Beast's Rose

by L M Wilson

  I can’t move. I’m frozen within the depths of the most amazing blue eyes I’ve ever seen. Comparing them to anything earthly would do them an injustice. Even if I could describe the colour, there’s no way I could describe the way they appear to be seeing right through me. Exposing every little secret and searching my very soul for the answers to questions I have no comprehension of.

  “Ah shit, I think you broke her Fade. Maybe look away for a moment and let her catch her breath. Yeah?” I can hear the humour in the wolf-man’s voice but there’s also a hint of fear penetrating his voice.

  Truthfully, I’m a little scared right now myself.

  I can’t move for fucks sake.

  This Fader guy has some kind of hypnotising power. I’m positive of it. Especially as he turns his back on me and the air rushes out of my lungs. I’m practically panting from the effort it takes to keep my eyes on anything other than him.

  “What the fuck?” It’s not really a question I want answered right now but for some reason these guys seem to think bombarding me with information is a good idea.

  “Fader is a Shadow-walker. He’s got the ability to read people’s memories.” Wolf-man says, his voice taking on a more serious tone.

  “Enough! We don’t know this chick and I have no intention of telling her anything more until we find out where that bastard is.” Fader’s growls have me backing up into my couch on the other side of the room. The backs of my knees hit the hard edge and I fall more than sit into the soft cushions. “Where is Loki?” Fader practically shouts the question at me and the very name of the man who cursed me has my spine stiffening defensively.

  I’ve got two choices; Lie and hope they don’t see through it or tell them the truth and hope they don’t go running for the hills.

  “I have no idea who that is.” I state blandly, trying my hardest to appear confused, instead of the fear that’s spiking through my veins.

  Yeah, yeah, I lied. Get over it. Self-preservation is high on my list.

  “Dude, I seriously think the spell went wrong. I mean look where we are. Can you really see Loki fucking Bromamere living in a place like this?” His piercing green eyes cut to me and once more I’m hypnotised, but not like I was with Fader. No, this guy’s eyes have my mind full of lustful thoughts that I really have no desire to explore.

  Okay, so that’s another lie but come on, I have no idea who these guys are or even if they could be dangerous. It’s clear they are looking for the devil and I want nothing to do with him. That man, (No even in my own head I can’t call Loki a man.) That demon is the reason I’m trapped, the reason I’m alone all the fucking time. Loki Bromamere is a demon, the devil, the last man on Earth I ever want to see again.

  “No offence, this is a nice place you got here and all but the man we’re looking for has um rather expensive tastes.” The wolf-man tries to reassure me as though I’m going to take offence to his description of my house.

  I glance around at my prison, trying to see it from their point of view. The hunter’s cottage isn’t much to look at from the outside, just a wooden structure with four walls and a slate roof, but on the inside, I’ve made it a home. It’s dusty and rustic, but its welcoming. A tiny woodfire stove, two small wooden chairs, a breakfast bar with a carved wooden bench top with built in cupboards. To the right of the kitchen is the only other door; that leads to the bathroom, which is indoors (thankfully, I was able to modernise that particular feature of my home a few years ago.) with plain white tiles decorating said bathroom and woodfire plumbing, yeah, no electricity in this place.

  My bedroom’s not the biggest but it hides behind a concertina divider and the bed could easily fit two people. Across from the kitchen is the small sitting area, it’s simply furnished with just a two-seater couch and a small bookshelf. It may not seem like much to the guys, but this little place has been my home for centuries and as much as I hate the circumstances that brought me here, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  “It’s a nice place though. Very homey.” Golden eyes agrees as he too looks around at my sparse furnishings. I feel a blush staining my cheeks and mentally berate myself for being embarrassed over something I can’t change.

  Before I can respond to wolf-man’s backhanded insult, or golden-eyes lame attempt to backpedal, Fader walks over to the front door and lifts up an off-white canvas bag. “Fine, let’s try it again, maybe I didn’t use enough monkshood last time.” He says as he rummages around in the bag.

