A/N: Woo hooo! I cannot believe I've finished this thing! I've written the final two chapters and will be posting the other tomorrow. Don't expect anyone to read it after this long a wait, but feel a sense of achievement anyway. As always, my respect for those authors who are able to sustain long multi-chaps is immense. Thank you in advance to any of you curious enough to see how this has ended.
Harvest XI
The alarm clock blinked '5.14 am' at her in taunting intervals.
She fluffed the goose down pillow, then lay her head back down, pulling the sheet up to her chin. She lay there for a while, then rolled to her side, sat up, fluffed the pillow again and thumped her head back down with a sigh. She tried not to look but couldn't help it. '5:19am'. It was long past the time she should have been asleep. Her passport to zed-land was normally pretty good, sleep usually came the moment her head hit the pillow. She couldn't understand it. It must be the prospect of seeing Mick again. Only another day or two to go and they'd be together again once more. So why, when she closed her eyes, did she see Josef with nothing but a towel around his waist? It didn't make any sense. She sat up and fluffed the pillow again, ignoring the butterflies in her belly. So she and Josef were friends again, so what?
Just when she was sure she'd never sleep again, she drifted off, entirely unaware of the sound of a car door opening and closing in the driveway, a familiar voice greeting Josef as the front door opened.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*
.
The sensuous sound of expensive liquid lolloping into cut crystal brought a serenity to the silence in the room. Josef handed Mick a tumbler full.
"To prodigal sons," he said.
"To faithful friends," Mick replied with an edge.
The two friends gazed hard at one another, Mick holding his eyes for just a second longer than he should, Josef thought, and then they tossed the whiskey back in unison. Mick sighed and relaxed back into one of the deep leather sofas in Josef's study, his arms along the backrest, a re-filled tumbler of whiskey dangling between his fingers.
"They'd kept her chained, Josef," he said, his voice angrier than Josef had heard in a long while. "She'd been hurting. For months." Mick clenched his fists.
"You're still in love with her, Mick."
"I haven't forgotten that I once was," Mick countered.
The two men let the stalemate fade.
"Are you all right?" Josef asked eventually.
Mick shrugged. "I'm here, aren't I?" Josef waited for him to continue. Mick looked over at him keenly. "You know, we say we're the master race, superior to human beings in all things, but when I saw the things they'd done to her…" He took another sip of whiskey. "I could kill them all."
"Your information might put us in a position to do just that, if we ever needed to, Mick."
Mick nodded. "You're right."
Mick took a breath and spoke for hours about his reconnaissance. He outlined the internal layout of the DuVall chateau, drew sketches of the grounds, marking out the guard posts, both the obvious and the concealed, and estimated the number of their guards and the times they changed their watch and the armaments that they used. He described the passage Coraline had revealed during their daring escape, skating over the worst of the details when they'd been discovered by Lance's hounds, to talk more of it's entrance location, outside the grounds. Under Josef's careful questioning he ran through each of the personnel inside the chateau, gave a thoughtful analysis of their inter-relationships, their wants, their needs, their dealings with other families, their trade routes, their network of spies. Josef paid good money to his own spy network for intelligence on the political machinations of the Europeans. Mick's rescue mission hadn't been funded entirely out of the goodness of his heart. A vampire in his position could never be over-informed about the intent of the most powerful family in the EU. Mick's astute observations were beyond reproach; they were worth their weight in gold.
The sun was high in the sky before Mick at last was through. "… and finally one of Coraline's contacts came through with transport to the States," he said, "and here I am. Thought I'd surprise you."
"Surprise me doing what?" Josef smiled.
Tension simmered through the room once again. Neither of them had forgotten the argument they'd had not so long ago triggered by Josef's presence in Beth's room too late at night for it to be passed off as comfortably platonic.
Finally, Mick's eyebrow rose, "How is she? I assume I don't have to arrange for the Tar Pits to be dragged, do I?"
So they were going to play it that way, were they? That was swell by him. "Not today," Josef sipped his whiskey. "Ask me again tomorrow."
"That bad, huh?"
Josef looked out the window. "I've had better four-and-a-half month Mexican standoffs."
Both men turned toward the door abruptly, a light illuminating Mick from within. The study door swung open, and Beth sauntered in, her blonde head bowed over the morning papers.
"Hey, Josef…. the staff said you were still up so I thought I'd - … Miiiick!" She threw herself into his open arms, her blue eyes wet with tears.
