Winx Club Fanfic- Child of the Moon (C5)

Chapter 5: The Offer

Summary: AU. Bitten by what she originally thought was a dog, Roxy's life takes a turn for the worse when she is turned into a creature of the night. How will her friends react? How will she be able to return her life to normal? But before she could do anything, strange things begin happening in Magix and familiar villains show up. What will the Winx and Roxy make of it?

Roxy yelped as her bottom struck terra firma. Her fingers touched cold, hard ground as she scrambled to her feet, eying her surroundings warily, panic and fear rising within her. The room she was in was circular, with a single window looking out onto treetops dotting the ground one level below. The brick walls were as cold as the floor, and the room was unfurnished save for faded red curtains which hung at the window, ripped in places. There was a wooden door, but upon trying to open it, the young fairy discovered it was locked.

      "Okay, here goes nothing," Roxy muttered to herself as she took a step back and prepared to use magic to unlock the door. However, nothing happened. She tried again and again, making sure to enunciate the spell properly, but the door remained locked. Finally, she gave up and resorted to pounding on it, yelling at whoever had locked her in to let her out.

     While she yelled, Roxy thought about what had happened. One second she was in an alley in Magix and the next thing she knew, she was in that weird room. The last thing she remembered was falling through the road, which was quite impossible, unless there had been some sort of invisible portal. She paused in her pounding and looked up at the ceiling, but there was nothing save for an expanse of grey, a lamp hanging from it. Roxy resumed pounding, but also resorted to her newly-developed heightened sense of smell and hearing to try to detect any signs of movements outside of the room she was in.

     She sniffed out the familiar scent of the woods. This building, or whatever it was, was located in the woods. The same woods as the one she stayed been in the previous night, judging from the smell. She strained her ears, but didn't hear anything save for the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the trees.

     Then she heard it.  Footsteps. Soft, but she was quite certain they were there. She pounded harder than ever on the door. "Open up!" she yelled. "Open up now and let me go! I know you're there!"

      Someone took hold of the knob on the other side and pulled open the door. Roxy stood in the doorway, slightly stunned, as she was welcomed by the sight of the woods. Slowly, she stepped out, before recovering and looking around for whoever it was who had freed her. She spotted him behind the door, slamming it shut, leaning against the wooden wall of a house in the woods.

       "No..." Roxy trailed off, finding herself at a loss for words. Finally, she turned and took off, racing with what energy she had left, through the woods, away from the wooden house. She knew it was a foolish attempt when he caught up with her and the magical ropes wound their way around her slim figure, binding her. She fell to the ground and glared up at him.

      "There's no need to run or be afraid, Roxy," Duman spoke. Roxy couldn't believe her eyes nor her ears.

      "You are dead!" she finally screamed out. "Nabu killed you and you are dead!"

       Duman smiled. "Any wizard of the Black Circle has his own ways to survive."

      Roxy's eyebrows furrowed as she struggled against the ropes binding her, but knew there was no escaping them. The injustice of it all nearly made her cry tears of anger. Nabu killed Duman before he was killed by Ogron. But the shapeshifter stood before her, as large as live and very much alive, like an insult to Nabu's memory. He lifted her bound form with magic and brought her back to the wooden house, where she was thrown back into the circular room, but there was someone else there.

     "Who are you?" Roxy spat at the dark-haired guy standing by the window. He reminded her of Helia.

     "My name's Karel. I'm a friend of Flora's," he said, nonchalantly. "You're a friend of hers, too, aren't you?" He sounded kind, despite the tone Roxy had used.

     "How do you know her?" the fairy asked, not so harshly as she had done earlier, as she heard Duman enter the room. Karel's gaze shifted momentarily from her to the wizard and back to her.

     "We met a few years back, when she and her friends were on a mission."

     The door swung shut. Roxy looked over her shoulder to see Duman walking up to her. She panicked and turned back to Karel. "What's going on here? What do you want with me?" she fired those questions at him, a pleading look on her face. She doubted Duman would ever let her go if she begged but perhaps, this Karel, would, especially since he was a friend of Flora's. "Why is he here? Do you know him?" She jerked her head back at Duman, before hearing the wizard snap his fingers and the ropes binding her vanished. She leapt to her feet, but the wizard casually moved in her way, blocking the door.

