Chapter 7
The first thing she heard was a hum.
It was loud and distracting, soon eclipsed by the sound of footfalls moving in a jittery, clicking motion very close by.
Her eyes opened wide, taking in the bright afternoon sunlight streaming through the window, and she shifted her head toward the sound.
On the wood-hewn wall next to her head, she saw a fly making its way toward the ceiling, and each time it moved, Darcy heard another distinct footfall, click click click, and the hum of its buzzing wings.
It finally launched itself off the wall, flew around the room in a fast circle, and through the open door.
Sitting up straight, she swung her legs over the bed and stretched her arms over her head, taking a deep breath. Instantly, she wrinkled her nose, assaulted by smells that she cataloged quickly in her head: dust, wood, bacon grease. Sweat, human. Sweat, me.
Wait. Sweat, me.
Darcy slowly lowered her hands in front of her face, staring at the backs of her hands, at the fingers pointed up to the ceiling. Me.
The simple word circled in her head.
Me me me me me me.
She felt the burning in her eyes as her heart started beating faster and watched—partly in fascination and partly in horror—as sharp points broke through the skin of her fingertips and slowly rose, higher and higher, until ten bright-white, foot-long claws pointed straight up at the ceiling.
She screamed, her hands shaking, but her body motionless as she stared at the claws that had just protracted from her hands.
“Darcy?”
Willow’s voice. Close. And then suddenly, there she was, Willow, standing in the doorway of the room.
“I have claws,” Darcy murmured, flicking her glance to her friend, then back to her hands.
“Calm down,” said Willow gently. She looked as if she wanted to enter the room, then checked out the claws again and stayed put. “You’re still you, kid.”
“I am definitely not still me.” Darcy couldn’t catch her breath as she still stared at the sharp, white, pristine claws.
Experimentally, she waggled her fingers, and they click-clacked against each other.
It sounded vaguely familiar. Somewhere, in the very depths of her mind, she knew she’d heard the very sound before, but she had no idea where or when.
“If I come in and sit next to you, will you keep those to yourself?”
Darcy nodded, slowly lowering her hands to her lap, the sharp points extending well beyond her knees.
“Oh, Willow, you stink,” she blurted out as her friend sat down on the bed beside her. “What have you been doing?”
Willow wrinkled her nose, leaning down to sniff one arm, then the other. “I don’t stink. I smell normal.”
“Believe me, you do not smell normal. You smell like…what is that? Ammonia?”
“Ammonia? I don’t smell like ammonia. But you?” Willow leaned a little closer to Darcy. “You don’t even want to know what you smell like.”
Darcy mimicked Willow’s sniffing from a moment ago on herself. “I smell fine.”
“You smell like wet dog and vomit.”
“Do not,” argued Darcy. “And even if I did, it would be an improvement on formaldehyde.”
“So you’re basically saying I smell like death,” said Willow.
“Yeah,” said Darcy with a little bit of wonder. “You do.”
Willow nodded, chuckling lightly. “No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
“No wonder they don’t eat Enchanteresses.” Willow tilted her head to the side. “Want me to go sit on the other side of the room?”
Darcy shook her head. “I’ll get used to it.”
They sat in silence for several long minutes until Willow spoke again. “What do you remember?”
Darcy took a deep breath and sighed. “We left Carlisle and drove up here. We met a man and a woman at night. The man…oh.” She suddenly remembered in a flash.
The man’s fangs sinking into the flesh of her arm, the burning pain, the fever and chills.
Turning over her arm, she looked at the underside, but there were no bite marks.
“They’re gone,” said Willow. “You rejuvenated.”
“I’m a…a…Roux-ga-roux,” said Darcy. “The…the creature that your Nohkom told us about. Is that what I am?”
Willow nodded. “Are you scared?”
Am I scared? Darcy searched for fear in her body, but she didn’t find any.
She didn’t feel frightened of anything. She couldn’t actually imagine something that would scare her.
Suddenly, she pointed her claws at the ceiling and concentrated hard, and they slipped quickly and quietly back under her fingertips.
“No,” she said, reveling in the words. “I’m not scared of anything.”
“Okay,” said Willow carefully. “That’s good, I guess. Um, do you know where we are?”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “Canada.”
“And why did we come here?”
“We were looking for someone.”
“Yes. Do you know who? Do you know why?”
Darcy searched her mind for the answers to these two questions, but it was as though the answers were shrouded in mist. She shook her head. “No. But I think it was important.”
