Chapter 10
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 9
Chapter warning: graphic description of gore
“It’s a bad sight,” the man says when they’re standing in the root cellar of the farm. And, yeah, Arthur can already tell that- the shape on the table doesn’t make a human body, and the sheet that covers it is stained with rusty-brown spots.
When the man pulls the sheet back, Arthur has to swallow hard- at the way it clings and sticks, at the figure under it.
There’s a head, but the throat is missing, or more like the entire front half of the neck. It makes it look oddly, precariously attached.
Also, there are no arms. And no stomach. Lower ribs sticking out in pale, broken stumps like the bottoms of the fence posts outside.
There are black dots dancing in front of his eyes, and he wonders how the people of the farm, the young man’s parents, will be able to eat their potatoes and carrots when they’ve been in the same room with this.
But of course it’s cool here and that’s good, and Arthur takes very shallow breaths, because he really wants to take a deep one but he can smell the charnel reek of death too well as it is.
It brings back flashes, of sitting on the dirt floor while dust motes float in evening sunbeams, but he pushes that away, focuses- focuses only on the details.
It’s just a puzzle. Just a puzzle, not a young man, not a person who had hopes and dreams, feelings and opinions, whose death will tear a hole of pain and grief into the lives of those around him.
Just a puzzle of separate parts to solve. So he pushes the emotions aside, under, away, and concentrates on the facts while he steps closer. Facts and details.
He’s no medical expert of any sort, but he’s pretty sure none of those edges are cuts. The skin below looks like the fabric above, torn, nothing straight that a blade might have left.
Strong, he thinks again. He couldn’t just rip off the sleeve of a shirt- and he can see it was a decent shirt, too, because the shoulder seams are still there, they didn’t give out.
So whatever it is, it’s strong and fast and didn’t care about the… packaging.
His eyes stray to the bottom half, still covered by the sheet.
“Nothing much to see there,” the man says, but removes the sheet fully.
And, well… apparently it didn’t need any legs, because yes, the bottom half is perfectly fine, aside from a copious blood stain on the trousers- flowed from the top down, Arthur thinks, so… the body was upright when it happened? He looks at the boots, which are fairly clean. Worn, yes, a bit of dirt on them, but the blood didn’t reach them.
A look into the body cavity doesn’t tell him much, because he doesn’t know what’s supposed to be in there. It’s a big hole, anyway, and he steps back before his control slips and he starts feeling all those jittery things he can tell are lurking behind it.
But his voice is even when he thanks the man and tells him he’d like to speak to the witnesses now.
The man gives him an unreadable look, then covers the body back up and leads him back to the inn.
~~~~
Didn’t she say it was easy? Why does it suddenly not feel easy anymore? Darcy had felt so calm the last night, out under the moon, just one of the monsters. She thought it was fine, it had been fine! She sent the boys to investigate, she can have some respite, take that human noble mask off.
Only, she can’t, the place feels wrong, she feels wrong in it, something is restricting her, something coils like chains around her. What is this place? Why does she feel trapped? Why won’t the mice in the walls come to her?
~~~~
By the time Gregory finds her, she’s sitting backed into a corner, scratching at her face, complaining over and over that the human mask won’t come off! Rushing over to pull her hands away from her skin, he tries to reassure her that she’s still herself, only to be hissed at and anger assaulting his empathy. It takes him another ten minutes and several wrong attempts until he finally remembers that Arthur had read him something that vampires need invitations, maybe that works, so he invites her, ends up looking at her fangs and claws not even a second later, but she finally calms down.
~~~~
If sobbing over all those people out there staring at her can be counted as calming down. Then Darcy realises that he’s holding her hands and asks him to let go. He does, but now they’re talking anyway so he keeps going, talks about anything and everything, until he more by accident than intention finds his way back to the topic he originally came in for: she assigned Arthur to examine the dead body. Gregory doesn’t want him to have to do that, he might get reminded of seeing Gregory’s dead body!
Excuse her? Did she hear right? Sheepish now, Gregory delivers a patchwork of a story, something about a ritual and a demon he supposedly tricked, and then he came back from the dead, tada. Now that, that, is a fairy tale story! If she believes it, because he really doesn’t tell it well and it seems far-fetched. But then, she read that Arthur’s father is a necromancer so it makes sense to her. Also, she just can’t help herself, she starts chuckling: He wouldn’t even have had to lie much to present himself as a cursed prince! No, she doesn’t mind the demon, a week ago vampires were evil monsters, now she’s one, so why not give demons a chance, too. Arthur shouldn’t have tried to banish him, he resurrected him in the first place, well, that’s her opinion at least.
