I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. School caught up and spring vaca and then I got really sick with like five different things at once so that wasn't fun. So tell me what you think! I eat reviews, if you want my story to be different or you think it could be better tell me! I am not a mind reader, words work better!

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Chapter 3 Inquiry

Beth hesitated as she stood in front of Mick's door. She wasn't sure if she wanted to see him again, she promised herself that she was mad, that she wouldn't forgive Mick for not changing that fateful day. But Jack was in there. Jack the strange teenage vampire who showed up in her window and saved her from making the biggest mistake of her life.

Beth shook her head in amazement. How had she end up spending an entire day with a vampire and not even known it? You think she'd know the signs by now. And what was Jack's story anyway? Who was she? What the hell had happened to her to change her?

Before Beth could make a conscious decision whether to go in the door swung open to reveal a tired looking Mick. It had only been an hour since she had seen him but it felt like forever.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," Mick answered. "Do you want to come in?"

"Sure."

Beth walked into Mick's apartment and sat down on the familiar couch. To her the apartment looked the same, a stone that refused to change despite the world being turned upside down. Mick joined her after a second, sitting in the opposite chair. They studied each other for a few uncomfortable seconds before Beth couldn't take it anymore.

"Is she okay?!" she blurted out.

Mick looked at her in surprise then chuckled. "Yeah she'll be fine. Honestly I'm amazed she's still sane."

"Is she really only seventeen?"

"Yeah, as far as I can tell."

"God," Beth said, burying her face in her hands. "She's so young."

Mick wondered if he dared to reproach on what he knew was a sensitive subject. If it went wrong he knew it would drive Beth away, probably for good.

"Beth I…" he trailed off, deciding to switch subjects.

Beth hated him enough as it was.

"What Mick?" Beth asked sounding slightly irritated.

"I offered Jack to stay here, with me, for me to be her sire in a sense. Whoever turned her into a vampire is long gone and she needs a place to stay."

Beth nodded her head. "Good, I'm glad, she needs someone."

They sat for another few seconds of awkward silence when Mick couldn't take it anymore, he had to ask her. He didn't care how much it would hurt him but he needed the truth, if what he thought was reality.

"Beth?" he asked.

Beth looked at him. "Yeah?"

"Do you…hate me?"



Beth looked at him stunned. Instantly her first thought was yes, she would like nothing more than to see Mick out of her life. She hated him for not saving Josh when he could have. But another response tugged at the back of her mind. How could she hate him? She couldn't, there was too much between them for her to have any negative feelings for him.

Images flashed through her mind. The first time they met, in the middle of the night in front of a dead girl's body, the first time he saved her, as a child, and sacrificing his wife's life to do it, when she saved him, in the burning desert, and the sweet but short kiss they shared that night in the parking lot. In all retrospect she loved him. But then other memories surfaced, how he had pushed her away after feeding from her, Josh bleeding on the ground, Mick refusing to change him to save him, telling her he would rather watch her dies as well. No she couldn't love Mick, not right now at least. But she couldn't hate him either.

"No Mick I don't hate you, but…I can't say I like you."

Mick nodded his head. His chest constricted and it became harder to breath, but he could live with Beth's answer. It was safer this way for her, she wouldn't be put into constant danger by being around him.

"I can live with that," he told her.

Beth simple nodded her head. She stood; ready to leave when a loud crash came from upstairs. It was followed by another and than a thumping sound, as if a room was being ripped apart. Beth looked back at Mick who was focused on the stairs, his face creased with worry.

"Stay here," he told Beth then ran upstairs.

Beth rolled her eyes. "Yeah right."

She ran upstairs to find Jack sitting on the ground; her head leaned against the wall. Mick was closing the door but not before Beth caught sight of an obliterated room, glass and metal twisted and embedded into dented walls.

"What happened?" she asked.

Jack rubbed her neck sheepishly. "Panicked. I forgot where I was and when I woke up… Sorry Mick."

