by Kyle Shultz
I ran between the tents, pulling Crispin along behind me. But just as we reached the edge of the encampment, the ground began to rumble beneath our feet. Vines covered in thorns exploded from the earth. They coiled around me, tearing at my hide. I felt Crispin’s hand pulled free from mine.
“Crispin!” I shouted.
As the vegetation formed a cocoon around me, I caught a final glimpse of Crispin’s face. He gazed sadly at me, his face deathly pale. “It’s all real,” he said, in a dull monotone, as the vines swallowed him up.
“AAAGGGHHH!” I screamed, as my eyes flew open.
“AAAGGGHHH!” screamed the uniformed man who had shot me earlier. He was pressed against a wall in front of me, staring with wide eyes.
“What the—” I tried to move, but was hampered by the heavy chains around my wrists and ankles. I was sitting in a cramped rectangular space. From the way the floor was lurching beneath me, I presumed I was in the back of a van. From the smell, I discovered that it was a dogcatcher’s van.
“Oh, come on,” I groaned. “Even that nightmare was better than this.”
“Are y-y-you g-going to eat me?” my traveling companion stuttered, clutching at the tranquilizer rifle he had dropped in his panic. He looked dismayed to discover that it was now in several pieces.
I rolled my eyes. “Well, it hadn’t occurred to me before, but now that you mention it, you did shoot me with a dart…”
“I’m sorry!” he cried.
I waved a hand in the air – both, actually, since they were bound together. “Forget about it. I don’t eat people.” I frowned. “At least, I don’t think I do. Not sure what cravings I might have developed.”
He eyed me with a mixture of terror and curiosity. “W-what are you, exactly?”
I twisted my head from side to side, trying to work out a crick in my neck. “I couldn’t say. I intend to consult a zoologist at the earliest opportunity.”
He continued to watch me warily, clutching the remains of his gun as if they were a talisman against evil.
“What’s your name, then?” I asked, trying to be friendly.
“Bernard,” he said.
“Pleased to meet you, Bernard. I’m…” I hesitated. I didn’t really want it to get out that the celebrated detective Nick Beasley had been transformed into a mythical creature. “Never mind. Where are you taking me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
My brow furrowed. “You must know where. You work there, presumably.”
“We’re not putting you in custody. We’re just transporting you to the rendezvous point. Then some other department is taking over.”
“What department?”
“I don’t know what it’s called. But apparently they specialize in this sort of thing.” He motioned vaguely to me, as if that was explanation enough.
I lapsed into silence, considering my options. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I had none.
There was a loud thud from the roof of the van. Bernard jumped in surprise. “What was that?”
I shrugged. “How should I know?”
“I thought you might have enhanced senses or something.”
“Just because I’m a monster doesn’t mean I’m a bloodhound,” I retorted. But just then, something caught my attention. A familiar scent. I sniffed the air in curiosity.
Bernard looked interested. “What is it?”
“Perfume,” I replied. “And I think I recognize it.”
The van lurched abruptly, listing to one side. I dug my claws into the floor as Bernard toppled forward, striking his head on the opposite wall and collapsing. Maneuvering over to him with some difficulty, I found that he was out cold.
“Hey!” a man shouted from the front of the van. “Wot’s goin’ on?”
The van shook violently. “Bernard,” I said to the unconscious heap, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say this van was rising into the air.”
Another jolt sent me tumbling backwards. The wind was knocked out of me as my back slammed into the wall. “Actually,” I wheezed, “Now that I come to think of it, I don’t know better.”
“Help!” I heard the driver shout from the front of the van. “We’re flyin’!”
“Excuse me,” said a female voice from the roof, “but could you possibly stop screaming in terror? I’m trying to cast a very complicated spell.”
I sat up so abruptly that I hit my head on the ceiling. “Oh, no,” I murmured. “It can’t be.”
There was a loud clicking noise from the doors at the back of the van as the lock was unfastened. Seconds later, the doors flew open, and wind rushed in. My stomach did a somersault as I took in the sight of Talesend – several hundred feet below. Bernard woke up briefly, took one look, then slumped to the floor again in a dead faint. The entire van was indeed suspended in the air.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a young woman outside kneeling on a flying carpet.
Even worse, it was Cordelia.
She had not seen me yet; her attention was diverted elsewhere. The carpet was bucking up and down underneath her, and she was busily clutching the edge for dear life. “Hang on,” she said over her shoulder, as the carpet spun in the wrong direction. “I’ll be with you in a moment. Just need to teach this thing some manners.”
I gaped at her, speechless. The rug was the same one she’d taken from the Palace of Villeneuve when she’d jumped. So that’s how she’d survived.
Magic is real, I reminded myself. This was going to take a lot of getting used to.
“Right, then!” said Cordelia, having somehow regained control over her mount. “Now, let’s…aaaaah.” She grimaced as her eyes fell on me. For once, somebody was not reacting to my appearance with abject terror. Instead, Cordelia’s face was contorted with guilt.
“Oh…my.” She stared at me for a long moment. “I, er…oh my.”
