Chapter 11
"For Christ sake, you could have removed this." Josef shot daggers at the Cleaners as he bent down to pull the stake out of Mick's chest.
Mick's body jerked upright, as if pulled by an invisible string, the paralysis from the stake leaving him. He looked at Josef, smears of blood on his chin and down the front of his shirt, a fine layer of grey powdery ash sprinkled through his hair and across his shoulders.
"What happened? Beth…is she?"
Mick didn't really need to ask Josef that question. The smell of burnt flesh wafted from Josef's clothes and body, assaulting Mick's nostrils with the scent of death.
"Yeah, she's…" Josef left the final word unspoken; the expression on his face told the story.
"So you just stood there and watched her burn?" Mick's voice was incredulous as his mind struggled to process the enormity of what he had seen reflected in Josef's eyes.
"Of course he watched," Ariadne stepped into the room then, beckoning to the other two Cleaners that it was time for them to leave, "it's a bit hard to aim a flame thrower with your eyes closed."
"You?" Mick stared at Josef wide eyed, physically recoiling as his mind reeled at the revelation.
"Get out." Josef spat venom at the Cleaners looking down at him, "our business is done."
Josef turned back to Mick, his expression lost and pleading, "Mick, I'm sorry."
"You were the one who did this? You burnt her, alive?" Mick's voice raised an octave, near hysteria, still trying to comprehend what he had just been told.
"Mick you don't understand." Josef sat back, throwing his hands in the air in a gesture of sheer frustration, "I had no choice. They would have killed you if I hadn't agreed to go through with it. That was the bargain I made with them, either your life or Beth's. Not surprisingly I chose yours."
Josef finished the last words of the sentence with a hollow laugh.
"I didn't know that." Mick sat silent for a moment, then wiped his hands over his face and looked at Josef once more, "You should have told me."
"Mick, come on you know how things work with the Cleaners."
Mick hesitated and then nodded his understanding. "Are you ok?" he asked then, looking at Josef with genuine concern.
"I will be." Josef forced a smile and tried to nod his reassurance, "Right now though I just need you to come over here and hold me."
Josef's voice was small and plaintive in the stillness of the room, the same lost and pleading expression on his face. Mick remained frozen to the spot, unmoving. "I can't." he told him, "Beth, she's…all over you."
Josef ran his fingers through his hair and watched as fine particles of ash drifted to the floor beneath him.
"I'll go take a shower." Josef mumbled the words under his breath, slowly getting to his feet and making his way upstairs to scrub the evidence of Beth's demise from his mind and body.
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"Tell me what happened." Josef felt Mick's hands reach for him under the spray of the shower, spinning him around and pressing him against the cold tiled wall, "I need to know."
"Mick…"
"…did she wake up?" Mick pressed his lips to Josef's neck and encircled his cock with his hand, "Did she scream? Did she look frightened? Did she know what was happening at all...Did you enjoy it?"
Josef turned on Mick then, his hand gripping Mick's throat as he lifted him off the ground and then hurled him across the room.
"Never ask me that again." He snarled in anger as Mick's head cracked against the wall on the opposite side of the room, leaving a smear of blood on the tiles behind him.
Not bothering to dry himself off Josef turned off the water in the shower and then walked past a stunned and shaken Mick still slumped on the ground with his back against the wall.
"I'm going to the freezer." Josef announced coldly to no one in particular.
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Mick had come to Josef after that, climbing into the freezer to lie next to him. Expression and voice contrite, he had whispered repeated apologies and reached for Josef in the cold blue of their icy receptacle.
They had wrapped themselves up in each other then, legs entwined and hands seeking desperate contact with the sharp planes and angles of each others body. Grinding against one another urgently, friction creating fire out of ice, they had both come screaming each other's names and sinking fangs into flesh.
When they were both spent, Mick had made some off the cuff quip about Josef being right, the freezer really was far too uncomfortable for this and for a moment Josef had almost breathed a sigh of relief, wanting to believe the worse was now over.
