Beastly Beauty: A Fairy Tale Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 2) Read online

  Beastly Beauty

  Girl Among Wolves 2

  A Dark Fairy Tale Adaptation

  Lena Mae Hill

  Beastly Beauty © 2017 Lena Mae Hill

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  ISBN: 978-1-945780-38-7

  1

  I am riding a mountain lion. I cling to his back, my arms circling his neck as he climbs steep slopes and slips between towering boulders. My head swirls with questions and my ankle throbs with pain where I twisted it during my escape from the valley of the wolves. Adjusting my hold, I shift the glass lantern against my chest, but it still bites into my skin. Inside the lantern, instead of a flame, a little grey mouse huddles. The mouse is Mrs. Nguyen, my childhood babysitter, next door neighbor, and tonight’s hero. The mountain lion is my father.

  As we crest one of the giant, rolling hills that make up the Ozark Mountains, a chorus of howls sounds behind us, echoing through the valley. My chest tightens, and I hope that isn’t the mourning cry as the pack finds their new Alpha in a mangled heap in the woods. I hope it isn’t my sister being caught and punished for trying to run away with us. But more than anything, I hope they don’t catch us.

  The mountaintop flattens into a plateau under us as my father makes his way along the ridgeline. The land folds, pushing up into more hills and down into valleys. From here, I can see all the way across the wolves’ valley to the next mountaintop, where a white lookout tower stands guard over the valleys on either side.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, but of course my father can’t answer now. I’m so sick of being in the dark, of never having answers, that all I want to do is slide off his back and demand he shift into his human form and tell me everything. Instead, I cling tighter when I hear a roar echoing up from the wolves’ valley, where they are fighting with the shifters.

  Dad increases his pace again, moving down the far side of the mountain. The howls dissipate, their lonesome sound sending chills along my arms as it fades into the distance. Inside my head, I whisper a goodbye to my sister, hoping she can somehow hear it through our twin bond. But she’s in wolf form now, and I don’t know if she can sense my presence drawing further away, the way I can sense hers.

  At last, when my arms ache from the strain of holding on so long, and my sternum is raw and bruised from pinning the lantern between my chest and Dad’s back, he slows. He lopes across a dirt road and into a driveway.

  “What is this place?” I ask, slipping from his back. I clutch the lantern in front of me, as if Mrs. Nguyen can somehow protect me.

  Dad shifts into human form in seconds. After seeing the wolves transition in such a slow and gruesome way, with bones and cartilage snapping, it’s still a bit of a shock to see a shifter do it so easily.

  “It’s where Efrain held me captive,” he says. “He wanted me to ask around about a girlfriend who took off on him. When I didn’t do it on his time schedule, he locked me in his shed.”

  I shudder, but I can’t stop the suspicions circling in my mind. Mrs. Nguyen says he left his body, so is this really him? What if someone else has projected into his body, and this isn’t my father at all? Suddenly I’m sure it’s Mother, waiting to grab my hands and say I’m caught, and that I’m going right back into her attic where I belong.

  My hand goes to my throat, and I swallow hard. “What did you get me after we went to the zoo?” I ask.

  “Your necklace,” he says. “Why are you asking about that?”

  I don’t know what to say to him. How to admit I don’t know if I remember his voice well enough after only three years to trust that it’s him, or that I don’t believe in hope enough to trust that it is. I’ve learned again and again that trusting anyone here is not an option.

  “I want to make sure it’s you,” I say at last. Dad’s not the type to get his feelings hurt over reasonable answers. But as he laughs, a chill goes through me. Mother knows I wear that necklace. I might have even told her it was from my dad. “Why did you get it for me?” I press.

  “Because you loved the tigers, so I got you a tiger eye,” he says. “So you could think of me and my promise to take you back to see them.”

  “It is you,” I say, my throat suddenly thick with unshed tears.

  “I’ll give it to you as soon as we get out of here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yvonne gave it to me—before she projected,” he says, faltering so strangely that my suspicions rise again. But before I can ask more, he goes on. “Right now, we need to focus on getting that mouse back to her human body.” With that, he turns and circles the shabby stone house. Yvonne, known to me as Mrs. Nguyen, peers out of the lantern with beady black eyes.

  I hurry to catch up with Dad.

  Behind the house, two rusted-out cars crouch on blocks, and a small tin shed sits next to a large walnut tree. For a second, I want to tell Dad that I have learned to recognize one tree from another, that I’ve read books on native plants and animals of the Ozarks. There’s no limit to the things I would do to stay sane in the months of sheer boredom when I was a prisoner. But Dad seems more interested in the shed than making conversation, so I follow along, averting my eyes so I won’t see his nakedness.

  “Why are we here?” I whisper, glancing back at the house.

  “I told you. To get Yvonne’s body,” he says, surveying the ground around the shed.

  “This is where you were kept?” I ask, not bothering to hide my shock. “In a shed?” Here I thought my mother was cruel for locking me in an attic. Suddenly, I’m filled with pity for my father. I can’t imagine what he went through at the hands of the shifters. Compared to this, the attic was a five-star resort.

