The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

Night Work

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Seth Moore woke up from the strangest dream he’d had in a long time. It was not about Nathan. Indeed, Nathan had stopped appearing to him since Christmas. It wasn’t an unpleasant dream at all, not like the monstrous fantasies he’d had before. He was in a great house with high walls and high ceilings, and he was walking through it with a man with golden hair and a scruffy face. Seth knew he loved him, and when the man turned to him, he kissed him on the mouth.

“You’re like me,” he said. “You have secrets.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” Seth told him. “Not anymore, and not from you.”

He knew he and the man had made love, and calling him the man didn’t seem right because in that dream he had known him, that man had been part of him. They had been lovers from long ago, and in the dream this was not their first time. They had spent a life together, He remembered them laying together and the man, the boy, his lover’s chest almost like something cut from marble, with lovely golden brown hair up the center of his stomach and on his breast, and his deep blue eyes, his crimson lips, his mouth red.

“You know I will always take care of you,” he said.

“But that’s perfect,” Seth smiled at him, “Because you know I’ll take care of you too.”

Nothing supernatural had taken place in that dream, certainly nothing like the strangeness that had taken place all through December up until Christmas, but it gave the early morning a sense of sweetness, and then, after that, a bit of sadness as he moved through his breakfast with Owen, and Lewis, with Christopher Ashby who looked half asleep, and with his cousin Loreal, whose cinnamon colored poofs of hair were touched by red as she sat before the sun filled window.

“Where did Uri go?” Loreal asked.

“He went back home,” Owen.

“But it’s still Christmas.” And Loreal added, “and I have no intentions of going home.”

“He went back largely for Kris Strauss,” Lewis said. “Eve gave him some letter.”

“Did you look at it?’

“No,” Lewis said.

“Why not?”

Lewis furrowed his brow because Loreal had furrowed her eyebrows and he said, “It really wasn’t my business.”

“Pardon me for saying it,” his cousin told him, “but these days everything is your business. Especially whatever Eve is up to.”

“Fine,” Lewis said, while Chris, who had still not spoken looked from him to Loreal, “since we are a family, since we are all in the know, I’ll be frank.”

“You should be,” the pretty girl said.

“You accept that there are wonders in this world.”

“I know there are wonders in this world,” Loreal said. “Us for one thing. And Christopher is a vampire.”

“And Laurie,” Seth added.

“Why did you bring him up?” Loreal asked.

Seth shrugged.

“Just because.”

Loreal opened her mouth, then closed it.

“There are all sorts of things in this world,” Lewis said. “Kris Strauss is a werewolf from a family of werewolves. And Eve’s letter is to the head of that family, for the werewolf clans are headed by women. Apparently Eve was the last person to see Kris’s father. Kris talked to Uri on Christmas Night, and it turns out that his father is dead. If what I know is right, he visited Augustus and Eve before he died.”

“Do you think Grandfather killed him?” Loreal demanded.

“I don’t know why he would,” Lewis said. “He’s certainly not above killing, but he always has a reason.”

“Well, being a werewolf would be a reason,” Chris said.

“Did you know there were werewolves?” Lewis asked him.

“No,” Chris shook his head. “I assumed they were made up, and they probably thought we were made up too.”

“Then you don’t know… how they work? What’s true about them, what’s from the movies and fiction and folktales?”

Chris shook his head.

“Here’s the thing,” Lewis said, “I’m not sure they do either. They aren’t like us. Or like you either, like the Drinkers. This family, it seems, lives like ordinary human beings.”

“Well, but they’d have to know,” Owen said. “I mean, if you turned into a wolf once a month, you would know.”

“Unless,” Chris said, “that’s not the way it works. I mean, I can walk in the daylight. I don’t have to constantly feed on blood. I don’t sleep in a coffin. Who knows how it really works? And apparently, if they are a family of werewolves then it’s not just being bitten that makes you one. You can inherit it. So… who knows?”

“If they don’t know who they are, and we don’t,” Loreal said, “then how in the world are we going to find out?”

“Who says it’s for us to find out?” Owen said. “We can’t assume that we are the ones who are supposed to figure out everything.”

“Only, Uncle,” Lewis said, “I have a feeling that we are.

“I have a feeling that everything that took place before Christmas, at Yule, was all about that. That this was why Kris Strauss was here, and Eve, and the vampires. It is the beginning of something. I don’t know how long that something will last or what that something is, but I know that in some way or another we are connected to them.”

Owen nodded slowly.

“Your reign has begun, Lewis. During mine I sought to keep the clan out of strange matters and let people seek us out rather than interfere in their affairs. Would you go to them, or wait till they come to you?”

Lewis shook his head.

“Vasilisa came to Baba Yaga, not the other way around. Always the witch’s place was in the wood and the quest was to find her. It was ever the way of the witch to maintain council and be found by the seeker, not to seek being heard. But maybe things have changed.”

“The Strausses are going to go down and talk to Augustus,”Chris said while they were sitting on the bed in Lewis’s apartment.

“Yes,” Lewis said. “They probably are.”

“But think of all the things Augustus could really know,” Chris said, “and not about them, but possibly about me?”

“You?”

“Augustus is old,” Chris said, “Very old, and apparently someone who hung out with werewolves. Someone who is not surprised by vampires. He knows my sister.”

“You think we should travel down there and see him.”

“At least get out of this shitty winter weather.”

Lewis laughed.

“Besides, you’ve become the Master of your clan, and some people weren’t there. Some people haven’t paid you honor.”

“Paid me honor?”