In the harsh light of the next day, Josef discovered the reprieve was to be short lived. They had just passed through the eye of the storm, its unnatural calm creating false hope before the roar of the storm hit them with full force.
"Tell me what happened, I need to know" Mick started in on Josef again, hands on hips and mouth set in a grim determined line as he stood over Josef at the kitchen table and voiced his demands.
"For fuck sake Mick, why?" Josef slammed the glass of blood in his hand down onto the kitchen table in front of him, "What the hell good is it going to do you?"
Josef shoved his chair back roughly from the table and stood up, striding out of the room with Mick following close behind, snapping at his heels like a terrier dog.
"Josef, please, you have to tell me. You owe me that much."
"I. Owe you? What the -"
"She was fine, Josef." Mick gritted his teeth and cut Josef's words off with a knife's edge. "She'd come off the drugs, she was happy with Ryder, she was making a new life for herself," Mick took a breath and pressed the pads of his fingers against his eyelids for a moment and then shook his head, "So what went wrong? Josef, I have to know.
"Mick, please just stop this is-"
"I have to know," Mick repeated, ignoring Josef's pleas, "and now I can't ask Beth myself because you've taken that chance away from me. So you tell me and you tell me right now, what happened. Did she say anything to you at all?"
"Gee Mick I don't know, I'd have to think about that for a moment. I was too busy chasing the howling bitch around with a flame thrower."
It was a low blow, designed to cut deep and Josef threw it anyway and then watched as Mick's face hardened into a bitter mask of hatred and he drew in another breath, ready to spit fire and venom.
Josef's hand shot towards Mick, his fingers digging painfully into Mick's cheeks as he gripped his face hard and then drew him in close.
"Mick, I love you, I don't want to hurt you." Josef's own face was mere inches away from Mick's, his voice a low hiss of desperation and warning, "but if you keep this up that is exactly what is going to happen."
Josef let his hand drop away from Mick's face then and slumped back against the wall behind him. Stunned and shaken at what had just transpired he slid down to the floor below and drew his knees up to his chest, drawing his arms tightly around them and placing his head on his hands.
Somewhere off in the distance he heard Mick's footsteps striding towards the front door.
"Where are you going?" Josef called out after him, his head still in his hands, feeling like a lead weight on his shoulders unable to be lifted.
"Out." Mick didn't bother to face Josef as he threw open the door, almost ripping it from the hinges, and spat his reply, "If you won't give me the answers I need, then I'll just have to find someone who will."
With that Mick stormed out into the glare of daylight, slamming the door shut behind him hard enough to leave the glass in the front windows shaking in his wake.
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Katherine tentatively made her way downstairs an hour later to find Josef still sitting in the same position that Mick had left him. Sitting down beside him she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her forehead against the back of his head.
Josef reached for Katherine, fingers encircling her forearm as he sat motionless and drew what little comfort he could from her embrace.
He felt Katherine shift position a few moments later and slowly lifted his head to face her.
"Where's Roisin?" He asked wanly, eyes red rimmed and face pale and drawn with emotional exhaustion.
"Upstairs, asleep." Katherine chuckled softly and brushed her fingers through Josef's hair, "That one could sleep through a hurricane sometimes you know."
"Yeah well, tell her she can wake up now if she wants," Josef let out a scoffing laugh and shook his head, "the hurricane's left."
"I know, I heard." Katherine replied simply and then placed her hand under Josef's chin and turned his face directly to hers. "Why the hell do you let him treat you the way he does?" She held Josef's gaze firmly with her own, "He walks all over you and you prostrate yourself at his feet and then let him trample on you some more."
"Katherine, I love him." Josef replied in earnest, as if there need be no further explanation, "I have loved him for almost a hundred years."
"Josef that's not love, that's blind devotion and sheer obsession." Katherine looked at Josef with something akin to a mix of concern and pity on her face.
