"Come on Cal."
"You have to sit back alright? Let us help your friend."
Ashley's voice had taken on one of Juliette's angrier growls at the instruction then as she snapped back with a tearful "She has to know I'm here for her. She has to know that I…." As Cal had swung like a pendulum between being awake and letting the darkness of unconsciousness take her away.
At least then she'd be in a little less pain.
"Cal, please….please don't leave me."
She'd tried so hard to hold onto that warm touch of fingers held so fragile in her chilling ones under the jostling rumble of the ambulance. She'd tried to force her cloudy eyes to focus on the saddened, heartbroken face swimming blurrily next to her.
"I love you… and I know you love me." Her girlfriend's broken voice reminds. The words echo so softly inside her fogging mind.
And she does love her.
The Guild and her own family shun her for it how truly, deeply, madly does she loves her stubborn, blood-loving cinnamon roll of a bee-saving, window glass-breaking, brother-saving disaster of a legacy.
She tries to tell her so. Or at least she tries to tell Ashley so. Not that it would change anything for it, but she wanted some part of Juliette to know that she longed to take it all back if she could even if doing so cost her, her last breath on this earth.
Juliette had to know that Cal still loved her.
But then she was no longer struggling for consciousness in the back of a rushing ambulance struggling to gain a tearful Ashley's attention before the flash of gritted fanged teeth loomed over her blocking the crying girl from Cal's view as her attempted saviors pushing an oddly glowing looking syringe of blood into her arm.
No, this time instead of swaying with another fast-taken turn Cal was jostled by an unseen someone shoulder checking her on their way inside the already raging party she' come to attend and instead of the blinding glare of the overhead lights of the ambulance Cal was greeted by the fading twilight of a fast-approaching night as she turns more of her attention towards the house.
The party at Noah's house. The place that had started it all for her and her legacy.
And maybe. Just maybe Cal had a chance to rewrite her history as she squares her shoulders and heads inside.
Immediately her eyes begin searching for that splash of denim jacket and flower-printed underdress her soon-to-be-returned girlfriend had chosen for the evening.
The fact that instead of her own picked-out long-sleeved baby blue shorts and cut-off jean shorts Cal was wearing the mismatched printing shirt and high-waisted pants she had been in when she'd last truly seen Juliette was a minor inconvenience as Cal once again began her hunt.
The blue liquid cups she remembers being passed around were now filled with sticky red as they went from partying hand to partying hand as she roamed from room to room in her agonized wait.
Nearly every grinning face she passed as she searched had lips stained with that familiar red coloring of freshly drawn blood all seen and just as quickly dismissed in Cal's mind as she waited with growing impatience for the one, she wanted.
Where in the name of Lilith are you, Jules? Cal wanted to scream as she stalked between the blurring faces and bodies swarming around her.
But then she catches sight of the one holding her answer, having somehow slipped right past her on the way in with a laughing Ben right by her side.
A much smaller-sized but equally deadly silver-tipped spear spun expertly between Cal's fingertips as the rest of the partygoers parted giving her a clear pathway to her found target.
Her back was to her at the moment too busy laughing along with the others already playing spin the bottle with their fellow partiers just as Cal remembers them from the first time, she'd come to this life-changing party.
"Where is she?" Cal demanded savoring the happy giggle that escaped those lips as the blonde-haired one she was talking to turned to face her. The shot glass in her hand sloshed a little as she moved before she knocked it back and met Cal's glaring eyes with a nervous expectancy in her own.
Ashley's eyes, so like Juliette's it hurt, widen in shocked surprise as Cal spins the silver-tipped spear up into place against the shorter girl's chest. Just a warning. Cal wasn't truly going to use it this time around as she backed her prey up against the edge of the kitchen island.
"Where is she?" the heartbroken hunter asks again over the thumping bass line of that life-changing song playing around them.
(Ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh) slumber party
"Cal what? Who else would you looking for?" Ashley says with more of a laugh in her voice than should be needed in a time like this. "You've already found me."
