That time, she was there to help me. This time, I’ll have my father. I have to get to him. He always knew how to talk me through the fits, to get me to sleep. When I’d wake in the morning, I’d have only nightmare images I couldn’t tell from reality, and sore muscles and joints.
“Stella,” Harmon rasps from the basement.
I pause at the entrance to the tunnel. I can still go back. I could drag myself to my feet and stumble back through the sitting room, back through the bedroom and the door, up the stairs and out into the yard. My mother was sympathetic when I had my last fit. She’d take me to my father this time.
Maybe.
But I need to take care of Harmon first.
I heave myself forward, ignoring the pulse in my temples. When I emerge from the tunnel, I can see Harmon more clearly than before, and I wonder distractedly what time it is. The wolves will transition back at dawn. Is it close already?
“Traitor,” Harmon snarls. He’s sitting up halfway, bound from full range of motion by the the rope tangled around the ladder, which is lying on the floor beside him. His hands remain behind his back.
I guess I’m not so bad at tying knots after all.
“I’m the traitor?” I ask. “You had my father in an attic the whole time?”
“Your mother caught him less than a week ago,” he says.
“And you let her put him up there?”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” he explodes.
“Stop being a coward just because you’re hideous,” I shoot back. “And if you want to talk about being a traitor, you’re the one who called your wolf pack to stop me. I guess it takes a whole pack of wolves to stop one tiny human girl? You’re all cowards.”
“I didn’t call them,” he says, his voice grating and harsh. “They’re waiting to see if I can transition.”
That gives me pause. I hadn’t expected that answer, hadn’t considered they were there for anything other than stopping me. But why wouldn’t he just call a guy or two if that was the case? They don’t mind throwing girls down flights of stairs on a regular basis. Why call in the whole pack for backup? This time, he must be telling the truth. Which really, really sucks. Not only is he suffering and weak and in pain, but he’s got the weight of the entire, expectant community resting on his shoulders. Tonight, he’s supposed show them he’s strong enough to be their Alpha. Instead, he’s going to prove he’s not. Again.
“Are you sure they’re not there to be spectators when your thugs knock me out?”
“What are you doing with that fork?”
“I’m going to stab your eyes out with it.”
He snorts and twists around a little, his heel digging into the dirt for leverage. That’s when I see that he has two human feet. I sit up, then grab my head. The fork tumbles to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice suddenly urgent with concern.
“Your foot,” I say through clenched teeth.
“My foot is bothering you?”
“You have two feet, Harmon. And your face.”
“What about my face? It’s still hideous? Because it hurt like hell, so I know something rearranged itself.”
I drop my forehead to the floor, relishing the coolness, but the gritty dirt sears my skin. It feels more like I’m getting a gravel facial than resting gently on the ground. I shouldn’t have come in here. I knew better. Right now, before it’s too late, I need to go to my father.
“I think you’re better,” I mumble against the floor. “You’re a human again.”
“In case you missed it, I have a cursed paw where my left hand should be,” he says. “I have a tail, Stella. Do you have a tail? Do most humans have tails? So I don’t think they’re going to accept me as Alpha anytime soon.”
“Your face…”
I want to tell him it’s better, almost normal. Sure, it’s a little furrier than the average human face, but still. It could pass as a beard. Maybe. If I’m really trying to convince myself. But I can’t say any of that, because a ripple of pain shudders through me. When I lift my head, my neck feels wobbly and unsteady.
Harmon is staring at me. “What was that?” he asks, his voice low and deadly.
“I need my father.” I can feel it building again, like a wave beneath the surface of the ocean, powerful and unstoppable.
“Untie me.”
“Get my dad,” I say, my voice sounding far off and dreamy.
“I can’t get your father,” Harmon says, nodding towards his bound hands.
“My mother, then,” I mutter. “Summon her, or whatever you do with your wolfie voodoo mind tricks.”