"It's our anniversary the day after tomorrow." Josef tried to brush away Katherine's concerns about the true nature of his feelings for Mick with the wave of a hand and a forced smile, "Paris," he quickly clarified when he saw the questioning look on her face, "fifty one years ago, it was the first time we were truly together. Maybe I'll surprise him with something nice, take him out somewhere really fancy, just the two of us. He'd like that."
Josef's words sounded desperate and pathetic to Katherine's ears and she looked at him incredulously for a moment and then swallowed back her urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he saw sense.
Forcing a smile of her own she gave a curt nod of her head and replied instead with a half muttered "Yeah, you do that, I'm sure Mick will really appreciate the effort."
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Mick wandered the streets, circling, directionless, until a single name popped into his mind like a revelation.
"Ryder."
He had to speak to Ryder; Ryder was the one who had lived with Beth in those final weeks and days after all. Ryder would have the answers he needed.
Making his way to the train station he threw a handful of notes and coins at the teller behind the window of the ticket office and collected his boarding pass for Cologne, not bothering to wait to collect his change at the same time.
Several hours later he was standing on Ryder's doorstep and hammering on his front door with a determined fist.
"I need to talk to you." He pushed past Ryder and strode down the passageway to the living room without waiting to be invited.
"Come in Mick, nice to see you too." Ryder muttered under his breath and then shut the door behind him.
Mick at least had the decency to wait until Ryder had entered the room and taken a seat on the couch before sitting down next to him and blurting out with sheer desperation, "What the hell happened? Please tell me, because I cannot make sense of anything for the life of me right now."
"You mean with Beth." Ryder lent back against the soft leather cushions of the couch and gave a curt nod of understanding. He had received word of Beth's passing from Josef a few short hours ago.
"Of course I mean with Beth." Mick spat incredulously, missing the point of Ryder's reply completely, "Who the fuck else would I mean?"
"Mick just watch yourself, alright. There's no need to-"
"She was fine Ryder, you know she was." Ryder's attempt to pull Mick into line fell on deaf ears as Mick continued unabated and punctuated his words with the sharp slap of a hand on leather.
"Well obviously she wasn't, Mick. If she was she'd still be alive, now wouldn't she?"
"I know that, I'm not a complete idiot you know." Mick rolled his eyes in frustration and then slumped back in the seat, folding his arms across his chest and glaring defensively at Ryder.
"No, but right now you're acting like one." Ryder thought, but held his tongue, not wanting to provoke Mick to any outbursts he had neither the desire nor the energy to deal with at that moment.
"Look, Mick." Ryder held up his hands and tried to reason with Mick then, "I honestly don't know what went wrong. I thought everything was fine as well. I sat with her on the couch of that place that Josef rented for her and she swore blind to me that she didn't have any feelings left for you whatsoever. She seemed happy to be with me, she seemed to be dealing fine with her new life as a Vampire, there were no indications from her at all of how she was truly feeling until it was too late."
"I don't believe that." Mick's defensive posturing shifted to one of challenge, "You lived with her, you were the last person she was truly close to. You have to know what went wrong and you have to tell me."
Mick's jaw was set hard, lips drawn back in a determined sneer. Ryder stared at Mick in disbelief for a moment and then threw his hands up in sheer frustration and spat back at him, "Why? Why the fuck should I know anything. I wasn't Beth's keeper. I've already told you, whatever was wrong she kept it well hidden, from both of us."
"Don't you even care? Don't you want to know what happened, why this happened?"
Mick could scarcely comprehend what Ryder was telling him, it seemed to Mick Ryder didn't even care and he turned to him then and told him as much.
"How the fuck can you sit there and try and rationalise any of this? You're acting like Beth didn't mean a damn thing to you, for fuck sake she was my friend-"
"And she was my partner." Ryder cut Mick's prepared rant off at the pass with a quick stab of his finger, "Or had you forgotten that fact? Of course I bloody well care that she's gone, how fucking dare you try and imply otherwise."
Ryder sat forward and shot furious daggers at Mick, the pain of his grief evident behind his mask of anger. Mick averted his eyes and then buried his face in his hands.
