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If you asked Juliette about her relationship with blood, she’d say “it’s complicated”.
Her parents didn’t feed in front of her. She never asked about it. If she really thought hard, it was quite possible she’d never seen her mother’s fangs.
Her parents sent Oliver away to Europe. Elinor’s explanation was something about incurable insanity and double murder.
Whatever happened with Oliver, it was obvious when Elinor got her first kill. She seemed fuller for it, her already sky-high confidence rocketing even more. None of it was Elinor's fault, but it was difficult growing up in the shadow of a shining example of who she was supposed to be one day. There was a brief reprieve when Elinor went to Emory, but once she moved back in she was out most nights, scarce until morning when she'd return with high, flushed cheeks. Elinor constantly basked in the glow of being exactly who she was supposed to be, the exact opposite of Juliette.
As she got closer to vampire puberty (ugh), aka her 16th birthday, it grew harder to ignore reality when she kept upping her pill count. She never asked where the pills came from, just assumed there was some underground supply chain or centuries-old Legacy connection she wasn't privy to.
Those were simpler days, when Juliette lived inside her own head, pining and crushing from a distance. Just a normal, teenage girl who wasn’t entirely comfortable in her own skin.
(The only time she felt wholly right in her own skin was when she’d drained that grown man dry. She felt a flare of her protective streak and she was thirsty. She used to try to forget the looks on her friends’ faces in the aftermath.)
The dreams and daytime fantasies escalated– they were no longer of innocent kisses and touches. She was in a constant sweat, head pounding, images of violence flickering behind her eyelids. But she kept a tight hold of herself and what her dad saw as her compassion. It was easier back then, before she’d fed for the first time. Her mind couldn’t conjure up something it was blind to. It was impossible to crave what she'd never had.
(When she had her first real taste of warm blood straight from the source, her first taste of Calliope, she should have seen it coming – just how screwed she would be after that.)
And she had followed Cal into the closet just to kiss her.
Her wildest fantasies were unfolding and everything was so much more than what she dreamed of: a strong thigh pushing past her dress, hot breaths ghosting against her ear, Calliope mouthing hungrily over her neck with lips and tongue and teeth.
(In hindsight, considering Cal already knew she was a vampire, how could she expect Juliette not to bite back when she was giving her that kind of treatment).
Juliette broke off the kissing, overwhelmed. There were things building within her that she didn’t yet understand. Staying away from the warm, pulsing neck was her only coherent thought she had left and she clung to it like driftwood. But things kept building, tides frothing in a sea of pleasure trying to pull her under.
There was the shatter of glass, the sudden, cloying sweet of the cherries. She had a split second to register that her fangs were out–
And then they were anchored deep and sure in the neck of the pretty girl she knew – or hardly knew, whatever. Cal’s blood flooded across her taste buds, filling her body with a different, fuller warmth than when she rubbed herself to sleep at night. She wasn’t sure, but food might have tasted this good once, when she was younger and closer to human.
It clicked for her then, why everyone made such a big deal about firsts.
She was interrupted by the pain of dying temporarily, her own blood slippery on her chest, Cal’s eyes dark and unreadable as they followed her to the floor.
She’d woken up in a puddle of fruit syrup, bells going off in her head, loud and rejoicing because Cal kissed her. Juliette’s thirst was worse than ever because she hadn’t killed, but she was too thrilled to care. She didn't care that the blood on her chest was too dark to be human. She brought home the stake that had been inside her and hid it in the bathroom cabinet, like a sick souvenir. Still buzzing from the high of kissing her crush, she did a spotty job cleaning up. Everything that happened that night was worth it, even when her mom grabbed her roughly to peer down at her fanged mouth, like she could divine from the residual blood whether Juliette had gone through with the kill.
Fast forward to the blood tears at Smashley’s vigil. Which, gross. And also, terrifying.
When she fought Cal, she was shocked by the muscle memory programmed into her as she more or less met the hunter blow for blow, until Cal slapped her hard enough to draw blood. As the hunter stared down in horror at Juliette’s dark blood on her fingers, it was Juliette whose gut twisted up with guilt, Juliette who wanted to curl up and cry as she left the girl who captured her heart writhing on the rooftop.
Next it was blood and gore, lots of it, dried and smeared across Smashley’s face in the high resolution photos strewn across her bed. The party girl’s head split open. Liver clawed out.
So this is what her dad thought she’d done.
The next morning, she’d lunged for the blood pills Elinor dangled before her like a woman starved, realizing darkly after swallowing them dry that it wasn't enough. Trapped in the vice grip of her hunger, she was too exhausted to be embarrassed when her fangs dropped mid-conversation with her sister, of all people.
That Juliette had been bold in declaring her distaste for the Legacy tradition of celebrating first kills, and how they’d all kill again, together, during the ceremony. She could see now how naive she was before, putting on a show she didn’t understand.
She made it to the night of the consecration somehow, and it was Elinor sneaking her a glass of the blood from concentrate, still trying to help in her uniquely twisted way. Juliette left a good amount in the glass because she didn’t want Elinor’s judgment, but it probably hadn’t mattered with how urgently and sloppily she gulped it down. Elinor had always read her too well.
And the blood had gone down a little too easily.
Elinor led her outside, out of the gate she’d thought they were running away from stuffy traditions. She freaked out when they reached the woods, telling Elinor she could smell the blood, knowing her sister could smell it too.
But Elinor already knew exactly what they were walking into.
With Elinor’s polished claws clamped over her shoulders, Juliette pushed back fruitlessly, straining away from the siren song of Cal's blood. She could have tried harder to get away, but Elinor would have caught up to her easily. Plus she wasn’t leaving Cal like that, tied up and helpless, at the whims of her big sister.
