Beauty’s Beast(45)
Author: Amanda Ashley

“No.” She felt suddenly faint and she stumbled forward, grabbing at the cell door to keep from falling. “No . . .”

At her touch, the door swung inward. With a cry, she fell forward, landing on her hands and knees inside the cell.

Erik whirled around, his gaze meeting hers, and for a moment, time ceased. He watched the blood drain from her face, watched her expression turn from fear to horror as her gaze swept over him and she saw him as he really was, saw the thick black pelt that covered the left side of his body, his wolflike ear, his feet that weren’t feet at all, but paws with thick black nails. Saw it all in the bright light of a hundred flickering candles. Saw his ugliness reflected back at her a hundred times over.

Shaking her head in disbelief, she backed away from him, only to be brought up short by the cell door, which had closed behind her, trapping her inside the cell with a monster.

Laughter echoed down the corridor of the dungeon. Charmion’s laughter.

Erik turned his back on Kristine, unable to abide the fear and revulsion in her eyes. He could hear the harsh rasp of her breathing, smell the sharp scent of her fear. She had scraped one of her hands on the rough stones when she fell, and the metallic odor of her blood rose in his nostrils, hot and thick and sweet. He licked his lips, horrified by the urge to lick the blood from her palm.

Silence stretched between them, a horrible silence that wore on his nerves. He sent a silent plea to Charmion, begging her to open the cell door so Kristine could escape, but the door remained closed, kept shut by another bit of witchery.

He pressed his forehead against the cold stone wall, his right hand clenched close to his side. Despair washed over him, engulfed him, and with it an all-consuming sense of shame and humiliation that Kristine had seen him as he was.

And then he heard her voice, small and frightened. “Erik?”

He closed his eyes, praying that this was a nightmare, that when he opened his eyes, he would find himself at home, in his own bed.

“Erik?”

He heard the tears in her voice and wished he could offer her some small measure of comfort, but there was nothing he could do. Nothing anyone could do.

“Erik, it is you, isn’t it?” He heard the pity in her voice, the desperate need for reassurance. “Talk to me, please. Say something, anything.”

“Kristine . . .” He breathed her name on a sigh, felt every muscle in his body tense as he heard her take a hesitant step toward him. “Stay there!”

“Won’t you hold me? I’m so afraid.”

“It’s me you should be afraid of.”

“You? Why?”

“Look at me!” He whirled around to face her. “Look, and tell me you’re not afraid of what you see.”

“I see my husband.”

“You see a monster!” He thrust his left hand toward her. “Tell me this doesn’t frighten you! Tell me you’re not repulsed by what you see.”

She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I am afraid, terribly afraid, but not of you.”

“Kristine, Kristine . . .” He lowered his hand and turned his back to her once more. “Don’t you understand? I’m changing on the inside, too.” He groaned deep in his throat. It was the dark, feral thoughts that plagued his mind more and more often of late that frightened him the most.

His breath caught in his throat when she placed her hand on his back.

“There has to be something we can do,” she said quietly. “Some way to break this terrible curse. There has to be.”

He shook his head, his eyes closing in pleasure as her fingertips stroked his back. He wondered how she could bear to be near him when he was in this hideous state, wondered how he had lived all these months without the tender touch of her hand.

“We’ve got to find a way out of here,” Kristine said.

“There is no way out.” Despair washed over him. He was trapped in a living nightmare, at the mercy of his worst enemy. The knowledge filled him with a strange lethargy.

“There has to be! We can’t just sit here and do nothing.” She placed her hands on his shoulders, the full extent of what had happened to him hitting her with renewed force as she felt smooth, warm skin beneath one hand and thick fur beneath the other. She fought down her own panic as she forced him to turn and face her.

For a moment, she could only stare at him. Without the mask, she could see the entire right side of his face, could see what a devastatingly handsome man he had once been.

He tried to turn away from her, but she cupped his face in her hands. “No. Look at me. We have to find a way out of here. Don’t you see? We have to find someone who can break Charmion’s curse before . . .” She took a deep breath. “Before it’s too late.”

Erik stared down at his wife. She was beautiful, with her eyes flashing fire. And she was right. He couldn’t waste time lamenting the inevitable. He had to get Kristine out of there before it was too late. Perhaps, if one witch could cast a spell, another could break it.

“All right, my little warrior wife,” he said with a wry grin. “We’ll fight our way out of here.”

Or die trying.

Chapter Nineteen

Charmion sat before the fire, staring at the dancing flames. The big black cat lying in her lap purred softly, its back arching as she ran her fingertips up and down its spine.

“Vengeance is truly sweet, my pretty one,” Charmion murmured. “Sweet, indeed.”

Lifting one hand, she sent a trickle of power into the fire. Immediately, her daughter’s image sprang to life within the flames.

“He will pay dearly for every tear you wept, my Dominique, for every drop of blood you shed.”

She stared at the image until it faded from sight.

Soon she would have another child. Erik’s child. She would raise it as her own, love it as her own. The babe would never know its true parents but would grow up thinking that Charmion was its mother. And Erik . . . once the transformation was complete, he would be her pet. It would give her great pleasure to watch him, to see the intelligence in his eyes, the knowledge of who and what he had been.

It would be interesting to see how long it took for him to surrender his humanity, to forget he had once been a man and finally, fully, become a beast. In truth, she had expected him to succumb to the full effects of the curse long before now. She had underestimated him, she mused. She had known he would fight against the inner change with every fiber of his being, just as his body fought the outer transformation. She had not realized how strong his will was, how deep his instinct for survival. And yet, no matter how fiercely he resisted, in the end, he would succumb. Her victory would be complete. Her daughter would be avenged.