How Beauty Met the Beast Page 4

  Steeling herself, she turned around. “Oh, God.” She reached out and stabilized her suddenly jellylike stance with a hand on the wall.

  Asleep on his side among mountains of soft bedding, he was still every bit as terrifying as she remembered. Dense scarring mottled his face in a patchwork of mismatched flesh tones. The ear she could see was half-gone and filled with piercings, from the industrial at the ragged top to the spikes of silver running down the lobe. His nose was shrunken, as if it had started to melt. Only his lips seemed to have survived the fire, and even they had one side twisted up in a slashing scar that ran from his ear to the corner of his mouth, like a half-Joker. No hair at all—not on his head, brows or lashes. But over each eye, four piercings marked where his eyebrows should be. His neck was a checkerboard of damaged and clear skin that trailed down below the collar of his T-shirt.

  He was hideous. And terrifying. Jolie couldn’t imagine how anyone received that much damage...and lived.

  Tattooed color at his forehead caught her attention. The hooked beak of a bird started there and must run down his skull. She walked around the bed to see the other side and was surprised by an intricate piece of art. Something about the curving lines spoke to her and, bracing her nerves, she pressed down the pillows to see it better.

  A bird in colorful reds, blues and golds rose from flames at his neck. Its wings outstretched protectively around his head, and sharp eyes and a hooked beak ended at his forehead, right where a priest would bless a penitent.

  No, not a bird. A phoenix, miraculously rising from the ashes of its previous existence to new life. Like a man who survived a terrible ordeal and not only persevered, but rescued helpless women who were too ready to associate frightening looks with evil.

  She sighed at her own foolishness—although right or wrong, how many people wouldn’t be freaked out by that face?—and turned away to explore his fascinating room.

  When Hauk woke up, she would face him with no expression but gratitude.

  * * *

  Jolie was in his bedroom, fingering the metal-work sculptures he’d created for his ancestor altar.

  Jolie was in his bedroom. Playing with his stuff and looking all gorgeously mussed, as if she’d just wo rd ’d juken up.

  And he didn’t remember how she’d gotten here. Or much of anything about last night after he’d heard her scream. He’d forgotten a lot of nights since the accident—fighting angry frequently triggered a blackout (and a win for the home team, so he didn’t question it much)—but the last time he’d woken up with a beautiful woman in his bedroom and no memory of how she’d gotten there was decidedly before the accident and accompanying scars. And had involved too much tequila.

  What the hell had happened last night?

  And, more pressing, what did he do now? He wanted to hide his face, but she had to have gotten a good look while he was asleep, and she hadn’t run screaming into the Underlight. Yet. So he pushed himself up to sitting and tried for a casual expression. “Mornin’.”

  She turned quickly and blinked once before schooling her own expression into impassive. No freak out, thank the gods, but no warmth, either. “Good morning, Hauk.”

  No “Wesley of the Divine Tongue.” He wasn’t surprised but still couldn’t stop feeling disappointed. Had she taken one look at him and forgotten all about their encounter, when the mere thought of it had him tenting the sheets? Or did she not realize he was the same man? Was she here by choice or had he, gods forbid, brought her? He didn’t have the first clue what to say.

  Luckily she kept talking. “Brayden and Catrina are bringing breakfast. Should I try to find them and tell them to bring you something too? I don’t know where they’re at, but I can head the way they went.” She pointed to the door, and he couldn’t tell if she was itching to leave or genuinely offering to help.

  But he wasn’t ready to let her go with so many unanswered questions. “No, that’s fine. I’ll send them a text.” He threw the sheets off. He was in his leathers from last night, and they were spattered with blood. Great. That was sure to make her more comfortable. Not. “How long ago did they leave?”

  “Just a couple of minutes.”

  He nodded and headed for the teletext at the door. He needed to order breakfast (he always woke up from his blackouts famished), change clothes and figure out what the hell had happened. All without freaking Jolie out. Good luck with that.

  “What are you doing?”