"Oh fuck. Ryder I'm sorry, I didn't…" Mick left the last words unspoken, shaking with disbelief and self loathing at the way he had just acted. "I'm losing it." He admitted, his voice, barely above a whisper, sounding choked and desperate.
"Well gee Mick, it's not like I hadn't already noticed that or anything, but thank you for pointing out the blatantly obvious to me."
Ryder mentally rolled his eyes and then swallowed back the cutting reply that was formed ready on his lips and reached out to Mick instead, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.
He wasn't at all prepared for what Mick did next.
Drawing his arms around Ryder's neck, Mick pulled Ryder into his embrace and then pressed his lips against Ryder's mouth.
"What the fuck?" Ryder shoved Mick away and leapt to his feet, "Have you gone completely fucking insane?" He demanded to know, staring at Mick in wide eyed shock and disbelief as he scrubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, trying to wipe away the taste of Mick's lips on his own.
"What?" Mick looked dumbfounded for a moment and then shrugged. "I just thought we could both use a bit of comfort right now."
"No Mick. You're not looking for comfort, if you were you'd be at home with Josef, where you belong." Ryder drew in a breath and then hammered the final point home with another pointed stab of a finger in Mick's direction, "What you're doing is self destructing."
Mick opened his mouth to voice his protest then and Ryder cut him off at the pass as he looked at Mick and growled an added reply of "and if you think I'm going to have any part in that then you can quite happily go fuck yourself sunshine," before gritting his teeth together and hissing at Mick with unbridled fury, "Now get the fuck out of my house."
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"I thought I told you to get out."
Mick glared up at Ryder, defiant, unmoving. Ryder took a step forward, lips drawn back and fangs bared.
"Yeah, alright I'm going."
Mick stood up and turned to leave, eyes glazed and movements staggered. Ryder watched for a moment and then relented, fearing Mick's state of mind.
"Wait, Mick don't go yet. We'll talk some more, just don't stick your tongue down my throat again."
He tried to call out after him but Mick brushed him off with a dismissive wave over his shoulder and kept walking, down the passageway and out the front door, straight for oblivion.
Back in Salzburg Katherine looked on helplessly as Josef paced in front of the window and kept vigil by the front door.
"I don't think he's coming home tonight." She approached Josef cautiously, placing a tentative hand on his arm.
"He might."
The words sounded hollow and pathetic even to Josef's ears and he turned to Katherine and began to repeat the same words he had said to her hours earlier, knowing she thought he had lost his mind and pleading with her for her understanding regardless.
"Katherine, I…"
"I know, you love him" Katherine finished the sentence for him, "You've loved him for almost a hundred years, God knows why but you have and you do."
Josef paused for a moment, eyes averted; staring out the window, then looked at Katherine and gave a brief nod of his head.
"You're certifiably insane when it comes to that man, you know that don't you?" Katherine took a step towards Josef and wrapped her arms around his waist.
"Yeah, I think you're probably right on that count." Josef managed a wan laugh and then allowed Katherine to draw him into her embrace.
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"Gimme the blonde one, I want what she's having."
Madeline's was a notorious Freshie bar in the heart of downtown Cologne, where more than just blood flowed freely. Mick found himself there now, thrusting a palm full of crumbled notes into the hand of the proprietor, eager to sample the wares on offer and lose himself completely.
He manoeuvred the freshie into a dimly lit corner and flopped down onto the threadbare fabric cushions of one of the dilapidated couches that stood there, pulling her down to sit next to him.
Sinking his fangs into the flesh of her forearm he drew her chemical laced blood into his mouth and swallowed greedily, feeling his body jolting, skin crawling and tiny fingers of electricity running across his scalp as the drug coursed through his own veins.
A youth, no more than nineteen years old, approached Mick then. Eyes glistening, smeared with clumsily applied eye shadow, and lips wet with gloss and saliva. He knelt down in-between Mick's legs and placed his hands on Mick's thighs, looking up at him and arching his brow in a question.
