damn men and their pride. “Well, just give me a few hours, and then we can both get on. Bullet can carry both of us. Will that suit your pride well enough?”
Mine wasn’t the only farm that was empty. We passed two others on the road, and when we finally reached the village, a makeshift barrier of stray boards and capsized tables blocked the way. I sat behind Philippe, staring at it, until a few boards moved, and Jean ran out.
“Izzy!”
“What’s going on?” When had my sleepy village become a war zone?
“You died, that’s what’s going on.” He waved his rifle back at the village and the two other men standing on point behind him. The metal barrel of his gun glinted with fresh lacquer as did the buttons of his red vest. A polished soldier with his blond hair greased back. “At least that’s what we thought. I never wanted to give up hope, but . . . you were with him?”
I wondered how Jean could possibly know about Howl until I realized his blue eyes were boring into Philippe.
“No. We just met on the road.” But something in the intensity of Jean’s stare made me uncomfortable, and I dismounted. I hadn’t slept as much as I hoped, but I had washed. My coat covered the bite on my arm and any other cuts and bruises. I still felt so raw and vulnerable.
“Where were you then?” he asked.
Right. I had to explain my absence somehow. And I couldn’t think of anything except the truth. I tried for an abbreviated version—one that still kept my promise to Howl and explained nothing. “I . . . saw a wolf. I chased after him and got lost in the woods.”
“For a whole month?”
Yeah, that was unlikely. Even without knowing about the count’s castle before Howl, it only took me a day to find my way back to my farm. I would look like the silliest girl alive if I let that story stand, but I had nothing better to replace it with.
Silliest girl alive it was.
It might have been lucky that Jean never looked for me to be a brain. He finally shook his head and pulled me into his arms. “That must have been awful, Izzy. Let’s get you home.”
He meant the inn. My home was gone.
Once Jean had one arm firmly around my shoulders, he smiled back at Philippe. “Thank you for helping her get back. I imagine you’re both starved.” He waved us toward the barrier and another rush of unease fluttered through my stomach as we walked through.
My village seemed nothing but another prison cell.
21
Beauty
As we walked through the village, I noticed that most every man had a gun, and few women were on the street at all. Shutters and doors were closed up tight. It quickly reminded me of what I had passed on the road coming here. “What happened to the farms outside? Philippe and I saw . . . they’re all empty.” I wanted to ask about my farm too, but I had too much emotion to do it without it sounding like an accusation.
Jean shrugged, like it was only natural. “People feel safer in town right now, Izzy.”
“But everyone is okay?”
He nodded. “Bit cramped at the inn, but it isn’t all bad. With all the mouths to feed, I was able to sell your sheep for top dollar. I have it all saved—just used some to bury your father. You can keep the rest as your dowry if you want.”
My heart dropped. I couldn’t catch my breath. Jean sold them all to the butcher? Sugar, Jolly, Onyx—all of them were dead? I mean, we were a working farm. I had sold sheep to the butcher before and helped harvest several others over the years, but the whole flock at once?
I had prepared myself for them being sold, but how could I have prepared myself for this? I couldn’t even properly rage over the injustice, because to the village, there was none. To Jean there was none. He had done the honorable thing—taken care of my family’s affairs in my absence. Got “top dollar” and saved it all for me. How could I get mad at him fo
r that? Or for locking up the whole village inside the inn to keep them safe?
But I wanted to be mad at something. “Is all of this because of H—the wolf?”
“It’s not a normal wolf, Izzy. I saw it myself.”
That was the very reason I had to come back. Jean saw it, and he could tell me. Then I would know what I needed to do to move forward. “I wanted to ask you about that . . . What do you remember about the attack?”
He frowned with far more confusion than the question warranted. “Which one?”
I gaped. “There have been more deaths?”
“At least a dozen. Why do you think people are so scared?”
I supposed I should have expected that with how much the town was mobilized. But Jean could mobilize the town with just one story of a broken snare. And how on earth had Howl found the time to kill a dozen more people while I was staying with him?
