~ 45
The beast sat on the edge of the black forest with the wolf resting beside him. Their breath buzzed with hunger. The beast searched the streets, dividing the spoils, the unctuous parts reserved for him and the skim Chien. His tongue battered his mouth, wanting to taste the innards split into mince between his teeth, to relish the juices and thick syrups they held. His teeth jarred and clattered through his skull. His body revolted with hunger.
Then the beast saw a young maiden turn out of a house into the field. She with a lifted dress as a young man pursued. He stroked Chien's scruff, burrowing his hardened nails into the track of callouses. Then he shoved Chien off as the wolf tore away from the woods, condemning it to kill.
Doris fumbled the hem of her dress and tripped into the wheat, unfurling laughter across the meadow. Philippe toppled on top of her and disappeared into the patch. The beast’s heart thundered watching Chien draw a dark line across the field toward them.
“You are the devil” Doris laughed as Philippe pushed himself atop her, stamping a bill of kisses up her neck.
“Am I?” He rolled her into his arms and pulled the lacing to her bosom. Foot patter filled the air and the brush snapped. Doris shoved Philippe away and stood to see the meadow yawn open.
“Look” she said. “Somebody's dog is coming. I want to see it.”
“Leave the bitch alone” he tugged at her dress. “I don't want you smelling.” Doris watched the dark line widen. How energetic that dog must be, so playful and young to run so fast. Excitement swilled in her bosom.
Chien tore from the stock and toppled Doris to the ground, muffling the short cry into grunts as its fangs plunged into her arm. Choking pain clogged her throat while the wolf stole ropes of flesh and muscle, forcing down on her arm, halting bone between its teeth. Philippe watched the dress turn velvet in the moonlight, seeing its eyes become deep wells of sinful blood. Chien shook her, leaving a thrashed doll in the brush.
“Help!” Philippe shrieked as her screams surrendered to a torrent of blood gagged howls. Then he saw a man running through the field. “Help!” The wolf held her head in its jaws. Utter horror and agony stewed in Doris’ eyes, when Philippe turned away, searching for the man. The person drew close, running with full force. Philippe’s stomach knotted.
The beast slammed Philippe, sending a crushing pain slogging through his body. His eyes fluttered against the golden grain mottled in beads of black blood. The night oscillated in heat and cold as the darkened pellets turned into thick streams spurting across the meadow. An excruciating pain rippled through his collarbone as a powerful hand ground into his skull, crushing the globe into the dust. A bite locked onto his neck like a vice of razors, then reared back with diabolical strength. He opened his mouth to scream when blood welled up his throat. His fingers wormed into the soil then fell limp.
The beast stole scores of flesh from Philippe's body while Chien pinned Doris with her face enveloped in its jowls. The beast ran to the wolf with unwieldy steps, like clogs of iron welded to his feet, and stomped Chien to the ground. The wolf bellowed in pain as the beast received a warm mouthful of her. The zany test of meat swam on his tongue, setting fire to his nerves, drowning the black phantoms stoking hunger in his gut. The skin was earthy and rich, delightful, when Chien let loose a howl of desperation.
Villagers turned out from the village. The beast growled as he hoisted Doris upon his shoulder and ran with her warm body slunk against his neck. Her breaths were bleating, and blood sowed the field back to black forest. Chien followed at his side, seeing the torches grow over the field like suns of a thousand deaths.
The trees wove a crown of sin over his head, hiding his guilt from the starlight, and roots webbed in soil rose like snares against his feet. The beast looked back as a volley painted the fields, roving over the shouts of bane and fear. The townsmen formed a party. They came to kill.
Flames fizzled off the torches, pulsating over the fishing boats as hunters searched the shoreline. A coolness came off Doris as her wound seeped down his back. The beast came to the edge of the black woods, standing just within the quilt of shadows. Chien stood at his side, breathing the scent of the lowborn men. The beast watched, seething with rage and hunger as Chien burst from the thicket, dashing across the sand toward the coast. Shots sang through coils of smoke. The wolf plunged into the water, disappearing beneath ripples of musket shot staining the surface with reflections of fire. The men scurried, thrusting their bayonets into the seabed.