Mick shrugged and then nodded his assent, placing his hand over his zipper and slowly lowering it. He reached down and grabbed handfuls of the youth's hair in his fists, guiding his head into his lap as he slumped against the back of the couch and muttered a single word under his breath.
"Josef."
"Yeah sure honey, whatever you say" The youth looked up at him and grinned, before reaching into the gap in Mick's jeans and working his cock free from his underwear, then wrapping his lips around the exposed head. "I can be whoever you want me to be."
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"I take it Mick hasn't come home yet?" Katherine crouched on the floor next to the armchair where Josef sat red eyed and haggard from lack of sleep, rolling a small, carefully wrapped package back and forth across agitated fingers. "What you got there?" Katherine asked gently, placing a concerned hand on Josef's knee.
"A present, for Mick, it's our anniversary today." Josef's forced smiled look more like a grimace of pain etched across his pale features.
"Oh Christ, Josef."
"Katherine…"
"Don't say it." Katherine held up her hands in front of Josef's face, "Alright, just don't. I don't want to hear it."
Josef drew in a breath and then swallowed back the flood of emotions welling up inside him. He heard the latch on the front door click then as the lock was released the sound snapping him to his feet.
"Mick, for God sake where the hell have you been I've been worried…" he let the rest of the sentence trail off as he watched Mick stagger through the doorway, all glassy eyed black pupils and clenched jaw, his hair and clothes in disarray.
"I told you before I left, Josef." Mick emphasised Josef's name with long drawn out syllables as he slumped onto the couch and placed his hand over his mouth, stifling the giggle that was threatening to erupt from his lips, "I went out."
"I can see that," Josef gritted his teeth and folded his arms across his chest, then tossed his head and threw at Mick with sarcastic politeness as he scented the air around him, "Well did you have fun then? I can smell them on you from here you know."
"What are you getting so worked up about?" Mick scoffed and rolled his eyes at Josef, "It's not like I fucked any of them. I got a few blow jobs; it took my mind of things, so what."
Mick finished with a forced shrug of his shoulders and a baiting smile aimed in Josef's direction.
"Well? And did you enjoy yourself?" Josef repeated, the same mockingly polite tone in his voice.
"Better than your devious snake tongued mouth."
Mick threw back his head and laughed and then looked up at Josef, wild eyed and grinning.
"I'm glad it meant something to you then, congratulations."
Josef turned away in disgust, preparing to walk away and go upstairs for some much needed freezer time, hoping Mick would come to his senses by the time he was awake again if he left him to ride out the last of his drug fueled high, alone.
"It meant absolutely nothing, Josef." Mick called out after him and then added with another wild eyed laugh and a flippant toss of his head, "A bit like you at the moment."
If Katherine had a camera at that moment, she would have sworn she could capture the exact moment when Josef's heart shattered, leaving jagged pieces lodged inside his chest.
Josef turned back to Mick and looked at him with heartbreaking disbelief, before a light went out in his eyes and he strolled casually over to where Mick sat.
Happy anniversary Mick," He smiled at Mick coldly and placed the small package in his hand down on the table in front of Mick with a soft tap, then turned away once more and walked straight out the door.
"So let me get this straight, Mick St John." Katherine spat his name like a bad taste on her mouth after Josef had left. "You've just been prepared to destroy a fifty one year relationship over some stupid blonde bitch that didn't have strength nor sense to know that sometimes shit just happens and you have to deal with it."
Katherine took a step forward then and began to clap, a slow sarcastic hand clap, "Well done."
"He'll be back." Mick snorted as he suppressed another laugh, "He's crazy about me, he'll probably bring me home another rosebush."
"You arrogant smug bastard." Katherine picked up her glass of blood from the corner of the table and threw it in Mick's face, splashing his face and clothes with the sticky red liquid.
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"Here get this into you." Katherine shoved a glass of fresh blood into Mick's hand the following afternoon as he struggled to drag himself through the layers of drug hazed unconsciousness that clung to his mind.