Cal sucks in a breath at the soft laughter of the question.
"I'm right here, Cal. This is me. Right in front of you." Ashley says with that heart melting little smile that never fails to make Cal's heart summersault in her chest. "I'm right here, Cal." Ashley grins "See?" she pushes as she wraps a none silver burned hand around the spear tip to shift it away from its resting place against her chest at Cal's buckling resistance the longer the two stair the other down. "just as flash and blood human as you" she reminds in reassurance
Again, Cal finds herself wavering under the sheer weight of that heart stopping smile. Lilith help her how she loved whenever her girlfriend smiled at her. Or looked at her. Or held her hand. But that was nothing compared to the times the shorter girl would kiss her.
She can't help herself thinking back to that stolen moment she'd been given of Ashley's lips on hers.
How soft. How human they'd been moving against her own before grazing that teasing path of ticking kisses down her throat.
Cal sparing only a moment's regret the action didn't end with the tempting brush of fangs sinking into her skin as they had that very first time.
Before her more Guild-trained mind had driven her to attack that night at Noah's she'd felt so proud Jules had picked her. When she'd finally allowed herself to feel something other than the Guild-mandated chilly distance from anyone and everything.
To just be Cal during that building trade of kisses with a girl that aside from being a vampire she was already starting to fall for.
"We can be together now," Ashley pounces with another proud smile. "Just think about it." She pushes as Cal's hands tremble around the hilt of her chosen weapon. "We can just be us. Just you and me. Just like we wanted" Ashley says shifting the spear away completely now as Cal's hands fall limply back at her sides allowing the shorter girl a few steps closer.
"Just think about it, Cal." She reminds reaching out to twist a stray strand of the hunter's long black hair back out of her glazed eyes. "No family drama. No forbidden love because of what we are." Ashley lists off feeling the hunter girl leaning her cheek into her cupping hand against the side of the taller girl's face.
"Just you and me," Cal repeats as the constricting band around her heart twists yet again. How the thing was still beating Cal doesn't know given how much pain she feels as her world crashes even more around her.
"Yeah, that's right, just you and me." Ashley smiles as her searching hands lift another shot glass towards the weaponless hunter. "Now come on. Drink up then follow me, okay? We only have seven minutes left in this heaven, remember?" she laughs again, holding out the offered shot glass.
The flavors of peaches and cherries tickled Cal's nose. An offered relief compared to the iron-tented assault of the blood-filled glasses the others were drinking from.
The hunter shakes her head as Ahsley so smoothly takes a drink of her own. "No." Cal decides letting the glass in her hand smash to the ground. "This isn't what I wanted at all."
"Cal, please." Ashley breathes the pain in her eyes breaking Cal's heart all over again "You know this was the only way."
Again, the hunter shakes her head in denial "I didn't want her to change. I love her just as she was." Cal says through her teeth. "Fangs and blood lust and all of it. I love her." Cal growls proud now that she didn't need to force herself to meet those same watery-filled eyes. "I love Juliette Fairmont so much it hurts." And she was hurting. Her heart works double inside her chest on every hard breath she takes. "Now where the hell is she?"
"You love me too Cal." Ashley fires back with a truly Elinor-worthy smile on her lips. "You can't deny that. You love me."
"I love Juliette more." Cal argues "She's my first love. My insanity." Saying the words aloud feels so powerful that Cal can't help but smile in pride even when Ashley's face twists with renewed pain. "I love her, and I know. I know she loves me."
"No, you don't, Cal." Her father's voice this time as the man himself melts out of the sea of teenage partiers crowded around them. "You said it yourself she is a monster. She killed your brother."
"Elinor killed Theo" Cal defends "Juliette saved my brother."
"But she didn't save him, did she?" Her father says with a bitterness in his voice now that nearly stops Cal's heart when she recognizes it as the same tone, she'd last used with Juliette that night as she'd said so many things she longed so badly to take back. "She turned him into the same monster that killed his mother."
