Because You Love to Hate Me(88)

And yet . . . I hardly cared.

I was in love. Philippe was right about that.

I was in love with Indigo Beau, and life could have gone on like this forever and ever . . .

And then they found the body.

A girl, fourteen. Soccer player, straight-A student, and daughter of Marie and Jon Jasper, owners of the best French bakery in town. Some tourist hikers stumbled upon the corpse at the edge of the Hush Woods. Her heart had been ripped out.

Indigo Beau lived in the Hush Woods, and the Beast was on the prowl.

I felt sick at the thought of her in that forest with it.

Sick.

It had been almost fifteen years since the Beast had killed someone in the Hush Woods. No one had believed the Bellerose twins when they’d said it was back.

But they would have believed me.

I should have told someone.

The people of Valois had tried to kill the Beast in the past. Of course they had. But it was always too clever, too fast, too cunning. Generation after generation and still the Beast lived.

But now it would be different.

Now they had me.

I was the best tracker in Valois, next to my father. I wouldn’t let the Beast go this time.

I would track it, hunt it down, put an arrow through its heart. I’d free my town from this curse.

I was born for this.

I’d become the town hero twice over. I’d march back into Valois, dragging the Beast’s body behind me. I’d save Indigo Beau from the Hush Woods Beast, and we’d live happily ever after.

This is what will happen.

I could feel it in my bones.





I went to Hush Witch Glen at sunset, but Indigo wasn’t there. I waited over an hour, but she never came.

I was starting to get worried. Really, really worried.

The moon rose high and fat in the sky.

I went back to town and grabbed my cloak and my recurve bow. Yes, I own a black wool cloak. Philippe tried to make fun of me for it once, and I broke his arm.

I strode past the local Beast hunters gathering in the town square, mapping out their attack. They’d never find the monster.

It would come down to me, and me alone.

It had rained the night before, and I took it as a sign. The mud was going to help me fulfill my destiny.

I found the tracks near midnight. Four toes, four claws. Just like a wolf. I stretched out my fingers next to the print. It was the size of my hand.

The wind had a spooky feel to it, sharp and cold, bite and teeth. But it was more than that, too. I thought for a second I could hear voices. No . . . screams. Was this what Indigo kept hearing? Was this the cry of the hanged women?

If there were ghosts in these woods, then they’d have it in for a Valois, after what my ancestor had done.

The screams seemed to float around me like feathers falling from the sky. Goose bumps rippled down my arms and down my spine.

That was when the doubt set in.

Maybe I wouldn’t kill the Beast.

Maybe it would kill me.

I’d never felt doubt before. The Valois men didn’t feel doubt. We didn’t even know what it was.

Lights.

The other hunters were moving through the trees, half a mile away, flashlights bouncing off the dark. Normally, they wouldn’t dream of coming near the Hush Woods border, but now a fourteen-year-old girl was dead. That gave people courage. Vengeance is a brilliant motivator. Not that it would help them—they were too loud, too slow. The Beast would see them coming a mile away, just as I had.

The witch screams quieted down just as the wind picked up again. I sniffed the air. There was a new smell to it, metallic and pungent.

I spun around . . .

The Beast was tearing into a coyote, fur and paws and nose and gore. I’m not squeamish—that’s for pansies—but the scene was harsh. Cannibalistic.

I looked away, up at the sky. The moon was bright red-orange now, like it was made of embers and glowing warm.

Everything smelled like blood.

I nocked my arrow. The brick-colored moon shone down, as if leading my hand.

I didn’t make one effing sound. I was silent as the stars.

I took aim.

I rarely miss. When I shoot, it’s to kill. But the Beast looked up as I pulled back the arrow. It looked right at me.

It tensed, as if to run.

But at the last second . . .

It stopped.

Stopped.

Something about its eyes, its expression . . . It was almost as if the monster was begging me to strike.

My arrow flew. It whistled through the air, nicked its shoulder, smacked into a tree.

I’d missed.

The Beast tilted its head back and howled.

And then it began to change.

Fur melted into white-blue moonlight skin. Paws pressed into the earth and dissolved into hands, fingers, feet, toes. Long spine twisted, curved, and softened into a back, a waist, hips.

Indigo sat naked on the muddy ground next to the mauled coyote. Her brown hair hung in her face, and her shoulder dripped blood.

I called out her name, but her eyes were already on mine. She looked fierce and proud and sad.

I took off my cloak and threw it around her body. She reached up and wiped blood from her mouth and teeth.

“So,” I said. “It’s you.”

She just nodded.

“Tell me.”

And she did. She sat there naked in the forest, smelling of night and earth and fur, and told me about her family, and its curse.