Fic: "Until My Dying Breath", Chapter Ten -- Part Two. Kurt/Blaine Vampire AU.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Epilogue
Click here to go back to part one.
--
“Come on, where are we going?” Blaine asks again, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. Kurt laughs and rolls his eyes.
“I told you, it’s a surprise,” says Kurt teasingly, sending a little devious grin in Blaine’s direction and giving him a squeeze where their arms are linked together. “It’s not very surprising if I tell you, is it?”
“Kurt,” Blaine groans piteously, throwing back his head. Kurt lets out a high chime of laughter as the two of them walk down the still-bustling street; bright with street lights and flashing signs and lit windows even through the dark of the starless sky. The city that never sleeps is still alive and wild at this hour, and all around them are images of nightlife that sear into the inside of Blaine’s eyelids like perfect pictures: girls in short skirts and sparkly tops wearing tights and coats to keep out the cold on the way to the clubs, young men who smell of spray-on deodorant and the need to impress, bright yellow cabs clogging the road thick with traffic. The snow is idle and easy as it drifts down around them; light and bright and beautiful, and even though Blaine can technically tell that it’s cold everything feels soft and comfortable against his skin.
Beside him, Kurt’s posture is as straight and refined as a classical dancer; head held high and eyes bright with intelligence and awareness as he guides them down a seemingly impossible-to-determine series of streets en route to their mystery location. Even for a casual walk, Kurt’s whole body is held taut in that perfect, beautiful grace that Blaine had always previously suspected must be inhuman. It had to be part of Kurt’s nature, Blaine had always told himself: no ordinary human could possibly be so incredibly poised all the time.
Apparently it isn’t supernatural, though. Because the two of them might be the same now, but Kurt is calm and composed where Blaine is practically vibrating out of his skin with excitement in a decidedly not-elegant way.
A thought occurs to him, sudden and bright and riveting, and Blaine grabs hold of Kurt’s arm in abrupt excitement. “Is it a snack?” asks Blaine eagerly, looking right into Kurt’s eyes and trying to discern something. Kurt’s poker face is good though, damn it, and it’s nearly impossible to figure out what could be hiding in his really, Blaine? expression. “Oh my god, Kurt. Do you have someone all strung up for us somewhere so that we don’t make a mess in the house?” There’s a tiny pause, and Blaine feels his eyes grow wide. “Do you? Oh my god, is it a boy? Is he pretty? I want to know, Kurt, tell me.”
“Oh my god,” Kurt huffs disparagingly, looking at Blaine in disbelief. “Are you actually hungry again already? You just fed yesterday, Blaine, I swear.”
Blonde hair and fingerless gloves, the flyaway hat and the night he was turned and the lovely, lovely blood still warm in his belly and making him full. Blaine hums happily, leaning in to rest his head on Kurt’s shoulder as they walk.
“I’m not hungry,” Blaine reassures him, nuzzling into Kurt’s shoulder. “Just curious. Your evil secrets are evil and killing me with their atrocious suspense, Kurt. I hope you’re happy.”
“You’ll like it, I promise,” says Kurt quietly, giving Blaine’s arm another squeeze as they walk.
Kurt always keeps his promises, thinks Blaine happily, falling silent for a stretch as they weave together through the people on the road.
It’s the first time they’ve gone out since Blaine was turned last night. A celebration, Kurt is calling it, although Blaine genuinely has no clue where the two of them might be heading. It’s strange, beacuase Kurt had always struck him as something of a homebody during his months in Kurt’s apartment. Kurt had always seemed perfectly content to stay inside with Blaine, watching movies and reading books and sewing and fucking and cooking food he didn’t eat. He had never seemed to miss going out, or talked wistfully of clubs or parties or dances. It makes Blaine even more burstingly excited to see what Kurt has in store; to see what his idea of a celebration constitutes.
Regardless, Blaine is all dressed up and ready for the occasion; the gel in his hair is fresh and newly-bought, and it had felt good to finally have it out of his eyes again. To finally have himself under control in such a visual way. Every day, every hour, Blaine feels more and more like himself; like the person he was always meant to be.