Harmon is quiet for so long that I lift my boulder-sized head again. He’s watching me, his eyes narrow and calculating.
“My mother,” I whisper. I can’t believe I’m asking for the woman who ordered me thrown down a flight of stairs. But the one time this happened, she took care of me. I can feel her arms around me, cradling me, can hear the panic in her voice. Maybe she did tie me to a bedframe when I started convulsing, but she also brought me the tea that helped me relax and fall asleep. And she told me why it happens, something my father never did.
“No,” Harmon says. “I don’t think I will call her.”
“I—I need her,” I say, flattened by the pressure ripping through my back. “You don’t understand. Please, Harmon.”
“I understand more than you know,” he says. “You tied me up here and left me to go through this alone. At least you’ll have me with you.”
“A fat lot of good that’ll do.” A cramp jerks me forward, and I roll onto my side, curling in the fetal position, defeated. “Please…help me.”
“Hmmm….” He considers me, as if I’m no more than an extra scrap of wood he’s trying to decide what to do with. Throw away, or build something?
“Harmon…I need help. Get my father, my mother, anyone. Dr. Golden. I—I might die.”
He smirks. “You won’t die. Just relax. Go with it. Isn’t that what you said to me?”
“Please.”
His eyes are remote, detached. His voice is firm when he speaks. “No.”
24
I swim in and out of consciousness. My body shivers, shudders. My muscles spasm and convulse.
“Just go with it,” Harmon commands. “Embrace it. Move towards it, not away.”
I scream. I vomit. I black out.
“Stella.”
I open my eyes. Through a distorted funhouse mirror of pain, I see Harmon’s face, as it was before, beautiful and perfect, his glossy black hair shot through with a streak of white. But his neck is black, too, his shoulders thick with a black pelt. He’s no longer tied, but lying in front of me, his face inches from mine. He’s stroking my cheek with the pad of his paw, his claws just scraping my skin, alerting me to danger.
“Stop fighting it,” he says. “It’ll be easier next time. Just relax, and think about something you love. Think about a tiger. How brave it is. How majestic. How powerful.” His voice is soothing, lulling my eyes closed. I picture the tiger at the zoo when I was a kid, with its huge head and its golden eyes staring out at me, just inches away from mine, on the other side of the glass. I remember the measuring post next to the enclosure where Dad took my picture next to the wooden tiger cutout that was ten feet tall.
I remember him telling me it was time to go. And when we got home, I was obsessed. Tiger sheets. Tiger t-shirts. Calendars. Posters. Stuffed animals. Dad promising to take me back to the zoo. And until we could go, I could wear a tiger eye necklace and think of him. Remember his promise to take me back. Somewhere along the way, it became a reminder of Dad, not the zoo.
“Holy mother of Diana.”
I open my eyes. Harmon sits up and scoots away quickly. He hasn’t changed, but he’s somehow smaller. A lot smaller. So small that when I sit up, he’s shorter than me. And sitting up is strange, dizzying, even. Suddenly, I know how Alice must have felt when she grew ten sizes bigger. I look down at myself, and
I’m not there. My hands are gone, and in their place are two huge white paws.
I look up at Harmon again. He’s scooting away, shaking his head slowly. “Stella,” he says, a warning note in his voice. “You’re still you. You know that, right?”
I open my mouth to say of course I’m still me. But am I?
The sound that comes out of my mouth says I am most definitely not me. It’s not a growl or a roar or a bark, but more like a chuff.
“It’s okay,” Harmon says. “You’ll shift back. I’m sorry it was so hard for you. They say it’s like that, if you resist it your whole life. Your parents really should have told you that. Had you practice…”
My head is spinning. I lift my hand, and the paw lifts. It’s freaking enormous. As I lift the other one and set it down, it sinks in. I’m not a werewolf. I’m a shifter. A freaking tiger!
Harmon has reached the wall, and he can’t back up any more. He’s so small. Even if he changed into a ferocious wolf right now, he’d be small compared to me. And he’s not a ferocious wolf. He’s a twisted hybrid freak, and he’s stuck that way. He can’t shift.
