Kill The Beast

by Graham Bradley

  The balcony at the back of the room was open. The chill night air of winter whistled across the deck and through the bars of the banister. The lack of torches in the chamber, together with the excess light of the moon outside, made the interior of the room even darker, and the curtains covered the windows to prevent any further illumination.

  “Aubrey!” Gautier barked. “Where are you, you swine?”

  A hissing sound emanated forth in the dark, short and repetitive…no, not a hiss, a laugh. The laugh of an old man, but to whom it belonged Gautier did not know. He had never heard this man laugh before.

  Click. With a snap of his fingers, the man in the room, once hidden by shadow, was suddenly alight in an amber glow from a dozen torches around the room…but they did not give light with fire. Gautier squinted, trying to make out the shape and function of a dozen tiny little globes, each with something thin inside it that glowed so bright it hurt to see.

  “Bonsoir, monsieur Gautier,” hissed the old man. He stood in the center of the room behind a massive workbench that, to Gautier’s knowledge of the castle, had not previously been there. Shelves lined the walls behind him, stuffed full of odd contraptions he didn’t recognize, as well as clear glass jars holding animal parts suspended in greenish liquid. Hearts, kidneys, livers, all things Gautier had seen in woodland animals.

  The rest of the room was likewise packed with strange makings of iron and copper, with long cables running around the edges of the room against the wall. Some of them led to the four-poster bed on the opposite side, which was still cast in shadow despite the artificial light. Gautier saw someone kneeling beside the bed, their face buried in the crook of their elbow as if in the act of crying.

  “Mon Dieu,” Gautier breathed. “What have you done, Maitre Marcel?”

  The old man cackled again. Yes, indeed, it was Marcel Reynaud, Robinette’s crazy inventor father who had gone missing a year ago. Everyone had presumed him dead. To find him here, standing in a makeshift laboratory for the dark sciences—and in Prince Aubrey’s own bedroom, no less—was more of a surprise than Gautier could have imagined.

  “I have begun to realize my vision for a better world,” Marcel said.

  “But…I don’t understand. Robinette, you did this to her?”

  Marcel blinked, his expression unchanging as he processed this information, cold and unfeeling. “I have done nothing to Robinette. Any involvement of hers in my work has been done in her own interests. There were a few times when she tried to interfere, but she quickly outgrew that tendency when she saw my grand vision!”

  Gautier looked back to the bed, where Robinette knelt beside it, weeping. Elsewhere in the room, an unseen presence rustled, and there was the barely-masked stench of dying wildlife that he knew too well. Something was seriously wrong here.

  “Enlighten me as to this vision, old man,” he said. “But in fairness let me tell you that if I don’t like what I hear, you won’t like what I do about it.”

  Again, that cold expression, a mild smile under sharp, piercing eyes, showing Marcel’s transformation into a man layered with confidence, something he had always lacked down in the village. Down there he had only ever been the crazy old tinkerer, whose inventions failed, and littered his land. Clearly he thought he had set those days behind him.

  “It’s simple, really. Prince Aubrey had a cadre of resources at his disposal, not the least significant of which was his extensive library. Do you have any idea how much of it was stolen from German luminaries? Men and women who were prodigies in their studies of life and animation. The translation process was arduous, but the tomes that outlined black magic were tremendously helpful. To be honest, they were quite rudimentary, and I doubt Prince Aubrey even knew he had them, or else he wouldn’t have needed me.

  “He was always short-sighted though, the little waif. He knew he had worn out his popularity among the villagers, and while this didn’t really bother him on a personal level, he did want his subjects to adore him, not resent him. He figured that would involve endowing them with riches, and the spoils of conquest. But in order to gain those things, one must first achieve said conquest. Aubrey needed an army, superior to any ever made on this earth, and for that he hired me.

  “I admit I disappointed him in the first few months, until I found the black magic books, and learned how to take control of other people. It’s complicated and time-consuming, so of course I focused my efforts solely on Prince Aubrey, then his inner circle, then the rest of the castle. A lot of them had to die before I got it right, but that’s trial-and-error for you.” Marcel laughed, actually laughed, like he was telling a story about his mischievous grandchildren, of which he had none.

