Chapter 3

"You're late," Josef greeted Mick darkly, regarding him with a grim expression of cold fury as he walked through the door of the Tailor's, exactly one hour and fifteen minutes after he had promised Josef he would be at the appointment.

"I know, Josef. Ok. I know" Mick moved quickly to try and placate him, "I'm sorry. I lost track of time."

"You lost track of time?" Josef spat at him and then repeated the words with an incredulous laugh, "You lost track of time. What, no 'the car broke down' or 'I was attacked by a band of marauding thieves and had to fight my way out of danger'. Just 'I lost track of time'."

"Josef, I said I was-"

"Sorry, Mick? Yes I heard you" Josef seethed, cutting Mick's words off, "I also heard you make some pathetic excuse about losing track of time"

"Josef-"

"Don't. Josef. Me, Mick" Josef snarled, his voice beginning to rise with anger, "All you had to do was make sure you were at this appointment by seven p.m"

"Mr Kostan, please" the tailor stepped forward, hands held up in a gesture pleading for calm. "We can reschedule, it's no trouble. Honestly."

Josef stood there for a moment, clenching and unclenching his fists as he continued to regard Mick furiously and heard him plead with him to, "Please, let's not do this now. Not here. Not in public".

"Ok." he said finally, addressing the tailor, as he took a few deep breaths and pushed the ball of anger welling up inside him back down, "reschedule the appointment and call me with a new time and date on the number I gave you".

With that he turned and walked out the door, leaving Mick to hurriedly mutter another apology to the tailor and run out after him.

"Josef" Mick called out after him, as he stormed off up the street, "Josef. For fucksake, wait. The car's just here, I can drive us home."

"I prefer to walk" he snapped in response, not bothering to stop or turn around.

"Ok" Mick replied, finally catching up with him and falling into an uncomfortable step alongside, "I'll walk with you then."

"Suit yourself"

They walked together in relative silence after that, Mick trying to make conversation only the once; asking Josef how his day with Miriam had been and if he thought it was a good idea to leave her alone in the house by herself, and Josef doing his level best to pretend he hadn't heard a word that Mick had said. Arriving home, Josef quickly unlocked the door to their house and then flounced inside; not bothering to check if Mick was behind him or not, before he gave the door a sharp backwards kick and almost slammed it shut in Mick's face.

Catching the door just in time, Mick followed Josef inside and approached him carefully,

"Josef, I am sorry. Really, I am. Ok" he said gently, reaching out and placing a tentative hand on Josef's arm at the same time.

That was all it took, before Mick even knew what was happening he had been kicked clear across the room and Josef was descending on him in a dark cloud of snarling fangs and fury.

"All you had to do was make sure you were at that damn appointment on time, Mick" he began to rage, gripping a hand around Mick's throat and slamming his head back against the wall behind him "That's all you had to do, and you couldn't even manage to do that. Do you even want to get married, Mick? Do you even want to be with me anymore,"

"Josef? What the hell?" Mick quickly shot back at him in response, struggling to release Josef's grip on his throat at the same time "I miss one appointment and you jump to the conclusion that I don't want to be with you anymore. What the fuck's gotten into you? I love you, you know that"

"If you loved me you wouldn't have left me here alone with her all day, Mick" Josef shouted in his face and then dropped his hand from Mick's throat and stepped back, shaken at what he'd just said.

"Alone with who, Josef? Miriam?"

Mick stared at Josef incredulously for a moment and then took a hesitant step forward, reaching out his hand towards him as he had done before and bracing himself for another attack at the same time. When he was certain none would be forthcoming he quickly moved to wrap an arm around Josef's shoulder and drew him towards him; pulling him into his body and holding him tightly.

"Josef, please" he whispered to him "you have to tell me what is going on."

Mick could feel the tension in Josef's body, the way his muscles seemed to be coiled tight like springs and his arms were held stiffly by his side; as he stood there and refused to return Mick's embrace, carrying on some sort of personal inner struggle to bring his emotions back under some semblance of control.

"It's nothing, I'm fine" Josed said with forced nonchalance, after a few moments had passed; pulling himself away from Mick's arms and turning his back on him.

"No, Josef. You're not" Mick replied with concern, trying to reach out a hand towards him once again; his efforts rewarded by a snarl and a flash of fangs, as Josef batted his hand away and warned him to, "Back off, Mick"

"Ok" Mick responded, dropping his hand to his side and trying to keep his tone and body language as neutral as possible, "I'll back off, if that's what you want. I won't touch you and I won't come anywhere near you, but I'm not going to go away until you tell me what it is that is really bothering you"

"It's nothing" Josef tried to protest, but Mick quickly counteracted his feigned indifference before he had a chance to say anything further.