  “She got me out,” he says. “I need to get her out. They’ll use her magic for their own purposes. She’s more valuable to them than I was, that’s for sure.”

  “But why would they want you?” I ask. “If you’re one of them?”

  “Found it,” he cries, pulling a crowbar from under the edge of the shed. He braces it against the padlock and yanks. With a screech of metal, the tin bends away from the wooden frame of the door.

  “How did you get out?” I ask.

  “They let me out because I agreed to fight alongside them. But when they threw her in here instead of me, I told her I’d come back for her.”

  “They must have known she could leave her body and project into the mouse,” I say, peering into the lantern. “Since they caught her in this form, too.”

  “Now she just needs a human body so she can communicate with us. Here, help me pry this open.”

  With my help, Dad yanks the tin free of the doorframe, leaving bent nails and splintered wood behind. We peer into the dark opening of the shed, and a chill passes over me.

  “Why didn’t you break out as a mountain lion?” I as
k.

  “They had a spell on me so I couldn’t shift.” He steps inside and crouches, feeling around on the ground. At last, he scoops up a body and steps out. The plump old woman who lived next door to us for the past ten years sags in his arms, as limp as a dead person. It reminds me too much of the day I found Dad’s body and thought he was dead.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “I’ll explain everything later.”

  But I’m tired of those words, tired of waiting for explanations. “Dad,” I say. “I found your body. How could you let me think you were dead?” My throat tightens painfully at the memory of it, but a swell of confusion and betrayal is seeping over the memories of sadness. He was alive. Somehow, some way, he could have gotten a message to me.

  “We need to get to someplace safe, and then we can talk,” he says, laying Mrs. Nguyen’s body gently on the fresh green grass sprouting in the backyard. I’m touched by his care and tenderness, the way he always was with her, even when he joked around. Back then, I didn’t understand why he liked spending time with an old lady so much.

  Dad takes the lantern from me and looks it over. “I think she’s trapped in here,” he says. “It’s got some kind of magic keeping her inside. Let’s break it open and see.”

  With that, he takes the crowbar and strikes the glass lantern. I bite back a yelp, but Dad laughs when the glass cracks. A few more blows and he’s broken out a pane of the lantern. He takes the mouse in his hand and slips it into Mrs. Nguyen’s pocket.

  We sit back, waiting.

  “What if she can’t project back?” I whisper.

  “She can.”

  After a minute, when she doesn’t move, he steps back into the shed. Seconds later, he returns, a string dangling from his fingers. At the end of it hangs the tiger-eye charm. I start to reach for it, but he slips it into Mrs. Nguyen’s breast pocket with the mouse.

  “It has a protection charm of sorts on it,” he says. “I had her put it on the stone to keep you safe.”

  Touched, I start to answer, but before I can, Mrs. Nguyen draws a noisy breath and sits up so suddenly that I stumble back.

  “They’ll be coming back from the fight by now,” Dad says. “Hurry and get on my back.” Without waiting for our agreement, Dad shifts back into his mountain lion form.

  “I always did fancy a lion ride,” Mrs. Nguyen says with a sly smile. She hops up as if nothing happened and attempts to climb on Dad’s back. I give her a boost, then look at him doubtfully.

  “Are you sure you can carry us both?” I ask.

  His huge head swings around and he growls low in his throat.

  “Okay, okay.” I climb onto his back, holding onto Mrs. Nguyen, who lays forward and grips his neck. Dad is much slower this time, and he keeps to the road. By now, it’s sometime between midnight and dawn, and we have the dirt road to ourselves. After only five or ten minutes, he steps off the road into another driveway. My heart nearly stops when I see his faded red pickup in the drive.

  “Home sweet home,” Mrs. Nguyen says, straightening.

  “What?” I ask, sliding off Dad’s back and holding out a hand for her. As soon as she sets foot on the ground, Dad shifts into human form.

  “It’s where I grew up,” he says, gesturing to the house. “Come inside. I’ll call Dr. Golden to come have a look at your ankle.”

  “Dad,” I say, my voice stronger than I expected. “Can we sit down and talk about the last, oh, I don’t know…fifteen years or so?”

  He sighs. “Okay, let me get some clothes on, and then we’ll talk.”

  “Fine,” I say, because I really don’t want to talk to my dad when he’s naked, no matter how dark it is.

  He jumps up onto the porch and disappears inside.

  “I’ll get us something to drink,” Mrs. Nguyen says, shuffling up the sagging steps. I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I’d really like some time with just my dad. He has so much explaining to do. But for now, it will have to be enough. Maybe Mrs. Nguyen can answer more of my questions, and after all, she did get me out of the wolf valley. Quelling my disappointment at her presence, I head for the porch swing.

