Chapter 46
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 45
The first thing Arthur notices is the cold- it’s biting right through his clothes, like the middle of winter. That makes sense when he opens his eyes (did he close them?) and finds himself in a forest, on what seems to be a mountain side, with everything covered in the most, whitest snow he’s ever seen. It’s definitely not his lab. Whatever magic it was, its unfamiliar scent bursting out of the book as Darcy read… it took them away from the lab. He wasn’t fast enough in slamming the book shut again, or maybe that had no effect. At least Darcy is next to him, and she looks unbothered by the cold- at least, her teeth aren’t starting to chatter and she’s not wrapping her arms around herself. She just brushes some snow off of her skirts while she looks around in curiosity.
Arthur can see a small, wooden cabin in the distance, and he decides his first priority is to get there- except the snow is deeper than anything he’s ever experienced, over his knees, and it’s really hard to walk in. And then impossible when he ends up in it up to his hips after a few steps. He’s glad Darcy is there to help him back out of that, and blushes when she decides that clearly, she’ll have to fly them over- but it is the only sensible course of action, and there’s no one around to see them, so he gets on her back after she’s turned into a big bat. At least they get to the cabin quickly that way, and the door isn’t locked or frozen shut, and inside it’s dry and neat.
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Darcy looks around the cabin. It’s well stocked, at least she thinks so, not that she’s ever seen one before, but there’s all kinds of things in here that look, uh, survival-ish, like in one of the illustrations in a travel book. Maybe they’re in Russia? Snowy mountains could be Russia, right? That’s supposed to be all cold. Shaking her head, she focuses back on the important thing: Arthur is cold! She’s not bothered by the temperature, of course not, but she can hear his teeth chattering and see him shivering. If this is a cabin in the woods or something, there ought to be wood somewhere, so after she, shyly, puts one of the pelts from the small bed over his shoulders, she goes back outside to find the wood, but only after telling him to start a fire.
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Arthur is only too happy for the weight of the big pelt- maybe it’s from a bear? It’s brown, anyway, and warm, and doesn’t even smell musty. He stacks some kindling into the stove that sits at one end of the cabin, and lights it with a quick fireball. By the time Darcy returns, he’s feeding some larger pieces into it from the small supply stacked against the wall.
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After Darcy puts the extra wood down, she stands next to Arthur for a few moments, unsure if she should, but he’s cold and she still remembers how it is to be cold even though she no longer can feel it, her own drac is wrapped around her far too nicely with its lovely fur. But she doesn’t want Arthur to be cold so she, with a blush, starts to rub his shoulders in between fighting with the sparse cooking equipment in the cabin to make him some nice warm tea.
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Having Darcy rub his shoulders like that makes Arthur blush as well, but it’s also… kind of nice? It’s good to be getting warmer as the cabin heats up from the fire. With a warm mug of tea in his hands, he doesn’t even need the pelt anymore, so it’s time to think about this situation. They’re clearly not at the castle anymore, and it’s got something to do with the book. Hearing that the book was sent to Darcy anonymously worries him- after all, it said something about ‘dhampirs’ in the title, he’s almost sure, and no one’s supposed to know about that. And this isn’t an illusion, at least not the same kind as John’s- they both have their powers. So they should probably investigate the area, find out where they are, if there’s a way out, or back, or whatever it is?
Darcy offers to go back out and look around. Isn’t this just the kind of area wolves would live in normally? Maybe she can get through the snow that way? Or she can fly, take off downhill again and circle around? Arthur can stay safe and warm in here!
Arthur bites his lip- yes, he likes being warm, but he also doesn’t want them to get separated. They don’t know how this place works, what kind of magic is at play. So he thinks it’s better if they stick together. He can wrap up in the pelt again, that should keep him reasonably warm for a while at least.
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She can’t argue against that, she’s no good with magic, and um, she doesn’t feel the cold but her body isn’t cold and she, well, she has fur. The embarrassment isn’t as important as keeping Arthur safe, though, so she tells him, with just a bit of a squeak to her voice, to make sure to stay as deep in her fur as he can before she goes outside and tries to find the best area to take off close to the cabin, so that Arthur doesn’t have to trudge through any snow at all if possible.
