Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Diana

It all started when those chickens went missing.

The townspeople had a meeting the very next day, right there in the village square. Everyone was in attendance, prepared to place blame on their neighbors’ Rottweiler or rogue teenagers. Accusations were thrown around. Denials were made. A lot of people went home angry.

Then a cow turned up dead in the middle of Old Mister Ackerman’s field, mauled and bloody. And then another. Another. Dozens. In a farming town like Piccadily, livestock puts food on the table. Dead animals turning up was not just a cause for concern, it was catastrophic.

A second meeting was held and this time, the villagers were mostly subdued. I’d stood beside my father near the front of the crowd, fanning his red face and reminding him to stay calm, so he wouldn’t rile his ulcer.

“It’s the beast!”

I can still remember the elderly man who’d stood up and wobbled his way to the front of the gathering, his cane tapping on the cracked concrete. Mister Ackerman’s great-great grandfather had founded Piccadily and when he spoke, everyone listened—and that day was no exception. I’d held my breath while waiting for him to continue. A beast? Surely I’d misheard him.

“I’m telling you all, it’s that damn beast again.” He’d rapped his cane on the ground. “He’s roamed the hills of this town since I was a boy. I’ve seen this kind of destruction before. Long before any of you were born.”

“A beast?” cried a female voice in the crowd. “What kind of beast?”

“A predator the likes of which you’ve never seen.” His audience, now rapt, crowded closer. “Taller than two men stacked on top of one another. Fierce. Violent. Hungry. There hasn’t been a sighting since I was a boy. Since my grandfather found a way to appease the beast. To make him leave Piccadily alone!”

“How did he do it?” My father wanted to know. “What does he want from us? I don’t know about everyone else, but if I lose any more cattle, I won’t be able to put a roof over our heads come the winter.”

“Yes,” another eager voice had chimed in. “What does the beast want to leave us alone? We’ll do anything.”

Mister Ackerman was silent for moment. “A sacrifice.” His cheeks deepened to red beneath his white whiskers. “A sacrifice of flesh.”

Alarmed by the ominous sound of that, I’d tugged on my father’s sleeve. “What does that mean?”

“We tried to fight the beast, but the men we sent up into the hills never returned,” Ackerman had continued, sounding weary. “My grandfather was the one who decided to…deliver the young girl. To the beast.”

A gasp had gone up, followed by silence.

My heartbeat was like the beating wings of a dove in my ears.

Sacrifice.

Young girl.

Beast.

These words used together were totally foreign. All of this had seemed like nothing but an outlandishly bad nightmare at the time.

I’d been so wrong.

A woman had stepped forward, holding a newborn in her arms. “Surely we can’t just give one of our own to a monster!”

Ackerman shrugged. “It kept him away eighty years the first time. We can wait to see if the beast kills more of our precious livestock. Or we can act. We can employ the only tried and true method we know.”

“But…who?”

I didn’t miss the way Ackerman’s eyes slid over me. “She’ll need to be a, uh…” A cough rattled out of him. “A virgin. Pleasing to look at.”

I’d buried my face in my father’s arm at that point, because every head in the crowd had turned to face me, to rake me with unsubtle scrutiny. I was used to being stared at. Seemed like it had been going on since I was in middle school and started looking just like my mother. She’d been beloved in Piccadily, but died giving birth to me. Not a day passes that someone doesn’t remind me I could be her twin, both of us blonde and fair with silver eyes.

Ackerman had pointed a bony finger at me. “It’ll have to be that one.”

And so. I’m currently being dragged through the forest in the middle of the night wearing a wedding dress, all trussed up to be sacrificed to a beast. So if this whole situation is indeed a nightmare, I would really appreciate someone waking me up about now. My own father marches me forward, his fingers twisted in the bindings that keep my wrists imprisoned. It’s a scene out of high school history books, though we live in the twenty-first century. I knew my small town was behind the times, but this is taking things to another level of old school. Case in point, I’m flanked on all sides by villagers carrying torches instead of flashlights, their eyes shifting nervously.

“What do you all have to be nervous about?” Lord but I sound pitiful, my voice a tearful wail. “I’m the one that’s about to be the bride of Bigfoot.”

