Chapter 14
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 13
4 Jan 1900
Darcy’s still not sure what she’s thinking about the fact that this Miss Powlett sent a letter again and that John seemed to like answering it. Of course, Quincy helped with that, and her men were all but play-punching each other over all the quipping back and forth. It makes her so happy to see that, but at the same time, her John is enjoying writing to a woman. Her drac is being pouty again and Darcy doesn’t want to be bad for John.
He should have a wife, an official one that can give him a child. But she so hates that it can’t be her. Maybe if Gregory keeps missing for long enough, she could just declare herself a widow and marry John anyway? But that’s really mean and selfish of her. After all, she still couldn’t give him an heir. And she’s not loving him the right way, so she’ll just keep holding her drac’s snout shut and let Quincy distract her.
He insisted they have their missed date from yesterday and yes, just as she told Arthur, it’s still a bit embarrassing, but it’s also so very fun!
With her mother she felt all clumsy and as if she’ll never learn this seductive kind of hunting that means she doesn’t have to spook the humans. With Quincy it feels so much less like stumbling over her paws in high-heels. He hunts differently, and he hunts different men. Now, he did tell her that he’s picking for her benefit, but that’s okay, she thinks that’s a really sweet sign of him taking care of her. He likes that, so she doesn’t know why she shouldn’t enjoy it.
It means kind of shady men and places, and that’s not where the baroness should be seen. Which just means they always have dress-up fun before they go out, including parading around in front of John so he can comment. This time, he swore at Quincy because he decided to really disguise her heavily. Apparently, they are going gang-member hunting and he thought it was better not to bring a girl at all.
Wearing pants is funny, there’s so much swish missing, but really, she likes that! It’s closer to not wearing anything, and that’s what she’s been doing in the dreamscape more often. Just letting her drac show and being so happy without any mask on. John calls her his wolf-girl lovingly and lets her be all fur-covered and kind of werewolf-y on some adventures.
That might have inspired Quincy, she’s wearing a fur trim on her jacket rather than a scarf. And fluffy boots, too. She likes those! But Quincy always knows how to dress her for fun. Even managed to make it look like she only has one wispy bit of long hair, (a rat tail, he called it and she loved that, too,) sticking out from underneath her hat. It’s a men’s hat and that feels funny, too.
But she’s out with Quincy and he keeps telling her she makes for a very sexy pretty boy and she likes being good for him, so she listens when he tells her to let her drac walk. Supposedly, she walks more like a man then, and hey, they are hunting, so sure, she can do that!
She can even manage to not dissolve into giggles anymore when they corner a man between them and both take a nibble. That’s so, um, naughty and she really shouldn’t do it, but well, Quincy says it’s okay, and what Quincy says must be true.
He’s told her that all those rules about being a harlot are silly, (well, he uses idiotic,) and even if they weren’t, they don’t apply to her. She’s a drac, his drac, John’s drac, so she should be like her night friends and those, um, well, yes, she’s seen that her night friends just do whatever, and, um, whoever they want, even when somebody’s looking!
So no, she’s just out with him, letting her drac run and hunt and enjoy the night and the taste of blood off of their dinner and off of each other’s lips.
Quincy, of course, always wants more when they get going, and one of their snacks apparently belonged to a gang with a nice remote base. They are going to visit it and have their fun with how much havoc they can raise striding in there. Now, she’s not entirely sure what he means, but as long as they do it together, she’s sure it’ll be fun. She just wants to be close to him and see him laugh and feel free to do whatever he wants. She knows that she is allowing him to be a lot more daring than he was before. And if he overdoes it a bit, well, she’ll protect him, of course!
Not that there’s much to protect him from. He can handle the shocked looks and questions about who they are and what they are doing here easily enough. He’s totally cheating with his powers, but why shouldn’t he? That’s just being nice to his drac, and she wants him to be. They make it all the way to the back of the building, to somebody who’s apparently in charge, even though he doesn’t really look any older than them. Come to think of it, all the people here did. Ooh, is this one of those street urchin gangs she’s read about?
Quincy always takes her to the most fun and inappropriate places!
Right, she’s a guy, she’s not supposed to giggle. Making the best sour all-manly grumpy face she can, she tries to play over it, although she thinks Quincy is close to bursting out laughing. Maybe she’s making the wrong face?
But that’s okay, he’s focusing back on the leader, sitting down on the desk, showing off how good he is at talking and getting people to listen.
Listen? Did she just hear something?