Then it was Elinor's sinful whispering in her ear, the trail of Cal's blood she traced down Juliette's chin. Her tongue swiped at it hard, digging deep at her bottom lip trying to soak up every last molecule. Because she’d already decided it was all she was gonna get.
Then Oliver showed up, telling her to untie Cal. It was hard to get closer but Juliette swallowed and tamped it down like a good girl, even though it would have been so easy to help herself to a taste, to have a lick of the oozing cut on Cal’s arm that was otherwise going to waste.
She tipped her head back as if the angled distance would make her want Cal’s blood any less. Her fangs slithered down and she clenched her teeth, trying to focus on the pain in her mouth and not what would make it better. Lilith didn’t care for prayer, but she fired off a silent one anyway, begging for the strength to hold back a little longer.
Finally, finally, it was Cook who practically fell into her lap, giving her every reason not to hold back. Feeding to kill wasn’t exactly sexual release, but a different kind of relief. She’d been so lost in the feel of it, lost all awareness of space and time, of the two hammering, human hearts as her friends watched on, horrorstruck.
She’d never had so much blood available to her, fresh, warm, plentiful. She didn’t have to be mindful of how much she took, how much excess dripped down her chin. The same instinct that had reared up when she bit Calliope reared its head. This time, she unhooked it from its straining leash.
Glad for the strength, the surge of new confidence, the buzz and high of the feed that made her wild and spontaneous, smashing windows, breaking and entering.
She was on such a roll with Cal, the back and forth easy between them until Cal put out the "favorite food" question. The answering churn in her stomach was instantaneous.
(Old Juliette was such a fool. Always burdening herself with stupid, stupid guilt.)
"Sorry," the hunter said quickly. The rare instance of Cal apologizing.
"It’s okay.” And Jules was all soft smiles and blunt teeth as she explained feeding to Cal, as if the hunter girl could ever be anything other than disgusted by it, as if she could ever accept that part of Jules.
After becoming full Legacy, she didn't really have a heightened smell for blood, as long as it stayed inside their bodies, under the skin. Noah’s blood was a little repulsive even – maybe because it was already dead.
But Cal? She could always smell her, like the hunter's scent was branded into her nostrils. It got a thousand times worse after zombie Smashley opened a gaping wound in her shoulder. Juliette could hardly speak around the mouthful of saliva, her fangs fully extended, the pit in her stomach emptier than it had ever been. The dark congealed streak soaking through Cal's improvised dressing was a sort of visual feast, an artfully made dessert that had her drooling on sight alone.
She saw a different kind of red when Oliver appeared, fangs out and breathing all over Calliope’s neck. Secretly she was grateful, and ashamed, that she needed that level of distraction to forget her own hunger.
Her night vision had always been exceptional. The only enhanced senses Juliette noticed were her hearing (strong pumping hearts took on a different tune), and touch as well (or maybe that was only when she was with Calliope).
Whenever they were together, the hunter girl engulfed her. Despite how quick and hot Cal’s blood pumped when they were eager for each other, it was easy to ignore in favor of the tangled heat in her core, the flare of deeper needs consuming her senses in the moment.
All too soon, they’d rushed into what would be their closing act. Overwhelmed with remorse for the life she’d helped Elinor take, Juliette had wanted to be merciful when Theo begged her. She thought she did right by him, drinking until his heart stopped, just like she had with Cook.
Maybe the difference was in the contradictions that swirled within her. Anger at Elinor’s betrayal, fear of the retribution that would come between their families, gaping sadness and guilt towards Cal and what the Burns family would have to face.
She never intended to turn Theo. If she’d been more accepting of her vampirism, of who she was, instead of constantly holding herself back from becoming more, maybe she would have had a better idea about the mechanics of turning someone.
Maybe Cal was right, that not knowing was a flimsy excuse. After all, her own father was changed by a born Legacy.
She knew something was wrong when she felt another connection, different from the one she had with Cal (which to present Juliette’s disappointment, didn't seem to be going away anytime soon).
This one was clouded, animalistic in its rage.
She’d thought Cal would be grieving, hurt, but she didn’t expect her to burn down everything that came before, what they had, what they were to each other. It stung like venom spat in her face when Cal called her brother a monster, and moments later when she confirmed that’s all Juliette was to her.
A monster. Special only because she’s hard to kill.
(It was astonishing how she’d betrayed her own family for a family that wasn’t hers, that was predetermined by their very DNA to hate what she is.)
Her sister’s last words before Juliette betrayed her couldn’t be more right. If she had been who she was meant to be from the beginning, if she’d simply drained Cal dry in that pantry, like she was supposed to, none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t have Theo’s blood on her hands. She wouldn’t be drowning in her own blood, still clawing at the hole in her chest, aching with the irreparable hurt of Cal’s final, hurled promise that pierced more thoroughly than any silver-tipped spear.
I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to kill you, and every Legacy like you.
And that’s exactly what Juliette is. A creature of the night, privileged to walk in the day. Something less than human. She could live in the here and now, forget about her past, be apathetic with her future.
Why was she only discovering this now? Blood taken from a living source was so much better than any drug. It didn’t fuzz her mind, it cleared it. Instead of borrowed, liquid courage, she had pure, distilled clarity. Why would she ever go back? She was everything she was supposed to be, at least in this moment, standing above the broken body of a girl she didn't know the name of, dumped on the Wooden Stake’s questionable floors.
Her tongue swiped feverishly across her fangs tasting the remnants of pleasure, worrying at the sweet bits of flesh between her teeth. She tilted her head back and smiled.