Back again! Here's the new chapter. Hope you enjoy it as much as the other ones. Feel hugged for your feedback again. It's great to have some so true readers! Don't know what I would do without you. Will be back at Sunday again. Until then: Have a great time!

Translated by: Draco

Beta read by: Jo1027

Indistinctness

It was a strange picture how this ancient, extraordinary vampire sat directly in front of him on the bright terrace of the large house in the shade of an olive tree and read - but only if you knew that he was actually a creature of the night who could not tolerate sun and heat very well. To everyone else he looked like an ordinary man, very tall and broad-shouldered, of course, and a little mysterious, but never would anyone have thought that he really was a vampire. His skin always gave the impression that he was a little tanned and here in this environment he looked so relaxed and calm as if he was actually spending a nice holiday in this hot region. That this wasn't the case, Mick had just experienced yesterday evening. This was precisely the time when they all got active, for the point was mainly to elicit the vampire inside of Mick and to train him. Too much sun was in this case a small hindrance. The day served for sleeping and resting and so it was already late afternoon, although Mick had just gotten up.

It was still very hot, but that didn't bother him very much. His human side loved the sun and its warmth and the mild wind that blew from the nearby river brought enough cooling not to feel uncomfortable - at least if you were human, for the most part. However, what had led Gabriel to sit on the terrace rather than to linger in the cool rooms of the small house, Mick really didn't understand. Therefore, he could not prevent the pensive wrinkle between his eyebrows as he made his way toward the old vampire.

"Have you slept well?" Gabriel asked without looking up from his book. That was when Mick realized that it was Frank's thick notebook in which he had been so absorbed.

"Hmm," Mick only replied and took, with a slightly queasy feeling in his stomach, a seat on one of the other chairs at the table. He wondered how much of the content in that book was probably about him and what exactly Gabriel was reading.

"Interesting reading?" His tone was grimmer than he had originally planned.

His companion now laid the book down and looked at him a little smile gracing his lips. "In some ways," he admitted. "But this passage wasn't about you." He tilted his head slightly and thoughtfully wrinkled his dark eyebrows. "Are you hungry?"

Mick had heard this question so often in the past three days that he was tempted to roll his eyes in an irritated manner. Well, his appetite was not nearly as great as it should have been, considering the strain he put on his body every night, and his stomach was actually growling constantly. However, sometimes he lacked the motivation to eat which didn't prevent Gabriel and August from stuffing him with the most delicious things, whether he wanted them or not.

Gabriel was still waiting with questioningly raised eyebrows for an answer, so Mick shrugged his shoulders a little hesitantly knowing that it wouldn't have the slightest impact. Gabriel promptly gave a sign to someone behind him. When Mick turned around he saw one of the two maids disappear into the interior of the house. He hadn't even noticed that she had stepped onto the terrace after him. The two women were only there a few hours each day and always only one of them at a time, and Mick felt sure that they were present not only to satisfy his hunger as a human, but also to supply Gabriel and August with fresh blood, although he had never caught them while they fed. Mick tried not to think about it any longer and instead drew his attention to the book lying before him and the related problems which they would have to take care of soon.

"And? Have you found a tutorial for a self-made cure?" he asked as calmly as possible to outplay his discomfort about the contents of the book.

Gabriel's laughter was barely audible. "Something like that," he admitted. "Frank was very thorough with his notes and you can follow the progress of changing the substance gradually to make it more sustainable and effective, and to ultimately fine-tune it for you."

"How much was it changed?" Mick asked interested. Frank had already tried more than once to explain everything to him, but he had used so many medical terms and complicated explanations that Mick soon had gotten a headache, even though he wasn't a layman in regards to medicine. And of course one had to consider the fact that he hadn't been in a very good shape some of those times. "What have they added?"

Gabriel's smile became a little strange. "Nothing."

Mick knitted his brows confused. "Nothing?" he repeated skeptically. "Then… they have withdrawn something?"