All of the people around them smell good - although some smell better than others - but Blaine had been telling the truth in that he really isn’t feeling particularly hungry at the moment. Without the pain twisting hunger hunger hunger dragging at his insides, too, Blaine finds that he’s able to think beyond the need to feed alone. As they walk down the road, Blaine realizes that he can look around at the men and women passing them in the streets and see more than just the blood beneath their veins. Not much, granted, but the barest bit more. They aren’t just walking meals like they seemed to him last night: tonight, they seem to be something in between animals and children and - god, maybe slaves, it’s hard to say. Some of them are pretty or handsome, and he can abstractly imagine feeling lust or desire for one of them, but definitely not respect. They’re not real, still, in any case. None of them are real. There’s no proper word in the language he used to speak to describe what the beings around them are, now. Nothing that truly fits the way his mind wants it to.
He wonders how long it will be before he wants to feed again. It doesn’t matter too much, though, because Kurt knows what he’s doing. Kurt will make sure that he’s full and happy, Blaine knows it. Trusts him with his everything.
It isn’t cold enough for the snow to stick on the pavement, but the night smells cool and crisp and fresh nonetheless. They’ve been walking for a while now, having driven Kurt’s car to a parkade a few blocks away, and Blaine is just about to give pestering Kurt one more try when the two of them round a corner, walk a few paces - and Kurt shoots him a smile brimming with constrained excitement before gesturing to one of the buildings.
It’s set into the bottom two floors of what at first appears to be an ordinary commercial building. The sign above the door is understated and stylish despite the content of the name; cream font on black background quietly hailing people off the street. There is a man standing outside, all bundled up for winter in about three more layers than either of them are wearing; big and burly, a snug hat pulled over his bald head. There is music coming from inside, drifting out the door and onto the street.
It takes Blaine a few seconds to fully process the words on the sign - to understand what Kurt’s surprise for the night is - but when he does, his mouth falls open. He stares in stunned disbelief for long seconds, unable to think of a single thing to say. All at once, his throat feels thick.
“You said that you used to do stuff like this all the time,” says Kurt, sounding a little bit nervous at Blaine’s lack of response. He shifts against Blaine’s side, giving a small shrug as if this isn’t one of the most special things anyone has ever done for Blaine in his whole life. “And... you said that you loved it. That you missed it.” Kurt’s voice lowers to a soft murmur, and he gives Blaine’s arm a squeeze.
“You remembered,” says Blaine dumbly, still staring at the Karaoke Bar with disbelieving eyes. There are fissures of excitement growing and bubbling up in his stomach. He feels so incredibly touched, staring up at the sign: it’s a high-class place, that much is clear from the exterior. Perfectly Kurt, as much as singing for fun in public can be classified as a Kurt-like trait. Images of perfectly-synchronized bodies in blue and red blazers dancing on stage under bright lights hits him like a punch to the gut. There are more recent memories, too: of him and his keyboard tucked into the corner of quaint little coffee shops, trying to find something his in a world of midterms and finals and essays and revision until he stopped trying to make time anymore. “I told you so long ago, but you remembered.”
“Of course I did,” says Kurt, delicate eyebrows furrowing together. As though it’s obvious.
“Kurt,” says Blaine softly, gathering himself and turning to face him. “Kurt, this is... this is the most...”
He can’t finish, but Kurt seems to understand anyways.
“Come on,” says Kurt, business-like and encouraging all at once as he reaches down to take Blaine’s hand in his. “I want to hear you sing.”
--
It’s the most brilliant, shining, victorious night of Blaine’s life.
They get their own booth because it’s a Tuesday night and thus not ridiculously busy, the two of them tucked into a warmly-lit corner seat. Everything is sleek and dark; faux-black leather upholstery and shining dark tile on the ground, brightly back-lit shelves lined with bottles of expensive alcohol and everything steeped in dim light that makes it all feel close and personal. There’s a small stage at the front of the room, topped with a standing microphone and lit by two small spotlights. When they walk inside there is a dark-skinned woman singing along fairly well to a classic rock song in a low voice, and when she finishes the song the people at the decently-populated tables all applaud as she smiles with bright white teeth.