  “Dude, could you maybe let me rest before we try again?”

  Fader ignores wolf-man and starts pulling out vials of what looks like magical spell ingredients. Wolf-man grabs Fader’s arm, stopping him from pulling anything else out of the bag. “You did just use me and my wolf to track the bastard, clearly something more than “Not enough monkshood,” went wrong or we wouldn’t be standing in the middle of this hot girl’s cabin in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

  Oh, my, god! The sexy wolf-man thinks I’m hot.

  Get a grip Rose. This is not the time to be drooling over sexy guys.

  Guys who have appeared out of nowhere, searching for the last person I ever want to see.

  The golden guy, who’s been really quiet for the last five minutes stands up straight and crosses the room to me. Kneeling down in front of me, he places his hand on my thigh. Heat pools beneath his touch, radiating throughout my body and sending butterflies fluttering in my stomach. “Sorry we scared you and took over your cabin. We’ll let ourselves out now.” With a final comforting pat on my thigh, he stands and motions to the other two to follow him outside.

  I panic. I don’t want them to leave. If they leave, then I’ll be alone again. Completely and utterly alone.

  “What do you want with the man you’re searching for?” I have no idea what made me ask the question, okay, my panic made me ask, but I am genuinely curious about their motives. And honestly, it’s been almost an entire month since I last spoke to another person. It’s kind of nice to have other people around. It also helps that they are all very easy on the eyes.

  “He’s a very bad man-.” Golden guy starts but stops with his mouth open. He glances around and slowly backs towards the door, looking like he’s about to bolt.

  “Who does very bad things to good people.” Wolf-man says watching his golden friend closely.

  “And we’re trying to find him so we can kill him.” Fader says, pulling my attention away from golden guy. I gulp at the look of warning from Fader. “So, if you know where he is, I’d suggest you tell us right now.”

  “He cursed you all, didn’t he?” I don’t really need them to confirm my suspicions, wolf-man kind of did that when he turned into a wolf. After all, I’ve lived for four hundred years and have never come across a shifter, but then again, I don’t really get out much anymore.

  Fader cocks his head to the side, studying me. I’m not game enough to meet his eyes for fear I may become trapped within their ethereal depths again. “Our spell didn’t go wrong, did it?” He moves faster than I can and that’s saying something considering I can cross a few miles in the blink of an eye. “Where is he?” Fader’s strong fingers squeeze my arm, painfully. I flinch but find myself incapable of pulling away from his demanding eyes. Eyes that bore into my soul once more.

  I try to fight the pull into the scary abyss of my own memories but it’s a futile attempt. Images flash within my mind, then a memory begins to play out. A memory I thought I had forgotten…

  ◆◆◆

  “He will be here any minute, why are you not dressed?” My mother screeches in exasperation brandishing the kitchen knife like it’ll spur me on. It doesn’t. I watch her for a few more minutes. My mother is one of those too young to be a mother of a teenager type of mother’s. She’s barely even thirty-two, she looks younger though. With her flawless skin, rose-red lips, and dark hair, she’s the very picture of an upper-class wife.

  Something I don’t want to be. But it’s not normal for a girl to want
that. It’s not normal for our class of people to want anything. Yeah, I’m talking about women here. It is the sixteenth century and we are still basically broodmares. I can’t wait for the day when women can choose for themselves. Mother says it’ll happen one day but not in our lifetimes.

  I really don’t want to be betrothed to anyone if I’m being honest. I’m only sixteen and a half, which is a little old to be being betrothed since most girls are betrothed at fourteen and then married at sixteen, but I’ve never wanted to marry for position. I’ve rejected every suitor that came calling and now my father is forcing my hand. He thinks I’m getting too old and thinks that if I don’t marry someone soon, I’ll become one of those spinsters who end up alone for the rest of their lives, which would be fine by me.

