Chapter 8
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 7
Well that’s just not fair!
It’s a spell, a silly, meanie spell! No Radu anywhere! Just some silly lady who wants to talk to her.
Fine, Darcy supposes she can listen. Not as if she isn’t soaked through anyway, now … down to her lungs, she must have inhaled at some point. That should be worse than it is, she thinks. But, it was one big rush of air out of her lungs and then it was cool and dark and quiet down here.
The sun is out of her eyes. The sun is just a speckle and kind of pretty glitter up above her from where she’s standing on the ocean floor. Anchored down like a rock, nothing to fall, no current on which she’ll just float forever and never find her way back to actually moving under her own control.
No, the thing she was so scared of, the falling and falling and floating didn’t happen. She ran into the ocean and just kept running. Slower than she could above the water, but now it’s just settled on her shoulders like a heavy blanket shielding her from the sun, and if she wasn’t listening to that woman, she would have half a mind walking off and trying to see if there’s any night friends down here where it’s dark everywhere.
Not that she would know how to find them, she tried sniffing but it’s not working. She feels pretty much blind down here. Is that the same word when it’s your nose, she wonders? In either case, everything down here feels odd to her senses. The language of the lady must use some mental things, because she’s sure her hearing is all distorted but she can still make out the words.
And now that she’s starting to actually give a blast about what she’s hearing, she forgets about how surprisingly nice it is down here. All of a sudden this feels like… like all the way back in that first village, her riding out to be the heroine of her story, to save her subjects. Just that this time, no Gregory, it’s John and Quincy at her side, and she’s not saving some silly humans she doesn’t care about. No, those villagers aren’t there for her to save, no, they are the villains of this story! The villains who are hurting non-humans, the ones that everybody would see as the monsters. Ergo, the ones that are like her!
She can see the teeth on the lady she’s talking to, the way there isn’t a snout, how they would leave a round bite, and Darcy hopes she was biting really hard. Like she said she’ll bite Lancaster!
But now, she has to get back to the beach first and tell her men, her… uh, what are Quincy and John in this story? If she’s the monster, then John likely is the huntsman, but the one who is only following rules when he can’t get away with breaking them. The one who just wants to be left alone in his forest hut. Yes, yes, that’s the right hidden husband for the monster. And Quincy… oh, how silly of her to not see it immediately, Quincy is the enchanted prince. The one that is all noble and pretty but belongs to another world.
She’s not sure how he’ll fit into this story, because it’s clearly a classical tale where the hero, no, the heroine, has to right a wrong that is invisible to the people in the land and only she who comes from afar can spot it. But she’s sure her enchanted prince, this time for real, no more Gregory stealing his way into that role, will save the princess, no wait, she’s the monster. Well, okay, this doesn’t quite fit with any of her stories, but John has taught her that it’s okay to tell her own stories. He’s good like that.
So, in any case, she has to rush back to them now that she heard the plea of the poor monsters she has to rescue! This is only the prologue of the story, and she wants to know how it keeps going. She even gets a magical gift from the lady: Her blood!
Darcy has never swum before in her life (outside of John’s dreamscape,) but with the siren’s blood, she feels herself lift off the ocean floor and her shoes are suddenly a prison so she kicks them off only to stare at her feet. She has webs between her toes, her too-long toes. Oh, she’s an aquatic dhampir now!
She still has no idea how to do this in the real world, but how hard can it be when you don’t have to breathe and have flippers with claws? Like a seal, like the seal ladies she has to go save now! She can dog paddle if nothing else.
~
This is the weirdest kind of fake idyllic. Quincy is sitting on the beach with John’s head on his lap and his jacket underneath the still sort-of-asleep man. If the situation wasn’t what it was, Quincy could swear this was some weird date with his stray napping on him, and it would be cute and everything, apart from the fact that John is sure as hell no stray, this sure as hell isn’t a date, and if it was, he wouldn’t be sitting out on a boring, rocky beach but actually do something that’s fun!
But here he is, bitching up at the Divine for always getting him into shit like this, and not sure what the hell to do apart from wait and check in with his horny levels if it’s safe to let John out. He’s worried he’ll catch a cold like this… and that’s probably one of the most domestic thoughts he’s had in a while. Tsk, the hunk and Cycy are making him all settled down. Well, fine, he’ll enjoy it for as long as he manages to keep that feeling up, it won’t be long. He knows himself, he’s a flighty bitch.
