Bastien Read online

  Faces hover before me, one more beautiful than the next. I fuck them all, take my pleasure with each of them. I have energy to spare and happily spend it here along with my coin. When one begins to bore me, I take another. Two, three at a time. Laughter and moans are the music of the night, the perfect rhythm to move to. They sigh my name, pour wine into my mouth, onto my cock.

  This is beauty—perfect because it is flawed. Cheeks too bright, lips too red, but flesh so hot it burns me and I adore it. The next one who mounts me is stunningly garish in a bright red wig and her clothes dark and stained. I rip them off her and bury my face between her ample breasts as she slams down on me with a slap of flesh against flesh. I lick, she moans. I nip, she screams and clutches my hair. She pulls my head back to kiss me and I frown.

  Her skin is suddenly pure as milk, her lips pink and lush. Her eyes, before so dark, now flash blue fire, and her hair is a shade I know all too well.

  I shove her off me and snarl. My heart beats too hard, and I shake my head and clutch my temples, blinking past the drunken stupor. The woman is on the floor, scrambling to her feet.

  “Get out,” I snarl.

  Garish red hair, painted lips, flushed, freckled skin. Strength is gone again. The whore runs out of the room, weeping. I look at the other, startled female faces. Not one of them resembled the phantom before. Now they all look exactly like her, all staring at me with contempt.

  I blink and the illusion is gone, and I am back in the whore house, surrounded by naked flesh.

  A burly man with a club in hand stomps in on my celebration. “I knew you’d be trouble,” he says, knuckles turning white as his face reddens. In an instant my women are flattened against the walls. I roll my eyes and get out of bed. “You’ll regret this,” I tell him. “Last chance to—”

  He charges with a shout.

  I have no other recourse but to fight back. I’m furious that this pile of warthog shit dared to intrude on my revelry, but the fight lights my blood on fire. I break his arm to get the club and then beat him with it until he’s a whimpering puddle of piss and misery on the floor. When I grow tired of it I drag the pathetic imbecile out and return to my harem, feeling like a knight who just slew the dragon. I grin hungrily and lick my teeth. “Who’s next?”

  Half of them run out. The other half compose themselves as best they can and edge closer.

  Coin is ever the draw, but for their courage I am prepared to pay them a premium not only in gold but in pleasure. The hunger in their eyes may not be for me, but it’s enough to keep them here. I’m not particular enough to care why they don’t run, only that they stay and do what I pay them to.

  When I recline on the bed again, a lushly rounded blond crawls over me, nearly smothers me in her cleavage. I make a note to reward her for it while I reach for the brunette with my right hand and the exotic Gypsy girl with my left. Both of them arch to my fingers and I am a god once again.

  By the time the night is through I can scarcely move. Four women are asleep, draped over me and each other. My sigh feels like a benediction to depravity. Dear God, I think, Forgive me for all the sins of the past, and those I have yet to commit in the future. Because you know I will.

  The jealous bastard probably won’t forgive, though. I’ve already resigned myself to the burden I must carry—the bitter envy of every angel in the sky.

  It’s a satisfying notion. A sign of a life well and truly spent. I close my eyes as the sky begins to lighten, a content smile pulling on my mouth. Just an hour or two, I tell myself. And then I can do it all over again.

  It’s the pain exploding in my chest that wakes me. I am lifted off the bed as my body breaks and shatters. “Noooo!” I roar, fighting my own demise with everything in me. Demons claw into me from the inside, tearing my soul directly out of my flesh. Fire starts to burn me alive, not the everlasting flames of hell, but the sizzling crack of the Faery’s lightning.

  I hear women scream all around me, I see them running for the door. I smell blood, taste it in my mouth. I go blind and deaf, and then even the agony of unbecoming is gone and I am, once again, to be no more.

  In my final moments of awareness, I see a blurry shape run into the room instead of out of it.

