The Beast (6 page)

              "I got sick of not being able to text you," Sandra said with a huge smile.

              "Oh my gosh, you shouldn't have," I said, attempting to smile back at her.

              "I had to," she said. "You know Cole owns an electronics store. He hooked it up. It was like five bucks. Besides, you needed an upgrade even before you threw your old phone through the window."

              "I didn't-." I laughed. "I did not throw my phone through the window, and it wasn’t
old.
"

              Sandra threw her hands up in mock defense. "Okay, okay, all I'm saying is that I see a broken window and a broken phone in the same week, things are a little sketchy."

              I smiled genuinely.

              "Go wash your face and let's go," Sandra commanded.

              As the cool water washed away the crust of tears and soothed the hot puffy mess around my eyes I thought of how silly I'd been to be afraid of the gift. Harold’s surprise had scared me away from everything in a bag or a bow.

              The delicate cookie remained in the white box in my car. The vial, however, I had wrapped up in the red paper and tucked carefully into my jeans some obscene good luck charm. I wasn't exactly sure why. Harold had said that it would make me stronger and heal my wounds. Maybe I was holding onto it in case I ever wanted to call him. He had promised that he would come if I called.

              And then he broke my window.

              "Come on, Jade. You can wash all day and it still won't make you as gorgeous as me. Do the best with what you have."

              I smiled and shut the water off.

              I called out sick from work the next day. Jack and his brother helped me move the larger things I owned under Sandra's supervision.

              My bed, couch, desk, and table went into the shed in Sandra’s yard. My dresser went into one of the guest rooms and all that was left were a computer, a few boxes and my clothes and linens.

              I'd been on my own for almost ten years and everything I owned fit into a truck bed and two cars. Even my kitchen was bare, except for the beans, pasta and sauce. The garlic bread was stale and was thrown in the trash along with some old clothes and towels that had been long forgotten. Everything was moved in just a few pickup truck loads. It was a little sad to think about.  I’d always thought that having few possessions would make it easier to travel, but the occasional visit to Tijuana wasn’t exactly what I had in mind as “travel”.

              Sandra paid the men in beer and flirtation, which we all shared, and after what felt like too little time she announced that she had to work in the morning and it was time to go to bed. I went up to the guest room that was now mine.

              On the unfamiliar comforter, I turned the little vial over and over, studying it. I opened the stopper and smelled the contents. It didn’t smell like anything. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the man had smelled so good, I had expected that his magical blood would have carried some of it.

              Hesitantly, I put a finger in place of the stopper and tipped it upside down. When I flipped it back over and removed my finger, there was a bright red bead of blood.

I smelled it again. Still nothing.

I rubbed my finger and thumb together, spreading the droplet thin across my fingerprints.

It didn’t seem magical at all.

Absently, I wiped my fingers down my bare stomach, a bad habit I’d learned from Sandra. I felt a strange sensation that wasn’t the pain I should have expected. When I looked down, it was as though I had just erased part of the scratches across my midsection.

I let another drop out and did it again. I felt it speed through the healing process. It went from angry and hot to tingly and itchy to nothing. Excited, I was ready to do it again and again, drop by drop until I was completely healed. I was sure that I’d have to live with scars, but the blood left nothing behind.

Harold’s promise came back to me.
Drink it and it will heal your wounds.

In an exalted rush to be freed of my ugly cuts, I raised the open vial to my lips.

I let it down again without drinking. I was the girl who would watch the bartender open my beer and then never let it leave my sight. I read the packaging on everything before I ate it, even though I didn’t always stick to what was good for me afterward. I couldn’t bring myself to drink it. The fear that it might not have been blood was replaced by the horror that blood was the best case scenario here. It might heal the physical wounds, but what else would happen?

I put the stopper back in the opening and slipped it under my pillow. I would keep it close. For emergencies.

And then, I slept

chapter 6

I arrived at work to find that, as promised, my cubicle was gone. Bob refused to let the change get him down and had signs taped to his computer monitor since he didn’t have walls.

The whole building buzzed with the latest news of the serial killer.

“They’re calling him the Beast of Hollywood,” Bob whispered loudly to his new desk mate, Lars.

Lars didn’t seem to care at all that Bob was making a show of trying to be quiet. Lars kept typing and replied loudly in his thickly accented voice, “Why?”

Shannon took the ear buds out of her ears and apparently pressed pause. She sighed and turned to face us.

“It’s a reference to the Beast of Gevaudan,” she said.

We all stared at her.

She sighed again. “In Gevaudan, in France, in the 1700s there was an animal that ran around killing people and eating them. It was like more than a hundred of them. They all thought it was a wolf, which is ridiculous. People kept shooting it and it wouldn’t die. Some guy shot a big wolf and stuffed it to make it look bigger. The murders stopped for a little while and then they started up again.”

