Chapter 7
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 6
It’s a blustery and changeable day, with lots of clouds and showers broken by a gusty wind into brief bits of sunlight. Cold, too, of course, but with some thick, cosy blankets and a plate of sandwiches and a pot of hot tea curtesy of the house, Arthur is comfortably ensconced in his new tree house.
It’s a really cool tree house, everything you could want from one: Big enough for him to sit up in and stretch out in, with walls and a roof and windows to look out at the tree and grounds. And it’s at least fifteen feet up in a sturdy fork, with a rope ladder that he’s pulled up behind himself. With Hannibal prowling around below, he’s feeling very safely tucked away.
So he’s startled when there’s a knock on the door to the treehouse and he sees Darcy when he shuffles out of his blankets and pokes his head out.
She smiles at him, and how did she get up here? The rope ladder is still curled up. But he’s distracted from asking by her telling him that something came up, and she and John and Quincy need to head out- could he keep an eye on the barony, please?
And of course he will! But she assures him that, no, he doesn’t have to come in, he can enjoy his day off, please, she only wanted to let him know just in case.
For which he’s grateful, he’d feel rather out of the loop if the others just took off without a word. Not to mention how troublesome that would be if something did happen.
So he thanks her for letting him know, and asks if she’s sure he doesn’t need to come along. She pouts at him, and tells him that, no, he should enjoy his day off! She trusts him to look after things here, but he deserves to relax!
That makes him feel all warm inside, because he really didn’t want to cut his day off short now that he started it. So he hugs her, and she hugs back and kisses him on the cheek, tells him “See you later!” and then… walks down off the tree.
And, right. He kind of forgot she could do that. But, of course, if she can walk up walls and on ceilings, why not up trees?
He chuckles, and cuddles back up, settles in to read and enjoy the sound of the wind gusting in the unseasonal leaves of the tree, the creaking of the branches and the slight motion he can feel through the floorboards.
He hates that, once more, he couldn’t do anything yesterday about Mrs Harker and Lucy Jr (if it’s really her,) but… but Quincy helped, and so does just getting a bit of distance from the constant onslaught of crises large and small they always seem to have. But he has friends to help with it.
It occurs to him that he didn’t even find out what exactly that thing is Darcy and the others need to do, or where exactly they’re going. And probably he should have? But it’s John and two dhampirs, they can handle most things.
No, he decides, he’ll trust them, too, and not worry.
Of course, it’s when he’s well absorbed in his book that he becomes aware of a creeping sensation down his neck, like he’s being stared at, like the hairs on his neck are standing up.
He looks up and right into a pair of green cat eyes. Arthur jumps, his heart hammering, until he realises it’s only Gregory.
“What are you doing here?!” he demands, because… because what’s with the sneaking up on him, and how long has Gregory been there? And also, there’s a reason that rope ladder is pulled up, why does he even bother if everyone just comes up anyway?
Gregory, it turns out, is looking for Darcy, and when he hears she went out and Arthur doesn’t know where, tries to get him to come look for her. Which is patently absurd, and Arthur tells him so- she’ll be back when she’ll be back, she just went to investigate something, and John and Quincy are there, too, they’ll be fine. And no, he’s not leaving, he’s staying here in case of emergency! But otherwise, it’s his day off, so Gregory can go look for Darcy by himself- It’s not like he’s not running all over the place by himself, anyway!
Maybe he’s being mean, but… he’s enjoying himself here, and Gregory is interrupting, and eventually he tells him he’s reading, and it’s his day off, and Gregory can either be quiet or leave.
Gregory pouts, but when Arthur narrows his eyes at him, does leave.
Arthur huffs out a breath of relief, shifts a little, tucks his blankets more cosily over his shoulders, and goes back to his book.
~
Darcy actually enjoyed the ride. Sure, the meanie sun is out, but not too out with the low hanging winter clouds. It’s just about murky enough that she doesn’t have to squint for most of the ride. More importantly though, her men are just so much fun to watch. They keep racing each other and bickering. She has noticed that they’re a little bit like Papa and Daddy. Those two also always sound kind of mean to each other, but then they grin and smirk and hug, like her men, too! Well, less hugging, more shoulder punches and elbowing. It’s so nice to see, anyway.
