by Ameriie
Indigo was still just watching me with her big blue eyes.
“To this day, bodies are still found once in a while, chewed up and mangled.” I sighed and rubbed my palm along my jaw. “A decade will pass, maybe two, and people start dying again.”
Here it came . . .
“A Beast lives in these woods, Indigo. A Beast that hunts and kills humans. Whenever it rains too much, or too little, or whenever a bad flu sweeps through, or a wolf pack starts skulking too close to town, or when the moon shines too full or too bright, they say the Hush Woods Beast is back again and on the prowl. The Bellerose twins claimed to have seen it a few weeks ago, and I laughed it off, but then . . . ”
Indigo screamed.
I jumped to my feet, grabbed my bow, spun around—
Nothing.
I nocked an arrow, slowed my breath . . .
Nothing.
Nothing but sky and trees and ferns and quiet.
Indigo slammed her hands over her ears and screamed again. The sound was sad and soft and chilling. I got goose bumps. Twice in one day.
I moved closer to her and kept my stance low, my bow ready. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”
She just shook her head.
“Indigo, why are you screaming?”
She shook her head again. “The . . . the wind picked up, and suddenly I thought I could hear those women, crying out as the noose went around their necks. I heard them pleading their innocence while the crowd screamed for their blood. Then I heard a crack, and another, and another . . . and then silence.”
She smashed her hands over her ears again. “Can’t you hear it? It’s faint, behind the wind and the leaves. It’s like having a song stuck in your head. A haunting, terrible song.”
I stared at her.
I certainly didn’t hear anything, and I certainly didn’t want to believe her. The Beast was real, yes, everyone effing knew that . . . but the Hush Witch ghosts?
Dead is dead.
Of course, I hadn’t believed the twins about the Beast, and then I’d been proved wrong. But that didn’t mean I’d be proved wrong again. It was really unlikely, actually.
I sat back down and put my arm around Indigo’s waist. She lowered her hands from her ears. Her eyes were wet with tears. Girls cry so easily.
“Maybe I imagined it,” she said.
I nodded. “Of course you did. But this is an eerie place, Indigo. You shouldn’t come here again without someone like me to protect you. I mean it.”
“Brahm?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to be hanged like those women. I don’t want to die with a noose around my neck . . . snap, pain, feet twitching, dark.”
I shivered when she said that. Probably from the cold.
“What a strange thing to worry about,” I said. “People don’t get hanged anymore. If you want to worry about something, worry about the Hush Woods Beast. You really shouldn’t be out here on your own. Even in the daytime.”
Indigo didn’t answer. She slid the thick blue scarf from her neck and wrapped it around both our shoulders, like a shawl. It was warm from her skin and smelled like lavender and honey.
“Indigo, I’m going to take you to dinner tomorrow night. What do you like? Seafood? Italian? French? Thai?”
She shook her head.
“Are you a food cart type of girl? Want to get fish tacos and crepes?”
Chin, left to right.
“Well, what do you want, then?”
“I can’t go to dinner with you.”
“All right, we’ll go to a movie.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I can’t.”
This was the first time a girl had ever told me no. I didn’t know how to handle it, honestly.
“You can’t go . . . or you won’t go?” I sounded annoyed and kind of pissed.
Everything was really tense all of a sudden.
We both just stared at the sky for a bit, not talking. It was starting to turn pink and orange and purple.
Sunset.
I felt her jerk suddenly, her shoulder snapping against mine. She stood up.
“I have to leave.”
“All right. I’ll walk you home.” It was a good three miles back to town, even with the shortcuts I’d honed through the years.
She shook her head again.
“Look, I’m not trying to hit on you, since I can see you’re not interested, somehow. But the Hush Woods are dangerous at night. Let me walk you home.”
“I am home,” she said.
And just at that second, the setting sun blazed up, right in my face, and blinded me. I rubbed my eyes. When I opened them, she was gone.
It was usually easy for me to forget about girls. Far too easy. I had a lot of distractions. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Indigo Beau after I saw her in the woods. She’d crawled into my brain, and I couldn’t get her out.
I expected to see her around town the next few days. Valois is small, small enough that eventually you run into people. I asked around about her at the coffee shops and some of the restaurants, to see if anyone knew where she lived, but that went nowhere. I even spent a few hours hanging out in the downtown library to see if she’d come in, looking for more books on wolves.
Nothing.
So I went back to the Hush Woods. I waited until evening, right before dusk . . . and—
I found her reading in the glen, sitting in the ferns, just like before.
She didn’t look surprised to see me.
I sat down next to her, and we talked.
We talked about our siblings. She had four sisters to my three brothers. We talked about books and wolves and trees and places I’d been and places she wanted to see.
The sun dipped lower, and Indigo heard the witch screams again. I held her this time, and she let me.
I went back the next night. And the next. Night after night. Afterward, she never let me walk her home. She’d just disappear between one breath and the next. I’d close my eyes for a second, and when I’d open them, she’d be gone.
Someday she would trust me enough to let me in on all her secrets.
On the seventh night, I kissed her. Plump, warm lips sliding into mine. I lifted her hair with the back of my hand and kissed her neck. She opened the front of my shirt and kissed my collarbone. I groaned, and she grabbed my hair in her fists.
