King of Beasts

Chapter 22

There were several things wrong on this particular night.  Something in the air.

It could have been the moon, cut at only half yet shining as bright as if it were full.  It could have been the billion some odd stars speaking in Morse to each other, winking in and out.  Maybe it was in the air, the scent that had no odor, the sensation that had no texture.  Just a feeling.

Or maybe, possibly, it was on that boundary that couldn't be seen.  The boundary encompassing the King of Beasts and all his beastly subordinates.  The boundary that wraps around each town the elders built up from the lumber they cut down all those years ago.  The boundary the rogues couldn't pass beyond, the one only Charlotte and the elders seemed capable of moving across.  

Where, if you took a magnifying glass, you could tell not a single thing lived.  Not a blade of grass, not a curve of a tree root, not a spec of bacteria or fungus.  Nothing.  Like the black matter between stars there was a peculiar . . . emptiness, about the boundary around an energy fault.  

But if you took a different sort of magnifying glass, one seen through a rune and the sharp eyes of an age old elder, then you would also be able to see the hairline fractures splintering through the boundary.  You could see the fractures rise and erupt with each passing moon cycle, the boundary bowing out as though something, somehow, was trapped within and pressing against that curious wall for release.

On this night, the elder on watch looked on in hopeless despair as the splinters scattered, moved about like greedy fingers to cover the surface of the boundary.  And right there, right by that fly that couldn't figure out why it couldn't fly forwards anymore, right by that pinprick smaller than a nerve ending, something from within broke out, and leaked into the night on the other side.  If you could see it leaking out, like the elder did with a cry of despair, then you could certainly feel it also.  Like a bullet packed with heroin ripping through your heart.  Equal parts exhilarating and excruciating.  Like the very force keeping you alive is escaping through a tiny, tiny break in the wall.

Maybe, possibly, that could be what's wrong with this night.  

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Or, how about the restless waves unsettling the tiny, unknown town filled with beasts?  The town that followed a king with something more than just blind devotion.  They followed their beastly king with so much dedication they'd lay down their lives so he could live another minute of his.  They'd give him the breaths from their very lungs if they thought it'd allow him to smell the morning dew he loved so much just a little bit better.

The problem, though, if you must find one, lies in the same dedication that ruled the town.  When there is no questioning of a single man with all power, then there is no questioning of his demise, either.  And when the townspeople are willing to give everything for this one man, this one beast that rules them all, then they can't tell when it stops being for the good, and ends up adding to the destruction of an entire town.

Because on this night, with that oddly bright moon shining, a boy hits puberty and suddenly from within a beast comes ripping through, nearly tearing him apart from the inside out.  And little Jason screams, because he can't quite remember anything being so painful before in his entire life.  

That something else in the back of his head suddenly has life, suddenly has a purpose, and it wants out.  It wants out bad.  But it's taking longer than usual.  Hours longer.  Excruciating, screaming, blistering hours longer than it should.  Hours where Jason's mom can't sooth him, and his dad can't give him the right advice.  Hours where the healer starts sweating for the first time in three hundred years because, well, she doesn't know what's happening either.

Hours where half the town howls to the moon for help, and the other half that can't howl cries for their king to come.  But the king of beasts doesn't come, because on this night, he's somewhere else.

On this night, when there's a blissful moment of pure, painless nothing, Jason becomes the beast.  Panting, ears twitching, smaller than most but that's okay because he's sill just a kid, hardly older than fourteen-- he bites his mom.

She was just soothing him.  She has two other boys and physical contact soothes them after this first shift, always had, and should have again.  But this time, the smaller than average beast on the ground pulls a lip back revealing sharp, glistening teeth and while his mom mumbles soothing words close to his head, those same teeth turn, slice across her wrist and clamp onto her jaw.

On this night, for the first time in hundreds of years, longer than anyone has been around, a new beast doesn't feel the support of a pack around him after his first shift.  For the first time, a beast is born rogue.

Maybe that's what's wrong with this night.

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And then again, maybe most important, it's the two women standing on a front porch.  Maybe it's the way it makes the king of beasts pause on the edge of the forest as he's leaving, as though this is a bad idea.  A very, very bad idea.  Like the world right then, right in that moment, is speaking directly to him and telling him it was wrong, this was wrong.  This was a bad idea.  A bad idea, Gabe.

This is a bad idea.

Gabriel.  This is a BAD IDEA.

But how?  How could a grandmother holding onto the shaking form of her granddaughter be a bad idea?  How could the only hope his Charlotte has be a bad idea?  

But the sun was coming up, and the beasts can only roam the streets at night.  No matter the effort involved in fighting the pull tugging him back to his own town, the king of beasts was powerless.  He had to leave the fiery haired beauty on that porch even with the world screaming at him not to.  He had to leave his Charlotte with nothing more than a promise to return the following night the moment he was allowed, and pray to the moon battling the sun above him that she still remembered who he was when he arrived.

Maybe that was what was wrong with the night.

And maybe the next night, and the one after that, and others after that, would only be so much worse.

Maybe something big was happening, and everything inside of that energy fault line, trapped within the boundary, was about to feel it.