Warped Page 2

  Her mind went around her discoveries: the curse chased her away from the iron gate, but it stretched far enough to encompass Boisombre as well without making her leave the village entirely. The Beast hid in a tree to watch the village, so she hoped he was still mentally sound enough to converse with her. Some curses warped the mind as well as the body, and she was hoping this was just the latter.

  With a sigh, she took her notebook from her knapsack and started writing her theories and discoveries down, hoping to find another hidden connection. When none came to her, she laid down on the bed and closed her eyes, praying for sleep without the nightmares.

  Three

  The gate was forbidding. Spikes of frost stuck out of the iron, jagged on the smooth metal. Despite the danger, she felt compelled to touch it. She grabbed the bar, and the frost crunched through her gloved hand. She tightened her grip and shoved the gate open. The hinges ground to a halt, not even a quarter of the way open. But it was enough.

  She sucked in her stomach and slid sideways through the opening. The gate scraped against her chest, and she exhaled until she was through. She took a moment to pull her coat straight then carried on along the path.

  Her feet crunched on the snow-covered leaves. The lush gardens that once filled the grounds were dead, burned by the everlasting winter that shrouded the castle. Animal-shaped hedges were brown and decaying, covered with a blanket of thick snow. Their skeletal faces leered down at her; a once-grand menagerie reduced to remnants.

  Her breath caught as she approached the wide steps of the castle. The gilded doors were open in a silent greeting. Something moved behind them, catching her eye. She stood still and waited for another glimpse of the figure, but there was nothing.

  Swallowing, she crossed the threshold. A warm wind smelling of honey and cherry blossoms rushed against her back, shoving her further inside. The doors slammed shut.

  She screamed.

  *****

  A heavy, thick pressure held her immobile, refusing to let her draw breath. Jess crashed to the floor as she twisted in the quilt. She screamed and tried to free her arms. She slammed her head against the wooden frame of the bed, and black spots danced in front of her eyes. She tried to convince herself it was just a nightmare. It wasn't just another nightmare; she knew it wasn't.

  She needed to go back to the gate immediately. The sense of urgency scared her, and for a moment, she worried if it was the curse driving her. With the that in mind, she threw her coat on and grabbed her knapsack before hurrying downstairs.

  Rushing through the kitchen, she threw an assortment of snacks into her knapsack. Two steps in the main room, she could hear Adrian moving around his quarters. His door squeaked open, and she ran the last few steps across the room and out of the Inn. She shut the door behind her with more force than necessary and caught her breath on the walkway just outside the shadow of the tall building. She hitched her knapsack higher on her shoulder and stepped into the town square.

  Jess ignored the villagers and their glares, jogging until she reached the cursed path, where she stopped to catch her breath. She braced herself and shoved her way through the brush to the icy stillness. At her passage, rough branches grabbed at her hair and clothes.

  Here, it was eerily calm. No wind, warm or cold, blew. Snow was ankle deep in the woods, but the road was clear, and only a trace of snow remained. An overcast sky threw pellets of ice at her. Under the snow, dry leaves slid under her boots. She ignored the trees that moved overhead to a strange wind. Feelings of fear and panic assaulted her from all sides, sending her adrenaline pumping.

  “It’s just the curse,” she said to herself, “it’s trying to stop you from doing your thing. But nothing is going to stop you.”

  The gate was just ahead. Her steps faltered when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Panic threw her into a mindless sprint away from the gate.

  “Shit,” she gasped. She managed to stop herself after a few long strides. The thing that had startled her was a little gray bird. It perched on a branch and cocked its head at her. It hopped closer to her, showing its bright orange belly. With a blur of motion, it flew out of sight.

  The gate was now shut, unlike yesterday. It was still covered with the thick frost. She reached out to the gate, but curled her fingers to her palms before she could touch it. Even a scan inch from the smooth copper, the ice made her fingers ache.