  Louis’ voice is shouting from so far away I cannot make out his words. He reaches for me, then recoils. I close my eyes and die.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Louis pays off everyone who saw the Beast transform, calls for his carriage and helps return him to the castle and his prison, cloaked in a black curtain. He explains to Jacques everything that happened, sparing no detail.

  “I saw you change,” Louis says. “My God, how can you stand it?”

  The Beast doesn’t answer. The transformation is a small enough thing. Wretched agony that lasts only until he dies. He doesn’t feel his human counterpart’s pain, only his own.

  Worse are the memories of all Bastien said and did last night. The savage joy he felt in beating a man unconscious, the soul-deep hunger for food, drink, flesh, pleasure and pain—for life. He drank and whored with abandon, as if his actions have no consequences. He certainly didn’t give any thought to the number of bastards he may have sired, or what maladies he may have brought back with him.

  And still worse is that somewhere deep inside the Beast envies him that freedom of form and conscience. The shame and guilt of it crush him. He cannot meet anyone’s gaze; can hardly drag himself back to his chambers.

  Once there, he finds that his wardrobe was changed out and another painting of the handsome monster is hanging in place of the one he defaced. Can I not be rid of him? Furious, the Beast tears it apart again, rips all the clothes asunder a second time. He prowls through the castle, destroying anything bearing even the slightest resemblance to Bastien. There are many.

  The man had dozens of portraits made of himself, statues, busts, even a fountain. The Beast destroys it all.

  He doesn’t stop his rampage until his curse stops it for him. The moment the sun dips below the trees, he transforms again. The Beast tears at his own flesh, desperate to destroy the demon inside him any way he can, even as the human fights his way back into this world and the life he doesn’t deserve.

  When he wakes the next morning, he is chained. Jacques and Louis are with him, both looking haggard and tired. “We knocked him out,” Louis says. “We didn’t know what he would do and rather than take the chance, we chained him.”

  “How do you feel?” Jacques asks.

  The Beast groans in answer.

  Louis grins. “I figured you might. Here.” He hands the Beast a bowl of water that smells of herbs. Not tea, but a tonic. The Beast drinks every last drop.

  “Why did you do it?” he asks. “Bastien is your friend.”

  “I thought so, too,” Louis replies. “When he came to me night before last I was half convinced he was back. I thought it meant he learned his lesson, and I was stunned and furious he broke the curse so quickly. But also glad. I expected him to be different, better.” He sighs and shakes his head. “I suppose I expected him to be you.”

  “So did I,” Jacques admits. “But we were wrong.”

  Louis nods. “He was worse than his old self. The way he spoke and acted… even at his worst I’ve never seen Bastien like that. So… empty.”

  Yes, empty is the word. The Beast remembers feeling that void inside, as if no amount of anything could fill it. It consumed Bastien and he didn’t even care.

  “And,” Louis adds, “I’ve never known him to raise a hand to his own staff. After what Jacques told me, well, we thought it safer to…”

  “Thank you,” the Beast says. Truly, words are not enough. It seems there is nothing he can do to control what his human half does, but somehow, these two men knew and did precisely what was needed. Is this to be his life now? Beast by day, monster by night?

  The idea of it terrifies him. “I fear what I remember feeling,” he says softly. “Bastien has no conscience, no restraint. He’s already caused harm
to another; there is no telling what evil he will commit if he is allowed to roam free.” Neither Bastien nor the Beast can leave without the curse returning them, but even within these walls there are people who can be hurt by Bastien.

  The Beast won’t allow that. If he can’t control Bastien, then something or someone else will have to do it for him. He looks at the chains that bound him through the night and alights on an idea. “Tell me, Louis, do you know of a good stonemason?”

  Jacques and Louis exchange a glance and get straight to it without question.

  That night, the Beast changes again. The next morning, Jacques describes to him how Bastien raged to find himself chained to the wall. The Beast doesn’t need reminding. The memories are there, separate from his own but still accessible somehow. It’s like remembering a dream, hazy and confusing, but somehow his mind is able to make sense of it.