Willow nodded. “It was. It was very important to you.”
“Did we find the person we were looking for?”
“We did.”
“And I asked for this,” she said, holding up her hands again and watching as the tips broke the skin, the claws shooting out of her fingertips like white lightning.
Willow shifted away slightly. “You did.”
“Where is he?” asked Darcy, looking back and forth at the ten shiny claws, marveling at their newness and symmetry.
Willow’s hand on Darcy’s face was sudden and unexpected, and Darcy felt her eyes ignite like cold fire, like dry ice, like melted silver.
“Sorry,” said Willow, drawing back quickly.
“You just surprised me,” said Darcy.
“I was excited. You remember him? You remember Jack?”
“Is that his name?”
Willow’s brilliant, happy smile faded as she stared back at Darcy, searching her eyes, desperate for Darcy to answer her own question. “Darcy. Tell me you know who Jack is.”
Jack. Darcy watched Willow’s face, the stricken expression, the disbelief and desperation, and wondered who Jack was.
“Jack,” she said, trying out the name, finding it wasn’t unfamiliar to her lips, even though it carried no personal meaning.
“Should I know him?”
“Oh, kid,” gasped Willow, standing up and crossing the room. She stood in the doorway with her back to Darcy.
“Jack?” She bit her lip, thinking hard, but her mind was a blank.
Willow’s shoulders were shaking, and Darcy concentrated again, watching her claws snap back with a satisfying swoosh, before standing up to place a soothing hand on her friend’s shoulder. Willow turned around, distress covering her face as tears poured from both eyes.
“You know him, Darce. Concentrate really hard. Please. Concentrate on the past.”
The past? Okay. Jack. Jack in the past. Something dinged in her head, and she looked up at Willow.
“Wait! Yeah. I…I remember this kid, Jack, from high school. I had a crush on him, remember? He was a, um…a senior, I think? Right? Do you remember him? Is that who…?”
Willow’s face was almost frozen, staring back at Darcy in utter and complete shock.
“Breathe, Will,” said Darcy, and Willow gasped sharply, turning away from Darcy and walking into a small common room.
“Sit down,” said Willow, gesturing to the loveseat in front of the fireplace.
Darcy looked around quickly. It looked like they were in a log cabin, small but comfortable, located in the woods. Through the windows, she could only see trees, and the plethora of sounds she heard were all typical of a woodland.
“Where are we?”
“The Northern Bloodlands,” said Willow. “In a cabin owned by another Roug named Tombeur.”
“Tombeur,” said Darcy, trying out the name and loving the way it slipped across her tongue. “Where is he?”
“Hunting. He’ll be back soon.”
Darcy nodded, her stomach growling at the thought of fresh meat. She looked up at Willow for a moment, but her nose wrinkled, and her hunger receded.
“Darcy,” said Willow, her face still fraught and serious. “Jack from high school. Do you have any recent memories of him?”
Darcy thought about this for a moment. Something nagged at her. She sensed that something small and uncertain buried very deep in her head wanted a louder voice, but she simply couldn’t hear it. She shook her head. “No.”
“Oh my god,” Willow gasped, turning her head to the front door of the cabin as it suddenly burst open.
Jack stood frozen in the doorway of Tombeur’s cabin, his eyes drawn effortlessly to Darcy, who sat on a loveseat facing Willow in front of the fireplace.
She was beautiful.
Strong and vital, he could hear her heartbeat, different from before, her blood coursing faster and hotter through her expanded veins.
Her smell was different too. It was still a derivative of her human smell, but deeper, muskier, infinitely more sexy and powerful.
The bolt of white-hot desire he felt for her threatened to buckle his knees right there.
He fought to catch his breath as she stared at him.
Her eyes, surprised by his sudden intrusion, burned greenish-silver, as he’d known they would, as he dreamed they would.
Darcy? Do you know me? he asked her, his own eyes scorching an unseen path across the room.
She stared back at him, her face blank. The silver burn of her eyes receded, and she sat back in her seat.
“You’re not Tombeur,” she said, turning away from him.
Willow leaped up from her seat and crossed the room, placing a hand on Jack’s forearm. “Kid, this is Jack.”
Darcy turned her head, and her eyes flicked to Willow’s, then to Jack’s as her face registered a mild curiosity.
