Chapter 110
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 109
To fill the silence and to discourage Art from losing his temper after all, Mina starts to report on Vlad’s progression. He is not sharing his senses with her yet, she suspects he’s still rushing along the skies and she concurs that she wouldn’t really have the capacity to process the way his senses work then.
But that doesn’t stop him from talking to her.
Just like twenty years ago, it hardly needed a day for their blood bond to flare into existence. She may not have written it into their original contract, after all, he wasn’t a vampire then, but the connection between their souls always was close. She always had access to his emotions, and his drac is a mere manifestation thereof, so this new form of being close felt natural from the start. (The intoxicating part of it is likely thanks to her fey instincts, not that she can explain or predict those.)
She recounts his observations of the moors, how they may be vast, but from where he’s standing he believes he can see for dozens of kilometers in every direction. So the manor, (if it is there,) is likely warded from sight. No matter, he has dominion over the children of the night, and his ears pick up what most people overlook even when standing face to face with something.
There is a lull in what she can report, it takes him some wandering and conversations with the local fauna before he locates a mouse that can lead the way to the closest larder, which he finds to, yes, be invisible upon approaching, but once through the ward, there is indeed a mansion in the British style. (The part where he tells her that he will never understand this lack of front-facing second level balconies even on a noble estate she keeps to herself.)
Now he opens his senses to her, which she can notice also in the way that Art flinches before she closes her likely red eyes. The smirk about that can’t hide the wider smirk about her dear voivode standing by his word and pride. No subtle approach for him. No, he strides right up to the front door.
She’s nearly surprised that he takes the time to knock, and then regrets that she can’t really hear what he is hearing, because the man, likely a servant, who has the misfortune to open that door goes rather very white in the face. Oh, but just might have invited her husband inside after some more prodding. Clever that, less time constraint for him.
Clever also to not let the man run off and warn Radu. Not that Vlad doesn’t tell her that he suspects Radu can already feel him, so he speeds up to a velocity that makes her very human perception stagger, gives her a slight headache, but just as she has to put a hand to her temple from discomfort, he slows to a stop in a doorway and the scene makes her laugh out loud. “That’s my Lucy! Dancing with the enemy!”
Art groans while Jack gives a slightly strained chuckle and pats Art’s arm. “Take it as her trying to make the best out of being a hostage.”
“Obviously she would,” Mina agrees, before focusing back on the scene in front of her mind’s eye. Not that she can follow along perfectly at the speed everything is happening, the… she nearly wants to call it a crack, in what she’s seeing makes her wonder if Radu attacked.
Vlad’s perspective more blurs than looks like he closed his eyes. She has no way of explaining it, but she can feel his worry and sadness, even though the next thing she really can make out is him looking back down from where he was looking up at the door.
Up? Oh, is he on the floor? Must be, but she trusts him to be sturdy. Clearly, he’s not so convinced of Lucy, and when he looks over, yes, Lucy is lying on the ground, too.
Mina waits with relaying that detail until she also hears Vlad’s reassurance that Lucy is merely out from Radu’s mindblast.
That explanation doesn’t seem to inspire much confidence in either Art or Jack, but she can deal with them later, she can’t change anything she’s seeing, either!
And yes, of course she’s upset about Lucy, too, or is that Vlad being upset and her feeling it through his emotions? As lovely as his emotions so close in to hers are, sometimes she still feels she doesn’t have a full grasp on their connection yet.
In either case, he’s carrying Lucy out of the room and the mansion and there, she’s coming to again. The next thing she does has Mina snort, ouch, that must have stung, and she is pretty sure she knows who Vlad just invoked to get Lucy’s fury off him. She can read the ‘Mina’ on Lucy’s lips, the widening eyes telling her that her best friend is shifting gears hard from whatever she was about to tell Vlad, because a moment later she sees her rush off as a bat.
There’s a mental sigh from her dear husband acknowledging that he probably deserved that. He shall stop sharing his eyes with her now, but he’ll be back shortly, or as quick as it may take Lucy to fly back, he’ll escort her, even if she might not like it much.
~~~~
Hearing that Lucy is on the way back has Art sigh so hard with relief that it is half a sob, and he puts his head on Jack’s shoulder. Always better at factual rather than emotional responses, Jack finds himself checking his watch and postulating that it may Lucy take an hour to fly from Devonshire. He has measured her speed from London to here after all. Belatedly he remembers to put an arm around Art and to pat his back supportively.