Gabriel nodded. "They have instead reduced it to your needs. Otherwise they wouldn't have progressed because certain components of the cure were a hindrance for the development of your body's system."

"And what exactly does the compound consist of?"

"Of the juice and the leaves of a certain rare plant."

Mick nodded. That was what Coraline had told him as well back then.

"And blood."

Mick raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Rare blood," Gabriel added.

"Human or vampire?" Mick asked. He remembered what Gabriel had told him yesterday about the heirs of the Nigong and, in this context, about rare blood types and an unpleasant idea forced itself slowly into his hard-working mind.

"Human, as it's written here," Gabriel said calmly, pointing at the book.

"Is… is there a blood type mentioned?" It was difficult for Mick to ask these questions as he believed to know the answer already.

"One?" Gabriel raised his eyebrows more seriously. "I think you can find all rare blood types that exist among the humans in this book. They were experimenting with all of them and many have worked together with the plant extract. But only one was perfect."

Mick gritted his teeth and nodded. "A0 negative," he said softly, and knew that he was right. With the things he had learned from Gabriel the previous day, all this was suddenly making sense.

"How… how does it work," he asked a little more composed. "I mean, why can the cure turn a vampire back into a human?"

Gabriel looked at him thoughtfully for a moment and then took a deep breath. "Didn't Coraline tell you anything about that?"

Mick did not respond to his question immediately. To hear the name of his ex-wife spoken by Gabriel was so strange. Not that it surprised him that Gabriel knew her, after all, she belonged to his family, it was the strangely gentle manner in which he pronounced her name that startled Mick. So he could only shake his head barely noticeablly.

"And you still just took it?" Gabriel asked with a small smile on his lips that made him aware of his own naiveté once again. Mick gritted his teeth more firmly, but didn't break eye contact.

"Your confidence in the women you love seems to be quite strong," Gabriel observed.

"I'm no longer in love with Coraline," Mick replied slightly annoyed, and his annoyance grew further when Gabriel's lips twisted into a knowing smile.

"Love cannot die. It can change, weaken, but it does not die," he added. "Anyway. You wanted to know why the cure works." He sat up a little in his chair, interlaced his fingers and took a deep breath.

"I know that Frank can explain this all much more accurately and better than I can because although I'm not completely clueless in the field of medical research I'm not a scientist and my knowledge does not really go into depth. But since we currently can't use his knowledge…" He sighed softly. "All I know is that both components taken separately show no effect for most vampires. This is probably because the blocking agents have changed over the centuries, becoming weaker, mostly through disuse. They alone are not strong enough to cause a longer-term change in the body of a vampire. As soon as they get into the body, they are already spent. The plant extract, however, ensures that they replicate in a fraction of a second and block the production of vampire-hormones, so that some kind of standstill of both factors is obtained in the organism. What remains is a perfectly normal human being: weak, vulnerable, mortal."

Mick nodded understandingly. "But if the human is injured, the production of vampire-hormones reactivates."

"Exactly," Gabriel agreed with him.

"So it's not sufficient to only take in blocking substances," Mick concluded.

"In your case, I'm not that sure of this anymore," Gabriel replied. "According to these notes you have received implanted cells that produce these blocking substances themselves and the contact with exogenous blocking agents seems to titillate these cells to a greater production. That's why they have reduced the plant extracts in your serum ever since."

Mick ran his hands over his face and exhaled loudly. That was almost too much information, as each has a chain of questions trailing behind. But one of these he still had to ask immediately.

"Yesterday you… you said that not all people who have this rare blood type carry the Nigong-blocking substances, that only very, very few own the cells that can produce these agents."

"That's right," Gabriel confirmed his statement.

"But how does one determine that?" Mick asked, although he did not really know if the old vampire could even answer his question. "How does this make itself felt? Is it obvious in a blood count?"

