Chapter 14
Previously: Obsidian: Ash and Moonbeams – Chapter 13
Does he want to be…? Caliban throws his head back and laughs.
“Another one for the ‘no one’s ever asked me that before’ pile, puppy! Do I want to be pretty? I’d rather be intimidating, but I suppose if I can be intimidating and pretty, I don’t mind!”
“But you’re such a nice monster! That’s hard, how can I help you be intimidating?” Now she’s glaring at his hair and tries a few braids and attempts arranging his hair, but it’s too short, really, to stay in place with no clasps or ties or oils. She pouts. “I’m trying! But I think that might need Quincy’s makeup skills.”
He finds himself laughing again, pats her leg. “Puppy, I think that might just be you. Have you ever even met anyone or anything you found intimidating? The size and the teeth and the posturing, as you call it, usually serve me fine on that front.”
~
People are intimidating, is her first instinct to answer, but they’ve been over that earlier. ‘Scared’ was the wrong word. He’s right. It really was.
Intimidated?
When has she been intimidated?
She thinks… no, she knows when she was scared.
“Llew leaning over me when I was wearing the fae crown that imprisoned my drac. The demon letting me run into his emptiness when I attacked. My own drac when it made me consider hurting John. Marcas when I realised that he nearly made me sell my love. That’s… that’s what intimidating is, right?”
Rubbing her cheek against his hair, she whimpers:
“Intimidating is when somebody could hurt my swarm.”
He makes a thoughtful sound, then answers: “Yeah, that could be what it means, though it’s not quite how I’d define it. I’d say it’s ‘don’t mess with me, you’ll regret it.’ A warning. The promise of fear.”
“But I’d only regret it if they could hurt my swarm, so maybe it’s the same?”
That sharp smell that tickles her nose tells her that she’s trying to remember something. Somebody who could hurt her swarm. Quincy’s grandfather. She didn’t attack him. She knew she couldn’t win. But all she felt was angry. Huh?
“Calidear, you say intimidated and fear go together. I didn’t maul Quincy’s grandfather because it wouldn’t have done anything. But I didn’t feel intimidated, I think. Annoyed, more like.”
~
“Aaand we’re back to you not really doing ‘intimidated’, fearless puppy.” He grins at her. She’s just so much fun with that.
~
The tips of her ears feel hot. She can only guess that must mean she’s blushing furiously. But that grin and what he said, it feels so terribly like when John is proud of her. She loves when John is proud of her, and that Caliban uses ‘puppy’ as his pet name for her makes her feel he’s proud of her drac. Now she’s just a melted, flustered puddle on his shoulders, because, night, does he make her feel appreciated.
~
“Cute, fearless puppy. Which isn’t usually my thing, but it just makes me want to bite you. In a fun way, not a lethal one,” he muses. Far too slowly, the mountain side that holds his camp is coming closer.
~
“You’ll make me blush worse with the promise of those nice teeth!” Just about to giggle and wiggle in anticipation, she realises something that instead makes her pout and kick her feet in the air.
“No fair! I can’t let you bite me if I need to drink from you. No fair, no fair, no fair!”
Grey world! Now she gets what Quincy always means by that, right now it definitely feels like somebody has it out personally for her, with first Llew, then Marcas being mean, and now she can’t even have the best part of her Calidear!
~
He’s near tempted to join her in the pouting. His teeth are thrumming with anticipation along with his cock, and just like his cock, he really wants to sink them into something hot and soft. “Why not?”
~
Great, now he smells as frustrated as she feels. It makes her want to snuggle him, so she does, while explaining with a whine: “Because I’m a dhampir. Blood is not just food, it’s also power and intimacy. Radu, he bit me and then gave me less of his blood than he took of mine. That’s an enthrallment. It’s meant to make you beholden to the person. Silly word, beholden, really, it makes your drac wag its tail at them. I asked him to. I knew I’d love him anyway, and an enthrallment is fast.”
For a moment, she sniffles, she hates those memories, so much, so very much. And remembering why she asked Radu to enthrall her makes her remember what her men did to make her feel better about it, and now she misses them all over again. “I was blood chained to the demon in what should be the closest, dearest thing to any vampire: a blood bond. Our mind and soul shared through our blood given in fair amounts.”
The spot Quincy likes best on her neck is tingling, her lips are tingling, her drac is howling and scrambling to keep its paws on the ground. She’s so worried about the bridge completely vanishing again. “Blood bonding, that’s what Quincy and I were doing. If I… if I let you bite me when I might have nobody else to drink from, I might not only get obsessed with you, I might end up enthralling you, or… marrying you.”