Jean opened the door to the inn, and sound burst from the crowded tables. I shied from the noise, but Jean kept towing me toward it. “Come on, everyone will want to see you.”
Everyone? I didn’t want to see everyone. But Jean quickly pulled me up front anyway.
As Jean paraded me around to tell of my miraculous return from the dead, I soon heard small details of the “near a dozen deaths” that had been contributed to the wolf. A merchant who never made it to an appointed stop. A tailor’s wife who went missing. A drunk roughed up in an alleyway. All from nearby villages.
I should have been horrified, but the absurdity struck me first. It just seemed so unlikely that every death or missing person could be traced back to Howl. I didn’t even have to wait that long before hearing how the merchant had been notoriously unreliable, the tailor’s wife unhappy in her marriage, and the drunk, well, a drunk with some unpaid debts.
“And how do you know it was all the same wolf?” I turned from the crowd and glanced at Jean sideways. The stories were all so weak that I could point out the inconsistencies even without mentioning Howl. “Those villages are pretty far apart.” Maybe there were separate rogues, or maybe some of the occurrences had nothing to do with wolves at all.
Men could die or disappear from other causes. It didn’t have to be a wolf.
“No.” Jean quickly stepped away from me, mapping things out on a table with the mugs and plates. “It’s only what, twenty leagues? So, if the wolf ran all day, he could have made it.”
Ran all day? Howl was never gone all day. Like most wolves, his pack usually hunted near dawn or dusk and then he was back at the castle, quite literally in my lap half the time.
“And you know for certain that the wolf was russet? Has anyone else seen him?” I scanned through the small crowd of village hunters, but they shifted and looked back at each other.
One, who had been sharing details of the last reported death, raised a finger then put it down again with a stumped sort of frown.
“I saw him. I told you.” Jean snapped the words and glared like any doubt expressed was a personal insult. “Your father asked to talk with me. We hung back from the group and that creature attacked—just pounced on us out of nowhere.”
I had seen Howl do that with the smaller wolf, but that wolf had been broken in just one stoke. If Howl had attacked like that, how was Jean still alive? “But you weren’t hurt?”
“My gun got jammed. There was too much rain. I ran to the others for help, but by the time we all got back . . .” He shook his head, putting his hand over mine. Was he trying to comfort me, spare me the details, or shutting me up? I just couldn’t tell anymore.
“We’ll catch him, Izzy,” he said. “I promise.”
“How?” Whether I wanted Howl caught or not, nothing they had tried worked so far.
“We follow the pattern. There’s always a pattern. It’s the way we ferreted out nobles, even when they tried to slip out in disguise. They always have old habits they fall back on. Animals in the forest are the same.” He gestured to a stuffed bear—the largest of his hunting trophies—and moved back to the map he had been building on the round table. “So, the wolf attacked here, here, and . . .” He paused when he ran out of cutlery. “Izzy, can you grab me another plate from the kitchen?”
“What?” I had been trying to piece together all the stories, and he just wanted to send me away? Order me back to the kitchen like one of his sisters?
And none of the other hunters spoke for me either. I had been so focused on Howl and the wolf mystery, I hadn’t paid them much attention before, but I was quickly feeling cowed by their disproval. They all were hanging on Jean’s every word and frowning at me, like I was deliberately holding everything up by refusing to follow a simple instruction.
But that was right. I had gotten used to Howl calling me smart and giving me his undivided attention, but the hunters wouldn’t think I had much to contribute. I never had.
More than just my gender, I was never social in town and had followed the script Jean had set for me. Jean might have been the one to pull me up here, but it wasn’t to have me speak with the others. He would have never expected or wanted that. I wasn’t the brain. I was just some silly girl who got herself lost in the woods after her father died, someone who needed to be protected—not only from the wolf, but also the grisly and complex details of how the hunt was to be accomplished. A pretty face meant to draw in other customers as he prattled on. A prop, and now an errand girl.
