Chapter 74
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 73
Darcy has to admit that her mother is beautiful and graceful when she hunts. She can do it with a mere smile, a look as she passes somebody, a wink over her shoulder when, invariably, the men turn to look after her. There is never a dearth of willing victims, and maybe Darcy should feel better about it, but the thought of doing it like that makes her feel she is a whore down to the bottom of her heart. She can’t do it, she knows it’s true but her drac is pouting.
It wants to run and hunt and take down its prey. Lucy tells her that she understands that. Hers wants to sit in ambush and pounce. It was hard for her, too, to learn to not listen to that impulse. Wistfully, she tells her that if she had not hunted like a wild beast in those first days after she woke up alone in her coffin, Art may never have believed that she truly could be evil and soulless and worthy of being staked.
No, Darcy doesn’t want to make her daddy sad! No, if that’s what happens if she allows herself to hunt like she feels would be easier then she’d rather starve! She’s not sure why Daddy would be upset about it, but she will listen to her mother. Still, she can’t do it. Yes, she can get attention, she can occasionally turn a head. But she’s not her mother. It feels strange and wrong and as if her drac is getting its feet entangled when she tries for that tantalizing half-turn to smile at somebody.
After a few tries, Lucy takes her to the side and shakes her head. It’s never going to work if she isn’t enjoying herself. Being alluring is all about confidence and projecting her own joy of the hunt outwards.
With a sinking feeling, Darcy shudders and gives her mother an unsure shrug. She doesn’t think she can do this. The joy of the hunt… yes, she knows it, when she runs with her fox friends or flies with her bats, the night air streaming through her fur and her blood pounding through her veins with every hammering step or flushed beat of her wings. When she swoops down on her prey and sinks her teeth into it, feels the dance of life and death between them. When she is part of something much bigger than her, part of her bat swarm, part of her night friends, part of the entire network of predator and prey spanning the world.
Blood and death wrapping themselves around her and crushing out the sense of forever standing alone in the twilight, unable to take a step in either direction on her own. It’s then that she feels most at ease, most free of this prison of never feeling complete.
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Listening to that, as outlandish and foreign as it seems to her, Lucy pulls Darcy close. She can hear the pain in her voice and she doesn’t want Darcy to ever have to feel like that. It must be a dhampir thing. She doesn’t think her drac ever felt like that. It feels perfectly complete as is. Sure, some days Lucy yearns to know other vampires, only more so now that she knows Darcy’s drac. But still, she wants to do something for Darcy. After a moment of thought, she wonders. Alright, let them play a game, tell a little story. Darcy loves stories just as much as she does, doesn’t she?
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That is how Darcy finds herself hiding in bat form in the shadows while her mother walks the worst parts of town, using her siren song power to draw people to her. But she puts extra meaning into it. When she doesn’t focus on it, her singing will draw people to her, her drac will even make them pliable to her hunger, but when she tries she can evoke emotions, and can draw specific motivations.
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If Darcy feels too shy to seduce men and wants to hunt but also respect Art’s morals, then the solution seems obvious to Lucy. She switches her power to draw on darker motivations of their prospective prey instead. Let Darcy’s drac pounce on the ones that would harm her if they could. Lucy shall be the damsel in distress and Darcy her valiant guard monster. She can eat those who dare wanting to harm a sweet, vulnerable young woman wandering streets of ill repute.
It’s for the best that Lucy has to concentrate on her power or she would snicker. Darcy is about as eager about that approach as she was hesitant about Lucy’s normal hunting behaviours. And really, not as if they intend to drain anybody dry. Lucy’s long learned that’s not only questionable, it’s gluttony and rather problematic on not ending with hunters on your tail. So, no, she just happens to wander into a dark alley followed by what she would pass over for dinner, but if it makes Darcy feel better, well, every drac to their own preference.