Taking his face with both her hands to force him to look at her, she glares right into his eyes. “I’m not marrying you by accident! I’m only marrying you if I fall silly in love with you!”
~
How the fuck is she so adorable without triggering his predatory instincts? “…Can’t say I’ve ever considered marrying anyone, but… yeah, by accident? No thank you. And definitely no to any beholden-ness. Your magic sure is all about the blood, huh?”
~
It feels kind of nice to stare at him like this, all intense, but then of course he can’t walk, so she lets go of his face again and just nods.
“Vampires call it vitae. Means power and class and blood all the same. Blood arts is what vampire magic is called, too. Yeah, it really is all about the blood with every aspect of my life and I like it that way. I’m a monster, not the princess. I get to like blood and Quincy’s helped me be less embarrassed with having to bite people I don’t know, too, but… but I like it best when I know the person.”
Putting both her arms around his neck and rubbing her cheek against his, she ends up turning and licking his face instead. “You smell nice, but the blood under your skin smells nice, too. I want to kiss you and stick my fangs into your lips and show you how you make me feel and melt into the taste of your blood on our tongues. It’s the absolute very best to do that with Quincy and with John and I miss them, so I don’t want to feel like I can’t have that. You feel right!”
~
He gets back to walking now that he can see the ground again instead of her big, pretty purple eyes, squeezes her thigh. “Romantic monster,” he observes with a chuckle. Which… he’s okay with, oddly enough. She’s just so… direct and honest about it. It’s not some kind of game or performance, she just really is like a puppy that takes a sniff of you, decides it likes the way you smell, and then climbs all over you because it wants to.
But clearly, there’s more to her insistence with this whole ‘monster’ thing- she’s not just embracing it as a fact of her existence, she’s positioning it as a contrast.
“So what’s this monster and princess thing about? I get the sense that’s a short-hand for you for some whole big concept or something. Anyone want you to be a princess instead of a monster? Literally or figuratively?”
~
“Not wanted to, supported.”
Maybe it’s silly, with how much she misses her men, but only now, talking about her Papa, is when she starts crying. “Papa. He gave me everything in my room. All the books that were my world. There only ever was one role for a girl. Princess. It was what the books taught me I had to be, could only be.”
Not bothering to wipe at her tears, she’s not embarrassed by them, her love for Papa deserves tears, she still leans her head down on Caliban’s shoulder. “He always tried so hard to make me feel strong in the role the world handed me. But then the demon ripped me out of my room and made me think he was my Prince Charming, no choice but to marry him or be ruined, no matter that I couldn’t stand him.”
She’s growling, but only for a moment, because no matter how much Gregory hurt her, her men were there for her. “John made me his wolf-girl. Quincy made me his fallen angel. I finally get to be the monster that gets to love my drac and my men, no matter what the grey world Quincy always talks about tries to push on me. The princess was the mask the demon pushed on my face until it cut into my bone and trapped me inside so I thought my poor drac was drowning in my own tears. The monster… and being loved for being just that, for being protective and having a mind John tells me is all special, that’s… that’s happiness. That’s being the best for my swarm.”
~
“Ah, Midgard- still keeping their women subservient and more or less enslaved, huh? Though the stories I heard there did have a few other roles for them. There were queens and whores. Not much between, granted. Can’t fault you for not finding yourself in that societal construction.”
And now he knows the source of that ‘grey world’ phrase, too.
~
“My mother made herself queen of the Court, but I hate being baroness. I only do it so I can protect John and Quincy, give them a home.” Reaching again, she strokes his cheek. “A place where you know your loved ones are safe and you can make them happy. I hope I can share that with you.”
There is her drac again, wagging its tail at him, making her giggle. “My drac has opinions about you needing to become part of my swarm. Monsters together. I’ll never again be just the demon’s whore because I thought it was the only thing I could be good for. You’ll make him disappear if John didn’t already. My poor John, he’s always trying to be a good man, but I hope he doesn’t push his temper down this time.”
~
“Monster puppy who likes to make a nest for her swarm, huh?” It’s pretty odd for someone to be so insistent on… wanting him. Not in the carnal way, but in a way that’s about him, actually. He’s not sure what he thinks or feels about that, but decides that seeing as they’re stuck here anyway… he’ll just deal with that when it becomes relevant.
“So how does this swarm business and nesting business go together with the no-marriage business? Seeing as you said no accidental vampire marriage, but also you’re talking keeping me around for more than a fuck or five.”
~
It’s certainly not princess-like, but she swats at him and snickers.
“I can count further than five!”
