Chapter 19
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 18
The motion of Quincy’s hand draws Arthur’s eyes back to him and Darcy, and he quickly yanks them away again, feels the burn of the blush in his cheeks and the tips of his ears.
Although… Darcy’s giggling, and the rude gesture Quincy gave John make the whole thing… somehow less uncomfortable. Still really embarrassing, but to his surprise, there’s no corresponding squirm in his stomach. Despite them being lip-locked, those gestures and Darcy’s laughter makes it more… silly. More like fun.
Which Arthur really doesn’t know what to make of. And what does John mean, he doubts Quincy can remember another woman right now? That sounds kind of like… well, like Quincy is in love with Darcy or something? But Arthur thought he wasn’t? From the enthrallment and ritual discussions he’d rather not think too much about?
Is that what’s changed?
Is he supposed to be able to tell? Is it something he can ask about?
Maybe not in front of all of them. What if Quincy says ‘no’, and then it would be awkward? Maybe he’ll ask Quincy when they’re alone and he has a chance.
For now, he decides to put all that confusing emotional, social stuff out of his head and focus back on what he’s actually reasonably competent at: magic.
Then it strikes him that he just thought of himself as competent at magic, and that… that’s new, too. He never would’ve thought that just a little while ago. But well… These days, he kind of is? He can make spells work, can make things happen.
So, yes, now he’s going to make this spell happen.
It’s just as hard as the last time. Doing it once isn’t really enough to get familiar with the spell and how the magic ought to flow through the matrix, the matrix itself. It takes all his concentration to hold it in his mind’s eye, to not forget pieces of it. And the magic needs coaxing and pushing- probably because Mrs Harker isn’t that attached to the hair clasp. Or the one she has with her isn’t very similar and connected to this one. Or because of the large distance.
Or all of that together.
Prickly magical strain stabs behind his eyeballs and into his temples, but something is happening, so he keeps pushing until he feels the connection form, however tenuous. The bit of reflective silver he’s staring at seems to grow in his vision, or swallow him up, darken, vague shapes becoming visible in front of his eyes. A thick, dark bar- a strand of hair? More distant shadows that are maybe, maybe, the lines of stone walls and a ceiling.
“Hello?” he tries. “This is Arthur. Mrs Harker, can you hear me?”
He listens for a long moment while the spell churns against his mind, but can’t hear a reply. “Mrs Harker?” he tries again, tries to use the magic to project his voice- Lucy clearly only caught a few words the other time. And he won’t be able to keep this spell up for long.
“Mrs Harker?”
After another few long moments that dig the headache deeper and another call or two, he’s just about to give up when shadows move over his vision, and then everything wobbles and tilts sickeningly. But then it stills again, and his brain combines a pale triangle with two dark smudges and some long shadows into what might be a face.
“-oung scholar?” a voice says, or he’s pretty sure that’s what it says, and that makes that Vlad. Who, yes, has very good ears, doesn’t he?
“Yes,” he says with relief. Now, keeping in mind that Vlad might not catch everything, he tries to be concise and put extra clarity on the important words: “We’ve been attacked by hunters. Everyone is fine. But send back-up, please? Help?”
He thinks he hears alarm in Vlad’s voice, maybe even sees it in the vague, distorted shadow that is his face: “Hunters? You are fine?”
“Yes,” Arthur agrees, hoping he understood that right.
The shadow of the face moves, turns, and there are some odd snatches of sound, like Vlad is conferring with someone else.
The spell is making Arthur’s head pound, and he grits his teeth against it, forces his concentration to keep steady.
Thankfully, it’s only a moment later that the two dark shadows of Vlad’s eyes return to whatever he must be holding to his face, and he says: “…search Lord Godalming’s library, … report back.”
“Look in Art’s library, then call again?” Arthur says, uses different words on purpose in the hope that that lowers the likelihood of misunderstandings.