"Thanks," Mick rasped. His mouth felt dry and full of grit as he gratefully swallowed down the crimson liquid in the glass.
"How much do you remember? You were pretty out of it." Katherine sat on her haunches on the floor in front of Mick and looked at him uneasily.
"Not a lot." Mick paused and then scrubbed his hands over his face and flicked his fingers out in front of him, trying to rid himself of the last remnants of confused sleep still dulling his senses. "Bits and pieces, flashes." He paused again and then looked around the room, eyes searching and ears pricked, before asking Katherine. "Where's Josef?"
"You really don't remember do you?" Katherine looked incredulous for a moment and then stared at Mick with cold precision. "He's gone, Mick. He left."
"Gone? Gone where?" It was Mick's turn to look incredulous, the confusion on his face evident as he searched his memory for any hint of what might have happened only to come up completely blank.
Mick listened in stunned silence as Katherine recounted the events of the night before. Burying his head in his hands he bit down on his bottom lip and muttered a single word.
"Shit."
He looked at Katherine then, eyes pleading, remorse etched deep. "Did he say when he'd be back?"
Katherine stared at him with the same cold precision as before and gave a halfhearted shrug.
"He probably just needs a few days to cool off; he'll come home after that. I'll try and think of something nice for him, something special, try and make things up to him."
Mick was babbling, talking more to himself than anyone in the room with him. Katherine let out a wry laugh then and rolled her eyes.
"Yeah well," she told Mick then, dispensing with any inkling of forced politeness "if you think that's all it's going to take, Mick. Then bloody good luck to you, you're gonna need it."
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Contrary to Mick's almost desperate belief otherwise, Josef didn't come home. Not the next day or the day following nor the day after that.
"I miss Beth," Mick admitted to Katherine one evening, a week later, as they sat on the couch together and tried not to notice the yawning gap in both their lives. "I don't mean I miss Beth, I mean I miss Beth." Mick gestured to try and convey his meaning.
"You mean you miss the human Beth, the girl you knew before you turned her."
"Yeah, exactly." Mick nodded his head in and then slumped further into the couch, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers against his forehead. "I should never have done what I did to her. Josef didn't kill her, I did."
"She killed herself Mick." Katherine's reply was simple and to the point and Mick looked at her for a moment, his brow furrowed. Before he had a chance to speak Katherine continued on. "I mean come on; Beth wasn't that stupid or naïve. She knew the rules of the Vampire community even before she became one herself. She had to have known that sending that article off to the press would practically guarantee she was signing her own death warrant."
"Yeah I guess so." Mick chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, brow still furrowed and fingers pressed against his chin. "But don't you see Katherine," he turned to her and said then, punctuating his words with a cutting hand gesture in the air in front of him, "She didn't want to be a Vampire anymore, she didn't want to be a Vampire at all. I was the one who made her into the thing she hated most in herself."
Mick didn't need to go on; he let the unspoken words of the sentence hang over his head like a knife edged accusation ready to cut him in two.
"It's my fault."
"Yeah you turned her." Katherine rolled her eyes and gritted her teeth in frustration, "And Josef turned you, which lead you to turn Beth to try and cancel out the effects of that, so it must be Josef's fault then."
"It's not Josef's…"
Mick had been about to voice his usual protest of none of this being Josef's fault, but his words were ignored as Katherine continued on regardless.
"…Or maybe it's the Vampire who kidnapped Beth in the first place's fault? I mean if he hadn't done that then Josef wouldn't have needed to turn you at all and you wouldn't have been lead to do what you did to Beth. Or maybe it's the Vampire who sired the Vampire who kidnapped Beth's fault, after all if he hadn't existed at all then he wouldn't have kidnapped Beth, you wouldn't have needed to be turned again by Josef and you wouldn't have then turned Beth under the influence of that."
Katherine held Mick's gaze with her own, unmoving and then drove the final point home, "Or maybe we should just go back and try to find the source of all Vampirism and aim a flame thrower at that, because clearly all of this must be their fault, after all if Vampires never existed in the first place none of this would have ever happened and I wouldn't be sitting here listening to you blather on about guilt and fault, I'd be six feet under the earth in a coffin somewhere and you'd probably be a pile of dust and bones."
