Cage the Beast

by Cheree Alsop

  “We need to use the kitchen to operate,” CJ said when we joined him in the cluttered hall.

  “What about the moon room?” Vicken asked.

  “The last thing a moonstone needs is more moonlight. Let’s clear a place,” CJ replied.

  “Easier said than done,” Vicken muttered with a glance around the room.

  Since I was too big for the tiny round table, it was decided that the best place to operate would be the floor. Dara didn’t let me lie down until Vicken had moved everything within reach and she swept it.

  “Do you have a mop?” she asked CJ.

  He gave a short chuckle as if she had told a joke, then at the realization that she was serious, he shook his head. “We’re just going to have to make due. If Finn gets an infection, it’s his fault for coming to my house in the first place.”

  At that reassuring thought, I settled down and rolled onto my side.

  Vicken held out the jar of knives he had cleaned in the sink and then proceeded to soak in the vodka he had pulled from the freezer, much to CJ’s chagrin and muttering about a waste of a perfectly good beverage. Dara stood ready with several towels she had scrounged from the truck. It was an unspoken agreement between us that nothing from the house would be used to stop the bleeding until I healed. Vicken poured the remaining contents of the bottle over my shoulder until CJ stopped him.

  “Save some for after. He might need it for the pain,” he said.

  The three of us exchanged looks of doubt that any of what remained would be used for me.

  Chapter Eleven

  CJ leaned over me with a small steak knife. By the looks of the serrated edge, this was going to hurt far worse than the scalpel. Vicken put his hands on my shoulder and side, ready to hold me down if the pain became too much.

  “Ready for this?” CJ asked.

  For the first time, I saw concern in the man’s eyes. He watched me closely, his brows pulled together beneath his shaggy hair. When he lifted the knife, I noticed that his fingers trembled slightly. With the thought that it was either him or my friends, I closed my eyes and nodded. At the very least, I didn’t want my friends to carry the memory of slicing me open.

  CJ parted my fur, and then grunted. “Looks like I have to remove some staples first. Too bad this thing’s healed already.” He held out a hand. “Butter knife.”

  Vicken gave it to him without a word.

  CJ slid a butter knife under the first staple and pulled up. Having the staples removed wasn’t my favorite moment, but the thought of what was to come made me remain still. “Five, huh?” CJ muttered when he was done. “Seems like a bit of overkill on a werewolf, but alright. Let’s begin again.” He picked up the steak knife.

  Dara grabbed my paw as CJ sliced into my skin. It took all of my willpower not to jerk away from the pain.

  “Breathe,” Dara whispered into my ear.

  I felt her pull and heard the way her breath caught. I opened my eyes and was met with her tight smile.

  I wanted to tell her not to take my pain. It wasn’t right that she was so ready to help me when everyone else in her life had been so cruel. I had told her before that I never wanted her to take my pain on herself, yet here she was, helping to ease me through the surgery.

  “It’s alright,” she whispered as though she saw the argument in my gaze. “It’s easier when I’m not the one under the knife. Trust me.”

  CJ cut deeper and we both sucked in a breath. Dara squeezed my paw. I kept my gaze on her beautiful violet eyes.

  “Almost there,” CJ muttered.

  “Hurry,” Vicken said.

  CJ glared at him. “You want to do this?”

  Vicken shook his head quickly. “I’m just worried about his heart.”

  The anger in CJ’s face faded and he turned back to the wound. “One more second.”

  I grunted as the knife bit deeper. Dara’s hand trembled.

  “There!” CJ exclaimed. He pulled the moonstone free and threw it across the room. At everyone’s astonished looks, he shrugged. “I don’t want to be a wolf forever, either.”

  He rose. “Well, that was fun.”

  Dara stared from me to him. “Aren’t you going to close it so he’s not bleeding?”

  CJ shook his shaggy head. “I told you I’d remove the moonstone. You can deal with the rest.” He left the room without a backwards glance.

