Page 76 of The Beast of Ashwood Manor

More of the hounds spotted me, but they were in smaller packs this time, and rather than attack me, they only stared from the trees. I turned and bared my teeth at them, willing them to attack me, but instead, they ran away.

I shouldn’t have slaughtered the others; I should have let them take me down, but I didn’t want to go out without a fight. And if I didn’t die as a beast, then at least I could shift back into a human and find a place for the gripping cold to do it for me.

I thought of Jared, the memory rushing back to me of how his face had gone pale when he saw me. He’d taken out a blade and thrown it at me. When he saw I wouldn’t be killed so easily, he ran for Ashwood.

But why?

Had he been afraid of me? Perhaps I had been wrong, and he feared for his life, fleeing with the other two who had urged him to kill me—Ruth and Henry. Yes, those were their names. They’d always been a tight-knit group, as Ruth was Jared’s cousin. But Henry . . . I wasn’t sure, as everything became more muddled when I was the beast.

Stopping, I looked around, seeing no other creatures but myself. There were the Boggarts, who lived more toward the edge of the woods. I recalled a hazy memory of destroying a few of their homes when I caught one out one day. And then there was the Phooka, a creature with the head of a goat and the hairy body of a man who stopped and stared at me. The beast within me had chased him down and butchered him as well.

There were other creatures the beast had taken down, the usual animals that I’d brought back for food, such as deer and rabbits, but there were others who had fallen victim to the beast’s bloodlust.

They all passed through my mind, not all of them of an evil nature, and this made me feel guilty.

It was hard to remember what I’d done in this forest, but the snippets of images raced through my mind. And as I thought of the creatures I’d killed, I imagined Cale in their place instead. Then I heard his voice, and I growled and willed it away.

Even out here, I hear him still. He lingers in my mind and won’t go away.

The deeper I walked into the denser part of the forest, the more muted the colors became, looking almost gray. Like ash. The outlandish tales outside this realm rang true in here, and I wondered if such things bled out into the real world in some way, and that's how it earned its name. I knew where I was headed. The heart of Ashwood—where nothing grew and mysterious ash spread from a deep, hot hole in the ground—was home to the forest's most dangerous creatures.

I suppose I belonged there.

“Gil!”

My ears twitched, and I stopped, wondering if I was hearing correctly.

“Gil, where are you?”

Cale.

My heart jolted to life, and I ran toward his voice, but the beast literally stopped me in my tracks.

What are you doing? Don’t you know he’ll kill us?

Cale was in the woods, which meant he’d run after me. He could be killed. Ignoring the beast, I followed his voice, and when I saw him in a small clearing of the woods, I stopped and growled at him.

Blood stained his shirt, and I wondered if it was his own, but then I saw the bloody knife he held. He must have already faced his share of monsters on his way in here. Given that it was daytime, the forest was tame. But come nightfall, it would be swarmed with menacing beasts such as myself.

“Gil . . .” Cale started, his eyes wide. Then he took a step back and yelled, “Look out!”

I turned just as the being attacked me, a tall gray figure with hollow black eyes. It spread out wings of smoke that curled around it, and I realized it was the Shade I’d been hunting. I lunged at it and punctured its belly with my claws, but it jumped back and let out a scream so shrill that I jumped, and it made me stagger as it flew past me.

I looked up just as it went after Cale. He slashed at it with his knife, but it screamed at him, making him sink to the ground in terror, and he dropped his knife.

Growling, I charged it, but it flew up toward the trees and out of sight before I could get to it. This was Royce’s killer, the being that drove him to madness in his mind just before he died. My heart pounded as I knelt down over Cale, shielding him from the monster.

He panted, tears springing from his eyes as he looked around in search of the strange Shade. When his hand found the hilt of the knife and he pulled it up, I sprang away from him, afraid of what he would do, and snarled at him. The beast was ready to pounce on him and tear him limb from limb.

He scrambled back from me, and there it was, the fear on his face.

Then the Shade dropped down onto me, and I fell upon something hard, jagged, that made me cry out, but it was the beast’s roar.

The creature climbed on top of me. She opened her mouth wide, and within the darkness there, I saw teeth and smoke. It curled out toward me, and all I could think about was Royce and how he’d met his slow demise this way.

The Shade jolted forward, and the smoke disappeared. Her mouth closed as she looked down to see the tip of a silver knife wedged through her body.

Standing up, the Shade staggered back and fell.

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