  He knows there should be bruises on his arms from the violent way Bastien pulled on his restraints. He remembers every curse his human self roared at everyone within earshot, the threats that made even the bravest cower far away. Bastien was a mad animal last night, without a single thought that didn’t call for blood. The Beast is grateful the chains restrained him, but how long can they hold against such onslaught?

  They can’t. He racks his brain all day long for some way to ensure Bastien won’t break free.

  He even goes down to the dungeon, but finds it useless. No one has used these cells in decades.

  The entire place reeks of mold and water, all the metal is rusted and the wooden doors are falling apart. The Beast wouldn’t trust a dog not to get out of here, let alone Bastien.

  Something else will need to be done.

  He chains himself again for the fourth night and posts guards outside the door for good measure, but this time he doesn’t transform. For three weeks he continues to sleep in the binds, with a pair of armed guards standing vigil, but Bastien doesn’t rise a single time.

  Not until the moon is full, and the Beast has almost convinced himself that he’s felt the last of Bastien’s malice, does the curse take effect again.

  In the morning he finds himself wrapped in chains on the bed. The guards tell him Bastien is stronger than any of them anticipated. In his rage, he managed to tear the chain moorings out of the wall and attack them. They were forced to stop him the only way they could—by stabbing him dead. Just like the unfortunate servant, Bastien woke again in minutes, but by then they’d already restrained him.

  The Beast has the chains reinforced and threaded through the wall into the chamber on the other side. He tests them himself and only when he is absolutely certain he cannot break free of them does he allow himself to rest until nightfall.

  When he wakes, he is in the entry hall with six burly servants and guards, armed with swords and javelins surrounding him. It’s Jacques who tells him what happened, and as he speaks, the Beast remembers.

  “The chains held,” the butler says tiredly. “It was a woman’s folly that let loose the monster Bastien.” Jocelyn, in her naivety, got past the guards under the pretense of bringing Bastien supper. She released him from the chains, thinking she would be the one to break his curse, make him better.

  The moment he was free, Bastien turned on her. He shoved the girl out onto the balcony and nearly strangled her to death before the guards pried him loose. But his hand on her throat was all that held her safe and without it, she lost her balance and fell over the balustrade to her death.

  The Beast howls in agony. The memory is so vivid it’s as if she’s falling again just outside.

  “She lives, Master,” Jacques says quickly. “But while the guards were distracted, Bastien made it past them, nearly outside. By then, Aimee and the others had seen the girl plummet and, well, in their anger and grief they mobbed him.”

  “Beat him right dead,” one of the guards adds proudly. “Done what we couldn’t, they did.

  The bastard went down like a felled tree and stayed there.” He nods in satisfaction. “Job well done, I say. Job well done.”

  If the curse hadn’t brought Jocelyn back…

  The Beast snarls and retreats to his chambers. They didn’t tell him the whole of it. Bastien didn’t just kill Jocelyn. He taunted her first, groped her and jeered, and her fear of him still lingers in this room. She was terrified of the monster she released, but so hopeful that she could change him she never screamed for help. It was by sheer luck that the guards decided to look in on her. If they hadn’t, Jocelyn would have suffered far worse than what she had.

  Death is easy. One turn of a card and a man goes from here to gone. Nothing to it but darkness between one breath and the next. What Bastien threatened, what he would have done if the guards hadn’t intervened, Jocelyn would never have forgotten.

  The Beast certainly never will.

  He lifts the chains, almost sensing Bastien still inside them, hovering like a ghost right in front of his face. Disgusted, the Beast drops the chains and turns his back on them to stoke the fire. As it blazes to life, he remembers something else. Something the others couldn’t know, because they were so intent on killing Bastien they never heard him through their own screams.