John’s been… hm, she’s not sure how to say it but, um, well, kind of even handsomer since he made friends with her sang du coeur. His grins are a bit freer, he seems to laugh more, and smile more, too. Smile softer. Not just at her, at Quincy, too, and it gives her the worst warm feeling deep in her belly.
They are good for each other, they make each other playful, and she feels like a puppy with them around. All she wants to do is kiss them both silly! Lick over their faces and bounce around them with how happy they make her. With how much she feels that yes, she has a life, a real life with her affair and hidden husband.
That still makes her giggle, but it’s true. She wants it to be true and her men tell her it is, so there!
She kind of wishes they could just have been out for the ride itself, no destination to get to, but no, there at the end of a dirt road, (though actually well-maintained rather than eaten up by potholes,) down into an inlet, is that little town with a name she can’t even pronounce. Maybe it’s not English. Her daddy showed her some Scottish places not so far from here that made her twist her tongue to the point of it getting stuck.
No matter though, the fey horses find their way down into it with no problem, and Darcy sits up straighter in her saddle. She has to put her baroness mask on now. But… she hasn’t had a mask on all ride long. Not when she’s only with her men. She’s good for them just as she is, drac out and loud. She can wear the baroness mask now, her skin is all healed from the other mask, so this one won’t hurt to wear for a little bit. Come to think of it, Gregory hasn’t been around her much at all, no wonder even her skull had time to heal from the mask he always pushes so hard on her.
Anyway, she has to do some noble talking now. Uh, if she could find somebody to talk to? Normally, when she rides into villages, there’s at least somebody curious, some kids running up to see the noble. Here, she’s pretty sure she saw several curtains closing specifically when she got closer.
Still, there’s a central plaza, she can ride up to there and then… address the village air loudly, she assumes. That seems to do something, even if she has to shout her name twice. Rude, these people are really rude.
The older man who finally gets out of one of the larger huts doesn’t even invite her in anywhere. No, he just kind of repeats what the letter said, plus that there wasn’t a storm or any big accident, no, this has gone on for a while with crews and boats vanishing. Going by the way Quincy looks, that must be bad, so she makes sure to tell the mayor her condolences. But she’s just being shrugged off and pointed towards one of the beaches. If she wants to call it a beach, the bit of sand turns to rocks pretty quickly, but there’s a simple, wooden dock at the village side of it. That looks empty and the beach stretches around some jutting rocks, so maybe there’s something more on the other side.
As she leads her horse that way and out of earshot from the village, she gives John a look, that grunt sounded suspicious, she thinks. He’s so beautifully expressive without words, she really likes that about him.
“I’m sticking with it, tax fraud. These fuckers have something to hide and really don’t want us here.”
“So you’re telling me this isn’t the normal reaction when your very own noble decides to personally heed your dire call for help?” Quincy asks, but she thinks, yes, yes, there is that little change in his tone, he’s being sarcastic, so she doesn’t answer the question.
Instead, she sticks her head into the seabreeze. She doesn’t think tax fraud has a smell, of course, but she might just as well sniff around the place. Maybe there is more they’re hiding and they are here, so why not investigate?
Uh, maybe tax fraud has a smell, after all, because something smells foul. She’s been at the ocean a few times, not too often, but some of the requests brought her to the beach in Whitby or to other parts of the coast, so no, it’s not just the rotting kelp, no, there’s more to it. Swinging off the horse and pouting up at the sun for a moment, she tries to follow the smell, no, it’s not on the ground, it’s just in the breeze. That’s harder as she walks further down the beach, but then it’s Quincy’s startled sound that makes her look up from the ground to where he’s pointing.
It’s a bit out, stuck between some rocks, white and floating and one long sniff later, yes, that’s what stinks.
~
He’s going to be sick. He’s definitely going to be sick!
Quincy wraps his scarf tighter over his face, but that doesn’t help at all with the mental image of what that bloated, discoloured and still far-too-obviously human-shaped form bopping up and down in the water must be.