  “Did he really just do that?” Vicken asked. His face was paler than usual. I noticed him glance at the bleeding wound and then away. “I would help, but I really can’t.”

  Dara must have seen his glance, too, because she said, “It’s alright. I’ll take care of it.”

  Vicken quickly left the room. I followed the sound of his footsteps as he followed CJ. Their voices were quiet when he asked, “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah,” CJ replied. “I’ve just never cut someone open before. It’s one thing to kill and eat when you’re a wolf, but another by far to slice through skin and see someone bleed on your kitchen floor. I guess I just wasn’t prepared.”

  “Me, either,” Vicken said.

  “How so?” CJ’s voice was tight as though he needed some reassurance.

  Vicken was quiet a moment, then he said, “Have you ever felt the urgent need to drink your best friend’s blood?”

  CJ gave a little chuckle and replied, “Nope. I haven’t had that one. I guess you win.”

  “Yay, me,” Vicken said drily.

  “I’m sorry,” Dara whispered.

  I realized there were tears in her eyes as she used one of the towels to clean around the wound.

  I wanted to tell her it was alright. Apparently, that one thought was enough to remind my body what it felt like to be human. In the most uncomfortable setting I could imagine, I began to change back to human form.

  “Are-are you phasing?” Dara asked. “Right now?”

  I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. It felt as if my body had been as anxious to get rid of the moonstone and phase back as I was. I only wished it had given me a little more warning.

  Dara’s eyes widened and she backed away to give me my space. The moment I was able to, I grabbed one of the towels and wrapped it around my waist. The end of the phase found me sitting back in my human form clutching at my towel in an attempt to maintain some modicum of modesty around the girl I loved.

  “Are you alright?” Dara called from where she crouched on the other side of the kitchen table.

  The hilarity of the situation struck me and I began to laugh. Answering laughter came from Dara as she rose and walked around the table toward me. I leaned my head in my free hand and laughed until I could barely breathe. Dara held a towel to my wound and laughed beside me until we were both left grinning and exhausted.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said, wiping away tears from her eyes. “I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time!”

  “You should have seen your face,” I replied, chuckling even though my ribs hurt from laughing so hard. “You had the cutest, panicked, ‘Is he going to phase right here’ look going on!”

  She grinned. “It’s pretty ridiculous.”

  I nodded, glancing around. “This isn’t the situation I would have chosen for you to see me like this.”

  Her grin widened and she said, “I changed your clothes at Vicken’s mansion, remember?”

  “So why were you so quick to leave when I was phasing,” I challenged teasingly.

  Dara’s eyebrows rose. “Well, it’s different when you’re awake.” Before I could tease her further, she said, “Let’s get you stitched up before you bleed through these towels.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “The last one is currently being used.”

  She removed the needle and thread from the cup of vodka and held it up. “Ready?” she asked with an uncertain expression.

  “Ready,” I replied.

  She was about to poke me when I caught her hand. “No pulling this time.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” s
he said innocently.

  I gave her a straight look. “You can’t stitch me up and share my pain at the same time. I can handle it.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  It wasn’t like we really had a choice. I nodded with my most confident expression plastered on my face. “Stitch away.”

  By the time she was done, I was tempted to drink from the nearly empty bottle at my side. But the thought of what we had left to do kept me from reaching for it. Dara used the last of the vodka to clean up the blood that had dripped down my shoulder, then stood back to survey her work.

  “Done,” she said with an approving nod.

  “Thanks,” I replied. “We were sort of left hanging there.”

  “Sort of?” she shot back. “They turned tail and ran.”

  I thought of CJ’s shaken voice when he said he had never cut someone open before. “At least the moonstone is out. I’m grateful for that.”

  “Good riddance,” CJ replied when he and Vicken walked back into the kitchen. “You can take it with you when you leave. I want that thing as far away from me as it can possibly be.”

  “We will,” Dara promised. She eyed the small, bloody rock that sat innocuously in the corner. “But, uh, do you have an idea how we can carry it without it affect us? I’m not sure what it’ll do to Vicken and me. Finn definitely doesn’t need to phase again.”

