Nature or Nurture Ch. 28-30

It makes him feel strong, whereas his other loves have often made him feel weak. There is little he will not do to protect these two, and he fears he may have to fight again before he'll have them home safely.

He'd give his right arm to have Bruce here with a bunch of his young hotheads, and Victor and Mina.

But he knows he is a small army by himself, and Adison and Neil aren't helpless in a fight either, so they'll have to take the chance and go back towards the city tomorrow.

But as it happens they don't have to travel the whole distance alone, for soon the bailiff arrives, and after interviewing the eight men he finds out they were all taken from farms within a few hours drive from his village.

Four are from the village where they changed horses, and as they are planning to return via the same inn, they can take the men along for extra protection.

This is a great relief for Vincent, for he was not looking forward to saddling Adison with an active toddler when still tired from working magic, but he was not going to sit in the carriage either, with the possibility of an ambush very real.

They work out the details, planning to start the return journey the same afternoon to be unpredictable, spending the night at the inn in the village where the farmers live.

Adison will not like it, but she will spend most of the day sleeping anyway, so she may as well do that in a moving coach, as long as someone is awake to entertain their daughter.

The bailiff takes the four men from other villages with him, and right then lunch is ready.

Vincent quietly wakes Adison and little Catherine, and both sit up, rubbing their eyes. They go in behind Peter Kent, his sons and the four remaining farmers.

Mrs Kent is clearly used to large groups of people eating with them, for the table is enormous, and the amount of food even more so.

Nelly laughs at their amazed looks. 'You should see the table in harvest season, when hired hands help us get the crops in. And when our children will start marrying, a few will certainly move in with us. That's the custom here.'

The food is excellent, Vincent and Adison are sitting on either side of their new daughter, helping her with whatever she cannot manage herself.

Somewhere during lunch, Vincent tells Adison what the bailiff has suggested, and though it will be a tight fit, she sees the sense in leaving quickly and in company.

'I will be sleeping most of the way, I couldn't travel alone with Catherine until I'd had a full night's sleep, and by then who knows what forces might be arrayed against us.'

So after lunch, Vincent leaves for the inn to ask Neil to ready the coach for a short drive in an hour, with four extra passengers.

Adison helps Nelly pack for little Catherine, and when Vincent has returned, Nelly tells the toddler that she will leave Nelly and her family to live with her father and with Adison. They are not sure she has understood yet, but she is not upset, and doesn't mind giving Adison and Vincent a little hand each.

Vincent says, 'We want to leave with all ceremony, if the farm is still watched they'll know Catherine is no longer here.

Still, you may want to stay on your guard for a few more days.'

Nelly accompanies them to the inn, where they pack their stuff and stow it on the roof of the carriage, excepting their weapons and the doctor's bag, plus some toys for the little girl.

They settle their account with the inn and two of the farmers go into the carriage, two settle on the box with Neil.

Vincent kisses Nelly goodbye, promising to write as soon as they have arrived safely. Adison kisses Nelly too, and then the time has come for the latter to say goodbye to little Catherine, the girl she has raised practically from birth.

It is a very difficult moment for Nelly, fortunately the girl is still too young to see her foster-mother's grief at the separation.

At the same time, Nelly is happy too, happy that the boy she loved is still alive and well enough to take care of his own child, and apparently well-able to protect her from whoever or whatever tried to take her.

She gives the toddler a last kiss, and then Vincent hands Adison into the coach, hands her the girl, and steps in himself.

Last of all, Neil checks the horses a last time, and sets off towards the moors.

Soon getting sleepy again, Adison settles against Vincent for another big nap.

This time, Catherine does not join her, but with three men adoring her she need not be bored. The two farmers both have children, so they know exactly how to entertain a toddler, and when they find out Vincent has only just met his own daughter, they are full of advice, some of which Vincent decides to remember well.

When the farmers wonder why Adison is so sleepy in the middle of the day, Vincent explains how working magic costs an enormous amount of energy.

This has opened the awkward subject of what has happened to discussion. One of the men observes, 'I remember trying to catch a beautiful black horse, but after touching it there is a big blank until I woke with a headache.'

The other says, 'I remember the horse and trying to halter it, and I remember you flying at me.' Thinking of the best way to put it, Vincent explains.

'The horse was a gytrash, an evil spirit in the shape of a horse, that lured you to touch it, spelling you into the power of its master.

We call him the enemy, for lack of a better name.

When under his spell, you watched the Kent farm, keeping an eye on little Catherine here, and when I killed the gytrash and Nelly met with us, you were set on her farm, I guess to abduct her to your master.

We intercepted you, Adison concluded you must be possessed because you were not afraid of guns and sabres, running right into them.

So she yelled not to kill you or harm you, we stunned you, she used her powers to break the spell. Times eight, which is why she is so tired now.'

'So we have you both to thank for our lives, not just for a lift home,' one man, Josh, says. 'I don't think you would have survived the spell,' Vincent deduces, 'you'd probably have been used to fight until it killed you.'

'It was a beautiful horse, though,' observes Brian, the other man.

'Beautiful, but deadly,' Vincent remembers, 'when we wouldn't touch it because Adison felt its evil, it changed into a big black dog the size of a horse, with two heads, and it attacked us.

We emptied two full cartridges in it, but it kept on coming.

Adison stayed back with Neil, who managed to keep the horses from bolting, and I took it on.'

'On your own?' Brian asks incredulously.

'I'm a lot stronger than I look, and I'm a master at swordplay and in Chinese martial arts,' Vincent states bluntly, 'it got only one hit on me.'

At this, Josh interjects, touching a tender spot on his head.

'I can still feel how strong you are, but I'm glad I'll see my family again.'

