Beautiful Beasts

by Nicholas Knight

  The beast lunged up, flinging her away. She bounced back and struck the creature in the face with her own body, using the chains binding her to strike her opponent’s crimson head over and over with a ringing sound and flashes of sparks. The beast fell back to the ground, dazed.

  The chains fell away with a rattling hiss. The impact had shattered one of the links. She was free. She grabbed the fallen chain in a heap and delivered a quick series of brutal blows to the beast’s head until it quit moving.

  She spit at it. The thing had hurt her teeth and wouldn’t be any good to eat. She was hungrier now than she had been before.

  She grinned and hissed her triumph. The horses she had smelled before whinnied and stomped in their own pens. The grin faded. She liked horses. She did not know why she liked them, but she did, and did not care for them being upset. Smelling blood would upset them. Horses did not like blood. She tried to…think, that was the word, think—but it was as if her brain had been suspended in sticky tree sap. Or blood. Flesh and blood—that would solve the problem. She could eat and think again, and then calm the horses down.

  No sooner had she come to this realization than a door at the far side of the structure—the barn—burst open and more beasts flooded in. It was not the beasts that caught her attention, however, but the two men that came in behind them. Two human men. One old. One in his prime. Either would be delicious. Their hearts and brains would be full of everything she could not get from eating the colorful creatures standing with them. The need for their flesh consumed what little thought she had managed.

  She leapt forward, dropping the chains as she went charging in an unpredictable zig-zag, bouncing off the walls. She was faster and more agile than she had realized. The distance shrank in a heartbeat. She did not think on this, only pushed herself faster still, ricocheting down the hall, jaws salivating at the thought of their meat sliding hot and bloody down her throat. No kicks or body blows for either of these two. Her fangs would find their throats, and she would not let go until they were dead beneath her and she could feast.

  One of the beasts leapt in front of her as she pounced, heat rippling off its feathered wings. It inhaled like it meant to blow on her, but was brought up short by a command from one of the men. She’d kill it first. Then the younger man behind it.

  Some predatory part of her recognized that they should be afraid of her, that the expressionless mask on the man’s face was not a normal response from prey that knew it was being hunted. The recognition did her no good. She lunged forward, catching her opponent’s wrists before it could bring those wicked talons to bear, and went for the throat.

  The man raised a hand toward her. She froze, fangs just scraping flesh. A scream tore its way from her throat. She was too close to her prey to be denied now!

  She could not move. Her entire body began seizing up from the inside, little spasms of energy and resistance dancing through her limbs and core as she fought against his hold.

  You don’t want to fight us. Stop. The words were not a sound, but she recognized them as what was missing from the sounds she had been hearing earlier. Words. Meaning. The sounds had been some form of communication. And so was this. Only it was more. So much more. It was intimate. Happening inside of her. Instinctively, she reached out for a part of her she no longer had a name for and willed it to thrust into this man. Amazingly, that part of her responded—and encountered the man’s equivalent power.

  She had expected to feel his will part before her, pierced or severed by her onslaught. Instead, she met no resistance, only…acceptance. The realization made her suddenly stop fighting, and her entire body relaxed as his mental command swept through her and into her, coursing through her muscles and veins and finally into her mind.

  Good, that’s it, said the words in her head with what sounded like approval. Yes, approval. That was the word for the…emotion, that was inside of them. The man was pleased. She did not want him pleased. She thrust her will harder into him. He simply accepted it into himself. She tried to withdraw and found that she could not. Her…whatever it was…was rooted fast to him, binding them together.

  His presence provided the words she was missing. Flashes of her childhood, of books she’d read, and conversations she’d had with people raced through her thoughts. Words returned, swiftly but not swift enough. She wanted more. Needed more. Words—they were what made her Loretta.

  That was her name—she had a name! Loretta Maradona! Firstborn daughter of the Maradona family and future duquesa.

  The presence inside of her recoiled at that realization, as if her recognition had been its own. She howled in agony, because as it withdrew, it took her newly reclaimed words and identity with it. To have regained these things, having never realized that they were missing only to have them ripped away rent a tear straight through her middle so that it seemed to her that she should be bleeding out all over the floor. The floor she was now laying sprawled upon, thrashing and yowling.

  Noises, angry word-type noises, sounded around her as she fought to regain her sense of self and place. She added her own shrieks to the cacophony. She wanted—needed—the presence and her words back! A moment or an eternity later, the presence returned, soothing the fresh wound like a balm, making her whole once again.

  You are not Loretta, the voice inside her head said.

  Loretta Maradona, she disagreed, that was her name.

  That is not your name any longer. You cannot be Loretta.

  She remembered being on the grass, held down by impudent beasts, her father glaring down at her in abject disgust. It felt as if he’d ripped open her stomach and spilled her bleeding insides out onto the ground.

  No, she thought. No, I am Loretta Maradona! Firstborn of the Maradona family. I am to be the duquesa! I am pure blooded. Diamond souled and pure.

  Once, said the voice with pity—pity! No longer.