“Lady Cordelia Beaumont, at a loss for words.” I half-smiled. “And I really thought I’d seen everything today.”
She cleared her throat. “I, ah - I’m here to rescue you.”
I nodded. “I see. Interesting way of going about it, I must say. Flying vans. Very creative.”
“Well, I had just used the same spell on the rug, you see, so I thought—”
“Perhaps we could save the explanations for later,” I suggested.
She nodded. “Right. Hold still.” She stretched out her hands, palms pointed toward me, fingers curved. Blue light flickered between her fingers, just as it had back at the palace. Only this time, the light blazed fiercely and formed into intricate, curving patterns. Runes. The symbols that were the lifeblood of magic itself - according to the ancients, at least.
This business of the ancients turning out to be right was getting to be very annoying.
As clouds of runes formed in front of each of Cordelia’s hands, she made a pushing motion, sending the symbols floating toward me. They collected around the shackles on my hands and feet, swarming upon the metal like angry bees. Within seconds, the chains fell away.
“Thank you,” I said grudgingly, rubbing my wrists.
“You’re welcome. Now, hop on.” She patted an empty space next to her on the rug.
“Hop—” I blinked. The rug was far from roomy. “Are you serious? Can that thing even hold both of us?”
“Of course!”
“And what about these poor chaps in the van? Are you just going to let them float around for all eternity?”
“Certainly not. The enchantment on the van will wear off. They’ll have gradually drifted back to the ground in an hour or so.”
“I can’t believe this was the best rescue plan you could come up with.”
“I was in a hurry! I heard from a contact at the police station that a monster had been sighted on your street, and I knew it had to be you, and—”
“Save it,” I interrupted. “Just get that miserable carpet closer, would you?”
She pulled forward, and I readied myself to
spring onto the rug.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t had time to grow accustomed to the increased strength in my legs, and I wound up overshooting the carpet by several yards.
“Hold on, I’m coming!” Cordelia called to me.
“Hold on to what, exactly?!” I shouted, my arms flailing as I plummeted toward the rooftops below.
There was a blur of motion, and Cordelia and her carpet were suddenly underneath me.
“Oof!” I grunted, as I slammed into the rug with a heavy thud. It felt like I was sitting on a hard, lumpy bed.
“See?” said Cordelia, wriggling sideways to give me more room. “My plan worked.”
“Just get me back on the ground,” I said through clenched teeth. “And then, we’re going to have a discussion about you and your blasted plans.”
“Uh-oh,” she murmured.
As it turns out, flying carpets are not the most reliable means of transport. We had only flown a short distance before the rug’s altitude began to drop. Cordelia pounded on it and tugged at its corners, as if trying to keep it from falling asleep, but her efforts were in vain.
“Something wrong with the carburetor?” I suggested.
“Very funny.” She gave it another smack with her hand, raising a cloud of dust. “Like I said, this spell’s only temporary. Not as temporary as the one I cast on the van, but I’ve been flying this thing around for quite a while now, so—”
“Cut to the chase,” I interrupted. “Are we going to crash?”
“No; we’re just going to land sooner than I had expected.” She gripped the corners of the rug more tightly. “Hang on.”
While our landing wasn’t a crash in the strict sense of the word, it wasn’t graceful either. We wobbled through the air into the less reputable region of Talesend, where people are careful to stay off the streets at night - and during the day, too, if they can help it. The carpet careened into an alley, plowing through a series of clotheslines stretched between the grim brick buildings on either side of us. I had just removed an article of underclothing from around my throat when we struck the ground with a dull thud, skidding across the dirty pavement. The impact sent us both rolling into a large pile of rubbish at the end of the alley.
“Well,” said Cordelia, scrambling to her feet and brushing fragments of old newspaper from her coat, “not one of my best landings, but at least we made it.”
“Pweh,” I replied, spitting out a banana peel.
“I don’t think anyone saw us; we should be safe.”
“Hrmph.” I narrowed my eyes at her. I had no intention of allowing her to tiptoe around the elephant in the room.
Clearly, she knew what I was thinking. She began scrutinizing a manhole cover on the ground in front of her and fidgeting with the buttons of her blue jacket.
Finally, she spoke. “I’m—”
I raised a hand. “Stop. Just stop.”
“But—”
“Please don’t tell me that you’re about to say ‘I’m sorry.’”
“Well—”
“Because, quite frankly, I don’t think ‘sorry’ comes anywhere close to covering it!” I turned to her and tapped my chest with a claw. “Look at me!”
“It’s hard not to,” she admitted, her face flushing with embarrassment.
“What in heaven’s name were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that you’d change right away!” she protested. “Right when I—well—”
“Stabbed me?” I suggested.
“I thought the enchantment would take effect immediately, and you’d believe me.”
“Well, congratulations, Lady Beaumont. I believe you.” My tail lashed the air as I fumed. I ignored it. I still wasn’t clear on how to control the appendage, and I didn’t intend to keep it long enough to find out. “Couldn’t you have done something a little less dramatic? Like turning your shoes into glass slippers?”