And probably for the first time in his life, he’s glad when he notices that his libido is settling down. He still gives it a few moments, but the sense of touch that isn’t touch has gone away, too, so he shakes John’s shoulder and gently (wait, really, yes, fine) gently calls his name.
For a moment, he tenses as John cracks his eyes open, but when the first reaction is a shiver rather than any attempt to jump up and run again, Quincy relaxes and starts to rub some warmth into those nice shoulders. Hey, he’s not even getting more than a short grunt, (he thinks that was the ‘watch it but okay’-grunt,) for his efforts, so his poor darling is likely frozen through. No wonder, so they both get up and try to return some warmth back into John’s limbs.
And good they did. It means he can spot the red dot earlier. Not that that makes any sense, Darcy can’t swim! But it’s Cycy, so a thought occurs to him and he gives the water a very suspicious look. “I’m going to shriek at whatever big fish she talked into bringing her back, aren’t I?”
~
John’s just glad to stomp his feet and rub his arms back into some warming circulation. Of course he suspected that his girl ran straight at the problem, that’s kind of what she always does. Frankly, the way he knows her, he wouldn’t have been surprised to get a telegram from, uh, what’s that way? Something Scandinavian he thinks, so yeah, a telegram from over there on the other side of the sea with her telling him she ran over and for him not to worry.
So that she’s riding on whatever counts as night friend in the ocean has him exactly zero surprised. Just, when she comes closer, are you kidding him? Nope, that’s not much in majestic riding a whale or something, his girl is doggie paddling her way to shore and it looks exactly as adorably silly as it always has in his dreamscape, too.
Now he’s suddenly glad that he taught her how to swim even though he never thought she’d be able to use it. Just, he spotted how much she loves the water, and in his dreamscape, of course she can float. Looks like his little gift of love came in useful after all. And if the molly comments on that doltish proud grin he knows he has on his face, he’ll deck him one.
Apparently, Quincy’s too busy going from incredulous to laughing, though, so he’ll leave it at elbowing him. That is, until Darcy half drags herself up on the beach, because something must be wrong with her feet. She tries standing up and topples right over again. Fuck the water, he wants to run and help her, but wading out to her would be stupid. He’s the only one here who can get hypothermia, after all. She tries to wave him off anyway, tries to speak, but there’s the grossest gargling sound, followed by water gushing from between her lips.
Everything in him wants to dash to her side and make sure she’s not drowning, he’s seen people spit water before, he lived at the sea after all, but… but she’s a dhampir, she can’t drown, right? Please?
The sounds of her coughing and still trying to talk but only hacking up more water are going to haunt him, he thinks. Molly sure is looking green again, too. But then she pulls one of the most her things in a while, flailing her tiny fists and declaring she’ll tear the entire village apart and find who needs to hang.
Should he be grinning smitten again? Maybe he shouldn’t, but he just can’t help himself when she is that convinced of something, when he knows down to his very soul that she will do exactly what she says, and that she trusts him to be there with her. So clearly, next point of order is trying to get his raging river of a girl to talk enough so that he has a clue what’s actually going on, because he suspects she’ll just stomp right off without explaining a thing if he doesn’t stop her.
~
Quincy isn’t sure if he’s glad that now he isn’t the only one green, but there is no way that he or John could just sit through the explanation Cycy growls of how the village men are missing because the Lemurian queendom’s guard in the water is trying to get at information any way they can. Information about the selkie trafficking ring for domestic and sex exploitation that’s apparently spanning all of Britain.
He has certain suspicions about John, about fey contracts and reasons for his insecurity in his own manliness, and also about why Cycy apparently had to save him off some ship headed for London. He suspects there’s a reason why his darling, at hearing about the ‘buying yourself a bride to abuse’ villainy, is not only exploding with fury. No, he can see that John is trying to focus on his anger, but there’s a tremble to his balled fists that Quincy doesn’t think comes from his protectiveness.
