Chapter Text
Jacob
It was the wind in my hair and whoosh of Ben’s breath that allowed me to pull my heart back to order. I didn’t like being unconscious, with the half mad visions clouding my mind. “Blackcat,” I groaned, “we can’t leave her.” There was still time, still time to go back.
“She can take care of herself.” Ben panted. He was a werewolf, he should be strong enough to carry me, but he was panting. He must be injured, and he couldn’t heal as fast as Blackcat could.
Blackcat who was in so much danger. Or was she? It was hard to tell with all I’d seen and with what I hadn’t.
There was a sound of a car, engine roaring, Ben skidded to a halt. “Adam! Mercy!” I turned my head to look, a woman was stepping out of the passenger side, she was amber eyed and Native American.
A moment later another car came screeching up, sirens wailing. I started to struggle. “Logan!” Ben set me down and I staggered, only to be swept up in anothers arms.
“Jacob!” I hugged her back as she started to pat me down, and she actually growled when she touched the blood on my face. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, beside us, Ben was gesturing frantically, speaking in voices to the people I assumed to be Adam and Mercy. “Yeah, I’m good.”
She started to look around, “Where’s Blackcat.”
“Dealing with the fucking problem,” Ben snarled. “You know you could of fucking told us that she was possessed!”
“She’s not possessed!” I snapped back. Because she wasn’t not really, she just wasn't not possessed either.
“Yes she is!” He cried, his eyes were wild. “I would know that scent anywhere!”
Adam set a hand on Ben’s shoulder, and murmured to him. He looked at Logan, eyes yellow. “Tell us, now.”
Mercy crossed her arms. “I’m pretty curious too.”
Logan sighed. “She’s not possessed, most of the time she has control. Yes, there’s a demon in her, but it's not really a demon anymore, it's spent too long in this world.” Which was about as close as she could get to Blackcat's complicated history.
“She’s right,” said a young voice. Everyone but me jumped, I’d known she was coming, I’d seen it when I was unconscious. A young girl was approaching, in a dress, playing with a yo-yo. She smiled, but there was nothing human in her gaze. “She’s coming.”
It was an understatement, she was here. I knew by the sudden rush of air and the arms that dropped around my shoulders. She was covered in blood and peppered with burns. The ones on one hand where more serious, I could see bone poking out of the twisted and blackened flesh. She murmured something in her old tongue, she was shaking. I twisted around to hug her. I could feel her head turn to glare at the girl. “He was one of yours.” It wasn’t her voice. I squeezed her once more and stepped away, and Logan’s hand fell to grip my shoulder.
“No,” the girl said, “he wasn’t. Perhaps he would have been if we’d known he existed. But in the end he would of been yours to deal with either way.”
Blackcat growled, and I took it as a good sign, the demon didn’t like to growl.
“You made a promise, fix it.”
Blackcat moved and the girl went sailing. She followed her, claws poised at her throat. “The only reason you are not dead is because I am in a good mood.” She stood up and walked back towards us. I noticed that her lips and face were covered in blisters. “You won’t have to worry about cleaning up. The place went down in flames.”
Yo-yo girl rubbed her throat and stood up. “One day,” she said, “You’ll have to choose a side.” She winked at me, and I grinned slightly back at her. I’d seen that too. The girl disappeared, as if she had never existed.
Blackcat sneered, and her teeth were a shattered, bloody mess. “Let’s go home.”
Mercy
We watched Logan, Jacob, and finally Blackcat enter Logan’s car and drive off. “Well that was impressive.” I said, then turned to Ben. He was white faced, his eyes were rimmed with red. “Come on Ben,” I murmured, “let's go.You’re staying with us tonight.” He nodded numbly, staring at nothing. Adam and I exchanged a glance, and I could tell that we were in agreement. We would make sure Ben was okay, and then we would visit Logan and Blackcat, and then we would finally figure out what was going on.
I pushed Ben into the backseat and sat with him while Adam gunned the car. “How did we not fucking know?” Ben whispered, “How did we not know?”
I thought of the shadowy Blackcat with the red eye and all the chains, but it was Adam who answered. “Because she’s very good at hiding it.”
“I want to know why Yo-yo girl appeared,” I said. “Especially since none of us contacted the fae.”
“Maybe Logan did.” Adam suggested, but I could tell in his voice that he doubted it. Yo-yo girl had come for a very specific reason, and I was pretty sure that reason, for once, had nothing to do with us.
“At least it’s over now.” I said.
“No its not,” Ben said, his voice slightly steadier, “there’s still the son of a bitch who taught him.”
I saw Blackcat’s face, covered in blisters and eyes burning. She’d told Yo-yo girl that she was in a good mood, she’d been lying, even if there had been no tells. “I don’t think that person will be much of a problem any longer.”
Ben started to shake again. “Don’t go after her Mercy, don’t. She’ll fucking kill you. It’ll fucking kill you.” He knew me, he knew what I was going to do. So did Adam, and I could see the anger and worry in his yellow eyes when he met mine in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t like it either, but it had to be done.
“I’m not going to talk to her alone, Adam will be with me. And somehow I doubt that she’ll do anything with Jacob there.”
“We’ll be careful Ben,” Adam said, “besides, I might just thank her. This is the first time in a long time that Mercy hasn’t had to go up against something that will most likely kill her.”