"That's ridiculous." Mick scoffed and let out a snort of laughter, even as he turned his head away from Katherine and stared at the wall in front of him, his mind reluctantly accepting that what she had just said did make sense.
"No more ridiculous than you blaming yourself for an unfortunate series of events that you had no real control over back then Mick." Katherine's voice was gentle that time, a reassuring hand placed lightly on Mick's arm.
"Oh Christ I miss Josef." Mick broke down then and buried his head in his hands.
"He'll be home soon." Katherine shifted her hand to the small of Mick's back, trying to offer what little comfort she could.
"You've spoken to him?" Mick lifted his head and quickly wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. "When, where is he, is he ok?"
Katherine held up her hand to halt the bombardment of questions from Mick. "He rang me last night, he doesn't want you to know where he is and he's as well as can be expected under the circumstances." She paused for a moment and then placed her hand on Mick's arm once again, "He just needs some time, ok"
"And I need him here with me."
Mick's voice was small and plaintive, almost childlike in the stillness of the room.
"How old are you again?" Katherine stared at Mick for a moment and then shook her head.
"One hundred and thirty eight, why what's that got do with anything?"
Katherine ignored the snapped tone of Mick's reply. "Josef looks after you doesn't he?"
"Josef's always looked after me. It's what he does, he takes care of me." Mick looked at Katherine, head cocked to the side and expression searching, trying to work out what she was getting at with this current line of question.
"And Coraline before that." Katherine nodded her head as if she'd just come to some great realisation.
"I don't see what Josef, or Coraline for that matter, has to do with any of this?" Mick started to say but found his reply cut off.
"You've never really had to deal with anything by yourself before, have you Mick? Not since you were a Vampire at least" it was a rhetorical question and Katherine continued on before Mick had a chance to form a response, "maybe that's half your problem."
Katherine stood up and bent down to pour a glass of blood from the bottle on the table in front of her. Handing it to Mick with a curt smile she instructed him, "Here, drink this you look like shit," and then walked away, leaving Mick to ponder his own thoughts, alone.
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A week later Mick found himself in Josef's office, frantically rifling through drawers and folders, trying to find some clue to where Josef might have gone.
Coming across a pile papers that he had found shoved, uncharacteristically messy for Josef, under a plethora of neatly filed folders in the top drawer of Josef's desk, he struggled as he read through them and tried to process the information that was revealed to him.
They were the contracts Josef had had drawn up before Beth's death. Contracts with Lance promising the entire contents of his fortune in exchange for the mortal cure, presumably to give to Beth.
"Everything I am and everything I own, I would give up in an instant for you."
Mick's mind and body reeled as the full weight of reality came crashing down on him and he realised just how far Josef had been prepared to go to try and save Beth's life, for his sake.
Oh Jesus what have I done?
He staggered back against the wall behind him and slid to the floor, stunned and shaken. Katherine found him like that an hour later; the papers still clutched his hands, breath coming in ragged gasps. She knelt down beside him and gently prised the pages from his fingers.
"Holy shit." She let out a whistle and looked at Mick in disbelief after she had quickly scanned their contents. "This is…"
"Everything, I know." Mick's voice was trembling, barely above a whisper. "Oh Jesus, Katherine," he repeated out loud. "What have I done?"
"Wow, you really did fuck up this time didn't you St John?" Katherine looked at Mick and arched her brow.
Mick gritted his teeth and began to wail then, a low keening sound like an animal in pain. Katherine stood up and backed slowly out of the room, scared to make any sudden movements until she was out of Mick's field of vision.
Hurrying down the stairs then, she picked up the phone and quickly dialed the emergency contact number Josef had given her the week before.
"Josef, you need to come home." She cut right to the chase, dispensing with any pleasantries as soon as she heard Josef's voice on the end of the line. "Right now."