  “I wouldn’t have, ” he shouted with all the righteous anger of one wrongfully accused. Even the Beast doesn’t believe his words.

  He gives new orders for the dungeon to be cleaned and repaired. It won’t be an easy task, certainly not something they can accomplish overnight, but the Beast makes certain the servants appraise him of the progress often so that the knowledge is fresh in his mind. If he remembers Bastien’s thoughts, it stands to reason that Bastien will remember his.

  Good. It means he will know that if he transgresses one more time the Beast will take away even the remaining comfort of his own bed chambers and chain him in the black, dank oubliette of the dungeon.

  He makes it clear that no one is to enter his chambers on full moon nights for any reason. He gives the key to his restraints to Jacques, and the butler is the only one allowed to know where it’s kept.

  If Bastien can’t be trusted around people, then he will spend the rest of eternity in solitude.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Three nights of the full moon each month, the Beast transforms into his former self. But he is worse. The worst of his flaws—cruelty, apathy, hunger—are all he seems capable of, all amplified into something that is only human because of the face it wears. The Beast, in turn, seems to bear what few virtues the human used to possess—a conscience and a heart. In his beastly form, these things are, again, much stronger than before.

  The servants can see it, too. They fear the human more than the Beast. At each full moon, the Beast has them chain him in his chambers, lock the doors and post sentries just outside of it.

  No one defies his orders again. They give Bastien a wide berth, leave him to rage, to batter and drive himself to the brink of madness.

  The Beast sees it all as though from outside of himself, and it is terrifying to behold Bastien turn downright demonic with fury. But a more frightening thing by far is to remember Bastien claw his way back to sanity after he’s lost all notion of what that is. His hatred and despair grow with each night he is forced to be bound alone in his tower chambers.

  Living Bastien’s night after the fact, the Beast knows when his human side learns that anger only makes the others retreat farther. He changes his strategy and starts calling out for help, cajoling anyone who can hear, inviting them, pleading, and offering bribes. It is the last that nearly works. After months of imprisonment, the guards begin to believe Bastien when he says he can release them. After all, if they are no longer in his employ, if he no longer owns them, the curse should set them free. He promises to do this—because the Beast cannot —if only they will set him free.

  Twice the guards come close to breaking Bastien’s chains. The first time, one stops the other before he steps into Bastien’s chamber. The second time, Bastien lures him nearly close enough to set him free
, but his eyes betray him. The guard says as much before he runs out, just in time to escape Bastien’s wrath.

  The Beast doesn’t begrudge the guard his desire to be free, but not willing to risk the safety of the others, he has the man removed to another post.

  Sunset becomes their witching hour, a time everyone dreads because of what it will surely bring. When dawn breaks each morning, the servants bring the Beast food and clothes, speak to him and give what comfort they can—considerations they cannot and will not offer their human lord.

  Louis visits often, though never again on the nights around the full moon. He is true to his word and remains a friend when all others would have abandoned him.

  The Beast could not ask for a better friend.

  Jacques and Louis devise a plan by which they hope to free the Beast. They are so confident it will work that the Beast doesn’t have the heart to tell them how laughable it is. The strategy consists of Louis courting young women in the Beast’s stead, telling them just enough of his good qualities to get one to the castle, at which point they expect to tell her the whole truth and hope for the best.

  “Even with your title and riches it will take time to earn their trust,” Louis warns. “Don’t expect a bevy at your door within the week.”

  “Time we have,” Jacques tells him. “Plenty of it.”

  Time is all the Beast and his castle have.

  But not Louis.

  At first it is a quest to redeem Bastien’s soul. Then it becomes a game. Before long, it begins to take its toll on Louis and everyone else. He no longer laughs when he speaks of the women he met, doesn’t tell the Beast to keep his chin up anymore.

  His visits become less frequent, and more often than not he avoids talk of women all together. There was a time when he and Bastien talked of nothing else. Now the subject is simply not brought up.

  They are failing.