I tried to warn Indigo about the Beast again. I tried to get her to meet me in town instead of the Hush Woods. But she’d only shake her head and smile kind of sadly.
Autumn crept into winter. During the day, I hunted buck and antelope and mule deer with my younger brothers, arrows cutting through air, into flesh, bringing moans and blood. I spent a lot of nights roaring drunk at the Valois Watering Hole, beating up anyone stupid enough to challenge me. I even tried to fight some emaciated hipsters once, with their tight jeans and stupid beards and pretentious talk about small-batch microbrews, but they scuttled away before I could throw a punch.
Philippe was the first to call me out on it. He told Jean George and Luc I was meeting a girl in the woods—how he’d figured it out I never knew. He told them I was in love. They teased me and my temper sparked, and the four of us ended up breaking two mirrors, a glass table, and my mother’s damn rococo cupid statue. Brahm Valois the First took away my credit cards and my black BMW.
And yet . . . I hardly cared.
I was in love. Philippe was right about that.
I was in love with Indigo Beau, and life could have gone on like this forever and ever . . .
And then they found the body.
A girl, fourteen. Soccer player, straight-A student, and daughter of Marie and Jon Jasper, owners of the best French bakery in town. Some tourist hikers stumbled upon the corpse at the edge of the Hush Woods. Her heart had been ripped out.
Indigo Beau lived in the Hush Woods, and the Beast was on the prowl.
I felt sick at the thought of her in that forest with
it.
Sick.
It had been almost fifteen years since the Beast had killed someone in the Hush Woods. No one had believed the Bellerose twins when they’d said it was back.
But they would have believed me.
I should have told someone.
The people of Valois had tried to kill the Beast in the past. Of course they had. But it was always too clever, too fast, too cunning. Generation after generation and still the Beast lived.
But now it would be different.
Now they had me.
I was the best tracker in Valois, next to my father. I wouldn’t let the Beast go this time.
I would track it, hunt it down, put an arrow through its heart. I’d free my town from this curse.
I was born for this.
I’d become the town hero twice over. I’d march back into Valois, dragging the Beast’s body behind me. I’d save Indigo Beau from the Hush Woods Beast, and we’d live happily ever after.
This is what will happen.
I could feel it in my bones.
I went to Hush Witch Glen at sunset, but Indigo wasn’t there. I waited over an hour, but she never came.
I was starting to get worried. Really, really worried.
The moon rose high and fat in the sky.
I went back to town and grabbed my cloak and my recurve bow. Yes, I own a black wool cloak. Philippe tried to make fun of me for it once, and I broke his arm.
I strode past the local Beast hunters gathering in the town square, mapping out their attack. They’d never find the monster.
It would come down to me, and me alone.
It had rained the night before, and I took it as a sign. The mud was going to help me fulfill my destiny.
I found the tracks near midnight. Four toes, four claws. Just like a wolf. I stretched out my fingers next to the print. It was the size of my hand.
The wind had a spooky feel to it, sharp and cold, bite and teeth. But it was more than that, too. I thought for a second I could hear voices. No . . . screams. Was this what Indigo kept hearing? Was this the cry of the hanged women?
If there were ghosts in these woods, then they’d have it in for a Valois, after what my ancestor had done.
The screams seemed to float around me like feathers falling from the sky. Goose bumps rippled down my arms and down my spine.
That was when the doubt set in.
Maybe I wouldn’t kill the Beast.
Maybe it would kill me.
I’d never felt doubt before. The Valois men didn’t feel doubt. We didn’t even know what it was.
Lights.
The other hunters were moving through the trees, half a mile away, flashlights bouncing off the dark. Normally, they wouldn’t dream of coming near the Hush Woods border, but now a fourteen-year-old girl was dead. That gave people courage. Vengeance is a brilliant motivator. Not that it would help them—they were too loud, too slow. The Beast would see them coming a mile away, just as I had.
The witch screams quieted down just as the wind picked up again. I sniffed the air. There was a new smell to it, metallic and pungent.
I spun around . . .
The Beast was tearing into a coyote, fur and paws and nose and gore. I’m not squeamish—that’s for pansies—but the scene was harsh. Cannibalistic.
I looked away, up at the sky. The moon was bright red-orange now, like it was made of embers and glowing warm.
Everything smelled like blood.
I nocked my arrow. The brick-colored moon shone down, as if leading my hand.
I didn’t make one effing sound. I was silent as the stars.
I took aim.
I rarely miss. When I shoot, it’s to kill. But the Beast looked up as I pulled back the arrow. It looked right at me.
It tensed, as if to run.
But at the last second . . .
It stopped.
Stopped.
Something about its eyes, its expression . . . It was almost as if the monster was begging me to strike.
My arrow flew. It whistled through the air, nicked its shoulder, smacked into a tree.
I’d missed.
The Beast tilted its head back and howled.
And then it began to change.
Fur melted into white-blue moonlight skin. Paws pressed into the earth and dissolved into hands, fingers, feet, toes. Long spine twisted, curved, and softened into a back, a waist, hips.