  “Anyway, with the process perfected, things got more comfortable. I even sent for Robinette to come live here in the castle, enjoying the comforts my new subjects could offer her. Things did get a little complicated when she fell for Aubrey. Been a thorn in my side ever since. I looked up potions and the like, to sever her attraction to him and so on, but there’s nothing short of the obscure arts that would alter her will. That process is, well, painful, and it eats a piece of your soul, and she’s my daughter, so I won’t do that to her. Just Aubrey, and his kind. She wants him free, but I need him. Oh, do I need him, Gautier. He is too magnificent to let go.”

  Gautier slowly placed his hands on his hips, like he was listening to Marcel, though in a disapproving way. In reality he wanted his hands closer to the last two loaded flintlocks at his waist. A lifetime of woodland instincts told him that Marcel was an unstable predator now, and that Gautier was in his territory, and that there was every chance the old man would need to be put down. There were still questions to be answered, though.

  “Piece something together for me, would you, Marcel? I’ve seen your copper mean with their steam valves, and the mangled staff in your foyer and elsewhere in the castle. I even met Christophe, and his clockwork guts. Knowing how Aubrey empowered you to make them what they were, I guess I’m only curious about one thing.” Gautier pursed his lips and stared off theatrically, as if lost in thought.

  “Oh? And what’s that?” Marcel said.

  “Where does the beast fit into it all?”

  A true smile formed on Marcel’s face this time, reaching his eyes, sparking that inner fire of passion that came from pursuing one’s own purpose. “Well now. The beast. He’s just, how shall I say it…special. With a bit of surgery and some lightning animation, I was able to make a homunculus from the strongest animals in the woods and power it with the soul of a human man.

  “The German books gave very strict parameters on how to carry out the experiment, including knowing how to measure the caliber of the soul that would transfer into the homunculus. As you can imagine, the pampered soul of a rich royal brat has not endured so much hardship of life as to ruin it. People like you, people like me, our souls are anchored to our bodies for this life. We own ourselves. We live by our own hands.

  “Men like Aubrey, whose greatest gift in this life is to never be burdened with a detailed thought or an arduous physical task, lose that spiritual glue that you have in spades, woodsman. And so it is not hard to mold them into whatever I need them to be,” Marcel said.

  Robinette spoke for the first time, her words choked by her tears. “Papa! You said you would let him go! Haven’t you gotten what you needed? Can he not be free? You promised!”

  Her sobs ate at Gautier, the way she pleaded with her father for something so obviously decent as the life of another man, even if that man was the bane of the village he was meant to rule. “Marcel, you have to stop this. Your beast attacked two travelers on the road! Surely this can’t be part of your vision?”

  “Two? He only brought back one. And he wouldn’t have attacked any of them if they were from our village,” Marcel said, puzzled. “Two. Hmm. I’ll have to send him back out. Can’t have witnesses out there, spreading the news before it’s all ready. But then, I suppose that’s how you came to be here. Tell me,
who was the other traveler?”

  “Are you mad? I’m not telling you. I’m here to stop you, you loony old man!” Gautier barked.

  Marcel only clucked his tongue in disagreement. “I am obliged to disappoint. You will find that task much more difficult than advertised. I’m warning you Gautier, even you, with so many antlers and pelts furnishing your cabins, cannot kill this beast. I should know. I created it. Last chance: tell me who the traveler is, and where I can find him.”

  Her, Gautier thought. Her, that special girl—woman—who had wandered into his village, into his life mere hours ago, had also wandered into his heart, perhaps more than he might have admitted. But why? What was it about Danielle that he found so, well, enchanting? He set his gaze once more upon Robinette, kneeling at the bedside, and for the first time he saw who else was lying in the bed; an errant gust of wind from the open balcony pushed the bed curtains aside, revealing the prostrate form of Prince Aubrey, significantly emaciated from the last time Gautier had seen him, as if he had not left his bed in quite some time.

