Chapter Fifty-Eight
Back Where We Started
Though she had been receptive to bathing with him, Juliet was adamant that Mika sleep in the guest room and had dressed quickly after they'd exited the bath in order to ready the room. As she tucked the sheets under the bed and fluffed pillows Mika broached the topic of her 'hunting' room. Leaning against the doorframe clad only in a pair of black sleeping pants, he crossed his arms at the sight of Juliet, frozen mid-action.
"Oh gods…" Juliet sighed, slowly and nervously returning to smoothing the wrinkles out of the duvet. She turned to him, arms crossed over her black tank top, mirroring his pose. "I was hoping you wouldn't snoop until I'd cleaned that place out."
"I would like to look over your findings." Mika said, clearly avoiding her gaze. Juliet's eyes narrowed. "You must understand my duty comes to my people, and I need to know what you- as a hunter- knew."
Juliet seemed to consider what he said and began to walk past him, grabbing his hand as she did. She led him to the next room before releasing him. "Alright let's do it." She sighed.
"It doesn't have to be now-" Mika began.
"Nope, no I want to get this out of the way." She said adamantly. "I don't want… the next few years to be shadowed by this shit. I want it out of my life." Juliet looked around the room, noting the weapons and the maps on the walls. "It's not who I am anymore…" She flipped, almost wistfully, through a stack of papers on the desk. "Maybe it never was."
Mika placed his large hand on Juliet's shoulder and she looked up at him, feeling his warmth surround her. "You can keep those." He said, motioning to the weaponry. Juliet snorted at his words.
"They are state-of-the-art." She laughed, walking over to her laser scoped sniper rifle- perched delicately in the center of the wall. She stroked it affectionately before turning her attention. "But then again, I am a half Vamp, and isn't there some rule about firearms? I will conveniently forget about it if you will 'sire'." She said with a wink. "Here, let's start by going over these maps."
As Juliet talked Mika through her work, the Prince felt overwhelmed by the amount of information she had gathered on Vampires during her time as a hunter. There were blurry pictures scattered amongst the papers on the desk, and any time Mika went to look at one Juliet quickly brushed it away and began talking about a different piece of information. All of her knowledge truly troubled the Vampire Prince, and his brow began furrowing deeper and deeper with each word she spoke, the harsh lines upon his face, recently faded during his time at the Cirque and with Juliet, once again becoming more prominent.
"This is troubling you, isn't it?" Juliet sighed, sitting herself in the large executive chair at the desk. All of the photos she'd been avoiding were in her hand and she fanned them between her fingers in irritation.
Mika nodded. He was leaned over the desk, one hand planted firmly, the other stroking atop the growing stubble on his chin. Concern was all over his features, from the tense arch of his back, to the all-too customary frown on his lips. "It is more than troubling." He said. "It is terrifying." His eyes locked with hers but she avoided his gaze, feeling shame burn deep within her chest and stomach.
Juliet clenched her jaw, "If it makes you feel better, I shared very little of my information with other hunters. I hardly had contact with them."
"You seemed to have had plenty of contact with Steve." Mika grated. Juliet could not contain her groan or the accompanied eye-roll. Their postures changed as Mika's hardened body became less tense and more agitated, and Juliet became visibly annoyed at the name.
"I think there are more important things to discuss when it comes to the Hunters than how many of them I've seen naked, Mika. Can you please focus? I'm trying to help." Juliet spit the words out, wanting to be much harsher, but remembering the promise she'd made to herself to give Mika more chances.
'Six years ago if he'd said that shit-' she began to think. 'No, six years ago he wouldn't have known anything about Steve and me because he would be dead… I would be dead. Gods what am I doing?' her thoughts spilled and tumbled like waves in her mind, swirling into a vortex of confusion and embarrassment.
