Chapter Forty-Seven

Backwards and Forwards and Left and Right

"The door to my past…" Juliet whispered the words, unbelieving. She stuck her dagger back in its sheath, approaching the door with unbidden curiosity. Mr. Tiny simply stood in place, watching her with his beady eyes behind his small-rimmed glasses.

"Juliet-" Mika called, moving after her, she touched the door, feeling warmth and… pulsing energy.

"There's no handle." She said, looking back at Mr. Tiny. "How do I open it?"

He smiled, and again Juliet's stomach roiled. "All you have to do is ask." He motioned to snap his fingers again but Mika called out.

"No, stop. Wait!" he reached for Juliet as Mr. Tiny lowered his hands with a frown. "Juliet, what are you thinking?"

Juliet's eyes were sparkling, as if reacting to the door. "Let me go Mika!" she snapped. "I'm going through that door."

That door was looming tall over them, beckoning Juliet with its warmth and promises. It was whispering to her, the same way she'd heard those whispers beckoning her to find Mika, to go to Vampire Mountain and kill him. 'Hunt them.' It said. 'Find him. Make him pay!'

This door, the dark wood emblazoned with gold filigrees, scalloped like something from gothic design. It whispered to her 'Find him. Question him. Search yourself. Find yourself.'

It was irritating.

Juliet didn't know how to make Mika understand the whispers, the voices, the uncontrollable need to do what they said, but she was fighting it. She looked at him, imploring him to let her go. "I need to do this." She hissed.

Mika was frowning deeper than he'd ever frowned before. "You can't trust this man." He whispered, leaning into her body and tightening his grip on her arm. "He always has a motive."

"Oh, I do have a motive." Mr. Tiny said. Mika snapped his head up, he and Juliet eyed the man, though Juliet's eyes were becoming more and more glazed over.

"What is it?" Juliet asked, reaching her hand out and running it over the wood of the door, feeling the heat radiate through her fingers. Touching it made the whispers stronger.

"If you find out who you are it benefits me. Simple as that." He shrugged and inspected his pocket watch, which, to Juliet's disgust, looked surprisingly like a human heart.

"Does this mean you know who Juliet is?" Mika asked, his tone demanding. "Why don't you just tell us?"

Desmond sighed and rolled his eyes, returning the watch to his pocket. He strode over to where Mika and Juliet stood, the latter beginning to slump into Mika's arms. "I don't know anything." Mr. Tiny said simply. "But I want to find out. Go through that door and sate everybody's curiosity, my dear." He motioned at the door and it swung open from the center, the panels creaking as they separated and opened without hinges.

Juliet stiffened in Mika's arms, staring at the darkness beyond the door. Mika didn't bother moving to look, but he knew that if he moved behind the door he'd see nothing. Magic was real, thought Vampires didn't bother with it, Desmond Tiny was the closes thing they came to experiencing it.

"How do you know this will help her?" Mika asked.

"Call it intuition."

Juliet struggled free from Mika's grasp, though he didn't let her go far. The both stood in front of the opening, staring into it. It could only be described as a swirling void. Mingling dark colored clouds seemed to be swimming through the darkness, and purple mist creeped out of the opening, causing Mika to pull Juliet back a step.

"This seems like a trap." Juliet mumbled.

"Obviously." Mika snapped, pinching his brow. "Where does it lead?"

Mr. Tiny only shrugged. "Only she would know." He gestured to Juliet.

Juliet turned to Mika, eyes pleading. "I have to go." She said.

Mika shook his head vehemently. "No, this is unsafe. You can't be sure what this will do, where it will lead, it could be anything, anywhere…" he was speaking so quickly, Juliet could tell he was scared.

"I will go through with you, if it will make you feel better." Desmond said, patting his large belly. "It's safe. I promise."

Juliet's eyes were fixed on Mika. He could feel her begging him with that gaze, something unreadable in her eyes, glazed and distant even as they were fixed on him. The sight was disturbingly familiar and it took him a moment to realize those were the same eyes she looked at him with in the cave where he first encountered her those years ago. Only instead of 'crazed' and 'furious' you could call them 'haunted' and 'fearful'. All the more reason for Mika to remove Juliet from that damned door.

"I cannot just leave without telling them, Juliet." He sighed. By 'them' he meant his fellow Princes. Juliet wanted to bristle at his insistence but again stopped herself. His people were important to him, she'd come to terms with this.

"Oh, don't worry, Mika ver Leth." Mr. Tiny said. "I will inform them of your absence. I was about to approach the mountain when I found you two." He smiled. "I suppose it can wait until tomorrow night. At any rate, it is not important, since this will take you no time at all!" he laughed heartily and looked at Mika and Juliet with a knowing glint in his eyes.

Juliet and Mika exchanged a glance, even as she looked painfully torn between him and the door. Finally he straightened. "I did make a promise to you. Earlier I said we could leave at any point. Now is one of them… though I wish I had more time to prepare."

Juliet nodded, thinking of her pack with its still uneaten granola bars, extra clothes. Her guns. But none of that was important, she felt drawn to that opening. She needed to move. "We're going?" she said breathily. 'Thank the gods, my head is aching from all these words.'