Whatever Vlad understands, he says: “Yes.”
And the spell is fraying no matter how hard Arthur is holding on to it, so he confirms with an: “Understood,” and lets it go.
The headache clamps his neck and temples in a vice, like a vicious rubber band snapped and hit his brain from the inside, or maybe that’s just because he’s no longer trying to ignore it.
It also puts a lump in his throat and nausea into his stomach, and for a moment, all he can do is sink forward and rest his forehead against the table with his arms wrapped around his middle, and try to breathe and not throw up.
~
John is honestly impressed, he thought his dhampirs wouldn’t notice a thing, but the moment Arthur’s head hit that table, they both jumped, even though, clearly, Quincy still had a fang stuck in Darcy’s lip and hisses at the tug. Darcy, obviously, is doing the hugging and Quincy is right in there with rubbing Arthur’s back all softly humming and asking the house for a glass of water while praising a certain Arthur-honey for how well he did.
His molly is so fucking predictable, always with the praise and rewards, but hey, at least he gives as good as he gets.
“I’d pat your shoulder, but I don’t think I have space. Want me to dim the lights for you?”
~
Arthur nods very cautiously to John’s question. It’s very strange to have someone fuss over him for a headache, but… but he finds it puts a big, warm ball of feeling into his chest, even while his head feels two sizes too large and his entire body kind of fragile and like a wrong movement or sound is going to break him into several aching pieces.
He even lets himself whimper a little, because: “…Ow.”
He has friends. He really has friends who are all warm next to him, and rubbing his back soothingly and turning the light down for him.
That is so nice.
And who help him sip a little water once the worst spike passes and he can lift his head enough without throwing up, so he gives them all a wobbly smile.
~
“Want to lean back and rest a bit, Arthur-dear? Oh, oh, I can get you a nice warm cloth to put over your eyes.” Oops, yes, Quincy’s right, she should speak softer, so she lowers her voice into a whisper, but still smiles at Arthur. “You don’t need to worry about anything. We’ll wait until mon sang du coeur is done biting his other meanie selves and then we can see how to best ask for help at Daddy’s place.”
Noticing the look John gives her as he walks back from having pulled the curtains shut and asked the house to not put on too many lamps, she tilts her head. What is she overlooking? Quincy is giving her a look, too. Both her men. That means it’s important! She needs to listen to them and John always smiles when she gives him that eager wiggle and big eyes, showing that yes, she’s listening to her hidden husband. Yes, there it is. He saw that she’s expecting his input and he’s being extra nice, he’s scratching behind her ears as he tells her that they need to be careful how to ask. They can’t tell the hunter household that hunters attacked them.
Oops, right, she remembers how mean Daddy’s servants were after she had her second date with Radu!
~
“Yes, please,” Arthur agrees to Darcy’s suggestion. His instinct would’ve been a cool cloth for his head, but now that she says it, a warm cloth sounds even nicer. He settles himself back inch by careful inch, balancing his wobbly head, until he can rest the back of his skull against the cushions and let them take the weight of it, relaxes with a sigh.
He doesn’t… have to start thinking ahead, does he? John has the tactical side handled, Quincy the social one, and all of them the caring one. Yes, he’ll just rest here for a bit while his mind recovers from the strain of the spell.
~
With a tut, Quincy pulls one of the cushions from the side of the sofa, places it on the table, and then, slowly and carefully, lifts Arthur’s feet up there. “There you go, honey, proper rest. Cycy is going to have that towel for you in a heartbeat, go, run, I can see you wanting to, shoo. I got him, he won’t fall over while you aren’t looking.”
Smiling after his queen for, of course, running to not just ask for the towel, no, she has to fetch and prepare it herself, Quincy can’t help the fond chuckle. Oh, but she is the pinnacle of creation. Well, pinnacle of creation, dhampir edition. The manly man version is back in his chair and Quincy feels like he should get some more information here, so he asks about the details of that, apparently, hunter household he has to play nice with.