Darcy definitely doesn’t seem to be grossed out, is about to pounce, her steps suddenly becoming audible when she changes from rat to human shape, still far shorter than the man but clearly not intimidated by that. Just about to wind her siren song down, Lucy notices the complete shift in Darcy’s behaviour, and a moment later she spots the likely reason for it. Gregory appeared out of nowhere on one of the roofs. He’s looking down at Darcy out of cat eyes but he still seems to grin.
Where Darcy seemed ready to make her first solo strike only moments before, Lucy can now see her hunker and shuffle her feet, giving Gregory unsure glances. Even her fangs have retracted. Well, they’ll not get anywhere like this. Lucy gets it, biting is intimate to Darcy, it’s not as if she doesn’t understand how hard this can be in the beginning. Of course she’s embarrassed in front of her husband. But still, Gregory ought to be supportive of his wife. It’s for her own best, she told him that back when there was that terrible obsession trouble, and he listened to her.
So Lucy sends the intended victim off and jumps up on the roof to have a talk with Gregory. It’s somewhat weird talking to a cat but he seems, as always, eager and amiable to everything she says. Her daughter sure picked herself an easy husband. He even volunteers to help Darcy hunt, which is good, with all the delays Lucy is running terribly short on time. She needs to get back to Art and Jack, and she has a long flight ahead of her.
Having gotten a grinned ‘I’ll get right on it!’ from Gregory, Lucy goes to find Darcy again, who has weirdly enough wandered off a little bit, sat down in another alley and, ah, of course, is petting the local rats. Now that is very much Darcy and very much not something Lucy wants to be anywhere close to! Rats… shudders run up and down Lucy’s arms. Rats… they ran over her coffin while she clawed her fingers bloody to get out of it. No, she hates them! They are filthy and the sounds they make are the soundtrack of the worst day of her life! No… she can’t do it. No…
Lucy takes several steps back, suppresses a shudder, or rather, fails at it, and instead of saying a proper goodbye to Darcy, mentally yells at her that she asked Gregory to help her now and flees away into the night sky. Up and as far away from those little, cool, gross paws that she can all but feel running up her legs if she doesn’t get away right now.
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Oh… even her mother has given her to Gregory now. Darcy hangs her head and gets up. Luckily Gregory isn’t right there. She’d be so worried for her rat friends if he was but no, she has to walk for a while to find him and then… she… she just can’t do it. He grins and teases her if she’s up for more pretty man hunting? Naughty of her to do that without him anyway. There he thought she was hunting for food. But clearly, she’s hunting for more. That’s what her mother said anyway.
Everything in her recoils. That is not what she was doing! Her mother… her mother wouldn’t say that, would she? But… her mother was trying to teach her to hunt with seduction, wasn’t she? Did she tell Gregory that? Was that how he understood it? No, no she wasn’t more of a harlot than she is!
He’s still looking at her, still grinning, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Those eyes that stare right at her, right into her soul and she feels so ashamed, so small, so helpless. Her husband made her a whore, why does she feel so dirty now for so much as trying to get some blood? All she wanted was to be good for John… John, her affair, not her husband… and Gregory probably knows that. With tears in her eyes she lowers her gaze and shakes her head. “No, I wasn’t. I don’t do that if not for you.”
It sounds terrible, but not as terrible as his laughter. He’s just shrugging before he jumps off the roof, he’s still looking down at her, even while standing right in front of her. There’s no hand on her chin to lift her face up. No smile to make her feel better, just that smell that isn’t a real smell drowning everything around them out. Making her feel as if she can’t breathe. No, not even breathe, she’s too powerless for even that. He can decide over her. Her papa gave her away, her mother gave her away, she signed the marriage contract. She signed with blood, it seems, and he’s just standing there, looking down at her, still grinning.
Grinning until she feels her drac whimper and curl small. She doesn’t know how she manages to keep standing, but then, she can’t just fall down here. If she does… her rat friends might come to check up on her and then Gregory will get them, too. No, no, she can’t let him have power over them, too.
Her hands are shaking but she puts one on the earrings she got and just stands there, stands there until she can’t feel anything anymore. Not until her drac tells her that Gregory is receding off into the distance. When did he even turn away from her? She doesn’t know. She just knows that she feels drained, that her drac feels so terribly tired, and that she needs to get back home.
