Chapter 5 #2
Willow sat down beside Darcy, reaching up to push her friend’s head onto her shoulder. “We could work on it.”
“Not in time,” sobbed Darcy. “The equinox is in three weeks, and anyway, I couldn’t make him. I wouldn’t ever ask him to go through that again. Not when…”
“Not when what?” asked Willow.
Darcy lifted her head, her eyes seizing Willow’s. “Not when there are other alternatives.”
Willow sighed, standing up and shaking her head. “They’ll kill you, Darcy. If you show up as his bound mate and try to reason with them, they’ll kill you.”
“That’s not the alternative I’m talking about,” said Darcy, shoving her toiletry bag into the duffel and zipping it closed.
“What if you can’t find someone to turn you?” Willow whispered.
Darcy hefted the bag on her shoulder. “His mother will do it. His mother will want to save his life, and if turning me will save it, she’ll do it.”
Willow’s eyes, usually so steady, swam with sudden tears. “There’s nothing I can say? To talk you out of it? Jack’s strong. Even if there is an Inquisition, he would survive it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What if you don’t survive the turning?” demanded Willow in a desperate shriek.
It surprised Darcy that the small smile she had offered Willow came so easily. “Then I’ll know I died trying to save him.”
Willow took a deep, ragged breath, then reached up to swipe at her eyes. “Give me ten minutes to pack and change.”
“I don’t have ten minutes,” Darcy had said, heading to the stairs. “I’ll give you five.”
“Well,” said Willow, ending her call with Amory and turning to Darcy. “Amory bought it. He said to have fun and be safe, and he’d see us on Sunday.”
Darcy nodded, then turned back to the road, switching highways to follow the signs for Quebec.
Jack had barely made it to his bed after his hot, soothing shower, and when he woke up, the first thing he noticed was that the house was quiet. Completely quiet.
No hum of activity downstairs or the faint sound of the TV.
He took a deep breath and sat up in bed, his lips tilting up when he realized that he’d been lying on top of his comforter, completely naked for the past six hours.
His body still ached, but not as fiercely as before.
Flexing his fingers in front of him, he let his claws extend, relieved that they didn’t strain with leftover pain.
Spearing the leg of his jeans on the floor, he retracted the claws and stood up, pulling on the pants and stretching.
“I need another ten hours of sleep,” he muttered, but he had to acknowledge that the sleep he’d never needed before was proving to be the antidote to the exhaustion of the suppressor.
His stomach growled, and he crossed his room to take a T-shirt out of his dresser, breathing deeply through his nose.
Darcy wasn’t in the house. She was probably in her study over the garage.
Pushing aside the curtains as he shrugged into his shirt, he looked across the driveway, surprised to see the garage completely dark. Accustomed to seeing her red head bent over books, he furrowed his brows to find her office unoccupied. Only then did he realize her car was missing too.
He couldn’t explain why this made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but they did.
He surged through the door of his room and down the stairs, his heart beating faster as he realized the house was dim and cool, as though it had lain empty for hours.
Flicking on the light in the kitchen, he remembered what she’d said about fixing him something to eat, and a quick sniff told him she hadn’t.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a note on the counter and grabbed at it as his heart raced and his breathing hitched.
Dear Jack,
I was wrong. It didn’t work. Seeing you in that kind of pain was unbearable.
I knew weeks ago that you weren’t going to turn me. I could see it in your eyes, feel it in your heart, in the way you touched me, in the way you love me.
But we’ve run out of options now.
Please don’t follow me.
I love you more than life.
Darcy
He tried to take a deep breath, but he couldn’t, and his claws emerged, tearing the slip of paper to shreds as his eyes burned gold.
“Oh my god,” he murmured, swallowing slowly, his eyes darting up to the clock to reconfirm what he already knew. She had a six-hour head start on him. There was no way to get to her in time.
“It’s time to call her,” said Darcy, pulling into a gas station and looking at Willow. “I don’t even know where to go from here.”
“But you know we’re close?” confirmed Willow.
Darcy nodded. From everything she’d learned from Jack, she knew that she was within thirty minutes of his pack’s Bloodlands. She just wasn’t sure how to get there from here.
“You have his mother’s phone number?”
Darcy picked up her phone from the console, swiped at the screen, and the name Tallis came up.
“I took it off his phone last week. I don’t know why. I have Julien and Lela’s numbers too.”
“Maybe you should call Julien,” suggested Willow, staring out the rain-spattered windshield at the dying light of late afternoon. “At least you know him.”
Darcy shook her head. “Julien might try to talk me out of it. Tallis won’t. I know it. She’ll come and get me, and she’ll turn me. And that’s what I want, so…” Darcy hit send, and listened as the phone rang once, twice—
“Oui?”
“Madame? Ms. Beauloup?”
“Yes.” Her voice was low and smooth, her accent thick.
“This is—”
“I know who you are. My son is half-mad with worry.”
Darcy’s heart clenched, but she forced herself to ignore it. “I need to speak with you. Urgently.”
“Where are you?”
“A gas station. At Stoneham-et-Tewkesbury.”
“You’re close.” She sounded a little surprised.
“Can you give me directions, and I’ll come straight to you?”
