Chapter 47
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 46
It’s kind of fun to hold on to Darcy as she runs through the forest- she’s so much lower down than a horse, so she can fit through smaller gaps between the trees. It’s exciting. Arthur asks her to stop when he can smell the magic increasing, and they go investigate what must be the edge of the barrier. They study the trees and the ground, Darcy even digs through the snow to the layer of leaf litter and moss and rock beneath, but there isn’t any sign of how the barrier is made, nothing they could break.
Darcy turns back so they can talk about what they’re finding, or not finding, and she says that the forest looks wrong across there- like the flow of it isn’t quite right, like it’s the same forest, literally the same, not a continuation of this one. Arthur hesitates, but everything is under snow, so he decides it should be safe enough for him to try if he can cast through the barrier, or whatever it is.
And he can- a bush ahead of them smoulders a bit before the snow puts his fire out. He finds a dead tree, less snow on that with no needles to hold onto it, and casts a stronger fireball at that one. It catches, at least a bit, and a thin plume of smoke rises up into the pale blue evening sky. He doesn’t know exactly what they’re looking for, but after Darcy turns small bat and flies up, she reports that she could see another plume of smoke that’s coming from behind them, in a straight line, from what should be the forest way behind the cabin. It’s like they’re in some sort of bubble, Arthur thinks- sort of like a treadmill, where some poor animal can run all the time and never get anywhere.
Given that they can see the smoke, they decide to dare to split up after all, see what happens if Darcy flies back towards the fire on the other side of the cabin. Just to confirm, and she can move fast. And indeed, maybe half an hour later, which Arthur spends with his hands tucked in his armpits and the bear pelt wrapped tightly around him like a miniature tent, Darcy arrives… in front of him, across the barrier. And she can fly through it, and lands next to him.
Since Arthur’s really pretty cold again by now, they decide to return to the cabin. Arthur tells himself that at least they learned something about their circumstances, but he’s having a hard time convincing himself.
Once he’s all thawed out and warm in the cabin, they talk about their discovery, and now it occurs to Arthur to wonder whether the barrier is specific to vampires, and whether he could’ve gone through on his own. But then he realizes that that would mean he’d leave Darcy alone, so it wouldn’t be a solution anyway- except then Darcy tells him, strongly, too, that it would be good, better if she is alone here than that she hurt him! It takes him pointing out that then he’d be alone in a mountain forest in winter and that wouldn’t do him any good or be safe before she concedes that he shouldn’t actually try it.
Since they haven’t any other ideas, and Arthur realizes that now he is hungry, he decides to try his hand at heating up some of that canned food. The wood stove is really hot and it takes constant stirring and lifting the pot every now and then, but on the plus side, it doesn’t take long at all for the aroma of beans and gravy and pork to fill the cabin, and he’s definitely had worse dinners.
Afterwards, he finds himself yawning, but oddly, it’s still light outside. The cabin is in the shadow of the mountain the sun is hiding behind, but the sky is still blue and bright. It’s very strange, but since they don’t have any better ideas, Arthur decides to take a nap, while Darcy declares she’ll go and keep watch on the roof. Arthur offers to help her dig up some soil so she can sleep, too, but she points out it’s probably not British soil, anyway, so it wouldn’t help. Arthur gives in and bundles himself into the bed, which is narrow and creaky but covered in soft, thick blankets, and despite the light, the warmth lulls him to sleep quickly.
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He’s still asleep when Darcy checks in on him, as quietly as she can, she knows how trample-y she can be. Standing still next to the bed, she pulls a blanket back into place to make sure Arthur’s safe. Part of her wants to pet his hair, but that would be so very forward of her. Instead, she sneaks over to the fire and puts a few more logs on to make sure that he stays warm, then climbs back up on the roof, glad that he didn’t stir. She’s not sure how long she has already been sitting there, but the sky never gets fully dark. If anything, it’s already starting to brighten again, but that’s not what has her shiver. It’s the fact that she’s sitting in a mountain forest, in what is at least some kind of twilight, and there isn’t a single night friend here to greet her. She misses the bats and moths always swirling around her hair, she misses her bunnies, too. This is too quiet and she feels so terribly alone.