  He looked at his fingers on the QWERTY keyboard Tally, and her partner in genius LaRoche, had hung at the entrance to every room in the Underlight. “Texting Brayden to include me in breakfast.”

  “On a broken typewriter?” Jolie cocked her head and walked toward him, curiosity clearly overcoming her nerves at being close to him.

  He could work with that. “Teletext. Pull this lever to send it.” He stepped back, giving her room to try the machine herself. Sure enough, her hesitation ended, and she stepped into the space he had just occupied, within touching distance of his current location.

  Not that he was going to touch. Now that she knew what he looked like, comfortable proximity was probably the best he could hope for. But he’d take what he could get.

  Jolie depressed the lever, and the gears on the ingenious little device spun and clacked until a tube sucked up the metal disk with the message he’d typed. It would be transported to the kitchen where Brayden could pick it up on arrival. After reading, he’d dump it into the reuse tube, where it would be cleaned and put back into circulation. No waste, no od.o wasteelectricity, the way the Underlight did everything.

  Their little community may lack regular modern conveniences, but it wasn’t without its own strange and ever-evolving technology that had diverted from the world above and never looked back. Hauk’s fascination with it hadn’t dimmed in the few years he’d lived down here, and he doubted it ever would.

  “That’s amazing.”

  Hauk smiled. “We think so. After breakfast I can give you the tour.”

  She hesitated, and for a moment he feared she’d turn down the invitation. But finally she nodded her pretty head. “That would be nice.”

  He glanced back at his stained clothes. “I’m going to get cleaned up.”

  “Okay.”

  They nodded at each other awkwardly. Didn’t he used to be smooth? With a forced smile, he turned away and removed his jacket.

  “Oh!” she said, “I’m in your room. You need me to go... somewhere else?”

  He pointed around a corner to an area partitioned off from the main room. “Shower’s around that way. I don’t mind you staying. I’ll be on the other side of the screen.”

  He’d taken off his boots last night but not his socks. Usually it was a funny game, trying to figure out why his berserk mind had decided to do whatever he’d done the night before. Today it was just weird. He sat on the bed and yanked off his socks as Jolie watched.

  “There’s a shower? Good God, what happened to your foot?”

  He glanced at the metal appendage La Roche had permanently fitted to his right thigh. “I lost my leg just above the knee in the same fire that made me all pretty. Did you want to use the shower? You can have it first.” Or we could use it at the same time. Mm...Jolie, wet and naked. And he was torturing himself with these thoughts, why? Oh yeah, ’cause he still had a dick. Which he used exclusively for pissing. He scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “You go ahead. You’ve got the—” she motioned at her chest, “—blood. I may use it after, if you don’t mind.”

  He nodded and launched himself from the bed toward the partition, yanking his shirt over his head as he walked.

  “G’damn...” Jolie muttered. He had no idea what that meant.

  He felt better when hot water poured over him, a nice wall separating him from the angel around the corner. But she raised her voice, and it carried easily into the bathroom and over the sound of the water, like he was attuned to it. “Are these runes? On the weapons?”

&
nbsp; “Yeah. Norse.”

  “What’s the arrow? It’s on all of them.”

  “Tyr, god of the just fight. He sacrificed his right hand to the Fenris-wolf to slow the coming of Armageddon.” At least Hauk had only lost a leg. A lost hand would be worse. Even LaRoche and Tally couldn’t make fingers that articulated like the real thing, and while his leg was perfectly functional, he couldn’t feel anything with it. The rest of his skin was an unpredictable mix of sensitive and deadened sensation, which still surprised him sometimes, but thank the gods his fingers could still reliably feel.

  “These are poetry books!”

  “You sound surprised.” Hauk ran the soap over his body, trying not to imagine what it would be like if it were her hands on theliehands o soap, rubbing the slick bar across his touch-starved skin. Trying and failing.

  “Axes and Byron make an odd combo.”

  He laughed and rinsed off his face. “Byron died a soldier in Greece, preparing to defend them from the Ottoman Empire. They go great together.”