"No," Gabriel replied without hesitation. "It's almost invisible even for doctors. There is only one way to find it out."

"That would be?" Mick asked with a bad feeling.

"The human has to consume vampire blood."

He looked at him in horror. "Then… then he turns!"

"Or he doesn't."

Mick didn't seem to trust his ears and just stared at his companion blankly. "He… he doesn't?" That sounded so terribly abstract.

Gabriel leaned a little further across the table and looked straight into his eyes. "The vampire blood activates the sleeper cells in the body of such a human, Mick," he explained. "It makes them pour out a large amount of blocking substances so fast that the V-hormones are not even able to spread and settle. They get extinguished completely. The only thing that remains is a temporary resistance to all kinds of diseases and an enormously fast healing of all kind of wounds. Only after contact with the blood of a vampire can the blocking substance be found and proven in the blood of a human."

Mick didn't really listen any further. His mind was struggling with all the new information that immediately tried to fasten on his new realizations.

"That means people who carry this predisposition of blocking substances in themselves can't be turned?" he asked and his intestines began to knot up slowly.

Gabriel nodded, and a trace of sadness showed on his face. "They can never become a vampire, even if they wanted to. Their time in this world is as limited as that of any normal human being."

A clattering sound behind him made Mick wince slightly. As he turned, he saw how the young maid shoved a little car with all sorts of foods and beverages onto the terrace.

"Oh, breakfast!" Gabriel said as pleased as if he himself would be able to participate. Mick couldn't emulate his joy for he knew that their conversation would be finished for now. Gabriel would hardly be grabbing for some fruit, but much more likely for the arm of the young woman, and he would certainly ask to be excused to retire with her.

On the other hand, Mick also wasn't so sure if he wanted to continue the conversation at all. There were so many things connected with it, so many tough questions and he was not sure if he was inwardly strong enough to endure the answers.

Eventually they had been forced to talk about it again. About the rare blood types, the composition of the cure, about its history and the research on it and… about Beth. Beth, who had this blood type. Beth, who could be a carrier of these blocking substances. Mick's thoughts about all this had been as conflicted as the rest of his strange existence was. He didn't even know if he should wish for her to be a carrier or whether he should hope for the opposite. The former made her, should it ever be made public, a goal of both the Legion and all the vampires who were hungry for a little more humanity, and the latter always hid the risk that one day she may be turned, and then would have to share his dark fate. It was strange, but somehow he had felt more comfortable with the second thought. As terrible as it was to imagine that his warm, joyful, soulful Beth might have to scrape a living as a cold, apathetic creature of the night at some point, it also gave her the possibility to defend herself effectively against threats from the outside and to withstand any other living creature. And deep down inside him he had heard his inner vampire purr contentedly at the thought as he longed for a companion for eternity.

Mick sucked the cool night air deep into his lungs and let his gaze roam once again across the line of houses opposite the small balcony where he had settled. There were only a few lights switched on and nightly calmness had settled on the narrow street like a damping cocoon. It was late at night... or rather early in the morning. Four a.m. Time for his nightmares. Time to spend the rest of the night in dark thoughts and deep concerns.

Sometimes he was lucky. Sometimes he could feel the dreams coming and was able to wake himself forcefully. Just as today. Just as this night. He had fallen asleep amazingly fast with his Beth in his arms and had had no time to regret anything or to consider whether they could afford to really behave like a couple and enjoy their intimate togetherness. Her warmth, her kisses, her touches had given him no room to feel uncomfortable. She had transformed him back into the man who enjoyed every single second in her presence to the fullest, who didn't want to think about what was happening outside of their small, happy world. To feel her soft, warm body pressed so close to his, just to breathe in her proximity had sufficed to help him sink into a blissful sleep.

