One of the beasts, which had feathers in place of hair, a pair of wings folded behind its back and the most terrifying golden eyes she had ever seen, fixed her with a disgusted look over the top of the trunk it was carrying. Loretta flinched, then held herself straight and proud.
“Lay down that trunk this instant,” she commanded the beast, “There is no reason for me to wear these rags when my gowns are at hand.”
The beast threw her a disgusted look and ignored her, continuing on its way to the carriage with Loretta’s trunk.
“Did you not hear me, beast?”
“You best be getting over yourself quick, little missy, or Feathers over there’ll roast you good.”
Loretta whirled around to confront whoever it was that dared speak to her in such a manner, and nearly shrieked as she came face to mouth with a maw of grinning red fangs. The maw belonged to a beast over a head taller than her with a feline body made of what Loretta thought might be ruby. She had known that some beasts were less human than others, but it had always been a sort of academic knowledge. Monstrous beasts were never kept in the presence of a lady, and the term was certainly appropriate to this terrifying creature.
“You’re not well-liked here,” the beast went on. “Caused too much pain and trouble. Bet you don’t even remember running Anmalen over with your fancy horse just a few days ago. Nearly ruined her arm not letting her into the healing spring. And you been a royal pain in our asses since.”
Loretta’s eyes flashed. Terrifying or not, no one, least of all a beast, spoke to her this way. “How dare you.”
The beast backhanded her with enough force to send her spinning several steps. She thought her jaw might break under the force. Somehow Loretta’s feet moved of their own accord and the spin was transformed into a pirouette that brought her to a graceful halt just out of reach. It did nothing to stop the pain blossoming in her cheek or the taste of blood on her lips. The beast had split her lip open!
She was so shocked that she froze in place, and, instead of assessing her situation, her mind latched on to the taste of blood. It was disgusting. Had she really been craving the coppery taste only a few hours ago? It seemed impossible. But then, what was impossible anymore?
The next blow sent her sprawling to the ground. She blinked up at her attacker, rage and fear warring within her chest in equal measure.
The beast cocked her striped head and bared her fangs. “Ain’t so tough now you got your head back. Maybe you was just always crazy.”
Loretta leapt to her feet, anger burning away her fear, ready to teach this mouthy beast her proper place, only to freeze as a familiar feeling welled inside of her chest and a voice in her mind said, Stop.
She stopped instantly, coming to stand in place, glaring at the ruby beast.
Sir Moreau and Conde Rodriquez approached, followed by a pair of beasts leading the horses from the barn. Two of them were clearly a matched set intended to accompany the motor carriage should the engine fail, while the third was a nag not worthy of the title. It was old and boney despite the plethora of grass about them. That one had to belong to Moreau.
“She attacked me,” Loretta spat, pointing at the striped beast.
Sir Moreau and the conde looked at the striped beast, who shrugged. “She was trying to interfere with the trunks. Said we had to give her a pretty dress.”
Conde Rodriquez chuckled. “None of that anymore. Good work, Tibby.”
Tibby—this monster’s name was Tibby!?—beamed at her master, flashing her fangs in a grin.
“Those are mine,” Loretta seethed. “Those trunks have my personal seal upon them. My property!”
“You are a beast. You don’t have the right to property anymore,” Sir Moreau said. “What you are wearing is sufficient for now. Once we reach Saunet we shall sell off the contents in exchange for proper provisions.”
She stared at him, dumbstruck. “P-proper provisions? Those are my things!”
“Once,” said Sir Moreau. “Now they are mine to do with as I please. And I shall.”
Rodriquez snorted. “You always did, you little shit.”
The harsh language was enough to shock Loretta into gaping silence. Gentlemen did not use such course language around a lady! Before she could reprimand either of them, they were stepping into the motor carriage, leaving the conde’s beasts to manage the horses. The nicer pair were quickly hooked up to the carriage while the nag was tied off behind it. She had no idea how far it was to Saunet, but she doubted the poor old animal would make it.
Come, Sir Moreau’s voice sounded in her head.
Just as she started to make her way toward the motor carriage though, both vehicle and horses began to pull away, leaving her standing there, dumbfounded, as the only means of transportation took off without her. It was then that she noticed the conde’s beasts, each taking up a position near the carriage and jogging to keep pace. Was she supposed to follow on foot? Like a common dog?
Apparently so.
She snarled at the indignation, wondering how they possibly thought she could keep up, but started after them at what turned out to be an easy pace. Several miles went by before she realized that she should be tired but was not. She was moving faster than she ever could have before, and yet the light sweat she had broken out in had more to do with the day’s rising heat than her own exertion. Undignified as the trip to town was, Loretta began to suspect that it would not be altogether difficult.
That was when the first of the conde’s beasts tripped her.
She sprawled into the dirt road they had turned onto half a mile back, banging her nose on a lifted root. The beasts made no move to help her up or sound an alert to the carriage that it should halt. For a moment she was tempted to simply lie there and let the carriage and the insufferable beasts and men pull away. Then she remembered her hunger for flesh and blood, being unable to speak or understand words, not even being able to remember who she was or had been. Loretta leapt to her feet and hurried to catch up.