The beast’s incensed cry stole the hunter's attention as hounds flooded into the black forest. The beast fled, veering around the trees as they formed a chain of dead bodies, each a victim of his bloodlust. Wooden limbs stretched into muscle and bone, interlocking as a mosaic of casualties. Their mouths gaped in perfect imitation of the winds moan, and their feet plummeted into the soil through roots.
A feral lust for meat hung on his breath, obsessed with mortal blood, when a hound burst from the shadows and toppled him to the ground. The body fell from his shoulder and Doris lay spread out in the brush with the moonlight obscuring her pale and lifeless form. The bitch doubled around, stalking the beast, then struck again and resumed its haunt. The beast swung and scored the air as Gerard, the hound’s master, went to pack another shot into his musket and fumbled the ramrod. The hound charged again when the beast caught it by the throat with a nail hooked in its neck and drove it into the ground. Cries ruptured the woods as the hound shriveled in agony, the beast tearing its scalp, taking back an ear and patch of meat. Gerard raised his eyes to the beast arched over the dead hound. The skirmish was lost. His pores became rancid with fear as the beast armed, transfixed in blood lust, seeing, hearing, breathing nothing but death.
Gerard cried with inescapable terror as the beast whirled around, upon him before a breath expired, and collapsed him beneath the strength of the demon king. The beast hoisted him off the ground and carried him on its shoulder. Gerard’s eyes flecked with visions of Doris lying cold, retching his last meal.
Shadows swam around the fire flickering between the trees. Hounds poured through the forest after the beast’s scent. The beast lurched forward as their cry quickened, feeling the torches simmer on the back of his neck, when it saw a steeple through the canopy of leaves. Hope.
The hounds’ cries magnified as pistol fire chewed the bark off the trees around his head. The beast ran till the woods fell away to a cliff mounting the ocean. A thick sea breeze wafted through his fir, cold and daring. He stood on the edge, the black waves ninety, a hundred and twenty feet below. Gerard moaned, losing his words to drivel, when the beast saw the first poacher released from the dark forest. A hound broke out from behind him, frothing with a delirious intent to slay.
The beast leaped from the cliff. Gunfire followed and pellets sizzled in the vacuum as they plummeted, shattering the black water like ice, cold, hard, sharp as glass. Darkness surrounded them. Gerard drifted off his shoulder, rising toward the break when the beast retrieved him, its prize, and swam toward the wall. Arsenal rang from the cliff, flashing the night skies with smoky orange blooms, and thuds echoed in the waves as impotent bullets fell into the sea. The beast dove with his spoil and entered the cave.
Gerard awoke at the staircase. Nausea clenched his gut below the broken ribs. What was that falling? he wondered. Cracked bones turned his breath into ember and his leg felt swollen. He reached out and touched the bullet wound hovelled in his thigh, and blacked out. The beast dragged him by his collar, trailing new blood over old.
~ 46
“When did you last see Philippe?” Fierro asked. Cyril pulled the sheets, rolling to his side as his gut retched with nothing to eject. Willem offered some water in a cup rubbed down with bootleg. Cyril took it, dipped his nose over the brim, and smelling the spices put it to his lips.
“Bloody water!” Cyril spit and threw the cup on the floor, then rolled to his back like an expectant mother, straightening his legs and kicking, biting down on the p
ain. “Where’s the hair of the bitch that bit me?”
“Withdrawals are something” Fierro said. Willem nodded, picked up the cup and took it outside the room. “I have the thing that’ll fix all your woes. Cooperation.” He pulled Cyril’s flask from his pocket and set it on a drawer next to the bed.
“I didn’t kill him!” Cyril watched the sun glint off the flask like a jewel. Fierro laughed. He took the flask, screwed off the cap and let a few drops touch Cyril’s lips. He lapped it off his lips like the devil eating tar.
“Atta’ boy. Giving us the only intelligible thing we may get all day. Of course you didn’t do it. Besides being a coward, you were in a coma for the last two days. You haven’t missed anything except Philippe. In fact everyone will be missing him.”
“Dead” Cyril repeated as he clutched his heart and watched the ceiling for evil spirits.
“Him and a comfort girl. Looks like they were attacked by a man and a dog, a big dog, according to the tracks. Know anyone of the sort? Some miffed husband of an unfaithful pretty bride? Maybe a floozy’s old man?”
