The dark side of forever
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of any part of Moonlight- this is purely a not-for-profit fanfiction to pay respect to a great show I am gutted was cancelled.
Chapter 4
'Open up, Logan,' Beth demanded, pounding harder with her fist on the apartment door. It was nine o'clock in the evening and she knew for a fact that the vampire was at home. Beth had been staking out the exit since she saw him go in some seven hours ago. Dating Mick for all that time meant she knew the score. Logan would definitely be out of his freezer by now, well-rested and rejuvenated for what she needed him to do. 'Come on,' she insisted, an edge of slight desperation creeping into her voice. 'I know you are in there. I'm not leaving until you-'
The door creaked open, and Logan's chubby face appeared in the gap.
'Oh, hi, Beth,' he said, voice falsely bright and cheerful. 'What… er, what do you want?' Beth watched his bobbling Adam's apple with fascination as Logan gulped nervously. Strange, but Logan always was a bit odd. Beth pasted a friendly and non-threatening smile on her face.
'Can I come in?'
'Come in?' Logan echoed, eyes darting furiously around.
'Yes,' Beth repeated patiently, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. 'Can I come inside?' When Logan did not answer she raised an eyebrow. 'Logan, I need to talk to you.'
'Er, yeah. Sure,' Logan muttered, but it seemed begrudging when he yanked the apartment door open wide enough for Beth to slip past him. It had been a while since she had been there, but Beth was reassured to see Logan's place still looked like the lair of a mad computer genius living inside his parent's basement. She stepped carefully down the metal stairs and around the mess of video games, weird looking tech and… were those empty blood bags? Oh, gross. This was hardly ideal for Beth's purposes, but she did not have a whole lot of choice. It was not like her i-phone was chock full of friendly vampire contacts.
'What can I do for you?' Logan asked, twitching one hand against his jeans, like an involuntary muscle memory from playing too much Guitar Hero. For her part, Beth stood kind of awkwardly, clutching her handbag tightly. Logan may seem like a benign computer nerd, but it was all too easy to forget that he was also a not-so-young vampire, who could snap her neck like a twig without breaking a sweat. This kind of brought her to the point of why she was here, in said vampire's apartment, alone in all her human frailty.
'I need a favour,' she began. When Logan didn't try to eject her from his home immediately, she continued: 'I have money.'
'What's the favour?'
Beth took a deep breath and looked at Logan almost apologetically.
'I need you to make me into a vampire. I want you to turn me.'
For a very long, gobsmacked moment Logan just gaped at her. Then, he began shaking his head and swaying slightly from side to side in consternation.
'Hell, no. No, no, no, nooo,' he said, stuttering as he backed himself practically into the giant flatscreen on the far wall.
Beth put her hands up.
'No, I know, it doesn't usually work like this. It's a bit weird. I can pay you though, and I really, really need this favour, Logan. I don't know who else to ask.'
'How about no-one?' Logan suggested, still looking at her like she was the kryptonite to his Superman.
'I thought you were my friend.'
'Yeah? Well, friends don't let friends… eat their friends,' Logan retorted, bug eyed and twitchy as all hell.
'Well, I don't want you to kill me. I want you to turn me,' Beth frowned at him. Logan looked like a geeky teenager about to pick up his date for prom, like if he was human he might actually be sweating by now. Beth had been prepared to do some convincing, probably bribe and potentially even threaten Logan, but this was a more negative reaction than she was expecting. 'Logan, what the hell is the matter with you?'
'I can't do it,' he said firmly. 'He'll kill me.'
'Who? Josef?' Beth asked. 'Josef never needs to know. Logan, I promise as soon as it's done, I'm leaving L.A. I'm leaving the country actually. If it helps, I'll promise not to come back.'
'Oh, great,' Logan muttered. 'That would go down so much better.'
Beth was starting to get irate now.
'Damn it, Logan,' she snapped. 'This is none of Josef's business. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't even be asking you for this.'
Logan just stared at her blankly.
'I need to find Mick,' she said, running her hands through her loose hair in frustration. She did not notice whatever it was that flickered behind Logan's eyes at the mention of his old friend. 'Josef has done nothing. He just accepts that Mick is dead and he won't help me look for him. He says it's too dangerous, and maybe he's right, but I can't just sit here and let another eight months go by. Until I have proof that Mick is dead, I have to try to find him. I can't just move on, like Josef tells me to.'