  Through the gate, nothing looked out of the ordinary. There were no black shadows waiting for her, just what looked like a garden, in the midst of waiting for spring to come and revive the dormant flowers. Hedge animals were barren of leaves, blanketed with snow. They stared blankly towards the castle, ignoring her intrusion. Snow covered the path leading from the gate to the garden, unbroken. No one had been here.

  She dug deep in the knapsack to find something to protect her hands from the icy metal. In the bottom, under the bread, paper and pencils, she found what she was searching for: a pair of soft, worn doeskin gloves. She slid them on before resettling the knapsack back on her shoulder.

  She tried touching the gate again, this time with gloved hands. An unnatural cold permeated the leather, and she grimaced. She shoved it, and despite her weight against it, it didn’t move.

  A glitter in the bottom hinge caught her eye. She knelt down and saw the hilt of an ornate dagger lodged in the hinge. When she removed it, she held a blade that was as long as her forearm. The hilt was garnished with dull gems, and there was a deep scratch down the length of the blade. Silver remnants clung to the wrought iron hinge, and she briefly wondered who else had tried to open the gate before her.

  Shadows leached from the gate and touched the silver blade. With a hiss, she threw it as they nearly reached her fingers. It skittered across the stone as the shadows engulfed it. As she watched the shadows swarm the small blade, she wondered what exactly they were.

  With a bare thought, she opened her ability to sense curses and looked at the shadows. Pain immediately blossomed in her mind like a bolt of lightning, and she dropped to her knees when it consumed her world. Her fingers clenched and filled with crackling leaves. She forced herself past the pain for a brief moment of clarity. In that millisecond, she found that this shadow from the woods — this part of the curse — would do nothing but watch her.

  With a heaving gasp, she released the ability and let out a grateful sigh as the pain dissipated. The pain was an immediate reminder of why exactly she didn’t use her abilities here: the curse would punish her greatly for doing so, and had been since the beginning.

  She caught her breath and found her feet before brushing the debris off her jeans and hands. She watched the curse swaying among the trees for a moment before turning her back on them. When they disappeared into the dark forest, she turned her attention back to the gate. She shoved the gate again. Without the blade impeding it, it swung open with a metallic grate.

  Before stepping through, her thoughts returned to the previous two years. Two long years of staring at dusty manuscripts, of talking to people who didn’t want to talk to her, and so many long rides in rough wagons down dusty roads. It all brought her here. A smile quirked her lips, and she pushed the gate once more, widening the entrance.

  Jess slid through the space before it could slam shut. It didn’t move as she watched it warily. Standing still just inside the grounds, the frigid wind numbed her cheeks. She shivered and thought about the unnatural winter that surrounded her. She turned around to face the garden, and took in the snow that was thick on the gardens.

  Back in the village, spring was peaking out around winter’s curtain. Despite the occasional dusting of snow, the trees were budding. Yet here, less than a mile away, winter appeared to be in full force. Even in the woods that led to the gate, winter wasn’t this harsh. The epicenter of the curse was somewhere in front of her.

  Behind her, the gate closed and the heavy locks echoed as pins dropped. Whirling around, she saw nothing that could have moved it. Shadows hazed the other
side, covering the forest from her prying eyes. Even the glinting silver blade had disappeared into the shadows. With a steadying breath, she turned her back on the gate and surveyed the garden.

  On the edges of her vision, she caught sight of more of the tendrils of darkness, but they disappeared when she looked directly at them. They were teasing her and trying to raise her fear — and if she wasn’t careful, they would do just that. They were across the garden, but even at this distance, she could sense the malevolence that poured from them. She shivered at the hatred and knew that she needed to ensure that they never reached her.

  Keeping the shadow in mind, Jess walked through the gardens, stepping over branches that littered the path, poking up from the snow. Her nightmare kept flashing before her eyes, but she forced herself to continue. The closer she walked to the castle, the warmer the air seemed to grow, as if it were encouraging her to continue on. She pulled her gloves off and stuffed them back into the knapsack.