Suddenly a buzz rang throughout the building. Mika's head snapped up from the papers on the desk. Juliet let out a shaky sigh, standing and cracking her bones. "That should be a grocery delivery." She said. "They're always here within a few hours of request. Large shipments get dropped off at the research facility and one of the personnel will drive some up here about twice a week." She explained. Mika nodded and returned to looking through the papers on the desk, their previous slip into uncharged 'Steve' territory momentarily and blessedly forgotten. "I guess I'll make dinner." Juliet sighed under her breath, going to answer the door.
"Evenin' Miss Gatsby!" a bright young man stood holding boxes on the other side of the cottage's large front door. A small hand-dolly stood next to him, four wooden crates piled on it. "It's good to see you doing well!"
"Hey Jason, come on in, you can pile the boxes in the kitchen." Juliet said, opening the door wider for the man. She offered to take the boxes in his arms so he could focus on the dolly and Jason beamed at her, unaccustomed to Juliet responding to his greetings. She'd always been a solitary person on the compound, only giving general orders about who can stay for research and when to lock down. The man was actually surprised she knew his name. He had always liked the hermit-esque beneficiary of the research compound. She'd hand-picked him to oversee the maintenance of the facility, as well as the upkeep of the surrounding grounds, and paid him handsomely, something that a man with degrees in both botany and electrical engineering was very happy to see. She appreciated his eclectic interests, and compensated him for it.
Plus she was really pretty.
"Is everything up and running?" He asked as he walked past her. "You haven't needed maintenance in a while-"
"I haven't needed maintenance since the house was built." Juliet scoffed, setting her boxes on the island in the center of the wide kitchen. "Don't worry about it. You're not here to do work on my house, just things in the main cottage."
"I just feel like I need to ask, considerin' you're all alone up here." Jason said with a smile as he set the crates on the kitchen counter. As if on cue Mika sauntered into the room, all menace and muscles to anyone who didn't know better. Jason stopped mid-movement, crate in hand as he separated the stacks.
"Good evening." Mika said, nodding at the man.
"That's right," Jason said, nodding back setting the parcel down. "I remember now the doc said you had a guest! I'm sorry I forgot." He smiled and walked towards Mika, hand extended. "I'm Jason Grand, I'm the grounds overseer, I take care of the maintenance on the main compound and make sure all the green things are getting taken care of as well." Mika accepted his hand and shook firmly, causing Jason to wince a little. "I don't do much research, but I'm always at the compound so you holler if you need me. Especially if something gets broken!" He looked at Juliet, she smiled and shook her head slightly, moving into the kitchen to unpack the groceries. Jason pulled Mika closer. "It's nice to know she's not alone up here. Don't let her try and fix anything! She's such a nice gal, with all she does for the scientists, it's the least I can do to make sure her gadgets are working."
Mika nodded and smiled at the young man, it was nice to see that even though she lived a solitary life, Juliet had gained the respect and admiration of people. "Will do." he smacked him on the shoulder in appreciation, knocking the wind out of Jason. "Are you available at all hours? We're-" he searched for the words. "Night owls."
Jason nodded, sucking in air. "Yessir. I'm always on call, though these places pretty much run themselves. Don't hesitate to call me down at the main compound." Mika nodded and the two men stepped away from each other. "Alright, Miss Gatsby, I'll be on my way. You let me know when you want the next grocery delivery!"
Juliet gave a noise of appreciation from the kitchen as she filled the fridge with produce. Mika waved the young man out as he left the room.
"Such nice people you have working here." He commented, walking into the kitchen where Juliet was at work.
"Yeah I hand-picked that guy. It's my land, I wanted someone trustworthy working it, and he really likes to watch the plants. I've found him off in the forest counting petals on a mutated lavender." She shrugged and pulled out Styrofoam cooler from one of the cardboard boxes. "Meats!" she smiled, shaking it at Mika. She opened it and pulled out the coolant packs, as well as two whole salmon, sectioned and vacuum-packed individually.