Sighing, Beth sank into a dubious looking hammock chair and looked up tiredly at Logan. 'I've done everything I can to look for Mick the human way, but nothing works. Every lead has gone cold. I need to find Lance, and to do that I need to move in the vampire world. Josef won't do it on my behalf, so…' She trailed off and shrugged, spreading her hands to indicate Logan and herself. 'I need your help.'
Logan said nothing.
Beth nodded minutely. 'And I have five thousand dollars,' she added, hopefully. 'Logan, say something.'
'No,' Logan said, snapping out of his semi-trance and starting to pace the tiny gap between the wall and the coffee table. 'I mean, yes, to the saying something, but a big fat no to the other part. I'm sorry, Beth. I'm really sorry about Mick. But I happen to enjoy living my undead life and turning you into a vampire is pretty much the dumbest thing anyone who doesn't want to be killed in a painful, creative and drawn-out way could do.'
'I can get maybe another two thousand…'
'It's not about the money,' Logan cut in, over Beth's desperate plea. Her pretty blue eyes hardened as she realised he was serious.
'You know, I can find another vampire to do it,' she said, coldly. 'I actually thought you might feel some kind of loyalty to Mick, and be a friend to me.'
'Trust me,' Logan said, seriously, with fear shining in his eyes. 'I am being a friend to you. A newly born vampire would stand no chance confronting a monster like Lance. Even if you could find him, which I highly doubt.'
'That's my risk to take, don't you think?'
'I don't think Josef Kostan will see it that way.'
'I don't give a rat's ass what Josef Kostan thinks. Why do you think Josef will be so opposed to me becoming a vampire, anyway? If anything, he was in favour of it when Mick and I were… Before Mick was taken. Josef used to say if you want to be with someone forever, you have to live forever. Why would he care?'
'Maybe because he respects Mick's wishes?'
Beth huffed in disbelief.
'Like I'm some kind of possession left behind, that he can dictate what happens to?'
Logan growled in annoyance and waved frustrated hands at Beth.
'Okay then, how about because the process itself is dangerous? Tons of people don't manage the transition.'
'I'm more likely to die if I go around asking random vampires to bite me than if you do it,' Beth pointed out. Shaking her head, she stuffed the money back in her bag and started for the stairs. 'But if that's what I have to do, well, fine. I will fight with every last breath in my body to find Mick. If by any small chance he's still alive, then he will know I never gave up on him. I will find a vampire willing to turn me, and I will go and find Lance and make him tell me what happened to Mick. You and Josef are just as bad and selfish as each other, and as far as I'm concerned you can rot together in hell. You may be vampires, but that is no excuse for being so inhuman.'
A blurry shape whooshed past her, and suddenly she found herself face to face with Logan, who was standing on the staircase blocking her exit. Quite surprisingly, Beth felt her pulse rate pick up in trepidation, but Logan only wrung his hands and stared in agony at his unlikely friend.
'Okay, stop. Please, stop,' he said, hastily. 'Please don't do that. You can't go and ask any old vampire to turn you. Half of them would take your money, and then just drain you and leave you dead.'
Beth looked at Logan's overwrought expression with unease.
'What choice have you left me?' she asked him, stiffly.
'Look,' Logan said, then paused and sighed heavily. 'If I tell you this, you have to promise not to tell Josef it was me who told you. He made me swear secrecy.'
'What is it?' Logan looked more serious than she had ever seen him, except maybe at Emma's execution. 'Fine,' she nodded in agreement, 'I promise. It's not like I ever intend to speak to Josef again anyway.'
Logan ushered Beth back down the stairs to the sofa, and sat down facing her.
'You may want to rethink that,' he said, wincing.
'Why?'
'Because Josef knows exactly where Lance is, and he's on his way there right now.'
'What do you mean?' Beth asked, completely confused.
'I mean that for the past eight months, Josef has done nothing but travel about the world following every lead to try and find that sonofabitch that took Mick,' Logan explained. 'And, about five weeks ago, he found him.'
8 months ago…
'Honey, sorry I'm late. Work was crazy, but I'm here now and I've got pizza and a bottle of really nice Merlot,' Beth called out invitingly, as she let herself into Mick's apartment, balancing a grocery bag, a pizza box and an oversize handbag precariously in her arms. She half-turned to nudge the door closed behind her with one foot. 'Well, okay, the pizza is for me, but you are a sucker for a good Merlot,' she continued.