No, not with how all his stray instincts suddenly are pinging on some need. Well, duh, some need. The need to reassure John in not only never again being seen as eligible for that fate, but also that no, nobody without Quincy’s level of background info from Cycy would ever suspect him. Silly, darling manly man. Not the first trans guy Quincy’s seen go overboard, but definitely the first one he wants to wrap himself around and throw stones back at the Divine. Okay, wrapping around would be counterproductive, fine, keep up with the leaning head-on-him and make himself be the less masculine by idiot standards it is.
Not his manly man, nope, not on his watch. And that also means letting him play the hero here! Enable both the growling ones to help, much as he doesn’t feel like he’s equipped for a situation as horrid as this. But well, they have two dhampirs and an aberration, plus apparently some siren blood.
He wonders, that touch that isn’t touch might help, and nothing in this village is far away from the water. He probably could stretch himself a bit and go undetected from beneath the waves.
His poor clothes but oh well, Cycy is sure to spoil him with new ones.
So he takes the blood from her and circles in on the village from the waterfront, while she turns rat in John’s shade and tries her best to sneak at least somewhat. John is holding position for the moment, but ready to get in for backup should either of them need it. And yes, Quincy wholeheartedly agrees that it is a waste and idiocy that Cycy’s real husband doesn’t have that connection she has with her fake husband. Looking through each other’s eyes would be very useful. They should look that up when they are back at the castle, there has to be a way to switch it over.
For right now though, ugh, into the water he goes. After, yes, appreciating the very nice purple highlights this blood is giving his hair. They look better on him than on Cycy, and he refuses to not point that out.
This isn’t easy, not one bloody bit. And he keeps getting distracted by checking what new icky thing he ended up touching in the water now, but at least, yes, Darcy was right, if he balances between being close enough to the coast and deep enough to be a few metres underwater, he can feel more of that touch to his mind. The little rustling of fabrics and materials moving against each other. Yes, there, the furry bright flame of Cycy stands out to him, he knows that feeling, and, following her presence across the mental plain of fabric he envisions in colours more than shapes, he can soon get an idea of what else to feel for.
If he just moves his fingers along with closed eyes, he can kind of build himself an idea with every touch Darcy runs past. They all feel a little bit different, but the differences are too subtle. He’s not sure if it’s the distance or the lack of training, but they just feel like one piece of wool after the other, that is, until there’s a bit of distance and then… what is that? Cooler, not as coarse? His first thought is silk, but no, silk is much more luxurious than this, it’s more like, oh, OH!
Fur, but different from Cycy’s, short and maybe a bit wet. Now if that doesn’t sound as if it should be something non-human that lives in the water, he doesn’t know what would. And there’s, oh dear, now that he is trying to push his fingers between the feeling, he has trouble distinguishing, so maybe there are several in a small space. Unbidden, he thinks of prison, his own worst nightmare.
Yes, he thinks he found them, or maybe him and Cycy found them together. She’s close, hasn’t moved in a bit, maybe she can smell them? In either case, he thinks it’s time to call John in, but how to get him past those pieces of wool? The villagers, he means. Hm, wait, maybe if they work together? It can’t do more than not work, and then he gets to just sweet talk them out of it, can do.
~
John didn’t think he’d end up ever feeling good about holding hands with a guy, but here he is, hand tight on Quincy’s, half guiding him because he can tell how much concentration goes into whatever their molly is doing exactly. Not that he doesn’t feel distracted himself. He’s never used his power like this before. He touches and sends people under, it’s not an area effect. At least he didn’t think it was, but then Quincy told him that maybe it is, after all.
He didn’t even think about it, but yes, there were times when Quincy got up in the middle of the night for a leak and the moment he got back into bed, he was back in the dreamscape. John didn’t wake up and touch him again, and really, he can walk through the dreamscape over to other sleeping people in the house to grab them. How has he never considered this before?
In any case, now he’s taking cautious steps while trying to just project his power like an indistinct field around himself and Quincy is trying to link his own suggestion power into it. The thing he knows he can do with making people obey him. Clearly, it’s burning blood for him, John can see the red glow to his eyes and the siren blood is already used up. That was good though, it meant Quincy could put his shoes back on and walk rather than continue with Quincy riding and John walking alongside while they still had to keep contact to link up their powers.
The only indication that John has that it’s working is that nobody is bothering them despite them making their way along the outer edge of the village, horses and all.