She inhales long and hard. That… that smells like oil. That special oil she’s smelled John use for guns, the one that Daddy uses for his crossbows, and there’s something else… something like… like Radu and tăticu and mother… no, like Quincy!
Dhampir!
Dhampir and crossbow oil!
Hunters!
Without thinking a moment further, she throws her weight against Quincy in an effort to get him behind the desk. There’s a bad cracking sound when he falls and she thinks he’s screaming, but she can’t focus on that.
She was only just fast enough, but she doesn’t have time to reach for the feathers on the bolt that’s sticking deep in her side, either. No, there’s more than one and that means more crossbows. The boys she walked past on the way in mean more people who might hurt her Quincy and she won’t let them. She’ll never let them!
Fangs and claws out, she charges at the nearest person to defend the man she loves no matter how many she has to kill for him!
~
Bloody hell! This isn’t how Quincy meant to maybe end up on top of that gang leader! Bloody ouch! What the hell was Cycy thinking?! And how is he going to live it down that he was so startled by her that he fell in the least graceful way possible, taking the gang kid with him, and he’s not sure if that ankle he landed on is only twisted. It hurts more than it has any right to!
Was that a gunshot? Oh Divine, that was a gunshot! Right in the building… right close by…
Suddenly, he whimpers. That’s what Cycy was thinking. His queen of the night, his knight, realised way before him that they are in danger. In actual danger. He didn’t think the gang kids would actually go for it… and normally his danger sense is impeccable.
Wait, what’s that pressure against his temple?
No, hush, I don’t have time for you right now. Ugh. He smacks at the gang leader pinned underneath him, because there it was again, that pressure and feel against that internal sense of touch of his. Is that… he starts cursing as he dares to glance past the table and spots the white haired person that is making Cycy howl.
Shit! It’s not the gang kids. It’s hunters!
White hair means dhampir and maybe that pressure is how it feels when a minstrel uses powers… Oh bloody hell, he’s played with Cycy so often before, she has shit for defences against mind control!
He doesn’t want to! He’s no good with violence and the air smells of blood and the small glance shows him that Cycy is still trying to fight and that looks painful and what if he gets hurt and what if his ankle is broken and what if…
Wait. She’s trying to fight for him!
Cycy’s first thought was to protect him. She threw him behind cover and attacked.
The smell of blood fades away in his mind as he feels his heart pound harder and harder. He can do this. With Cycy as his protector, he can do anything! He doesn’t need to see the person. He’s trained that! He held back an entire bloody village!
His fangs suddenly feel even more natural than they do anyway, his power feels like flowing waters under his fingers, ready for him to unleash a flood against anybody who would dare stand against his queen, against the one who would risk everything for him!
With a distinct sensation of something deep in him, something feeling as furry as Cycy always does against his mind, pressing in close to his back and then charging as he yells, with a willingness to hurt and harm unknown to himself, at the dhampir: “Stop attacking!”
Quincy doesn’t try to see if that worked, Cycy isn’t howling, and a moment later, there are horribly wet sounds. His queen is fighting, his queen cannot be stopped as long as they only throw metal and violence at her. But she might not be able to kill the minstrel.
Quincy knows who could. He needs his darling here. It’s too far to even hope for his telepathy to work. He hasn’t had any luck to project thoughts even across a room. But he has another way.
Dragging the gang leader out from under himself, he grabs him by the front of the shirt and pushes as hard with his powers as he can, again feels the furry thing that must be his drac. “Run to the castle and get help!”
~
John’s not thinking he’ll stay up for the dhampirs. It’s their date, their date with Darcy fucking dressed up as a pretty boy. Gross, and typical of his molly bro. He knows he’s being teased, and he’s not going to give Quincy any more satisfaction by reacting again to it when they stumble back home to him.
Nope, he’ll enjoy sitting with the book he and Quincy picked for the next dreamscape scenario they are cooking up for Darcy. Feet up comfily and going back and forth between reading the descriptions and building the scenery. Okay, yes, and totally enjoying that Arthur’s cat also decided his bribing attempts are worth it and curled up next to him.
Not that Arthur isn’t just over on his own sofa and the cat is playing them both, but John doesn’t mind. This is a good evening. He wonders if Miss Powlett is reading his letter, and he’ll never admit that he liked that Quincy talked him into sending it via telegraph so she’ll have it right this evening already.
She’s good at writing between the lines and it took him and Quincy some effort to catch everything, but he has to say, he likes the personality she’s showing. She just might be a great addition to the household. And a good woman to have as the biological mother of his children, but that thought is close to being arse territory again. He punches it square into its misogynist agenda so he forgets it.