Mika eyed the fish and Juliet let out an impressed whistle. "Alright, this will be taken care of tomorrow." She set it aside. "Something tells me we'll be eating fish for a while. I knew I should have built a smoker out here! Smoked salmon sounds heavenly right now…"
Mika watched with interest as Juliet continued to unpack food and arrange it into the cabinets. One box was full of alcohol. "Four reds, two whites and assorted liquors. Good haul!" Juliet nodded in appreciation. Mika raised his eyebrows causing Juliet to frown. "Hey I'll have you know this lasts me all month.
"That would last less than a week in the hands of a Vampire." Mika chuckled.
"Well if you can't learn to lessen your intake you'll have to keep your paws off my booze, VAMP." She snapped with a smile.
The light-natured conversation brightened the previously tense mood between the two of them, and Mika awkwardly offered to help Juliet unload and store the groceries. She surprised him by asking him to butcher the large portions of elk and whole chickens that had also been provided. Juliet positioned him at a space of counter that had been built with a special top, much like the blocks used in butcher's shops.
"Do they not butcher meats before shipment these days?" Mika asked, clearly afraid his knowledge of the 'human world' was incorrect.
"Oh, of course they do," Juliet replied. "But it's better for us up here to order these large sections, it affords us the better quality meat." She had finished packing away flour and assorted kitchen staples and watched as Mika expertly sheared the excess skin from the game. "I have a deep freezer in the basement here," she walked towards the pantry and flicked the light switch on, then stepped on a single tile. A small plume of air shot up from the ground as the tile and two more behind it slid backwards into some unknown place, revealing a small set of stairs.
"We have to be self-sufficient out here." Juliet stated.
Mika had watched with rapt attention, but hadn't neglected his duties. The elk now sat, separated and perfectly cut for a variety of dishes. Juliet walked back towards him and nodded her approval. "I take it you want to keep the chickens whole?" She asked, pointing to the fowl, still in their vacuum packing.
"How do you normally cook them?" Mika asked in earnest.
Juliet shook her head. "Just separate one, and I'll roast the other whole. Something tells me you could eat two chickens by yourself…" she had begun packing the separated elk into clear plastic bags and set them aside. Before Mika could begin to break into the chicken, Juliet had wiped clean his entire work station, including the two knives he had used on the elk, and grabbed the other chicken, setting it with the newly-packaged elk.
She watched as Mika neglected the butcher's knives in favor of his bare hands, and wrenched the legs and wings from the small fowl. For the breasts, the Vampire Prince positioned his thumbs along each side of the sternum, and ripped the flesh and muscle away from the back, ribs and all. With two quick snaps he had separated the thighs as well. Before he could get to work on the back meat, Juliet stopped him.
"Package those up." She said, and he knew she meant the separated chicken pieces. Mika looked in vain for the clear plastic bags, and once found, struggled to open them, having never interacted with one before. Juliet was content to laugh internally at his faux-struggle as she filled a large pot halfway with water, set it on the large gas stove and dropped the semi-savaged chicken inside to make stock.
"Need help?" Juliet asked in a saccharine voice. Mika was holding the plastic bag upside down and still hadn't figured out how to open it.
"These modern contraptions make me feel like an imbecile." He muttered, handing the bag to Juliet. She snorted and moved the small top slider to the opposite end of the bag, opening it and inserting the chicken leg and wing pieces. The breasts and thighs went in a separate bag.
"You'll be domesticated by the end of your stay here." Juliet said, a small smile dancing over her features. She hefted the other bags of butchered meat and headed towards the opening to the basement. Mika began to follow, but stopped himself. The opening in the floor was narrow, and his broad body would not be comfortable following Juliet down.
"This house must have been designed for your petit frame," he remarked. He heard Juliet chuckle from the basement.
"That's right. But I was a bit more petite when it was first built." She was coming back up the stairs and had to duck her head at the top to keep from hitting the floor/ceiling. "I didn't expect a growth spurt at the age of 75." She motioned to the sink and Mika realized she wanted him to wash his hands.