Suddenly, the carriage slows and Neil knocks on the front window, calling loudly, 'I'll have to dismount to lead the horses past the cadaver of the gytrash, anyone want to see it?'

Now the carriage stops, and Adison promptly wakes up.

'It's the body of the gytrash, Neil has to dismount to pass it,' Vincent says comfortingly, 'who wants to see it?'

Both men want to, and Vincent and Adison really want to as well, this time by daylight.

So they all step outside, Vincent carrying his little daughter on the arm, in case the huge body frightens her. He feels a thrill to have this little person trust him so much.

They all gawk at the huge corpse, even more hideous and more enormous in daylight. Brian and Josh, and their two friends inspect it from very close-by.

Neil is trying to keep the horses from bolting, they are rolling their eyes and snorting in fear.

'They still don't like it, even though it's dead. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I would not believe you killed that monster all by yourself. It's huge!

Hey there, one of you familiar with horses?'

One of the farmers comes towards them.

'I breed them, so I guess I am.'

'Can you take the far horse, Liam, it's very nervous and if it breaks, this one will follow.'

Together they lead the horses past the corpse expertly, and they stop twenty yards from the dead monster.

Vincent and Adison walk past the monstrous cadaver, seeing the ruined right head, and the wounds on its belly and backside. Catherine looks rather interested than afraid, and says two of the first words they've heard her speak. 'Big dog.'

Vincent looks at her, melting. 'It sure was.'

Josh, Brian and their mate now follow them back to the carriage, talking to one another in excited tones, Josh commenting toVincent, 'That beast took some killing, I still find it hard to believe you managed that by yourself. We three couldn't have done it together.'

A bit embarrassed with all the attention, Vincent cannot help but agree with them.

Neil just told me, that if he hadn't seen it himself, he wouldn't have believed it either. I must admit it looks a lot larger in daylight.'

'But fortunately, just as dead,' is Adison's comment.

They all nod, remembering what the effect of its touch had been.

'That reminds me, Miss, Mr Heathcliff here told me you saved our lives, clearly at great cost to yourself,' Brian says quite formally, 'we all want to thank you. We're glad to be able to go home.' Now it's Adison's turn to be a bit embarrassed.

'I'm glad I could help, and I hope you will all have a lot more years with your families.

They will be happy to see you.'

After that, they all go back to their places on and in the coach, and drive for two more hours until they reach the village where they will spend the night.

Adison sleeps away one more hour, again joined by Catherine, warmed by Vincent's coat and loving looks.

Then they spend another hour playing together, even talking a little in a toddler's special language. When they arrive there are still a few hours of daylight left, and the village buzzes like a hornets' nest with the news of the four men turning up alive and well.

The rescuers are treated to a fabulous dinner at the inn, with the demise of the gytrash the lean times are over for the innkeeper.

And that night, his place is filled to the brim with curious villagers, eating out and drinking to a good end.

Neil tells another captivated audience how Vincent and Adison confronted the gytrash head on, how it changed into a huge black hyena with two heads, and how Vincent faced it first, then rolled under it, scoring its belly, then flew over it, thrashing its legs, got dumped once, then split its head in one epic swing.

His storytelling has the cadence and flow of the real master, but it has grown relatively little in the telling. Adison suspects that embellishing it would make it unbelievable altogether, it already is incredible.

Still, four men have witnessed the corpse, and counted the number of heads, and the wounds on it support the tale as Neil tells it.

Vincent is sitting in the audience with Adison and Catherine, all three enjoying a rare treat of ice-cream, brought out especially for the hero, his fiancée and his lovely daughter.

After the tale of the gytrash, it is the turn of the four lost men to tell their tale, and they do so in a much more down-to-earth manner.

Still, their story makes a great impression on the villagers, they know these guys personally, had mourned their deaths, comforted their widows and crying children.

Now, they see Adison too, having heard the story of how she freed them from an evil spell.

The feasting, long overdue, lasts a long time yet, but after saying goodbyes to Brian, Josh, Liam and Cole, who are going home for some private time with their wives and children and a good night's sleep, Adison and Vincent retire too.

Catherine needs her sleep, after all. Adison tucks Catherine in in a small bed that comes out from under their own big bed, then she fetches hot water from the kitchen and carefully cleans the wounds Vincent got in the fight.

She is not surprised to see them healing well, knowing now that his blood actively resists infection.

Seeing her wash away some blood, Vincent remembers a funny incident with Mina, and he tells his beloved about it.

'When you were in bed with the concussion, I was feeding Mina for the first time, and she was stunned by the taste and the effect of my blood.

Afterwards I told her of a dream I had about eloping from Wuthering Heights, but she kept staring at me.

I looked back questioningly, and she told me, quite embarrassed, how she suddenly remembered all of my blood she had seen you wash away. She thought it was a waste.'

Laughing, Adison observes, 'Well, you've been good today, you've wasted very little blood. Will you let her taste it again in the future? If Victor doesn't mind?'

'You wouldn't mind? We've arranged that it's for emergencies and special occasions, kitchen table only of course. Jokingly, but I'd do it any day.'

Adison replies, deadly serious.

'I wouldn't mind letting her take it in bed either, if you both wanted to. We've shared love with Victor, haven't we? I think I'd like to watch, though, that would be a sight, you and her.'

Thinking he knew his lover well, this answer stuns Vincent, how large a heart can a person have? The image of himself in bed with Mina is spectacular, but it doesn't really turn him on.

He is too much in love with his own precious woman, and falling really hard for his tiny daughter. He has no other comment than an intense, passionate kiss.

She returns it, but not without a significant look towards little Catherine.

But Vincent knows they'll find a solution for that too, toddlers sleep very tightly after all, and they can make love very quietly. And when after a nice long cuddle they hear a regular breathing sound coming from the little bed next to their own, that is exactly what they do, saving the wild love play for later.