Hello All!! Hope you all had a grear Christmas/Hannuka/Sulk in the Dark!! Haven't updated for ages i know so, by way of apology, i present ye with a longer chapter that will hopefully provide a little more insight into Joss.
As always, pleease please please please please please please please please please review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She came out of her bathroom dressed and showered, her hair, just towel dried, sticking out in all directions, to find Logan sitting cross-legged on her bed tucking into the enormous stack of pancakes Storm had delivered. Holding out a fork he gestured towards the pile of sweet, sticky pancakes and Joss quite willingly joined in.
Swallowing his mouthful Logan looked up at Joss, he was worried about her, just because he didn't go on at her like the rest of them it didn't mean that he wasn't concerned but he just didn't know how to make her listen to him without her feeling cornered.
Noticing his gaze, Joss looked up and detected the worry in his eyes. She was about to try and steer conversation round to something neutral when, before she could think of anything, he spoke.
"When are you going to tell me what happened, Joss?" she looked away, he didn't, just waited, eyes steady.
"Why would you want to know that? It's not exactly a topic for light conversation." He continued to hold her gaze.
"I don't want light conversation I want to help you."
"Why can't you all just leave it be? Huh?" she snapped, "Why must everybody want to help, I've been fine on my own for ten years I'm not about to accept help now! What makes y'all think I want to remember it?" she was standing up now, angry, frustrated, still scared.
Logan rose and approached her but she backed off and gestured with her arms for him to keep his distance, growling deeply. He apologised and persisted, she growled louder in warning.
Eventually, after a few minutes, when he came over to her she allowed him to take her in his arms and hold her still till she calmed down and huddled into him.
"Maybe it's worse," he began, quietly, "to remember the bad things that have happened to you than it is to have no recollection of them at all."
"I'm sorry." she apologised, her voice muffled in his shoulder.
"S'okay, I'm hardly known for my calm temperament." She raised her head to look at his face.
"Do you really want to know?" he nodded
"I really do." She sighed and sat back down,
"Okay, but I haven't told it before so you'll have bear with me."
It was a warm summer evening in County Cork, Ireland, not the hot sticky kind but the kind that carries both the left over heat from the day and the cooling salt winds from the sea. A young family were sitting laughing on the front lawn of their large house, surrounded by stables and fields of beautiful purebred horses, the best in the country.
Jake Darko and his wife Morgan were happier than they could ever have conceived being; drinking their daughters chocolate milk as ordered and watching as she tried, unsuccessfully, to dress their large black mongrel, Ted, in her yellow summer dress.
Gazing out over their land Jake stiffened suddenly as he saw a movement on the boundaries of their forest. There had been news of murders in the surrounding area recently, horrible, brutal murders.
Standing up he started to move the plates and cups from their early dinner into the kitchen, Morgan always alert to his moods sensed his unease and followed him in to the house.
"What's the matter, Jake?" she asked, concerned. He peered out of the window across at the forest and frowned.
"I'm not sure," he replied "I thought I saw something on the boundary of the woods. It's probably nothing." He turned back to his wife and tried to smile but she wasn't buying it.
"Lets bring Joscelyn and Ted in, it's starting to get chilly anyway." She headed out on to the lawn and froze. "Jake!" she called, starting to panic. "Jake, she's gone! My baby's gone!"
Jake dashed out the door just in time to hear the ear-piercing scream of his six-year-old daughter from behind the house.
They both ran around the side of the house to find her crouching, sobbing on the floor Ted in her arms, her white cotton dress covered in blood. They rushed to her side; Morgan pulling her daughter away, checking her over and Jake stooped to look at the dog. He was already dead, split open down the middle, ribcage exposed to the warm evening air. He took of his jacket and laid it over the body.
"Joscelyn" Morgan demanded "what happen to you?" the girl stopped sobbing and dragged a small arm over her eyes.
"We were just playing" she began, sniffing "and he started to growl at something in the barn…he ran around the corner and I went after him but then he was all bleeding and crying and I don't know what he did!" she burst out crying again and fell in to her mother arms.
Jake stood up abruptly, taking charge.
"Morgan, get Joscelyn inside lock all the doors and windows then call Len O'Bannon, tell him to get him and his boys round here sharpish. I'm going to bring the horses in. Don't let anyone in, unless it's me or Len." She nodded and scooping the child up hurried inside.
Jake had trained all of their horses to respond to a high-pitched dog whistle so he managed to bring them in pretty swiftly and locked them all in their stables hoping that he wasn't just taking away their only defence; flight.