They stood side-by-side at the large country sink, and as the water ran and they scrubbed at their hands, the water began boiling for on the stove. Quick as a flash, Juliet had grabbed a dish-towel from a nearby drawer, semi-dried her hands on it, and tucked it into the waist-band of her soft black pants. She reached for some spray and used it and a wet rag to clean the area where the meats had been butchered. She then reached into a cabinet beneath the butchers block and pulled out a wooden board. On to the refrigerator she went, pulling out onions, carrots and celery, then to the knife block where she removed a large blade, before moving back to the wooden board.
Mika watched all of this, slowly turning of the water the way he had seen Juliet turn it on. She moved in a well maneuvered fashion, comfortable and at one with her surroundings. It hit Mika then that this space was where Juliet had lived her long and solitary life, and he felt all at once like a stranger around this woman, of which who's eyes had glazed over in the way a person's do when their body had performed a task hundreds of times. Juliet had become so ingrained in her task, that as she moved with carrots in one hand and knife in the other towards the sink, she did not see Mika, leaning against the counter, eyes locked onto her face until she collided with him.
The Vampire's solid body knocked Juliet onto the ground, and though the carrots fell here and there, it was the clang of the knife onto the cold floor, trailing blood, that actually snapped Juliet out of auto-pilot.
"Oh shit!" She hissed, and Mika was on the floor with her, looking her over for any abrasions or injuries. As he was fretting over Juliet, she was looking for the knife to keep it from miraculously hurting anyone again, and then she noticed and she sighed. "Goddammit Mika, I stabbed you."
Indeed, when Mika finally stopped turning over Juliet's hands and arms and holding her face in his hands to make sure not a single spot of skin was disrupted, he felt the sting in his abdomen and the slow trickling of blood down his torso. He moved to stand and investigate his wound when Juliet stopped him. Hurriedly, she rose to the sink and, whipping it from her side, wet the towel at she'd had at her torso with hot water before sinking back down.
"I'm so sorry, so-so-so sorry." She whispered, leaning over Mika, who sat on his elbows. The wound was shallow and artificial, located inches away from his navel, but still she doted on him, wiping up the blood that trickled down his abdomen and applying pressure to it. "What is wrong with me?" She hissed. "I didn't… I didn't even see you I just walked straight into you. I'm so sorry." Her face angled to the floor, Mika could feel the shame and fear pouring out of her body.
The way her hair had fallen around her distraught face, how her hands trembled against his stomach, suddenly Mika knew again who's presence he inhabited, and he was taken back to that mansion fifty years ago to the young woman who could scarcely conceive of hurting another person, who had lived a sadly similar, lonely life. Mika placed one of his hands over Juliet's, and with the other pulled her against his body. A small pain throbbed in his abdomen, but he ignored it and straightened himself to wrap both of his arms around Juliet's small frame.
"Mika…" she whispered, apprehensive, her body tense against his.
"You didn't harm me, Juliet." He said, plain and simple, his deep voice warm rain, pouring over her shivering form. "Not now, and not then."
If her body had begun to relax even a fraction, his words made her tense again. His knowing words, that forced her to acknowledge the reason she was so apprehensive. "No…" she agreed. "But I could have. I wanted to."
Mika's grip around her only intensified, and Juliet found herself awash with his scent and his strength. "You have changed in so many ways," he responded, almost agreeing and she felt that shame bubbling within her again. Shame at the woman she had been, had become, could be again. The cold of the tile beneath her legs began creeping upwards and Mika's warmth began to disappear. "But in other ways, you haven't." He said, and Juliet found herself frowning and freezing in his apparent displeasure with her. "You are so lonely, Juliet."
His words, the words of a man who had known her more than any other person ever had, made her stop. The entire world stopped, the cold stopped around her and suddenly she found herself outside of that space. And she saw herself, in Mika's embrace on the floor of her kitchen, and then that too was gone, and all sensation was replaced with something else. Something foreign, but familiar. Something that felt like home to Juliet.