"I wanted to surprise you, honey," Mick said, wrapping his arms about her and kissing her deeply.
"Take it up to your room, kids," Josef said, his hands busying themselves with the files on top of his desk. "I've got work to do."
*.*.*.*.*.*.*
.
Beth broke away, gasping for air and before she'd swallowed a proper lungful Mick had covered her lips with his again. She pulled away and gasped again. "Human," she laughed, "Human. Remember? Need. Air. To breathe."
Mick couldn't speak, his lips too busy covering her eyes, her nose, her throat, her earlobe. "I want to take you home and do very. Bad. Things to you," he growled, and her knees almost buckled. He unzipped his fly and placed her hand inside. "I missed you."
Mick was a totally different man. She'd never seen him so physically… open… with her. It wasn't just their separation. Wherever it was and whatever he'd been doing had been very, very good for him as a vampire and a man. Something had happened over there to change him. She pulled away again, the tears in her eyes for a different reason this time. After all the trouble they'd had in that department, was it possible that…? "Is this... do you mean it?"
His eyes darkened. "Let me take you home, Beth. Let me show you how much."
She looked at him, and started nodding, her head moving faster and faster as the tears welled in her eyes.
He kissed her again, his hand winding into the hair at the back of her neck. "I'll organise for Josef's staff to pack your bags." He was halfway to the door before he turned back, pulling her into his arms again for the deepest kiss of all. "I love you, Beth," he whispered. "I'm ready to give you what you need."
And then he was gone, and all her underlying doubts gone with him.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*
.
They walked down the stairs arm in arm, a bevy of staff carrying her cases behind them. When they reached the lobby, she halted him with a hand on his chest.
"Wait Mick, I want to say goodbye to Josef."
"Okay." He leaned in, smiled, kissed her nose. "I'll organise your things in the car."
She found him in the library, his favourite place amongst all the rooms of his house, looking out onto the wide expanse lawn. For some reason, the atmosphere inside the lovely room had the sombre air of a church nave.
"Josef?"
Although he didn't stir, an intangible shift in the atmosphere told her that he was keenly aware of her presence.
"Mick and I are leaving and I wanted to say goodbye."
He turned and said, "Is this where we do the obligatory human hugging thing? Because if it is, I'm going to need this suit pressed."
"Well, if it's going to put you out that much, I insist." She embraced him lightly, a little confused by the lack of warmth in his response.
"So, I can finally get back to the business of being a vampire and bartering humans instead of baby-sitting them."
"You can't wait? I thought I'd be walled up in this vampire tomb forever."
The corner of his lips quirked in an uneven grin. "You say that now, but what about all the happy memories? Who's going to come to the rescue the next time you black up and go all ninja on some poor tree in the middle of the night?"
"Josef, you left me there hanging by my fingertips!"
He shrugged. "I didn't say it was your happy memory."
She rolled her eyes, smiling. "I did cause a minor disturbance or two, didn't I?"
"If it wasn't for Mick," Josef said, "the first time you started giving me grief I would have snapped you in two and fed both your skinny halves to my employees. Yeah…" his voice trailed off, "if it wasn't for Mick..."
The sound of Mick's footsteps echoed outside the library door.
"Beth, Honey, the bags are in the car. We should probably head out and get out of Josef's hair now."
Beth squeezed Josef's hand and looked from one man to the other. She walked toward Mick and Josef watched as his friend drew a possessive arm around her and stooped to kiss her hair.
"You go ahead, Honey," Mick said, "I'll just be a minute." Mick stepped into the library and closed the door behind him. "Thankyou. You did me a big favour looking after Beth the way you have." He paused. "I hope that's all it was."
Josef walked to his liquor cabinet, took his time pouring a generous measure of scotch. He lifted the cut crystal tumbler to his lips and drank deeply, his eyes never leaving Mick's face. "My people tell me you liberated Coraline three and a half weeks ago."
Mick shrugged. "I couldn't just leave her, Josef. I had to relocate her somewhere safe."
"Coraline must have been very… grateful... after you got her out."
Mick held his gaze without blinking. "Don't go there, Josef."
"She's here in L.A., isn't she?"
Mick's shoulders straightened, his face impassive. He regarded the other man for a long moment before he said, "Goodbye, Josef."
The thud of Mick's retreating footsteps didn't waver when Josef called out, "Even good men make mistakes, Mick."
The front door slammed and Josef knew he was alone. The sound of shattering glass split the silence in the empty mansion.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*
.