Ama ran beside me. The wind slid over her fur and gave me the gift of her familiar scent. How I’d missed her, despite everything.
Sebastian wasn’t nearly as fast as we were, but I kept him with us as we wound through the edge of the woods toward Emméline’s farm. The sounds and smells of the mob behind us marched steadily closer. We outpaced them, but fear nipped at all four of my heels. They’d followed us right into the jaws of the beast, and I couldn’t be sure they’d pick the right one to try to kill.
Emméline’s house spilled over its plot with extra rooms added as the father and daughter’s wealth grew. It didn’t match itself—the plaster of the main section colored with age and the new additions much too white.
A wooden barn stood sentinel on the edge of the property beside an open, empty field.
A thinner building ran parallel to the barn. Its wooden slats had been spaced carefully and close together. A metal door lent the thing the look of a prison. This must be where they held the creatures.
But a guttural howl, so much rougher than mine or Ama’s, told me the monster wasn’t in there now.
Sebastian spun, his musket aimed at shadows. A chill breeze brought the gasps and shouts of the townspeople to my finely tuned ears. Ama must have heard them too, because she looped around and came to a rest in front of me. She angled herself between me and the sounds of a hundred furious people looking for something to soothe their desperation.
They wanted blood, but I was determined they wouldn’t get any of Ama’s or mine. I peered out into the trees and waited for the glow of the torches to come closer.
Every few moments, I glanced behind me, but the creature didn’t spring from the shadows between the barns. I had to rely on my senses—the deep pull of a breath through my sensitive nose, the shift in the air to tell me of movement, the taste of salty sweat and fear. I’d feel the monster before I saw it. Of that I was sure.
Which was exactly why it surprised me.
Red fur flashed before my eyes at exactly the same time I smelled the putrid musk of it. The animal jumped clean over me and fell with sickening grace on Ama’s back. She jolted and I shrieked—a yelp scraping free of my throat. Sebastian jumped back and aimed his gun at the wrestling figures of my sister and the beast.
Please don’t shoot. The aim couldn’t be trusted—not with Ama twisting herself out of the monster’s mouth.
In utter silence, the townspeople reached the edge of the wood and stood between the trees. Fear replaced the fury in their eyes as their nightmare came to life before them. Emméline stared at me without any expression at all. She’d let a mob come here, to her own home, as part of her evil game. The idea turned my stomach, but I didn’t have time for disgust.
The monster pinned Ama to the ground. In a blinding rage, I bared my teeth and sunk them into the animal’s russet-colored back. It growled and released Ama’s neck while I tore into its flesh. Blood filled my mouth with a thick, metallic taste and I had to let go before I choked on it.
I stepped back and took my first real look at the monster. It was a giant, almost bigger than me and Ama. The long legs of a wolf topped with the muscular body of a mastiff. Bred for hunting and killing. It came at my sister again. I leapt and brought my long claws down on its back. Ama’s legs kicked at the dirt and pine needles until she could stand again. Then she clamped her jaws around the animal’s neck, holding it there for a moment before it threw her off. Ama and I stood with our tails flicking each other, cornering the wolf-dog against a row of fir trees. Her golden eyes held mine, and it was almost as if I could hear her in my head. I just knew what she was going to do next by the stance of her legs and the set of the dark crest of fur on her neck. I imagined I looked the same.
She went for the animal’s back legs and swept them out from under it with her snout. I angled my body and launched myself at its neck, sinking my teeth into its flesh for the second time. Ama rolled the beast over with her paws and opened her jaw so that her sharp teeth hovered just over the soft white fur of the beast’s belly.
Sebastian kept his gun trained on the injured monster and I tried to scream at him with my eyes, Get back behind me!
He didn’t listen and I couldn’t make him.
“You see?” Emméline’s strong voice split the crowd at the tree line. They parted for her and her loping hounds. “Three of them. No wonder they pick us off so quickly.”
The animal caught on the ground beneath us snarled and snapped at the air. On the other side of the field, the hounds grumbled low, tentative growls.
“Kill them all!” Emméline said. “We’ll send their bodies to Versailles and the king will reward us with more than we could ever dream of. We can show him what we’re really worth.”
Shouts of agreement rang out through the frozen air, and I wondered why they weren’t more afraid. Did they think they could kill us so easily?
Sebastian dropped to his knees in the cold, snowy dirt beside Ama and me. “Marie,” he whispered. “Change back, now. We can explain . . . tell them what happened.”
He’d be revealing his mother as a witch, along with my aunt. It was a sacrifice from him, and I took it without question.
The townspeople seemed to move as one, bursting from the trees like bees from a hive, surging toward us with their makeshift weapons. Papa pushed his way to the front of the group and rounded on them.
“Stop!” he yelled.