“You’re Jack from high school?” She looked at him more closely, then, her eyes caressing his forehead, his cheeks, his lips and eyes. He watched, holding his breath as her face softened. “Oh, wow. It’s you.”
It’s you.
Sagging with relief, Jack lurched from the doorway, stumbling across the room and falling to his knees before her. “Oh, baby, I’m so relieved. I’m—”
He reached up to cup her cheeks with his hands, but she whipped back quickly, holding her hands up in the universal sign for stop, and Jack watched, mesmerized, as her claws snapped out, pointing straight up at the ceiling in warning.
“Hey,” she said, standing up and taking a sidestep away from him, her eyes confused and wary. “Nice to see you again and all, but…”
Still on his knees, Jack swallowed painfully.
It was true.
She didn’t know him.
“Jacques, mon fils!”
Jack turned and looked back at the door, jumping up from the floor as his claws and fangs dropped.
“What did you do?” he screamed at his mother, charging her.
He knocked into her as the hair burst out across his body, his clothes tearing and dropping to the ground like confetti as he shifted.
She was thrown from the cabin by the strength of his blow.
Groaning and growling at her, he swiped at her face, but she rolled to the side in time to avoid his blow.
“Jacques!” she screamed, trying to stand. “Non!”
Reaching down, he lifted her off the ground. He pulled back to throw her against a tree when she was grabbed from his arms, and thick, sharp claws slashed into his back.
He snapped and howled in pain as he turned to find a fully shifted Tombeur standing before him, fangs frothy, claws extended in an invitation to fight.
Fight me instead. His eyes burned, holding onto Jack’s.
My fight isn’t with you, Jack grunted, looking behind Tombeur’s back for his traitorous, despicable mother, and advancing on her, standing, still unshifted, behind Tombeur.
Tombeur slashed his claws down Jack’s chest to get his attention. Jack roared as blood spurted, hot and sticky, into his fur. He looked back at Tombeur in confusion and growing fury.
Yes, he growled at Jack. It is. Your fight is with me.
Jack took a step closer to Tombeur, seizing his eyes. You did this? You turned her?
It was me, confirmed Tombeur. Not your mother.
Jack roared with anger and pain and agony for his lost binding, his rage white and fierce as he drew back his arms and swiped at Tombeur’s chest with all his might, sending the older Roug flat on his back.
“No!” screamed Darcy, breaking through the haze of Jack’s rage. “No!”
His body went limp at the sound of her scream, and he watched, dumbfounded, as she quickly shifted, racing from the cabin.
Punching and pushing at Jack’s chest with the surprising strength of a newly turned Roug, she growled like a wild thing, forcing him away until she was shielding Tombeur with her body, standing in front of him, facing Jack.
Don’t hurt him, she said, her trembling claws extended out toward Jack, her eyes a burning silver, staring at him as she would a monster.
Jack watched as Tombeur downshifted quickly into human form, standing up directly behind Darcy.
As though he had no control over his own downshift, he felt the fur recede while his claws sank back into his fingers.
He stared at her, disbelieving, as she stood her ground, only shifting back to human once his own shift was complete.
Though the world had suddenly been turned upside down, Jack was forced to acknowledge the truth.
His recently unbound mate was protecting her maker from Jack at the possible expense of her own life.
“Darcy,” he said softly, his voice hitching with the pain of her unknowing betrayal. “Baby, please…”
“I’m not your baby,” she said, lifting her chin. “I haven’t seen you in twenty years.”
From behind her, Tombeur stalked back into the cabin, and Tallis and Willow followed, leaving Jack and Darcy alone. Her eyes flicked to his hips, and her cheeks colored.
Jack allowed himself a leisurely gaze up and down her naked form before capturing her eyes. “I know you think you don’t know me, but—”
“That’s right,” she said. “I don’t know you.”
Jack scrambled to figure out something that would jog her memory, that would somehow tap into the tiny part of her heart that must—must—still belong to him. He reached for her, but she stepped back quickly. “We’re…we were bound to each other. You belonged to me and I—”
“No.” She shook her head, looking away from him, back at the cabin where Tombeur waited for her.
“Please try to remember,” he begged her, his eyes burning with despair, with human tears, with a deep, terrible dread such that Jack Beauloup had never known. “It’s you.”
She looked up at him again, and her eyes burned bright, like molten silver, like burning magnesium, white and hot, stark and empty.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, like she really meant it.
Then she turned and walked back into the cabin, closing the door behind her.