The rattling of the silver chains scrapped against her ears as it was pulled tighter against the twin posts, she was now shackled between like a scene right out of King Kong or something. The itching burn of the silver cutting even deeper into her skin with the motion yet if they were looking for some complaint from her, they would need to try a lot harder. If anything, Juliette was considering giving an Elinor-worthy "Is this the best you've got?" remark just to see what they would do.
Once the two silent hunters had finished with the task, they leave her to her own private thoughts and just for something to do Juliette shifts in a way that deliberately pulls at her bonds, so they dug even more along their coiled wrapping around her arms. Her fanged teeth gritted even harder against the fresh scolds of pain when the slivery links press tighter against the fresh marks of Theo's fangs against her forearm.
You made him the thing he was raised to hate and trained to kill.
And you knew that's not what he was asking you to do.
Fresh tears that have nothing to do with the burn of the silver well in the legacies eyes as she drops her chin against her chest as the angry words replay in her mind. The look of pleading pain in Theo's eyes during his final human moments filled her head.
She was only trying to help. To right one of the many wrongs, her sister had done. To spare Cal the pain of losing her big brother when she'd sunk her fangs into the offered wrist of the fading hunter.
I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to kill you, and every Legacy like you.
"God, it reeks in here." A sickening voice gagged over the sounds of the heavy door opening once more.
"You'll get used to it after a while." The legacy shrugged when her head had been yanked up by her hair whilst the hunter's other hand attempted to cover his nose and mouth against the smoking stink of Juliette's silver-exposed skin. The hard slam of the butt of a gun sends the teenager's head rocking backward with a warning "Don't try to be snarky monster."
"I wasn't." Juliette answers around the newer sting of the split in her lip. "You could try…" she tries again to suggest only for a long strip of black cloth to be tied around her mouth muffling her words as the hunter gives a scoffed "Shut up." As he ties the thing tightly around the legacy's mouth his face twisting in disgust the whole time before he steps back with a pleased "That should keep you quiet." As he admires his handy work.
Juliette rolls her eyes at the comment dropping her chin back to her chest and resuming her quiet memorizing of the cracked ground under her bare feet. Her shoes and socks having been stripped off before she'd been allowed out of the van that had driven her wherever 'here' was.
Then she feels it.
The small tugging somewhere in the back of her mind. Like a tossed lifeline in the drowning burn of heartache and silver-induced pain. Like her connection to Cal had been before her hunter had made it so painfully clear she wanted nothing to do with her.
Jules?
the sound of her name has her glancing upwards as if the voice had actually been spoken aloud rather than in her own mind.
I'm sorry Theo. The strung-up legacy answers back now more than a little grateful for the unintentional covering of the gag muffling her words should she say any of them aloud in her dazed state as she allows more of her sire bond to block out the stinging burn of her upcoming torment.
You saved my life. Theo argues back Now help me save yours. He pleads before a new sound draws Juliette's attention.
Not as complex as her hunter's true but one she found she recognized all the same as the thudding sounds of boots drew closer.
"And here I thought nothing spooked your kind." One of her captors laughed seeing the recognition and fear in the teen's blue eyes as her glazed eyes look unseeing at some point besides the opening door. "This is her right?" he asked over the sounds of the vampire's more muffled attempts to talk around the gag tied around her mouth.
Jack Burns didn't respond to the asking only nodded pointedly over his shoulder with an attritive "leave." As his eyes remind trained on the trust-up monster who'd destroyed his family.
"We can't do…."
"Leave." Jack growled once more
"The Guild…."
"Knows as well as we all do monsters like this one isn't easy to put down so there is no reason to think I'll actually kill her before they have their chance to interrogate her." Jack reminds in a broad kind of tone "but until then I'd like to ask her a few questions of my own." He instructed again his hardened eyes never breaking from Juliette's bowed head.
Cal's fingers tighten around the jacket Margot had thought to drape around the nervous teen's shoulders at some point since Cal and the others had connived at the Fairmont house. Juliette's school jacket Cal recognized at once as she pressed her nose against the collar remembering with a more soured feeling one of the last times, she'd seen her legacy wrapped inside it.