The doorbell rings.
Oh for fuck’s sake. He should have known that the evening was going too well. The look going between him and Arthur tells him that yeah, he’s not the only one smelling the newest crisis deciding to not even wait for breakfast.
Can’t be helped.
Swinging his legs off the sofa, he checks if he looks noble enough even in his indoor outfit and, eh, good enough, their molly isn’t here to chew him out for it. When he opens the door, there’s a gangly kid, okay, young man in front of it, not in the best clothes and… is that blood he’s smelling on him?
“Run to the castle and get help!”
What? What did he say?
“Run to the castle and get help!”
Okay, he heard right and he’s being yelled at here. Wait. Reaching and pulling the guy into the light, he’s getting a better look at his eyes. The fucker’s completely dazed. Pupils dilated and staring into nothing.
He gets yelled at again.
Wait… fuck fuck fuck!
Dazed! Not from drugs!
That’s a Molly command effect! His dhampirs are in trouble! Fuck, how is he supposed to find them? The guy would know… okay, keep calm, you might not have time.
Shouting across half the castle for Arthur and already running for his shotgun, John asks the house spirit to deliver a message to Arthur to get Hannibal ready and to do something magical to the guy in the hallway. They need to trace where he came from!
Uh… that wasn’t quite what John thought of when he yelled for Arthur’s help, but what does he know about what magic can do and can’t do. By the time he comes running back to the entrance, Arthur hasn’t put a spell on the youth, no, he’s (gentle as he always is) trying to get him to the front where Hannibal is standing right outside.
“What are you planning?”
Arthur explains that he doesn’t have any tracking spells and scrying is object-bound, which doesn’t help them right now. But he remembered the time in London where they tracked with Darcy’s nose, and while they don’t have her nose, his horse has a good sense of smell, too.
Okay, John thinks Arthur put on his crisis brain, that’s too fucking cool and collected for the situation. But that’s fine, good counterpoint to him feeling every part of his body tingle as if somebody was running electricity through him. He needs to fucking do something right this moment or he’ll explode. His dhampirs are in danger!
But Hannibal’s a good horse- nightmare. John knows that and is perfectly happy to promise him extra snacks if he just please finds their dhampirs as fast as possible. After Hannibal has a good long sniff at the still-dazed but no longer shouting guy, he doesn’t even complain (much) when both Arthur and John get on. They both know that the fey horses can’t keep up with him, and John would rather deal with rumours than waste any time. The house spirit can deal with the guy when he fully wakes up.
If this wasn’t such a dire situation, he thinks they all would have some fun with Hannibal getting to stretch his legs like this, flaming hoofprints down their driveway and towards the city included. But again, good boy, he slows down as they get closer, begins to sniff around, breath coming out as big plumes of vapour that John kind of thinks indicate more heat than a normal horse would have… Habits, seriously, even now he thinks he has to adjust that in his dreamscape model?
Or maybe he thinks that specifically because all he can do is wait for Hannibal to find the right way. He can feel his fingers endlessly working against his palms, unable to do something right now, and the electricity tingling in every muscle makes him twitchy.
Luckily, it doesn’t take Hannibal that long, the trail is fresh after all, and it’s past sundown, the streets are fairly empty compared to only a few hours ago. Not that it matters that much, they are not going deep into town. No, they are circling around the edge, not even close to the waterfront, staying in the outskirts, far away from any fancy parts that they normally are in when on barony business.
Why would the dhampirs be out here? Their molly is a fancy snob, he wouldn’t enjoy a date away from any and all cultural luxuries… and clean dinner options. Unless, of course, he fancied himself a round of slumming. He dressed Darcy up as a guy. Okay, fuck, that scans as a possibility. But still, even if the dhampirs went into a rough part, he knows they had harbour dates, they’ve been fine roughing it with the sailors. How much worse could it get?
That question gets answered when Hannibal stops in front of a comparatively large building, a run down barn maybe, and scratches his hoof against the door, which isn’t closed properly, and fuck… Looking down John notices that the ground is trampled right outside the exit, and that’s several trails of blood.
Fuck! He can’t be too late!
Giving Hannibal a very quick pat in thanks, he scrambles off his back, gets his shotgun ready and listens for only a moment before entering the building. It’s quiet.
Too quiet. But the trails of blood are easy to follow. Follow all the way to the back of the building, where a door is propped open by a dead body.
~
Blood!
Pain.
Hungry!
Protect?
Keep biting!