I stand. My body feels huge and unwieldy. I must look drunk as I take a few steps towards him, figuring out the whole four-legged thing. Suddenly, I remember his taunts when I was shifting. I stop, open my mouth, and roar at him. The sound is a blast of pure sound, the energy of it rocking through the basement in waves. It’s huge and glorious. I do it again.
Harmon seems to shrink as I stand there roaring at him. If he hadn’t knocked down the ladder, he could have climbed it. But guess what? Tigers can climb. Tigers can knock down flimsy little ladders. I could probably knock down this whole building. I roar at him again, glorying in the immensity of my voice. No wonder my mother “helped” me when I started shifting. No wonder she never told me. She wasn’t protecting me. She was protecting herself.
At the thought of my mother, a flood of anger pours like blood from my heart, enough to drown my veins. I leap forward. Harmon strikes at me, his fist smashing squarely into my nose. Pain shoots up my nostrils. I growl in frustration, and it reverberates through my body, through the basement, like a living thing.
“Stop,” Harmon barks, his voice sharp and commanding. But I’m not a wolf. I don’t have to obey his commands. This time, I strike him. He tumbles sideways, and before he can recover, my jaws close around his neck. My jaws are enormous! I could rip his head off in one swift pull. And doesn’t he deserve as much? Why should I have mercy on him, when he’s never shown me any?
“Stella, you don’t want to do this,” he says quickly, his palm bracing against my throat. “You’re high on the power of it, but this is still you. It’s not separate from your human self. When you go back to your human form, you’re still responsible for what you did. Do you really want to kill me? Is that how much you hate me?”
He must know my teeth could sink into his flesh in a heartbeat, and he’d be gone. I can feel his blood pulsing in the veins in his neck. It’s disturbingly alluring. I don’t hate him. But he betrayed me.
I remember him asking if I would kill anyone, if I’d seek revenge, when I got out. The realization of what that conversation really meant rocks through me. He wasn’t my partner in this, asking what I would be willing to do for my freedom. He was securing a promise, knowing this moment would come.
And it has. I’m not a helpless, ordinary—and therefore useless—girl. All this time, I believed I wasn’t special enough to be part of my own family. That I was ungifted, and that’s why my mother didn’t want me.
I’m a freak and an outsider, all right. But not for the reasons I thought.
I’m dangerous not because I know what they are, but because I’m stronger than they are. Because I can turn into something bigger and fiercer and stronger than they are. Something that can snap the neck of their Alpha in a second. Something that could kill each and every one of them, if I chose to do it. No wonder they didn’t want me to know.
Now I know.
I tighten my teeth on Harmon’s neck. His pulse throbs against my canines, his thick wolf fur warm against my tongue. He buries his hands in my fur, but instead of struggling, he goes still. No begging and rationalizing, no bargaining and explaining and warning. No one will stop me if I choose to do this. I could be this person.
If I choose to be this person, this is who I will be for the rest of my life. Powerful. Ruthless. Treacherous.
No one can stop me.
That thought brings a strange, stark clarity to my mind. If I want to do this, I can. It’s my choice. But the choice is mine to make, and only mine. In this moment, I understand my mother. The knowledge of my complete power is intoxicating. One pulse of my teeth and a whole, promising, glorious life snaps to an end.
I drop Harmon.
He rolls away, flattening his back against the wall. I want to ask him everything at once, but I can’t ask anything. My voice is huge, but it’s also without language. After a minute of staring at each other, he laughs nervously. “Are you…yourself?”
I don’t know if I’m myself. I don’t even know who that is anymore. Suddenly I’m not just me. I’m much more. And I want him to know that even though I chose not to crush his skull in my jaws, I could have. I still could. Placing a paw on his chest, I press him down into the dirt until his cheek twitches. I ease back on the pressure, baring my teeth.
