Before Midnight (3 page)

Despite being underground, her cellar room was well lit, a courtesy from her stepmother to allow Loupe to properly see during the execution of her macabre tasks. There was nowhere Loupe could look where she didn’t find the waxy eyes of dead animals staring at her…judging her.

“You are working too slow,” her stepmother grumbled. She stalked over to the table that sat perpendicular to Loupe’s modest little bed. Poking at the dead animal, she frowned. “I brought this carcass to you yesterday and you haven’t even started the skinning.” She eyed the two drying racks. “Are those two finished?”

Loupe nodded, realized her stepmother wasn’t looking at her, and cleared her throat. “Yes, stepmother.”

“As soon as they’re finished drying, I want them packaged and carried upstairs.” She turned and faced Loupe. “There were guards in the village today so we will not be hunting for a few nights. You will have plenty of time to get every one of these carcasses skinned and dried by then.”

Images danced through Loupe’s mind, an endless parade of dead wolves. Her hands trembled and she swallowed the scream building inside her. All this killing and death and skinning. She couldn’t bear it.

“Stepmother,” Loupe said hoarsely. “The king is growing more and more determined to stop all poaching in his woods. Perhaps you should stop—”

The slap on her cheek shocked her out of her thoughts. Her hand flew to her face and she dropped to her knees on the floor, cowering away from the look of fury darkening her stepmother’s features like a sudden storm cloud.

“Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” her stepmother snarled. “You are not the head of this family. Your father’s death put me in charge—not you!”

She whirled around, as if looking at Loupe was too distasteful for her to bear anymore. Loupe winced at the burning in her cheek but kept her gaze on her stepmother. Madame Tessier wandered around the room, trailing her hand lovingly over the wolf pelts.

“What a backward village I allowed your father to drag me into. All these laws protecting wolves—what is your king thinking? Alive, wolves are nothing but heartless predators, killing valuable livestock, not to mention the occasional hapless villager.” She stopped and stared off into space. “Those glorious creatures have so much more to offer us with their deaths.” She looked down at one of the pelts. “When I send these to my brothers, they will wear them into battle. My kin will take on the ferocious nature of the beast and strike terror into the hearts of their enemies!”

Loupe kept silent as her stepmother raged. She’d heard the speech many times. Her stepmother was fiercely proud of her heritage and the constant wars her brothers seemed to be fighting back in their home kingdom of Midgard. Loupe suspected that her stepmother’s family was actually a bunch of marauders sacking villages and pillaging things that didn’t belong to them, but she wisely chose not to share those suspicions. Instead, she obediently treated the furs her stepmother and stepsisters brought to her and hid the illegal goods from the king’s vigilant guards.

“You aren’t listening to me!”

Loupe fell backward just as her stepmother’s hand flew toward her face. Shocked at her own audacity, she fell to a prostrate position on the floor.

“I’m so sorry, stepmother, please forgive me,” she begged. Her body trembled as she thought of the beating that may very well follow her attempt to avoid her stepmother’s slap. She’d be lucky to be able to crawl to her bed tonight.

“Sniveling, mousy little girl,” sneered her stepmother. “In my country we leave puny little prey like you to die in the wilderness.”

Loupe dared to raise her eyes to her stepmother’s face—and immediately wished she hadn’t. Madame Tessier walked toward her stepdaughter, idly grabbing a knife from the workbench as she did so. She raised the knife.

Loupe bit her tongue to hold in her cry of terror and covered her head with her arms. Braced for the impact, her entire body shook, anticipating the cruel stroke of the blade.

The sound of metal biting wood cracked in her ears. She sobbed as she turned to see the blade buried in the floor a few inches from her head.

“Oh, for the love of Pierre, get up, you stupid girl.” The swish of her stepmother’s skirts followed her exit. “Package those finished hides and bring them up here, or there’ll be no supper for you tonight.”