~~~~
Arthur has been resisting the urge to hug a pillow to his chest while he listened to Mrs Harker report on Mr Basarab’s progress- he doesn’t want to look like a child, but he also lets out a huff of relief when she says that Lucy is on her way back.
Apparently, Radu did attack them? But it didn’t harm them? Well, not with lasting effects, at least? He takes a bit of comfort in the knowledge that Mr Basarab seems able to scare Radu off reliably. Still- it’s not like he can hang around forever? Well. He’s a vampire, so maybe he can.
But Arthur doesn’t want to spend the next however long living with a vampire chaperone, and looking over his shoulder. Though… he also does live a bit like that in regards to his father.
Who at least can’t fly and turn into small animals or fog or mind-control him.
Arthur supposes there’s scarier things than his father in the world, actually. That’s… an odd realization.
But one thing after the other. First they have to find a solution to Darcy’s situation, and then they can worry about what to do about Radu.
~~~~
“Assuming that Jack’s time estimate is correct, I propose a quick dinner, as a working through one isn’t an option with our vampires returning and us likely still having hours of work ahead of ourselves to help Darcy next.” Mina makes a point of stressing the ‘our vampires’, because really, she knows she’ll have to keep interacting with those two, and the sooner they get over their suspicion of her and her vampire, the sooner they can be efficient at problem solving. And also, their social life, because if they think they get a choice in being around each other, they underestimate the strength of female friendships.
So she simply gets up and tells her daughter to please go set the table… Actually, this might work, she knows more about the old idiot than she wants to and here she is with a child on her side. So she asks Art to please help Lucy Jr, while Jack helps her in the kitchen. If Arthur could find her son and bring him down to dinner, she would appreciate that.
~~~~
Arthur nods, happy enough to have something to do. He can’t quite remember when Quincy vanished, or in which direction, but… well, he gets up to check the various inhabited places of the castle. First the solar they were in earlier, then he heads upstairs to check the bedrooms.
He can hear a sound like the scraping of a poker in the fireplace from Darcy’s bedroom as he approaches, and pokes his head in to find Quincy putting a blanket over John’s sleeping form and one of Darcy’s stuffed toys next to him- the badger, the one John didn’t want Arthur to take because it wasn’t terribly soft or cuddly. It occurs to Arthur to wonder whether maybe, also, John likes that one? Quincy is good with people, he probably would’ve figured that out? Maybe?
Anyway, when Quincy notices Arthur, he comes over, and Arthur tells him quietly about Lucy being on her way back and being fine, and Mr Basarab, too, and his mother making dinner.
~~~~
Looking over his shoulder back at John but then nodding, Quincy closes the door softly behind him. “He won’t be up today, I don’t think. And maybe that’s for the best, because we’re missing Darcy.”
He feels like he can imagine Blondie’s reaction way too well, because he’s pretty sure he shares it. It takes him an effort to not fidget with his sleeve buttons and he hates domestic chores, but he supposes he can go help in the kitchen. At least be useful there, he can’t do anything more for John… Although he hopes he can look at his mother without remembering that she gets to kiss the man he wanted.
And he’ll make sure to tell himself that in the past tense before it hurts even more.
~~~~
Arthur accompanies Quincy downstairs, hears Art’s voice from the dining room, and when he pokes his head in, Art smiles at him and waves him in, and so of course he joins him and Lucy Jr, even if there isn’t a whole lot of helping left to do with laying the table.
~~~~
In the expectation of having to help out quite a bit in the kitchen, Quincy walks in with a huff ready, only to lift an eyebrow. Not just his mother, but Darcy’s papa as well, and what did he miss? Not that it wasn’t easy to see that his mother prefers that one over Godalming, but it took him, what, five to ten minutes to come help and those two are working alongside in perfect tandem with nearly nothing large left to help out with? And his mother keeps teasing Jack with quips about Lucy, which he’s clearly occasionally unsure how to handle, but then also quips back with a sharp smirk.
Seriously? Could his mother not have picked that slim, serious-looking scholar type rather than Harker?! Ugh, Cycy was nothing but chirps about that one being good father material. Would it have hurt so much to let her son have a good home life if she had to play away from his actual father?