A hunter household he rather agrees with, after all, Radu drugged a maid and snuck into Darcy’s room! He can only too easily imagine Darcy’s eager bounce to the window, her too loud steps, and how Radu must have had to do everything himself instead. It’s smart to drug the maid, but it still creeps Quincy out. He’s so glad when Darcy returns with the towel, so glad to see her smile and her beautiful purple eyes…
Red eyes. Quincy’s staring into red eyes.
It takes a moment for the rest of the image to come into focus and he wishes it didn’t.
Is that him? Is he staring at himself in a horrid future where his hair went white?
He’s, oh Divine, no, middle-aged, that’s horrid!
Oh, double set of fangs… Shit, probably what he should be focusing on. Shit, berserked-out him… No, wait, why is Cycy standing in front of him? He was looking right over her head but she made a sound. Why does it come out so weak?
His eyes wander down and, oh no, no, no, he takes it back, can this vision please be about him being middle-aged?!
She’s stumbling back into him, making that sound again and this time he catches it despite the ruin her throat is, her face is, only because he can hear her thought:
“Radu, no.”
Radu? Radu?!
His eyes flick back up to the man standing there following Darcy’s fall with his eyes, those terrifying red eyes and huge fangs displayed behind snarling lips. Lips closing over them. Lips forming a whine.
Radu whines again, the blood-smeared hand lifting and Quincy knows he’s dead. There’s nothing he can do. Even if he tries to run, how could he ever escape?
He doesn’t want to die. His queen tried to protect him. She tried but she couldn’t, nobody could.
No, he won’t close his eyes. He’ll face his death on his feet, his queen held tight in his arms, and defiant.
Quincy tries to stare down the berserked voivode, but nothing is happening. Why is the man just staring at his own bloody hand? This is insane. Utterly insane, but Quincy repeats Darcy’s words. Louder. Yelling them. Yelling defiantly, because it’s all he can do:
“Radu, no!”
There’s that whine again, and the red fades from Radu’s eyes, replaced by gold. Not the fey yellow Quincy starts to despise. No, gold as you’d see on an animal. For a moment, Quincy is sure that’s what he’s looking at before the man whirls around and runs, turns into a blur and is gone.
Through a door Quincy is pretty sure is part of the castle but he doesn’t care. Darcy is trying so desperately to reach up to him, so desperately trying to tell him something, but she can’t speak. This is the horrid ritual again, just worse. She’s not even gurgling up blood. The slash is so deep he can see her spine from the front.
He was overcome with disgust at seeing Harker’s dead face, but despite the gore right in front of him, all he has are tears and love.
Why are there none of the little blood shadows he knows from Cycy? Why isn’t she healing?
Divine, please.
Blood, maybe she needs blood!
It hurts like hell when he rips his wrist open to let his blood stream into her open mouth, what’s left of it where her jaw is hanging only half attached. It’s not helping, he can see his own blood spill over the open sides of her throat.
Divine, please, no.
Her thoughts scratch at him, weak, so weak, even now when he tries to focus on them. There’s nothing else he can do. “I love you, mon sang du coeur. Sorry for dying. Please wait for me.”
Wait for her? What? What does she mean?
“Cycy! Tell me!”
No answer.
“Cycy?”
Her eyes are so dull.
No.
No.
NO!
He searches for a pulse. For a breath.
Nothing.
Cycy!
He lost his queen.
His hands shake as he places them on her cheeks, gently, holding her jaw where it should be. He can’t even cry. Just stare down at her, stare down on how even his pale fingers look bright against her skin.
He stares down at his nails. Again.
But this time it’s not the gentle memory of her care he remembers, or the rose tint he sees.
No. He sees his claws. He feels his fangs. He feels the howling of his own drac. He feels ice cold daggers run through his veins. Not in pain but in a rage that wipes away the howling, wipes away the shaking, wipes away all grief.