They didn’t listen. I concentrated on my muscles, the feel of them, the ache. I imagined slipping out of this body like a snake shedding its skin.
A warm tingling started in my hind legs and burned its way through me. I knew without knowing how that I was turning back. My body broke around me, the golden fur falling away to reveal the human skin underneath. Screams echoed in my ears, and the snarling and snapping of the monster behind me sent shiver after shiver down my naked spine.
“Behold the face of evil,” said Père Danil as he pushed through the crowd with a crucifix squeezed tightly in his hand. He stretched it out toward me as if expecting me to flinch. Sebastian rushed forward and covered me with his jacket, and I was glad to have something between my skin and the searing gaze of the crowd.
They’d stopped moving and stared at me. It was as if they were all waiting to see what would happen, as if this was a play and not their real lives at all. The only indications of life were the flittering of eyelids and the wispy plumes their breath made in the icy air.
I didn’t owe these people anything. They’d never accepted me—some had hated me, hunted me. I’d always been on the edge of their world, never invited in. But their behavior had nothing to do with me. Now I got to choose exactly who I was, who I wanted to be, and I was no monster.
Papa reached out and clenched his hand around my wrist to pull me back to him, but I twisted away.
“Marie,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “You too? You’re one of them too? Please, come.”
I wouldn’t act to please him either. This was for me. I wanted to know I could do it.
“My lord,” Père Danil said to Sebastian. “We must execute her to keep the village safe.”
Murmurs of agreement spread through the crowd behind me.
“Kill her right away this time, so she can’t escape,” came a voice from the crowd.
“Shoot her!”
“Slit her belly!”
Fear gurgled up through my throat, but I refused to let it show. I stared into the faces of the townspeople who wanted me dead and silently dared them to come try to kill me themselves.
“She was meant to save you!” Sebastian cried, and the shouting died down. He still held some power as their lord, it seemed. “That’s what she and her sister were supposed to be . . . protectors. And we pretended she was a witch to trick the killer so we could capture them! Everything Marie said that night was a lie, but you believed it because it was exactly what you were all afraid of. That thing, the animal that killed your children, was not Marie.”
A few heads nodded, but most still stared at me with a mix of burning fear and hatred in their eyes.
“And that thing wasn’t created by God,” I said, pointing at the wolf-dog under Ama’s paws. “It was Emméline.”
The sudden absence of sound shocked me. Tension wound around us like a hangman’s rope, tying us all together. I had to explain.
“Emméline and her father before her made the monsters,” I went on. “They bred their great mastiffs with wolves and trained the pups to be killers. And when their animals wouldn’t obey them, I think they killed their victims themselves. They wanted to create a panic so they could be the heroes.”
Emméline gripped the hunting knife in her hand and raised it toward me. “Liar! You’re only trying to save your skin.”
Shock zipped through the crowd like a spark—lighting frenzy in people’s eyes. They started to shift and churn together.
“Lies!”
“It can’t be!”
“It’s true,” Papa said, and my heart warmed a little. “My daughters could never be monsters.”
Daughters. He’d given Ama away, but I guessed that didn’t matter anymore. All our secrets were laid bare and the villagers were still deciding what to do with them.
“Kill her before she changes into the beast again!” Emméline shouted, spittle coating her lips.
I stepped closer to her. She towered over me, but my presence seemed to make her shrink into herself.
“What have you done, Emméline?”
The monster twisted in Ama’s grip and my sister squealed with pain. It was weak, but its legs were still long and powerful. The animal launched itself between me and Emméline. I ripped a pitchfork from the baker’s hands and swung around. The tines sunk into the monster’s belly with just a little resistance. Nausea swept through me, but I clamped my lips together and willed it away. I’d seen blood before. No need to be squeamish. This one was dead now, and that eased the knot in my belly, but it was only the latest in a long line of kills. We’d all have to live with the deaths forever.
“See how it protected Emméline?” Papa said from beside me.
“It was her creature,” I said. “You see that now, don’t you? She set it loose on our village, your children.”
“Lies!” Emméline said, backing away from us, the lines of kennels behind her.
We moved with her, closing in. Sebastian reached for her arm, but she tore it away.
“Don’t touch me! You’re just like the rest of them. You can’t see anything beyond this village. I could have won us glory.”
“No, Emméline,” he said. “You’ve only given us terror and grief. The magistrate can decide what to do with you.”
“Père Danil!” she shouted.
The priest had retreated back into the crowd; the only thing setting him apart was his stark black robe.
He shook his head. “You let the devil in, didn’t you, child? And you and your father both tricked me.”
“You’re all wrong! Small-minded! There are bigger things happening in Paris, you know. We could have been talked about, rewarded!” Emméline said, and pulled open the latch on the nearest kennel.