"Wonderful, wonderful!" Mr. Tiny clapped and approached the opening. "Come, let us be on our way. You've got all you need, I promise you that! Let's not dally." He walked through into the darkness and Mika strained his neck to try and see the man's round shape in the distance.

Juliet gulped and took one wavering step after another into the doorway, Mika never let go of her arm. Their surroundings were mesmerizing, hazy purple mist lolling around them, dark and forbidding and yet never touching their skin. There was no way to tell if they were walking forward or in a circle. Mr. Tiny had begun whistling ahead of them, and though she couldn't see him, Juliet continued following the sound. They had barely walked three feet in when Mika turned and saw the outline of the stream a good distance away.

"Juliet-" he grunted, worried. Juliet didn't stop moving, even as the light began to disappear from around them, the sound of the door creaking closed in the distance.

"Oh dear I do believe I forgot to mention something important!" Mr. Tiny said jovially.

"WHAT?" Mika snapped, in no mood for his cryptic words.

"Now, now, dear boy, let me rectify it." His voice was right next to them, and Mika felt Juliet stiffen and stop moving. The strange man's breath was on her ear, warming and disturbing the side of her face. Her cheeks heated in disgust, but she knew he couldn't tell, or at least she hoped he couldn't. Before she could ask him to move away from her he whispered, "My dear, do you know today's date?"

No sooner had the words left his lips did Juliet and Mika open their eyes to an empty alleyway. The sound of cars on a nearby street caused Mika to stand abruptly. They had been knocked out. He cursed.

"Juliet are you-"

"Fine." She sighed. "Dammit what happened?" she snapped, reaching for him to help her stand.

Mika looked her up and down as she rose, ensuring that she was in one piece. She began patting herself down, a relieved expression crossing her face as she felt her weapons intact. 'Good,' he thought. 'At least one of us is armed.'

Mika was wearing nothing but his black pants, shirt and shoes. His gloves tucked safely in his pocket. "We've been swindled." He hissed. "Desmond Tiny is playing with us."

"Maybe…." She mumbled, unconvinced. "I'm not sure about that." She surveyed her surroundings, eyeing the building's stonework and the sound of modern vehicles on roads around them. "That door-" she began.

"You felt an attraction to it?" Mika supplied. She nodded, surprised at his keen observation. "Your eyes were sparkling like magic." He stated. Juliet didn't bother denying it. She had felt crazy sensations the moment that door appeared, and wouldn't be surprised if her eyes were reacting to it. Growing up her adoptive father had always said she had 'Magic eyes'.

"It was whispering to me." She sighed. "Like what I heard when I was crazy."

Mika stiffened.

"It wasn't telling me to kill you, though." He softened. "But it was saying some weird shit. 'Find him, question him' weird ass stuff like that. It even said 'find yourself'…" she trailed off looking in the distance. Mika followed her gaze and noticed something troubling.

"Sunrise…" he mumbled.

"Well shit, maybe we have been played." Juliet sighed and began rummaging through the dumpsters around them. "I'll find you something to cover yourself, you keep in the shadows."

Mika did as she said, surprised at how she took charge of the situation, and her concern for him. "Are you sure you are alright?" he asked. "The voices-"

"They're gone. Don't worry." She pulled out large black bags of garbage from the biggest dumspter, which she had jumped into without second thought. "I think it was that door. Or that man." She ripped open a bag and scowled, wrinkling her nose at the smell. Mika did the same. "Who the eff was that guy anyhow?"

"Mr. Tiny is an enigma even to Vampires." Mika supplied, watching as Juliet used a discarded hanger to sift through the bags contents. Finding nothing she kicked the bag to the side, tearing open another one, full of paper. She mumbled something about recycling before stiffening.

"Mika, take a look at this." She called. He approached her, wary of the encroaching sunrise. She overturned the bag on the floor, it was full of discarded magazines and newspapers.

"Catching up on current events, Juliet?" he chided jokingly.

"Not so current…" she mumbled, thrusting papers at him. "Look at the date on each of these." Mika complied, sifting through the papers she handed him. At first he was confused at her insistence as she kept thrusting more and more papers into his arms. "This is ridiculous, there must be a doctor's office or something in one of these buildings for all this news…"

"What is wrong Juliet?"

"Mr. Tiny said something to me before he dumped us here." She sighed, investigating more and more papers. "I didn't get it then, but I do now."

"What?" Mika asked sternly.

"What is today's date?" she asked him in return. Mika frowned and told her. "Okay so what is wrong with these newspapers?"

Mika looked at the one on top of his pile, really investigating the date. Then it hit him.

"This is from five years ago." He said. Juliet nodded. He began rustling through the papers with her, investigating dates once more. "Every single one of these is from five years ago."

"The months are all the same, and the paper's not even soggy or faded. These are recent Mika." She looked at him pointedly. "He asked me that for a reason. He fucking knew where that door would take us."

"Back in time." Mika said, sitting back and leaning against the brick wall of the building. He wrung his hands, thankful for the shade of the buildings as the sun inched ever higher in the morning sky. "How could he do that?"

"What was your excuse earlier?" Juliet sighed, sitting next to him, hands thrown between her knees as she shook her head. "He's an enigma."