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Arthur blushes again- he’s sure it’s not proper etiquette to ride around on your sister-in-law’s back. But it’s the practical thing to do, so he wraps himself securely in the bear pelt and follows her and climbs on anyway. There’s no real alternative for holding on except her fur. That is soft and dense, so at least his hands will be warm, but he apologizes just in case he pulls on it. Darcy looks at him over her shoulder and makes a bat chirp noise, which he takes as reassurance that she doesn’t mind.
They take off and fly out across the snow-covered slopes of the mountain and across the valley to the next ridge, to see what’s behind that. The landscape is utterly unfamiliar, way more rugged than anything Arthur has seen of England, even more so than the pictures of Scotland he’s come across. And way colder, with all that snow. It also smells faintly like magic, he finds, but not like any he’s familiar with. Something kind of… woodsy? Except he has smelled it before- just for a moment. It smells like that whiff of magic he got from the book before they arrived here, wherever ‘here’ is. How that helps them, though, he doesn’t know.
As they cross over the mountain on the opposite side, Arthur feels a distinct tingling feeling, catches a stronger whiff of that magic scent. When he looks around and down to find out what happened, worried they might have been taken somewhere else, he instead finds that the new valley below looks… more familiar than it should. He calls to Darcy to ask her if she can go up higher, and she does. The wind bites at his ears and face and the backs of his hands where Darcy’s fur doesn’t reach. But from this high up, he can see the cabin again- ahead and a bit to the side of them, not behind them. It’s like they flew in a circle without noticing. He calls his observation to Darcy, and asks her to try a different direction, following the valley this time.
But no matter how they try, after some minutes of flight, there’s always that feeling of magic and they end up back in the same valley.
After some time of this, Arthur starts shivering again with the cold wind plucking away at him, and they return to the cabin.
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Meanwhile, in the castle, John is back on his way to re-join Darcy in the study after he took his afternoon break. With her being a sleepy mess around noon, he tends to take over for her and then, when she starts to get more active again, they switch.
He doesn’t make it to the study.
Instead he’s being jumped by Gregory, well, that cat form of his. As if he needed any more proof that he’s nothing more than an alley tom who doesn’t know how to treat his girl right. No matter, John’s there for Darcy. Which does not mean he’s stalking her, so how would he know where she and Arthur are? Yes, he knows he’s being grumpy with Gregory, but the question was stupid in the first place. If they aren’t in the study or library, then how about they go down to the lab? Grumbling about Gregory, and how he mindlessly panics now, John leads them down, knocks, and, when he doesn’t get an answer, opens the door, ready to apologize for the intrusion, but the cat runs past his feet.
At least Gregory seems to be sniffing along a trail. Now he remembered he has powers! Darcy’s scent trail leads right up to a book, no surprise there. But looking at the title has John cough- whatever it’s about, there’s the word ‘erotica’ in it. He probably shouldn’t be looking at a foreign naughty book that Darcy brought to Arthur. Wait, what? There’s no way she did that. Before he can even form another theory, the cat is rushing out again and John doesn’t see why he should pay attention to that.
Reading the clues in the room is more important. Nothing seems disturbed apart from the chair he knows Arthur normally sits in, that one is too far back from the table, Arthur might have jumped up. Darcy clearly carried the book down here; He suspects he’ll find more clues in the study, so he turns to do that. He was right: The book came as a gift via mail, the opened packaging is still on Darcy’s desk, and an unsigned card, too. Not very helpful after all, okay, back downstairs, he supposes.
When he gets there, Gregory is standing next to the book and poking it with… a bunny? Seriously? When neither the outer parts of the book, nor the open pages do anything at being touched by the wriggling animal, John is ready to bring it back. He knows only too well how protective Darcy is of her bunny friends, that one… he thinks she named it Snowglobe for the white flecks in its fur. Even while he reaches his hands for it, Gregory, without even looking, snaps its neck, declaring that if it’s useless for this it will at least make for dinner.