Lucien stumbled out, blinking, legs unsure.
My breath caught in my chest. I lurched forward, Sebastian matching my steps. Emméline wrapped an arm around Lucien’s neck and held her hunting knife to his throat.
“When?” Sebastian asked.
“Marie led me so helpfully back to the house when she escaped the oubliette, and it gave me the idea to take him. It was the first time I realized it wasn’t just her sister who turned into a beast that my babies could never quite catch. So I went upstairs to see Lucien, to get myself some insurance. Madame Écrue was so pleased to see me.” Emméline smiled and I wanted to run her through with the pitchfork.
“He’s so sick, isn’t he?” Emméline continued. “I grew the oleander flowers in my garden in the spring and made the tincture before the cold came. All it took was a few drops while you turned your back when I visited that day and he sickened so quickly. I knew that would keep you distracted while I churned up more panic.”
“You did this to him?” Sebastian asked.
She nodded. “And I told him he’d benefit from the fresh air on my farm and he came with me just like that, didn’t you, Lucien? Probably bored of being in bed all day.”
It wasn’t a surprise that Emméline knew oleander was poisonous—most people did—but I couldn’t believe she’d given it to a child. Foxglove didn’t have as bad an effect as oleander. Oleander could easily be deadly.
A trickle of blood ran down Lucien’s neck. His hair was slick with sweat and sticking to his forehead. Dark circles hung like upside-down moons under his eyes. He barely reacted to being pulled from the kennel and held with a knife to his throat, he was so ill. My chest filled with heat, rage burning through me.
I understood a bit better how Maurice’s parents felt, what Vivienne’s parents must have gone through. And then I realized every vagrant, every person I’d marked for Ama had a family somewhere. Once upon a time, they’d been someone’s child. They’d been loved. And I’d stolen them away. Regret tightened my chest, soured my stomach. I’d also been a monster.
“What will it be, Sebastian?” Emméline said, turning to him. “Should I sink the knife into his skin or are you going to let me go?”
Sebastian glanced over at me and I recognized the determination in his eyes. He’d do anything to stop Emméline hurting Lucien. Emméline was counting on it, but I knew Sebastian better than she did now. He wasn’t going to let this happen without a fight and I was right there with him.
“Yes, yes, whatever you want. Just let my brother go,” Sebastian said.
“How do I know you won’t come after me?”
“I don’t care about you, Emméline. I only care about Lucien.”
“Hurry, Sebastian!’ I said, filling my voice with panic. It came easily.
“Let go of him, Emméline, and we’ll give you whatever you want!” Sebastian pled.
She laughed. “This is what makes you weak, you know. Your attachment to your brother . . .”
She stepped backward with Lucien in her grasp and flicked the latch on another kennel. A red mastiff loped out, snarling, teeth glinting in the pale, early winter sun. The people behind us leapt back. But Sebastian and I remained.
I met Ama’s eye and nodded my head. She growled and jumped for the dog. Emméline’s head whipped around to see what happened and I tackled her. This body wasn’t as strong as the beast’s, but it was enough. I knocked into Emméline and Lucien, sending them both sprawling. Emméline flailed and a searing pain went through my shoulder where her knife split my skin. The blood trickling down my chest was warm in the cool air. I knocked the knife out of her hand, into the dead grass. Lucien crawled away. Emméline held me and I struggled in her grip, fighting off her desperate strength, until I could reach the knife. In one swift motion, I picked it up and plunged it into her chest. Her eyes opened wide and she let out a little breath. My second kill of the day. It didn’t feel good or bad. Just numb.
Ama whined and I looked up. While I’d been trying to save Lucien, the mastiff had injured my sister. She rose on shaking legs and fell again. She spasmed and her body broke apart. Fur shriveled into skin.
My sister shimmered back into her human shape. Papa threw his coat over her, and she crawled through the dirty snow toward me. I ran to her and fell to my knees, pulling her close. I’d been waiting for this, to just have her here, to have her back. I let the feeling of it settle over me and bent my face to her head. Her hair smelled like the fir trees all around us. That’s who she was now. A little bit of the animal and the forest always inside her. Just like me. I couldn’t strip my sister of her curse because she’d never been cursed to begin with—neither of us had. Sebastian’s mother might not have asked our permission to do what she did, but Ama had embraced it now, and I could too.
Lucien leaned into Sebastian and I took them both in, trying to capture the moment so I could always remember it. They were both safe. We were all safe.
“Another one?” the baker said, pointing at Ama and me.
Sebastian took a step toward us, Lucien clinging to his leg. “They saved you, all of you. They’re our protectors.”
I didn’t know what I was now. All I knew was that the townspeople couldn’t tell me, and neither could Sebastian or his mother or even Ama. I had to find out for myself.