At Kurt’s urging they order their first round of drinks right away, leafing through the songbook to find something for both of them. Blaine is unsure, at first, whether he’s going to like alcohol anymore. The thought of drinking doesn’t seem immediately unpleasant in the same way that food does, it’s true, but neither does it seem like an exactly tempting prospect. He doesn’t even know if alcohol will have any effect on him; there’s so much to learn and discover, so much he doesn’t know. Kurt reassures him, though, before quickly heading up to put their names down and pay the fee.
Their waitress comes back a few minutes later with two very stiff drinks, and Blaine eyes his uneasily until Kurt comes back and wheedles him into giving it a try. The whisky on the rocks tastes wrong at first; different flavours and altered tastebuds, more anemic on his tongue than he’s used to. It makes him wrinkle his nose in surprise, which makes Kurt laugh, which makes Blaine keep going in order to make him laugh again. After the first few sips, Blaine manages to get over how different the taste is from what he remembers. He settles into the flavour of it, relaxing into the difference with a pleased little smile that makes Kurt grin beside him.
There’s must be a lull in the number of people wanting to go on stage, because it takes less than fifteen minutes before it’s Blaine’s turn to go up. Too quick and not enough time to prepare, catching him off guard when his number is called. He freezes, takes a deep breath and smiles at the reassuring look Kurt sends his way, and stands.
As Blaine walks to the front of the room, climbing the few steps to reach the sleekly elevated stage, it feels as though his feet are floating above the ground with every footstep. Unreal exhilaration is thrumming, building up in the tips of his fingers. When he reaches the top of the stage and takes the microphone out of its stand to hold it in hand - he’s always preferred the mobility of being able to move freely around a stage if he wants to - he raises his eyes and looks at the room full of people in front of him.
The room is dotted with empty little parcels of bones and blood and sinew wrapped up in skin, talking quietly and eating and drinking and laughing. Some of them are looking up at him and waiting for him to begin; others are more focused on the companions at their table. It’s hard to see some of the people through the glare of the spotlights, but at least the lights are at least fairly small and compact and not enough to reduce the whole room to stark whiteness.
In the end, the only one of them who matters at all is Kurt. Clearly visible through the light, sitting in the corner and smiling widely with his head tilted to one side; looking at Blaine as though there is nothing else in all the world.
Blaine grins. The music starts up around him, four bars of musical opening before the words kick in. One and he grins at the audience, tapping his foot in time with the beat. Two and he can feel Kurt’s smile, eager and waiting and shining at him through the light. Three and he expects a rush of nerves but there isn’t one; only confidence and eagerness and so, so much joy building up inside, bubbling and bursting and ready to escape.
Four and he takes a deep breath, opens his mouth - and begins to perform.
Blaine performs like he hasn’t had a chance to in years; all stage presence and fervour, facial expressions and soulful long notes and a chorus that sways and swoons. The song he had decided on is as current as he could manage given the way he’s been tucked away for the past few months. By a female artist, but one with a low enough vocal register that he can easily hit all the high notes without having to alter the key. It’s a song about life; about living it and loving it, and never letting anything mess it up. Blaine has fun with it, plays with the notes in a way that has the audience clapping and cat-calling part way through. He grins at the audience, spins in place and has a group of people singing along with the chorus his second time through.
It’s like coming to life, being up here. Sweet adrenaline and joy are pumping through his veins as he grins and basks in the light of it, in the way everyone responds to him. Soaks it up and shines like the sun he will never see again. Blaine laughs when he finishes the last long note, and considerable applause greets the end of the song. He lets out an exhilarated breath, feeling flushed and warm even though he knows he isn’t, places the microphone back in place, and practically bounces down the stairs back to Kurt in the far back booth.
“What did you think?” Blaine asks eagerly when he gets back, an impossible grin stretched across his face as he waits for Kurt’s reaction. Eager to hear that he made Kurt happy.