“Dead” Cyril repeated, imagining their bodies sewn against the mausoleum wall like dolls in a playhouse. He turned his gaze out the window to the horizon where clouds peeled blue from the skies. “I didn’t do it.”
“That isn’t being contested” Fierro said, raising his eyes to Willem’s as he came back into the room.
“I didn’t do it” Cyril plead with the coxswain. Willem held a cruet and Fierro summoned him over. He dropped half a shot of whiskey into the drink, then poured it into the councilman’s mouth with a saucer.
“You’ve rattled that chain already” Willem said. “All the good captain wants is when you last saw him. Was he with anyone? Know of anyone plotting to kill him?”
“No one!” Willem gave him another run and Cyril fell back into his pillow, swishing his mouth, and released a dry sigh of relief.
“Whoever did it did a real work on him” Fierro said. “Looks like the man tore him to pieces and fed what was left to his dog.”
“A damn big dog” Willem commented as he put the cup forward and withdrew when Cyril reached for it. “We need something else first.”
“Anything!” Cyril turned between both men like a magnet switching polarity. Fierro pulled a notepad from his pocket, licked his finger, and pulled the pages apart till he found a list scribbled front and back.
“What was your business with Philippe?” Fierro asked.
“What do you mean?” Cyril gestured for another sip.
“Come out with it, Cyril. I’m the captain and steward of the docks. Who do you think takes the orders and carries the shipments? Philippe bought a hundred pounds worth of poison for you. What did he want?” Cyril rolled his eyes back to Fierro like a penitent seeking absolution.
“Just an extra pair of ears” Cyril stuttered. Willem looked at Fierro and read the same disbelief painted across his brow.
“You’ll have to do better than that” Willem said. He took the flask from Fierro, opened the window, and turned it upside down, letting the sap colored fluid flow out in chugs.
“I swear it” Cyril yelled as he looked to Fierro with pleading eyes. The captain faced him with lips cramped shut. “He wanted to hear the rumors. Aye. Yeah. Sailors and bar fish votes count just as much as the populace, he’d say. He wanted to find his corner in the people’s market.” He turned his eyes toward Willem who raised the bottle to an angle, slowing the flow.
“And?” Willem asked. Cyril kicked the sheets and puffed his lips as sweat burned in his eyes.
“And he wants to spread rumors. Slander. Defamation. He thought he could make mayor.”
“More!” Willem tilted the bottle down again.
“That’s it! Just a selfish bastard for power and panache and power” he spit until the air in his lungs fell flat, and gasped for breath. Willem looked to Fierro who returned a nod. He threw the flask onto his lap where the whiskey bled into the sheets. Cyril scrambled and brought it to his lips, collecting the last few drops which melted against the back of his throat.
“That’s it?” Cyril slammed the flask on the floor as the men left the room. “You twit! Come back here and I’ll give you a proper romping.”
~ 47
“Is it a man?” Edmond asked, staring at the new prisoner.
“No, and it would be ill to refer to it as one” Gerard replied, holding his leg as it bled through the wrappings. He pulled back the gauze and vomited as the septic odor filled the cell. Edmond scurried across the floor, placing his hands on each stone, pushing till he shook, soiling his pants, and grunted with disappointed. Clearly he's gone mad Gerard thought, watching the deranged prisoner race about like hare coursing. None of this is worth Philippe and that whore. She should be here, not me.
Edmond jabbered and tossed from one side to the other, probing until he found a bone fragment resting beneath a patch of straw. He dove and crushed his head against the stone wall. Seconds later he woke with it in his hands and moored it in his fingers, baring his blackened teeth. Gerard watched him from behind. He studied his drab sackcloth and chest that wrapped tight over his ribs like tusks, rancorous with starvation. The prisoner walked with a limp, anchored by a bloated gut. Gerard watched him, wondering when his body might deform into a scarecrow like his mate’s.
What an awful existence Gerard thought as he watched Edmond fall into the corner and model the bone like a relic of some fallen god. He turned to his side, relieving the pressure off his swollen leg, and pulled back the dressing again. Pus rose like a mushroom of expired mustard from the sore. His fingers trembled as he pushed into the tissue, medicating it with spit, and cleaned the lesion till blood flowed like water.