~~~~
Seward has relocated with the book to the library, as the most suitable location for research. And he only wishes he were alone in it. Gregory has been pacing for hours, of course right where he is distracting him. Because being useless wasn’t enough for him, no, he had to be a nuisance. Focusing on translating the Romanian is difficult enough, he always found himself more at ease with numbers rather than languages, but with having to wilfully push down the building rage at Gregory, Seward finds himself stumbling over the words, French layering over the Romanian and stubbornly refusing to give him the meaning he is looking for. The time he is wasting on having to look those words up in a dictionary would be better used concentrating on breaking what might be a cypher, but with the constant distraction, that concentration is hard to come by. Lucy has tried to get Gregory away, but he insists to be close to the book, that he has to do something.
~~~~
‘Do something’ is the only part of that John agrees with, which is why he’s been in the library, digging through whatever books he can find on enchanted books and hunter traps. Not that it amounts to much, but if he doesn’t do at least that, he might do what he can see Seward clearly fantasising about. Punch Gregory, that is.
When he hears raised voices, he wonders if Seward finally gave in, and rushes back (not sure actually if it’s to help or to join in) but finds them shouting at each other without physical altercation. Well, Gregory is shouting, Seward’s voice is shaking with murderous intent and for a moment John freezes, he’s only heard his own father sound like that once. Or at least, that’s what he reconstructs; he can’t fully remember everything before he found himself at the bottom of the stairs, cradling his mother’s body.
But whether he’s imagining the tone or not, he quickly realises that Gregory is accusing Seward of having no right to say anything about protecting Darcy. Which is fucking rich, given that Gregory was out of the house when she vanished. He doesn’t say what he was off doing, either. Not that John cares, or Seward, clearly, for that matter, since he only retorts that he thought he had made himself clear, the only reason he ever agreed to the marriage was because he assumed (and, fuck, that’s a lot of venom in one word) with an aberration or whatever he is exactly, he could trust Gregory to help keep Darcy safe.
Oh fuck. John balls his fists, because he can see Gregory’s signs of changing. He knows that there is something demon-like in Gregory, he’s bragging about that often enough, and if that thing reacts to anger, then he better knock him out fast. Before it’s Gregory murdering Seward.
He can’t let that happen. Darcy loves her papa!
He’s moving to put himself between Seward and Gregory, but then Lucy also rushes in, stands at his side and fuck, she had to be blonde. He doesn’t like the sudden weird association, but it’s gone as soon as it came because, no, his mother wouldn’t dare. And his mother wouldn’t know how to talk two angry men down; she didn’t know how to talk one down.
Suddenly, John finds himself superfluous in the confrontation, so instead he slinks over to the translation and tries to make any sense of it. The first pages make about as much sense in English as they made in the other language. What the fuck kind of grammar is that?
~~~~
Seward takes his seat again, the unusually easy to identify spike of emotion receding into his general fog of vaguer tendencies, freeing his mind to finally properly focus. He leaves it to Lucy to walk the child he has the misfortune to have given his daughter to out of the room. Instead, he starts asking John what he thinks of this.
The translation, he means. He confesses that he doesn’t trust himself completely, but no matter how he tried, the first pages did not seem to want to make sense. The later paragraphs however, these seem to be descriptions of people, vampires most likely.
~~~~
John agrees on that assessment, finds the finishing sentence on each of the paragraphs peculiar though. He taps the last one: “Bound and staked before me.” That’s a pattern, they aren’t all exactly like that, but this is nearly like a mantra throughout. Seward agrees and mentions that he already checked the last few pages in case these are some kind of teleportation instructions, and they can see what is meant to be Darcy’s fate there. But no, no mention at all of either Darcy or Arthur. John’s not sure if he’s relieved or not about that. Sure, he doesn’t want to think about his girl appearing tied up (he hated that enough when it was meant differently) in front of some fucking hunters, but that still means they have no clue at all.