Although, by the time she steps back through the door on the library mezzanine, she can’t remember how she got there, either. Her mind is in a fog. Her drac’s paws feel sore. She’s at the end of her fortitude. All she can do is drag herself into her bathroom and crawl into the bathtub. Clothes and shoes and everything. The house hesitates only for a moment but then obliges and the hot water helps. It shuts everything else out when it comes up to over her nose and she feels like she can wrap herself around her drac, too. Try to warm it like the water warms her and maybe, just maybe thaw out that sense of her heart having turned to quartz.
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Darcy should have known, of course she should have known!
It’s obvious and she’s stupid and she hates it.
But what could she have done? After what happened last time she couldn’t just go back out and try to hunt again, could she? Gregory would have found her again, wouldn’t he? He must be able to feel her, too. He doesn’t have a drac, but still, he appears too reliably right where she is, it’s like she’s never too far out of his sight. He doesn’t go to bed with her, he’s never there when she wakes up, but she knows that sometimes, sometimes when she wakes up she can see his eyes in the dark. He’s sitting over her when she sleeps, just sitting there, staring, and all she can do is turn around and press her eyes shut as tight as they will go. Try to fall asleep again even knowing that he’s there. All she can do is cradle her drac close and hope he’ll stop staring at her.
He’s her husband, why does she feel like that under his gaze? Shouldn’t she like that he watches over her? But he never asked and she doesn’t need it and it feels weird because he waits until she can’t tell him off to appear, only to disappear before she wakes up.
He seems to not do it when John is there, at least she really hopes so, but it just means that she finds herself more often than not in John’s bed or him in her bed.
But not this time, this time she woke up, and too early at that, to Llew. She wants to howl. Yes, he’s been in this bed before, but that doesn’t mean he’s just welcome at any point! Of course he doesn’t understand that, worse, he’s grinning at her again, puts a hand to his chest and fakes being hurt by her rejection. As if she wouldn’t like to actually hurt him! But his next words make her whimper. “And there I just wanted to selflessly offer you some help with that nasty, nasty bloodsucker obsession of yours. You need more blood and you know it. Well, here I am.”
She shouldn’t, or should she?
She knows exactly why he is offering. He couldn’t care less about her obsession issues she’s sure. He just wants to use her again for his own desires. But isn’t that what men do with a whore? And if she makes him pay in blood, isn’t that better than making him pay in sleeping with Gregory? It would hurt less and she knows that despite her wanting to slap him for the words, he’s right.
He knows it, too, that grin is too sure. He knows that she can’t really say no to him. Can’t say no to him any more than she could say no the last time he was in her bed and at least… at least it’s only him now.
For one more moment, she fights with herself, then reaches for him. She’s not going to pretend she likes to touch him. At least that he is good for, she never has to hide any of her anger and disgust with him. He likes it. She can throw every last bit of resentment at him and he’ll chuckle. Fey… are weird like that.
But if nothing else, at least he actually tastes good. Closing her eyes, even where she can’t shut her ears to his reaction, she savours the sensation dancing over her tongue like champagne bubbles, like little lightning bolts swirling, and maybe this wasn’t such a terrible idea after all.
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This was the worst idea she ever had!
He lingered around after she licked at her bite and closed it that way, and what difference does it make if he sees her change? So she eventually got out of bed, only to shriek when she sits down in front of her vanity. Her hair is white! And, of course, that’s exactly the moment Llew disappears in glitter and laughing raucously. Oh, how she hates him!
No… no, Gregory can’t see her like this! If he does he’ll know about Llew and then he’ll tease, or worse. No, she has to do something about this. But what? She doesn’t know. Oh no, no, no! What to do? Jumping up from her vanity, she makes two agitated circles around her room before she turns rat and runs as fast as she can over to Arthur’s room. Maybe he can help!