"It's not nothing and we both know that. You just kicked me clear across the room and then practically throttled me, slammed my head against the wall and started screaming some crap about my not wanting to be with you anymore. All for what? Nothing? I don't think so, Josef" Mick said firmly, holding Josef's gaze with an expression that said 'go on, I dare you to tell me different, Josef, but I won't believe you even if you do', " and don't tell me it's just pre wedding nerves either" he added, "there's something else"

"Mick, please. Just. Leave it. I don't want to talk about it."

"Well you're going to talk about it, Josef. Whether you want to or not. I'm worried about you for fucksake, you're completely losing the plot lately," Mick responded, harsher than what he had intended to.

"I know, I'm sorry, Mick-"

"Don't just be sorry all the time, Josef" Mick pleaded with him; dropping the tone of his voice to a level which indicated deep concern, rather than the harsh tone of frustration he had used previously, "just tell me what's going on, tell me what's bothering you. Please"

Despite his previous promise to do what Josef has asked and 'back off' Mick moved quickly after that, covering the distance between them in one rapid fluid motion and gripping Josef's face with his hands, as he repeated his plea for him to, "Please, tell me what's wrong," with earnest.

"This is about Miriam, isn't it. There's something about that baby that's really getting to you." his words were more of a statement, as he searched Josef's face for some sign, some hint, of what was troubling him and found his answer.

"Yeah" Josef said finally, letting out a reluctant sigh of breath and reaching up to take hold of one of Mick's hands; pressing the palm of it against his lips, "Yeah. There is."

He hesitated for a moment, then, still holding onto Mick's hand, he started to lead him towards the front door with the simple instruction to,

"Come with me".

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"So where exactly are we going?" Mick asked when they reached the Ferrari that had been left parked out the front of the Tailor's.

"The storage shed" Josef replied offhandedly, climbing into the driver's seat of the car and unlocking the passenger side door for Mick.

Mick quickly searched his mind for what could possibly be in the storage shed that had anything to do with what was troubling Josef. As far as he was aware it was just a collection of assorted furniture and bric a brac, they had amassed over the decades, that didn't fit into their current living arrangements, but were still too good to just be gotten rid of. Most of it had already been sold off, the rest was gathering dust in a small storage facility they had hired when they first moved to Salzburg. He glanced over at Josef, sitting tense and upright in his seat, eyes focused straight ahead and hands clenched tight on the steering wheel, and decided that it probably wasn't a good idea to question him on the subject. Instead he placed a hand gently on Josef's leg and smiled over at him as reassuringly as he could, feeling Josef's hand slip into his and his fingers entwine around his own as he did so.

A few minutes later they were pulling up to the front of a large square brick single storey construction and climbing out of the car. Mick watched as Josef made his way over to a small electronic keypad, situated just to one side of the entrance into the building, and typed in a series of numbers; his hand visibly shaking as he did so. Walking over to him, Mick wrapped his arms around Josef's waist and held him for a moment, as Josef leant his head back against Mick's and closed his eyes, silently revelling in the comfort of Mick's embrace.

"Come on" he said finally, reluctantly disentangling Mick's arms from around his body, "Let's go inside."

Stepping through the door into the dim concrete interior, Mick waited for his vampiric sight to adjust quickly to the low levels of light available and found himself transported back in time by the jumbled menagerie of boxes and other items that lined the walls and stood stacked at various heights around the room. There in one corner stood the large Tiffany inspired leadlight floor lamp that had once stood in the hallway of a house they had rented, for a brief time, in Hagen, in another an ornate black cabinet, made of ebony wood, that had once graced their living room when they had lived together in a large residence on the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland. Against another wall was the strange wrought iron sculputure, of what exactly neither one of them had ever actually worked out, that Josef had insisted was the height of derigeur modern art sculpture and purchased for a small fortune, only to get it home and decide he absolutely loathed the piece afterall. Next to that stood a pile of paintings, stacked one against the other, of various styles and periods of art, some of which Mick was vaguely aware were worth a lot of money to serious collectors who could afford to buy them, just infront of those was a box filled with an assortment of old glass bottles, of various shapes and sizes, that had once contained the finest of french perfumed oils, left over from a period of their lives that Mick now jokingly thought of as 'Josef's olfactory obsession phase'.