And in that nothing, the whispers remind him. The ice cold whispers at the back of his mind can think clearly. He embraces them.
Wait for her. She’s a dhampir. She’s not dead. She’s becoming a vampire.
Radu didn’t kill her. He didn’t take her away. He took away her strength. Her potential. Her power!
That power is Quincy’s! She’s his queen!
No, there is no worry in him that he can feel the other thing in him that isn’t his drac stirring.
He’s still looking down at his claws against her skin, but there’s the faintest red to her eyes now.
Red eyes, like on the thief!
He will hunt him. He will find him. He will take his queen’s rightful power back! No matter what it takes. His queen is his and he is hers. Sang du coeur. He’ll feed her another heart’s blood. He’ll write a contract in blood that will restore her.
Leaning down he kisses her brow. “You are forgiven for dying. I will wait for you. I love you, my queen, my wife.”
~
Oh fuck! That doesn’t look as good as the other times Quincy bopped back up from a vision. Shit, that’s claws and fangs and hissing.
But he’s not lashing out, good, John doesn’t have to tackle him away from Arthur. No, but he is still right there and has his hands on his molly’s shoulders while Darcy is on Quincy’s lap in an instant. That’s not kissing she’s getting this time. Fuck, Quincy’s upset the way he’s clinging to her, the way he’s hissing, (and that’s probably the most actually drac sound John’s ever heard from him,) and… are those the sparkles again? Yupp, but this time it’s not the shimmer of different effects. No, that’s little ice crystals.
Right, that would upset him only worse. John shouldn’t laugh, he’s trying not to laugh, but the molly swatting at his own ice sparkles and growling that he’s not his grandfather no matter if he swears bloody vengeance on somebody is the weirdest kind of wrong.
“Oi, calm it. You can have your own vendetta and no, nobody is taking our girl away. Watch the claws, you two go through enough dresses of hers as is. Calm down, sparkler. You won against another vision.”
~
Despite the clear agitation from Quincy next to him, Arthur only moves enough to lift a corner of the cloth up and tilt his head for a one-eyed look.
Yes, upset dhampir, but he isn’t feeling worried in the least. Is that weird? But Quincy won’t hurt him on purpose, and if he looked like doing it by accident, Darcy and John would take care of it. He believes that.
So he puts the cloth back down, mumbles: “Congratulations,” and lets himself lean just a little more against Quincy’s shoulder.
~
That… that nonchalance from Arthur, and his darling knowing immediately that vengeance could only mean one thing, breaks Quincy out of both the fury coursing through his veins at how Radu could dare steal his queen’s power and the fear at the cold whispers in the back of his mind. He knows what those whispers are, they feel like that sense of self he had in the vision before. They feel fey. Feel like his grandfather, like his sister, like all his worst fears for his mother.
He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to be like that. No matter how right it felt in the vision! And normally he would run to the rooftop and hide, but… he doesn’t want to be alone with those whispers. No, he wants his lovelies. It’s okay to cling to his queen. It’s okay to stand shoulder to shoulder with John. And it’s more than okay to bury his face into Darcy’s neck and cry on her. She loves when he does that, it always gets him so much love, so much dedication, so much attention, and he needs all of that bitterly right now.
~
Those wet streaks down her skin feel like rivulets of lava to Darcy. No, hotter, not lava, heart blood. Her sang du coeur showing her his heart and letting her wrap her fallen angel wings around it. Wrap him into her night, their night, growl for him. If he wants vengeance, she’ll bite anybody for him! Just he wait until they are in each other, she so wants him in her mind so she can tell him everything. But if there’s the distance of words between them, it won’t reach. No… no she’ll wait until John can paint the world with her emotions in the dreamscape so that Quincy really can see, no, touch them!