  The garden was still except for the small gray bird, the orange of his chest flashing as he flew chirruping from statue to hedge. She strained to hear a reply to his repeated calls, but none came.

  The center of the stairs were worn clean, with just a thin walkway through the leaves. She picked her way through the debris and looked up at the closed door. It was darker than in her nightmare, a heavy mahogany color.

  The doors opened by themselves. Just inside, there was a whispered noise, something that was almost a word. The wind, much warmer now than it had been in the woods, beckoned her towards the entrance. Jess frowned, her boots gripping the stone as the strength of the wind grew, threatening to shove her over the threshold.

  “I’ll go in when I’m damn ready.” Jess bit her lip at the thought that something wanted her inside the insidious castle. It couldn’t be the curse. In her experience, curses didn’t help a Breaker — they hindered. “If you wanna fix this curse, then you gotta go through that door,” she muttered to herself. Setting her jaw, she stepped over the threshold.

  Four

  The creak of the doors brought her whirling around just in time to see them slamming shut behind her.

  “Shit!” She shoved them, but they wouldn't give at all. She turned back to the interior of the castle.

  “Great, just great.” Looking around, she found herself alone, in a room that was devoid of any furniture. To her right, large windows let light into the hallway, but the light didn’t touch a recessed area to her right.

  The shadows seemed more substantial in the recess — something that looked almost human. There was a whisper of fabric moving within the darkness. Her eyes adjusted enough to see a monstrous shape in the depth of the recess.

  It moved in the shadows. Dim light caught eyes, and they glinted at her. Panic laced her thoughts as the curse dove into her mind, showing her what the Beast would do if it caught her.

  That was all it took for her thin rope of self-control to break. She ran in a blind panic, racing away from the Beast. Claws scrabbled on the stone floors, chasing her.

  “Attendez,” it commanded from behind her. “S’il vous plait!”

  There was a note of desperation that almost made her stop, but her mind was too crazed, already in a haze of terror from the and Beast. Sliding around a corner, she almost hit the wall before regaining her footing. The beast was gaining ground behind her.

  There was a thud, a crash, and a cry of pain from somewhere behind her. Her lungs burned, but she kept running. Jess caught her fingers on the stone corner as the hallway ended and flung herself up a set of narrow stairs to the second floor. Her mind screamed that she was trapping herself upstairs with the thing chasing her.

  The claws scrabbled behind her again as she raced up the last few steps and down a large corridor with a thick rug spread along the center. It muffled her footsteps while she sprinted, and her steps grew uneven as her legs started to cramp.

  When all she could hear behind her was silence, she stopped, her throat raw from the fast breaths. Trying to tame her hurried heart, she listened for the creature following her.

  It was walking up the stairs with slow, precise movements. It wasn’t chasing her any longer; no, now she was being stalked. Somehow, she knew that no matter where she went, it would find her. A clawed hand grabbed the edge of the stairway.

  She darted through a door left ajar and into a dark room. The strap of her knapsack hooked on the door handle, and she struggled for a moment, panic rising higher until she wriggled out of the knapsack, leaving it to dangle from the handle.

  The room she had chosen was full of furniture, collecting dust. She slid under a piano tucked in a corner, moving beneath it until she was shrouded in darkness by the wall. Light streamed in from the hallway as something pushed the door open. It filled the doorway, blocking most of the light.

  “Je sais que vous êtes ici…” A deep, masculine voice said softly, “Où cachez-vous?”

  She held her breath as it — no, he looked for her. She pressed a hand over her mouth, trying to silence the deep breaths that she couldn’t stop. She felt his eyes on her, and the pit of her stomach dropped.

  “Je te vois. Sortez maintenant,” he commanded as he walked toward her hiding spot. Somehow, he knew where she was tucked away.