A few minutes later, she was tripped again.
The first she had thought was merely an accident, but the second trip had been deliberate. She caught two of the beasts, Tibby and Feathers—those had to be nicknames—smirking to each other as she rejoined the group. Now that she knew what to look for, she was able to dodge, spinning in a mercurial arc around her next attacker, allowing the beast to tumble past and crash into a bush. She smirked at the indignant creature as it rose up to glare at her, and continued jogging along.
That was how the trip to Saunet continued, under a flurry of attacks coming from any possible direction. Loretta quickly realized that if she could see the attacks coming then avoiding them was fairly easy. She moved far quicker and with much greater control of her body than she ever had before. She almost found herself enjoying the activity. It was like a game. She was reminded every time she caught sight of a snarling face or found herself face down in the dirt once again, that it was not. Even if she were to accept that she was now like these beasts, they would not accept her as one of them.
That was fine by her. She was too good for them anyway. Even if they were bound to a conde and she to the ragamuffin Moreau. Honestly, she wondered if her sister had not somehow arranged that as well, merely to spite her. That thought slowed her long enough for one of her traveling companions to shove her into a tree.
Pulling herself away and running to catch up once again, Loretta began to wonder if the conde had been in on her sister’s plot. It should have occurred to her earlier. It should have been the first thing she thought upon recognizing him. She cursed herself and put the thought away to consider later. There was little she could do with or about it at the moment and attempting to do so would find her laid out in a ditch with a broken neck.
Even paying attention, she could not dodge every attack. Especially when the group began teaming up. The rainbow haired Anmalen managed to distract her while Tibby slipped up behind her and sent her careening into a nearby
gully to land in the mud with a splash.
Loretta snarled up at them, leaping to her feet, but none of them were near enough to attack. In fact, they had put a fair bit of distance between themselves and her. A sound behind her was Loretta’s only warning, and if she had not already been so primed to respond after so many sneak attacks, she would have lost her head.
Something shiny and metallic slashed right where her neck had been an instant before as she dodged aside. The muddy footing stole her momentum, and she tumbled, coating herself in more mud. An angry screech sounded behind her. She spun around to find a Rampant beast coming at her in a silvery blur of metallic feathers and claws.
Loretta tried to lash out with her anima out of instinct and found nothing there. Even if it had been, it would not have done her any good. This beast was Rampant, not harvested by a keeper. The seconds lost by her mistake cost her. The beast closed, wicked beak reared back to strike.
A gunshot sounded. The branches of a nearby shrubbery vanished. Another shot followed right on the heels of it, taking the Rampant beast in the shoulder in a shower of sparks. The metal gave way under the shot and blood sprayed. Another shot. This time the sparks and blood flew from the beast’s head as half of its skull vanished.
The corpse toppled over.
Loretta looked back at the motor carriage, which had come to a halt. Moreau had stepped out and was examining that awkward firearm of his. Apparently not so awkward, she thought dully. That stock must have some kind of spring mechanism inside of it to reduce the recoil. That was the only explanation for how he managed to get those shots off so quickly and keep the grouping so tight with a weapon that size.
She looked back to the dead beast and poked it with her toe. The metal was soft. Cerium, perhaps? The creature was definitely more animal than human. She’d never had much experience with Rampant beasts. As a diamond souled, they’d always been kept away from her.
Her hands were shaking. Why were her hands shaking?
She clenched her fists, stood up, and strode from the gully as if she wasn’t covered in mud and blood. The other beasts watched her, keeping their distance.
Moreau did not so much as glance at her.
She gritted her teeth. The man had just saved her life, and now he would not do her the courtesy of looking at her?
He looked up, but not at her. At the conde’s menagerie. “That’s enough of that. Understood?”
Her tail shot up, her ears went flat, and she found herself baring her teeth at him. How dare he interfere!
The conde’s menagerie gave her bitter glances but kept their distance as Moreau re-entered the carriage as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Perhaps nothing had, she realized. She might be the best educated person there, but she was far outside her many areas of experience. For the first time, it dawned on her what her relationship with this man was as she glanced over at the dead beast in the gully. If she made a break for it, she might be able to get away before he could mentally command her back, but then what? She would become a monster, Rampant like that thing that had attacked her.
Loretta had vague memories of her own time being Rampant. Mostly, she remembered being hungry and angry. She was plenty angry now. If she did get away and go Rampant, she wouldn’t have to remember who she had been or live with the knowledge of what she was now. She’d have no memories, just that blinding fury.
She crushed the notion under heel. That would be giving up. Surrendering to her circumstances and allowing these petty creatures to believe that they had bested her. A familiar determination lit within her as the motor carriage started up again. Loretta, Maradona or no, future duquesa or no, did not lose.
Beneath that determination, low in her chest where it had settled, pulsed the warm command of Sir Moreau. Come it urged her. So, she did.
Chapter Four
Sauvage
Their travels ended as abruptly as they had started.
The motor carriage came around a bend, and ahead they could see the town of Saunet, and off to the east, Kerkenhal. It was a castle from a time when the region was less peaceful and built to withstand a siege—ugly and practical, with towering stone walls that made the whole thing look like a big grey box. Difficult to breach, more difficult to admire.