  We met each other’s eyes with matching grins at the thought.

  “I have a box here somewhere you can use,” CJ said. “I’ll have to find it, though.” He gave me a disapproving look. “And you should go get dressed. Standing like that in front of a lady isn’t appropriate. There’s clothes in the bedroom down the hall. You’re welcome to whatever you can find.”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  When I left the kitchen, I heard him say, “The kid’s got a lot of scars. What happened?”

  “He fought demons at the Academy,” Dara said.

  “And in the city,” Vicken seconded.

  “Oh, and don’t forget those demon-possessed mountain lions,” Dara added.

  I rolled my eyes and opened the door to the bedroom at the end of the hall. Any hopes I’d had that it would be cleaner than the rest of the house vanished at one glance. I stepped gingerly inside.

  “And the bear,” I heard Vicken continue.

  “There was a bear?” Dara asked with horror in her voice.

  “That’s why we jumped into the river in the first place,” Vicken said. “Before the mountain lions.”

  “Anything else?” CJ asked. I couldn’t read the emotion in his tone.

  “There was the demon in the corridor,” Vicken said. “That’s the one that burned his hand.”

  “And the Demon Knight. Not to mention the Wiccan Enforcer. She nearly killed him before she died,” Dara told him as I pulled on a pair of sweat pants I spotted in a corner.

  I found a shirt in a pile of clothes that had been tossed on the floor. It smelled a little stale, but better than the rest of the heap.

  “He fights demons?” CJ asked.

  “And runs from them,” Dara said with a laugh.

  No laugh came from Vicken, though. I knew he was remembering the one that bit his leg. He almost hadn’t survived that one.

  “And they teach you all of this at the Academy?” CJ asked with disapproval in his voice.

  “Oh, no, not to everyone,” Dara replied. “We’re part of a defense team for Haunted High. With all of the demons around lately and….”

  My eyes locked onto a picture on the nightstand near the bed and the sound of Dara’s voice faded away.

  It was the only clean thing in the room. Where everything else was covered in a deep layer of dust, the picture was spotless; a circle of space surrounded where it sat on the nightstand as if CJ didn’t let anything near it.

  I picked up the frame. A closer looked confirmed what my first glance had shown. I sat on the bed without a care for how the movement made mice squeak beneath the mattress.

  Mom’s face looked back at me from the photograph I held. She was younger than any of the pictures we had of her, but her carefree smile and the green eyes that matched mine were unmistakable. When she was older, she had always kept her wavy blonde hair combed out and free on her shoulders. In the picture I held, her hair had been plaited into a braid on either side of her head. She grinned at the camera with a smile that made me think of Drake, and she leaned against a boy who was a head taller than her.

  My heart gave a painful thump when I looked into the face of the older boy and saw CJ’s eyes looking back at me. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Professor Briggs had killed him after he attacked the school and slaughtered so many students and professors. There was no way the CJ who had just saved my life with the moon mirrors and cut the moonstone out of my shoulder was Conrad, my mother’s brother who savagely attacked the school and had werewolves banned until I showed up.

  I turned the frame over and removed the back. With shaking fingers, I carefully took out the photograph. On the back, the words, “Silvia Marie Roe and Conrad Justin Roe, ages twelve and fourteen.”

  I rose numbly and made my way to the door. With feet that felt weighed down by cement, I carried the picture out of the room and toward the kitchen. The demons that looked at me when I passed by suddenly made sense.

  “This box is perfect!” Dara was saying when I walked in. “I can’t believe you have an ironwood box. It’ll block the effects of the moonstone so we can carry it!” She was quiet for a moment, then she said, “It matches the boxes Professor Briggs has.”

  “Ironwood is handy,” CJ replied levelly.

  “Why do you have an ironwood box that matches Professor Briggs’?” Vicken asked.

