Because You Love to Hate Me(89)

“One girl in every generation becomes a Shade,” she said. “That’s what my family calls the Beast. The sun sets, and we shift. We hunt and kill, like an animal. The Shade picked me, the youngest, out of five sisters. I turned fourteen, and it began.”

Indigo pressed her back into my chest. She was nestled into my arms, her head on my shoulder.

“My parents let me stay with them for as long as they could. We were careful. We lived outside town, on a farm in Minnesota. I quit school. No one knew. I thought I could control it. I thought . . . I thought a lot of things. My parents tried chaining me up, but I always broke free. I’m so strong, Brahm. So strong. And then one moonlit night I mauled a boy. They found his body six days later. His name was Ethan. He used to be in my class, in school. I’d known him since kindergarten.”

Indigo started crying, her back trembling against my chest. I held her. I put my face in her hair and held her until the sobs slowed down and she was breathing normal again.

“My aunt was here in the Hush Woods before me,” she whispered when she could talk. “And her cousin before that. The locals don’t like to come to this forest, as you said. So it’s safe. Safer. There’s a cabin hidden deep in the trees where she lived. That’s where I live now. My aunt took her own life. She was only twenty-two. She couldn’t bear it. We all . . . we all find our way to death eventually.”

Indigo’s shoulder was still bleeding, but every time I moved to stanch the blood she just clutched me tighter.

“I will kill again,” she said. “And I will keep killing until someone stops me.”





They found us an hour later.

We saw their flashlights first, white lights casting long shadows across the forest floor. She got to her feet, naked except for my cloak. I stood at her side.

They saw the blood and the coyote, and they knew. People aren’t as dumb as you think. They aren’t as dumb as you want them to be.

Jon Jasper stood at the head of the group. He looked at me and nodded, just once. “We’re going to kill her. We’re going to end this. Try to stop us and we’ll kill you, too, Valois.”

I saw the rope in his hand, the noose at the end. Indigo shrank from it. I felt her recoil against me.

My bow was ten feet away, right where I’d dropped it in the mud.

“Change,” I whispered to her. “Change into the Beast and run. Run, Indigo.”

“I can’t.” Her voice caught. She shook her head, cleared her throat. “It doesn’t work that way.”

My eyes met hers. She nodded. I nodded back.

They won’t string her up like one of those three Valois women.

I could give her that much, at least.

The mob drew in, thick and tight.

They started with rocks.

I turned and threw myself in front of Indigo, long arms, broad shoulders, brawny back. The blows fell on me and me alone. I’m built like an ox. I didn’t feel the stones, didn’t feel the bruises.

She crouched beneath me in the dark. She matched her breath to mine, slow, steady, soft. I reached down and pulled the bowie knife from the straps around my left calf. She grabbed my shirt in her fist and squeezed tight.

“Do it,” she said.

I cupped her tiny, pointed chin in my large hunter’s hand, and tilted her head back.

I slit her throat.

She slipped to the ground.

I turned back to the crowd and dropped the knife.

The mob took a step back, waiting to see what I’d do next. But I just slid down beside Indigo Beau, slid into the blood and the mud.

The crowd left.

My brothers found me near dawn. They helped me up, arms supporting my weight.

“My bow,” I said to Philippe.

He fetched it, handed it to me. I pulled the string back, muscles straining.

I nocked the arrow and shot Indigo Beau’s limp body straight through the heart.





I am the new Valois Beast. My hair is long and tangled, my beard thick, my clothes ragged. I sleep in dirt and old leaves. I hunt and I eat what I kill.

People scream when they see me in the woods.

That’s as it should be.

I wait for her. I wait for the next Beast. I know she will come, five years, ten years . . . Sooner or later she will come.

But this time she won’t be alone.

This time she will have me.





WHITNEY ATKINSON’S VILLAIN CHALLENGE TO APRIL GENEVIEVE TUCHOLKE:

Beauty and the Beast: Suitor’s Revenge





GLAMORIZED RECOVERY: EXPECTATIONS VS. REALITY





BY WHITNEY ATKINSON



Is Gaston cursed to be forever known as the villain? The answer is yes—not because of fate or luck, but because of his choices. The world seems pitted against villains. Whereas heroes get success, love interests, and unblemished reputations practically handed to them, villains are forced to put sweat and blood into each of their endeavors, a process that makes villains seem like they succumb to the pressures of life whereas heroes twist misadventures to benefit them.

If you were a villain, you would see firsthand how the gears of a hierarchical society work—rewarding the minor endeavors of heroes and punishing the slight advancement of villains. Perhaps your expectations, pure at heart, would be thwarted in a burst of smoke. So imagine yourself in Gaston’s shoes. You might think the following . . .