Some days his height is a curse. Darcy was too far down to the ground, but he’s up on a horse and tall, and of course that means he spotted the corpse first. He is not made for this! He wishes John was right and it had just been tax fraud, but ugh, that looks very much as if at least the mention of dead people wasn’t an exaggeration.
Oh Divine, and his Cycy, of course, is going right for the thing, yes, going to be sick any moment now. Why can’t he look away?!
~
John better turn their molly around. He doesn’t like that panicked look and green tinge to him. His girl can deal just fine with the cadaver. For one horrid moment, he wonders if she might chew on the thing the way she does with their hunted birds, but he can worry about that later.
“Hey, Molly, come on, let’s get a bit further past that. Maybe we can spot the boat.”
On the horses, he can’t pat Quincy’s shoulder, but he still notices how eager Quincy is to take him up on that suggestion. It might be a bit dangerous to ride that fast on the slick beach, but he better keep up with Quincy as he gets his horse to dash past where Darcy is wading out towards the corpse.
~
Stones in winter in the ocean are slippery! Darcy just about managed not to fall over, twice, the third time she did end up on her butt. That’s another dress she ruined, Quincy is going to laugh at her for it. But at least she’s made it out to the rocks with the dead thing on them. Good, closer up that looks human, she’d feel bad if it was an animal, but no, the form might be misshapen and bloated and kind of not look much like a person but there’s some clothes she thinks.
When she pokes at it, her finger sinks in, not from pushing hard, more like pushing on a soufflé, she thinks. And that popped the skin, oh, more stinky now. Maybe that was bad. In either case, now it collapsed all into itself and that makes it easier to see things. Like that there’s parts missing.
She puts her hands under the cadaver and turns it over for a better look, has to shake her hands when the skin kind of wants to follow after her, it’s really not so well attached to the rest. Papa could probably tell how long the man has been dead, but Darcy can’t tell a thing. Really, she’s not sure what she’s going to find out, but she keeps looking.
Wait, that looks like something took a bite out of the corpse! Or maybe the person, she has no idea how to tell when something was done while alive or after. But she can tell that that doesn’t look like anything she’s seen any of her night friends leave, no, actually… Tilting her head from side to side, she evaluates for a moment if she should put a bite next to it for comparison, but she suspects then she’ll smell like the corpse and Quincy wouldn’t like that, so she just estimates. Yes, yes, that looks like something she might have left, round and a bit dull and definitely about the size of her own mouth.
But that’s the only interesting thing about the corpse she can find. Okay, better haul it to the beach, the villagers might want it. Maybe somebody can still tell who it was.
She’s just about done dragging the corpse up on the smaller stones and out of the water, (and trying her best to not make it come apart,) when she hears something. Or rather, her drac hears something.
For just the tiniest of moments, wild hope flares up in her: Radu? That sense of need and lust and love all intertwined in an intoxicating cocktail of blood that’s hammering right past her ears into her mind has to be Radu, right? Is he calling for her again?
Why would he be out there somewhere?
It doesn’t matter. She has to follow! Fear of the water be damned!
She just has to run after that feeling, right into the spray and depth!
~
There’s no boat, but frankly, Quincy doesn’t care. He’s just glad they’re upwind and around a little outcropping. Swinging down from the horse just so that he can feel a bit more in control of his own body, his legs at least, even if his stomach still wants to misbehave, he tries to avoid all the various things you find on a beach. All the various icky things. Why does he have to be out here? He should have stayed in the study!
At least he has John swing down right next to him and bump their shoulders together in support. The one good thing, he doesn’t have to do this alone. Still, do what?
Now he isn’t even sure he wants to keep looking. For all he knows, he’ll kick over a stone and find a detached finger or something. And that made his stomach act up worse. With a whine, he sticks his head against John’s shoulder. He’ll even take the chuckle, pat, and teasing for being a pansy, but wait. Huh?
Looking up at John’s face, he sees the change, the vacant expression, completely distracted and staring off into the distance.
Well, if he’s honest, he kind of had a ping on the horny, but he just thought that was Quincy central having no sense of being appropriate about his friend holding him close. Just, uh, is that a blush on John’s face there?