Making her way to the kitchen counter, she deposited the goods on the surface and quickly unpacked a box of tomatoes, salad leaves and a ready-made chocolate mousse into the fridge. As she did, Beth carried on talking. 'I've thought about what you said, about selling my apartment. I know I stay here most of the time, and it makes sense. I think it's actually a good idea. I guess,' Beth grimaced into the vegetable crisper box, and retrieved a bag of wrinkly old mushrooms and a dubious looking half eggplant to be binned. The problem with only one person eating was a lot got wasted. 'Well, I guess I just needed a few days to get my head around the whole idea of not having my own place as a kind of back up? You know? I mean, me moving in here officially is a big step. But I want you to know I'm ready for it. Baby, I have no hesitations about us.'
Beth glanced up to look for her boyfriend, but the tastefully furnished apartment, now mellowed from its previous bachelor pad status by the addition of a number of couple-friendly soft furnishings Beth had been subtly placing over the past year, did not reveal Mick's whereabouts.
There was music drifting down from the upstairs mezzanine; some of that old-fashioned jazz that Mick was addicted to. Smiling, Beth reached for two long-stemmed glasses from the cabinet. After dating Mick for over a year, Beth knew what would get her man vampire-speeding down the stairs quicker than she could say 'love-bite'. Although it had taken a long time to convince Mick that Beth really wanted for them to do it, they had finally taken their physical relationship to the next level a few months ago, and, if possible, sharing her blood with Mick (in a situation not involving his imminent death) had made sex with him even more amazing. Beth felt closer to him than ever, and right now she wouldn't change one thing about their strange but wonderful life together.
'Mick,' she said, in a low sultry voice that she knew his vampire hearing would pick up from the upper floor, even over the music. The wine bottle made a soft pop as she levered the cork out of the neck. 'I'll make yours a cocktail with some fresh A0 negative, if you promise to make it worth my while later.' Though Beth knew Mick would enjoy tasting her blood no matter what, she was extra glad that her rare blood type was damn near irresistbale to him.
Beth waited for the blur of colour to streak down the stairs, ending with Mick standing before her, all heated eyes, firm sculpted muscles and that irresistible grin. She waited, but nothing happened.
'Mick?'
Beth was starting to get an unsettled feeling. Where was Mick? The lights and the music were on and Beth knew he had been home an hour earlier when he responded to her text message telling him she was running late.
'Calm down super-sleuth,' she murmured to herself, putting the Merlot back on the counter. 'He probably just popped out to the 7-11 for something. Probably something for his needy human girlfriend. Like milk. Or bread.' But she knew they had both in the kitchen already.
The bedroom upstairs was empty and so, when she pressed the combination on the electronic keypad to get into the hidden room, was Mick's freezer.
Beth was coming back down the stairs when she saw it. The door to Mick's study was ajar and from this angle she could see through the gap. She could see the dark, viscous puddle on the hard wood floor. Suddenly, Beth's knees felt weak, but she tripped down the steps as fast she could and raced to pull open the study door.
Oh, God. Beth's hands flew to her mouth as she surveyed the chaos before her. Mick's usually neat and orderly study was in upheaval, with broken furniture and scattered files all over the floor. The heavy metallic desk was split clean in two, the centre crushed down to the floor like a large weight had smashed down on it. Beth's toe hit something, and when she looked down she saw the oversize glass paperweight she had brought Mick back as a corny present from her work trip to Denver last August. It was cracked and covered on one side with a slick red coating.
There was blood everywhere. Large patches seeping into wooden floor and white throw rugs, sprays up the walls and across the scattered papers, smears across picture glass and on the surfaces of upturned armchairs and filing cabinets. Beth had been around violence for long enough to know how vicious a fight there must have been to shed this much blood between vampires. And it was definitely vampires; if this had been a human attacker, even a group of them, she would be seeing Mick standing in the middle of this mess, rubbing an achy shoulder and waxing lyrical about the needlessness of violence.
But Mick was not here. Panic bloomed like a black hole inside her.
Stumbling across the room, Beth followed the noticeable smears of blood drawn in two thick, patchy trails across the floor, towards the window. The attractive slanted window panes that Beth knew for a fact were reinforced glass were shattered and the frames snapped in the centre to create a billowing hole in the wall. Beth trod recklessly over the crunched glass and dragged a stool from the corner to balance on. Now higher up, she leaned as far out of the window as she could and looked down. It was a long drop, but any vampire could easy make the two storey fall to the next level of roof garden on this side of the building. For a wild moment, Beth considered trying to follow, but the sudden nausea that overtook her fortunately prevented any such idiocy, which could only have resulted in her death or serious injury. Her head swam and her breathing was coming too fast. For once, the girl who never stayed behind, never backed down or kept still, was paralyzed with helplessness.