  The house is small and plain, with siding that should have been replaced a decade ago, a sagging roof, and a porch that looks like it might detach from the house at any second and collapse into a heap of boards and cinderblocks. When I step closer, I can see that the porch swing doesn’t hang from a chain. Instead, it sits on more stacks of cinderblocks, making a bench seat.

  As I’m debating whether the porch is fit to hold three people at once, gravel crunches stealthily behind me. I spin around, then gasp at the pain in my ankle. There’s no one there.

  But the unmistakable sound of a footstep in the gravel still rings in my ears. A sneaking footstep, someone trying to be quiet. I know, because I’ve tried to sneak along gravel driveways a time or two myself.

  “Who’s there?” I ask, my voice coming out sharp rather than firm.

  A breath of warm air sweeps across my neck, and I almost scream. I spin around again, only to collide with a bare, furry chest. This time, I do scream. Strong arms circle me, and a hand clamps over my mouth. His skin smells like animal, sharp and pungent.

  “Now, we don’t want to alarm anyone, do we, little girl?” he asks. His deep voice carries a strong southern accent and a hint of teasing. In the silvery moonlight, I can make out enough of his features to know I’ve never seen him before, though something about him does seem vaguely familiar. He doesn’t look like one of the werewolves, though, and they never smell like sweaty animals.

  I struggle against him, but he only smirks down at me.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you,” he says. “I’m just here to talk to the joke who lives here. Though if you wanted, we could have a little fun while we wait.”

  I scream against his palm, scraping my teeth against it, trying to bite him. But my lips only smash against his callouses. He laughs, amusement dancing in his dark eyes.

  “Our business here is with Owen,” a voice says behind me. “Who are you?”

  I make a sound behind the first guy’s hand.

  “It’s a fair question,” he says. “If I let go of your mouth, you ain’t going to scream, are you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Good, because I wouldn’t want to have to hurt such a pretty girl,” he says. “But I will if you scream.”

  The second he takes his hand off my mouth, I scream. It’s cut short by the shock of a blow. My head rocks back, my teeth smashing together. I gasp for breath, trying to force myself to calm down. Mother slapped me around plenty over the past few years. But I’ve never been punched. I can’t seem to recover from the reeling pain of it, echoing up and down my body. All I can do is open and close my mouth to make sure my jaw isn’t broken.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the guy says, turning my body so my back is to him. He grips my wrists behind my back. Through the blur of tears in my eyes, I can see the second guy. While the one who holds me is brawny, the other is wiry. His eyes sparkle with a cold cruelty. They are both naked, so I’m guessing they’re shifters who arrived in animal form.

  Where the hell is my dad?

  “Who are you?” the smaller one asks again. His voice is also strongly accented, but it has a sharp, nasally twang.

  “I—I’m not anyone,” I choke out, stalling for time. If I can’t have a mountain lion protecting me, I’d settle for a witch. Just about anyone can do more damage than a human girl with a sprained ankle.

  “You ain’t a quick learner, that’s for sure,” the one holding me says.

  “Here’s how this works,” the smaller one says. “I ask you a question, and you answer, or you get hit. You can understand a simple rule like that, can’t you?”

  I nod, choking down my terror. As scared as I was of the wolves, I knew them. I knew how and when they’d hurt me. I curse myself for ever leaving their valley. But if I can stall these guys, keep them talking, Mrs. Nguyen will se
e me out the window. She’ll warn Dad, and he’ll come eat them.

  “Good girl,” the skinny guy says, stepping closer and running the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “You must be a werewolf, dressed up fancy as you are. What are you doing all the way over here in the shifter valley with the likes of Owen?”

  “I know he likes ‘em young and pretty, but damn,” says the one behind me, one of his hands still gripping my wrists like a handcuff.

  “I’m his daughter,” I say, spitting the words out with all the revulsion I feel at hearing his comment.

  For a second, they don’t speak. Their eyes meet over my head, but I can’t read the expression in their eyes.

  “Is that right?” the skinny one asks at last.

  “Guess that means I’m your second cousin,” the deep voice of the other says behind me. “Too bad. I like blondes.”

  “Second cousin’s not too close,” the smaller guy says with a leering smile. “Ain’t that what they call kissing cousins?”

  All my life, I dreamed of having a mother. Then I found out I had a mother, and she totally sucked. I dreamed of having a big, extended family with lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Now that I’ve met my cousin, I’m going to have to amend that wish, too.

  Suddenly Harmon’s words flash through my mind, and hope surges through me. As angry as it makes me to say the words, I force them out. “I belong to a wolf,” I say quickly. “To Harmon. The Alpha.”

  “Is that right?” the smaller guy asks. “Because I think you’d make a real nice bargaining chip if you belonged to your daddy.”

  “But I don’t.”

  Just then, the screen door bangs behind me. The shifter holding my hands pivots, twisting me around so I’m still in front of him, facing the house now. My ankle throbs in pain when I have to set my foot down to catch myself from falling, but no one notices my cry of pain.

  “If it ain’t Owen,” the smaller guy says with a sneer. “Your Highness.”