Together, they can stand against anything and anyone, and together they can really express themselves, she doesn’t need to be scared of words, Quincy doesn’t need to be scared of being forced, and John doesn’t need to be scared… well, John isn’t scared of anything. So there! He can protect them both when they are scared, and she will protect them fiercely. She can feel her drac grin. Can feel the fangs painted on her face where once she had a mask.
No, visions or hunters or fears, she’ll bite them all for her men!
~
John must be fucking getting used to this. He thinks he remembers cringing and being uncomfortable even just by proxy about this much emotion and vulnerability shown on a guy, well, anybody, but worse on a guy, because that would undermine a man. Just, it’s their molly, he doesn’t give a fuck and somehow, no, John doesn’t question him being a guy one bit for crying on Darcy.
He’s honestly happy that Quincy has their girl there to take care of him. That’s what a good girl does and Darcy is the very best, obviously. Still, he’s not just going to twiddle his thumbs and watch Quincy cry, Arthur nap, and Darcy fussing over both of them.
Not that he is planning on going over to London on his own, nope, that’s a job for more than one of them. But if they’re supposed to check Godalming’s stuff, hey, he might just as well start with what they have in the house. And he’s just not going to admit to how much fun it is to rummage through the huge standing suitcase for all kinds of hidden pockets and uncovering a host of weapons and what not. He even finds those blood vials he thinks Arthur did some tests with and that Godalming told them to keep away from. No, he isn’t going to grab them just to stick it to the man. He respects him and Darcy would pout hard.
Not as fun to figure out but definitely more useful is when he finally finds what must be some kind of log. And he’ll just not let Darcy read this, he’s pretty sure he can see dates for when her daddy was part of murdering some hapless vampire dolts who let themselves be cornered. But there’s info on hunter families and gatherings in there. Sparse, probably for safety reasons, but there’s sections he suspects have a cipher, and while he knows he could crack it with some time, he has a fucking head for numbers after all, Arthur might actually have fun with it. So back to the library he goes… only to realise that it’s basically lunch time. The dhampirs definitely forgot, so hey, he can ask the house to deliver.
Starvation protection for them, yupp, that’s him, not just by being walking dinner… and breakfast, and snack time, anyway.
~
Arthur’s feeling much better by the time John returns from his rummaging around Art’s things with a notebook and a suggestion of lunch.
Apparently, having a doze right away while being all fussed over, (Darcy even got him his genet plushie, which made him blush, but since Gregory isn’t around, he still happily hugged it to his stomach, where the softness somehow helped soothe the nausea,) really does help to make the headache recede quickly. There’s some lingering tenderness, and he doesn’t quite want to do any more magic right now if he doesn’t have to, and ideally nothing strenuous until tomorrow, but… he’s really feeling so much better.
Well enough to appreciate food and a puzzle to decipher!
~
Will you look at those two. Last Quincy saw Arthur and John stick their heads together like that was over the tax ledgers, but that was concentration, this right here is them being adorable with a number puzzle. How anybody could possible enjoy numbers is utterly beyond Quincy, but hey, just means he has Darcy all to himself.
Which means he gets to laugh himself raw at her sitting on his lap and trying to feed him because what if he falls over into the cutlery?! He has a distinct feeling that he should hiss, but it doesn’t really feel like her fussing over him, no, she’s protecting his face from getting marred, and let’s be honest here, that would be a terrifying prospect. He’s not the hunk here. Facial scars don’t go with his flair. One scar on his head is one too many, and this one wouldn’t even come with a dramatic story like the one damned one he has.
No, he’s quite happy as is with Darcy on his lap, them playing a game of ‘your food is terrible, how can you eat that?’ between them and his darling tackling the things he has no inclination or interest in. If not for the vision and his damn fey’s sense of comfort in an orderly grid, he thinks he’d be grinning at this nice delegation of duties all around. But he’ll be damned if he makes any fey statements.
Or lets Cycy know that okay, maybe she was right with her fussing as he feels the edge of his vision blur.