Almost on autopilot, Beth did the only thing she could. Her hands trembled as she tugged the phone off Mick's desk and pressed '2' on the speed dial.
'I need you to come over here, right now,' she said, in a low scratchy whisper, when he answered.
Then, Beth backed into the corner of the room and sank down to the floor. She barely noticed the grazes to her hands as she pressed down on tiny shards of glass. She ran two hands through her hair, brought them back to press against the sides of her face, and then hastily removed them as she felt wetness on her skin. Her hands were covered in blood.
*
Josef arrived at Mick's apartment barely fifteen minutes after Beth called, and found her curled up in the corner of the destroyed office, covered in blood and shaking like a leaf.
'Beth?'
The room stank of fresh blood. Josef could distinguish the smell of Mick's from other vampire blood, and the tantalising aroma of Beth's AO negative from across the room. In a blur of speed, Josef was crouched in front of the blonde woman, gripping her chin and lifting her face up for inspection.
'Where are you hurt?'
Beth stared glassy eyed at him, then sniffed and shook her head.
'I'm not. It's just… my hands.' She lifted her scratched palms towards him, and looked impassively as Josef cradled them gently in his own.
'Your face is covered in blood.'
'It's just from my hands and… other stuff I've touched.' Beth's traumatised eyes flickered around the bloody room.
'Are you sure you're not hurt anywhere else?' Josef asked gently.
'I'm fine,' Beth sniffed. 'I wasn't here. I just came over and found it… like this.' She looked up at Josef, wide eyed and shell-shocked. 'I don't know where Mick is.'
'It's okay,' he hushed her.
'I think they took him through the window. There's a patio about two storeys down.' Beth's face looked strained with the difficulty of concentrating through the shock. 'I spoke to Mick about an hour before I got here. Well, he left me a voicemail. I was late coming over…' Her voice cracked and Josef looked grim.
'Hold on,' he said. It only took him twenty five seconds to blur out of the room and return with a cold washcloth, which he pressed to her bleeding hands. Pulling her into his arms, Josef lifted Beth with ease and carried her steadily out of Mick's office and into the main apartment. He set her down on one of the large sofas and straightened back up.
'I'm going to have a look outside,' he told her. 'Just stay here for a minute.'
Josef disappeared and for once Beth did as she was told and stayed put. When Josef came back, his young beautiful face was twisted in anger. Beth listened to him barking orders into his cell phone, as he paced the space between the office doorway and the living area.
'If someone doesn't have information for me in the next five minutes, people are going to lose more than their jobs,' he snapped at the hapless employee on the other end of the conversation. 'I want to know names and addresses on every visiting vampire in L.A. And get Keisha over here to collect blood samples. If any vampire in the area knows these scents, I want to know before sunrise. Are the CCTV and travel checks set up?' There was a brief pause while Josef listened to the answer. 'Good. Anyone without a job can get out on the street and start looking. I want every single employee brought in on this, I don't care if it's their night off.' Josef snapped the phone shut and ran a hand through his short hair. He smiled tightly at Beth.
'Did you find anything outside?' Beth asked him.
'Nothing helpful. They definitely went that way though. Three vamps, and Mick was with them.' Josef didn't add that there was more of Mick's blood on the pavement below, where he had obviously been dragged along, likely unconscious. 'As far as I can tell, they all went over the wall.'
'So they took him. He's not dead.' Beth said, more to herself than to Josef.
'If he was dead then there wouldn't have been a body to carry out,' Josef confirmed.
'But who?' Beth wondered. 'Who would want to do this to Mick? Why would anyone want to?'
Josef hesitated. There weren't many vampires who would be stupid enough to try to kidnap Mick , as well as being Josef Kostan's best friend, he was popular with the whole community. There were even fewer he could think of with the juice or motivation to pull it off.
'I'm doing everything I can to find out,' was all he said to Beth. 'I'm sure we'll know more soon.'
'And then?' Beth asked, weakly.
'Then we'll get him back and I'll make sure anyone who had anything to do with this dies a slow and painful death,' Josef said, almost brightly. He noticed that Beth was looking a little better, now that the shock was wearing off.
'What can I do to help?' Beth's voice was still a bit shaky, but determined.