She looked like she was going to put her headphones back in her ears.

“Wait-.” I started.

“What was it?” Bob finished.

Shannon shrugged. “Eventually some rich guy shot it and it was stuffed and taken to some place but it got lost or destroyed or whatever so we have no idea. Some people think it was a wolf and some think it was like a lion wearing boar skin, some think that it was half mastiff and half wolf. I think it was a hyena.”

“A hyena?” Apparently, Lars was paying attention.

“Yeah, the Beast ate through bones. Wolves just eat around them. Hyenas are pretty much the only thing that can eat through bones. Plus, it looked like a hyena.” She shrugged. “Or it could be a throwback to the Beast of Bray Road from like the eighties and nineties, which was a werewolf Big Foot thing, but out here people are dying, and Bray Road was just some weird sightings.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked, stunned with the realization that I did not know this person at all. I’d seen Shannon every week day for over a year and I knew nothing about her except that she wore headphones and could type.

“Well,” she said. “When I was in kindergarten and first grade, I learned how to read.”

With no more than that, the ear buds were back in and she was back to work.

I decided to look it up online when I got back to Sandra’s house. If only I could figure out how to spell
Gevaudan
.

I called the management company for the apartment building and let them know that I would be taking the “quit” option of “Pay or Quit”, which they didn’t particularly want to hear. I was told that I would owe even more money for breaking the lease. I cheerily agreed and promised to eventually pay it.

I felt surprisingly lighter after the phone call, like things would actually be okay.

And then I ran into Simon on the way to fill out the paperwork.

When he saw me he froze for a split second like a deer in headlights before he recovered. His eyes passed over me again as if he didn’t recognized me.

I stopped my car a few steps ahead of him and rolled the window down. Apparently realizing that he was busted, Simon trotted to my window.

“Hello, Jade.”

“Hello, Simon.”

"You cut your hair. It looks nice."

Long, awkward pause.

I sighed.

“Get in the car,” I said.

He looked at me, dumbfounded. “What?”

“Get in,” I said.

Surprisingly, he did. After I made such a crazy fool of myself the last time we’d met, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he never wanted to see me again.

“How was the burger?”

I smiled. Like I’d never flipped out at all. “It was delicious.”

“Are you taking me somewhere so you can leave me dead in a ditch?”

“Probably,” I said.

I didn’t actually know where I was going until I ended up outside of city hall. The little park area there was familiar, with a circle of orange trees that I had known and watched shrink from a lush orange grove since I was a kid travelling back and forth between our home and my parents’ jobs. It wasn’t as fantastic as Simon’s spot, but it was a place where the grass was always green and sometimes you could find a low hanging orange from one of the tall trees.

We didn’t get out of the car.

“I keep seeing these impossible things,” I said, looking straight ahead. I couldn’t bear to look into his eyes while I said it. I could hardly bear to say it.

“Let’s not do this again,” he said softly.

For a heartbeat, I thought that I might actually be crazy, that none of it was real. Then, without really thinking about it, I pulled the little vial out of my pocket and opened it. I put my finger over the hole, inverted it, righted it again. I saw his nostrils flare. He shrank back and I knew I had him.

“You know,” I said quietly. “You know everything.”

From the corner of my eye, I noticed his hand creeping for the handle. In a move that was part slap, part grab, I hit him in the face with the droplet.

He screamed as smoke rose and a little line of his skin melted away like I had just hit him with acid.

I wished I could take it back.

He turned and let out an inhuman snarl that made me back into the car door. I was an idiot for trying that. I was worse than an idiot. I hurt him, and for what? So he would admit the things I already knew?

“Fine,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’ll tell you everything, but not here.”

“No,” I said coldly. All of my remorse for hurting him was gone with the memory of how I had acted out, embarrassing myself, thinking that I was completely insane because he
let
me think that. “Here. Now.”

“Fine,” he said again, his gloved hand hovering near his newly burned face. “I’m-.”

“Go on.” I spoke with a cold confidence, still holding the vial casually in one hand.

“You’re really going to make me say it?” He looked at me from behind his hand. I looked away. It would only make me feel crazier if I was right about everything.

“If it was that big a secret you shouldn’t have let me see it.”

“I saved your life, and I ruined my hands doing it!”

“So it was you,” I heard myself say wonderingly.

“I had to,” he said. “A human in trouble, and so close; I had to.”

"You could have let me die."

"We can't- I can't do that. If a hu- if a person is going to die I have to do everything I can to protect them."

"Why?"

"It's in my blood."

I looked down at the pale smear of blood on my fingertip and the fresh burn across his face. "The- the man said this was his blood."

"What man?"

Something stopped me from saying his name. "There was a man outside the window of my apartment the other night. He left me a present at work. He said that this was his blood. He said that it was magical. He said that if I drank it, it would do stuff."

