Beauty in the Beast by Christine Danse

missing from the zoo, and no one had sighted such a beast. He could not forget the smear of blood on his body, but he said nothing of that to anyone.
    “Several weeks passed. Michael gave up alchemy and pursued other leads in the search for the mechanism of evolution, though he knew they would be fruitless. He tried to forget the events of that night, but dreams plagued him—dreams of running through London, the smells of sewage and coal smoke and men ripe in his nose. More than once, he awoke at a moment in his dream when he rent a man’s chest with his claws.
    “His sleeping grew fitful and he often found himself pacing anxiously before bed. One evening in particular, he felt especially restless. Afraid of disturbing his wife with his nervous wandering, he remained late at the university. Instead of decreasing as the night wore on, his anxious energy only grew until he could not stand still even for a moment.
    “And then the pain began.
    “It was just as he remembered it: unbearable. Lightning coursed through his body. But this time, he’d had no contact with the potion. Screaming with rage and surprise and pain, he fell writhing to the floor of his office. He stared at his feet as they stretched and burst through his shoes as savage talons. A small part of him wondered that he didn’t wake all of London with his cries.
    “He awoke curled behind a bush, the morning light falling down upon him and a breeze tickling the bare skin of his back. He discovered that he had fallen asleep behind the neat hedge that fronted his house. Blood and dirt caked his body.
    “Michael barely talked that day from shock. The newspapers proclaimed three more brutal murders had occurred the night before—two men and one woman. The woman was a lady of the night, but one of the men was a well-respected professor of the college, someone Michael knew. Again, he had no recollection of the night’s events. However, his dreams the following night, and every night after that, were filled with the cries of men and a haze of blood. The city’s Bell detectives were stumped. They could only guess that a man was unleashing a savage creature upon London with malicious intent, but found no evidence, only the bodies themselves and bits of shed fur.
    “Fearing for his life, Michael’s wife begged him not to stay out late, so every night at home he paced the sitting room and feared his restless nerves, waiting for the pain to consume him at any moment.
    “Weeks passed. One night, as Michael spent time with his wife, a rush came over him and the pain began.”
    I shook my head. No, I mouthed, clutching Beth’s arm so tight that she squeaked. I released my grip but held my breath.
    A sigh shuddered through Rolph. Deep shadows flickered across his face, reminding me of sharp reaching claws. When he opened his eyes, he looked straight at me.
    “He awoke to dry eyes and aching muscles, nested on the sitting room floor and painted with blood. The air smelled of metal and fear. By the morning light, he found a trail of broken memories: a porcelain doll, a set of china, the shards of a mirror. At its end, he found his wife and his little girls—dead, their bodies ripped and savaged. Under his feet, the rug was damp with blood. Too, too red.
    “There is reason that alchemy has fallen into disuse, replaced by more predictable and exact sciences, like chemistry. As he ran into the countryside, far from London and the life he had destroyed, Michael fervently cursed the day he had ever heard of it.
    “He tried disappearing into the forest, the most fitting place for beasts and monsters, but he starved for food and human company. So he skulked at the edges of small villages, taking shelter in forgotten barns and begging for his food—always poised to run at the first sign of transformation. The episodes seemed to be tied to the cycle of the moon, as if the celestial body pulled at the beast in his blood in the same manner it governed the ocean tides. The