  I saw the suspicion on his face. There was something about the vampire’s gaze that said he was close to guessing the truth.

  With a sick feeling in my stomach, I said, “Because he’s been to Haunted High. He was a student there.” I met CJ’s gaze. “Weren’t you?”

  The man spotted the photograph in my hand and his eyes widened. “What are you doing with that?” he demanded.

  He crossed the kitchen toward me. I backed up out of reach and hid the photograph behind me so he couldn’t grab it. “You were a student at Haunted High, weren’t you?” I demanded, louder.

  “Give me that picture!” he yelled.

  Tears burned in the corners of my eyes when I said, “I will if you tell us the truth.”

  CJ paused, his chest heaving and his hands still raised from trying to get the photograph.

  “What’s the truth?” Dara asked quietly.

  I met CJ’s green eyes that were so like my mother’s and said, “Do you want to tell them or should I, Uncle Conrad?”

  Dara gasped at my words and I saw Vicken nod out of the corner of my eye as if I had just confirmed what he had been thinking.

  Conrad fell heavily onto a chair and buried his face in his hands. “You weren’t supposed to come here.”

  So many emotions filled me that I couldn’t settle on one. The reality of who he was had knocked the air from me as effectively as if I had been punched in the stomach. I sank onto a chair across from him. Shocked silence filled the kitchen.

  “You died.” I hated how strangled and pathetic the words sounded when they left my lips, but I was so confused. I didn’t know where else to begin.

  “I can’t die,” Conrad replied, his voice thick with self-loathing. “Not with him following every step I make.”

  “Who’s him?” Dara asked.

  Conrad spoke into the hands he had covering his face. “The Darkest Warlock. Chutka’s last subordinate, if I understood what you told me earlier. He took over my body. He kept me alive.” Tears leaked out from between the man’s fingers when he continued, “Trace thought he killed me. He should have, too. With the lives of all those students on my hands, all those professors, I should have died.” His last words were high and agonizing when he said, “Why didn’t I die?�
�

  His confession shocked me. I looked up to see the same horror reflected by Dara and Vicken. I didn’t know what to say and neither did they. We had lived in the aftermath of Conrad’s actions. The terror he had inflicted on Haunted High had nearly destroyed the school. Even so many years later, the effects of Conrad’s actions showed in the distrust I caught on the faces of professors and students. We were still fighting the demons who escaped when Conrad first opened the door to the realm of Chutka the Shambler. He had hurt so many people with his actions.

  Yet, sitting there across the table from him, I knew I looked at a broken man. The sorrow in his eyes didn’t match how I thought a killer should appear. His shoulders shook in soundless agony and the tears that rolled down his cheeks and were lost in his beard were real. I could feel his pain even without Dara’s ability.

  As if she read my thoughts, Dara walked over and set a hand on my uncle’s arm. He turned away from her, but she merely moved her hand to his shoulder. She closed her eyes, and I felt her pull. Conrad’s silent sobs slowed. His shaking eased and the tears stopped. But the aching in his eyes didn’t lessen.

  “The Darkest Warlock used my body to kill them. I felt him break those children and toss them aside. He used my werewolf abilities to tear through the professors as if they were putty. I couldn’t stop him. I tried. I tried.” His words faded to a whisper. “I should have been stronger.” His green eyes, so like my mother’s, stared unseeing at the wall across from him. “I shouldn’t have meddled with the gate and unlocked things I didn’t understand. I should have been able to stop him. It was my fault. It was all my fault.”

  “You were eighteen.” Vicken’s voice broke the silence after Conrad’s words like a stone thrown at a pane of glass.

  Conrad turned to look at him as if what the vampire said held some unseen power.

  Vicken’s yellow gaze was steady when he continued with, “You were only a year or two older than us.”

  “I should have been strong enough,” Conrad repeated in a voice just above a whisper. “I shouldn’t have opened the gate. I-I was tired of being stuck. I was mad that we had to hide what we were from the world.” He looked at me. “I was tired of being a monster.”