"Did you?" He asked, eyes wide with concern.

"No. What would happen if I did?"

"Well, you saw what happened to me."

"That's not what happened to me, though." I lifted my shirt to show him the broken slashes.

He winced when he saw them and looked mildly disgusted, like he might ask me to put it away.

"It can heal you on the outside," he said. "But it changes you. It makes you theirs."

"Whose?" I was dying for him to say it, to say something bluntly. One of us had to be the lunatic to say it out loud- I didn’t want it to be me.

"
Theirs
. Can you put that away now?"

He indicated the vial and I hurried to put the stopper back in and shoved my whole fist into my pocket. I hesitantly withdrew my hand, leaving the vial behind. "Sorry."

Another long silence. Our relationship was full of silences.

Our relationship?

I looked through the window over the sparse trees and the big squat building and saw the moon. It was big and white, already visible in the sky before the sun set.

"Full moon," I said. "Shouldn't you be baying at it or something?"

He looked almost hurt until he noticed the smirk on my face. Then he smiled. "Not yet."

"So what happens when the moon is full?" I reached for his hand, which he gave willingly, and with both of mine I started to pull the glove off.

"All the crazies come out?"

I looked up at him, just a brief look of annoyance. His defenses were always up. Could I blame him? If I was something different it would take all night for someone to make me admit it. All night of them showing me video and pictures and undisputable evidence that I was something else. And even then I might not bring myself to say it out loud.

Under the glove, his fingers were delicately bandaged, a thin strip of gauze wrapped carefully around each digit. I started to uncoil it. "What really happens?"

He reached for my face with his free hand and turned it toward his. "I turn into a monster."

My hands froze.

"I'm a werewolf."

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted to shout my relief that even if I was crazy, I wasn't alone. I wanted to ask a thousand questions. Part of me was repulsed and another part was intrigued. After what felt like an eternity, I went back to slowly unwrapping his hand.

"Thank you," I breathed.

He seemed to relax. Maybe it was because I didn't scream and cry and run away or laugh and call the police. Maybe it was because he'd carried it for so long.

"How long have you been a-?" I couldn't say it. I forced my mouth to say it. He said it, now I had to. "Werewolf?"

"I was born one," he said. "It’s not a disease. You don't just catch it, and you don’t cure it. It’s what I am."

I looked down at the puckered, wrinkled flesh that covered his bones. Swirls of shining pink scar tissue made it look fake, like a movie prop. I raised it to my face and gently kissed his fingertips. I heard him draw a shaky breath and I looked up into his eyes.

He was a part of the night like the black shadow trees and the stars. He was another promise of safety and contentment. His eyes weren't just brown, they were many shades of brown, all reaching out warmly from the blackness of his pupils. A flash of dimple appeared when he swallowed.

"Jade," he began in a voice barely above a whisper. "I should go."

I did not release him. Instead, I leaned toward him, pressing my foot into the floor, leaning over the center console, and put my face close to his. "You owe me this," I said quietly.

He let his covered hand reach up to touch my neck. "I saved your life and I owe you?"

I reached up and put my hand on his neck. Coarse stubble met smooth skin, and I let my fingertips travel slowly down to his chest. "You saved my life. You let the other ones into my life. You let me act like a crazy woman.” I put my face close to his until our noses touched. “You saved my life and then you ruined it."

"I'm sorry." He breathed the words insincerely against my lips. My heart was beating in my ears as I started to close the miniscule gap that separated our mouths.

I could almost taste his lips when a voice startled me.

"No, no, no. You don't understand. It was all a hoax."

I jumped back into my own seat, looking around. Simon reached over and switched the radio off.

I laughed and sighed, relieved that I had just hit the knob with my elbow, wondering why I had been so jumpy about it. I licked my lips, still smiling at Simon. My heart was still racing.

“I’m getting that thing uninstalled.”

He smiled back and leaned over to kiss me when someone knocked on the passenger window.

We both looked over to see a bulky bald headed man with a tire iron in his hand.

My mouth dropped open in fear.

"Ey!" the man said in an accented voice. "Open the door, homie, and I won't kill your pretty girlfriend."

Someone knocked on my window then, a goatee and thick bushy eyebrows nearly filling up the window.

"We'll just take your car," the first man continued. 

"And your woman," said a third, approaching the windshield. This one was skinny and he carried a baseball bat. He leapt onto the hood of my car and squatted in front of the windshield, making faces.

Other hands started banging on the trunk and taunts rose up from all around. I willed myself to stay strong and not cry. It didn't work long. Tears welled and fell and I wanted it to stop. The banging and taunting made it sound like there were twenty of them.

"Go away!" I screamed. I realized just how much like a child I was; bold until the minute something scary happened, then I lost all resolve and went crying for a protector. "Simon!"