“I tried,” she protested. “Doing something less dramatic, I mean, not the part about the slippers. That would have been ridiculous.”
I snorted. “It’s nice to know that some things are still ridiculous.”
“And you saw what happened. I couldn’t cast any spells in that place; the Rose was too powerful. I had to work with the only magic that was available.”
“Then why didn’t it work right then and there?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it had something to do with the Rose being nearly dead after all this time. Or maybe it was because I used a thorn that wasn’t attached to the Rose. Magical horticulture isn’t really my strong point.”
“No. Apparently your strong point is being impulsive and making an ungodly mess of things.”
Cordelia’s eyes flashed, and she opened her mouth to protest. Then she seemed to think better of it. Her head drooped, and she let out a long sigh. “You’re wearing a dressing gown,” she observed.
I had forgotten about that. “Yes. I am.” I pulled the belt tighter around my waist.
“I’m sorry.”
“That I’m wearing a dressing gown?”
“That this happened. That I did this to you.”
“I told you not to say that.”
“I know.”
I reached up to scratch at the spot behind my ear where the dart had pricked me. “I’m sure you had the best of intentions,” I heard myself say. Why was I being even slightly magnanimous about disaster? What was wrong with me?
“For what it’s worth,” said Cordelia, “everything I told you about my father – about how dangerous he is – was completely true.”
“If magic is real, then I suppose I believe you. I regret not believing you before. Though I’ll admit that it’s largely for selfish reasons.” I looked down ruefully at my clawed toes.
“Does my father have the Rose now?”
“I’m afraid he does, yes.”
Her jaw clenched. “That’s not good.”
“I’m sorry.” Now I was apologizing to her? Had the transformation affected my brain somehow?
She began pacing back and forth. “I have to do something. I need to—”
“Wait,” I said, putting a hand on her arm just in time to stop her accidentally pacing off the edge of the roof. “Before you do anything else, there’s something I’d like you to un-do.”
She cringed. “Er—”
“I’m really hoping that ‘er’ is the first syllable of some kind of de-monsterization spell, and not the start of you saying that you can’t fix this.”
Her gaze went back to the manhole cover. “I can’t fix this,” she said, quietly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I Hate Magic
I felt my ears twitch back, flattening against my skull. The fur on my hackles rose, and my tail shot straight up. I had always prided myself on not panicking openly in moments of crisis, but emotions were a lot harder to disguise in this body.
“What do you mean?” I roared. “Don’t tell me that! You said, back in the castle, that you were going to change me just to convince me magic was real, and then change me back! So why can’t you just do that now?”
“It’s not that easy,” she insisted. “Magic has rules.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “It’s magic,” I exclaimed. “By definition, how could it possibly have rules? Magic is a contradiction of every law in the universe!”
“Of course it has rules,” she shot back. “If it didn’t, then you could just do anything you wanted to with it!”
“Can’t you?”
“No! There are all sorts of things magic can never do. Raising the dead, for example.”
“I’m not asking you to raise the dead! Just break this spell! I thought that’s what fairy tales were all about, after all!” I rammed my fingers through my mane, trying to remember how people went about dealing with problems like this in the old stories. “What if you kissed me?”
Her jaw dropped. “I beg your pardon?”
“Look, I know it wouldn’t be pleasant, but it’d be over in two seconds.
”
“Nick—”
“No, wait.” I snapped my fingers - or rather, tried to. The rough pads on my fingertips dulled the snapping noise. “I’m wrong. That wouldn’t work. We’re not in love.”
“No, we most certainly are not, but—”
“But come to think of it, it wasn’t actually a kiss that changed the Beast back, was it? It was tears.” I whirled to face her and put my hands on her shoulders. “Yes, that should be easy! Just cry on me. Focus on your tremendous, crushing guilt and let those tears flow.”
She pulled away from me. “Look, Nick, I do feel guilty, but to be honest, I’m not much of a crier. And anyway, none of those things are going to fix you. That’s just not how magic works.”
“Fine!” I growled, throwing up my hands. “Then how does it work? Explain.”
She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a small piece of chalk. “Here,” she said, “I’ll draw a diagram.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you always carry chalk around with you?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“No.”
“Their loss.” She knelt down, brushed aside a pile of candy wrappers, and began drawing on the pavement with long, bold strokes.
“There are three parts to every spell,” she began.
I yawned, inadvertently making a loud growling noise at the same time. “Is this going to be a long lecture, Professor?” I asked, squatting down on the pavement next to her.
“I’m being as succinct as I can.” She drew three objects arranged in a triangle - one stick figure at the top, another at the bottom right corner, and a flower at the bottom left corner. Her artistic skills left something to be desired.
“Three parts,” she repeated. “The caster—” She wrote “CASTER” next to the top stick figure. “The source—” This word she put next to the flower. “And the—”
“Victim,” I guessed, pointing to the second stick figure.
“Target,” she corrected, glaring at me. “The caster is somebody with the ability to cast runes. A Charmblood, born with magical powers. It runs in families.”
“Yes, I know about Charmbloods,” I said impatiently. “It’s the other two parts I haven’t heard of.”
