Okay yes it's taken me like forever to update this story. I hit a temporary snag in writting.
Why? Check out my profile page to get a link to my website and find out.
The ride back to Jake's house was stone cold silent. Spud refused to turn on the radio and refused all of Jake's suggestions for CD's.
Jake knew Spud was angry with him even if he couldn't figure out exactly why. There was no concrete reason for Spud to be angry, in his opnion. Trixie was alive, they both got to see her—for goodness sakes that's what they came for.
Trixie—she looked so great. She looked great before but now she was all grown up. Her jet black hair was now sleek and chic and hung loose around her shoulders and down her back. She was so fit and muscular. Jake hated to admit it but when he first saw her his eyes lingered for a while on her hips and the area below her neck.
His fingers twitched in remembrance of how smooth her skin looked, how much he wanted to just touch her. And her scent—Jake sighed—her scent was amazing. He felt a little more dragon than human when they were hugging for those few moments. He found himself clinging to his legs, trying so hard to keep himself from imagining to much.
"We're here." Spud's voice interrupted his more than inappropriate thoughts.
Jake studdered for a moment before collecting himself and forming a coherent sentence. "Okay. Uh," he started to initiate a conversation with Spud but ultimately decided against it, "See you later, man."
"Yeah, sure."
Jake got out of the car and as soon as his door was closed Spud sped off in a blur or rust and rubber.
Up the stairs and into his townhouse, Jake went straight to his room and threw his pack on his bed, closing the door as softly as he could. The excitement of having found Trixie, having seen her after so long was overwhelming him.
A shower, he decided, would be a nice way to relax and collect his thoughts.
He quietly tiptoed down the hallway, passed Halley's door and shut the bathroom door quietly. He turned on the lights and jumped a little at his reflection. Chuckling a bit he got an inkling as to why Trixie didn't recognize him immediately. He didn't look like his old self. There were similarities but the differences outweighed them by a lot. His hair was still spiky, jet black and tinted green at the ends. His skin was still a shade of bronze that no tanning bed could achieve. His eyes were the same but… even to him they seemed a bit different. In any case he wasn't in the mood for analyzing himself at 5am.
He turned the water on hot, stripped down and then hopped in.
Jake sighed, letting the steaming hot water roll from his face, to his broad and tense shoulder, down his torso and legs and off his feet. It was the perfect end to the perfect stakeout.
He stayed there, still, letting the water fall around him for a good ten minutes before grabbing his scrub and soaping himself up. There was so much sweat, dirt and grim to wash away, he couldn't deny it. His last shower was probably a few days before this one. Ew, he thought, I'm gross.
His shower ended after forty-five minutes with two scrub downs and three rinse-and-repeats. He stepped out of the steamy bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist, and headed down the hallways towards his room.
Once in his room he threw the towel to the floor and strutted over to his dresser in all his naked man glory, stopping on for a moment to admire himself in the mirror. He pulled out a pair of red, plaid boxers and slipped them on.
"Oh, please don't stop the show on my account." A voice came from behind him; he jumped and whirled around only to find that no one was there.
He stared into the moonlight area of his room where a pile of dirty clothes cluttered his bed. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, there was no person. He stepped closer, with the knowledge that there could be someone under an invisibility spell in his room.
He held his hands out in front of him, feeling his way through the room as though he were a blind person. "Come out and show yourself!" he angrily whispered into the darkness.
Jake continued to feel his way around until he reached his bed and sat down. He sighed, confused and disoriented. Had he just imagined Trixie's voice?
He felt two hands slide up his back and around his shoulders, to frozen to react. "You have grown, Jake. You have grown." Trixie whispered into his ear, running her hands over the chorded muscles of his back.
Her hot breath tickled his ear lobes but he could not move, he could not react even though every fiber in his being wanted to. He let her continue to roam his body with little thought on the subject. Her fingers traced patterns down his spine, around his shoulders and on the nape of his neck—he was not complaing about how it tickled a little. He let out a small stuttered breath, closed his eyes and sighed.
"How did you…" He stopped midsentence when she slipped her hands from his lower back, around to the front and ran her fingers around his ab muscles.
She chuckled and leaned forward so that her cheek was pressed on Jake's back, "I was gone for a long time Jake, but not that long." She told him in a soft tone. She remembered all the good times they had, she would never forget, but time had made her put those memories away for quite a while.
After a moment of silence Jake suddenly found the strength to grab one of Trixie's hands that were wrapped around his stomach and pull her so that she sat in his lap. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand lost in the tangles of her hair and the other clinging to her waist from fear she would disappear. This is what he wanted, just to hold her, to have her in his arms.
Trixie spoke just then, "You stole my jacket." She laughed a little, Jake joining in.
He loosened his grip on her, but only enough so he could look down at her face and smile, "I know it sounds stupid but…"
"You were going to have Foo smell it and track me down. So predictable." She chuckled and ran her fingers through Jake's black hair.