All around him, as he leant against one of the walls, where there was a clear space for him to do so, and surveyed the room in front of him, were the sights and smells of fifty years of an immortal life shared with Josef. Suddenly feeling very overwhelmed by the flood of memories, Mick slumped down onto the hard cushions of an old velvet brocade sofa they had bought together in an auction of fine period furniture pieces in Paris two decades ago, and took a moment to try and clear his head from the assault of nostalgia; as he watched Josef make his way over to a small space between two piles of boxes against the wall opposite, where he crouched down and pried out two loose bricks, then reach into a small cavity in the wall and pull out a small gold gold locket carefully wrapped in a piece of old cloth.

"Here", he said, as he walked over to Mick and handed it to Mick, "open it."

Mick carefully pried open the locket and looked down at the small painting inside of it.

"Josef", he said, in near disbelief, as he studied the tiny image, "this looks almost exactly like -"

" - like the baby who is now living under our roof? Yes Mick, I know it does" he replied, retrieving the locket from Mick's outstretched hand and hastily wrapping it back in it's cloth, before shoving it into the pocket of his pants.

"Well?" who is she, Mick had been about to say, but Josef, preempting the question, cut him off.

"My sister" he sighed, taking a seat next to Mick and rubbing his hands over his face, before he took a deep breath and proceeded to tell Mick the story of his baby sisters life and cruel death more than four centuries ago.

The year was 1625, a year before Josef had taken holy orders and 6 months before Miriam had succumbed to the plague that had swept through their village. Miriam's birth had been a difficult one and in the subsequent months after the event, two days of hard labour followed by a dose of puerperal fever had left their Mother bedbound and too weak to properly look after for the child herself, full responsibility for the care of his newborn sister had fallen squarely on Josef's shoulders. His father, a travelling salesman who was not averse to the company of several other women, was rarely at home. Two of his older brothers were already in the ground, one the victim of an unfortunate misadventure with a bottle of alcohol and a sword, the other succumbing to scarlet fever as an infant. The other brothers had married and moved away soon after and out of his surviving sisters, the youngest, before Miriam, had been stillborn, neither one was capable of caring for an infant owing to their shared fondness for consuming alcohol in large quantities. Josef, already a man of twenty and working as an assistant for the local village carpenter, was the only one still left who was willing or able to bare the burden. It was no easy task, but he adored and doted on his baby sister and did the best he could for her with what little time and resources he had available to him.

The winter of that year was particular harsh, several people in the village succumbing to the various illnesses that the bitter cold bought with it and food stocks made scarce by the frosts that attacked the crops and left the villagers without the ability to feed their livestock, let alone themselves, but the spring that followed bought with it something far worse. As the snow and ice of winter melted away and the villagers began to breathe a sigh of relief at the coming of the warmer weather and the chance to plant new crops, death, in the form of a plague that killed with a ferocity that defied description, descended on the small community.

His mother and two sisters, their bodies already weakened by illness or alcoholism, were amongst the first to die, followed by their closest neighbours wife and two of his youngest sons, the Village Carpenter that he worked for's entire family, the blacksmith's eldest and youngest daughters, both of the baker's elderly parent's and on and on it went. Soon there was nobody left who either didn't know, or hadn't personally witnessed, someone who had been struck down and succumbed to the terrible disease. Miriam was one the of the final victim's that spring, her tiny body shaking with pain as her body erupted in sores and pustules and she coughed and spat blood, Josef looking on helplessly as he sat by her cribside fortwo days and two nights and watched the life drain out of her.

"I joined the Domincan order shortly after that", Josef told Mick then, "I thought if I could just understand God, then I could understand why he had allowed Miriam to die so cruelly and somehow it would make what happened acceptable. Five years later I was no closer to understanding God or having any of my questions suitably answered, so when Gregor came along and dangled the promise of 'ultimate knowledge' in my face, naturally I jumped at the chance. The rest, as they say, is history."

"Josef?" Mick asked incredulously, gripping his head in his hands and turning his face towards his, when Josef had finished telling him the story and he had had time to absorb it, "why on earth didn't you tell me any of this before."

"I don't speak about my life as a human, Mick. You should know that" Josef replied quietly, as he rested his forehead against Mick's and struggled to bring the tidal wave of emotions running through him under control, "I've been a Vampire for centuries now, the mortal part of my life no longer holds any relevance for me. Or so I thought" he quickly added, with a deep sigh.