“How long have you been here?” Gerard asked. Edmond jumped as a door hinge squealed. Chains clanged against metal and footsteps rapped beyond the cell bars. Gerard fixed himself up on his arm, leaving his bandages undone, and shoved his back against the wall. Shackles clashed against the stone floor and Edmond squabbled, slapping his head. The beast came into sight, turning Gerard’s spirit to poison. It walked with coercion, lugging its body with each step. He saw a pelt of thick black hair consuming its body and an iron clasp hanging from its paw. His breath stopped in a transom of disbelief; it’s teeth were like a man’s, not in their ill keep but in their form and shape. Yellow eyes measured them both, unable to differentiate between the bloated and the glutton. A key slipped between its finger and the gate gave a rustic scream as the cell door opened.
Edmond dashed to the side of the cell and sunk into whimpers as the beast threw the chain at his feet. The man kicked the collar, humming as it slid beside Gerard’s macerated leg. The grating metal sent shivers through Gerard’s spine as Edmond began salivating, arrested with confusion and fright. The beast charged in. The foul stench gagged Gerard while it grasped the chain and dragged Edmond outside the block. The beast dropped the prisoner and the man wept and laughed as it twisted his leg back and clamped the iron ring around his ankle. Screams of laughter echoed down the prison walls as the beast lagged Edmond away by the chain cuffed to his ankle. Gerard curled up and closed his eyes when all became still.
~ 48
The leaves jingled, opening to a thousand blinking stars just arm’s reach above Gabrielle’s head. Owls tracked her from their branches, circumscribing the silence with rapid hoots, while bats reigned the skies, soaring in the venues of the wind. Gabrielle tightened the scarf around her neck as she stepped out from the shadows into the meadow. A triad of dragonflies circling like diamonds on a chain of moonlight dispelled as she passed. A soft night breeze rocked the grass, and she listened as the hum of the wild grew like the mountains.
Gabrielle opened her satchel and fumbled a beet into the straw. She knelt down and beat the grass every which way, like a blind man searching for coin. Gabrielle found it and blew the stem clear of any fray. She righted herself on her knees. Steadying for a bite, when she saw the wolf. Its eyes grew magnetized
with hers, setting one paw in front of the other. The creature bore its teeth, licking its gums, and the fur on the ridge of its back spiked. Its jaws widened into a sea of spit where its tongue waited as a Leviathan waiting to strike.
Gabrielle opened her mouth to scream when a howl pierced the air. The wolf stayed, wanting to feed, to follow its instinct, to kill. The howl echoed again and the wolf turned its head in the direction of the call and barked, then ran off into the woods. Gabrielle fell into the brush, watching the stars convolute from gods to scribble. The nocturnal life watched her through globular eyes, reflecting moonlight like white flame, as she crept through the wheat.
The beast watched from the periphery as she carved the grass, circling about her old tracks, stumbling over stones hatched in sod. Chien lay beside its master, stalking her with its eyes, its tongue hanging, waiting to sponge up her blood. The beast held Chien down by the scruff, pushing it into the soil, forcing its obedience as she went on like a lamb separated from the pack.
The beast followed her, sorting out the silence with growls, coercing her toward the castle whenever she began to deviate from the path. Chien followed at its master’s heel, daring only to watch her, licking her scent and swallowing back spit like blood.
The girl wondered, meddling where mortal flesh was forbidden to roam, touch, see. Breathe. Not once did Sir James cross her mind. Once she left town it became dead to her. In her heart she placed a cross over it, deciding its closure. That world must be as the past to her, nor was it allowed to hold hope of a home if she wished to return. Everything of it must be dead. Its people. Its walls. The fields. The animals.
Fierro.
Gabrielle searched the skies and found the moon staring back with a brood of stars. The gods watched her in the mirror of its face, shining the light of their divinity at her feet, promising her a way of protection. When she reached the grassland she took the satchel off her shoulder and rubbed her neck. Gabrielle unpacked a tin cup, filled the tincture with water, and swallowed the contents until she gagged. Her lungs burned and feet ached. How much further, she wondered.
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