Jake enjoyed the way her fingers felt against his scalp, salvaging every memory his nerve endings gave him. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so—unburdened, so free of the weight he had been carrying on his shoulders for three years.
Trixie got out of his hold, Jake flinched forward and she turned on him. Her face was hard at first but quickly softened, "Just looking around, relax," she told him. His body relaxed but he was still on guard mentally, in case she tried to run.
She looked around the room. Going from the dressers to the closet, from the window to the wall with all of his posters and a few pictures, "Haven't changed a bit have you." She stated.
Jake didn't respond, just kept a very close eye on her. She looked so different that how he remembered her, so much more grown up. No more afropuffs on the side of her head, all the baby fat was gone and replaced by muscle. She walked differently, her carefree strides from the past turning into strained steps, like she waiting for something to attack her. She had her guard up, even when around Jake, her friend—he wondered why.
She finished her tour and sat next to Jake on the bed, "You have some questions for me, I expect."
Jake turned so he didn't have to look at her. He closed his eyes, the image of her with a tail and red eyes took over the darkness. With a sigh, he leaned back on his elbows, "How?" was all he said.
It was Trixie's turn to be silent.
She sat, thinking of how to explain thing to Jake without making him feel worse. She wanted to tell him in a way that wouldn't completely confuse him and drive him to get angry because of his on inability to understand.. "That night," she started slowly, "That night something happened that I still can't explain."
Jake sat upright; finally about to get the answers he had feverishly searched for three years for.
Trixie touched the right side of her face and Jake silently kicked himself for besmirching the beauty of her face so wrongfully with that scar. It seemed to shine in the pale daylight starting to filter in through his window. She looked into the mirror atop his dresser and continued.
"The night you gave me this scar a transformation took place. Inside of me," she whispered, "It didn't manifest until about a year after I had been taken but… it was wonderful." There was a tone in her voice, full of awe and fascination.
Jake somehow understood that her turning into a cat-thing was somehow his doing, somehow he had expected it. "The Huntsclan, where did they take you? What did they do to you? Why didn't you escape once you knew about…"
"I'm getting to it, Jakey!" she silence him, "The Huntsclan took me while I was still unconscious, that much I'm sure you know. The NYPD wrote me off as a terrorist attack or something right? That I was dead somewhere." She waited while Jake nodded and confirmed what she already knew. She chuckled, "Good ol' New York law enforcement."
Jake stood up slowly but didn't move toward her.
"They took me to some facility of theirs in the mountains. At first they wanted information—about you. 'Who is the American Dragon? Where can we find him? How do we destroy him?' they asked me every day for hours on end as they…" she stopped before continuing with the sentence. She would have to choose her words carefully around Jake.
"Did they… did they do anything to you?" he asked in a strained voice.
Trixie turned, "Jake,"
"Answer the question."
His voice leveled out when he took a deep breath and Trixie decided that he could take it. Now that she was exposed there was no point in keeping the truth from him. She took a deep breath before continuing, "In the beginning they just started to starve me, hoping the hunger would make me so weak I would beg and tell them whatever they wanted. After six months of starving me with no results the moved on to psychological torture."
"All day they would take shifts sending people in to say all kinds of things. Some of them would try to make me believe that no one missed me. They would say that no one was looking for me. After that most of them would just call me names."
By the time Trixie took a moment to catch her breath Jake's fists were clenched into impenetrable boulders at his sides. He took several calming breaths and moved forward, now he had to be near Trixie. He placed a hand on her shoulder and just left it there, "I never stopped looking, hoping that you were okay, Trixie! I tried so hard to find you!"
She smiled, "I never believed them. I knew you and Spud were looking for me. I never gave up on that," there was a brief pause as she temporarily got lost in Jake's solemn eyes, "After the first year of unresponsive torture the HuntsKing himself decided to intervene. He gave me two choices. The first choice was that he could continue to have people torture me the second was that I could train with the rest of the Huntsclan."
"At first I took the torture but slowly I came around to the idea of training. I was going to die in the cell if I didn't find a way to get healthy again. So I told him yes."
"The training was hard at first but then the magic took hold. It made me stronger, faster than any of the rest of those bastards. At first I thought it was you somehow taking over my body and making me fight better. I wasn't completely wrong." She laughed. "Anyways, I quickly got bumped up the ranks until I was at the same level as… Rose."
Jake knew why the last word was so hard for her to say. Trixie hated Rose and as illustrated prior to their meeting Rose hated her too.
"I suppose that brings us to recent times, eh? All I can really tell you is that I left the Huntsclan with the intention of coming to find you and Spud, coming back to my old life but… I couldn't."
Jake squeezed her shoulder, "Why?"
"The old man is sick, Jake. Once he keels over, the spot for head of the Huntsclan is open. I want that spot." She told him. When she turned to face him, her eyes were glowing red, her jaw clenched tight, "I will be the HuntsQueen."
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