  Better to live alone than in a loveless marriage. I cut my eyes back to my mother as she goes through the motions of baking todays food. She looks happy enough, but I’ve heard her crying at night when she thinks no one will notice. My mother used to be a free spirit. The kind of woman who was taught to read behind her father’s back. The kind of woman who taught the same taboo things to me when I was little more than a babe, but she changed. I’m not sure when it happened, but it did and not for the better.

  I snatch an apple tart from the bench beside mother and pop it into my mouth before mumbling around my food, “What if he is a horrible, harsh, cruel man, or worse, what if he is so ugly it pains me to look at him?” Okay so I don’t really think being ugly is worse than being a cruel person, but my mother doesn’t like it when I speak above my station, so I try to cover my real fears with shallow ones.

  Her shocked expression is enough to make me laugh. “Your father would never allow such a thing.” Mother turns back to finish chopping the vegetables for the stew she’s making for our midday meal. “Stop delaying, get presentable or we will present him with a bedraggled betrothed and hope for the best.” Mother laughs as my face turns redder than the freshly picked tomatoes lying on the kitchen bench behind her.

  I’m not worried about my appearance, well, not overly, but what if I’m wrong and he’s actually a really handsome man.

  I hurry up the stairs and quickly change into my petticoats and my best dress. Just as I’m fastening the last of the buttons down the front of the pale green silk, mother comes through wielding a hairbrush like it’s a weapon. She slaps it on her palm and studies me for a moment. Her eyes water as a wobbly smile tugs at the corners of her lips.

  I look much like my mother; Long dark hair, big bright blue eyes. Skin the colour of the first snow and a light sprinkle of freckles dusted across my nose and cheeks. Mother is only sixteen years older than me and even though I know as a woman it is our duty to make a good wife and bear children for our husbands, I really don’t want my mother’s life.

  I want to study and learn and travel all around the world. I want to meet new people and explore the unknown lands. I want to fall in love and marry because our love is magical, not because my parents got an offer they couldn’t refuse.

  Mind you the offer they got is pretty darned hard to refuse. This Mr Bromamere has offered to take me as his wife without dowry, buy out my father’s bakery business and buy their land, which means they can pay off my father’s debts, (He inherited a huge debt from his own father when he died.) and he even offered to let my parents retire to a farm that he owns just outside of town.

  It really is a great offer.

  For my parents, but not for me.

  I sigh as my mother runs the brush through my hair one last time. She pats the back of it then declares me presentable.

  With a heavy heart, I follow her down the hall to the sitting room. I know no matter what I say or do, I have no choice but to do as my father tells me. Even if every bone in my body is screaming at me to run far away from marriage.

  A gasp leaves my lips before I do anything more than see the man who is my unwanted future. He’s handsome, but not my kind of handsome. He’s tall with black hair, a small patch of white in his hair by his right temple making him look somewhere between late thirties and early fifties. It’s really hard to tell how old he is, but to me, he is way too old.

  His black suit fits him like a glove, showing off the hard planes of his body but it’s his eyes that lure me in. They are the most amazing colour, a mix of greens, browns and blues that blend and separate into hypnotising patterns that are both alluring and scary at the same time.

  ◆◆◆

  The memory fades. I only get a glimpse of the present before I find myself watching through my younger self’s eyes as the second worst day of my life plays out.

  ◆◆◆

  “I do not want to marry you. My parents never signed the betrothal agreement. You can’t force me into a contract.” I’m only seventeen, I feel like it’s way too young to be getting married and I really don’t want to marry this cruel man.

  He beats his servants for the stupidest reasons for heaven’s sake.

  “You are nothing more than a woman, a woman I so graciously took into my home after your parents were killed. As your guardian I’m telling you, you will marry me before your eighteenth birthday.”

