Beast: An Anthology Read online

  Chills ran up my spine as the men cheered.

  I stayed hidden under my cloak long after my magic’s endurance had expired. I wanted to stay hidden there forever, but I needed to keep moving. I needed to reach that mountain pass where I would be free forever. I glanced up to see that it was near midday.

  Sneaking along the path, I traveled delicately through the wooded forest toward the east, leaving my failing shadow behind me. I deliberated. I could travel along the brook that I knew to be half a day’s walk to my right. It would keep my footsteps hidden and allow me to travel more discreetly. Or I could take the more direct route to the pass that would lead me through the open plains leaving me vulnerable without cover.

  I stood at the pinnacle of a small hill pondering my choices when out of nowhere, something landed hard and swift against my back. I began rolling down the hill across the brambles and leaves. There was a deep panting growl in my ears, and I realized I was not tumbling alone. It was an animal—a tall animal at my back. As we stopped falling, I felt its hand around my arm as it yanked me to stand making my head spin. A hand—no, a claw, was at my throat. I must have hit my head quite hard because I could not tell in which direction was the sky and which was the ground.

  Someone was speaking. A husky voice was shouting my name but all I could focus on was the animal trying to kill me. I struggled against the hold, waiting for the teeth or the claws to break my skin. Why wasn’t it biting me? My fingers grasped the long fur, and I pulled with all my might.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tight to stave off the dizziness. A voice inside urged me to calm down. I took a deep breath and pulled up a bit of magic from deep down inside my gut. It resided in that quiet place inside, so deep and subtle that if no one had told me when I was young, I would never have known it was there. Like reaching into a pond full of fish, I seized a piece of that magic, and I blended it with the thought that screamed the loudest from my mind. Pain. I wanted the beast to feel the most pain as possible, so I thrust the magic and the pain out through my fingertips and into the thing that threatened to kill me.

  Disoriented and exhausted, my magic was weak, but it worked. The thing howled in a way, so human-like and alive, it sent shivers through my heart. The grip on my neck was loose enough for me to escape, and I fell. I hardly even realized that it held me so far from the ground. The leaves crunched under my weight, but it was a relief to be on solid ground. It took a moment for my mind to settle itself, and once it did, I did not hesitate before standing to run.

  I nearly escaped. I would have if I had not looked back. I would have been free of that thing, but my curiosity had the best of me, and I turned my head in my haste.

  I did not know what to expect. Until that moment, it was not important to understand what was attacking, only to escape it. But what my eyes saw caused me to stop my running. It appeared to be a man, hunched over and writhing in pain. The black slacks and boots from my angle seemed normal and oddly familiar.

  I glanced around in a panic for the beast that had me in its grasp. I distinctly remembered the feeling of cold fur against my skin. There was no other sound or movement in the trees. I looked back at the huddled mass on the ground. I blinked, once, then twice—and realization dawned.

  “Theo?” I whispered. His moaning no longer seemed so animal-like anymore. He groaned into his hands as he rolled on the ground. I took a step closer.

  I should have run. For everything that had transpired between me and Theo that morning—the way he betrayed me, attacked me, and what I did to him in return—I should have bolted the moment that I realized it was him. But I didn’t. Sometimes, the mind is not strong enough to contend with the heart.

  So I stepped closer. I reached a hand out to touch his back.

  Then he growled, “what have you done to me?” I furrowed my brows in confusion. Something about his voice was different.

  I answered back in little more than a whisper. “It was just a touch of pain. I thought you would kill me. It won’t last long.” Why was I defending myself? I should have been the one so angry.

  “No. Not that. What have you done to me?” He shouted, then he turned his body to face me, and I nearly screamed. Theo’s face was almost entirely covered in coarse, black hair along his cheeks, brow, and chin. His eyes, once a beautiful crystal blue, were now jet black with no white in them at all.

  And it wasn’t only his face that was monstrous. The hair, that of a dark wolf’s, reached down through his arms and into his hands, which now held the shape of claws, long and sharp.

  I felt the color drain from my face. I whimpered a few questions of shock. “How…what…” But nothing made any sense. I was utterly dumbfounded.

  My first thought was that it was not my work. I did not, could not, do that. My magic was not so powerful, and if it were, there was no way that I would have ever done that to him. I wouldn’t even know how. And I would have said these things if it weren’t for the way Theo was stalking toward me with such a look of anger on his face. If I didn’t move quickly, he would have his claws around my neck in no time.

  “Change me back,” he said in a low growl. He hovered over me, at least a whole head taller. I don’t remember him being so tall; was this part of the spell?

  With every step he took toward me, I stepped back. I glanced around, trying to recognize my position, but with the fall and hit to the head, I was disoriented. I had no idea which way was North or where the mountain pass I was headed toward was from where I stood.

  I placed my hands out in front of me, as if that would stop the towering beast. “I can’t change you back. I don’t know how,” I cried.

  “Then try,” he bullied. A hand reached for me, but I was quick to avoid it.

