Chapter 33
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 32
Can this paperwork and the constant need for excursions and riding her lands finally please let up? Darcy has enough to do with wedding preparations! But of course, no, there’s not going to be a sudden lull, this is apparently how a barony works. It’s not what the books have told her, which tells her that she read the wrong books. Clearly, those authors were bad at giving instructions. But that doesn’t mean she can ignore everything, no matter how inconvenient it is. Constant distractions or not, she has to hunt down and buy up Gregory’s parents’ house!
And of course that turns out to be only more paperwork. How is a romantic thing like wedding preparations so tedious? With a pout, she tries to find out who could even help her with this. Is there anything in her own paperwork? Oh, why didn’t she think about this earlier? Papa would know, Papa always knows! And he’s only just back from his own paperwork in London. Not that she’s seen as much of him as she wants to, Gregory always seems to need her attention right when she was ready to walk to Papa and spend time with him. But now her fiance’s nowhere around, he doesn’t like paperwork, after all, so she can sneak over to Papa!
When she asks him if he happens to know who her solicitor is, at first he says he’ll need to look it up. Then suddenly, he gets wide-eyed and murmurs that he overlooked something. She can’t have her papa seem so worried! She’ll make it better! Taking his hand, she promises she can deal with anything, can he tell her?
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He can, and he should have, should have prepared, if anything, but Harker had not been the first person he was worried about. No, there is somebody he worries about more who might break down the door once he hears about the new Lady Rossmore. But still, Harker might be very bad news, too.
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Darcy’s eyes also go wide when she hears the name Harker. She read the diaries and old letters. She knows that was naughty of her, but she wanted to know more about her mother. Which means she knows who Harker is: one of the men who hunted who must be her vampiric grandsire. One of the men who tried killing her mother. Which means he knows that she can’t possibly exist, can’t possibly be the baroness!
With Papa’s hand tight in hers, she runs to the library, calling for Arthur, she needs his advice! Of course, her yelling brings Gregory right down on them, too. That’s okay, she tells both of them what the matter is. Because as her lawyer, Harker must have heard about her. She did legal things! That must have ended up in his office! What if he is drumming hunters together right now to come after her? Worse, what if he’s going after her papa the next time he’s in London?!
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While Gregory is making himself tall and telling her he’ll protect her, Arthur goes to fetch Eluned, who was the one who forged the paperwork, after all. Eluned thinks it completely unnecessary to worry about anything, tells them that she made it appear as if Darcy was born before Lucy fell sick. Dr Seward married her in secret before she did, against her parents’ wishes, and her pregnancy never showed. That’s the story Dr Seward is to tell if anybody asks him, really, did Darcy really think she would make such an amateurish mistake?
Arthur… can’t say he likes this situation. Well, he’s glad to know how exactly Eluned fudged the paperwork, because he was wondering, and now they can have their story straight and all, and it seems plausible enough… But hearing that their lawyer was part of the vampire hunters who were after Darcy’s mother when she became a vampire isn’t reassuring at all.
Dr Seward still doesn’t go into any detail of what happened back then, really- which Arthur would kind of like to know, but he doesn’t dare ask more, that seems like a very personal story. But Dr Seward does tell them how the vampire hunter they had contact with back then wasn’t actually a traditional hunter, he learned later, but more a… freelancer. Usually, the hunters come from specific families that have been doing it for a long time, they are organised and know each other, forming a semi-secret network across the British Isles and the Continent, and maybe even further.
But the most worrying thing Dr Seward mentions is how they kidnap and enslave dhampirs, to use to hunt vampires.
Gregory growls at that, builds himself up protectively next to Darcy, says that they’ll have to get through him first! And Arthur… well, he doesn’t literally agree, Gregory and Darcy are way sturdier than him, but if any hunters were to attack Darcy, he’d want to help from the back lines.
So he nods to Gregory’s words- he can’t tell whether Dr Seward approves or not, his expression is so hard to read, but then he mentions that there is a book on dhampirs in the library, asks Arthur directly whether he’s read it and would like to discuss it?
Which is, of course, when Arthur has to admit that he didn’t know about the book, he hasn’t read it yet, but he’ll… do it right away?