What Blaine is expecting are nice words, and a smile, and maybe a gentle squeeze on the arm. Something sweet, and kind, and enough. Instead, Kurt immediately slides out of the booth, gets to his feet, wraps his arms around Blaine’s shoulders - and captures Blaine’s lips in a breathless, heated kiss for everyone in the room to see.
Initially surprised - Kurt has never seemed like the type for overt displays of public affection before - Blaine quickly surrenders into the kiss, letting his eyes close as Kurt holds him close and pours everything into the kiss between them. They don’t have to hide, or hold back, or feel ashamed; no one is ever going to hurt Blaine the way those boys at his old high school did, or the way Kurt was hurt by the man who turned him. They’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt them or make them break away from another, Blaine decides, remembering the drunk man with his hands snapped back against his arms all those months ago with a soft smile against Kurt’s lips.
When Kurt finally pulls away he lets out a soft sigh and presses their foreheads together, eyes still closed and a genuinely blissful expression on his face.
“God, you take my breath away,” Kurt murmurs, the sound as loud as thunder in Blaine’s ears. It feels as though Blaine’s heart is melting, merging into something transcendent and airborne as Kurt holds him in his arms and worships him. Pride is bursting in Blaine’s chest; pride at being here, at being loved, at being so special to the person who matters most in all the world.
Kurt’s number is called only a few seconds later, and he leaves toward the stage with a squeeze to Blaine’s arm and a bright shine in his eyes. Feeling expanded and cared for and so, so full, Blaine slides back into the booth and watches Kurt prepare himself on stage. He looks extremely confident, but in a different way than Blaine remembers feeling himself: cool and nonchalant where Blaine was passion and excitement, and it makes him smile for this man he knows so well when all the world could never know him better.
The song Kurt chose is one that Blaine has never heard of before. The opening few bars begin to play, filling the whole room with a deep double bass line that reminds him of smoky bars and femme fatales. It’s an old song, Blaine thinks, although he doesn’t know for sure. He wants to know what Kurt sounds like, as he sings; not a few hummed bars here or there in their apartment, but a real song played for people in public. Blaine smiles eagerly, practically vibrating as he waits for the lyrics to kick in.
But when Kurt opens his mouth, everything narrows down and the room vanishes with the first few, incredible notes. And Blaine is shocked to realize that it isn’t the voice of a human being sliding along the air, holding the whole room in its beautiful grip.
It’s the voice of an angel.
Stunned captivation snug around his mind like a snare, Blaine forgets how to think. Forgets how to breathe. He can only sit back in perfect disbelief as Kurt fills the room with notes too beautiful to fathom.
--
They talk and talk and drink shots of vodka that hit the back of Blaine’s throat like a Mack Truck, torrents of words and questions and ideas and plans pouring out of the both of them as though they had hardly been able to contain them before now. They talk with hands and expressions and excited words, not bothering to keep their voices down: the sound of people singing along is loud enough that no one will pay them any attention, and nothing of what they say would make sense to anyone even if they were overheard.
Blaine finally gets some answers to questions, and the easily willing way that Kurt responds to every one of them makes his heart feel full and warm in the dim of the room. Yes, the alcohol can have an affect one them: they just need to drink more than a human being in order to get the same impact. No, Kurt has never tried to turn anyone before him; has never travelled with anyone other than him not ever, Blaine, never. Blaine asks what being in Europe during World War Two was like and is rewarded with twenty minutes of gushing, a vivid picture of endless comely young men of many nations who were never looked for too hard if they went missing in the line of duty.
“I went to Eastern Europe briefly,” Kurt adds a few minutes into the torrent of words, wrinkling his nose in obvious distaste. “Poland, and a little bit of Ukraine. It was... not very nice there, then. I didn’t stay long.”
The biggest surprise comes a little bit later, once there is a small pile of shot glasses strewn between them - more of them on Blaine’s side of the table, it’s true - and Blaine is finally starting to feel the warm buzz of alcohol inside.