Indigo sat naked on the muddy ground next to the mauled coyote. Her brown hair hung in her face, and her shoulder dripped blood.
I called out her name, but her eyes were already on mine. She looked fierce and proud and sad.
I took off my cloak and threw it around her body. She reached up and wiped blood from her mouth and teeth.
“So,” I said. “It’s you.”
She just nodded.
“Tell me.”
And she did. She sat there naked in the forest, smelling of night and earth and fur, and told me about her family, and its curse.
“One girl in every generation becomes a Shade,” she said. “That’s what my family calls the Beast. The sun sets, and we shift. We hunt and kill, like an animal. The Shade picked me, the youngest, out of five sisters. I turned fourteen, and it began.”
Indigo pressed her back into my chest. She was nestled into my arms, her head on my shoulder.
“My parents let me stay with them for as long as they could. We were careful. We lived outside town, on a farm in Minnesota. I quit school. No one knew. I thought I could control it. I thought . . . I thought a lot of things. My parents tried chaining me up, but I always broke free. I’m so strong, Brahm. So strong. And then one moonlit night I mauled a boy. They found his body six days later. His name was Ethan. He used to be in my class, in school. I’d known him since kindergarten.”
Indigo started crying, her back trembling against my chest. I held her. I put my face in her hair and held her until the sobs slowed down and she was breathing normal again.
“My aunt was here in the Hush Woods before me,” she whispered when she could talk. “And her cousin before that. The locals don’t like to come to this forest, as you said. So it’s safe. Safer. There’s a cabin hidden deep in the trees where she lived. That’s where I live now. My aunt took her own life. She was only twenty-two. She couldn’t bear it. We all . . . we all find our way to death eventually.”
Indigo’s shoulder was still bleeding, but every time I moved to stanch the blood she just clutched me tighter.
“I will kill again,” she said. “And I will keep killing until someone stops me.”
They found us an hour later.
We saw their flashlights first, white lights casting long shadows across the forest floor. She got to her feet, naked except for my cloak. I stood at her side.
They saw the blood and the coyote, and they knew. People aren’t as dumb as you think. They aren’t as dumb as you want them to be.
Jon Jasper stood at the head of the group. He looked at me and nodded, just once. “We’re going to kill her. We’re going to end this. Try to stop us and we’ll kill you, too, Valois.”
I saw the rope in his hand, the noose at the end. Indigo shrank from it. I felt her recoil against me.
My bow was ten feet away, right where I’d dropped it in the mud.
“Change,” I whispered to her. “Change into the Beast and run. Run, Indigo.”
“I can’t.” Her voice caught. She shook her head, cleared her throat. “It doesn’t work that way.”
My eyes met hers. She nodded. I nodded back.
They won’t string her up like one of those three Valois women.
I could give her that much, at least.
The mob drew in, thick and tight.
They started with rocks.
I turned and threw myself in front of Indigo, long arms, broad shoulders, brawny back. The blows fell on me and me alone. I’m built like an ox. I didn’t feel the stones, didn’t feel the bruises.
She crouched b
eneath me in the dark. She matched her breath to mine, slow, steady, soft. I reached down and pulled the bowie knife from the straps around my left calf. She grabbed my shirt in her fist and squeezed tight.
“Do it,” she said.
I cupped her tiny, pointed chin in my large hunter’s hand, and tilted her head back.
I slit her throat.
She slipped to the ground.
I turned back to the crowd and dropped the knife.
The mob took a step back, waiting to see what I’d do next. But I just slid down beside Indigo Beau, slid into the blood and the mud.
The crowd left.
My brothers found me near dawn. They helped me up, arms supporting my weight.
“My bow,” I said to Philippe.
He fetched it, handed it to me. I pulled the string back, muscles straining.
I nocked the arrow and shot Indigo Beau’s limp body straight through the heart.
I am the new Valois Beast. My hair is long and tangled, my beard thick, my clothes ragged. I sleep in dirt and old leaves. I hunt and I eat what I kill.
People scream when they see me in the woods.
That’s as it should be.
I wait for her. I wait for the next Beast. I know she will come, five years, ten years . . . Sooner or later she will come.
But this time she won’t be alone.
This time she will have me.
WHITNEY ATKINSON’S VILLAIN CHALLENGE TO APRIL GENEVIEVE TUCHOLKE:
Beauty and the Beast: Suitor’s Revenge
GLAMORIZED RECOVERY: EXPECTATIONS VS. REALITY
BY WHITNEY ATKINSON
Is Gaston cursed to be forever known as the villain? The answer is yes—not because of fate or luck, but because of his choices. The world seems pitted against villains. Whereas heroes get success, love interests, and unblemished reputations practically handed to them, villains are forced to put sweat and blood into each of their endeavors, a process that makes villains seem like they succumb to the pressures of life whereas heroes twist misadventures to benefit them.
If you were a villain, you would see firsthand how the gears of a hierarchical society work—rewarding the minor endeavors of heroes and punishing the slight advancement of villains. Perhaps your expectations, pure at heart, would be thwarted in a burst of smoke. So imagine yourself in Gaston’s shoes. You might think the following . . .