Saunet was at least a week’s travel from the Maradona chateau, which made Loretta stop to think about how long she must have been out of her mind. Seven days? Eight? Rodriquez must have been especially keen on the notion of scruffy Sir Moreau harvesting her. Not that she herself was looking any better after a day of running along a dirty road and a dip in a muddy gully. Her limbs felt as if they’d been hollowed out and filled with lead. She was covered in sweat and road grime, and her hair was an absolute fiasco. Not to mention the blood.
Rodriquez’s beasts had respected Moreau’s command for a few hours, then started up again. The longer the trek had gone, the better they had gotten at ganging up on her and the more fatigued she’d become. By the end she was having more “accidents” than not, though none of them drove her from the road again. Every part of Loretta ached so badly that she was hardly able to dwell on her appearance, let alone Rodriquez’s motives.
As they drew near the city, the antagonizing antics of her traveling companions ceased, and the stench of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people all living in close proximity assaulted Loretta’s newly enhanced nose. She had discovered on her journey a newfound awareness of her feet, where they were and what was beneath them. This ability had saved her several times from eating dirt, but, from her first step on the slimy cobblestone streets she found she would have preferred the extra falls to this experience. And that was the least of her worries.
Loretta had been to Saunet several times before, but always from a position of authority. If she had walked the streets, it was as a lady of high breeding and stature, not a beast exhausted from a full day chasing after a motor carriage. The conde’s beasts pulled together in a tight formation around the carriage that kept the vagabonds and riffraff apart from the vehicle, but also made it so that Loretta was forced to wade through the people brushed aside in their wake. Peasants and beasts crowded her, pushing against her. Twice, she felt a hand trying to slip into a pocket her trousers did not have. Each time this happened, she swatted it away, which earned scowls and looks of shock. She was too tired to care.
They pulled to a stop in front of an inn, where Loretta expected she’d finally be allowed to rest. It was not to be. Moreau exited the motor carriage, saddled his nag, and, after grasping wrists with Rodriquez, pushed onward. Their destination, it seemed, was to be Kerkenhal itself.
The last stretch made Loretta even more aware of her pain and fatigue. She fell into a fugue, coming to only as they approached Kerkenhal’s gate. The sun was setting, turning the sky a blazing orange. The light glinted off the gilded ornamentation upon the guards’ uniforms and weaponry.
Slow, her tired mind supplied. That gilding would make them slow and throw off the weight of their weapons. What was the point of the guards, then? There was nothing ornamental about their beasts. Each had at least two with him, and there was something inorganically rough about them and their animalistic features. Their stances, light and ready despite their apparent solidity, suggested that they were the real threat. Loretta could believe it. Guard and beast alike eyed the two of them with unabashed skepticism that made her tail stand on end.
Without intending to, Loretta threw her shoulders back, adjusting her posture even as Sir Moreau drew himself up and produced an envelope from his tattered coat. “I am Sir Sigmund Moreau. I am here to see the vizcondesa.”
One of the guards reached into his coat pocket and produced a pocket watch, which he ostensibly checked. Then he rapped on the gate with his knuckles. “You, Sir Moreau, are late.”
The gates began to slowly open with a groan of straining mechanisms. They must draw their power from the castle’s spring, Loretta thought. From t
he sound of the machines at work, she could think of nothing else that could provide the necessary amount of energy short of an entire team of coordinated beasts. Kerkenhal really was built to withstand a siege.
“Am I?” Sir Moreau asked, sounding intrigued, if anything.
Loretta gave him a sidelong look. His expression was one of bemusement. Where on earth did the ragamuffin knight get off sounding bemused? One of his station should be grateful to be allowed within the same building as a vizcondesa, let alone be expected by one.
Loretta’s heart leaped. The vizcondesa!
Loretta had never met Vizcondesa Augustina Velasquez before, but she knew the woman was diamond souled, if not so pure blooded as to move in the same circles as the Maradona family. If anyone would be willing to help her…shame suddenly filled her, and all thought of pleading for assistance fled. What would happen to her family if she was discovered? The purity of her mother and father’s lineage would be called into question. For a fleeting moment, her father’s face rose to the fore of her mind, twisted with disgust as he glared down at her. The remembered look stabbed into her heart like a frozen knife.
She would find a way to restore her humanity, and, when she did, she would return and claim her rightful place. If she was discovered as a beast before then…her return would be awkward, to say the least. Assuming it did not destroy her family outright. No, she needed to go about this very carefully.
“Yes,” said a stern voice once the noise of the opening gates had died. “You are.”
The voice belonged to a dark skinned, matronly figure. She looked like the kindly old grandmother from a children’s story. Her face and figure were round, and her dress several seasons out of fashion, though she was no less regal for it. The woman wore it with the confident indifference of the elderly, and it worked for her, giving her a casual elegance. She did not carry herself like most women of her weight, instead gliding with light elegance across the ground to them, holding herself so proudly erect that it seemed to Loretta that the woman was several inches taller than she actually was until she stood before them.
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