Chapter 4 #2
She started to encircle his neck with the hand on his throat, but he reached up and clamped his fingers around her wrist, pulling it away from him and releasing it meaningfully.
Don’t, his eyes begged her.
Her breath hitched, and she stepped back from him, reaching for the jar on her desk with a trembling hand.
“You’ll have to finish it.”
He took the jar carefully, but his eyes were wide and wild as they searched hers. She saw uncertainty. She saw fear. She saw love. It all twisted her heart in the worst, most painful way, and she winced, placing her palm against her chest.
“I wouldn’t—” He gasped softly as his eyes flooded, then burned. “There isn’t another soul on this earth who could get me to—I mean, I’d do anything for you.”
“I know,” she sobbed, a tear snaking down her face as she controlled the impulse to reach for him one last time.
“Keep me company?” he whispered fiercely.
“Every minute,” she promised. “Every second.”
He nodded, staring at her face for one long, hard moment.
I belong to you.
She nodded.
And I belong to you.
Then he turned away from her, and she heard the keypad next to the vault beep loudly as he pressed his palm against the sensor and entered a code. A moment later, the heavy steel door slammed closed.
September 3, 4:40 p.m.
Subject has ingested the suppressor.
I am watching for signs of immediate discomfort and finding none, much to my relief, which means that the Lycopodium clavatum is coating his stomach, and the olivetol appears to be controlling the urge to vomit. Will the wolfsbane still suppress the shift?
Surprised that he felt nothing after drinking the disgusting mixture, he sat down on the floor with his legs spread out in front of him and looked up at the camera.
“You there, baby?”
“I’m here.”
It was strange, the way her voice filled the metal and concrete box where he was trapped.
It was comforting and disconcerting at the same time to have her voice, but nothing else.
He briefly considered pulling her inside, so he could touch her as he’d desperately wanted to before, but thought better of it.
There would be plenty of time for Dansmatête over the next three days.
“I don’t feel anything,” said Jack.
“That’s good. That’s the best possible scenario.”
He chuckled dryly. “What’s the worst?”
She sighed into the microphone.
“Darcy, I already drank it. Tell me the worst.”
“Shakes, chills, fever…I don’t know. Vomiting maybe. Anything. For as much as Willow tried to map your DNA so we could get the dosage perfect, this is still a first trial.”
His stomach gurgled unpleasantly.
“I think it’s coming back up,” he said through clenched teeth.
September 3, 6:50 p.m.
Subject has now vomited eight separate times.
This shouldn’t affect its potency, as enough of the potion was metabolized upon ingestion.
He is sweating and shaking as the sunset draws near, and he occasionally stalks around the cell, growling and groaning.
As of right now, his claws have dropped, but his skin is coated only with a modest smattering of growth, and his face and feet remain unchanged.
“Jack?”
“What?” he roared, looking into the camera with wild eyes.
Darcy winced. It wasn’t going well. He was about twenty minutes away from sundown now, and she could see that he was struggling, his body engaged in a fierce battle between the demand to shift and the inability to make it happen.
“How can I help?”
“You could fucking accept me for who I am!” he thundered.
Darcy knew that his anger was a result of his situation, but his words still hurt.
“I love you. You know that.”
His chest heaved up and down, and he vomited up some bile that clung, in ugly yellow strings of drool, to his beard.
“S-s-sorry, Darcy.”
“No,” she said gently. “Don’t be sorry. I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
Suddenly, he clutched his chest, throwing back his head and scratching at his shirt with his claws until the shirt was shredded and he was bleeding.
“Jack, stop!”
His claws stilled, and he dropped them to his sides, leaning forward to brace his palms on his knees as pieces of his tattered shirt floated to the floor.
September 3, 7:04 p.m., sunset
Subject is angry and agitated.
With ten separate instances of vomiting, we can be assured that the Lycopodium clavatum and olivetol weren’t effective in protecting his stomach, though we can’t guess how much more damage would have been sustained without them.
Sunset has arrived.
The moon is full.
With the exception of golden eyes and dropped claws, the subject’s form is almost entirely human.
The burning was extreme.
The hairs beneath his skin jabbed at the underside of his flesh, but didn’t burst forth, and Jack realized what a holy, orgasmic relief it would be if they would.
Right now, as they poked and jabbed, just short of developing, they itched and burned like a colony of fire ants fighting beneath the surface of his skin.
Additionally, the bones and muscles in his body, which longed for growth, were kept just at the cusp of developing.
They strained and ached, pregnant with expansion, yet restrained from growth.
His stomach, which had to be empty, still rolled and rebelled, and Jack gasped for breath as another wave of bile filled his mouth. He spat it onto the floor with disgust.
His jaw unleashed a sudden, powerful, gnawing pain that made his head feel like it was trapped in a vise, and he reached into his mouth to find that the fangs he expected to feel hadn’t dropped.
They were neatly concealed in his gums, but the waves and spirals of pain to his head originated where they should now be exposed.
He whimpered, the sound more canine than human in his ears, as his trembling fingers massaged the soft, wet gums that throbbed.
His chest, which had already healed neatly, held within it a deep, sorrowful howl of longing and pain as he felt the sun slip below the horizon.
Like a sharp blow to the body, like being hit by a truck, the pain was suddenly so intense, so unbelievable, the cell around him spun wildly, and the last thing Jack remembered was his head hitting the cold cement of the floor.
September 4, 3:00 a.m.
Subject has been asleep (passed out?) now for about four hours, but he writhes and cries out in his sleep. He is sweating and shaking but has not shifted beyond the initial stages.
His fangs never dropped.
His body never expanded.
He is not covered in fur.
His claws are receding about an inch every hour.
There is still a burning golden light behind his eyes, but it’s not as bright as the hours move slowly forward.
I can now safely say that the Pleine Lune shift was suppressed.
But the emotional and physical distress to the subject was extreme.
Additional tinkering with the formula is required to make it more comfortable for the subject.
Darcy woke up with a jolt, gasping as she flipped over her wrist and realized it was seven o’clock in the morning.
Straightening in the desk chair, she looked up at the screens, standing to get a better view. What she saw astounded her.
Jack was still asleep, curled into a comfortable ball, and he appeared to be breathing and sleeping peacefully. He wasn’t shaking anymore, and he looked almost entirely human.
“Jack?” she whispered into the microphone.
He stirred lightly, but didn’t wake up.
It occurred to Darcy that there was only one sure way to connect with him. She pulled him inside.
Floating gently overhead, she stared down at the black wolf, curled up on a gray carpet beneath her.
“Jack?” she whispered, the sound so soft in her head, it was a wonder she could hear it at all.
The black wolf whimpered, and she let herself drop to the floor beside him, the flexible, floating nature of her being surrounding him like a cover of mist.
“Jack?”
The wolf whimpered, licking its white teeth and opening its black eyes. Paaaaaaain.
Still? she asked.
No, he answered, his eyes mournful and exhausted.
It worked, she told him.
Yes, he answered, his voice soft and defeated. It worked.
Wrapping her essence around his brokenness, she rested the beating sound of her heart against the beating sound of his and stayed beside him as he fell back to sleep.