~~~~
Lucy walks back into the room, alone, thankfully, and Seward explains to her what he just discussed with John. She considers his words for a few moments, then gives him a look. “Jackie, who would know a vampire hunter better than a vampire hunter?”
He doesn’t even bother to ask if she’s serious, or mention that he’s not exactly unqualified. No, she is right. Maybe, just maybe, this could work. And if not… he’s had contingency plans should the worst happen and Darcy be found, found maybe even by that specific hunter, so it may finally be time to enact them if this goes from one disaster to the next.
Nodding, he gets up and informs her that he’ll call on his old best friend personally. He likely will be willing to do a favour for him, but if he’ll still help when he knows everything, Seward doesn’t know. However, the likelihood that they can get help faster from anywhere else is low, and they don’t know how dire the situation is for Darcy. They have to trust the probabilities to be in their favour.
~~~~
When Arthur wakes up again, the light says it’s late into the next morning and he feels rested. Darcy tells him how it never got properly dark, it was twilight for a while and then the sun started rising again. That makes Arthur feel all sorts of out of place and out of rhythm, and they agree that time does seem to be moving faster here, or something. Darcy also made him a big helping of oatmeal. There’s no milk, but plenty of sugar and dried fruits, so he tucks in.
He’s not sure what to do with himself after that, so he decides to wrap up and have another walk around, close by the cabin this time, to see if he can spot any signs of the magic keeping them here that way- if this is some kind of… vampire hunter secret magic lair, there has to be some way out, right? The place is stocked with supplies, meant for a person to live there, but there’s no dead bodies around, so someone came here and left again, somehow.
Darcy follows him as a wolf, but she’s keeping more distance to him today, circles the cabin the other way from him with her nose in the snow. Once again, they return with no result, and it’s getting frustrating. But first, Darcy exclaims over Arthur’s sodden trousers and shoes and socks and insists he take them off so they can dry. Since the cabin lacks anything like towels, she rips more strips from her skirt (pointedly with her back to him, for which Arthur is very grateful), and once he’s dried himself off and wrapped up in a blanket from the bed, Arthur turns to the probably-a-bible to see if he can find anything of use there.
Darcy busies herself with putting his things near, but not too near, the stove, and keeping them in firewood and such. After what has to be hours, but not enough to make the sun tip towards evening again as it’s doing, Arthur sighs and pushes the book away. It has lots of annotations, most of which would be hard to read even if he understood the language- but he doesn’t. There’s no solution there.
It feels like they’re grasping at straws, but maybe the words that got them in here could get them out? Darcy, still at the other side of the cabin from him, agrees, and together they try to remember what exactly it was Darcy read. But either they don’t remember it right, or it doesn’t work- either way, they’re still in the cabin, and the sun is dipping behind the mountain on far too short a day. With no better ideas, Arthur decides to see about dinner- which reminds him to ask if she, uh, is hungry?
She tells him, or rather, a spot behind him on the wall because she doesn’t really dare to look at him, that she’ll be alright. John and Papa must have noticed they are gone and are trying their best to save them, she’s sure, so they won’t be here much longer.
When he asks if she’s sure, she actually pleads with him to not invite her powers so that he’ll be safe in the cabin, so that he can lock her out if need be, and if she’s trying to hurt him, to please stake her, he has the vampire hunter kit!
He stares at her, and then shakes his head- he’d never! She wouldn’t hurt him! He tries to explain that that’s why he’d rather she tell him if she’s hungry, but he doesn’t think he does a very good job of it, so eventually, he goes to sleep. It’s harder to fall asleep this time- he’s not sure it’s actually time to sleep, but it’s as dark as it’s going to get, and… he can’t think of anything more productive to do. After a while of watching the glitter of the ice flowers on the window pane, and listening to the soft rumble of the fire, he does drift off.