As she keeps talking some more with him, he starts to treat her differently, starts to fawn because she’s amazing for not being afraid of him being a bit demon. With her being cool like that, he admits that he doesn’t think he gets it, he can’t even read, after all. That shocks her and she nearly offers to try to teach him, but he adds that Arthur of course tried. Arthur’s smart, but Arthur also says that for him, the letters don’t dance around the page. Having been brought up by two doctors, she thinks that is pertinently, yes, that’s the word papa always uses, silly. It’s a medical condition, her Uncle Jekyll was looking into it, she knows. So there, he doesn’t need to think himself stupid.
That has him all but tear up, he wants to hug her but she shies back, scandalised once more and frantically trying to get the conversation back to the demon part of him, because his human side is scary! Still scary! And no matter how she tries, he just doesn’t get it and why must he talk so much anyway, and not notice any of all the hints she gives him! It’s so unladylike to be direct, but while it is better talking to only one person, she still feels less and less comfortable; maybe it would help her to be around his demon?
He’s reluctant; he once really ticked out and killed somebody who was threatening Arthur, after which Arthur questioned if he’s really still his friend or if the demon has taken over. That has Darcy shake her head, that was defending his friend, she’s not going to think ill of him for that. Again, his eyes start sparkling from how awesome she is, he wants to say yes to anything she asks of him, but what if she reacts badly?
No, no, a lady does not roll her eyes, that would be uncouth, but really, how many times has she tried to make him understand that it’s not demons she’s afraid of? Fine, if he won’t believe her otherwise she tries a different tactic, gives him a more strongly worded request, well, strongly worded for her. Still, it works, he jumps to it, happy to be told what to do, but insists on drawing the curtains and locking the door, to a loud scandalised gasp from her. Manners?! Implications?! She’s locked in a room with a lower class man!
Just about to protest, she begins to stare as the shadows in the room contort, they shouldn’t dance like that with no change to the light but they run and swim before her eyes, flow towards Gregory and a moment later the boy is gone and she gets transfixed staring into slit pupils, takes a step back at the size of him. Immediately worried that she’s afraid of him after all, Gregory twitches his ears, when instead, she bites her lip but can’t hold the squeal in. “Kitty!”
She wants to pet those cute big ears, decides, yes, now he’s far less scary, so steps back in with a lifted hand and questioning look.
~~~~
Gregory lowers his feline head for her and for the first time in this form feels somebody touch him with obvious comfort. Her whispered soothing and cooing noises at him make him relax, he had his own private worries about this demon business, but clearly, if somebody as awesome as her isn’t afraid of him, then everything is absolutely alright.
~~~~
The relaxing makes him even less observant of where the conversation is going, and when Darcy starts telling him about her cat Pretty and that it’s also as brown as he is, when really, a tiger should be orange, his ears give him away. Noticing how he’s obviously hiding something and remembering how well that worked, she tells him to come clean, right this instant!
He does, by way of shrinking from his tiger-like form all the way down to being a house cat.
Her hand goes up to her mouth to stifle a sob of anguish, but she can’t stop the tears of anger and pain. Taking several steps back from him, she glares. How dare he?! He lied! Again! He pretended to be her friend! He spied on her! Violated her privacy! She’s ruined! Even more ruined than she thought! Trying to soothe her like he did before, Pretty tries to wind around her legs only for her to take another step away. How dare he try to touch her! Didn’t he get enough of a peep show already!
She sobs through several more accusations, fleeing across the room as he doesn’t get that he really should stop trying to console her by being close. He says that her pain hurts him, that he only wanted to help, that he didn’t know what else to do! That last one she can believe. But his feeble excuse of supposedly always being honourable, never peeking, or even not wanting to look when he is a cat falls on deaf ears.
What’s done is done, though, but she won’t have him close to her like that again! Regaining enough composure to talk more sensibly, she tells him in no uncertain words what she expects of him, how he will respect her now. He immediately promises to never lie to her again and he’ll wear the pink ribbon even as a human because he wants her to forgive him, because she’s so amazing!
That has her scoff. He doesn’t know anything about her! (In all honesty, she isn’t sure she knows all that much about herself anymore these days). But that doesn’t stop him, he turns human, which really only shows her that no, he doesn’t know her, or listen to her. His deep blush catches her off-guard, though, as he tells her that what he knows is really likable and he feels they instantly connected on their emotions. Yes, really, he can feel her emotions with his empathy.
Now deeply uncomfortable, it takes her too long to answer and rebuff him, so he barrels on, tells her he wants to know more about her. She should give herself more credit for being such a wonderful person and he so wishes it could happen, that they could be more, if only she would see him as appropriate despite their different stations in life.