Instead of cowering, he slowly reaches up with both hands. His paw touches my face, and even though there’s a layer of fur between his hand and my skin, I can feel it every bit as well as if I had bare skin. He buries the fingers of his human hand in my fur, a look of pure wonder spreading over his strange face.
“I knew what you were,” he says, stroking my fur with his paw. “But I didn’t know. This is incredible. You’re incredible.”
I dig my claws into his furry chest, just enough to let him feel them. He’s still at my mercy. He grimaces in pain, but he doesn’t look afraid. He’s too busy marveling at me, stroking my ears, my neck. He touches my whiskers, and my lips instinctively pull back from my teeth. He smiles and runs his hand along my powerful jaw.
And after all this time, after sixteen years of my father, my mother, my sisters, and everyone else knowing but me, he’s the one person who was brave enough to tell me. To force me into this, however painful it was. He didn’t have to do that. He probably shouldn’t have done that. But he did.
I lean forwards over him, bringing my face close to his, and growl. I don’t want to sit down here in the basement. I want to run through the woods, over the hills, back home. He wouldn’t stop me. Couldn’t. I have strength I never knew.
But for the first time since entering the Three Valleys, I’m not sure I want to leave.
25
For a long time, I lie on the floor next to Harmon, ready to pounce if he moves. But eventually, I fall asleep. When I wake, he’s curled up against me, his body resting against mine. I stand and stretch, relishing the powerful length of my limbs.
Harmon sits up and rolls his head on his neck, rubbing his shoulder with his good hand. “You might want to transition back to human,” he says. “Or not. You know, if you wanted to talk about this. Maybe I can answer some of your questions?”
My first question is, how do I transition back? When I remember the pain of those fits, the nightmare shifting vision, the headache, I don’t know if I do want to. But he’s right. I have questions. I have a lot of questions.
“If you do, you know where to find me,” he says, rising to his feet. His human feet. But he’s not all better, just because his feet look normal. His legs are still uneven, his stance crooked. His knee bends at a strange angle as he limps to the tunnel and ducks through. I pace the basement, which now seems impossibly small. It occurs to me after a few minutes that they can’t hold me here anymore. I’m bigger and stronger than all of them. Which means I’m free.
The thought scares me and thrills me in equal measure. I pad into the tunnel, which must have been made for
animals and not humans. As a tiger, I don’t have to duck when I walk through.
I find Harmon at the table, playing solitaire. I place my front paws on the edge of the table and rise up over it, peering down at Harmon. He smells even better when I’m a tiger. I snuffle at him, at the cards on the table, which shift slightly when I blow out a breath.
“Okay, you don’t get to act like a cat,” Harmon says, pushing at my neck. “You’re not a tiger, Stella. You’re a shifter. You don’t get to lose your human side completely, even when you’re in your animal form.”
I drop down from the edge of the table and turn away. My tail moves with me, like an extra arm, always extended for balance. It swishes back and forth now.
“Go on, transform back,” Harmon says, setting down the deck of cards in his hand. “The same way you did last night. Only think human, not tiger. It’ll get easier every time, and pretty soon, you’ll be so used to it you almost look forward to the pain. It feels good, like popping your back.”
I snort, and Harmon laughs.
“When you’re ready, I’ll help you,” he says. “The most important thing is that now you know, so when it happens, you can go into it instead of resisting.”
I step back and lower my head. Closing my eyes, I think of my human form. Harmon’s voice coaxes me on, telling me to reach for it, to pull it into me. Picture it, seek it, call to it and embrace it when it comes. Don’t hold back or hesitate or be scared. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.
Soon, the pain starts, and I pull back from it. But it only intensifies when I tense up, scared to let it consume me again. Harmon moves to my side and massages the spot between my shoulder blades. He talks me through it, one wave at a time, until I finally let go and let myself fall, spinning into the pain as if I love it.
Beastly Beauty: A Fairy Tale Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 2) Page 15
