As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A) (41 page)

“Ah, yes, well,” D’Arque said, shrugging. “Lévi was one of the least harmful
charmantes
, and careful not to ever practice magic in the village. In return for his not…exposing my operations, I agreed that neither I nor any of my associates would bother you.”

“But you kidnapped me
and
my father!” Belle snapped. “
And
Monsieur Lévi!”

“Well, regrettable as breaking my word is, it was for a good purpose. And only to a
charmante.
It means nothing—like promises to a bird. I needed to make sure he didn’t help either Belle or the Beast…So I figured it would be best to keep him safely out of the way.”

“Promises to a
bird
?” Maurice asked in disgust. “Frédéric,
we were friends.
You came to Belle’s christening!”

“What?” Belle asked involuntarily. Her mind raced. If he was close enough to be at her christening…“You were
all
friends…

“
You
killed Alaric Potts.”

At
that,
for the first time, D’Arque looked bothered, shaken out of his smugness.

“You knew he was helping to rescue
les charmantes
out of the kingdom…bringing them to
Maman
and Papa. Or maybe you didn’t know what he was doing with them
until
you killed him. And when you found out, you went after
Maman
.”

D’Arque shifted nervously, irritably, from foot to foot on his expensive, old-fashioned heels. “I never intended to hurt any man—any
human
. Least of all my old friend. His betrayal was beyond enraging—and dangerous.”

“
HIS
betrayal?” Belle demanded. “You turned on your best friends! All of them!”

“He turned on his race!”
D’Arque hissed. “Why would someone born innocent, born
pure,
help
les charmantes
? He
knew
how dangerous they were!”

“We are going to go now,” Maurice said carefully. “And you are going to just let us go. I think you know just how precisely vile you are, Frédéric. You’re a smart man. You always have been. You know this is the way it needs to end. Good-bye.”

And Maurice put his arms around his wife’s waist and his hand in his daughter’s and turned around very deliberately to go.

“You are incorrect,
old friend
,” D’Arque said, his voice cracking. Belle heard him cock his musket with a terrifyingly quiet
click.

They turned back to the doctor. He had the gun carefully balanced on his forearm and was sighting down it with one eye closed. No mere gesture was this—he was aiming to kill if he had to.

Belle started to open her mouth, thinking of all sorts of reasonable and pitiable things to say, logic and begging…

And that’s when the Beast came tearing out of the crowd, leaping at D’Arque’s throat.

“Beast!”
Belle cried.

At no point during any of her time in the castle had she seen him look like this. He was slavering—literally
slavering
, foam and spittle coming off his curved ivory teeth. His lips were pulled back, revealing black animal-like gums. His eyes were still the unusual bright blue, but there was no trace of anything human or remotely intelligent in them. He was mad as a dog with hydrocephalus.

D’Arque got off one shot before the Beast landed on his chest, knocking him to the ground. And Belle couldn’t tell where the bullet had gone—if it was actually into the Beast, he didn’t so much as twitch.

He crouched on the old man and lifted his claws high, prepared to rend him from limb to limb with the relish of a long-starved lion.

“Wait!”

Belle ran forward, pulling out of her parents’ grip and running to him.

“Belle, no!” her father cried.

The Prince, while keeping the lower half of his body perfectly still, twisted in a weasel-like and inhuman way to regard Belle. He sniffed the air around her, his wet nose and tongue coming dangerously close to her cheeks.

She held very still.

“Beast, it’s me,” she said, slowly putting a hand out.

He regarded it suspiciously.

Belle bit her lip and gently touched his hot, furry arm.

“Remember? It’s Belle. I’m Belle. I read you stories.”

“Belle,”
the Beast said gruffly, in a voice that was barely intelligible.

D’Arque took that inopportune moment to move, trying to scrabble out from underneath his captor.

The Beast let out a roar and cuffed his prey on the side of the head to silence him.

“No!” Belle said, loudly and firmly.
“Stop.”

The Beast growled.

“If you kill him, it will make you a murderer. And you aren’t a murderer
or
a beast.”

He looked at her with large eyes, impossible to read. Were they uncomprehending, or thinking?

His claws twitched.

“Come back to me,” Belle pleaded. “Come back to me. I know you’re there. Please, come back.”

The Beast blinked.

Belle made herself look into his eyes, to
hold
him there.

And he looked back. Wide-eyed but blank.

“Please,”
she whispered. “For me.”

She reached out slowly and touched his mane, just above his horn. His nose twitched. Gently she stroked the little wavy lock there, smoothing it behind his ear the way she would a stray bit of her own hair.

The Beast’s paw snapped up and grabbed her wrist.

Belle couldn’t help wincing: his grip was as solid and strong and unyielding as stone. But he wasn’t bearing down, or trying to crush her. He just…
held
her arm there.

“Belle,”
he whispered, almost a croak.

“You promised to give me my bookstore back,” she said, trying not to cry. “You
promised me.
So I could read more stories about Jack. So I could read them…to
you.
…”

The Beast’s mouth opened strangely, his pointy teeth suddenly seeming too large and out of place inside of lips trying to form words it couldn’t remember.

Then he suddenly shook himself—like a spooked cat or dog.

He looked down at Belle, his eyes now bright with intelligence.