  “Okay. Yes. I did know that. But Viking runes and poetry?”

  He shut off the water and grabbed a towel. He’d neglected to bring clothes in. Oh, well. Now was not the time to develop shyness. After a quick dry, he wrapped the towel around his hips and headed back into the bedroom.

  Jolie curiously played with some mechanical pieces he was making for Tally to use in an invention. Everyone in the Underlight had a craft talent; as everything was handmade or recycled, it was a requirement to sustain the community. They also did a bang-up business on Etsy and Craigslist, which allowed them to acquire necessities they couldn’t make. Hauk had chosen metalwork to retrain his fine motor skills after the injuries and to force himself to get near fire again, which had been almost as hard as the rehab. The strategy had worked, limbering his fingers and easing his nightmares, and after a couple years of frustration he was a pretty good craftsman, if he did say so himself.

  He smiled to see her playing with his things. It looked good. “The Vikings believed a real man could swing a weapon with strength and write a poem with grace. Don’t believe those nasty rumors spread by the continent. My ancestors saw no reason not to be both strong and smart.” He motioned at himself. “And clean. Cleanest Europeans of the Medieval Era, anyway.”

  She stared at him openly, and he couldn’t read the expression. The wider planes of his chest made the scarring less noticeable there than on his face. Or at least, that’s what he told himself when he looked in the mirror. And with no body hair, his musculature, which he kept up to Army Ranger standards, was easy to see. He could only hope that’s what had Jolie’s pretty green eyes riveted.

  He stepped toward her, and she blushed but didn’t back up. Gods, he knew better than to stop in front of her, he knew better, but his feet stopped anyway. “A look like that could give a man the wrong impression,” he rumbled.

  “Oh. Sorry. I...” Her blush deepened until her skin nearly matched the strawberry in her hair. “You came to me. I didn’t mean to...”

  He nodded behind her. “You’re between me and my closet.”

  “Oh!”

  “I know the birthday suit’s a hit, but you’re gonna have to make a decision here. Step aside, or grab the towel and check out the rest.” He was flirting? He hadn’t flirted in five years.

  Jolie’s hands clenched. Was it possible she would consider going for the towel? Because she wanted to see him? Or because she wanted to gawk at more scars? She looked him over and her eyes settled back onto his, serious. “It doesn’t bother you.”

  His smile faded a bit as he shrugged. “Never was much of a looker. Didn’t matter to me before. What good would it do me to care now?”

  “You have beautiful eyes.”

  The smile came back. “Yeah, the pink in my face sets the color off nicely.”

  She laughed then slapped her hand across her mouth, as if disturbed by her reaction. “You make jokes. That’s so...normal.”

  “The fire burned my sup burnedkin, not my brain. Contrary to popular opinion, the explosion did not blow the human out of me.” Might’ve given him some weird aftereffects, like blackouts and a pain-dar, but under the changes he was the same old Hauk, worshiping old gods, writing bad poetry and swinging a fist when the situation called for it.

  She bit her lower lip and stepped to the side, the blank expression she’d carefully kept most of the morning replaced with a thoughtful one. Again came the stupid but uncontrollable disappointment that he couldn’t have more with her, that last night’s touches were necessarily their last. But he left his Beauty standing in the middle of the room and strode the rest of the way to his closet.

  “I’m gonna use the shower,” she said, but her footsteps didn’t retreat.

  He nodded without turning around.

  “Hauk, I’m so sorry.”

  He pulled out a blue shirt (blue for his eyes? Stupid...) and started to dress. “For the accident? Unless you happened to be in Afghanistan five years ago, committing arson on a military base, I’m not sure why.”

  “No, for the way I reacted to...” She took a deep breath. “To your scars. I was an idiot.”

  He turned to face her, far more comfortable now that he had a shirt on. “Everyone reacts the same, Jolie. The difference is who sticks around long enough to get past it. Something it sounds like you just did. So, far as I’m concerned, we’re five by five.”