He ducks his head, worried Dr Seward will think that he was lazy in not finding the book sooner, but the man only offers to discuss it with him once he has.
Arthur mumbles his thanks- not at all sure he wants to spend that much time with the man and under his attention.
Then Darcy declares that she is going to make sure Harker won’t hurt her papa, or Arthur for that matter! She stomps her foot in determination- she’s going to call him to come meet with them here at the castle!
Arthur’s not sure how that’s increasing their safety- and also, it’s her who’d be the most in danger, but when he points that out, Darcy only waves him away and says she’s the baroness, it’s her duty to keep him safe! And if Harker comes to the castle, they can find out how he reacts and do something if he’s dangerous.
Arthur doesn’t quite dare ask whether by ‘do something’, she means killing the man… he’s kind of afraid the answer would be ‘yes.’ But… maybe it is better to meet the man on their terms rather than wait for whatever he might be planning or finding out…
So he hesitantly agrees, and Darcy marches off to their telephone to arrange things, while Arthur heads to the library to read that dhampir book.
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De Naturis Dhampirae et Lamiae: Qum Facta Mores et Biologia by some man named Willibrand Jäger isn’t a very long book, but informative- also, it says it’s a translation from German, not from Latin, despite the title.
And Arthur’s not sure he likes the book’s attitude to dhampirs- even though Dr Seward says it’s less biased than most of the other ones he’s read.
But it talks about “the guidance and restraint a good vampire hunter” gives their “ward”, and how the families have “a specialist to tame them together with other beasts of the trade.”
And how the vampire hunter families are so good at finding dhampirs before they’re even a year old that there’s rumours of a “dhampir breeding program”- the idea makes Arthur’s stomach turn, and he quickly reads on. Apparently, the straja, the specialist, controls the dhampir’s access to blood by giving them a mix of human and fey blood. Because dhampirs, the book says, can use the “inherent properties” of blood they drink to gain new powers. So drinking fae blood turns their hair white, and that means they stand out and people are suspicious of them and they can’t easily get away from the hunters. Well, the book doesn’t exactly put it like that, but that’s how Arthur reads it- if he was used as a “beast of the trade” by vampire hunters, he certainly would want to run away!
Especially since the book also talks about how vampires can excuse doing terrible things because they were made monsters and dhampirs were born that way, so never were human, like that’s a bad thing.
Fine, Arthur doesn’t know any vampires, but, well, they do live off of human blood and some of them are really powerful from what the book says- the voivodes, a slavic term for ‘war leader’, apparently they’re really powerful and can shapeshift into all sorts of things, or make themselves stronger or faster, or can lure people in or charm them or change people’s emotions- that’s creepy. Definitely creepy.
So, yes, vampires clearly are dangerous and scary. And maybe they don’t like humans, or, well, consider them food, like humans do with cows and pigs and all. Arthur likes beef and sausages, but he’d rather not be the cow that gets slaughtered for it.
Though the book doesn’t make it sound like vampires have to kill anyone- one person can’t feed a vampire, it says, but if they drink from a bunch of different people, it’s fine, isn’t it?
Anyway- maybe Darcy wasn’t born all human, but Arthur doesn’t see what that has to do with her being a good person or not. She’s nice to him, and took them in, and she works hard and helps people in the barony.
And plenty of humans aren’t nice people.
So really, he thinks it’s pretty rude to just call them monsters because they’re not human.
There are some more interesting things about vampires in the book, though- apparently, power and merit is important to them, which is why they don’t like dhampirs, because, if Arthur understands that right, a dhampir can get those new powers and then be a more powerful vampire when they… die? The book says something about how decapitation will kill a dhampir, but how it’s possible the dhampir might then become a vampire and put their head back on!
Arthur finds himself reluctantly fascinated with that idea- after all… how do you find your head if it’s not attached? And how can your body move to put it back on without a brain to think about that? Would the body just… crawl around, feeling with its hands until it finds the head?
Okay, that image is creepy, and Arthur resolutely turns his attention back to the book.