  I storm away up the stairs and back to my room, knowing that arguing with Loki is fruitless. I’ve been a prisoner here in Loki’s mansion for nearly six months now. He never lets me leave, not even to go into town, but I sneak out anyway. Usually when he’s away on business trips or when he’s asleep in his room at the end of the hall.

  I’ve had the snaking suspicion that Loki had something to do with the accident that took my parents from me, but proving it is impossible.

  Hours pass as I read from the same books that I’ve been reading for six months, at this point I know all three stories by heart but I love the feel of a book in my hands, it’s the only thing that calms me down after a confrontation with him.

  Mr Bromamere doesn’t think a woman should be able to read, let alone own any books, so I have to keep the books hidden. The last time he found one of my books, he tossed it in the fireplace and gave me three lashes, all the while making me repeat the words “Women are only good for breeding and raising children.”

  I’ve been sneaking out to the local men’s club, where there’s a really nice old man who loves to read almost as much as I do. He lets me borrow his books so long as I don’t tell anyone where I got them from. Our little town isn’t big on a woman reading, almost all the men in this town are just like Loki Bromamere, stuck in the mindset that a woman should not read.

  I tear myself out of my thoughts and try once again to focus on the words on the page, but I hear a sound coming from downstairs that makes all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It’s a cross between a scream and an animalistic howl. I creep out of my room, past the scary looking portraits hanging on the hallway walls and down the stairs. I’m scared but my curious nature has always helped me overcome my fears. Of course, my curiosity has also gotten me in a lot of trouble, but that’s the nature of curiosity.

  The sound is coming from the room that Loki calls his office. I always found it weird that his office is in the bowels of his castle but having never lived in a castle before six months ago, I can’t really judge.

  Sneaking up to the door, I try the handle.

  It’s locked.

  Another howling scream rings out and I shudder. Too afraid to stay but too curious to run.

  I peer into the keyhole of the door.

  The room on the other side of the door is huge. It’s not like any office I’ve ever seen. Especially since it has no furniture. It’s literally just an empty room with a strange design carved into the floor. Around the outside of the huge star and circle is what appears to be symbols written in a language I’ve never seen before. The image depicted in the brownish red ink in the centre of the design is the creepiest part. It almost looks like a goat’s skull. I saw one once, when I was really little. I’d been wandering the forest near my parent’s home and came across a goat’s corpse lef
t to rot in the sun. The smell was awful, but the shape of the skull was interesting. It had me wondering if we had similar looking structures holding us together.

  The howling scream echoes off the walls pulling me back to the creepy scene on the other side of the door, and I glance around as much as I can, trying to find the source of the horrible, heart wrenching sound. In the far-left corner of the room, I spy a man, from the dark cloak and hood, I can’t make out who it is but the fact that he is towering over the man tied to a chair, I’m certain the hooded creeper is a man. The guy on the chair howls again and that’s when I see it.

  A demon!

  A creature with black soulless eyes.

  A creature with horns protruding from its misshapen head and huge razor-sharp claws on the tips of its fingers.

  It moves around the edge of the room with a feral gait that makes it seem like it’s stalking its prey.

  I cover my mouth with my hand trying to hold in my scream.

  The demon stalks towards the man tied to the chair, lowers its head and its jaw sort of unhinges, it’s mouth impossibly wide as it swallows the man’s head in one bite.

  The cloaked figure lifts its hands and drops the cloak to the floor, revealing a second demonic creature. This one has four horns, and three eyes. Its skin is the colour of blood, the exact colour of blood, as evidenced by the fact that its feet appear to have disappeared into the pool of blood gushing all over the carved wooden floor from the now headless man.

  I scream, I can’t help it.

  My scream alerts the two demons to my presence. The one who ate the man’s head crosses the room faster than I can blink. His clawed hands unlocking the door and grabbing me before I can even think of running away.

  “You weren’t meant to see that.” The voice coming from the demon is none other than Loki Bromomere’s. The man who has been pushing me to marry him. The very man who was entrusted by my parents with my care after they died.