       "Where are you going to go, Roxy?" he asked, in a tone and voice that infuriated her. He laughed at her obvious annoyance. "No one wants you anymore. Not after what you've become."

    Her eyes widened, and she took a step back. "What are you talking about?" she yelled.

     "You think we don't know a wolf when we see one?" the wizard continued. Roxy realised what they were talking about and her desire to get out of that place and far away from them grew stronger. She rushed forwards towards the door, but Karel grabbed her from the back.

     "Listen to him, Roxy," he commanded.

     Duman didn't say anything, merely looked at the fairy. Roxy scowled. "Fine," she snapped, wrenching her hands from Karel's grasp. "I was bitten by one and now I'm one of them. Happy?" As she spoke, tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. She fought them back. She could not display any weakness, not in front of the wizard.

    "One of us," Karel gently corrected. Roxy spun round to face him.

     "What? Y- You are... a werewolf, as well?" she asked, stunned. Karel merely nodded. There was a short pause before Roxy continued, "Did Flora know?"

     Karel looked a little melancholic. "Yes, unfortunately," he responded, his voice dropping an octave. "She found out the hard way." Roxy's eyes widened slightly at those words, before she turned back to Duman.

     "So, why am I here?"

      "You're here because you're one of us," Duman said. "I'm not a werewolf, Roxy, but you do know I'm a shapeshifter, a wizard of animals, and it have a connection with them. Just like you do. Only yours have just recently grown stronger. You're here because Karel and I want you with us."

    Roxy laughed, much to the dark-haired boy's surprise and Duman's scorn. "Okay," she said, trying to pull herself together. "First, back on Earth, you were trying to capture me, drag me into the black circle because I was an essential ingredient in your pursuit of world domination. Now, you're saying you want me to be a part of your circle?" She gave Duman a weird look. "How do I know this is not a trick? And where are your brothers, anyway?"

    "Oh, they're here," Duman responded, as chills ran down Roxy's spine as memories from the time the hunters were in hot pursuit of her flashed in her mind. "They're in the next room. They've been hiding here for some time now. After I heard what happened to them, I tried to get them out. The werewolves offered to help me, so now we're with them. Karel was kind enough to house them."

    Roxy shut her eyes and shook her head. It had to be all part of a bad dream. She was going to wake up from it, to discover that she had never been bitten by a werewolf, and that the wizards were dead and there was no such person as a boy named Karel who knew Flora. She wished it would all go away. Once again, her mind flashed back to the time when she tried to convince herself fairies didn't exist. But it turned out they did and she was one of them. Now she was trying to convince herself that she wasn't in the company of a werewolf and a former nemesis who were trying to recruit her for their werewolf company as casually as though they were trying to recruit her for a basketball team. Roxy opened her eyes and looked up at the wizard, directly into his cold dark eyes. She had to stop pretending.

      "So what are you going to do to me?"

      "It's not a matter of what we're going to do to you, it's about what we're about to do with you," Duman said, putting emphasis on the words 'to' and 'with'. He smiled sinisterly at Roxy. "We'll train you. We'll teach you everything you need to know about being a werewolf. How to control yourself, how to be the wolf, how to be aware you're the wolf. How to accept it. And ultimately, how to control your transformations. Don't you want that as well? But, it's your choice."

      Roxy wasn't sure what to say or do. For a moment, she just stood there, staring at the two of them. Then she transformed into a her fairy form.

     "Forget it!" she yelled, blasting the door with all her might. It burst open, much to her surprise. She had guessed the reason she couldn't unlock it earlier was due to a spell Duman had placed on it, but it seemed to have gone. She flew right out and away from the wooden cabin, her pulse accelerating, adrenaline coursing through her veins. She had to get as far away as possible. She daren't look back, but something told her that no one was chasing her. After she had travelled what seemed to be a mile, she finally glanced over her shoulder. The cabin had gone out of sight, but no one had gone after her. She was alone.