That man, blind and deaf for love, wasn't gone yet, and every thought of the beautiful woman sleeping deeply inside the apartment increased the urge inside him to go back to her and slip under the covers, to hold her in his arms and show her in every possible way how much he loved her. But he couldn't, for a much larger part of him was terribly worried about her and he knew that if he woke her, she would immediately sense that something was wrong. And she shouldn't. He wasn't allowed to talk to her about this matter as long as he wasn't absolutely certain about this. She already had had to face so many other fears and worries, so he didn't want to bother her additionally with such depressing thoughts.

Again, his chest expanded with a deep, heavy breath and his eyes fell on the heel of his hand where his own sharp teeth had left behind two small punctured scars. This craving for her blood. He shook his head. He couldn't afford to give into this urge so easily again, had to take care that no one came even remotely close to the idea that she would provide her blood for the vampire world. He had been far too careless in recent weeks, and had, by doing so, endangered her. With this… this morbid addiction. With the revival of his human side, it had been almost gone, but he knew that the urge would return as soon as the vampire in him began to stir once again. He was so strangely fixated on her blood.

Mick had successfully repressed his memory of these conversations with Gabriel for a long time, even after he had noticed that Beth's blood tasted different. Only now, after he had tasted it a second time, he could no longer hold back the memories. And yet he wasn't sure that Beth indeed carried a part of his cure inside herself... even though there were so many things that indicated it to be true. So many things which he could not really explain otherwise. Why had her blood changed? Why had the bite on her neck almost been healed after just a few hours? Why did her blood have such a calming effect on his vampire side? Why did the human in him now come back so clearly? Questions that allowed only one answer, but yet he couldn't believe it. Beth had never been bitten by any other vampire and she had certainly not consumed any vampire blood. Why should she? She had never expressed a desire to be turned. He had rather gotten the impression that that thought scared her. There had to be another reason for the changes in her blood's taste, a better, preferably harmless one.

Hate! Rage! It hit him so suddenly and so hard that Mick threw himself back in his chair and took a hissing breath. These weren't his own feelings and they weren't nearby... Gabriel.

Mick closed his eyes and tried to focus on this energy boost like the old vampire had taught him. Maybe he could see pictures this time. He winced as a very vague image of the face of a total stranger appeared in his mind's eye. The man's eyes widened in horror as he grabbed his own throat and only a few milliseconds later, dark blood oozed between his fingers. The image was distorted, torn in dark rags, just to focus on a dark car that raced away with screeching tires.

Mick jumped up, stood on the balcony swaying for a moment and tried to understand what just happened. But there was too little information and he did not know whether Gabriel really intended to send him these images and feelings. A dull feeling in his gut told him, however, that something hadn't gone as it had been planned and that they were no longer safe in this apartment. He gathered his thoughts briefly and then rushed into the dark apartment; he reached the bedroom in just a few steps and was instantly at her bedside. She was still sleeping soundly, had no idea of what had just happened. He bent over her, bracing himself with one hand next to her warm body and gently touched her shoulder with the other.

"Beth…"

She moved and uttered a faint sigh that sent a little shiver down his back, and then turned onto her back, her heavy eyelids slowly opening. A charming smile appeared on her lips and she stretched out her hand to touch his arm, gently stroked his skin, leaving goose bumps which spread over his entire body. She probably misunderstood his excitement, his rapid breathing, for she showed a clear tendency to pull him back onto the bed.

"Beth you need to get dressed," he said, his voice a little scratchy. Damn urges! "We need to get out of here!"

Beth, who was suddenly wide awake, got up immediately and Mick stood up at once and collected all the private things he could find on his way from the bed over to the travel bags. He strictly forbade himself from looking at Beth while she was still not fully dressed.

"What's the matter?" he heard her whisper worriedly. The rustling of clothes told him that she was following his instructions.

"No idea," he replied and pulled the zipper of the first bag shut. "Something went wrong. We're no longer safe."

Mick froze. He had felt something. Once again an energetic tingling and it was much closer and unknown. An alien vampire, an old vampire. So he wasn't mistaken, something had happened that nobody had anticipated and now endangered them all.