Mick chuckled. "Don't worry about it emotions as a newborn are always erratic. All things considering I'm glad you didn't punch right through the wall. I must say though I'm impressed at the carnage."

Jack moaned and buried her head in her hands. "Somehow that doesn't make me feel better."

Mick ruffled her hair, trying to get her attention. When Jack did finally look up she said, "I'm ready to tell you my story."

Beth and Mick looked at each other in shock. Beth was sure they would never get Jack's full story, from what she knew of her Jack wasn't a person who readily spoke. Mick thought they would have to drag it out of her, after a while he knew he was going to end up questioning her.

"Do you want to know?" Jack asked, thinking that maybe they didn't.

"Of course," Beth and Mick said in unison.

Jack chuckle, they were both fit for each other. She didn't know their history but whatever it was had to be bad, those two existed for the other and whatever was holding them back had to be big.

A minute later they were all downstairs, Mick on the chair, and Beth and Jack on the couch. Jack had a glass of blood, she still felt extremely weak but not to the point where she was falling over.

"Where to start?" she asked more herself. She took a sip of the liquid and relished the feeling of it soothing her coarse throat.

"How about where you're from?" Beth suggested.

Jack shook her head and studied the glass, following the design unintentionally wrought into the glass as it was formed. "Not yet, I don't want to think about home." She took a deep breath and decided where to begin. "I originally came to Hollywood with a few friends for something like a day trip, you 

know, girl's night out in the town of fame. It actually turned into a few days because we were having so much fun. Everyone agreed we were going to move out here when we got older." A grin flashed on Jack's face and her eyes were distant. Then suddenly her smile dropped. "I was walking back to the place we were staying at; it was an apartment of my best friend's aunt's. I wanted a soda and her aunt was something of a health nut so she didn't have any. I knew there was a nearby store and the dark had never scared me, I welcomed it in fact.

"I was about halfway back when it happened. One second I was walking, and the next I was on the ground, a searing pain ripping through my skull and my neck. I remember fighting back as best as I could, and something warm dripping onto my neck but after that everything went black. I woke up and everything was alive, and you know what?" Jack let out a crazed laugh. "I freakin knew what happened."

Mick and Beth's eyes widened in shock.

"How?" Mick asked.

"I'm weird," Jack said as if it was obvious. "I know about this stuff, most of my friends did. No I'm not some geek whose life is devoid of all social aspects but we were interested in the abnormal. So when I woke up, saw that everything was sooo much sharper, noticed that I suddenly wanted to bite everything that had a heart beat, I realized I was a vampire." She paused, studying a shock stilled Mick and Beth as if waiting a response. "That's probably why I didn't go crazy at first.

After a minute Beth sputtered out, "And then?"

Jack sighed. "I waited, going out during the night just to keep an eye on things try to learn how things worked. Of course it was…very…hard to resist the…temptation of…people." She grimaced. "But I managed to break into hospitals and blood banks and steal bags when I needed to. I've spent the last month fighting a lot of things luckily none of them other vampires. I ended up at Beth's place by accident, I was just running around and I heard some talk about explosions." An elated smile lit her face. "And trust me, stuff blowing up is better than doing nothing."

Beth shot Jack a grateful look, she definitely did not want Mick to know about her slightly desperate action. Jack caught it and winked when Mick wasn't looking. Knowing she wouldn't tell, Beth allowed a small smile.

"So that's it?" Mick asked. He wasn't entirely convinced, especially about how Jack met Beth, but didn't want to push.

Jack nodded. "I've been a very good, bored, vampire, girl."

Mick laughed at her innocent sounding voice. "Alright well, don't expect to be bored anymore," he told her, "I expect you to help out."

"With what?"

"My job, I'm a private investigator and don't think you get to stay home all day."

Jack's smile was from ear to ear. "When do I start?"

Alright peeps there it is. So tell me what you think k? I'm not one of those people who withhold chapters for reviews but I do love them so give them please -