Now, he’d love to flatter himself and, for half a second, he considers if, somehow, he made himself feminine enough with the whining and hiding against their manly man that John maybe had a ping on him, but no. No, he doesn’t think so, because now that he’s checking, he’s horny in the direction of the ocean and that makes no bloody sense at all. Also, there’s a sensation against that mental touch he’s still trying to figure out. Like, hm, rope tightening and pulling?
Hell, magic! This must be magic, some kind of ensnaring or what not and woah, woah, hold, stop!
“Darling! Snap out of it!”
Quincy is hanging himself with all his weight, (which isn’t much and never you listen to anybody who says otherwise,) around John’s waist and holding on. “Now’s not the time to show off how strong you are! Ugh! Hold still! You’ll catch your death in the cold water!”
It’s not working! Oh bloody hell, John can punch him for this later!
Quincy switches from dragging John backwards away from the water to pushing against him from the front for a futile few moments, then crouches and jumps hard against John’s chest. Toppling them both over, he lands on top of him and starts praying that he won’t get a boner any second now because he knows John’s going to keep fighting and he better get him immobilised. So before he gets a literal punch into dreamland, he switches position and gets John’s legs bent up towards his shoulders, pinning him down under him. Yupp, praying only harder for lack of boner because, damn, does the man work out, that’s some very, very nice tension he can feel here.
This is awkward, very awkward, he’s not normally just holding that position, and most certainly not with a straight guy who he now is terribly worried he’ll set off and make uncomfortable. Since when does he care about making straight guys uncomfortable?! Duh, since he’s actually friends with one, Quincy outpost, get it together, yes, it’s very distracting and that magic horny spell isn’t helping one bit. Okay, think of vaginas… ew… Okay, that helped.
He thinks it’s only actually been ten seconds or so, but that definitely felt like eternity before he can feel another scratch against that mental touch and, oh dear… dreamscape, he’s in for it now…
~
John groans and lets himself fall into one of the chairs in his dreamscape hunting lodge before giving his molly a long look. “Stop looking like I’ll murder you. I can fucking tell my brain is short-circuited out there. Thanks for stopping me from throwing myself into the fucking January ocean. Just, no fucking mention ever of how you did it, okay?”
Seriously, he doesn’t want to think about how that looks out there, especially with both of them having a quick nap there. But fuck, he has bigger problems than the molly snuggled on top of him. What the fuck is going on? And why is it targeting him specifically?
Just, apparently, it didn’t? When he asks Quincy, he hears how it felt on that side and okay, yes, if he thinks about it, he did feel that kind of draw, but to him, he swears he had the distinct sensation of his girl howling for him. Pulled on the heart strings something fierce.
Aw fuck! Great, now he has to worry about what’s going on out there and a molly who is right back to his fears of never falling in love. He knows how much that upsets Quincy, (understandable, really,) so he just elbows him. “Oi, picky and high-maintenance guy like you can’t expect to find a man that can turn your head easily. I’m easy, only reason I got a girl already.”
He swears a month ago it would have felt fucking weird to protect a guy’s feelings like that, a molly’s feelings, worse, but now, yeah, shitty situation all around, but he feels himself settle down at seeing the edges of Quincy’s lips lift again. He managed to pull him back from one of his traumas and he knows, John just knows, that Quincy always does the same for him, too.
They’ve got each other’s backs… uh, bad formulation with a molly, very bad formulation, and he can’t help it, he starts laughing and tells Quincy whats it’s about. Only to get huffed at that Quincy tried to have his back out there, but he’s just too stubborn and kept pulling away.
“Speaking of my back, in the interest of not breaking it under your weight, can I let you out while I wait it out in here?”
Despite the immediate protest, John knows that Quincy means it when he says he’ll make sure neither of them are idiots about whatever that magic attack is. With a bit of luck, Darcy is in the process of beating up whatever it is already.
That’s the thought he’ll focus on while he sits alone in his hunting lodge now, waiting the action out. Great, just fucking great! Ugh, he hates not being able to do anything.
~