  Marcel had been using him for a while, and yet Robinette clung to hope that her demented father would eventually surrender him to her. Why? What had Aubrey done to earn Robinette’s loyalty? She couldn’t have known him for long, if she’d known him at all, before Marcel had done this to him. Was it because he was beautiful?

  Isn’t that why you cling to Robinette?

  It shocked him to hear those words in his mind, not in his own voice, but in Leroux’s. Foolish as his friend generally was…had been…in manners pertaining to Robinette, he had been more sage than Gautier had been willing to admit. Robinette was loyal in her attraction to Aubrey because it suited her fantasy, that she might someday marry a prince. That was the point of all those stories she read, and she wanted it so badly.

  Gautier had to come to grips with the fact that, while he mocked her addiction to literature, he was loyal to his own fantasies, primarily one that Robinette was the woman he wanted, needed her to be. That she would be the one to end his loneliness. To slay that final beast, as he had said at Madame Ésprits’ tavern.

  Oh, how cruel were the fates.

  “Use his soul, Papa!” Robinette said suddenly, thrusting an almost accusatory finger at Gautier. “He’s not using it! He’s just a daft woodsman, killing for sport more than for food! You’ve seen his trophies. Every antler that decorates Madame Ésprits’ tavern was cut by Gautier’s own hand. Take his spirit for your beast, and leave me my sweet prince!”

  “Would that it worked that way darling, but alas, it does not. This next transference of Aubrey’s spirit shall be the final passage. No more recharging between ventures, can you imagine it! Unfortunately Aubrey has to die, but I’m prepared to make that sacrifice. Time’s up, woodsman. The traveler?” Marcel asked, turning to face Gautier.

  “Not a chance.” Gautier drew both pistols and leveled them at Marcel from a distance of ten paces, if that.

  Again, that unnerving smile. “That is fine. It is more entertaining this way. I shall just have the prince sniff out the loose end.”

  Several things happened at once. Marcel ducked, throwing a lever on his worktable as he went down. Gautier fired a fraction of a second too late, and the twin lead balls cracked into a wooden hutch on the opposite side of the room, shattering some of Marcel’s jars.

  Then the room came alive with bright, hot, searing white light, as though a bolt of lightning had struck the floor, only it didn’t come from the sky, but rather some strange apparatus in the corner of the room, with a long metal antenna that stretched out the open balcony and to the sky beyond.

  To Gautier’s left, he saw what he hadn’t been able to see in the shadows: an open section of floor encircled with a thick band of copper, with six copper posts rising up out of it equidistant from each other. Thinner bolts of lightning crackled between the poles, illuminating the large shadowy shape therein, a beast the size of five men, a creature that looked like something straight out of a cathedral painting of hell.

  Gautier could almost feel a transference occurring between the inert form of Prince Aubrey on the bed, and the beast in the copper ring. It caused his heart to ache, his conscience to sting, filling him with the kind of sickness one felt when watching something innocent die for no reason at all. It offended nature, offended Gautier’s very soul that something sacred could be stolen in such a manner, twisted for the purposes of a madman.

  The beast stood up.

  The brief description Danielle had made of the monster was accurate, for the most part. Gautier’s eye caught parts of animals that had been stitched together, like the torso of a massive bear, the head and tusks of a savage boar, the powerful neck and antlers of a mighty stag, and somewhere at the base of it, portions of a bull to bring it all together.

  She had, however, neglected to mention the battle armor. Unless that was new.

  As the beast stretched its spine, spreading its massive paws, it drew in a breath and filled its vast lungs, then opened its gleaming, blood red eyes and let out a snort.

  “No!” Robinette wailed, clutching at Aubrey with her right hand and reaching for the beast with her left. “Papa, no! Aubrey!”

  The beast snarled, a sick, choking sound, repeating the same snort over and over, until Gautier realized it was trying to work Robinette’s name out through its porcine mouth. Saints above, Prince Aubrey really was inside that thing!

  “It lives!” Marcel cackled, pumping a fist in the air. “First task, my pet: kill this woodsman, and capture the intruders!”

