He looked out into the corridor to make sure, but they were in fact gone. For how long? The door to Beast’s secretive room had been left open, and Laurent’s heart skipped a beat. His feet moved before his brain could even make a decision.
Hound opened his eyes, pricking his ears in curiosity, but he didn’t move from the bed, likely too sleepy to worry about human matters. Laurent swallowed and faced the secretive chamber where no one but Beast and Knight were allowed. It was always locked, but this time the key was sticking out beneath the door handle, and the door itself was not even shut.
Heat flushed Laurent’s chest as he slowly approached and peeked inside, only to see complete darkness. There were either no windows or very thick curtains in there. He patted the wall on the side from the door, where light switches usually were, and as expected, all he needed to do was press on one to illuminate the room.
All at once, notes and pictures assaulted Laurent from the walls. Book pages were connected to newspaper clippings, some pinned together with drawings, and stacks of folders lay on the desk next to two cans of Coke, the dark, fizzy drink Laurent despised.
He shuddered when photos of several satanic sigils, including one carved in a stone floor, assaulted him so unexpectedly he grabbed at the back of his neck where the protruding lines burned at his fingertips. Behind the door stood a whole bookshelf of literature and folders marked by phrases such as “occult activity”, “satanism”, “Brecon 18th C”, but it was too much to take in at once, so Laurent swiped his gaze over the cluttered desk with piles of open notebooks and drawings on top.
Above it, pinned to a corkboard, was a large, somewhat faded photograph of a handsome young man with a squarish jaw and blond hair that tickled his bare shoulders. Laurent was instantly drawn to it and adjusted his glasses as he walked up to it and squinted at the sense of familiarity the portrait gave him. It took him a while to realize why he felt like this, but another photograph of the same man on Beast’s motorcycle made him realize who the stranger was.
The colours faded somewhat, but Laurent would recognize the blue eyes anywhere. The face itself had been completely transformed by scars and tattoos, so much so that it made the man difficult to identify as Laurent’s lover, but upon close inspection it became clear that his bone structure was the same.
Would Beast have been the same man he was today if not for the accident that killed his mother? Would he even be ‘Beast’? It only now hit Laurent that he didn’t know what Beast’s real name was. How sad was it that a man who could be so tender, such a good friend was only known as a monster.
He exhaled, letting himself watch the roguish smile for a few more seconds before tearing his attention away to look at the open notebook in the middle of the table. Unlike some of the other items, it wasn’t even slightly dusty, and the writing inside didn’t look like Beast’s either. He leaned in, sensing a stab of heat in his chest when he realized it was a family tree of the Mercier family, with Travis’s—or Knight’s—name circled in red at the very bottom.
Laurent quickly traced it with his finger, all the way up to… Adolphe, his brother.
He blinked when he saw his own name gently crossed out with a pencil. His own branch had been cut off like a rotting part of a tree, whereas his brother’s thrived for generations, all the way to 2017, to Knight and seven of his siblings, none of whom Laurent had seen around the club despite those people having families of their own according to the tree.
He started flipping the pages of the notebook, trying to hurry in case Beast and Knight came back, but his mind was going in circles about this room. The truth about his past had been here all along. With research and books about the devil, about other places where the sigil has been found, and never had Beast as much as mentioned things that so clearly could provide an insight into Laurent’s situation.
There were all kinds of things about the Mercier family in the notebook, which was even divided into chapters where Knight has meticulously put in dates, places, as well as anecdotes and trivia. Laurent Mercier had an entire section dedicated to him.
It contained a copy from an old register, which listed him as Mr. Barnave’s indentured servant, a note about him being a murderer, and an account written by the local priest, whom Laurent remembered speaking to only weeks ago. A physical description of him was there as well, colored by prejudice and accusing him of having dealings with the devil himself. His unusually long hair was pictured as proof of Laurent’s association with witchcraft. What struck him most though was the way he was portrayed, almost matter-of-factly. A killer. A sly thief who wanted to steal from the good Mr. Fane—who at the time the note had been written clearly hadn’t been yet exposed as a murderer. It speculated that Laurent had wanted to make a run for it with Fane’s rings, which must had been taken by a dishonest servant before the body was actually reported missing to the authorities.