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Arthur wakes to the sound of urgent knocking, and it makes him sit up in bed, heart hammering- that’s never a good sign! “What is it?” he croaks while he disentangles himself from the stuffed genet and flicks a spark at his bedside lamp.
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“Can I please come in?” Darcy whispers urgently, throwing glances all over the place but Gregory doesn’t feel too close yet. Close, but he probably is not right around the corner. For right now, at least, maybe she still has a chance to get away with her mistake.
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Oh, it’s Darcy… and she sounds worried? And, well, it wouldn’t be the first time that she sees him in his night clothes, or he sees her in hers, and they’re family, so it’s okay, right? “Um, yes, sure?”
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Sneaking as best she can and closing the door behind her silently, Darcy slinks into Arthur’s room, throws one worried look all around but luckily, only Katharina and not a certain other cat is to be seen. Looking at her feet for a moment, she whimpers at Arthur. “Please, Gregory can’t see me like this. Please help me make it go away.”
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Arthur blinks, because… because Darcy’s hair is… white? Like that of an old person, but she doesn’t look any older than normal otherwise, that he can see in the light from his lamp. “Er… of course I’ll help! Just, uh… what happened? What can I do?”
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“Llew pranked me.” It’s not quite the truth, well, not the entire truth, and then Darcy feels bad for lying even that much, so she slumps into a chair and hides her face behind her hands, tries not to cry, but it still just tumbles out, words and tears. “I was trying so hard to be better for John. I told you I can get addicted to a person’s blood, and I don’t want to do that ever again to him. And that means… means I need more blood. And Lucy tried teaching me so that I don’t just have to hope we go on an excursion and somebody bad is there in a fight. But… but… Gregory saw and he… he… I don’t want to be such a harlot, and then Llew heard and offered and what was I supposed to do?” Her voice climbs into an insecure whine at the end.
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“Oh,” Arthur says. So she… had some of Llew’s blood and somehow that’s connected with the white hair? Maybe he used it to cast a spell on her? And also… He blushes, but it was fine in the cabin, and he wants to help, so he continues: “Um, if you ever need some blood, uh… What I mean is, I’m happy to help, um, too…?” He trails off, unsure.
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The blush is rising and surely peeking out from behind her fingers where she hardly dares to look at him. “I don’t want to be bad for you… and… and biting is… can be… um, it’s really very close. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable with me.”
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“Um, well, it felt fine that time in the cabin…” He gives her an unsure smile. “Like a hug. So, uh, if you need it, well… my offer stands?”
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Didn’t she think of this back when she first learned about her obsession struggle? Didn’t she think of Llew and Arthur? But back then she also thought it never possibly could seem intimate with Llew. What if she ends up corrupting Arthur? Or if she does something that he doesn’t want, he’s so uncomfortable with the entire topic and she can never predict her bite. And then he’ll be disgusted with her and probably with himself, too. No, no she can’t be that bad for him. So all she does is smile and thank him, but continues: “But what about this and… me hunting enough? I don’t want to touch that many people.”
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Arthur supposes he understands that- after all, he wouldn’t be that keen to put his mouth on random people’s skin, either. “Maybe you could use a straw,” he jokes, snickers a little at the mental image.
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Her eyes go wide as her hands sink down to her lap. “Why didn’t I think of that?! Arthur-dear, you are the best! Do you think you could make me one that would work? Do you think it, uh, needs a syringe on the tip?”
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Arthur blinks at her taking his suggestion seriously. “Uh, that was a joke…” he points out, but tilts his head as his mind already starts thinking about how to make it work. “…It would, in essence, be a fairly wide-gauge syringe needle, wouldn’t it? We wouldn’t want it to be the size of an actual straw, I don’t think, that’d leave kind of large holes and the bleeding might be hard to stop. Also, very noticeable. …Is there a reason you couldn’t use a syringe? Get the blood out that way, then drink it from the reservoir? I mean, I don’t know how you’d get people to not notice you’re taking blood from them, but if you’d manage that somehow, they might just think they got bitten by some fly or something…”
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“It would still be really gross if it’s not direct but… gross blood versus kissing somebody’s skin.” She pouts at that, then tilts her head. “Uh, but how do I know where to put my straw? With the bite, I smell where your blood is. I know exactly where to bite. I think it’s like animal instinct.”
