Time became less important after that last whispered sound her progeny relayed to her before Juliette deliberately blocks out Theseus's voice inside her head. How long she's been the Hunter's captive Juliette could care less. An hour, a day, a month, a week. She honestly doesn't care as long as she can give what small kindness, she can in shielding her progeny from her torment.
Only the lessening of the pain marked anything meaningful anymore as Juliette mulled over what Theo had supposedly heard to block out what little of the seemingly never-ending rounds of suffering, she could. What was one more pain against the scaring marks now littering her paling, sickly-colored skin?
No matter where they take you. I'll hunt you down
Would it be a mercy or just another twist in torment?
Enough with always playing the innocent. The "I don't know what I am, I don't know how this works" bullshit.
Seeing Cal just one more time would surely be a mercy. But seeing her hunter once more just so Cal could personally end her life?
Let me make this as plain to you as I can. Stay the hell away from me.
Juliette felt her body jolt in response to the spear her captor was jabbing hard into her stomach but not even the explosion of pain the thing cause tore at her more than the remembered final words from the girl she loved filling her head the same as they always did whenever Juliette's pain hazed mind tried to cling to any scrap of hope she could.
I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to kill you and every Legacy like you.
Cal's last true promise cuts into her with fresh rips of heartbreak at the same time Jack Burn's spear is pulled free of her limp body. Fresh tracks of what little blood supply she had left in her slowly stained the floor as the vampire sags limply against her restraints with only a small whimper of pain.
The door rebounds off its hinges as Juliette's head lulls along with her tired body, her chin once more resting against her blood-splashed chest.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" A voice Juliette's clouding mind can't place yet she was sure she knew despite the stuffed cotton feeling in her ears pulls the almost passed-out vampire's attention.
"The guild wanted ways of dealing with them, and I'm providing that information." Her captor growls back a reply
"By starvation? Silver? Staking her over and over?" the newcomer lists almost horrified in sympathy as more of Juliette's blood leaks onto the already red-smeared floor.
"Among other means." Jack reminds with a shrug. "Why is the Guild so interested now?" he wonders curiously. "They seemed all for this line of interrogation so long as it gave them results, which it has. so why change their tune now when it was them that let me use this place?"
The legacy tunes them out focusing more on her struggling attempt to lift her bowed head before the muffled tone Juliette can't name starts again moving closer to her as it spoke. '-ight days so whatever vendetta you have with this one is over."
Juliette can't catch what Cal's father says in answer considering the thumbing beat of something warm and alive that comes so close to her more personal space without the added feel of silver or wood ripping into her worn-out body.
And for one flash of an instant, Juliette could have been back in that pantry given the tempting flavor beating a surprisingly steady rhythm against her ear as the fingers twisted in her hair seems to be appraising her wide collection of injuries that turned far softer than she'd anticipated as it seemed to be guiding the vampire's dry lips towards the offered blood supply their throat housed.
"Hi."
The soft breath of a word when hazed blue eyes find the hunter's dark ones in the room's glaring lighting. the sound so like the first time she'd heard her hunter utter the more parroted greeting only adds to her hunger-charged delirium as Juliette's head dips more towards the offered beat of a pulse.
"I wouldn't," Jack warned before Juliette had regained enough of her senses to actually bite down on the offered throat even with the hindrance of the gag still tied around her mouth before the hunter offering it rocked back on her heels to meet her captor's unfeeling eyes.
"Started getting snappy around the fourth day." Jack tells them more focused on cleaning his newest chosen weapon from the literal table full he'd yet to use of blood than the annoyance of the Guild's chosen 'lessons' come to tell him off. "but that could have been sped up cause of the heavy bloodletting needed to update the Guild test samples on her kind."
"Don't think you can use the Guild's less than ample knowledge of how to handle legacies to cover your own personal drives," The agent closest to Cal's father scoffed. "As we've said your 'play time' or whatever you wish to call whatever this is, is over."
Only Juliette notices it. It's a breath of a sound really. A soft clicking anyone else could mistake for the shifting of one of Jack Burns's many weapons, but it was far too close for that.
It was a signal. A beacon.
And as if in answer less than a beat later the very building around them shook as if caught in the eye of a violent windstorm letting all manner of hell loose.
Including an incredibly hungry Juliette Fairmont.