“I know how it goes. I am in a clan too, don’t forget,” Chris said. “And even though Augustus isn’t technically in your clan, he should have been there. The fact that he wasn’t—”

“Could be meant to irk, meant to make me pay a visit.”

“Or he doesn’t think you will,” Chris said. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“I was…” Lewis rolled his tongue in his mouth. “I might have actually been a teenager.”

“Well, there’s the thing,” Chris said. “Maybe he thinks that’s still what you are. Maybe he thinks Owen is still the real head of things and he simply doesn’t respect you.”

“Are you just saying these things to make me go down and see him?”

“I am saying them because I’ve been around a long time and I know how power works.”

“But, Christopher, you’re forgetting, I’ve been around a long time too,”

And when Lewis said it, there was a look in his eyes and Chris instantly saw the Malachy he had been separated from for so long, whom he had longed for.

“And yet, knowing all that, I have fallen in love with you as Lewis.”

Lewis nodded.

“I longed for you to come back to me for so long, and when you did, you were Lewis for so long that Lewis is what I know. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Well, not that funny,” Lewis shrugged. “After all, Lewis is who I am. That’s not untrue. I’m just a lot of other people too.”

Lewis stirred his coffee and then he said, “I think we should pay a visit down south.”

Chris looked at him.

“After all, as you said, the weather in Chicago is awfully shitty.”

“What’s that you’re writing in?”

“You know you could have scared the shit out of me?” Loreal demanded.

“Not you,” Laurie said.

“You can’t just come flying in through windows,” Loreal reprimanded, not turning from her desk where she was still writing.

“I didn’t exactly—”

“You flew, at an incredibly high speed, and you came in through the window like a bat. Not as a bat, but like a bat. I’ve seen you do it before.”

Loreal turned around, thumping her pen on the desk.

“Or rather, I’ve failed to see since my seeing isn’t as quick as your moving.”

“You are full of sharp words and little charm for your Laurie.”

“This is a grimoire,” Loreal said, gesturing to the ledger. “A grammary.”

“That’s a thing?”

“Of course it’s a thing. You see it’s a thing.”

“I thought that was just like… you know, me sleeping in a coffin.”

“No, grammaries are real, and I’m updating mine before I go with Lewis.”

“Oh,” Laurie frowned. “Lewis didn’t tell me you were going.”

“No,” Loreal nodded, “That’s because I didn’t tell him I was going either.”

“What about college?”

“We don’t start back for a while and anyway, this is more important. By the way, why did you come?”

Laurie started to speak, and Loreal said, “I know the question sounds rude, but it is a serious one. You have business with Lewis?”

“I thought that, possibly, I might have business with you.”

“Oh,” Loreal said.

“May I sit?”

Loreal gestured to her bed.

Smoothing his dark trousers, Laurie sat down and Loreal swiveled in her chair to sit across from him.

“Was I wrong in thinking we were becoming friends?”

“If in becoming friends you mean we made out and almost had sex at my grandmother’s funeral, then… yes.”

Laurie took a breath and stroked his chin.

“Um… yes.”

“I thought vampires were more eloquent.”

“I thought witches were more silent.”

Loreal raised an eyebrow.

Then she said, “Look, I just don’t really know what’s going on. Where we are. Or if we are a we. Or why I’m kind of ticked off about that question. I mean, I was pretty sure you were into me, which I hate to use that term. Only you’ve got this Lynn, and she’s having your baby and—”

“I don’t think I’m going to be staying with Lynn.”

“Don’t think?” Loreal said.

“I will not be staying with Lynn.”

“Oh,” Loreal said.

“She does not like the idea of what I am. To her.”

“Being her great-great grandfather?”

Laurie nodded.

“And that twice over,” he said.

“And she did not sign on to being with a vampire. Believe it or not, some people find it offputting.”

Loreal sat back in the chair as far as she could, nodding.

“Let me ask you this?” she said.

“Alright?”

“If she was okay with it—?”

“She isn’t.”

“So you said, but if she was? Would you still want to be with her?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

Laurie did not answer her, and Loreal waited for him to say something, but nothing came. So, she simply swung around in her chair and picked up her pen.

“When you have something to say, I’ll be here.”

“It couldn’t have worked out,” Laurie said.

Loreal turned to look at him.

“You know me for exactly what I am, and that is how you… if you are keen on me at all, it’s because you know who I am. And I think you are keen. On me. A little.”

“Is this when we go to the malt shop?”

“What?”

“The last time I heard the word keen was on The Donna Reed Show.”

“Well,” Laurie shrugged, looking a little embarrassed, “It’s hard to keep up with the lingo.”

“Just stop using slang.”

Laurie nodded, looking strangely shy.

“And I feel like no matter what century you’re in, telling a girl that she wants you and not at least admitting you want her a little is…. Tacky. Tacky. You can use that bit of slang. It’s not going anywhere.”

“I am keen—” Laurie began. Then he said, “I love you.”

Loreal blinked at him, her eyes wide.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I mean—”

“No,” Loreal waved him away. “I love you too. That’s the main bit we have to sort out. Now…. You should go back to work.”

“Go back to work?”

“Go back to work and I’ll finish keeping my grammary.”

“May I… come calling tonight?”

“Come call…. Uh, sure,” Loreal said. “But for now, I need to sort out my head. So go to work.”

Laurie stood more uncertain than she had ever seen him, and then suddenly he kissed her on he cheek.

She turned to speak to him, but there was a streak of color, and then he was gone.

As Loreal sat looking at the blank space in the room before her, and the open door to the hallway she murmured, “We’re gonna have to have a talk about that.”