  “Not a chance!” Gautier drew his knife and leapt at Marcel, only to be batted aside by the beast’s paw, its claws sharp as daggers. Gautier flew through the air and smashed against another of Marcel’s shelves, this one full of books, and when he hit the ground, fiery hot pain seared in his chest. In the dim light of the room he saw the front of his coat in tatters, and felt blood trickling down his flesh.

  It’s not deep. Get up! He had been hit before. Even thrown before, wrestling cattle. That’s all this thing was. Prince Aubrey was its mind, but Gautier had killed this thing’s body a hundred times.

  The beast had vaulted out of the circle to place itself between Gautier and Marcel. It roared, an unnatural sound to say the least, and fell to all fours to charge at him. Gautier hadn’t any weapon but his knife and his still-sheathed sword, and with no time to draw it, he let out a roar of his own and ran at the monster head-on.

  He only had room to take about two steps before they were upon each other. The wide rack of antlers lowered to gore him, and it was in this instant that Gautier realized he was dealing with a man who had only ever hunted for sport, and with a party of sycophants around him. He knew nothing about animals, nothing about their bodies, how they used their natural weapons, how and why they would engage with another creature in combat…

  Gautier put one boot in the middle of the beast’s head, right in the antler gap, and vaulted himself forward, then upward, over the thing’s impossible bulk. The beast reared and threw its head back, but this only gave Gautier more momentum as he flew across the room, over the table with its instruments and drawings, down onto a surprised Marcel who couldn’t even react fast enough to cover his face.

  Over two hundred pounds of French woodsman came down on the mad inventor. Marcel broke Gautier’s fall, and they both hit the ground silently, losing their breath on impact. Gautier inhaled sharply and jerked to the side, sensing the incoming antlers of the beast, and only just missed being gored on his side.

  Marcel was not so quick, though. One prong stabbed him right in the chest, over the heart, piercing skin and muscle and cartilage and soft organs. The old man coughed, a sick, gurgling sound, and Gautier smelled blood. Marcel was done for.

  The beast threw its head back and roared, lifting Marcel off the floor and swinging him from side to side as it tried to dislodge its victim. Robinette screamed all the while.

  “Robinette! Get to safety. I’ll find you!” Gautie
r shouted.

  But she didn’t move from where she sat. She only picked up a book from the stand next to Aubrey’s bed and hurled it at him.

  “This is all your fault!” she howled through tears.

  “It’s what? No! Your insane father did this. Are you really that cracked in the head?” Gautier shot back.

  He wouldn’t get an answer. The beast tossed Marcel aside and charged after Gautier again. In a flash, the woodsman got to his feet. The beast lowered its head and tossed Marcel’s workbench aside with its antlers, and while it was down, Gautier tried to get in close and jam his knife into its neck, but the thing’s paw slashed out at him and he had to dodge it or die.

  Gautier rolled out of the way and hacked at the paw with his knife, catching flesh and opening up a long wound over what would have been its forearm. As the beast yelped and backed off, Gautier retreated, gathered his wits, and rapidly planned his next move. He would circle around, move in on the thing’s neck, and slit its throat. That would…

  Robinette appeared in front of him and shoved him back. “Leave him alone!” she said.

  “Confound it, woman! Stay out of the way!”

  “I won’t let you do this! He’s my prince!”

  “He’s not a prince, he’s a monster! He’ll kill all of us,” Gautier said.

  “Aubrey’s soul is inside it! My father’s machine is—”

  “Your father said this was the last time, that it was permanent now.”

  The beast snarled at this, pawing at the carpet, hungry for the woodsman.

  “He can be saved, Gautier. I just know it. I love him!”

  “This is not a fairy tale!”

  The beast gently moved Robinette out of the way. Gautier lunged for the kill, going for the jugular, supposing that Marcel wouldn’t have moved it, but then he wasn’t sure if the thing had a bear’s jugular, or a pig’s. He didn’t get the knife in there deep enough to know before the beast snapped at him with its razor-sharp teeth, and he only just retreated from its reach. And now his knife was gone.