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“It would still be gross even if it’s just been in a syringe for, like, a second?” Arthur asks, intrigued now. “What’s the difference? Does it lose some magical property, maybe? And, uh… I don’t know, maybe that would be weird, but maybe Dr Seward could show you? What with being a doctor and all… he’d know, wouldn’t he?”
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“Of course Papa would know!” That was a chirp and the thought of Papa helping makes this all so much easier, so she relaxes and tries to think it through for Arthur. “I don’t really know, actually. I know the vials are really icky and uh, there must be something magical about it. Didn’t… wait… didn’t the dhampir book, that mean thing, say something about white hair?”
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“Oh.” Arthur tries to remember back. “I think you’re right? Something about making it so they can’t escape easily because of how it makes them stand out?”
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“Meanie hunters.” Darcy mutters and asks the house to please give her the book with the fitting page open. Wrinkling her nose while reading again, Darcy ends up nodding. “I was stupid to not have remembered that. Yes, it says right here that fey blood will do this to my hair so that I’m extra suspicious to humans. Just what I needed.”
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Arthur holds out his hand for the book to refresh his memory, too, then hands it back to Darcy after flicking his eyes over the paragraph. “I’m sure it’s not easy to learn all about being a different species than you thought and remembering it all,” he offers- he hopes that’s encouraging and not insulting somehow. “But, hm… if they add that to all the, uh, food for the hunting dhampirs, that suggests it’s something that has to be kept up. So the effect is temporary? Your hair ought to go back to its normal colour by itself after a while?”
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“We don’t know how long ‘after a while’ is, though!” There is her worry about Gregory seeing her like this again, the enjoyable discussion gone, replaced with tension in her stomach at the thought of him putting those crystal deep eyes on her again, and grinning through his teasing until she feels broken and used up with all her emotions wrung out of her.
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“That’s true. Uh… I guess it’d be too obvious if you covered it up with a head scarf or a hat? And some would probably still show…” He leans forward a bit to look at her more closely in the low light. “…Also, I think your eyebrows are white, too.”
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That, at least, pulls Darcy out of her rising worry. “My eyebrows?” Daring to lift the front of her sleeping gown and peek under an arm, she giggles. If nothing else, this is at least kind of funny. “Not just my eyebrows.” What she leaves unsaid is that that means that even if she could get away with putting something over her head, Gregory would notice when she performs her wifely duties for him this morning.
So she’s still powerless to avoid his teasing… Oh no, she must have thought that too loudly. He’s still in her head after all! Oh, no… and she didn’t realise how close he was anyway! Whirling towards the door, she realises only now that when she felt him close by it wasn’t downstairs, no… much closer. How long has he been there? How much did he hear? She doesn’t know, but right there, yes, there’s that grin on his cat face she dreaded.
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Darcy’s sudden movement draws Arthur’s attention, but he still jumps when he sees Gregory, in cat form, sitting there, inside the door. Which is silly, isn’t it? Why does he feel like… like Gregory ought to have knocked, or something? They’ve always shared everything they had, his room has always also been Gregory’s room, why should that be different now just because Gregory isn’t sleeping there all the time? (Or really almost never?)
Apparently, Katharina got startled, too, because she rolls to her feet and pins back her ears, shows Gregory her teeth, lashes her tail. Arthur takes that distraction and the fact that Darcy is in the way of Gregory’s line of sight to stuff the genet further under the covers, so no bit of spotted fur pokes out.
Gregory’s eyes are on Darcy’s hair anyway, the grin only getting wider as he teases: “Fey blood you said. Am I being excluded?” At her pulse speeding up he chuckles, interrupts her as he turns to his human shape and throws her over a shoulder. “Don’t worry, I don’t care.”