"Can't run from the past forever, Josef." Mick began softly, as he wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled him into an embrace, "You really should have told me about this, I've been your partner for the past five decades and there's still so much of yourself that you haven't shared with me."

"Because, like I just told you, it's not relevant" Josef replied, as he pressed his lips againt Mick's mouth and began to fumble desperately with the buttons on his shirt.

"Or so you though, Josef" Mick replied pointedly, half mumbling his respond into Josef's mouth as he responded to his kiss.

"Yes, or so I thought" Josef responded back to him distractedly, probing Mick's mouth open with his tongue, as he deepened the kiss and continued undoing the buttons of his shirt.

"Mick, please" Josef pleaded with him a moment later, after Mick had broken the embrace and held him at arms length, looking at him questioningly, "right now I just need to feel connected to something."

Mick hesitated for another brief moment, before quickly nodding his understanding and pulling Josef back towards him, crushing his mouth against his as they fell to the floor in a tangle of fangs and limbs, smothering each other's faces and necks with snarling kisses, as they both clawed almost desperately at the various buttons and fastenings of their material accoutrements and rapidly shed their clothes.

"What are you looking for?" Josef panted, as Mick broke away from their pre coupling ritual to start ratting through boxes.

"Lubricant," Mick muttered his distracted reply, as he chewed on his bottom lip and furrowed his brow, hurriedly scanning the room, trying to remember if and when he had some anything that could be used for lubrication.

"The box in front of the paintings, Mick" Josef reminded him, "some of the bottles in that should still contain some oil, just use that. Or use spit, or nothing or I don't care" he added, with a note of rising frustration, half begging"I just need you to fuck me, please. Before I lose my grounding completely", he thought to himself quietly.

Hastily grabbing one of the bottles, that still contained some of it's contents, out of the box Josef had indicated to him, Mick quickly returned to his side and poured a small amount of the oil over himself and then worked some of it into the crack of Josef's arse, just before Josef reached up and grabbed him around the neck and pulled him back down on top of him. Positioning himself against his entrance Mick pushed past the inital resistance and plunged the full length of himself into Josef's body, then gradually began a slow steady rhythm of thrust and withdraw, as Josef wrapped his legs around Mick's waist and dug his heels into his backside, spurring him on.

"Faster", he whispered a single desperate command in Mick's ear, arching his back and letting out a snarl of pleasure as Mick obeyed his instructions and his hips rose to meet every hard thrust of Mick's cock into his arse.

Clinging on to Mick's neck he continued to whisper soft snarling commands of 'faster', 'harder' in his ear, feeling the first stirrings of impending orgasm rising up within him, as Mick continued to obey his instructions and increased the pace of his pelvic movements to an ever increasingly frantic level.

Moments later, Mick felt Josef's body tense beneath him as he slipped past the point of no return and let out a single snarling roar of release. Sinking his fangs into Mick's neck and biting sharply into the soft flesh there, Josef fell into a rhythm of half sobbing snarls and convulsions of pleasure and pulled Mick over the edge with him; feeling his fangs pierce the flesh just above his collarbone, as Mick spun headlong into a shuddering, snarling climax of his own.

When it was over and the last residual pulses of climax had died away, Mick gently pulled himself out of Josef's passage and rolled over to lie next to him.

"I love you, Josef Kostan. Don't you ever forget that" he spoke earnestly, as he wrapped his arms around Josef's neck and nuzzled his head under his chin. "And everything about you is relevant to me, even the stuff you don't think is" he added a few moments later, propping himself up on one elbow and regarding Josef's face with an expression of abiding love and sincerity.

"Come on" he said then, as he stood up and quickly gathered up his clothes that were strewn over the floor and redressed himself, "Get dressed, we need to go home. I think you really need to see the information Ryder found on Miriam's mother".

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"Well? What do you think?" Mick asked when they had arrived home and he had given Josef enough time to read through the information Ryder had amassed for him.

"Purple"

"What?" Mick shook his head and looked confused at Josef's strange response, which had nothing of anything to do with what he had just asked him.

"Beth's dress, it should be purple. Purple goes nicely with red. Don't you think?"

"Yeah, great-"

"-and the invitations. I think I'll redesign them, cancel that initial order. We never did really work out exactly where we were going to get married. Did we?"

"No, we didn't," Mick tried to suppress the rising sense of annoyance at Josef's evasion of the question at hand. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that it was probably to be expected, after what Josef had just finished reading, "But what do you think of the information Ryder found? You don't think it's more than a slight coincidence that the woman we assume is Miriam's mother is Irish?"