'You can let me take you to my house,' Josef said seriously. 'Until I know what the hell is going on, I'd rather you are somewhere safe. And you'll be on the scene when we get some information.'
Beth nodded.
'Are you good to walk?'
Beth sat up straight, redid her ponytail and reached out to take the hand that Josef offered.
'I'm fine. Sorry I spaced on you. I've got myself together now, I promise,' she told Josef. 'Let's find these guys and get to the painful death part.'
'Thatta girl,' Josef smirked, pulling her to her feet.
They stood facing each other and Beth gripped Josef's arm tightly.
'Thank you,' Beth whispered.
'He's my best friend.'
'I know. Just the same.'
Josef nodded, and patted her hand awkwardly.
'Plus, I'm not totally averse to you either, Blondie.' Beth gave his hand a small squeeze.
'Okay,' she said, visibly gathering her energy. 'You carry on doing… what the hell it is you're doing. Just give me a minute to grab my bag and I'll let you take me to the house of horrors.'
'You love my house.'
'It's the frickin' vampire playboy mansion.'
'Like I said, you love my h-' Josef broke off when Beth smacked him in the arm.
'I'll be one minute, idiot.'
Josef stood in the centre of Mick's apartment as Beth trotted up the stairs to gather a few overnight essentials. His gaze fixed on the kitchen counter and walking over to it he flicked the lid back from the abandoned pizza box. His face wrinkled in distaste at the congealed cold contents.
Flicking his phone open he made one more call.
'Get some pepperoni pizza ordered to the house.'
*
At some untold hour of the night, Beth woke up on a plush kingsize bed in Josef's house. Frowning, she took a second before the horrific events of the past twenty-six hours rushed back to her with a nasty jolt, causing her to half leap off the bed. The last thing she remembered was being downstairs in Josef's study, while he and a team of crisp, efficient looking professionals co-ordinated the fruitless search for Mick. Sometimes, Josef would disappear for an hour to 'talk to' whichever hapless person, human or otherwise, his team had dragged in on suspicion of having relevant information. This was for Mick, and Beth felt surprisingly okay about closing her eyes to whatever Josef was doing in these 'talks'. Josef's housekeeper had tried to force feed Beth pizza and lemonade, hot tea and biscuits at various intervals. She remembered sitting on the leather couch behind Josef's desk, leaning her head on the back as the black knot of fear festered and grew in the pit of her stomach. It had been so long since she slept. Then… Well, Josef must have brought her up here after she passed out.
The knock on the door made her jump, but it was only Josef.
'You're awake,' he said, stating the obvious as he stepped into the room.
Beth had never seen Josef look so terrible. His dishevelled clothes were hardly the issue, but the awful expression on his face chilled Beth to the very core. With a deep sense of foreboding, she sank back to sit on the edge of the bed.
'What is it?' she asked.
'I'm sorry Beth,' Josef said, but it was more of a sob as his voice broke in a jarring grief-stricken way.
'No,' Beth whispered. No, no, no, no, no, no, ran through her mind like a violent prayer.
'I'm so sorry,' Josef repeated. 'It's too late. Mick's dead.'
Beth's mouth was dry and she felt as if she was looking down on this scene, like a spectator off some crazy, far-fetched play.
'How?'
'It was Lance. My people have confirmed it.'
'Coraline's brother?' Beth's mind raced. It made no sense. 'They fell out, like, over eighteen months ago. We haven't heard anything about him since he took Coraline away.'
'That's not exactly true,' Josef said, in a pained voice.
'What the hell do you mean?' Beth snapped.
Josef's eyes flashed and he rubbed a hand over his mouth.
'Some of Lance's people were in L.A. about three months ago, and they wanted to speak to Mick.'
Beth shook her head.
'No, Mick wouldn't have kept that from me.' But even as she spoke she knew it wasn't true: Mick would never have told her anything that would worry or upset her. That was Mick, always the protective one: her hero. 'What did they want?'
'I didn't get the details. The gist is Lance extended Mick a family invitation. I know he was seriously pissed at Coraline for denigrating the royal bloodline by turning Mick without permission. God knows what the hell they've been doing with Coraline since they took her back, and frankly I don't give a toss. All I know is that Lance sent his goons to bring Mick into the family fold.'
'And Mick said no,' Beth said, flatly.
'He would never have left you willingly, you know that.'
Beth moaned in agony and crumpled to the floor at the foot of the bed, while Josef slumped against the bedroom door.