~~~~
Darcy is turning circle after circle after circle in the snow, her paw prints filled with ice from the repeated heat off her skin and she still worries. She’s not sure if this is better or worse, she feels so much closer to her drac but her drac is exactly who makes her act differently when she’s hungry, isn’t it? She can feel it; she can feel being drawn to the inside of the cabin. She can’t feel the cold out here, but it feels cold down to her soul. It’s dead; she’s alone out here, she hates being alone! She was alone so often, so long, her papa had to leave her alone so often and now she awoke anyway. She didn’t need to be alone so much.
Only then does she realise that she’s been howling, wolf howling, and it dies down into a whimper, a whimper that follows her as she slinks back to the cabin door, and paws it open. Of course, Arthur still didn’t invite her powers so she feels her drac’s face fall off herself as she steps inside, but she still feels her drac in every step she takes. Every step all the way over to the bed before she curls up on it. Not alone, she doesn’t want to be alone.
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Arthur wakes up from confused dreams, and it takes him a moment to notice that he’s not in London- there’s no dogs howling and barking, no factory horns, and… wait, there shouldn’t be a weight on his blanket, Gregory isn’t here. No, that’s Darcy, he sees when he turns his head, smiling at him and now very close indeed, cuddled up to him, and then she leans in and kisses him on the cheek and wishes him a good morning in a voice that’s deeper than her usual chirp, and yes- she definitely needs something to eat, this is why he told her to tell him before it gets to exactly this point, when she’s acting all odd… So he wishes her a good morning, too, and scoots out of the bed, and over to the cupboard with the cooking things for a knife.
“Hush, Arthur-dear, don’t hurt yourself,” her voice, still in that low tone, comes from right next to his ear as she dashes after him and puts her arms around him from behind.
That… feels really awkward. It’s not technically more body contact than when she carried him around on her back, but still… But he doesn’t really feel threatened, and giving her some blood will make her uncomfortable behaviour go away, give her back her full rational thinking, so he offers her his arm without the knife. After all, he can heal himself, and her fangs can’t really hurt more than a cut, right?
Her fangs spring out but also… she sniffs, close to him, then tilts her head with a whimper. “I don’t want you to be scared. I’m… sorry. I don’t want to be bad. Are you sure?”
At her question, Arthur feels himself relaxing- she’s obviously hungry but still thinking clearly enough to be concerned about him, so clearly not dangerously out of it. So he turns his head to smile at her a little, nods. “It doesn’t hurt too bad, right? And you’ll not take more than I can heal?”
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Before she can stop herself, her drac nudges her head forward so she can gently rub her nose against his cheek when she tells him it doesn’t hurt at all and she doesn’t want to be bad for him. Loosening her arms, she takes a few steps back and sits down on the bed again, lets her drac show because she can feel the puppy eyes it’s making at Arthur and that should show him that she never would be bad for him.
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Now she’s really mostly reminding him of her wolf-self, all nudging at him and with the hopeful look- he can almost see how she would have her ears perked at him. That dispels the last of his worries, and he walks over to sit next to her on the bed, folds one leg under so he can turn towards her. “Um… now what?” he asks as he offers her his arm again. He’s not sure he believes the ‘it doesn’t hurt at all’ part- there’s fangs and biting him with them involved, after all, but… he’s willing to find out.
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She scoots up to him and gently takes his arm, opens the buttons at his wrist while glancing back at him repeatedly, then turns so he’s sitting sideways to her and she can put her other arm around him. She doesn’t know what her bite will do exactly, she knows what it does with Gregory (make him come and it’s still a bit embarrassing), but John reacts differently. John always ends up crushing her in a hug, giving her such affectionate looks. So she hopes whatever it’ll be will be okay for Arthur. Mother calls it a hunting bite, it’s meant to make the person not want to leave. She doesn’t want Arthur to leave, so she’s extra gentle when she puts her lips to his skin, sniffs and adjusts slightly where her nose tells her she’ll really hit blood if she bites, but she forces herself to give him one more questioning look, despite her fangs aching so bad she’s shaking from being so close.