Must… must win?
Win what?
Blood! Hungry!
~
Quincy started considering praying a while ago. Not that it wouldn’t be completely futile. The Divine is an adversary to prevail against no matter what it throws at him, not some deity that might listen to requests.
Still, it might be all he can do at this point.
He’s kept the other dhampir off his queen for as long as he could. He’s tired and hungry and in pain. That ankle is definitely broken. He couldn’t stand up when he tried. Tried to maybe get away, flee…
He trusts his queen to prevail. How couldn’t she? This apparition of strength and power and unbridled fury. This flame of determination painting the grey world in every colour of red and pink with the claws that rend the Divine directly. That rip the grey world’s veil away with every slash and growl.
Oh, she is formidable. She is magnificent. She is the pinnacle of every emotion coalesced into perfection.
She is also berserked out.
Even from behind the desk, Quincy can see that her eyes are glowing red and lost to all reason. Her growling has gone from her voice, oh that sweet chime of divine harmony and infernal chaos balanced, to the symphony of the night itself. Her drac shattering the bounds of all earthly confines, the primordial supremacy of his forest goddess plunging her foes into non-existence.
Oh, how he longs to hold that dark force, this swirling maelstrom of emotions, tight against his pounding heart. Oh, how he longs to live for long enough to savour her. His saviour, his protector, his queen of the Divine.
And yet, he fears the fangs he can see. Fears what all that divine power unleashed on him with not four but eight fangs would do. Fears that in her divine retribution against this deep hunger, his queen would rend him asunder like she’s done to their foes.
His own drac is shivering with that fear, with the need and love of life only such a deep fear can bring, and yet, it also trembles with its own hunger. He’s not felt the thing this distinctly before. It’s like he’s seeing Cycy through his drac’s eyes and, for the first time, saw reality. Saw the truth not filtered through the lies that his human-trained eyes perceive, but with his heart directly. The way he knows John sees Cycy, and Divine, how could he ever not understand why John is so helpless against this goddess? This queen among all the colourless people around.
Yes, John is right, the world is sepia all around her because all the life and colour bleeds into her, into this drac that feeds on the world itself. On the actual fabric of reality, for how else could she shine like this?
Be this beautiful even when locked in mortal struggle with her last remaining enemy.
She’s studded with crossbow bolts, and the holes of gunshots in her clothing reveal the unhealing wounds, her precious blood seeping in streams of ruby perfection over her tortured flesh.
She’s fought them all. The gang kids that must have been in league with the hunters. Those were mere distractions. His queen hardly needed more than seconds to rip throats and break bones. Laughing in dracial abandon at the thrill of the fight and the pain driving her ever on.
But the hunters knew how to use the distractions. She’s taken so many hits, so many bolts, thrown herself between them and him over and over. They tried to hurt him but he is unscathed. He does not have a single scratch on him thanks to her. He could focus on stunning the one he knows will be the only true obstacle.
Quincy has been locked in a battle of minds with the other dhampir ever since the first command faded, ever since he stopped him from slaughtering the messenger he sent out for help.
But he’s run out of blood, he can’t hold him back any longer, and he knows that his queen is in a deadlock with him. Her claws are deep in the boy, but his mind is holding her back. Whoever breaks first will surely die, and he cannot let his queen die. Not when he finally found her, truly found her.
And yet. There’s nothing he can do. Even if he struggles to his feet, if he somehow manages to stumble over there. He’s no fighter. He’s not good with violence. He hardly trusts his claws to even get at their enemy.
He doesn’t have the blood for another blast with his power. He tried, oh Divine, how he tried, but all he gets is a hungry whine from his drac. If he pushes even a little bit more, he fears he’ll be as lost to his rational mind as is his queen. And he doesn’t even know who he would uselessly attack. No, he’d only kill himself faster that way.
So all he can do is pray… No, not to the Divine, what has it ever done but mock him, no, he prays for John to arrive. To save them both.
And just like that, there is the feel of stubble over tight muscles against his internal sense of touch that can only mean one thing. His darling found them!
His darling found them, and not even a second after Quincy realises how close John must be, the room is filled with a sound so loud he covers his ears. Why did none of the other guns sound this loud? Why did none of the other guns produce that… that… horrible, gut-wrenchingly wrong crackling and splattering sound?
He doesn’t want to look. He doesn’t, no, but… but there’s one less furry feeling against his mental touch and he would never mistake Cycy for any other dhampir and she’s still there but, oh, no… she’s berserked and John is so very close. He can’t lose him either!
~