“Hey,” I complained, “I think I’m very good at staying, thank you very much.”
“Broken neck,” Adam said with a growl.
“Volcano god in your shop.” Ben added.
“Golem of Prague.”
“Wheelchair because of a giant river monster.”
I tuned them out as they continued to list my almost deaths. I didn’t point out that they were kinda just proving my point.
. . .
Much later, after Ben was situated in a guest room with Medea on his lap and Aiden and Jesse pulling him into playing pirates, Adam and I pulled up at the address of Logan’s and Blackcat’s temporary home. Logan opened the door for us, she looked like a wreck, and at the site of us her lips twisted. “I figured,” she said as she moved out of our way. The house was dark, In the living room there was the dialogue of some movie going on.
I tilted my head, “Is that The Hobbit?”
“Yep, the first one.” Logan led us through to the kitchen, and I caught a glimpse of Blackcat laying upside down on the couch. She had changed her tattered clothing for a fresh pair, and the blisters on her face was healed and the skin on her hand shiny and tight. Her eyes glowed a soft gold. Jacob leaned against her, fast asleep.
I took a seat at the table, and so did Logan, but Adam just leaned on the edge of it. “Blackcat will need to explain,” Logan said, “I don’t know how, and she, she knows probably know what is going on in her head.”
“Probably?” Adam asked.
“According to her, things that were never meant to live forever either lose their memories or go crazy, or a messy combination of both.”
“I’ve never heard of that.” I said. Though it would explain why some of the oldest wolves acted the way they did. Bran and Sam being an exception.
“It’s true,” said a quiet voice with just a hint of purr. Blackcat leaned against the kitchen door frame, eyes still glowing gold. They had the faintest ring of black around them. She looked at Logan, “Jacob’s in bed, and hopefully he’ll stay there for the night.” She looked back at Adam and me. “What do you want to know?”
“We want to know about the demon.” Adam said, bland and cold, but I could hear the undercurrent of growl in it. I took a deep breath and tried to do the trick I’d managed earlier, but I couldn’t. Blackcat only smelled of human now, nothing else.
“I’m possessed.” Blackcat said. “But it cannot take me over except on certain days, if I am in the presence of something that will react badly to it when that happens, then I try to remove myself from that situation as quickly as possible.” She smirked slightly, “At least that's what I’ve been doing for the past three years. It can’t take me over completely because I am not alone. One of me is only slightly human, the other was never human to begin with. It can take over one, but not both.”
“How did it happen?” I asked because I wanted to see if she knew.
“I don’t know, I wasn’t there for that. But my human says that it started with a death. The possession was an accident, she never meant to call a demon, only something that could protect, but she messed up the calling and she got the demon. I know how it ended though,” she smiled, “it ended with a bargain.”
“What bargain?”
Blackcat looked at me. “Her humanity to destroy her demon. But she was very young, and very scared, and made mistakes. So her demon did not get destroyed, just chained.”
I’d seen those chains.
“Is that it?” Adam asked.
“I believe it is,” she stretched, “I must go now, I have things to do.”
Then she was gone, with only the sound of the front door banging to show that she hadn’t teleported.
I looked at Logan. “She’s going to kill the witch, isn’t she?”
Logan sighed. “Yes, she is.”
Blackcat
Much later
I sat on my haunches, staring at my work. The blood on the floor was starting to cool, the scent of the witch's power was fading. I took a step away and wiped the blood from my mouth. She’d died grasping at the power her pain gave her. I’d made her suffer the death I couldn’t give to her student.
No one had heard her scream. The witch herself had made certain of that, she’d warded the house so sounds of pain could not get through to the ears of her neighbors.
I turned to leave, only to pause. Yo-yo girl had been right. This whole debacle had been my fault, if I’d dealt with this witch when I first found her, her student would not of learned her arts, would not have gone after Jacob.
I’d made a promise.
So what? You’ve broken your word before.
Should I?
It’s up to you.
I took another step forward.
A spirit, eyes burning in anger, standing on the table with defiance written on its face. “If you want me to tell you where he is, you must promise me something. Fix your mistakes, do your job, or no deal. He will die, and you’ll be to blame.”
A long time ago, when I was younger, a cave full of shadows, something moving in its depths. “What will you do to get rid of it?”
Me at that time, angry and scared and full of self-loathing. “Anything.”
I’d given up what I was, ignored the problems festering in the wake of my mistakes. For what? Those problems had caught up to me eventually. I might as well hunt down the rest of them before the found me. It was time to own up to my mistakes, to stop hiding from what I’d done. From what I’d been.
I groaned and turned back, knelt and placed two fingers on the floor. Beneath the wood, deeper, there was the threads of power. Not a ley-line, but close. The power was darkened, it tasted like blood in my mouth.
Could I still do it? I didn’t know.
There were no words for what I did next. It was a push, a pull, a movement of thought, the strength of will, old as time, older. But when I opened my eyes, when I touched that vein of power again, it was cleaner, like pure water.
I stood up and sighed. Weak. I walked over and started to push the bones of the body back into place. I found oil and started to drench the room with it. Lit a match, and left. The wards would keep people away for a little while, enough time for the body to burn. And magic’s first child was always fire.
You did the right thing.
I know, it feels odd.
Let’s go home.
Good, idea.