  I needed to get away and fast. I bolted back up the hill from where we had fallen. I knew that if I reached higher ground, I would be able to grasp my bearings and tell in which direction to flee. But going up the hill was a mistake. I was slow and clumsy. It didn’t take long before his strong arms were pulling me back down, and again, we tumbled.

  “Anabelle!” he screamed as he pinned me to the ground, his hands holding mine by the wrists. “Look at what you’ve done to me.”

  His form was frightening. His face was barely recognizable under the fur. The entire shape of his face had even changed somehow. The blackness of his eyes made the hairs on my arms stand on end, the way they do at the start of a lightning storm.

  Still, under the monster, the recognition of Theo was still there. Under different circumstances, this position, under his body with his hands touching mine, would have been divine. Only twenty-four hours ago, it was all that I wanted and exactly what I expected—without the animal fur, of course. And the fighting. And betrayal.

  Suddenly, that thought brought me back to the moment. I remembered how angry I was at him, and instantly it replaced the fear.

  “You,” I growled back in his face from the underneath his straddling hold. “You deserve this. You betrayed me. You had a dagger to my throat!”

  “I betrayed you? You can’t be serious.”

  I struggled against his grasp. “Theo, let me go!”

  “Not until you change me back. I can’t go back to the castle like this, Ana. They’ll be looking for me. The entire village will be out here looking before long.”

  “Let them look. I don’t care. I hope they find you and see what a monster you are.”

  For a brief moment, he appeared hurt. “You’re a witch. A wanted criminal. Everything you said was a lie.”

  His breath was so close to my face that I could feel its warmth. It transported me back to last night, hiding in the shadows of the castle with his lips against mine.

  “I’m not a witch,” I said, my voice soft and weak from the sob lodged in my throat. “And not everything was a lie.”

  There was a long moment of silence. I could only stare at his mouth; his lips were all that I recognized. I wanted so badly to look into his eyes, to see them looking back at me, b
ut the abyss of black was too deep.

  Voices in the distance distracted us from our intensifying glares. The bounty hunter and his pack were not far.

  “Who is that?” Theo panicked. He scurried away from where he held me down, almost as if he forgot that I would flee if given the chance. He covered his face with arms, as if that hid him at all.

  “Bounty hunters. They mean to kill me.”

  His head snapped to face me as if it shocked him to hear this. Did he still worry about me? Was this news at all frightening to him? Even after threatening to turn me in himself. What did he think would happen to me?

  “Have you been sentenced to death?” he asked.

  I laughed. “Sentencing would require a trial. They believe I am evil, and that is enough for them. All they need to receive their bounty is my head.” Theo stared at me, his brow furrowed and fierce. I would not apologize for being dramatic or graphic. I had seen the leather pouch they meant for my head; it was filthy.

  His stare did not waver, and I realized that he wanted to know what I had done to deserve such a fate. He would not be granted that satisfaction. “Look, Theo,” I continued as I moved to stand, brushing leaves and thorns from my cloak. “They will not hesitate. If they see me, they will put an arrow through my heart without question. They won’t wait or let me speak. They’re too afraid of what I could do to them. So if they find me, within seconds I will be dead, and you will be stuck the way you are now forever. I don’t know where you will find another sorceress…or witch,” I snarled, “to change you back.”

  He grabbed my arm and pulled my face up to meet his. “Then change me back now,” he growled. I ignored his demand.

  “See that mountain range to the east. There is a pass that runs through them, just along the river, and on the other side of that mountain is my freedom.”

  He squeezed even tighter. “I’ve roamed these hills my entire life. Those mountains are unpassable. Everyone knows that.”

  “So you think, but from what little memory I have of my mother, she told me of that mountain pass, that it is found only with true magic, undetectable by man’s eye. And what lay beyond that mountain is farther than any bounty hunter or prince could reach. That is my freedom.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Take me there.” Immediately, he huffed at my demand. “You know the way better than I do. Help me reach that secret passage, protect me from the hunters, and as soon as we get there, I will change you back.”

  “Or I can squeeze the blood from your neck until you do it now, and we can be done with all of this.”

  I flinched. This wasn’t like him. The violence, the threats, the anger. This sounded more like his brothers. Theo despised them and everything they stood for. But now, I suspected they had a hand in this sudden change of heart.

  “Theo,” I whispered. It was all I could muster. I don’t know if it was a plea for mercy or a call for sincerity, but I spotted the subtlest blink. It was a crack in the façade. “They will kill me anyway, so if I must die by your hand, then so be it.” My eyes did not waver from his once.

  After a blood-boiling moment when neither of us spoke or moved, his shoulders finally relaxed and his near-pounce stance dissolved. “You can do it, then? If I take you there, you can change me back?”

  “I am confident that I can.” I spoke with strength as I stared into those inky black eyes. I hid my hesitation, and I pushed aside the fear inside that I would not be able to change him, let alone find that hidden pass.

  The Ambush

  “THOSE MOUNTAINS ARE a two-day journey. We can make it by nightfall tomorrow if we travel through the night. The others will move along the river where there is an easy trail, but I think we should take the thicker part of the woods. The hills will be steeper, but the distance is shorter.” I listened to him speak as he began walking. His knowledge of the forest was keener than I expected.