  She wailed anew. More memories, complete memories returned, and with them, almost unnoticed, her craving for human flesh and blood diminished. Each memory should have been a treasured gem, another piece that made her who she was and made her whole. Instead they bit into her, shards of a shattered woman whose life she could not have ever lived.

  Diamond souled were pure. They did not Fall. They did not become beasts. She could not have been the duquesa’s daughter. She tried to pull away from the memories, to stop them from coming. The presence enveloped her, as if cradling her very soul.

  When she came to, her eyes were full of tears, and Loretta finally realized that she was naked. The pale blue fur was gone, but the messy locks of her hair strewn across her face remained that horrific shade of dark blue she remembered seeing before. As she pulled herself into what should have been an awkward sitting position with her bound knees pulled up high to her chin, she noticed that even the hair between her legs had changed color. Her tail twitched at the shock. She had a tail! Her entire face burned with shame. She was naked before all these beasts and these two men, one of them her father’s long-time friend, and they could all see the evidence of her Fall. Her ears lay flat against her skull, and that sensation only made her shame deepen.

  The younger man, the one she had attacked and who had stood his ground, approached and knelt beside her. His presence felt familiar and soothing to her thoughts even though she had never seen him before. When she realized what that meant, her gorge rose, and she fought down the urge to vomit.

  “No!” She jerked away, falling over into the dirt, squirming to put distance between them. “No. I am not bound. I am not some lowly beast, and I will not be b-bound to the likes of some common hoodlum!”

  The laughter from the barn’s entrance was not the reaction she had expected, and it stilled her. She looked past the younger man to see Conde Valentin Rodriquez with his head thrown back in laughter. The beasts around him smirked. Smirked, the little monsters!

  “Cease that at once,” she demanded. “How dare—”

  The presence insi
de of her swelled until she felt as if she would overflow and her words died on her tongue. Her gaze lowered from the conde to the nameless man who she now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt had bound her to him. His expression was still a blank mask, unreadable. He’d have done well in court if he hadn’t been so obviously rugged and didn’t stink like fish and smoke. Even if he cleaned up, there would be no mistaking the weathering he’d endured. As he was, the man was barely a ragamuffin.

  It was the conde who spoke next, though not to her. “You’d best break her of those bad habits early. It will be a kindness. Break her like a wild stallion and be done with it. Both of your lives will be much easier that way.”

  Cold dread spiked up from her stomach and into her chest. Her indignation fled in the face of the very real possibility that she was about to be tortured. She’d heard that beasts could take far more punishment than any human could endure, and that the most unruly had to be beaten into submission, their minds ripped from them over and over again until they completely forgot about their human lives or learned their place. She could not forget who she was! This was all some kind of misunderstanding—some trick played on her by her sister and that merchant.

  No mere merchant, she suddenly realized. Gage was some kind of wizard. She’d never heard of one who would lower himself to a tradesman’s status, but that had to be the only explanation. She was diamond souled, not a trace of bestial heritage in all of her ancestry. She couldn’t have Fallen without some sort of magical aid or curse. Perhaps this was all some sort of elaborate illusion? A hallucination? Was she even now back in the vineyard, crawling around in the dirt as she imagined this nightmarish scenario?

  Rise, the voice in her head commanded, and she leapt to her feet without thinking, realizing only after that the younger man was already standing, and that she had obeyed without question.

  Hot anger chased away the fear. How dare he command her! She was…her anger faded in the face of his impassive expression. It was as if he knew everything she was thinking and simply did not care because he knew, absolutely knew, that she must obey him.

  “I cannot be a beast,” she said to him, all but lowering herself to pleading with him so that he would understand. “I am of pure blood. I cannot Fall.”

  “I am Sir Sigmund Moreau,” he replied. “I am your new keeper. The sooner you accept that and your new place in this world, the better off you will be.”

  Loretta made to protest and realized her exact position. She was naked on the ground—she must have fallen when her anima was being accepted by this Moreau’s—with hostile beasts glaring at her from every angle, and both men had firearms. In her Rampant state, she had not been able to recognize them for what they were and then she had been too disoriented to even take note of them. Her life was in very real danger. The cold she felt had nothing to do with her nudity.

  “So,” Rodriquez said. “Will I be putting her down?

  He made to shoulder the longarm he held but stopped as Moreau’s own sidearm twitched. The motion brought her eye to the weapon. It was of an odd design, something akin to a six-shot revolver and a shotgun. It had a cylinder that was much too large for bullets and a bulky stock. There was no way he could be accurate with that thing, and if he shot it without bracing that stock the man wouldn’t just break his wrist, he’d shatter it.

  The man must be some kind of idiot, and her life was quite literally in his hands.

  He gave her a once over, then spoke to the Conde. “No. I accept your offer.”

  The conde laughed.

  ~ ~ ~

  Several hours later, after partially recovering from the shock of regaining her right mind, Loretta took proper stock of the changes she had gone through. The most obvious to her, and the strangest to accommodate, were her new teeth. They filled her mouth like needles, and thrice she had already drawn blood from her own tongue. At least she no longer had a muzzle.