What the fuck?! If Darcy hears about this she’ll be heartbroken! Why is he even surprised? Gregory might talk his so-called empathy power up all the time, but actually using his empathy seems like it’s too difficult a task. John still takes the bunny, he’ll have to bury it, or maybe let one of Darcy’s fox friends have it. She probably would feel better about that. But that’s considerations for later, for right now, he needs to keep his temper under control to work out what happened here. Which again, clearly is too much work for Gregory, whose tone sounds as if he just solved the entire problem when he yells he’ll get Llew!
Great, now he’s standing here with a dead bunny and soon two dolts. This place definitely wouldn’t be worth it if not for his girl. His girl who might be in danger, so he can stow his dislike of Gregory and Llew for a little bit longer, and instead he goes to work to see if he can figure out anything more from the book itself. The first few pages are covered tightly in sentences, the rest is in individual paragraphs, but all of it is in a language he can’t read.
“What is a tome of lost fey queendoms doing here?” Llew announces himself with when he strolls into the lab, Gregory, of course, like always, stuck to his side, giving him fawning looks. Could Gregory not at least try to be a little bit subtler about being a fucking molly? No matter, what Llew said and the way he took the book out of John’s hands with his usual entitlement have John narrow his eyes.
Looking at the book title, yes, it still reads the same as before, he turns around and counts down from twenty, turns back and asks Llew to read the title out to him. That doesn’t sound anything like the few words he could make out, that sounds like a totally different language if anything. When he looks back down at the book, there, yes, it changed!
He repeats the experiment with handing it to Gregory and gets the same result, which he has to explain to Gregory, who is whining about being out of the loop. How he can be is beyond John, but then again, dolt, the both of them. This is perfectly obvious to him, the book shifts depending on the person, a fey tome for Llew, a naughty adventure book for him, probably fairy tales for Darcy. The language it was in first for him looked a little bit like French, but Darcy could read that, another Romance language then, coming from Latin presumably, which would explain why she brought it to Arthur.
So yes, this is a trap. Darcy is being targeted!
Llew is giving him a bit too much of an interested look, the same way he always does when Darcy gets emotional, fucking creep. Not important right now, can he help?
Nope, no idea, the thing isn’t fey.
Great! Just fucking great! If it’s targeting Darcy, then it might be hunters, she told him about those. And he knows that she is scared of them because her father is scared of them. That means he might know more about them. Leaving Gregory to make distressed sounds at Llew not helping and himself having no clue what to do, John runs upstairs again and hammers on Seward’s door but doesn’t get an answer.
Oh fuck, of course, he should have expected that, so he goes one door further and hammers on Lucy’s door. Still nothing, fine, this is about Darcy, he doesn’t care if this is totally wrong, so he barges into her parents’ bedroom and… right, no bed, uh… awkward, but he can do this. Walking up to the large casket, he doesn’t quite get around to bending down to knock on it. Instead, he gets treated to Seward giving him a raised eyebrow as he lifts the lid from inside while Lucy, clearly half asleep, tells him to be nice, their daughter has good taste but it’s way too early to get yelled at for thinking of pulling the morsel into bed with them.
John would blush if he wasn’t so single-minded: Darcy is missing! The words are barely out when Seward’s entire expression changes, his eyes go cold, and he says that he’ll be there in just a few minutes.
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It’s not just Jackie following her daughter’s delectable conquest back to the lab though; Lucy braves the late afternoon sun as well. While Jackie makes a beeline for the book, she spots Gregory sitting forlorn at the table, clearly not knowing what to do with himself. She takes his hand to soothe him, they’ll figure this out, her Jackie always does.
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Said Jackie, well, Seward, meanwhile, feels nowhere as confident as his wife makes him out to be. The language on the book is Romanian, and that can only mean one thing. Well, two, one worse than the other. One quick calculation of likelihoods later, he straightens his shoulders out again and turns to Lucy. She may be in danger, too. This is hunter work.
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Once he has warmed up again, Arthur gives the cabin another, more thorough search for clues. What he finds isn’t very promising at all. There’s a book in the nightstand that looks to be a bible, and in the same language as the book Darcy got- at least he also sees ‘cu’s and ‘perdu’s in it, they must be some kind of conjunction words.