But maybe it is monster-like to jump on the crude joke rather than anything else, because she’s sure she’s being very scandalous and unladylike and all those words that only make sense for that etiquette that isn’t safety but a bad cage. Or, well, a way for Quincy to amuse himself. Yes, that’s the only thing it’s good for, so why should she mind that Caliban is stating things so explicitly? Not as if her drac doesn’t agree with him, and really, that’s the important part.
“Well, I’ll start by giving your camp a nice woman’s touch, make it as good, uh, as good a nest as I can! Apart from that… I’m not entirely sure? It tends to go that I find somebody and then we have lots of things happen that we have to figure out together and we grow from it and grow close. So really,” she shrugs, because isn’t it obvious? “We’ll just have to see how our story goes and if we overcome our perilous imprisonment here by our combined powers, or if we have to make this a stranded-alone-together drama while we wait on rescue from the rest of my swarm.”
The thought makes her bounce. “Both sound like great stories to me!” Blushing again, but also definitely grinning fang-to-fang, she adds with a giggle: “Just a question of if my men find me with another husband or with my dearest dog fishie bestest monster friend!”
~
“I notice how dying or ‘going insane through boredom’ or ‘rot here for all eternity’ aren’t part of your potential story arcs,” he points out. “Not that I’m not all for options one or two.”
Yeah, sounds like they’re on the same kind of ‘wait and see what happens’ approach.
“So you’re a multiple-husband kind of puppy, not a ‘only one husband’ kind? I assume that’s not how they do it on Midgard where you come from, so how are you handling that with your two men back there?”
~
“But I have you, I won’t get bored even if I have to spend a long time here! I’ll miss my swarm really badly, but I’ll do everything I can to help you not be bored or rot!”
Barking? Yes, her drac is barking and shaking itself. Bad thoughts, she doesn’t like her dog fishy worrying about how long they might be here, so she lets the bark bubble up to the surface and stomps the air, too. “I’ll be the bestest puppy there is for you, so there!”
“And I’m the bestest wolf-girl for John and the bestest fallen angel, forest goddess, or whatever Quincy is calling me that day for him! Papa and Daddy love Mother very much and love each other lots, too, and if Papa does, it then it must be the right thing to do no matter that the stories never talked about that. No, no, Quincy and John make each other better. They are, hm, John says bros, and I know that means lots to him, as does actually having a friend to Quincy.”
~
“Oh, the harem runs in the family, huh?” he teases. “Well, fine by me. We’ll see what happens and where it goes, and I’m looking forward to your bestest puppy efforts. You really are very fun,” he assures her, because she is.
~
It’s the worst impulse yet, she wonders if the growly games her men always play are rubbing off on her, because she snorts and doesn’t stop herself from saying: “Dhampir, told you, family is a thing. I mean… Keeping it in the family with wanting Quincy and Radu, aren’t I?”
He throws his head back and laughs. “Okay, explain that one to me! How’s that keeping it in the family?”
Oops! It’s so obvious to her that she didn’t even think that he wouldn’t know. She normally doesn’t mention it because Quincy is uncomfortable with it. Not as uncomfortable as Radu was, but well, minstrels. “So, remember tăticu? The one who loves Mina lots? Mina is Quincy’s mother, my mother-in-law. tăticu is my vampire grandfather because he’s mother’s sire. And Radu is tăticu’s brother. Not vampire version this time. It’s why my dhampir family weakness is all over both of them despite neither of them being as sexy as John. So, keeping it in the family by marrying kind of, not really, but close enough, my uncle and wanting my grand-uncle in my swarm so bad!”
~
Caliban maps that out mentally. “Oh, naughty! And what’s your husband think of fucking the same person as his… uncle, this time by blood, right?”
~
“Didn’t manage to get to that with Radu.”
Yes, yes, she knows she’s grumbling. “They ripped me away from him on the third date and then did a ritual to rip my emotions out because they were all silly about the enthrallment. It’s that blasted ritual why Llew got me to agree at all to go talk to Marcas, something about still being in his debt from him organising it and helping my swarm save me from Radu. I didn’t need saving!”
For a moment, she shouts, but then just sighs and settles back down.
“But Quincy caught my thought of ‘I can’t have Radu, but at least you look like him’, yes, that was mean of me. I know. He’s loved it better since. Him and John both. I just wish I could still be good for them and show them that Radu is just hurt and needs loving better himself.”
~
He makes a thoughtful noise as he considers what she’s telling him, tilts his head.
“What’s stopping you? Aside from the whole ‘stuck on the stinking foot of Yggdrasil’ part, I mean? Though I can see how someone might get growly about this enthrallment business. Sounds like it’s built to be a mind-fuck.”
~
“But my family did this whole big ritual to make sure I don’t have Radu in here anymore. I don’t want to be bad for them.”