'Then why would Lance kill him?' Beth asked, punching a clenched fist on the floor. 'Why bother dragging him out of the window and taking him away. If he wanted Mick dead, why not have the vamps kill him in the apartment?'
'Beth, I don't…'
'Just tell me, Josef' Beth demanded, seeing the hesitation in her friend's face.
'Fine,' Josef said quietly. 'Lance would want to do it himself. When he came to L.A. to collect Coraline, it was the first time I've heard of him being outside of Europe in centuries. And that was for his sister. He sent vamps here to bring Mick to him, so he could kill Mick by his own hand.'
Beth felt physically sick.
'We don't know that for sure,' she whispered, desperately. 'He might have changed his mind. Maybe-'
'I spoke to Coraline,' Josef said, desolate. 'She called two hours ago. We only spoke for a minute, I think she was risking a lot to call here. She saw Mick, Beth. He was taken to Lance, and Coraline said… she said Lance killed him.'
'And you believe that bitch? Coraline is a liar.'
'She was distraught,' Josef said, avoiding Beth's eyes, because he knew he subject of Coraline's obsessive love for her husband was a touchy subject even before… Well, it didn't matter now, did it?
'She's a good actress,' Beth mumbled.
'I have another source: an acquaintance who is working at Lance's court. He said Mick arrived in one of Lance's Italian estates a few hours ago. Apparently, it was…' Josef swallowed hard 'relatively quick.' And though that was hardly saying Mick would not have suffered, Josef privately thought that, if it was true, it was a small mercy for his friend, given the marathon torture sessions Lance was infamous for.
'Did he actually see it happen?' Beth asked, completely embedded in denial.
Sighing, Josef straightened his stance and looked Beth straight into her eyes, bright with unshed tears.
'Beth, I'm going to say this once,' he said, quietly, but with an intensely compelling voice that felled lesser mortals. 'Mick is dead. Lance is one of the most powerful and dangerous vampires in the world. This is unbearably hard, but Mick didn't stand a chance. Neither will we if we try to avenge this. We must learn to live with this.'
Beth looked at him in horror, then her face hardened.
'Get out, Josef,' Beth said, through the beginnings of gulping sobs. 'I can't… I can't accept this… I won't. Please, I just want to be alone.'
When the door clicked shut behind him, Beth gave in to the most soul-consuming misery she had ever felt: a million times darker than when Josh had died. She didn't know what to do next, but Beth knew that she could not live without Mick St John.
Present time…
'Josef has been looking for Lance?'
A cold sensation suddenly rushed over Beth, and everything became too loud and bright for a second.
'Yep,' Logan confirmed. 'When the only contact Josef had at Lance's court disappeared off the face of the earth a few weeks after Mick was taken, Josef knew something didn't feel right. Since the court and the whole damn family seemed to disappear underground, Josef made it his mission to find them, and to find out what happened to Mick.'
'Josef didn't believe Lance actually killed Mick?'
Logan shrugged.
'I think Josef thought Mick probably was dead, but it's not like Josef to give up until he is one hundred percent sure of the cold hard facts.' Well, Beth had to agree that sounded more like the Josef she had thought she'd known, the friend she had given up on recently. 'Josef didn't want to get your hopes up. He made me promise not to tell you anything. I've been doing what I can to help smooth the way for Josef's investigations, since its all been pretty much under the radar. Which is where I live,' Logan concluded proudly.
Beth smiled at him.
'You know, Mick really was my friend too,' Logan said and Beth nodded.
'I know, Logan. I'm sorry about what I said before. I didn't know…'
'S'cool,' Logan grinned, shrugging it off.
'Do you know where Josef is right now?'
'Of course,' the vampire bragged. 'Who do you think arranged to get him there? Josef's been back and forth between here and France for the past five weeks.'
Beth smiled broadly, feeling a lightness in her heart that had not been there for too many months. If Josef had found out for sure that Mick was dead, why would he keep going back there? No, Josef must think Mick was still alive, and he was trying to save him. That lying, completely wonderful, bastard. Beth didn't know if she wanted to kiss or throttle him.
'Then there's a favour I need to ask you,' she said to Logan, fixing him firmly with her most determined gaze.
'Uh, what?' Logan asked warily.
'Wherever Josef is, I need you to get me there too.'
TBC
A/N: Sorry for the long wait guys: life takes over. Will try to update again much sooner. If anyone is still reading this, please let me know and review!!! I am beyond thrilled every time I get a review, and I promise I will not give up on this story. Thanks. :-)