  Mentally, she kicked herself, almost groaning audibly. Of course he knew where she was. She’d left him tracks through the dust, straight from the door to her, and her knapsack was hanging just outside the room. Her hands shook as she pressed a fist into her mouth. She hadn’t just trapped herself upstairs. She’d trapped herself in a corner of a small room, underneath one flimsy piece of furniture. If this was a horror movie, she’d be dead within the next five seconds. Jess silently prayed that this wasn’t one of those endings.

  “Avez-vous peur ? Bien sûr, vous êtes. Comme vous devriez être,” he said, finishing the last part softer, as if he were talking to himself. His voice was rich and deep with a French accent, and a hint of something not quite human.

  “Qui es-tu?” he tried again, gentler. A chair creaked as he leaned on it.

  She tried to let go of the fear that cramped her muscles tight. She knew that most of the terror was a product of the curse trying to get her to leave. She knew that, but the remainder of the fear was all natural: the result of being chased by a large cursed animal. Whatever he was, he was the Beast of the Legend. Squeezing her eyes shut, she willed the fear to disappear. She could still feel the curse in her mind, and she tried to ignore it, shoving the fear it produced away.

  Opening her eyes, she looked out again. Her eyes searched the darkness, trying to discern shapes, definition — anything — but the only thing she could separate was his bulk from that of the chair. He was massive, towering over her five-foot four-inch height by well over a foot. He was definitely the Beast. But, he’d tried to speak to her. Not threaten, at least, from what she could tell by his tone of voice. But it had been a question in a language she didn’t speak but recognized as French.

  “Parle…parlez vous anglais?” she said awkwardly, voice hardly above a whisper.

  “Yes, I speak English.” His reply was slow. “You speak no French?”

  “No.”

  “Pity. Who are you?”

  Her heart still raced, but she could already feel the adrenaline ebbing. The curse had tried to drive her away, out of the castle and away from her goal completely, but it had failed. She was here, talking with the Beast.

  “Jessamyn — Jess — Moreau. I’m coming out,” she said, forcing a bravado into her voice.

  “What are you doing here, in my castle?” he asked softly, voice rumbling through the small room.

  “I’m searching for you,” she said. She drew herself to her full height and shook off the remains of the fear, firm in the knowledge that it was due to the curse. Straightening, she took a moment to brush off the dust that clung to her. “Actually, I seem to have found you.”

  “Whyever would you want to find me?”

  Jess chewed h
er lip as she noticed that the more he spoke, the more the fear retreated, as if the curse was forced back by their interaction. Strange. “Because you’re cursed, and it’s my job to break curses.”

  He grunted and shifted his weight before taking a step away from her. “How do you intend to do that?”

  “That’s a long discussion, which I will be more than glad to have with you somewhere else.” She brushed off a spider web that clung to her leather coat.

  He looked at her speculatively with a curious tilt of his head. “Perhaps you can answer one query before we proceed somewhere more comfortable.”

  Jess stopped trying to free her hand from the spiderweb and looked at him with a hint of apprehension. “That depends on the query, I suppose.”

  “How is it you found me? In the last two centuries, no one has made contact with me at all.”

  She smiled, knowing she could answer this one. “Part of my job is locating curses, and I’ve spent the better part of two years trying to find you. After all, if I couldn’t actually find the curse, then I couldn’t break it.”

  Five

  “What curse are you trying to break, Mademoiselle Moreau?” His voice was deceptively mild.

  “La Belle et la Bête. The curse of la Bête, to be specific. I thought that was obvious, given your...condition,” she said. She gestured lamely towards him.

  He gave a curt nod, and he stepped away from the chair and exited the room, stopping near the large windows that lined the wide hallway. Her curiosity drove her to follow him now that he wasn’t chasing her. She stood beside him and took in the man warped by the curse.

  The pale gray fur of his face caught the light. Natural, dark lines around his eyes gave him the cat’s eye eyeliner that models lusted after. Except for the cover of fur, a nose with a slightly feline cast, and ears set higher and more pointed than natural, his face tended towards human. His almond-shaped green eyes narrowed at her examination.