Nothing.
Nothing was Juliet with no memories, growing up in the empty house waiting for someone who she believed she could not live without to return. Nothing is how she felt that night, receiving the call that her father and benefactor had died oversees and left her his estate. Nothing. The morning after her only home had burned to ashes leaving her in scorching pain among its rubble, and though her flesh burned and peeled, black as night her heart felt nothing and the pain was just motivation to move and live and continue, continue on to nothing. Nothing is what she had been thinking and feeling when she collided with Mika on the floor, so used to being in her nothing that she had completely forgotten his existence in her emptiness.
'You are so lonely, Juliet.'
Lonely, empty, nothing. Were they all the same? Had she spent so much time feeling nothing that she had jumped at the first chance to feel 'something'?
Excitement was what she felt when Mika entered her life, bringing adventure and intimacy she had never experienced before. Love blossomed from her first experience with 'something'.
And so did hate. For all his love and companionship, he had left her alone and empty.
When she learned of hunters, she felt excitement again. And that time excitement gave way into hatred and rage, which fueled her to find the source. Mika again.
How can the same man break up her loneliness, her nothingness in two completely different ways?
'What am I doing?' Juliet's voice swirled around her in the nothingness. 'Love or hate. Something or nothing. What am I doing?'
Had all her emotions, all her feelings been brought about solely by this man? That sounded impossible, but Juliet found herself more and more confronted with the emptiness of her life and the way Mika ver Leth filled it. Contact with Mika ver Leth bred love or hate, isn't that what experience had taught her?
Something or nothing
"You're so lonely, Juliet. Why won't you let me love you?"
Juliet blinked, and was back in her place, in herself, in his arms. Mika's question hung in the air around them, heavy with possibilities. He looked directly into her face, his onyx eyes expecting an answer.
This time Juliet had one.
"Because for me, it might not be love." She whispered, barely able to comprehend what her own words might mean.
Mika's face mirrored her own, confused, unsure, pained. "Juliet-" he began.
"All I've ever had is nothing, Mika." She interrupted, stiff in his arms, even as his grip loosened. "Nothing, and you." Her eyes shined in that magical way Mika had witnessed so many times before. But this time it wasn't magic, it was unshed tears that Juliet refused to let fall. "When I have had you it has been either in love or in hate." She continued. "And then without you, again I have nothing."
Juliet pushed against his body, and Mika's arms fell away easily. She stood dusting herself off. "You understand, right?" she said staring down at him, eyes devoid of any singular emotion he could comprehend. "What a risk it could be for me to have you again? What I could gain- what I could lose?"
She bent down, collecting the carrots on the floor, and the knife was quickly deposited into the sink. "You understand why I would rather continue on in nothing, than subject myself to you again?" she whispered. "This is torture for me, Mika."
She avoided his eyes and went back to her original task, peeling carrots at the sink with a new knife. Mika stayed on the floor dumbstruck, this encounter with Juliet even more confusing than the last. One minute she's pliant with her acceptance of his feelings, the next she's distant. This time, he felt an iron gate had been pulled down between them.
As Juliet finished with the carrots and dropped them into the boiling water with the chicken, Mika attended to his still slowly bleeding wound. A little Vampire saliva saw the superficial wound closed and healed. He then stood and with a single glance at Juliet, who had her back to him chopping onions and the remaining vegetables, he adjourned to the study to continue going over her papers. Perhaps it was a handful of hours later that he heard a knock at the study door and a bowl of hot soup waiting for him on a tray when he answered. Juliet, however was nowhere to be seen, the lights in the entire home had been turned off.
Mika sat at the large chair in front of the, now organized, desk with his soup. Though it smelled inviting, a scent that had been wafting about the building for a while now, it's taste was nowhere near as inspiring as the food he had eaten in Vampire mountain, cooked by a different Juliet with not so heavy a heart and mind.