Beastly Beauty

Fifteen

Don’t move. Don’t flinch. Don’t breathe, Beau’s slamming heart warned him. The wolf never runs before the rabbit does.

So he listened. Like a mouse listens when the cat is near. With his ears, his flesh, his nerves, with every fiber of his being, and his body told him that the beast was crouching in the mouth of the very corridor where he’d meant to go.

Slowly, so slowly it did not look like he was moving at all, Beau raised his candle to his lips and huffed out its flame. He couldn’t see the beast; now it couldn’t see him, either.

The growling grew louder, more guttural. Beau heard a footstep, then another. It was moving toward him. The muscles in his legs snapped and jumped, telling him to run. Run fast. Run now. But he held himself steady. He knew he had only one small chance to escape.

Ten paces back to the staircase, he told himself. Forty-two steps to the landing …

Raphael had taught him to look for exits. Always. Everywhere. He’d learned to measure distances in his head, to memorize turns and corners and doorways. Five paces across the landing to the chamber door …

He took a deep, slow, silent breath, filling his lungs with air, and as he did, he cocked his arm back. Then he threw his candle as hard as he could, aiming for the corridor at his left, praying it made it through the archway.

He heard it land and roll along the floor. He heard the beast lunge out of its hiding place after it. And then he heard nothing but his own pounding footsteps as he flew back up the staircase.

He’d left the door to his room ajar, and the fire, still alive in the hearth, threw a sliver of light across the landing. He shot inside his room, slammed the door shut, and dropped to his knees. Frantically, he pulled the bundle of tools from his waistband and shook it open.

As he fumbled the rake tine and the nail into the lock, he heard footsteps on the stone stairs. He heard a growl rise into a snarl. Panic foamed over him like a storm surge. It caused his hands to shake. He dropped his tools.

“Come on … come on,” he breathed, scrabbling them up again.

Go easy, boy … Take your time …

Antonio was back in his head, steadying his hands.

Soft and slow, like a first kiss …

The snarl was rising. The beast was on the landing. Beau’s heart was in his throat.

In one last desperate move, he jammed the tine back into the lock and raked it along the pins, nudging the tumblers, and one by one they fell. Instead of the noisy thunk he’d made when he’d unlocked the door, this time there was only a soft snick as the bolt shot home.

A split second later, the beast slammed into the door. The impact sent Beau tumbling backward. As he sat on the cold floor, hands braced behind him, chest heaving, he heard it roar in fury. It hurled itself at the door again. And then Beau heard its snarl trailing away, as if the creature was retreating down the staircase. He held his breath. A long minute passed and then it was silent.

Beau let out a long, ragged exhale and flopped back on the floor, pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes. “You’re a liar, Valmont,” he whispered.

The beast wasn’t a fantasy. It wasn’t some figment of his wine-soaked imagination.

The beast was here. It was real.

And it wanted to kill him.