She heard Jack’s mother mutter something in French that sounded very much like “imbecile.”
“It’s not a good idea for you to come here.”
“But I need—”
“I will come to you. Go north on 73 until the highway ends. It will turn into Route 175. Go another thirty minutes, and you’ll see a weigh station at Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval. I’ll meet you there.” The line went dead.
Darcy sucked in her first breath since dialing the phone and turned to Willow. “She’s meeting us. Thirty minutes up the road.”
“And Jack?” asked Willow.
Darcy swallowed. “Beside himself.”
Jack slammed his foot on the gas, but he still had hours to go.
As a precautionary measure, he called his mother as he was leaving Carlisle, but Tallis had no information about Darcy.
She hadn’t been in contact, nor had she—as far as Tallis knew—made it to Portes de l’Enfer yet.
He tried calling Julien and Lela too, but neither picked up the call.
The biggest problem was that Jack wasn’t actually sure of what Darcy was going to do.
Was she going to walk into the Bloodlands and introduce herself as Jack’s bound mate?
Try to convince the Council to leave them alone?
The very thought made rivulets of sweat slide down his face.
The next time he saw her, she’d be dead.
His mother had promised to try to protect her if she showed up, but Jack knew that was a dim hope, at best. Tallis was respected as a Council member, but even with Tombeur as backup, Darcy wouldn’t have a chance.
“Shit, shit, shit!” He banged on the wheel, clenching his jaw as he came up on the international checkpoint. He rifled through the glove box for his Canadian passport, showing it to the Canadian police, who looked at it lazily before waving him through.
You should have turned her, said a voice in his head. You know that’s what she wanted. You should have just done it and taken your chances with the binding.
Shaking his head as he zoomed north, Jack searched his heart, but still couldn’t find a quorum that would have supported turning Darcy.
He had unwittingly drawn her into this life.
He had stolen any chance of the happiness she could have found with one of her own kind.
He had placed her in danger the moment he reemerged in her life.
But through it all, he’d loved her, planned for her, living his life in one trajectory, with one goal: to have a life with her, eventually. And now, when it had seemed so close, he felt it slipping through his fingers.
Darcy pulled into the small vacant weigh station at Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval, noting only one other car in the parking lot parked two spaces away from hers. She reached for her door handle, but Willow grabbed her hand quickly, and Darcy turned to face her.
“Listen,” said Willow. “Stay behind me a little. They won’t hurt me.”
“This is Jack’s mother,” explained Darcy gently. “She won’t hurt me either.”
“No matter what happens, kid,” said Willow, her eyes clear but infinitely grieved. “I will be with you.”
Darcy nodded, feeling her courage slipping a little.
“It’s going to be okay, right?” she asked Willow.
Willow swallowed, but nodded. “I hope so.”
Darcy squeezed Willow’s hand before getting out of the car. The driver and passenger doors of the other car opened as well, and two figures emerged.
“Ms. Beauloup?” asked Darcy, standing against the door of her car.
“Tallis,” said a woman’s voice, her stride sure as she stepped around her car toward Darcy.
Darcy couldn’t help offering a smile to the striking woman, who she’d know for Jack’s mother immediately.
With her tall, strong, trim figure, spare movements, and black hair cascading in waves around her shoulders, Tallis Beauloup was every bit the fierce warrior that Jack had described to Darcy, and so beautiful that it was evident that Jack got all of his looks from her.
“I-I’d know you anywhere,” said Darcy softly.
Tallis took a deep breath through her nose, her eyes registering a bit of surprise before her lips tilted up in a very slight smirk. “I smell my son on you.”
Darcy’s cheeks flushed with fear, and she turned her eyes to a man standing slightly behind Tallis, to her left. “You must be Tombeur.”
“I am,” he said, a soft twang in his lightly accented English. He leaned forward and held out his hand. “And you’re Darcy…from the Southern Bloodlands.”
She nodded, taking his hand. She registered the heat he threw off his body, but she’d long past accustomed herself to Jack’s heat, so she didn’t flinch. His hand was warm and solid, and for a moment, her longing for Jack tripled in intensity. She hushed it. It would do her no favors to be weak now.
“You’ve brought the Enchanteresse,” remarked Tallis, looking at Willow, who stood next to Darcy against the car.
“Enchante,” offered Willow, extending her hand.
Tallis grimaced, her nostrils flaring slightly, before taking Willow’s hand. “Saule.”
“That’s what Julien calls me,” said Willow.
“Je sais,” answered Tallis, her eyes smoldering slightly as she stared at Willow.
“Actually, he calls you ‘Belle Saule,’” corrected Tombeur, taking Willow’s hand from Tallis gently but firmly, and offering her a small grin. “It gets Lela all riled.”
Willow smiled at Tombeur, and Darcy realized how charming he was, how grateful she was not to be meeting the intimidating Tallis alone. She gave him a genuine smile before turning back to Tallis, whose eyes narrowed.
“Save your smiles,” she said, her voice almost edging into a scowl. “What do you want?”
Darcy took a deep breath and sighed, holding Tallis’s eyes with a certain and steady gaze. “I’ve come to ask you to turn me.”