“Now now, daughter,” comes my father’s voice from behind me. “You’re doing a real honorable thing here. You’ll be remembered as a hero.”

“I don’t want to be remembered. I want to be alive.”

“Selfish,” someone mutters in the crowd. “She couldn’t care less about those poor chickens and cows.”

Hot, frustrated tears push behind my eyelids and I dig my heels into the ground, trying to stop our progress toward my doom. “Please, father. Please don’t do this. There has to be another way. Have we even tried bringing him a nice steak or a six pack or—”

“Old Man Ackerman said it needed to be a sacrifice of flesh.” My father won’t meet my eyes. “A virgin.”

“Listen to me. Okay? Just listen.” I’m desperate now. A wheeler-dealer trying to make a bargain for her life. “Pornography wasn’t even invented when Ackerman’s grandfather sacrificed the first girl. Can’t we even try to slip him some dirty magazines or something? I know Piccadily is a little behind the times, but virgins just aren’t sacrificed in the twenty-first century. This is insanity.”

“Daughter…”

My sandaled feet slide through the wet earth, propelled forward by my own flesh and blood. I can’t believe this is happening. “Don’t you need my help on the farm, father?” I say in a pleading voice, tears moving in a pulsing river down my cheeks. “Who will help you?”

He seems to be hedging.

“What is it?”

“Well, if this is the last time I see you, I won’t end with a lie. You’re…not exactly a dab hand at farming, Diana,” he says on an exhale. “Come to think of it, you don’t really have any marketable skills to speak of.”

“I…what?”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he rushes to say.

“You think?” My jaw is unhinged. “Talk about adding insult to injury.”

From that point on, I’m numb. Just numb. Not only am I stuck in this bizarre nightmare where I am being donated to gain a beast’s favor—and are we even sure there’s a beast?—but no one has come to my defense. Not a single person. And I’ve interacted with these villagers every day of my life. I’ve babysat their children, baked them pies, attended their weddings.

Maybe it should give me comfort that they’re not thinking straight. That the possibility of losing their income and homes has made them desperate and in some cases, riddled with bitterness. It doesn’t help, though. I’ve been deemed disposable by the ones who should love me.

We come to a stop at a large tree that sits at the edge of a clearing. I watch in silence as one of the male villagers wraps a rope around the trunk, leaving the ends loose. Then my father guides me forward and connects it to the bindings on my wrists.

“What is this?” I murmur, dazedly. “The official sacrifice tree? You could at least throw up a string of lights or carve death tree into the trunk. Give it some flair.”

No one responds.

My father does seem like he wants to say something, but in the end he delivers a hard kiss to my cheek, before tearing himself away to follow the rest of the heartless, torch-wielding jerks back down to the village.

Standing in the darkness with my hands bound to the tree, I’m more alone than I’ve ever felt in my life. And that’s saying something, considering I’ve never really felt like one of the townspeople. My jokes are always a little too weird. I ask deeply personal questions when people just want to make small talk about the weather. Worst of all, animals don’t like me—which is the mark of a witch in a farm town. I’ve just never fit in.

I swipe my tears on my shoulder and try not to dwell on my circumstances. Or the fact that my father just abandoned me to a murderous monster.

Know what?

I’m getting loose of these stupid bonds. I’m going to free myself, hunker down for the night, and in the morning, I’m going out to embark on a fresh start. I’ll leave Piccadily behind and let them think I was devoured by the beast. He probably isn’t even real. It was probably a coyote that killed those cows—

A deep howl rents the air and shakes the earth beneath my feet.

“Oh fuuuuuck,” I whisper, my whole body beginning to shake. “Oh no.”

In the distance, standing on a crest, a black silhouette stands in front of the full moon. It’s him. It’s the beast. And he’s even taller and broader than I imagined. His hair is long and full, in disarray around his face, reminding me of a lion. The rest of him doesn’t seem human, either. His shirtless torso is thick and laden with muscle, not to mention his thighs. They’re flexing with sinew and…and…

Oh my God. Is that a loincloth?

He throws his head back again howls again.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

With a whimper, I renew my struggle against my bonds.