Part Seven
Without a word, Josef handed Mick a package, wrapped in blue paper and tied with a bow, indistinguishable from the pile of baby presents still in the great room. Mick gave his friend a questioning look and ripped away the paper.
A plastic container and inside it a hand, ragged and torn, no clean cuts or easy tears.
"That would be the hand he laid on Beth," Josef informed him as he led the way to one of the rooms Beth would never see.
The answer to Mick's first question had been easy and decidedly modern, discovered with just a click of the mouse – the vampire had been one of Josef's own. He'd run the second set of tests, at one of the labs Josef owned. The vampire had been a carelessness of the old ways, never to be repeated. A favor to his sire, a European vampire with deals to make, Josef had put him on the payroll years ago without question, before surveillance and background checks, before the spyglass of technology could be trained on him. He'd had Beth's blood, Mick's blood. He'd asked for more – a request that would haunt Josef – but been denied.
The vampire was stretched across the floor, chained and stained with blood. Josef handed his friend a piece of wood and stepped back. Mick licked his lips, feeling fang and knelt.
The stake went in and the stake went out with clinical precision, nicking organs and arteries, as Mick started with simple questions. Names, places.
Silence.
The groans were interrupted by a a sucking sound as wood passed down to the concrete, the tip shattering a little.
There was so little skin and blood between spine and air.
The C4, T6, L4, L5 – sounds like cracking walnuts. Then he found bundle of nerves, playing his fingers over them. Slippery and delicate, like he'd always thought jellyfish would feel. No screams yet.
Mick ripped his fingers through the tissue paper-thin nerves and watched as they reknit themselves, flowing over the broken shells of his bones. A seal of perfect flesh.
Then the questions again as the stake came out.
"The lab."
A call from a woman late one night, a vampire who knew about the mystery of Mick St. John and who believed. There was a plane. Already gone. Private strip in the desert. One day, one time and the pilot would leave for parts unknown.
With a flick of his wrist, Josef shoved the stake back through that smooth skin and flipped him like a pancake, the flat of the stake banging against the table and pushing the stake further through his chest..
Mick pulled the broken tip, the wood catching at organs and flesh as it came through the other side, not a smooth wood. From the bathroom door, Mick thought, staring at the faded paint. He inhaled the fear, the pain oozing from the body.
"Tests, what tests?"
He pulled the silver-plated knife from Josef's tray of playthings.
Blood tests. Blood out of them. Blood into them. How much of Beth's blood. His blood. New blood in them. The tenuous St. John line as a teeter totter of measurements.
It always came down to the blood.
"Names."
Sophie Renault – the voice on the phone. A vampire who would meet him. William. No last name.
The knife sank into skin, pulling apart four sections, peeling layers to see the tangle of viscera, quiet, so quiet. No blood. The flutter of a heart with nothing to pump. When the thrashing began, Mick carefully worked the wood through the center of the silent, fleshy organ.
"I'm out of questions. But I have time."
Filled with teeth and claws and blood and vengeance.
Heel, toe, heel, toe, Beth repeated, carefully navigating the hallway, hand at her back.
"I will not waddle, damn it," she muttered as she headed to the door. She saw the hats and the uniforms, large boxes.
"Mick!" she hollered, a hand on the door and the other working aching muscles. His bleary, frozen, naked self was at her side before the echo faded.
"Put some clothes on," she rolled her eyes. "We have packages and they don't need to see yours."
She tugged the door but nothing happened. His hand weighed against the metal.
"You're just going to open the door? For random strangers? With boxes?" Mick's eyes flashed. His hand went to her face. "The bruises haven't even faded."
"We have baby furniture coming," Beth stomped a little and she reddened when she realized her mistake, but refused to admit it.
"We have enemies. We have bored, crazy vampires who want to play mad scientist, get their hands on you, on him," she swatted away his touch of her stomach.
"Oh, fuck the vampires," Beth spun away.
The buzzer rang again.
"Go into the freezer room. It's steel lined."
"Fuck you!" she called from the steps, breathing hard and wishing she could get a good stomp going. "Goddamned vampire bullshit."
"I love you!" Mick returned.
"Put some clothes on while you investigate the imminent vampire threat, Marlowe!"
"I thought there would be more blood," Mick whispered, holding Beth tight between his legs. His eyes grew wide and her lungs seized up as the shadows flickered around the room.
"I want to know why she's naked," Beth said, less quietly. "With porn music."
The rumble of his laughter earned a nasty look from the instructor, who'd already practiced her pinched face and head shake at them when Beth admitted they were less than a month away and at their first birthing class. Beth had specifically avoided visuals like this. She was going to be on the other side of those stirrups. Why did she need to see the play-by-play of pain to come.
But then Ryder had taught Josef how to text message and her phone began beeping several times an hour with tips and warnings. He'd tried to get her to hunker down and practice breathing with one of the freshies in the middle of his office on her last visit and pumped his own latent lungs with lamaze techniques until Beth let Mick sign them up for a night class.
"Seriously? When was this made?" Beth kept her whisper low enough only Mick could hear her. "I'm wearing clothes. And getting drugs. A lot of drugs."
She squeezed her eyes shut, then peeked, unable to look away as the thatch of dark hair pushed out. The rest seemed to go fast and suddenly the whine of the soundtrack was louder, the woman was clutching a baby to her chest and Beth was sighing.
Beth processed Mick's comment as the TV was wheeled away.
"Wait, more blood?" she let a dangerous hope tighten her chest. "So maybe? Maybe you could?"
Mick buried his nose against her and inhaled, let the smell tease him, push him to his limits. Rich, dark and delicious, the throb in his mouth matching the one in his groin. His tongue was half out of his mouth about to lick her like a pale popsicle. Her pounding heart reminded him of how dry his mouth, his throat, his body was. But he pushed back against the flow of red. The image of his son, their son, squalling and in his hands, Beth against him, that hunger overwhelmed his thirst.
"Maybe," he offered. "Maybe."
And, for Beth, for now, it was enough.