She closes her eyes she can even picture it all over again. The elegant dress Juliette had been wearing that night as Elinor had gouged her into taking Cal's blood. Into making Cal her first-ever kill. Only it hadn't been Cal that had ended up on Juliette's menu that night.
Well not in that way anyways.
Even Theo looks around at the breath of a giggled laugh Cal gives as the memory of Juliette's blood-smeared face when she'd lifted her head from Clayton Cook's neck paints itself behind the hunter's closed eyes the same moment Cal swears, she can still catch the fresh traces of peaches and the earthy scents of the more memorialsesk bonfire they'd held that night woven deeply into the heavy jacket tucked around her shoulders.
"What?" Cal asked her voice cracking a little as she looked at every pair of curiously puzzled eyes looking at her now. "She looked like she'd just devoured a cherry pie not completely drained a full-grown man." The hunter says as if that would clarify things for them as she tugged the offered jacket closer around her.
Ben the only one who seemed to understand her meaning as he comes to sit beside her on the lower levels of the long staircase leading to the upper floors of the Fairmont's house. The farthest Cal could bring herself to go before her legs had given out after the strained workout, she'd given them in her hard-pushed sprint away from the trainwreck that was her life.
If only she'd been fast enough to catch up with the van.
But would that have made a difference? The more hunter-driven part of her mind questioned once more making Cal doubt her once more spiraling feelings. Just because her heart still longed for the monster that had turned her brother didn't mean she should be so quick to forgive and move on after what had happened.
"I know right, such a messy eater that girl is." Ben agrees but Cal can see the hidden pain in the boy's eyes before she ducked her head to lean against his shoulder.
"Clayton Cook, he….he would have…." Cal remembered pulling Juliette's jacket that much tighter around herself.
"Letty wouldn't have let that happen." Ben denies tears of his own sliding down his cheeks as he meets her eyes. "She loves you." The sheer strength behind his words cuts far worse than he could ever know thankfully for Cal that is the sounds of breaking glass has the both of them hurrying towards the Fairmont kitchens.
"It hurts. It hurts." Theo whimpers over and over as Talia's strong arms wrapped even tighter around the boy now sitting huddled in the corner holding his right arm as if it were on fire.
"Cal his…his mouth." Ben notices as he like Cal catches sight of Theo's bared fangs glinting in the kitchen's low lighting gritted tightly against the phantom pain in his arm as Talia did her best to try and calm him.
"What do we do?" Cal demands her tearful gaze landing on the closest legacy available for her to interrogate as her brother gives another pained whimper from his huddled corner.
"This isn't his own pain he's feeling so for the moment we can't do anything," Margot answers regretfully despite the fact she was currently running a folded-over washcloth under a cool tap.
"What do you mean?" Talia questioned as Theo tucked his head against her shoulder with another sound of pain.
"It's Juliette." Cal says before Margot could find her voice enough to say the words herself. "this….this is because she turned him right?" the hunter goes
"T-t—turn-turned him? What are you talking about?" Ben stumbles to ask from behind her
"She's trying to block me out." Theo says through gritted teeth as Cal slowly lowers herself into a crouch in front of him. "Doesn't want me to feel…." He explains in another grunted hiss of pain as his hand crawls once again over that single spot against his arm. "H—hurts." He groaned as whatever pain he was feeling intensified.
"Jules." Cal whispers
Theo's eyes immediately lift to her own at the name, but they were still glazed unseeing even as they stair with focused intensity into Cal's.
Cal's hands slowly reach for Theo's clenched ones sliding her fingers between them just as she had that time she and Juliette broke into the school after hours what felt like a lifetime ago now.
"I'm on the hunt Jules. I'm hunting for you." Cal promised "I'm going to find Juliette. I promise. No matter where they take you. I'll hunt you down." She vows before that glazed look vanishes from her brother's eyes.
Theo's head dips nuzzling lightly against Cal's own at the promise. "She knows, Callie." He promises now visibly shuddering from the pain. "She knows."