"She was only trying to help." Cal argues
"She ripped this family apart, Cal." Jack Burns roars over the still pounding undertone of the music playing so faintly in the background now. "She's still ripping this family apart."
"I don't care." Cal shouts back "I don't care." She repeats with a little less volume now as she glares with tear-filled eyes at the blurring outline of her father. "I love her, Dad."
"Baby girl you can't." her father tries to say but Cal is done listening to him and his Guild-trained nonsense.
With practiced aim, the hunter girl hurls the silver pointed spear in her hands directly towards her father's heart in her blinding rage at the denial of her feelings.
He would never understand.
Never see Juliette as anything other than just another vampire needing to be taken care of. Never seeing the kinder side that Cal first fell in love with that half second, she felt more than saw the vampire girl scop up that small little bee from Cal's shoulder before inviting her shyly to Noah's party.
Why couldn't he just accept that Juliette was different than the other monsters they'd been conditioned to hate? Why couldn't he just be happy for his only daughter that she'd finally found someone to love just as deeply as he loved Taila?
Yet instead of soft flesh, the spearhead sank deep into the thick side of a swaying tree trunk. A few bruised and slightly rotten peaches dropped pathetically to the ground at her feet at the action.
Breathing hard Cal backs up a few stumbling steps as more falling fruit thumps pitifully to the dying patches of what had once been lush grass under her bare feet.
"Juliette?" she calls in more of a whispered sob of breath than she'd have liked. "J—Jules?" she tries again turning her back on the embedded weapon she'd unintentionally brought to this ragged but still calming Eden once she'd quieted the nervous nausea settling in her stomach at the sudden change in her surroundings.
"How are you here?"
Cal was more than a little surprised her ankles didn't snap with how quickly she twisted around at the equally softly asked question. "Juliette." The hunter half sobbed not wasting any more time in dragging the shorted girl into a tight hug.
"You shouldn't be here," Juliette says against her ear as Cal clings to her.
"Well, I am here. And like hell am I leaving you again." Cal argues not dropping her arms even when it seems Juliette was attempting to lean away from her.
"But you can't be," Juliette repeats in a broken sob.
"Wanna bet?" Cal asks teasing now with one hand keeping a tight hold on the vampire girl's waste letting her other reach for Juliette's chin.
"Don't."
Cal stops at once at the crushing rejection of the attempted kiss she was trying to give.
"You're not her." Juliette reasons untangling herself from Cal's pleading grip as she spoke.
"Jules." Cal pleads.
"No." Juliette snaps her fanged teeth snapping audibly between them in her anger. "This may be my hell but don't think for a second I'll let you- whoever or whatever you are use her against me like this." the vampire girl hisses backing away. "It's bad enough knowing the real Cal wants nothing to do with a monster like me without this to make it all worse."
At this Cal feels an answering growl building fast deep in her chest as she shoves roughly at the smaller girl's shoulders backing Juliette hard against the non-spear embedded tree trunk before melding her mouth to her legacies in a hard, demanding kiss swallowing the gasped hiss of surprise and annoyance at the move.
Not that it lasted long as after rebranding Juliette's mouth Cal quickly moved down Julitte's throat nuzzling lightly at the dip of the shorter girl's shoulder before moving back to mark every inch of the vampire's neck with her lips.
A known weakness Cal had found during their short couplings that she fully intended to use to her advantage in what little time they had left.
"Cal."
The mewed breath of her name and the way Juliette's hands are clawing with kitten-like strength against the back of her shirt as the vampire presses closer against her has tears welling behind the hunter's closed eyes as Juliette tilts her head in offering to the hunter's seeking lips.
Her gums aching with a pain Cal had never noticed or felt before until this very moment.
"Drink, Cal," Juliette whispers her hands still tangled in the hunter's hair now holding Cal's bowed head in place more than guiding her along. "It's alright." She promises "you need to drink."
Cal obediently bites down with a muffled moan as her fangs puncture Juliette's soft skin.