And under the bed he finds a sturdy case, with a carrying handle. When he snaps the latches open, he sees rows of vials tucked into belts along the lid, and sharp wooden stakes and a mallet, and a rosary, and some other tools, and a stack of notes. They’re handwritten, and the paper is a bit yellow with age but not ancient, and he thinks that’s the same language yet again, best as he can read- more ‘cu’s and ‘perdu’s, and also ‘vampiri’… and lots of talk about ‘abilități’, which looks a lot like ‘abilities’ to him. So the notes talk about… vampire abilities? Together with everything else, that makes him suspect this might be a vampire hunter’s equipment.
He looks up to ask Darcy what she thinks, and as he does, catches sight of the sun shining through the cabin’s windows, sparkling on the snow on the window sills and the frost flowers in the corners. That’s really pretty, but… “Is it evening already? We haven’t been here that long… right?” He gets up and wanders over to the window to peek out.
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Darcy had been giving the stakes a wrinkled nose, that’s just mean, but then turns to also look. And no, it was before tea time at the castle, there’s no way it should be getting dark already. Not that she really is complaining about nightfall, but that might make it even colder for poor Arthur.
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Arthur assures her that with the stove lit, he’s actually feeling cozy- maybe they should get some more wood in so it can dry out and they have it ready? While Darcy, of course, bustles off to do that right away, Arthur gives the sun another puzzled look. It’s just touching the edge of the mountain across the valley and probably will be gone in another half hour or so- maybe they arrived later than they thought? Anyway, since he’ll lose the light soon, he goes back to see if he can make some more sense of the vampire hunter notes.
He doesn’t, really, though, so instead, he goes searching for dinner. To his relief, he finds some cans of stew in a cupboard, which even he and Darcy should be able to heat up and make edible. Not that he’s hungry yet. When Darcy gets back and they have more wood stacked against the wall by the stove, Arthur tells her what he’s been able to make out of the notes, little as it is, and asks her what she thinks about it all- if there’s vampire hunters involved, he worries that they’re in real trouble.
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The mention of hunters has Darcy tense, Papa said something about hunters, warned her thoroughly to break off her barony excursions if she runs into hunters. Even said he was so worried that they finally found her, they were the real reason he kept her hidden from everybody, they and vampires. That makes her eyes go large and the words gush out of her: If that language is Romanian, maybe it’s her family? Well, uh, she’s not sure if that’s how it goes with vampires, but the man who must have made her mother was Romanian. She read the diaries… That confession makes her blush, but she goes right on. He was something like vampire royalty, she thinks, maybe that’s her family trying to get a hold of her?
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This is all new to Arthur- he realizes he hasn’t really looked into vampires since that time he read that one book weeks ago when they first got to the castle. But if her family is vampire royalty… He blushes, but also finds himself grinning a little as he asks her whether that makes her a vampire princess?
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The blush stays right where it is, but Darcy also wiggles and squeals. That’s so nice of him to say! It would be so nice to meet her family, but with that nasty kit, maybe it is hunters and Papa was very concerned about hunters, she now tells Arthur, and if Papa is concerned that must mean they are really dangerous. They need to get out of here; she has to keep Arthur safe!
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Um, says Arthur, if it’s vampire hunters- shouldn’t they keep Darcy safe from them? Not that he minds her looking out for him, he thinks but doesn’t say- it’s nice. And he doesn’t think he’d want to meet vampire hunters, they sound like really awful people from what little he’s heard of them so far. But yes, he agrees out loud again, they need to figure this out and get out. There aren’t any more clues he can find in the cabin, though. Maybe if he could read the notes, but he can’t.
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Looking off to the side, Darcy rubs her arm and mumbles that she also meant keeping him safe from… well, um… (She still doesn’t fully dare to look at him,) she doesn’t want him to be afraid of her again, or be disgusted with her, but what if they have to be here for a few days?
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Arthur… is very confused. By her behaviour, clearly there’s something he’s not getting, but… why would he be scared or disgusted by her? Probably this should be obvious, but he only ends up blinking at her while he tries to work out what she means.