They arrive at what looks like a warehouse, large double doors towards the sea, rolled up ropes and such. He’s seen warehouses like this before, wonders if during high tide it might even be a boat house. He’s never been inside one of them, though. He imagines boat building supplies, extra fishing nets and maybe some fish barrels.
When Quincy takes only a few minutes to pick the lock on the heavy chain, (and he’ll remember that skill,) though, he’s surprised when, yes, there are some boat supplies, but there are also crates and tools that look like they’re too high quality for this place. He can only see the entrance, it’s dark in there, so with a sigh he allows Quincy to take his hand again and lead him inside.
Darcy must be in here, he can distinguish her rat noises from other rats by now, (yes, he’s proud of that,) and she’s making that distinct sew-sawing sort of growling ‘eh’ sound he’s only maybe heard once or twice before. Still, it’s a sound that you don’t forget once you’ve heard it, she’s pissed off, really pissed off!
~
Gnaw gnaw gnaw! Bite! Open open open!
Darcy has to get these silly… no, needs a worse word, needs a John word, these fucking cages open!
She can see the purple whisps at the edge of her vision, can feel something inside her roil and flicker, like that smell that isn’t a smell, but it’s weak, it’s like her drac is putting its paws on top of it and there’s a bit leaking out at the sides, but it’s not even struggling against the pressure of the paws.
No, the whisps and the anger that comes with them is just a distraction, a distraction from the much more important task of breaking cages, breaking chains. Breaking chains is important. Quincy told her that. Told her with a kiss and a smile and whispering that she never has to wear a chain, just to listen to her men. And tell them when she’s not sure. That’s not a chain, that’s love, she thinks.
Maybe Radu would have known how to explain it even better, but she doesn’t have Radu, only the returned ache for him after mistaking the siren song for him. She wonders if she can find his helper in the shadows again if she wanders the streets of London. She might want to sit on Arthur’s house’s doorsteps and just whisper into the dark in hopes he can bring a message to his master.
She misses Radu, but it doesn’t hurt quite as bad anymore because she has John and Quincy. She doesn’t have to be Gregory’s, and well, Gregory never was hers and that feels very, very true now. Her drac barely leans any direction at all when she thinks of Gregory. It’s more of a lazy wave of its snout and nothing more. She likes it better this way.
This way, she feels like she knows what she’s doing, she knows what she should be doing, and that is become the heroine of her own story! This must be why she got this letter now. This is her redemption arc, her rise from being the wife in the epilogue. No, no more, she’s her huntsman’s and enchanted prince’s monster!
And monsters can break all cages!
With one more growl, she finishes gnawing through the lock, and the woman who had been watching her all this time silently immediately reaches to get herself out of the cage. Darcy can smell the abuse and the pain on her and it makes her so angry. But it’s the good angry, not the Gregory angry. There’s no mask on her face, this is all just her drac, and her drac is urging her on to jump to the next cage and gnaw through that lock, too.
She has to free the women, maybe the women can help the poor puppies in the hole that is nothing but misery. She already broke their chains, but the puppies don’t know what to do with that. Darcy has to free them all!
~
Quincy has spotted the hole at the bottom of the wall in the back and he wouldn’t have needed John telling him that that sound of back alley doom is Darcy, he can feel her behind the wall, her and the pieces of wet fur. Just, he’s not rat-sized, not even his tiny waist would fit through that rat hole, how is he supposed to get in there?
There must be a hidden mechanism here somewhere, and preferably a lantern so that John can see, too. No luck on the lantern so far, and Quincy is hesitant to really feel his way along the wall. What if he gets a splinter from this rough wood, or breaks a nail by pulling on any of the metal parts? He doesn’t want to, but ugh, their manly man is squinting into the dark to no avail. The things he does for this woman!
When he finally spots that one of those hammered parts is fake and can be turned, allowing him to roll a partition of the wall aside, he realises that breaking a nail would be much, much preferable to what he’ll have to face if he takes another step.
He gags at the stench that is revealed behind the door. The smell of rot, blood, and people who cannot help but stand and crouch in their own filth. Oh Divine, he can’t possibly go forward. Everything in him wants to turn and run, he takes one staggering half step back, collides with John, because of course the bloody protective manly man has the opposite reaction, of course he wants to go help. Ugh, he can’t, Quincy can’t! Please, no.
~