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Feeling her breath on his wrist tickles a little, and he’s not sure he’s ever been this physically close to anyone except Gregory, and it’s very different with Gregory, seeing as he’s not a girl and all, but… it’s not bad, and Darcy is being so cautious, so he nods his encouragement to her.
And when she does bite him, it really doesn’t hurt at all. He only feels a little pressure from her fangs, and then a warm feeling inside. Like being wrapped into a… metaphorical blanket, all comforting and affectionate and protective. Like a hug. It’s actually really nice.
~~~~
He’s relaxing against her? Oh, this is a new reaction again and she’s relieved that it’s such a mellow one. Licking at his wrist until she finally doesn’t feel so hungry anymore she keeps holding him, dares to move so he can rest his head on her shoulder, then kisses the bite all better. “Are you alright, Arthur-dear?”
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He nods to her question- then realizes and admits: “A bit dizzy. Um, sorry. Need a moment…” Being dizzy is not so conducive to concentration, and he needs to concentrate to heal himself. Despite how relaxed he’s feeling, his heart is beating a bit fast- apparently Darcy was really pretty hungry. But no matter- after a few moments, he manages to focus and visualize his spell, and move the magic through it, and then he’s quickly feeling better.
Apologising immediately for taking so much, Darcy asks if he’s steady enough to sit on his own, she’ll go make breakfast for him so he can recuperate quickly.
He smiles once he’s healed up, and tells her it’s fine, no reason to apologize- well, she could’ve said something earlier… But he healed himself, so it’s all good. But some breakfast would be nice. His stomach rumbles in agreement as he straightens up, blushes as he realizes how he’s been leaning his head against her shoulder, so he scoots off to the side to sit by himself on the bed again.
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Darcy catches herself looking wistful as he scooted away from her, blushes, and gets up to make breakfast. But she’s hardly a step away from him when she notices a darkness at the edge of her vision, and whirls around to throw herself at him, arms tight around him, and growls with how much she wants to protect him, to not get separated wherever they are being teleported to now.
Arthur sees the darkness, too, and more, smells the surge in the magic, and grabs onto Darcy just as hard as she’s holding onto him.
Before Darcy has fully oriented herself again, before the world decides to be more than darkness and the smell and feel of Arthur close to her, she recognises Gregory’s voice barrelling towards her, and then he smacks into her and Arthur. She comforts him while she blinks her eyes to finally be able to see around the room. Gregory declares that he’s so glad that he could save them, only to have John grunt, and that’s her papa’s voice countering that it was him.
But there’s another voice, deep, rumbling, and powerful, it gives her goosebumps. Just when he claims that it was, in fact, him who saved them, does she fully manage to focus her eyes and ends up swallowing. He’s huge! A brick wall of a man. Dark hair like her papa but her papa would never have a beard like that, could never have a beard like that… she wonders if it smells nice, then blushes furiously at that thought. And then she realises how she looks, shoe-less, with most of her skirt missing, and arms wrapped tight around Arthur.
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Arthur still has his hands knotted tightly into Darcy’s clothes… which are actually partially her underthings, he realizes with a hot blush that starts climbing up his neck and face and ears. And that would be bad enough with Gregory -who might be distracted and so forget to tease him about it- and Darcy’s father -who she’ll probably protect him from if he gets angry- and John -who probably won’t jump to any conclusions- there, but with a stranger?
A big and strong stranger to boot who has Arthur shift his weight away from him. With Dr Seward and John and Gregory there, he’s probably not a danger, if he really got them out of the book, but how did he know how to get them out of the book? It’s a hunter book. And who is he? Arthur holds himself still, tense, keeping a sideways eye on the man- he doesn’t want to challenge him or draw his attention, but if he makes a threatening move… Arthur holds his fire spell ready in his mind.