He’s about ready to go up in huffs when his mother greets him by quipping at Cycy’s papa that he can get his psychologist charms out, rewards work on her son. If she makes one more comment like that, he’ll swat at her and consider if he, out of sheer spite, has to seduce the man!
He didn’t sign up for that treatment.
He thought he could help here… And then that arse of an over-glorified father figure has the nerve to put the kitchen work down for a moment to take a closer look at him. He feels like he’s being dissected by that look, and could his apparent dhampir libido take a hike about that kind of being hot? That’s Cycy’s father, not his own, no dhampir family idiocy here! Just, okay, fine, that sharp cut to his chin and the sharper intelligence behind his eyes, combined with the apparent social hiding behind his friend, ugh, yes, yes, stray sense for knowing how to improve him and having fun with it tingling.
Still, he is not a piece of data to be examined! So he leans forward, uses his height (nobody mention that he does have to go up on the front of his feet a bit for this) to look down at Jack and huffs: “Done inspecting the dhampir curiosity?”
That worked, Jack clearly only now realises that he’s being rude, and bloody hell, he wanted him to back off but now he’s just being cute in stumbling how to recover socially. So with a gentler huff, Quincy takes it from the top, introduces himself properly and mentions that he’s Cycy’s fellow dhampir just as much as a curiosity in his own right. Now, how can he help, or have the two chefs managed everything between them already? Cycy might have dropped something about her papa being the only chef who can get her dhampir appetite going and frankly, with all this stress he really can’t find his own, so he’d appreciate the help.
~~~~
Despite everything, being around Art is relaxing, Arthur thinks. He’s just… so clearly trying to cheer them up. With card tricks, even. Though Lucy Jr asks if that’s with counting cards, if not, that’s boring, and Arthur has to admit that… he’s unaware how you could not count cards in something like this. That just happens, right?
Lucy Jr nods seriously and agrees, right.
~~~~
Those two are worse than Jack! But fine, he can get one in over Mina and maybe keep them happy at the same time, so Art admits, that yes, some of them work with counting, especially the ones for cheating at playing cards, so would Lucy Jr like to learn how to count for that?
Arthur looks interested, too, even goes so far as to call that a fun and useful skill, so Art spends the rest of the time until dinner teaching both of them the basics of some of the most common card decks, what cards are in them and which ones are typically high value. Lucy Jr has a lot of fun with showing off how quickly she can call out all their values.
Art’s glad that worked, because he needs the distraction. After all, it’s just Mina’s word that Lucy is coming back, and he wants to trust Jack’s assessment but he can’t get rid of the worry repeatedly poking him. There isn’t any plan he can just run along with, no singular big goal to work towards, and he can feel his energy waning apart from his boiling-with-fight blood keeping it up artificially.
He knows he has to keep going, Lucy isn’t safe, Darcy is missing, and they have damn fucking Dracula in the house!
The single nice thing right now is that Jack is cooking. That’s better than fey food for sure. Even with them speeding through making dinner, he is convinced it will be a perfect distraction by being just so damn good. When Mina’s brat starts bringing the food in, Art takes one long sniff and begins to grin. Score! Of course Jack made galettes when he has to make quick dinner.
Now, if he could just focus on that and the liquor in his glass he’d be happy, but it’s Mina’s brat who hands him that glass with a wink and then gets Jack to actually talk to him. To the brat, not his own best friend! That has to be mind craft! So he glares through dinner, despite the fact that really, sitting at the table with at least one of the kids and Jack should be very nice, but no, Mina and her brats had to ruin the atmosphere.
At least it’s fairly quick, that was the entire point, and then he can dawdle with washing up, because he rather very much hopes that Lucy is going to reunite with them in ways that would require not getting any food close to his vampire. He still finds himself playing with his cigar, (yes, to calm himself down with a vice,) back in the library. And he knows full well that sugar doll would probably pout at him for smoking close to the books, but he has to stick to some bad habits, right?
~~~~
Lucy is convinced that Jack would have loved timing her. If she burns any more blood on speeding up, she just might go nibble at that anything-but-subtle honour guard of hers. She’s still bubbling on the inside, she has some very specific things to tell him, but she has to check on Mina and her men first.