  Her nails and ears had changed as well, the former becoming short, hook-like claws, and the latter becoming furry, if not so prominent as she had feared. Her hips were slightly wider, as was her backside, though not with fat. Loretta had become well-muscled, particularly in her legs and core, both of which seemed to have also become longer.

  These changes should have thrown off her center of gravity, but balance came easily to her. Indeed, she found sitting still like a proper lady to be all but impossible. As soon as she’d been freed of her bindings, she’d begun to dart about, each movement flowing gracefully, if suddenly, into another. She was aware of her body as she had never been before. Everything felt connected, each step and twist and turn all simply brushstrokes of a masterpiece in the making. Was that sensation normal?

  As if that, and the presence of the decidedly inappropriate musculature were not horrific enough, she had a tail! Fluffy, soft, and pale. A color somewhere between white and blue and so damnably responsive. It helped her keep her balance, but it also stuck straight up whenever she was startled. Worse, the appendage seemed to have a mind of its own. Anyone who observed her long enough would soon learn to tell her exact mood by the position of her traitorous tail.

  The entire process of familiarizing herself with this body nearly brought her to tears all over again. This was not her body. These were not her legs or her belly or her hair. Even the subtle change in her movement was abhorrent. She had always been graceful, but her motions had also always been economic and deliberate. Now her feet and hands moved simply for the sake of moving if she did not deliberately will them to be still.

  After a breakfast of bland fish, she had been given a set of poorly mended trousers—trousers!—and a blouse that had clearly belonged to another woman or beast. The very idea that she was wearing clothes that had once been worn by somebody else, let alone one of these creatures, was nearly as disgusting as the notion that she now was one. There were no shoes to be had, but another disturbing blessing seemed to be that her feet remained largely unscathed by stone or briar.

  For the most part, she had been allowed to simply wander the yard around the cabin beside the barn that turned out to belong to Sir Sigmund Moreau. Apparently, he was some sort of knight, albeit the shoddiest, poorest excuse for a knight she had ever laid eyes upon. If it weren’t for the fact that being near him kept her sane, she would have fled into the woods, damn the risks, and taken her chances. Except that he had instructed her, using that voice that spoke inside of her head no less, to stay nearby, and so that was exactly what she did.

  Rodriquez’s beasts kept their distance from her. Loretta did not mind that in the slightest. She found a spot up at the top of a nearby hill dotted with willow trees that had a good stump for sitting—and fidgeting—on, and three piles of rocks stacked up to signify something, perhaps some ancient heathen rite. Who could tell in a place as obviously backwater as this? With naught but herself for company Loretta found herself reliving those last moments of her life before this. Sirena had lured her out to the vineyard, pretending to be Robles, and then Gage had trapped her using some kind of unseen force before that glowing object in his hand had worked its magic upon her.

  It had felt nothing at all like what Sir Moreau had worked upon her, now that she thought about it. His power had seemed to come from within her, as if he were a part of her, and she simply had not known it. It was disturbingly natural. Whereas whatever force Gage had wielded had acted solely upon her person from the outside like a giant, invisible hand. Of course, she had been human, a woman, not a beast, and therefore not subject to any man’s mental commands.

  Gage must have been using some form of wizardry. It was the only explanation that made sense. And that object he’d carried—she’d never heard of anything at all like it during her years at the Academy. An object that could cause a diamond souled woman to Fall was something that she would have heard of. At least in gossip and outlandish tall tales if nothing else.

  She took a deep breath and twisted about. This was getting her nowhere. What she needed to do
was assess her situation and proceed rationally and calmly in the direction that would restore her to power. Sir Moreau might be able to issue her commands, but he was still some lowborn with barely a hint of nobility in his veins. If she could not bend his like to her will, then she truly had no business ever aspiring to be the duquesa.

  Return to the cabin.

  Loretta shivered. It was as if he had known she was thinking about him. Could he tell what she was thinking? She had never before considered with any thoroughness the relationship between men and their beasts. The entire notion rather disgusted her. For all she knew, he could hear her very thoughts. Her stomach clenched and her traitorous tail shot straight up. He seemed to have known her thoughts back when he was binding her. It was then that she realized she had already begun answering his command and was halfway down the hill.

  Loretta cursed under her breath and brought herself to a reluctant pause, stopping beside a willow tree simply to prove to herself that she could, but the longer she stayed there, the stronger the urge to follow through on his command grew. This was made no easier by her newfound desire to be in constant motion. She was able to remain still and quietly rebellious for only a few moments before her feet were once again moving. Loretta told herself that she could have stayed longer had she been so inclined. She did not believe it, but whispered the lie over and over in her mind, taking comfort in the little hope it afforded her.

  When she reached the cabin, it was to discover a set of familiar trunks being carted over to the conde’s carriage by the old man’s beasts.

  “Those are mine,” she cried out without thinking.