  She dropped her gaze then looked back at him, still so serious. “That’s big of you. Thank you for your understanding. And for saving me last night. I’ll admit, I was a little freaked when I woke up in bed with you. But Catrina was right. You’re a good man.”

  Hauk’s eyes widened in horror. He’d not only taken her to the Underlight (nobody brought strangers home to the Underlight; big community no-no), but he’d dragged her into bed with him? He wasn’t sure which was worse: that he’d effectively kidnapped her or that he’d managed to hold her for eight hours and didn’t remember it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “No worries. I’ll take cuddling with you over whatever Dickhead and Asshat were planning any day.”

  A

  s compliments went, it was weak. But he’d take it.

  Chapter Four

  Tiny clockwork dirigibles with mistletoe hanging from the baskets flew lazy circles around the great hall. Fireplaces in each corner crackled merrily as they burned real wood fires, and colorful stockings hung from every mantel, each with a name embroidered in a carefully homemade stitch. In the center of the room a Christmas tree stretched up to nearly brush the sixteen-foot ceiling, decorated in lit candles and metal ornaments that moved like wind-up toys. A spiderweb of clear pipes decked with holly and pungent evergreen zipped more teletext messages up the walls and across the ceiling. A gentleman in a jaunty Santa hat scrubbed the stone floor and discussed politics with a young woman dusting the wooden furnishings, and both of them stopped to wave good morning at anyone passing through.

  Jolie didn’t know which part was most alien, but she beamed in delight at the décor and waved back at the couple. “What is this place?”

  “Welcome to Austin’s branch of the Underlight. Organized in theized eighteen-hundreds, we fight industrial control of our media, government and resources and return the power to the people.”

  Jolie looked Hauk over to see if he was serious. “That’s some mission statement. Don’t most communes grow their own vegetables and call it a day?”

  Hauk laughed with a cheerful sound she found heartwarming. “We do that, too. There’s a greenhouse out past the kitchen. They have it set up so mirrors bring sunlight in from above. The spinach from this morning’s omelets was grown there.” He shrugged. “Although most of our food is from the farmer’s market. We don’t have the space to grow enough to feed everybody who lives here. But there’s nothing wrong with supporting your local family farms.”

  The change-the-world determination in his voice reminded he
r of her father in earnestness, if not in content. Her father’s rants, however, had more to do with the trampled rights of business owners and fighting immorality in modern society. Papa didn’t know she’d joined a burlesque troupe, and she was keeping it that way. Hauk’s form of idealism sounded closer to her own politics, vague and unformed as those were.

  “So how do you—” she tried to keep a straight face and almost succeeded, “—return power to the people?”

  Hauk hesitated, like he wasn’t going to tell the whole story. Interesting. She crossed her arms and watched him struggle for words. Finally he said, “There are things most people take for granted as normal parts of living today, normal parts of progress. Or so-called progress. And they’re not.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like environmental wreckage. Like our health crisis and the insane way we produce and waste food.” His face darkened. “Like modern warfare. It’s... I’m not saying war was ever a jolly good time, but people who think it’s more civilized because we have guns and smart bombs instead of axes and spears don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “A pacifist soldier?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t say that. Anyone excited about war is ignorant or crazy. But there are things—people, ideas, freedoms—that are worth fighting for, and there will always be people who put these at risk. A good soldier fights to protect what he loves or to win something good that can be gained through no other means. I’m proud to be a solider. I’m the strongest fighter the Austin Underlight has, and I choose to forward her mission as best I can.”

  He emphasized “choose,” again giving Jolie the impression there was a backstory he wasn’t telling her. So many secrets down here. If Catrina hadn’t been so confident in her safety, she might be worried. Although truly, she didn’t get anything but good intentions off the vibe, and who was she to judge what was normal? Her life was anything but. “I still don’t understand what exactly it is that you do or how, say, the environment—which is a great cause—is connected to the national health crisis. Again, a great cause, but...”