Not that it gets any better, since the next paragraph is about how vampires also don’t like dhampirs because if they’re related (the vampire way or the… biological way- it doesn’t put it like that, and Arthur feels more discomfort squirm in his insides and quickly skips on to the next words)- someone could use blood magic to target the vampire through their relative.
And that’s the sort of magic his father wanted him to learn, and uses, and Arthur really, really doesn’t like it. If a vampire is a big threat, he supposes it’s theoretically useful, but… No, Arthur really doesn’t like that sort of magic.
Of course, apparently on top of all their other powers, vampires can also make a human bound to them by giving them their blood. Ghouling, the book calls the process, and the fact that the hunters call the vampire in that the ‘puppeteer’ and the human (or dhampir) a ‘doll’ tells him what they think of it. And it wouldn’t be such a bad deal, the book says the human gets a small amount of the vampire’s powers, and a sense of the vampire’s location, and even doesn’t die of old age if they get the blood regularly- if it weren’t for the vampire getting easier access to the human’s mind because the human gets compelled to to make the vampire happy and to feel loyal and affectionate towards them.
Arthur shudders with horror at the idea of someone making him feel something he wouldn’t otherwise with magic like that. That… that sounds like such a deep violation, being made to like someone when you otherwise wouldn’t. Compromising your judgement- even your sense of self. Even if you got away from that… wouldn’t you question whether you felt this or that by yourself or because someone made you forever after?
He thinks he would.
More on point and the topic of dhampirs, the book says that they’re “consumed by their hunger for life”, which, apparently means, Arthur reads while blushing, that they’re susceptible to seduction. He’s not sure he needed to know that- or how some hunter families treating it “little different from other service beasts going into heat”. He rather prefers the listing of dhampir abilities and weaknesses- such as losing their powers if they’re in a place uninvited or in direct sunlight. Now that’s useful information! The rest is mostly stuff he already knows by knowing Darcy: more strength and being able to heal even bad wounds and being able to shapeshift- though he doesn’t think he’s seen Darcy ever shapeshift into fog. That would be cool, though he wonders what that feels like. Maybe he’ll ask her if she wants to try?
And he can’t say he’s ever seen Darcy’s shadow or mirror image behave unnaturally when she’s using her powers.
On the other hand, when she’s using her powers, they’re usually in trouble and he has other things to pay attention to… and it tends to be dark, so…
And apparently, neither vampires nor dhampirs can swim- but it doesn’t kill them. They just… sink to the bottom of the water? And then walk out? It seems inconsistent to Arthur that not being able to breathe wouldn’t make a dhampir die and turn into a vampire, but the book says it wouldn’t. Just piss them off.
Which, well… Arthur probably would be, too.
Nor does a wooden stake to the heart kill a dhampir, only paralyze them, but Arthur can’t imagine that’s particularly pleasant, either.
And then there’s one last point about dhampirs and their peculiarities: They have a “dark urge” for their family members’ blood. Arthur slides a look at Dr Seward- but he looks fine, and Darcy cares so much for her papa, so… Arthur guesses she’s able to resist any urges.
When Arthur finishes with the book and his notes on it an hour later, Dr Seward comments on his reading speed, and Arthur isn’t sure whether that’s a compliment or not, so he assures him that he did pay proper attention. Dr Seward once more offers to discuss the book with him, and Arthur’s not sure what to do with that- is it a test of really having paid attention? But Dr Seward isn’t asking any questions, so… so Arthur asks, hesitantly, if the vampire hunters are really even worse in what they think of dhampirs than this book, and Dr Seward confirms that, yes, they are. That’s why he kept Darcy in her room, to protect her from being found by the hunters and used as a ‘hunting dog’.
Arthur thinks that’s just awful of the hunters, and resolves to keep a good look-out, too.
When Dr Seward asks if he has any more questions, though, he shakes his head and is glad to escape the man’s attention to his lab and practising magic- like learning to put up a magic wall to protect himself and others.
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When Arthur sees Darcy next at dinner, she lets him know that she made an appointment with Mr and Mrs Harker to come to the castle the next afternoon, and Arthur feels a nervous churning in his stomach at that- but yes, better to get it over with.