An Omega.
I opened my mouth, but didn’t speak. Everyone was staring, and I just didn’t know how to.
“Oh, are you tired? Do you need to sit down?” Jean tried, and now I was certain his show of concern was nothing but patronizing. Nothing that I wanted.
Then Anna-Marie sprang forward like we were in a race.
“I’ll do it. I know just where they are.” She squeezed his arm then darted away.
“Thank you,” Jean said, dismissing the matter, but whether or not I went back to the kitchen now, it seemed I had also been forgotten. He went back to mapping and sorting through all the hunters’ claims without me, trying to make all the rumored attacks fit the pattern he worked out in his head. He had been watching it all and thought they could counter its spread with some strategy he learned fighting nobles at the capital. That quickly led to more war stories and boasting.
With the inn so full and all the admiring, worshiping eyes—it really seemed like the wolf was the best thing that ever happened to Jean. He got so wrapped up in it all, that I slipped away toward the back to stew in my own venom.
Was I really the only one who had some doubts about the wolf?
Then, I wasn’t the most unbiased party either. Maybe a part of me still wanted to defend Howl, no matter how much evidence stacked against him. But that was just it. There was too much.
The boy I cared about, the boy I saw every day in that castle, and even the wolf I saw in my room at night, just couldn’t be the cause of all this. One tragic accident in one terror-filled rage, I could have believed. But for everything to be some elaborate act while a whole slew of bodies stacked up . . . it just didn’t make sense.
Howl had been cursed from birth and was over twenty years old. If he truly was that out of control, he should have killed thousands of people during that time. Not just a few in a single month. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t hurt me either.
There was no way my blundering, awkward wolf could successfully live a complete double life and lie like that. Even when hiding his wolf form, he left so many clues I might have guessed it myself if I had seen shapeshifting as anything more than a fantasy.
Then Philippe came back to me, shaking his head as well. “You know, some of the things he’s saying just don’t add up.” He rubbed his splinted arm and got the haunted look my father sometimes did when he talked of the Beast of Gevaudan and the first uprising against the count. The look I had expected to see in Jean when he returned home, but never did. “About the war. It really wasn’t as pretty or organized as all that.”
“How was the war? F
or you?” I flinched as the words poured out of my mouth, but I didn’t call them back. I had to know what it was like for someone who wasn’t Jean.
Philippe shook his head. “There is no war anymore. The fighting . . . that really didn’t last that long. Now . . . it’s just the guillotine. Lines of nobles, every day. Our leaders built barricades around the city but not to keep out beasts. It’s to keep nobles from slipping through the gates. They imprison and kill more and more. And you know some of the ones they kill deserve it, the ones who whipped people for looking at them wrong or glutted themselves on cake while the rest of us starved, but—no one really checks anymore. They just run them all through. Women. Children. There’s blood and heads in the street, and still the leaders crow like . . . like . . .”
Like Jean. The rioters had all become like Jean and even like me when I almost shot Spin. They were so reckless and blind in their anger that they went too far, not even seeing the new horrors they were causing. At least not all of them did.
Philippe clearly had. “When my arm got hurt, I was glad. I thought, now I can go home, and no one will say nothing of it. They kill traitors too.” He shuddered when he looked at Jean and turned away. “I just want to go home; I don’t want to cause trouble. If it’s just wolves he’s after, maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“He thinks there is another Beast of Gevaudan.” And maybe there was. I wasn’t around for the first beast’s reign of terror. And now it seemed like I hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to the stories. Had it ever felt like this then? Like men chasing shadows? “Do you remember that hunt at all?” Philippe might have only been around eight at the time, but maybe that was enough.
“Some.” Philippe shrugged. “Your pa and Jean Chastel were the heroes.”
“How did Chastel know to use silver bullets to shoot the wolf? I never asked.” The count might have caused the wolf crisis, but now I was much more interested in how it ended.