Page 9 of Beast of Blood and Roses
A car engine grumbled to life outside, the sound slicing through my shock like a knife. My heart lurched painfully as realization fully dawned. I scrambled to the window, my stocking-clad feet sliding across the polished hardwood floor in my haste. Moisture from my breath painted the glass as I pressed my face against it just in time to watch my dad’s beaten-up Chevy peel down the long driveway, tires kicking up gravel in his desperation to escape.
Leaving me.
My fingernails scraped uselessly against the glass as I watched the taillights grow smaller, twin red eyes disappearing into the gathering dusk. There were bars on the window—ornate wrought iron that might have seemed decorative if it wasn’t so obviously meant to keep someone in rather than out. No way to escape. The realization settled over me like a shroud.
Tears—hot, angry, terrified—slid down my face, tracking silent paths along my cheeks before dropping from my chin. Each one felt like a piece of me falling away, leaving behind something hollow and afraid. Despair settled in my heart, heavy as lead, cold as winter.
I pressed my palm against the glass, feeling its cool solidity, the barrier between captivity and freedom. Would Dad try to find a way to rescue me, or would he scramble to find another way to raise the ten thousand dollars? He’d been a gambler all his life and a bad one at that. The knowledge twisted in my gut like a knife. If he simply returned to his life, I’d be stuck here forever, but how long was forever?
Colette said I had to obey to survive. The words replayed in my mind, each repetition more ominous than the last. My silhouette wavered in the darkening glass, a pale ghost with wide, frightened eyes. The question that formed behind those eyes sent ice through my veins: If I disobeyed him, would I sign my death warrant?
I hugged myself tightly, pressing my forehead against the cold windowpane as darkness fell outside, matching the shadows gathering in my soul.
Chapter Six
Fierro
“This isn’t going to work,” I growled the words through clenched teeth, my claws twitching with the urge to strike. The bitter taste of failure already coated my tongue as I glared at Marcel, who stood before me with that infuriating military posture—spine straight as a bayonet, head held high, hands clasped behind his back. A perfect statue even before the sun’s final rays abandoned us.
The fading afternoon light filtered through the plantation shutters, casting prison-bar shadows across the worn cypress floors of my bayou mansion. Outside, cypress trees jutted from murky waters while Spanish moss swayed like ghosts in the evening breeze. The air hung heavy with impending transformation—that familiar electric charge that preceded Marcel and Colette’s nightly metamorphosis, mingling with the primal scents of water and decay that marked my isolated domain.Soon they would be cold marble, and I would be left alone with her. With the witch.
“Monsieur, you must try.” Marcel’s French accent thickened with his growing urgency, his eyes flicking nervously to the antique clock on the mantel. The pendulum’s tick-tock counted down the precious seconds of his mobility, competing with the distant chorus of frogs and cicadas that serenaded the coming night.
“She’s a witch,” I spat, the word tasting of ancient hatred and fresh fear. My beastly form bristled, making my shoulders hunch forward as if preparing to charge. The earthy, slightly sweet scent of water lilies drifting in from the swamp did nothing to calm my rattled nerves.
He sighed—a deep, centuries-old sound—and ran a trembling hand through his silver-threaded hair. The gesture was so human, so vulnerable, it momentarily disarmed my rage. “She is,” Marcel conceded, his voice softening as the first hints of stone crept up his ankles, “but I suspect she doesn’t know she is one.”
The last crimson finger of daylight withdrew from the room, leaving us in the blue embrace of twilight. Marcel’s eyes met mine one final time—filled with a desperate hope that pierced my hardened heart—before the transformation claimed him completely.
The familiar loneliness drifted over me like fog across the bayou, seeping into my bones and settling there with the heaviness night always brought now. I slumped against the cold windowpane, my shadowy form—distorted and beastly—staring back at me with hollow eyes. Night was the most miserable time for me now. The darkness that had once been my ally had become my prison.