  “You must have spent a great deal of time out here. I always thought prince’s had better things to do than play in the woods.” I teased him, trying to lighten the mood I suppose. He kept walking ahead of me, picking his footsteps as if he were stepping in the exact place he had stepped before.

  “My oldest brother gained so much attention that they hardly noticed when I had gone missing. I stayed out here for two days once when I was a boy. I expected them to be furious, but when I returned…” he glanced back at me, and I could tell that he did not mean to share so much. He didn’t need to. I knew what it was he was going to say: that when he returned, they had not even noticed that he was gone. He had not told me that story before.

  It was actually out in the forest, west of the castle, that Theo and I had first met—not even a fortnight had passed since. He had frightened me out of my wits when I came across him on the trail. I had not seen another person for days, and I got the sense that he had been watching me before I found him. I knew straightaway who he was. He did not make an attempt to hide his shiny black riding boots and crimson red cloak adorned with his royal crest.

  I thought immediately that my time was up, and I waited for the approaching cavalry of knights to arrest me, but they did not come. I was so frightened, that I did not notice at first how beautiful he was. He was tall, and his face had a soft roundness in the cheeks and chin. And when he smiled, deep dimples pierced either side of his face. Never in my life had someone else’s smile had such an effect on my heart. Perhaps it was the fact that I had not seen a man so clean and kind in all my life, but Theo stole my heart in that first day. It started with curious conversation, followed by innocent friendship, but by the end the first week, it had become something neither of us could walk away from.

  Of course, I did not disclose who or what I was. I would not have gotten this far in my life if I told complete strangers what I could do to them with my bare hands and a little intention. It wasn’t long before I ached to tell him. I wanted to, not only to share something with him, but to release some of the burden of carrying that weight alone. I knew, deep down, that he would not condemn me. I believed he would protect me.

  I was wrong.

  “You must keep up!” he barked, turning to glare at me with those dark eyes. My daydreaming had caused me to lag too far behind. I pulled my pack further up onto my shoulder and I picked up my speed. Tears pricked my eyes as I thought about that kind man who greeted me in the woods not so long ago, and how much I missed him.

  We traveled in a rush for the rest of the afternoon. The pace never became comfortable for me, and rather being the one running away, it felt as if I was the one being run from. We did not speak, and I occupied my mind by watching his strange form rush through the woods and how familiar the territory seemed to be for him.

  Walking behind him, I started to notice subtle changes in Theo’s body. Early in the walk, he stood so straight, but as the sun moved across the sky, I noticed his shoulders began to hunch. And that was not all. His hips seemed wider after the first hour and his legs did not move in the same graceful manner.

  That was the first time I realized that Theo’s transformation was not complete. Did he notice this too? I wondered. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to mention it. I hated to think how much worse his curse could become.

  As dusk approached, my stomach ached with hunger. I had not eaten anything all day and it was getting too difficult to ignore.

  “Theo, we have to rest. I’m hungry.”

  He did not answer but kept moving as if he didn’t hear me.

  “Theo, did you hear me. I want to stop.” I tripped and landed clumsily against a tree. The lack of food was causing me to lose my coordination. Theo did not even glance back as I yelled from where I landed. “Theo!”

  “What!” he shouted back. I flinched at his response. Apparently, it was not only his appearance that changed with the curse. His temper was monstrous to match.

  I argued back. “I need to eat! And if you keep shouting like that, then you will attract that gang of imbeciles, and this
whole journey will be all for naught.”

  He huffed in frustration. “One hour. Rest and eat and then we continue.”

  It took nearly an hour to catch the rabbit. Theo watched me set the trap with the netting and rope from my pack, and I could feel his watching eyes. I knew he wanted to correct my work, but he kept quiet behind me. And I couldn’t help but feel smug when he looked my work over without correcting them.

  While the traps we laid were waiting in the hills, we wandered the woods to find suitable branches for a fire. Every few steps, we would hear movement or bird calls that caused us to freeze in our tracks to listen. As soon as we were sure that the hunters were not on our trail, we would continue our hunt.

  I had something on my mind since that morning that I was dying to get off my chest.

  “This morning I heard them say that they got word from the castle of my whereabouts.” I glanced out of the corner of my eye waiting for his response.

  He looked at me, but it was so hard to read his mind without those human facial expressions that I had come to know so well.

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Do you know who else might have known?” I was poking at the idea of maybe his brothers finding out who their little brother was engaging with in the woods every day.

  He confirmed my suspicion with his silence.

  “And you took their side,” I mumbled under my breath. I knew from the moment I found his face under the helmet that it had something to do with them. I had lost him to them, as I feared I would.

  He must have heard my mumble because he stopped what he was doing and turned toward me with obvious anger.

  “Don’t blame me for that, Ana. You had a bounty on your head long before you met me. I wasn’t the one who lied.”

  “Tell yourself whatever you must, Theo.”