Beth noticed his tension immediately and rushed over to him.

"What?" she whispered to him.

Mick didn't answer, instead he closed his eyes and breathed in the air of their surroundings through his nose. The vampire was getting closer, moving up to their apartment, sneaking up on them.

Mick turned around and looked at Beth urgently.

"You stay here!" he said as firmly as possible and immediately knew that this was completely pointless. The concern in her eyes told him this, the reluctance that she couldn't hide from him. Beth was not a woman who hid from danger, especially not when she had the feeling of having to stand by his side. Mick gritted his teeth and took a deep breath.

"Stay… stay behind me at least," he corrected himself and this time she nodded. Apparently she could live with that.

'Catch your breath! Stay calm! Focus!' he said to himself, as he slowly groped his way along the wall to the front door of the apartment. 'You can do this without turning. You have learned how to do that.'

Mick stayed right next to the door and didn't need to turn around to know that Beth did the same. She was really quiet, he had to give her that due.

The other vampire had now reached their floor and approached their door quickly. Something jingled and Mick frowned in confusion. Did he have a key? He hadn't much time to think about it, because the next moment the door opened and a dark figure slipped into the room. Mick reacted immediately. He rushed to him, grabbed him by the neck and slammed his back against the nearest wall pushing him so high that he lost the floor under his feet and no longer had the ability to push off it to break free.

"You've five seconds to explain what you want here!" Mick pressed through his teeth, his face near the intruders neck, and his inner vampire already began to growl in a threatening manner. Five seconds were almost too long.

"Gabriel... sent… me," the vampire brought out only with great difficulty because the pressure of Mick's fingers was just too strong.

"Oh yeah?" Mick growled, but loosened his grip a bit to make it easier for the man to talk. "Where did you get the key from? From him?"

"It's... it's my apartment," the man coughed. "I'm Clement. I belong to the family."

"Family?" Mick drew his brows together thoughtfully, and now dared to put the much smaller man back on his feet. But he remained suspicious. There was no real evidence that the vampire was telling the truth. However, he indeed had an apartment key in his hand.

"We... we should really clarify this matter elsewhere," the man urged and looked over at Beth. "They could be here any minute!"

"The Legion?" Beth asked and Mick could hear the fear in her voice. Unfortunately Clement nodded and robbed her of her last remaining self-control. She spun around and stormed back into the bedroom to get the bags.

Mick cast another skeptical glance at the vampire, but then quickly went over to the small cloakroom where their coats hung and took them off. He could almost feel that Clement used the chance to eye him up and he didn't like that at all. Something about this man was strange.

"And where's Gabriel?" Mick asked as he turned to face him again.

With a slight twitch the man seemed to startle out of his thoughts. This didn't go unnoticed by Mick.

"He will be here any minute," Clement replied and his eyes went to Beth who came back with the two bags. Mick relieved her of them and handed her the jackets instead while he kept his eyes glued to the other vampire. Earlier he had had some difficulty in recognizng when a vampire was nervous, but now he could feel it clearly; he could feel the tension as if he was connected with this man.

"He went to get a car," Clement added and turned to the door. "We really should go downstairs."

He pointed to the door and Mick forced himself to nod, let Beth go ahead before he left the apartment himself. He felt Clement looking at him as he closed the door behind them at last and followed them. The skin of Mick's neck began to tingle under his gaze. Something was wrong. Clement was perhaps a vampire, but Mick knew from experience that such commonalities lost their value when it came to one's own survival, or even one's own advantage. There was treachery everywhere. The only question was how Beth and he could get out of this situation, without attracting too much attention or taking the risk that she might be injured. He could outfight one vampire no matter how old he was and how much strength he possessed, but if reinforcements appeared the whole thing would get much more difficult. Especially because if the vampire within him had the feeling that Beth's life was threatened; he could not be suppressed then and certainly would cause a bloodbath on the street. This wasn't to be allowed to get that far out of hand.