What must they be thinking about her not only vanishing but walking into that trap? Not that she thinks she could have avoided that. How was she supposed to know there’s another vampire in the family? One with a silver tongue to purr over. There she thought she could get some information out of him, she never met a vampire willing to introduce her to her own house, after all, but phew, that one danced circles around her socially. Well, maybe also in the dancing itself, he knows how to make a woman swoon.
In either case, seeing to her humans first, then slapping the other brother! Yes, she already did, but she thinks she wants to do it again, where her men can see it. And anyway, he deserves more than one! Funny how she has been schooling herself into being more stoic for twenty years after the worst day of her life, because whatever could be worse, and then she feels all those emotions come back up after all.
But right now, there’s her castle! She can’t stop herself from throwing one glance over towards the cemetery where she met Vlad for the first time, feverish and desperate. He seemed like such a life line, and then it all turned nightmare.
But no, present, present first, and she wouldn’t even need the lights only being on in one room to guess where everybody is. Of course it’s the library, and yes, that’s Jack opening the terrace door for her, he can sense her coming closer. She so felt like she’s flying along the steadying string of their love. She didn’t have to ask which way to go, no, all she had to do was follow her sense of where her heart needs to land.
So screw the stoicism for a moment, she doesn’t give him a chance to be shy about it, she flies right at him, changes midair and makes him catch her, although then it’s her lifting him up, there’s too much joy in being able to do that these days. And then he makes her melt, of course he was worried for her, but all he wants is one quick kiss before he urges her on to see to their Art.
Aw, her poor, big worry wArt! Of course he’s a mess! The poor sweet man. That deserves being silly, so she runs up to him and lifts him up, too, before pulling him close and patting his back, showering him with reassurances.
But that worry, that distinct fear of losing her she can pick up from him makes her momentarily suppressed anger bubble right back up, so she steps away from him and marches up to Vlad and slaps him again. As hard as she can this time, and begins to yell at him, lets out twenty years of apparently repressed anger. “You promised I would be fine! Fine! FINE! Is it your definition of fine to wake up in a metal tomb and scratching at it until my fingers were bloody bone stumps to free myself?! Is it your definition of fine to have your fiancé think he should ram a stake through your heart and cut your head off?! Fine?! I was not fine!”
~~~~
Ouch… despite all his own issues with him at the moment, Quincy feels bad for his father there. For the way he so clearly feels guilty and deserving of that outburst. Good, he probably should, but still. With a sigh, Quincy prepares to get between two people for the second time, and again, he sees that his existence is enough to startle people out of their aggression.
The woman stares at him for interrupting her with a ‘Could we talk it out without the slapping?’ and then it’s his own mother coming to his aid. “Yes, please take pity on my husband, he’s only a man after all, but he happens to be my man.”
~~~~
Lucy is staring open-mouthed from the teenage version of Basarab’s brother to her best friend and back. She’s just about to let herself give in to the cackle that she feels oncoming, because oh, now that is juicy, so very juicy, and she’d much rather laugh than feel so upset, but she doesn’t get to it.
There’s all of a sudden a Gregory impacting her side, clinging to her and bawling his eyes out. “Mum! Make it better! Darcy can’t do it and I hate everything right now.”
Is she supposed to go ‘there, there’? Mum? Her? What? Uh… sure, he’s come to her before, but this is a whole different level, and frankly, it’s pretty off-putting from a young man. So the best she can do is it not too obvious that she is leaning away from him, and mentally ask for some back-up from Jack, she doesn’t do this parental thing.
~~~~
What? What the hell? What is going on? Arthur wonders. Why is Gregory crying in front of everyone? Gregory doesn’t like to do that… Especially not in a room full of people. And where did he come from? Again? He wasn’t at dinner. Dinner was awkward enough by itself, with lots of tension going underneath the surface, mostly between Mrs Harker and Art, Arthur thinks. Dr Seward seemed to talk politely enough with Quincy. And at least the food was good. Really good, actually, some kind of savoury pancakes of a type Arthur’s never had before, and he wishes he could’ve enjoyed them under better circumstances.But now… now he feels so awkward and mortified by Gregory’s behaviour he wishes he could turn invisible and teleport away. Why would he call Lucy ‘mum’? Okay, she’s his mother-in-law, but… but it’s just so… awkward? Weird?