Ireland was just as green as Mick had always imagined it would be, and a part of him wished he was here under better circumstances. The two men had not really spoken since New York… Josef had been too busy making phone calls, most of which ended in contingency plans for what to do if he didn't call in a week. None of these calls seemed to make either one feel any better about what was to come.
At least somewhere in there Josef had arranged for a limo to pick them up from the airport and take them to their hotel, which Mick was surprised to learn was vamp friendly. The penthouse suite came complete with freezer, retractable blackout shades, and a fully stocked mini-bar, vampire style. Too bad they weren't planning on staying long.
Mick set down his bags in his room and immediately began unpacking and double checking his vampire execution kit. Stakes, mini crossbow, silver alloy throwing knives, fully automatic submachine gun with silver bullets, everything one could want when hunting their own kind, most of which were stowed in custom made holsters. It was good to be rich and able to bypass customs.
Josef watched him from the doorway, shaking his head. "You can carry all you want, Mick, but I'd advise you not to brandish a weapon in front of my ex. She'll see it as a personal insult and likely take it out on Beth. If she's as smart as I remember, she already knows what Beth means to you, which makes it a given that Katherine controls you because of it. Right now, you are only a means to an end for her… the delivery boy for what she ordered, and nothing else unless you make it more complicated. I don't want to see things get more complicated for you or Beth, so just hand me over, get Beth safely out of the country, and enjoy the inheritance I've left for the two of you."
"We've already been over this, Josef. I'm not going to let some crazy woman kill you if I can do anything to stop it," Mick said defiantly.
"Who said she was crazy?" Josef asked in all seriousness.
"She kidnapped Beth so I'd find you! From what you've said she likely has planned some inventive and very painful ways of getting back at you for whatever you did to her." Mick thought for a moment. "What did you do to her, Josef?"
"Does it matter?"
"It might."
"Fine." Josef sat on the bed and wished he'd had time for another haircut before his funeral. "She was one of my earliest meals when I was a fledgling. I drained her and left her for dead. Unfortunately for me, Lola found her, barely alive and turned her, knowing that she wanted the immortality, knowing that she was in love with me. Lola mistakenly thought I was in love with my wife and planned to use that against me, but unfortunately for me, I had chosen not to air our dirty laundry out of my own sense of propriety. When Katherine came to me, newly turned, she was very forgiving of my error, chalking it up to fledgling hunger… making it out to be a simple and forgivable mistake on my part."
"Was it? A mistake?" Mick asked as he strapped two silver knives to his ankles.
"Of course not. I never liked her. We married because it was arranged and we were both expected to marry who our parents chose for us. That was the way things were in the late sixteenth century, we were fifteen years old for God's sake. Only peasants married for love and we were most certainly not peasants. I'd quickly grown tired of her constant prattling on about nothing, her frequent requests that I visit her bedchamber, and I'd had enough ten years later."
Mick looked startled. "So you tried to kill her on purpose, but you didn't finish the job?"
"See, I've always told you we had more in common that you thought."
"Shit."
"Exactly. 'Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.' Congreve was a friend of Katherine's, well, his mistress actually. Can you tell?"
"So, every so often when she escapes the minders she tries to kill me. Not personally of course. She once told me she could never hurt me directly, that she still loves me, though I'm inclined to think that given recent events, she might have gotten over that little hangup, or she might have just hired a good torturer."
"What's her usual M.O.?" Mick asked as he examined the contents of his kit, as if Josef's response would help him make up his mind what to bring.
Josef stood up and poured each of them a tall glass of blood from the mini-bar, then sat back down on the bed and paged through the local travel magazine that the hotel had supplied. "Time before last she hired a vamp who used to be a hit man for the Nazis. He blew up Marcus' party house while we were in it… Marcus was not pleased, and he sent out his own assassins after her, but she'd run back under the radar by then. The last time she tried to kill me she was a little more subtle. She sent a freshie, quite the attractive AB negative if I do say so myself, complete with excellent references and a silver plated stake. If she'd been about an inch to the left I would have been in real trouble. At other times Katherine has sent a variety of assassins after me, and once went after my money. See, even us paranoids have some real enemies."
"Have you tried to kill her a second time, Josef?"
"Directly? Not recently. Lola used to keep Katherine in line and out of reach most of the time, then occasionally let her out to play when I didn't give Lola what she wanted. Lola's dead now, though."
"Yeah, I remember. Did you know Katherine would be after you again because of it?"
"Yes, but I thought it would take her longer. After the last time, I had Ryder seize all of her assets, which were considerable, and transfer them to my ownership. I mistakenly thought she'd need more time before she surfaced again. Assassins are getting more expensive, you know. Inflation." Josef shrugged his shoulders like he was discussing the price of commodities futures.
"So the two of you have been playing cat and mouse for four hundred years with Lola as the referee?"
"Yeah, that about sums it up. Sorry to bore you with the details."
"So, I'm going out on a limb here, Josef, but I'll be the one to say that your ex-wife is crazy."
"You think so?"
Mick smiled as he pulled on a shoulder holster and settled the automatic pistol underneath his jacket. Josef sarcastic had to be a good sign. A quick glace and the mirror reassured him it wasn't visible unless his coat opened. Finishing his glass of blood, Mick turned around and rinsed both glasses, setting them back on the counter.
Josef stood and waited for Mick to finish, with a more sullen look on his face than normal as of late. "Look, Mick…"
"I'm not promising you anything else that will make it easier for you to go down without a fight, Josef."
"I understand." Josef put his hand on his friend's arm. "I'm sorry you and Beth had to become involved in this mess." He pulled his friend into a guy-appropriate hug, then drove the stake he'd picked up from the vampire kit straight into Mick's back, hitting his heart quickly. He picked Mick up and placed him into the freezer gently, on his side.
"I'm sorry, Mick. For everything. I'll get her back for you, I promise." He closed the lid gently and made a quick call to Marcus to get Mick out the freezer in two days if he wasn't back. The he grabbed an extra stake and tucked it into his pocket, leaving the directions he'd written out earlier for Mick to where he thought Katherine was holding Beth on the table nearest the freezer. Josef's hand hesitated a moment around a second envelope with Beth's name on it before finally dropping it next to the first one. The soft metallic clink left by the latter as it hit the surface of the table was drowned out by the sound of the door Josef slammed on his way out.