He sensed that Beth looked at him uncertainly from the side and he gave her a brief glance to make her understand that they could not talk for now. But somehow he had to communicate with her, had to give her a signal that she had to be prepared to flee, to run away as far as possible if something did happen.

They had already reached the first landing of the staircase. Only two more and they were all the way down and would maybe run directly into the arms of Clements back-up. Mick tried to concentrate, to clear his mind and to focus on just one thing, a small sequence of images that were immensely important: Beth. Beth as she flung herself around and ran away. Again and again the same image sequence. 'Run away, when the time has come. Run away. Run away. Run away.'

The heartbeat next to him accelerated and Beth's gaze wandered over to him again. Mick looked straight ahead trying not to show how relieved he was. It had worked - really worked! The connection was really there, wasn't a figment of his imagination. He could reach Beth mentally for real. And now she knew, could react quickly if things went downhill. Now it was up to him to give her an escape route, if it turned out that Clement was indeed a traitor.

It was not long before they reached the end of the stairs. Mick tried hard to keep his own treacherous heart calm, but this wasn't so easy anymore. The tension grew, especially as he really could make out a dark car through the opaque glass of the front door that arrived and stopped with screeching tires.

"Here they are already," he could hear Clement say from behind and wondered who he referred to as 'they'. He really hoped that he was wrong, and that the person that would get out of the car was in fact Gabriel. But that did not happen. Actually, nothing happened. The car with tinted windows just stood there and waited for them. Even when Mick, his heart now pounding fairly quickly, pushed the door open and stepped out with Beth at his side nothing changed. Mick stopped a good two feet away from the car and Beth did the same. Her pulse was going even faster than his, and every single muscle in her body seemed to be tense. That was good.

"Don't be so shy," Clement said with a false smile and pointed in a welcoming gesture to the dark car. There was something malicious lurking in his voice and Mick just set down his bags.

"Maybe you should load the luggage into the trunk first," he said with a calmness he didn't know he owned.

"But of course," Clement replied with a false smile but made no move to even bend down to the bags himself. Instead, he gave a sign to someone in the car and the driver's door began to open immediately. A strangely familiar smell rose to Mick's nose, but his eyes immediately flew to Beth signaling her to start running. She didn't look at him at all. Her eyes were fixed on the tall man who got out of the car in one fluid movement. This energy... Mick turned around again and froze. It really surprised him to see Gabriel in front of him, but the shocked expression on Clement's face said that he had not expected to see him.

"Ça te surprend n'est-ce pas?" Gabriel addressed the now much paler man with a beautiful shark-like smile that ripped him out of his stupor. The movement in Beth's direction was unseen, but Mick felt it before Clement had a chance to perform it. In a split second he had pulled Beth to the side and grabbed the other vampire by the collar pulling him with such force to his own chest that the man's breathing stopped due to the force of the impact.

"Don't you dare!" he growled, and felt himself turn immediately as his fangs slid out and the urge to kill became a dominant feeling in his heart.

"Clement, haven't you learned anything in all the years you've pretended to be a loyal stalwart to me?" Gabriel asked gently and walked up to both of them, giving a contemptuous gaze to the man who was now trembling strongly with suppressed rage and fear.

"You can't lure me into a trap that I can't see through or, even better, that I can't use for my own purposes. Did you really think I failed to see how much you and some of your friends hate me? Did you really think I'd leave my protégés alone and completely unobserved in order to meet up with Emile?"

Gabriel shook his head, smiled, and it was his turn to give a nod in the direction of the house. Malik's dark figure slipped from the wall just a stone's throw away and he was with them a few, quick steps later.

Clement's eyes were still staring into Mick's, but had discolored into a whitish tinge and were now full of hate.

"Infâme bâtard!" he hissed and bared his sharp fangs. „Je maudis le jour de ta transformation, mordu!"