As a vampire, I’d savored the night life in New Orleans—gambling at Crimson Stakes where the scent of whiskey and blood mingled in intoxicating waves, playing late night poker games with cards sliding silkily between my fingers and cigar smoke curling above the table like ghostly dancers. I’d reveled in hunting on Bourbon Street, where the music pulsed through the cobblestones and into my veins, where laughter and screams were sometimes indistinguishable.
But those late night pleasures had been viciously snatched away from me. My claws scraped against the window glass, leaving thin scratches as I curled my hands into fists. I was confined to my decaying mansion, trapped in this grotesque form while the cypress trees stood sentinel around me like bars of a cage. A growl rumbled deep in my chest at the thought of Tinker Bell. If I could get my paws on her, I’d rip her apart, feel her bones crack beneath my grip, watch the smug light fade from her eyes.
And now I had a witch locked up in a room upstairs. The floorboards above creaked with her movements; each footstep a reminder of her presence, each sound sending my heightened senses into alert. My ears twitched, tracking her like prey. All thanks to Marcel’s foolish notion that she could be the one to break the curse. His words echoed in my mind, mingling with the distant thunder rolling across the swamp.
He suspected she didn’t know she was a witch, but he didn’t say why he thought this. The uncertainty made my hackles rise. What if she was conjuring a spell right now? My nostrils flared, seeking traces of magic in the air; that distinctive electric scent that made my fur stand on end. My fangs extended involuntarily at the thought, sharp against my lowerlip. If she was casting, she was a dead witch, beauty or not. I’d tear out her throat before I’d let another spell touch me.
I stalked toward the staircase, the wood groaning beneath my misshapen feet. My breath caught in my throat as I passed Colette, her porcelain beauty both mesmerizing and disturbing in its stillness. The scent of her perfume—lavender and vanilla—still clung to the air around her statue form, a ghost of humanity that made my chest tighten with longing for what we’d both lost.
She stood next to the bedroom door, transformed into cold marble, her elegant form now petrified in the deep purple twilight that settled through the hall window. The last fading rays of sunset cast long shadows across her frozen features, making the hollows of her cheeks seem deeper, more haunting. Her crisp white blouse and tailored pants appeared strangely formal in stone, the sharp creases and folds captured perfectly in her transformation. Her once-lively eyes, now glassy and vacant, remained fixed on the door, a marble sentinel. Her delicate hand hung frozen in midair, fingers slightly curled as if she’d just released the tarnished brass doorknob before the transformation seized her. A cruel illusion forever captured in stone.
I crept toward the door, my massive paws making the floorboards creak despite my attempt at stealth.
Swallowing hard, I pressed my furry ear against the weathered oak door, straining to detect any whispered incantations or the telltale crackling of arcane energy. But the room beyond was uncomfortably silent. A silence so complete it felt like a physical presence pushing back against me. The only sound was the thundering of my own heart, its uneven rhythm echoing in my sensitive ears and vibrating through my clawed fingertips where they restedagainst the wood.
A bead of sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades, dampening the coarse fur there. What was she doing in that oppressive silence? Plotting? Preparing? My nostrils flared, seeking any trace of witch scent—that peculiar mixture of herbs and ozone that might reveal her true nature. My jaw clenched, fangs pressing painfully against my lower lip as a growl built in my chest.
Time for her to know the rules if she wanted to survive. I flexed my claws against the door frame, leaving fresh gouges in the cypress wood as I steeled myself for the confrontation. The witch would learn the boundaries of her gilded cage, or she would become just another regret haunting my endless nights.
I grabbed the doorknob and twisted it then barged inside without waiting for an invitation.
The girl gasped and braced herself against the wall, her face draining to the color of bone china. Her fingers splayed against the rose-colored wallpaper like she could somehow melt through it if she tried hard enough. “What do you want?”
Her fear permeated the room, sweet and intoxicating, but she was a witch and I couldn’t care less what terrors kept her up at night. Everyone in this bayou feared something—usually me. The curse that twisted my features made sure of that.
“I have some rules I want to go over with you.”