    "That's weird," she murmured under her breath, before turning back to face the front, expecting an ambush, but there was nothing. The woods around her rang with the sounds of nature, but there wasn't a single sound depicting footsteps pounding on the ground, racing after her or the wind being unsettled by a figure flying through the air, headed towards her. Roxy finally decided to just get back to Magix.

     #

     "So, tell us what happened," Headmistress Faragonda spoke sternly, a severe look directed at the meek fairy seated before her.

     Roxy felt the eyes of the the headmistress on her, boring into her soul. "I went to the woods one evening, because I suddenly remembered that I might have left something there from a previous visit, something that I crucially needed at that moment, but hadn't realised was missing till then. I didn't take Artu with me because I figured it would be just a short trip. While I was searching  I suddenly felt really tired. I was actually already feeling exhausted before that, but like I told you, it was crucial I got my hands on that thing I left. Then I..."

    "What is this item you left in the woods?" the headmistress questioned, suspicious.

    Roxy hadn't quite figured that out. "It was a book, headmistress," she hurriedly said, a book being the first object that crossed her mind. "I had bought it from a bookstore in Magix some time ago, went through it a little, bringing it with me to several places I went, including the woods. I accidentally left it there. I remembered some stuff that were in it, and then I was assigned homework which I had out off till that day. When I tried to do it, despite being tired and all, I realised that the answers to some of the questions were in that book. I searched for it, but it was not there so I tried to remember where I had last put it. And..." Faragonda raised a hand and she was silenced.

      "Very well, it's a book. You were exhausted. Then?  

     Roxy heaved an inaudible sigh of relief. "My head was spinning, so I rested for a moment beneath a tree. I think I must've dozed off."

     Faragonda nodded, the severe look still etched on her face. "So you went to sleep. And you didn't wake up till the next morning. What happened next?"

     "I was afraid to come back here, as I was afraid if I went to Magix, I would be caught by the authorities for playing truant, which I wasn't," Roxy explained. "But finally, I did, and some citizens somehow recognised me and ran after me. I got afraid and hid in a back alley. They didn't find me. Then I realised I should be getting back to Alfea, so I decided to transform and fly back here. I didn't transform earlier because I didn't want to prompt them to use magic to capture me."

     
     "They knew who you were because we alerted them," Faragonda said. "We were worried, Roxy. Right now, as we speak, the Winx are in the woods with Artu, searching for you. I should call them back. For now, you may go."

    Roxy thanked the headmistress and got to her feet, trembling slightly, guilt filling her. She had just told the largest lie ever. She could never forgive herself. But how could she ever tell the headmistress what had truly happened? She had to find out something first.

     The library was her next destination. Instead of going through the books, Roxy searched through newspaper and magazine articles, searching for werewolves. She finally found an article on them, from a magazine and went through it briefly. It shook her even more.

     Werewolves are cold-blooded murderers...they deserve to be killed... the magic dimension hates werewolves...

     Shaking, Roxy replaced the article and sat down at one of the desks. She had done the right thing by not revealing herself to the headmistress And now, she wasn't sure if she could execute her original plan to confide in the Winx. What if they thought the same of werewolves despite the fact that one of their friends was one? Roxy thought of Flora. Perhaps the fairy of nature would understand, after having confronted one before. But she didn't dare. She didn't want to take any risks.

      Duman's offer replayed itself in her mind as she went to bed that night. The Winx had returned, after being called back by the headmistress, but with nothing to report. Apparently, they hadn't searched much as Artu was acting rather strange. As Roxy lay in her warm bed, dreading the next full moon, she heard soft growling sounds and peered down to see Artu, who usually slept by her bed, baring his teeth at her. Instinctively, she sent him out. As her head touched her pillow, she pondered on what was happening to her. She had changed. Her old self wouldn't send Artu out. Her old self wouldn't tell a blatant lie.

      And the wizards. They were alive. Would they pose a threat to the Winx? She hoped not, or else, her cover was bound to be blown, for she was certain Duman had informed them of her current status. The events of the day replayed themselves, Duman's voice echoing in her troubled mind and Roxy didn't sleep a wink that night.