"Cela suffit!" Gabriel interfered, grabbing Clement by the shoulder and Mick's arm with his other hand.

"Let him go. We'll take care of him," he said, and looked at Mick urgently.

Mick found it really hard to follow Gabriel's command as he was aware of what this man, for some reason, had intended to do, and the words he had just thrown at Mick weren't really nice. But he finally succeeded in prying his fingers out of Clement's collar and then to push him away contemptuously. Beth was instantly at his side, clutching his arm with trembling fingers and pressing herself close to him. It was quite clear to her that this had been a close call and Mick's anger didn't seem to want to settle at this thought and was now directed against Gabriel as well, whose secrecy they had to thank for all this excitement. Somehow Mick couldn't help the feeling that they had involuntarily been used as a decoy in order to unmask a traitor in their own ranks. But it bothered him the most that he could still not understand at all what had happened or what this was all about.

"That... that's means that the Legion isn't coming, I guess?" Beth adressed that question directly to Gabriel who had just passed Clement to Malik.

"That's what he said, isn't it?" asked Gabriel, smiling back and Mick's anger grew even further.

"No, this has little to do with the Legion," the old vampire added and at least had the decency to get rid of his smile before he looked at Mick again.

"I know that this stirred up a lot of questions and a lot of anger in you," he said gently and with great understanding in his bright eyes. "But I can explain everything later. Clement is not the head of this and we really need to get out of here. But not together."

"What?" Mick blurted out in disbelief but got no answer because at that moment a black van turned into the street and headed in their direction.

Mick stepped back immediately and hid Beth instinctively behind himself, but Gabriel lifted his hands soothingly.

"They're with us – don't worry! Listen, you will now get into that car," he pointed to the Mercedes in which he had arrived, "and simply follow the instructions of the on-board navigator. It will guide you to a private property on which a small private plane is waiting for you. It will bring you directly to Omaha."

"Omaha?" Mick repeated confused. What was that supposed to mean?

"Our meeting will for some reason take place there now," Gabriel explained quietly, with a brief look at the van which now came to a halt beside the Mercedes. Only a few seconds later the passenger doors opened and two vampires completely unknown to Mick jumped out and helped Malik to load the clearly reluctant Clement into the van.

"And what are you going to do?" Beth, who had stepped beside Mick asked, confused.

"I'm going to have a little chat with my friend Clement and then I'll follow," the old vampire replied with such a cold smile that it even send a shiver down Mick's back. He didn't want to think about how this 'little chat' would turn out.

Gabriel gave Malik a sign and he came over to them immediately.

"Malik will accompany you," he said. "If you want, he can drive, that will give you a little time to… talk."

The hesitation lasted only briefly and was not accompanied by a smile so Mick wasn't sure whether Gabriel had indeed meant to give his remark this slightly salacious tone. That was actually more like Josef. But it made Mick wonder.

"See you in Omaha!" Gabriel added and patted his shoulder briefly while giving Beth an encouraging smile.

"I hope you save some time to have another talk between the two of us," Mick replied a little louder as Gabriel was already moving towards the van.

"But of course," the vampire replied with a little laugh and disappeared into the back of the van with an easy gait.

Mick's anger had not dissipated completely as the door closed behind him, but he had cooled enough that he at least was in a position to release some of his tension once again. He felt Beth moving closer to him and looked at her. She nodded over to Malik who was just about to place their bags in the trunk of the car.

"You drive and I'll have a heart to heart with him," she whispered to him, and Mick couldn't avoid his lips twisting into a wide grin.

He only needed to raise an eyebrow briefly and she knew he enthusiastically agreed to her plan. The sly smile that she now could no longer hide made a warm feeling spread inside of him. That was his Beth. Secrets could never be kept from her for long. If there was anyone who could interrogate people or vampires without using any violence and could see through people, then it was her. Poor Malik. The next few hours wouldn't be easy for him.