Turning back towards the house he darted into the shadows of an empty stall as he heard a sound outside. It was a low, menacing laugh…no, more a giggle but not the endearing giggle of his daughter, the chilling giggling of a grown man out of sorts. Staring out through a crack he saw the lean figure of a man pass the door to the stables heading for he back door of the house.
Steeling himself, Jake made a mad dash for the front door; through the carefully tended flowerbed and vaulting over the gate he pounded on the door.
"Morgan!" he yelled "Morgan, open the door."
His heart stopped as he saw her through the frosted paned glass of the door. The figure loomed behind her, looking over her shoulder at him with pale pink eyes and a sickly smile. She had no idea as she neared the door reaching out to let him in frowning puzzled at his frantic gestures to look over her shoulder.
Through his hazy view he screamed at her to run but his words wouldn't penetrate through the glass. Just as the pink eyed murderer reached out for her there was a piercing cry from inside the house and he saw his daughter in the doorway to the hall.
"Mama!" she cried out "He's behind you!" Morgan spun around just as the figure swung back a long arm. A long arm becoming longer. The fingers of it's hand melted together, curled round, the skin down to the wrist hardened and became a shining, black, wicked looking claw,
He brought it whistling through the air slicing her beautiful gypsy style face in half down to the white of her skull.
She screamed and clutched at her face blood pouring forth, between her fingers. Jake roared in fury and hurled himself against the door, crashing through the glass and flying at the man, now approaching his terrified daughter.
Before he reached her, the clawed intruder had lashed out with his long arm and torn at his back, Jake arched backwards in pain exposing his stomach, which was promptly opened up, down the middle, releasing his intestines to pile out onto the polished wooden floor.
Morgan, in the corner, attempting to hold her face together, peered through her fingers and seeing her husband kneeling, prone on the ground tried to struggle to her feet but couldn't bear to remove her hands from her mutilated face.
"Jake!" she cried, he turned his deathly pale face to her, screaming as their sallow skinned tormentor raised a deathly claw once again and slit her throat bringing it round in a wide arc and removed his head completely.
Joscelyn was cowering against the wall silent and staring. Wide, brown eyes taking in every minute detail of the picture in front of her. Her mother's body, both pieces of her father, the increasing pool of blood spreading across the floor towards her.
The man snickered again drawing her eyes to him. He was standing about 6'7", skin so pale it was almost transparent, flecked with thin spidery veins. His eyes, the pale pinkish colour of drained flesh, were full of amusement.
"Hello, little girl," he spoke, in a creepy, childish voice and she pushed up against the wall as far away from him as she could get, her small, bare feet slipping in the slick pool of blood moving closer to her. "Want to play?" he asked, approaching wielding the bloodied claw.
Joscelyn's breath quickened and she found that she was completely paralysed. Filled with an indescribable terror that rushed through her veins and ran down her brow.
She was wishing more than anything that she was big enough to knock the man who killed her parents down and run away as fast as she could. Praying to all the pagan gods she could remember her mother teaching her, she suddenly found that her movements had become more fluid, controlled, her senses sharpened. She could smell the blood from her parents, mingling with her own sweat, adrenaline and the faint stench of vomit and bile this threatening stranger carried.
He had paused is his approach and was looking at her strangely; Joss' eyes had changed from the dark brown of her mothers eyes to a the bright golden colour of summer corn, she had stopped scrabbling away from him and turned to face him. Maybe this little girl was not what she appeared.
Joss felt a rush of exhilaration; as if she had spent her life driving an old tractor and had suddenly found herself behind the wheel of an AC Cobra. Crouching down on her heels she uttered a low guttural growl and, not quite knowing what she expected to happen, threw herself at her would-be killer.
Half way through the air the small, six-year-old girl changed into a lithe, powerful young lioness and barrelled into the stunned man in front of her and pelted out of the door, across the fields and all the way through the forest. Branches whipped against her face, the ground passed beneath her feet at an astonishing speed but she didn't stop.
Ten miles away from her home the lion stopped and changed back into a small girl in a blood stained white cotton dress and bare feet. She lay panting on the bare earth for half an hour before crawling into a hedgerow, curling into a tight ball, and staying dead still until the darkness of the night enveloped her.
As the moon rose and a church struck midnight in the distance Joscelyn emerged from the shelter of the bushes and staring at the moon cried out into the darkness, screaming until her throat bled and dogs began howling for miles around.
Not knowing how to bring on the change into the form she had taken moments before, she continued as she was, away from her home with no notion of where she was going, only wishing to put as much distance between herself, the dismembered bodies of her parents and the man who had killed them as she possibly could.