"A coincidence? Yes." Josef stated, trying to the tone of his voice casual and offhanded, "and that's all it is"

Mick thought of asking Josef if he was sure, although the look in Josef's eyes and the tone of his voice already answered that question for him. Josef wasn't sure it was just a coincidence, as a matter of fact deep down he knew it wasn't and Mick could sense that. He decided not to push the issue.

Upstairs Miriam stirred and stretched and let out a small cry, which quickly increased to an ear shattering scream. Josef flinched once, briefly, at the sound and then pretended he hadn't heard it. Mick wouldn't have been at all surprised if that had been the way he had responded to Miriam's cries earlier as well, indeed, judging by the way Josef was reacting now, Mick had no problem believing that Miriam had screamed on and off all day and Josef had merely sat there and done his level best to ignore her.

"I'll go" Mick muttered offhandedly and watched as Josef stood up and walked over to the cabinet where they stored a few bottles of liquor and poured himself a generous shot of Scotch, adding a few drops of blood from a half empty bottle on the table behind him. He hesitated for a moment, before turning around to give Mick a brief nod and taking a seat back on the lounge, throwing back the drink in his hand in one quick shot as he stared at the wall in front of him and continued pretending he couldn't hear the commotion coming from upstairs.

Mick walked over and placed a comforting hand on Josef's shoulder for a moment, before he turned and headed upstairs. Finding Miriam obviously in a distressed state, wet and hungry, he picked her up and carried her back downstairs.

"Josef, come here" he called to him from the kitchen, trying to keep his voice as even as he could, laying Miriam down on the table and watching her kick and scream, her little face wet with tears and bundled up as she wailed.

"Josef" he repeated, a little firmer this time, "could you come here for a moment, please."
Reluctantly getting up from his seat, Josef joined Mick in the kitchen and stood at the furthest end of the table, away from Miriam.

"Josef" Mick said, pointing to the small infant on the table in front of him, as Josef stared ahead and refused to look, "this is not your sister." Not giving Josef a chance to respond, he quickly carried on, "Now I'm sorry for what happened when you were still human, Josef and I'm sorry that having this baby in our house is bringing back some bad memories for you, but I have to go out again tomorrow to see Ryder and I need to know that I can leave Miriam with you and that you'll be capable of looking after her" Stepping back from the table he challenged Josef gently to "look at me" and then instructed him simply to "change and feed her".

He watched as Josef hesitated for a moment, then let out a deep sigh and nodded his acquiesce.

"Thank you" he told him softly, reaching out and giving his arm a quick reassuring squeeze as Josef brushed past him and started preparing a bottle with the formula he had bought the previous night. "What I don't understand though" he said then, watching Josef as he set about changing Miriam and tried to keep his eyes averted from her as much as possible, "is why you had trouble doing this today? You managed fine when I was asleep the other day, didn't you"

"Like you said, Mick" Josef told him, picking Miriam up from the table and placing the teat end of a bottle filled with formula in her mouth, "the past catches up with you eventually"

"And what about your past, Josef?" Mick asked "Has that caught up with you?"

Josef pretended he didn't know what Mick meant and Mick went to fetch the sheets of information he'd handed to him earlier from the table in the lounge room.

"O'Dwyer" he said, showing Josef the name on one of the pieces of paper he held in his hand "it's certainly a very Irish sounding name. Kostan isn't an Irish name, is it Josef?"

"No, it isn't" Josef replied matter of factly and shifted Miriam over to his right shoulder.

"It suits you, in a weird sort of way" Mick smiled at him, "Have you ever wondered about it? Us having kids I mean."

Josef rolled his eyes and gave a tiny snort of laughter, "Well Mick, if I ever manage to get you pregnant I'm sure there'll be a lot of people wondering about it. Like the entire medical science community for a start and probably the Church as well, seeing as I'm sure they'd want to record such a miracle" he replied sarcastically.

"That's not what I meant, Josef" Mick huffed in response. "I meant what sort of parents we'd make"

"Bad ones Mick, we're Vampires remember?"

"I know that, Josef" Mick replied with a dismissive wave of a hand, "I just meant…oh look it doesn't matter what I meant, we're getting off topic. What was your last name when you were still human" he asked him, rewording the question from before more directly.

Josef looked at Mick for a moment and then walked over and handed Miriam into his arms.

"O'Dwyer" he said flatly, averting his eyes from Mick's. "Put her to bed for the night" he instructed him then, "I'm going to the freezer".