“I
did
promise,” he said, his voice growing stronger and more human. “And…a king
keeps
his promises.”

Belle almost sobbed with relief.

Then the Beast leapt up and lifted the old man as well, setting him violently on his feet.

“The girl you kidnapped just saved your life,” he growled. “
Thank
her.”

“Oh, I do,” D’Arque said, brushing himself off.

Belle was instantly suspicious of his calm and…almost theatrical demeanor. She glanced behind her. The villagers had gathered behind them and were watching everything. LeFou gave her a curious look. But Gaston was nowhere to be seen.

“I thank her very much for her human inclinations toward mercy and pity,” the head of the asylum continued. “None of which you…naturally have.” Then he raised his voice, directly addressing the crowd. “You see? This is what I have been protecting you all from for all of these years. The wild, crazed, and
powerful
beasts that sometimes have human form.”

He gave Rosalind a purposeful look.

“Despite their…familiar appearances, those born of magic and the supernatural are not human and have none of the temperance, compassion, logic, or morality that we men and women do. All these years I have been trying to corral these creatures, cure them of their supernatural insanity, protect you from them. Can you imagine a world in which they are free to rampage and do as they will?”

“You, too, were one of
les charmantes
,” Maurice shouted. “You could tell the future, Frédéric. You’re killing your own.”

“Not anymore. Not one of
my
own,” D’Arque said with a vile grin. He pushed his hair back—his
wig
back—to reveal a skull brutally scarred and pitted as if bone itself had been broken and removed like a jigsaw puzzle.

Belle, her father, and her mother looked with horror. People in the crowd gasped in disgust.

“You see?” D’Arque replaced his wig. “I have removed the unnatural part of me that led to improper visions.”

“You have removed something of yourself, too, Frédéric,” Maurice said sadly. “You were never this mad before. Never
this
full of hate.”

“But what about Belle?” someone from the crowd demanded. “There’s nothing supernatural about her. You kidnapped her! And tortured her!”

“He tortured
all
of us!”

This was spat by the wheezing Monsieur Boulanger senior. He leaned heavily on the shoulders of his son and daughter, both of whom looked angry and ashamed.

There was a palpable shift among the crowd. The patients, clearly differentiated in their thin, pale garments, began to move forward, a similar murder in all of their eyes.

The orderlies, nurses, and thugs employed by D’Arque responded immediately, hunkering down and brandishing their truncheons.

Suddenly, one of the patients shot forward with a scream, making right for D’Arque.

Two orderlies immediately leapt in his way, bringing their clubs down on his neck and back with a sickening, fleshy thud.

A dozen muskets were raised, readied, and cocked. The villagers, who had been angry without real direction before, now had a focus for their rage. They began to move menacingly forward.

“I warn you, my guards are well-trained,” D’Arque said.

“
Guards?
This is no house for the weak-minded,” Monsieur LeClerc said in disgust. “My donations have been going to a…grizzly carnal house. You are an obscenity, Monsieur D’Arque.”

“You aren’t seeing the big picture,” D’Arque spoke calmly, as if they would all understand in time. “These people are
dangerous
…”

“HOW IS MY FATHER DANGEROUS?”
Boulanger’s daughter demanded. She pulled her sleeves up her own meaty bakers’ arms and advanced on him. “You said he was a danger to himself and others! We believed you!”

An orderly put himself firmly in her way.

“And my aunt!” LeFou spat. “She went in a little kooky and now she doesn’t even know me!”

He had a pair of small flintlock pistols—and was no unskilled shooter.

“People…” Belle began uncertainly.

“You swore,” Monseiur Lévi called, coming out of the crowd to stand with Belle and her family. “You swore you would
never
go after Belle. You’re a monster who breaks his word on top of everything else.”

“I had to be sure Belle was pure of her mother’s foul disease,” D’Arque answered primly. “And honestly, she was bait to lure in the…the…”

Belle—and everyone else—waited for him to finish his statement, which was accompanied by a strange, wide-eyed look of surprise on his face.

His body jerked oddly.

“I—uhhh…”

Blood began to pool out of his stomach and onto his shirt.

He fell forward, revealing Gaston and his dripping hunting machete.

“
I
found LeFou’s aunt. Sitting in her own fouled sheets,” Gaston growled into the dying man’s ear as he slumped.

Then he stood up, chest out, a grim look of satisfaction on his face.

“I have vanquished the villain who has been preying on our town and its innocent loonies,” he announced loudly to the crowd. “Come, let us lock up the Beast as we agreed and put an end to this.”

No one moved or said anything. Even the escaped patients among the townspeople were shocked into silence, seeing their captor so violently dispatched in front of their eyes. A few people looked at each other uncomfortably.

“There’s only one way to end this terrible story on a less somber note,” Gaston said with a sad smile. He spun to face Belle and dropped to one knee with a grin. “Let’s make this the most romantic happily ever after
ever.

“Belle, will you marry me?”

Belle blinked at Gaston. So did the Prince, who, having been in full beast form a moment ago, was so surprised he didn’t seem to even want to tear the hunter from limb to limb. LeFou might have shaken his head and looked away out of embarrassment for his friend, but that was the only immediate reaction from anyone.