Still quaking, Loupe pushed herself into a sitting position. She wrapped trembling fingers around the knife and pulled it from the floorboards. It took several deep breaths to calm herself enough to stand up and gather the packaging materials. Fear threatened to take over when it came time to lift the pelts into the box, but she shoved it away. She didn’t need to give her stepmother any more reasons to be angry with her.

After fighting her way up the ladder with the heavy package, Loupe made her way through the kitchen and sitting room, up the main staircase to her stepmother’s room. She deposited the parcel on the table next to the dresser. For a second, she looked around at the bedroom that had once been her father’s.

There was no evidence left that he’d ever been there. Her chest tightened as she noticed the simple white cotton sheets on the bed had been replaced by dark red satin. The simple, sturdy wooden dressers and table had been draped with silks, adorned with frills, and scattered with sparkling jewelry. She turned away, leaving the room on shaky legs.

What had her father ever seen in her stepmother? How could a man as kind as he not see the cruelty etched into every line of Maude’s face? Had he been in such a hurry to give Loupe a new mother? Had he been so lonely?

The all too familiar questions plagued Loupe as she plodded down the stairs. The large country home had once been comfortable and modest, despite its size. Now, however, it was as decadent as her stepmother’s inheritance had been able to make it. Richly embroidered furniture, large ornate mirrors, and lush throw rugs covered every available surface.

 There was no sign nor sound of her stepmother, nor her daughters Danette and Arabelle. They must have gone out again, no doubt to purchase more dresses for her maiden stepsisters. Loupe’s shoulders drooped. It had been a long time since she’d had a new dress. As silly as it seemed, she would have liked to have something pretty to wear.

“And where would you wear it?” she asked herself. “Down in your little dungeon room, amidst the skins of dead beasts?”

She looked down at her body. Her simple tan dress was worn clean through in several areas and the ends frayed horribly where it brushed the ground when she walked. The bodice was too worn to fit as snugly as it should have, despite being laced as tightly as she could make it. Blood and filth covered her bare forearms along with the thick scent of musk. Her blonde hair hung in a thick braid down her back, but even that couldn’t keep it safe from the unsavory duties she performed on her stepfamily’s hunting trophies. Her fingers trembled as she scratched at the blood on her arms. A few flakes of blood drifted to the floor.

“I need a bath.” Loupe’s voice sounded hollow even to her own ears. That was good though, better than the hysteria that swirled inside her. It was more than a little pointless to bathe since she had more skinning to do, but in that moment she had a desperate need to be clean. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand it. How much longer the threat of physical violence would keep her in that dungeon, surrounded by dead wolves, covered in their blood. It was sick, especially considering what Loupe had become…

It took only a few minutes to gather her bathing things and lock the house behind her. Her stepmother never allowed her to draw fresh water for her own bath, leaving her to wait until one of her stepsisters had finished with their bathwater and use what was left behind. Loupe preferred to just go deep into the forest and bathe in the lake there. Surely it was cleaner than the water that ran off her bloodthirsty relatives.

Loupe started down the path from the kitchen door in the back of the house toward the woods that surrounded her home. The trees stretched up to the sky, looming over her like ancient giants. Their trunks sucked the light out of the air, absorbing it into the dark brown bark covered here and there with thick green moss. There had been a time Loupe had been afraid to wander into the woods alone, but not now. No animals would dare to bother her. Not anymore.

Her mind drifted ahead to her secret place in the woods and she froze.

“Stupid girl,” she muttered to herself. She quickly turned and walked back up the path. She let herself back into the house and strode into the kitchen to gather a few sausages, taking only the smallest ones that were less likely to be missed. She wrapped them up and took them with her as she once again locked the door behind her before leaving the yard.

About thirty yards into the forest, Loupe passed a stretch of ground that gave her pause. It didn’t look any different from the surrounding forest floor, but in her mind’s eye she saw a mound of freshly turned dirt, a screaming beacon of what lie beneath in a shallow grave. She’d buried it over a year ago, but she could still see the corpse in her mind.