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t sigh, and she lets her arms dangle down before she’s tempted to try to push on her chest again, because she worries about the hole there if she loses her bridge with Quincy, too, now. “And they did that and I still love him. I knew what I was doing when I asked him for the enthrallment. It was my idea. Just because others are scared of what my drac and I decide doesn’t make it wrong for me. I so hope they don’t suspect Radu and are being mean to him because I’m missing.”
~
“You’re all mopey about it, though. You should go get yourself what you want.” She’s much more fun that way. “Do they know you knew what you were doing? With that whole Midgardian frame-work and all, do they know you weren’t the prey?”
Because he could see how her puppyish directness might read as naivete. Hell, it might be naivete, he doesn’t know her well enough, especially in a more complex social context, to say. And with what she said about her upbringing being geared towards ‘princess’, and how hard she’s pushing against it… Yeah, might not be obvious to fellow Midgardians how sharp her fangs are.
Not that he has anything but her word for the fact that her fangs are sharp enough, and this Radu really didn’t manipulate her. Making someone think something’s their own idea is, after all, perfectly possible.
Though she’s just so straight-forward… Pretty words wouldn’t get to her, he doesn’t think.
~
“But Arthur’s scared of him.” Which is utterly silly of him.
Wait. Her drac is reminding her of something that feels like forever ago, but really was hardly half a year ago.
“He was scared of me, too, at first. Really, he’s scared of half of everything. All Gregory’s fault, of course. But,” she narrows her eyes and feels very wily for even considering it, “if I could convince him back then that I won’t eat him, Radu can convince him that he won’t eat him either. He’is much better at talking than me! He’s real social and smart and charming! And he cares about me, he knew that tăticu gets all mean when it comes to him, so he took my memories away so tăticu wouldn’t know about us.”
How that made everybody so scared is totally beyond her, but then, they didn’t see his drac the way she did.
“Everybody wants to see him as the villain when he’s just a swoon worthy rake. I like rakes. Quincy and John always grin about that in the stories they play out with me in our dreamscape. And even if Radu was the villain, I’m a monster, that means I’m a villain, too, in most stories, so I should be with the villain. Seriously, not as if everybody in the household isn’t technically a criminal!”
She’s not going to say anything about John because he doesn’t want anybody to know, but it’s true enough. She’s an adulterer and lying to the crown about being human, Quincy’s a molly, Arthur had to steal to eat, Papa killed a patient to save Mother, Daddy is a scoundrel and was a hunter. Humans would judge all of them!
~
“Arthur was the mage, wasn’t he?” Caliban asks, just to make sure. “And yeah, you’re really set on this Radu.” He shows her his teeth in a grin. “If we get off this rock, I’ll help you get him. You should have what you want, and if that’s a charming villain…” He shrugs. “The rest of your guys can just get over being scaredy-cats.”
~
“Best dog fishie ever! You are so sweet! Thank you!”
Quincy not talking mean about Radu anymore apparently wasn’t as good as it could possibly get! Oh, she’s so excited. Her story was so much more wonderful already with her huntsman and prince, but with a fellow monster, they can make so many more arcs she didn’t even dare dream of! Just one thing, and she’s giggling while covering Caliban’s cheek in kisses again: “But Quincy is a self-declared coward and it makes John and me happy to protect him, so no getting over it for him, no no.”
~
Something about her reaction makes him feel like purring in satisfaction. How odd.
More importantly, though… He gives her a stare.
“Why would anyone do that?”
That makes no sense. Why would anyone declare themselves a coward?
~
“Uh, because it’s true?”
She likes this! Caliban always asks her questions she didn’t expect. His mind is special in his own way.
Not that Quincy and John aren’t special, and not as if she hasn’t laughed so hard many times together with John when Quincy pulls something that has both of them go ‘What?’. But Calidear asking those questions means it’s important, so she thinks more about it.
“He’s said that it’s smart? He’s not good with violence, so getting away from it is good for him? He gets really jittery after a fight. And when we have our adventures in the dreamscape, there’s always lots of shrieking and he runs away and just mind-controls whatever is after him. It’s so fun to watch, maul whatever set him off, and then get showered with his affection as reward.”
~
“Hmmm,” Caliban makes, as his entire self rejects the notion of acting like that.
Marking yourself prey. Broadcasting your weakness.
Though being able to mind-control your enemies does not sound like weakness. Is this…?
“Cultural, I think. That’s antithetical to everything Aesir are all about. That’d be an invitation to get torn apart, socially if not literally. And also, that’s so very, very weird from a fae.”
He imagines Faomir acting like that, and the ridiculousness of the image has him chuckle.
“What a thing to waste emotions on.”
~