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Well, Darcy mumbles, Gregory (or John as she thinks but definitely doesn’t admit to) isn’t here and she is… well, she’s a dhampir.
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Darcy’s clear embarrassment keeps Arthur’s own blush right where it is- especially in combination with mentioning Gregory. But then he realizes how her being a dhampir and her maybe being dangerous go together, and he says a relieved: “Oh!” and then assures her that, uh, well, if she gets hungry, he’s… happy to help with that? He’d, um, he’d rather she tell him before it gets too bad, really…
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That is so… so, she doesn’t even know what she thinks about it. Does that mean he’d like her to kiss him? Does he know about John? Does he know she’s a harlot? Feeling a lump in her belly, she turns around and marches back towards the door. Maybe she can find something at the base of the barrier. Anything to help them get out of here, and to not have to feel his eyes on her like that, she didn’t mean to be bad. She really didn’t, she was just so hungry, and Gregory so pushy, and John… well, he’s John, he’s so… safe. But Arthur wouldn’t understand, and probably Gregory told him, bragged maybe even, and everything feels wrong again and she can’t deal with that. People are so difficult and she wants her papa and John! But she can’t have them, so she does the only thing she knows feels right, trying to protect Arthur.
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Arthur’s not sure what he said wrong, but Darcy seems upset? Rather than make it worse by saying the wrong thing, he instead follows after her to the door, asks her if she’s had an idea.
She tells him that she’ll go and check if there’s anything on the ground at the barrier, maybe some magic circle she can disturb or something. Maybe it’s different when she’s not just flying through.
That’s a good idea; Arthur thinks and says- though he’s still not keen on splitting up, maybe even less so now they know this is somehow to do with vampire hunters…
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Giving him a long look while contemplating the matter, she finally sighs, because she said that protecting him is the most important thing even when she’s not sure how to act around him. Even if he maybe is thinking she is bad. But she’s carried him as a bat, where even is the difference? So she walks out to turn wolf, lowers herself down the same way she did as a bat, and looks over her shoulder at him.
“Um,” he says, “You’re sure? I won’t be too heavy?”
Shaking her head, she wags her tail slightly at him, still embarrassed but like this she feels much more like her drac, and her drac isn’t always unsure, her drac knows what it wants, and she wishes she could be as free.
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“Okay then…” Arthur concedes, and rushes to the bed to pick up the bear pelt again and wrap it around himself, as snug as he can. Well, while still keeping his legs mobile so he can climb onto Darcy’s back, after closing the door behind them. A wolf back is a lot narrower than a horse, and he has to tuck his feet up high, but her fur is a lot deeper than as a bat.
Darcy looks at him over her shoulder, sniffs too for good measure, then pouts and lowers herself back down. Confused, Arthur climbs back off, because that seems to be what she wants- maybe he’s too heavy after all?
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Transforming back to her human form, Darcy hesitates for just one second, then leans down and rips a wide strip off her skirt, then wraps it over Arthur’s poor exposed ears and neck before he catches his death out in the cold here. Two more small strips wrap around his hands, she can’t make him gloves but this is better than nothing, and she doesn’t stop before she’s done or she thinks she won’t be able to go on without melting into embarrassment with her exposed underskirts.
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Arthur freezes when Darcy starts covering him in the fabric of her skirt (and he’s definitely not looking below her knees at what she has on underneath), and he feels kind of silly wrapped up like that, but it’s good thinking, especially since the sun has disappeared behind the other mountain, taking even that little bit of warmth with it. So he manages an awkward “Thank you”.
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Managing half a lop-side grin, she whispers. “That goes on the list, right?” Quickly now, she turns wolf again, only allows herself to feel the full brunt of her embarrassment when she’s safe in her drac’s body again, not the silly girl standing there with ripped skirts in front of a man who probably got all his suspicions confirmed about how much of a harlot she is. But thankfully, he didn’t say anything, so instead she fluffs herself up best she can so he can get some of her body heat.
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Arthur nods vigorously- not vigorously enough to dislodge his new… scarf, though- that definitely goes on the list of things they’re never going to mention again. Like some other very awkward moments they’ve had before. He climbs back on, feels better for her grin and her being fully dressed in wolf fur.