For the second time that day, Loupe’s mind drifted back to the fateful evening when her life had changed forever. The wolf carcass that hadn’t been dead, the last lunge of a dying beast…and the human woman it had turned into after the last death rattle had passed.

Loupe didn’t know who the woman had been, or how she’d come to be cursed as a
loup garou
. All she knew was the woman had infected her with the same curse, turned her life into a string of terrified full moons. She looked up at the sky, even though it was far too bright out to see the moon. The waxing moon would reach its zenith in four days. In four days she would once again be forced to sneak out of her house, plunging deep into the woods to the place where the chains waited for her. The place where the beast would take over. It was torture and it was consistent.

The walk to the lake didn’t take long, but the surrounding trees were still thick enough to give Loupe the illusion that she was in a world separate from her old life. The trees grew close together and one portion of the lake’s edge was thick with reeds.

She smiled as tiny yips spilled from a cropping of bushes behind the reeds. Getting down on her hands and knees, Loupe peeked inside the branches. A small pile of brown fur shifted and rippled before bursting into three distinct forms. She laughed as the wolf pups ran out to her, barking and nosing around her skirts. There was no doubt in her mind that the little beasties could smell the sausage.

“All right now, all right, settle down,” she chastised them affectionately. She unwrapped the sausage and broke it into pieces. “Don’t fight, I brought plenty for everyone.”

The pups growled at one another, but calmed as soon as they each got their own meal. She petted them as they ate, pleased that they were growing nicely. When she’d first found them, they’d been so tiny, she’d feared they would never make it. Loupe’s heart ached. Her stepmother had killed their mother, she was certain of it. She remembered how one of the female wolf carcasses had shown signs of a nursing mother. Loupe had wasted no time plunging into the woods to find the abandoned pups.

“How about a nice bath, eh?” she cooed. She unbound her hair, stripped off her clothing, and stepped into the lake. She hissed at the shock of the cool water, only barely warmed by the day. It was summer, but the lake was well-shaded and didn’t benefit from the full heat of the sun. She fought to keep her teeth from chattering as she tried to wave the wolf pups into the water.

The rustle of bushes snared her attention.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here.” She smiled at the larger wolf approaching the water. “The pups aren’t the least bit interested in a bath and they’re terribly dirty from burrowing in the mud.”

The wolf tilted its head as if it understood her. Then it took a few graceful strides and leapt into the air before landing in the lake with a splash. Loupe shrieked with laughter as she raised her arms against the barrage of water droplets. She raised an eyebrow at the wolf as it dog-paddled around her.

“You splashed me on purpose, didn’t you,” she said dryly, wrapping her arms around herself in a vain attempt to ward off the chill.

The wolf ignored her and barked at the pups.

Loupe left the wolf to try and coax the young ones into the lake and tried to adjust to the water. She inhaled sharply as she lowered herself into the lake up to her neck.

“Are you all right?”

Loupe stiffened at the sound of a decidedly masculine voice. The deep tone rumbled down her spine, followed by a wave of heat that chased away some of the cold. A similar heat filled her cheeks and she cursed herself for not paying better attention to her surroundings. For a split second, her embarrassment overwhelmed her, but bit by bit a touch of fear joined it. She was alone and naked in the middle of the woods. Animals may recognize the wolf inside her, but a human wouldn’t. Her heart pounded.

Just breathe, she told herself. He asked if you are all right. There’s probably nothing to worry about.

Grateful that her naked body was almost completely submerged, she turned in the water without rising to reveal any more flesh. She raised her attention to the figure standing across the lake, her brain whirring to think of some excuse for why she was bathing in the forest surrounded by wolf pups.

Her jaw dropped. The most gorgeous man she’d ever seen was standing at the edge of the lake. From her angle, she couldn’t tell how tall he was, but he radiated strength. His soft brown hair and clear grey eyes, paired with a lean, muscled body, conspired to heat her blood. She wondered that the lake wasn’t boiling around her.