The Mark of the Beast
Kim Antieau
Published by Green Snake Publishing
Copyright (c) 2012 by Kim Antieau
Originally appeared in The Ultimate Werewolf, 1991
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Discover other titles by this author on Smashwords.com.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The Mark of the Beast
Kim Antieau
BUSHES AND SAPLINGS grabbed me as I hurried through the starless moonless forest. M. Garnier had warned me to return to the chateau before dark, yet I had foolishly hunted until dusk and now I was lost. I stopped for a breath and shouldered my musket and game bag. Once night falls, Garnier had told me, the beasts come out.
In the distance, a wolf howled, a lonely cry which made my bones ache. I started forward again. The surrounding night reached into me. I felt like a child, untouched and alone in a darkness filled with malevolent shapes, instead of the man I was, sent from my father’s house to shake the melancholy which had gripped my soul these many months. Now I was far from the world I had known all my life. Far from the world most men knew. The forest whispered to me in a language I could not comprehend. Some manner of beast awaited me behind each shadow. I shuddered.
“I will never find my way back,” I said out loud.
My voice startled an owl off its perch in an old oak, and the air quivered as the bird fluttered its huge wings.
Near me, leaves crackled. Bushes shook. What thing sought me out in these woods? My heart pounded in my throat.
Suddenly, a small hand grasped my hand.
“This way,” a woman whispered. She led me through blackness, and I welcomed her guidance. The forest parted as she moved ahead of me, like the sea parting before the bow of a ship. Leaves and ferns stroked my arms, calming my racing heart. For the quarter of an hour that the woman held my hand, the forest became familiar, like the woods surrounding my own distant home.
Then suddenly, the woman’s hand pulled away from mine, and she was gone. I stepped out onto the lawn of the chateau.
“Jean-Jacques? Is that you?” Louis Garnier became a shadow in the entryway, framed by the dim gold light of an inside fire. “At last! I was afraid the beasts had gotten you. My old friend Rieux would have never forgiven me if I had allowed his only begotten son to come to harm!” Garnier motioned me inside. “Come,” he said as I came toward him, “show me what you have killed this day.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING was bright and cool. After I dressed in a shaft of warm sunshine, I joined Garnier downstairs for breakfast.
“Have you recovered from your adventure last night?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, sitting across from him. “It was strange. I have lived in the Auvergne district all of my thirty years and I have never gotten lost before.” I took a breast of quail from the platter and began to eat.
“Don’t let it trouble you,” Garnier said. “The Apcon forest is unlike any other place. Not many journey this far into it. Even our good King Francis does not venture here often!” He laughed heartily. Then he looked beyond me and the laughter died.
“Good morning,” a familiar voice said quietly. My savior from the forest! I turned. I wanted to thank her then and there, but something about her timid gaze kept me silent.
“Marie,” Garnier said. “Please, join us. Jean-Jacques Rieux, this is my wife, Marie. She was resting yesterday when you first arrived.”
I stood and bowed slightly. Marie returned the bow and then sat next to her husband. She was small with golden hair pulled away from her face and curled so that it fell down her back in a way I had not seen in other women. She was more a girl than a woman, perhaps eighteen. I glanced at Louis Garnier. He could have been her father.
“Her parents were killed when she was a child,” Garnier said. “They were distant relations of mine. I took Marie when they died.”
“My husband is a generous man,” Marie said. Garnier glanced at her and then down at his food again. Marie picked up her goblet with her child’s hand and sipped the water slowly.
“How long can you stay with us?” Garnier asked me.