“Is there anything else I should be worried about?” Blaine asks, wiping away tears of mirth from his eyes: they’re both only just able to calm themselves down from Kurt’s hilarious story about an SS Officer, a small village in France, and two tonnes of explosives. He presses right up against Kurt’s side, pressing his face to Kurt’s neck and breathing in deep where the smell of him is the strongest. “I mean, other than a stake through the heart. Anything that I should try to - hey, Kurt, what -?”
Next to him, Kurt’s body is shaking in what it takes Blaine a few seconds to realize is laughter.
“Blaine,” Kurt gasps, pressing a pale hand over his mouth and visibly trying to bring himself back into some kind of composure. The giggles keep escaping, though; Kurt’s whole body is wracked with them as he shakes his head back and forth. “Oh, god, Blaine. I forgot about that.”
“What?” Blaine asks, blinking and feeling rather left out of a joke.
“You - oh my god, okay,” Kurt chokes, gathering himself together. He straightens up, his natural elegance straining to re-assert itself through the laughter. “So... back when you and that professor bitch were having your little meet-ups - which was completely adorable, by the way, like watching a puppy trying to fire a rifle - I was following you quite closely, as you know. And - well. Both of you became quite focused on those little stakes, and I thought -” He chuckles, a wicked look in his eye. “I thought, why not? You weren’t actually a threat, but... better safe than sorry.”
There is a beat.
Blinking, Blaine stares at him in open-mouthed shock. “You... all this time. All this time I thought, but - they don’t -?”
“A bit of wood through the heart?” asks Kurt disparagingly, sending Blaine a wry sideways look. “Really, Blaine? Who even came up with that? Eternal creatures of the night are not ended by toothpicks, thank you very much.”
There is a pause. Before -
“Oh my god!” Blaine bursts out, howling with laughter so hard that it garners a nasty look from one of the waitresses, but he doesn’t care. He laughs, and laughs, and soon there are tears running down his face as his whole body shakes. He can’t help it; all that time, all that trust and hope built around little splinters of wood that Kurt knew didn’t do anything, and it’s just hilarious. Somehow, he feels both humiliated and sorry toward the person he used to be all at once. “That’s... oh my god, oh, that’s terrible.” He almost has himself back under control again, but then he meets Kurt’s eyes, his face all scrumpled up with laughter as well, and gets sent into fits of helpless giggles.
“I know,” Kurt wheezes next to him, clutching at his stomach. “I know, I know.”
--
The night seems to stretch on forever in its brilliance. They drink a truly ludicrous amount of shots between the two of them, tiny glasses scattered across the table in such great quantities that it’s hard for the waitress to keep up with them. Blaine pesters Kurt until he finally talks about the real way that one of their kind can be killed - removing the head and burning the body, Blaine; I have no idea where all this nonsense about stakes came from, I swear - and the two of them wind up back on stage at least one time apiece before the bar starts emptying out and the waitress starts asking them if they want their bill. It’s a beautiful night, absolutely beautiful, and Blaine feels as though he could fly by the end of it.
When the two of them stumble out into the night, it quickly becomes clear that the truly inhuman amounts of alcohol Blaine consumed has finally caught up with him. Blaine’s feet feel liquid and unstable beneath him, and he has one arm slung over Kurt’s shoulder in order to keep himself standing. One of Kurt’s arms is tucked securely around his waist, holding him close and upright. They’re shuffling along the scarcely-populated street dotted with only a few men and women smoking outside of clubs and bars, and Blaine can’t stop smiling and laughing. Can’t stop telling Kurt what a wonderful time he had, because he did, it was wonderful, and he got to sing and he loves singing and he never used to be able to, and it’s the most romantic thing in the world which is nice because Blaine isn’t very good at being romantic. He’s tried, he’s not the best, but Kurt is good at it and that’s better.
And Blaine keeps expecting Kurt to agree with him wholeheartedly. But Kurt just keeps giving him this little gleeful sort-of-smile instead, and saying that’s nice, Blaine and maybe Blaine should tell him that he had a good night again.
Now that Blaine thinks of it, Kurt didn’t have nearly as much to drink as he did. Not nearly. It’s unfair, really. Stupid, because he’s drunk and Kurt should be drunk too and that would obviously be more fun for everyone involved, and Kurt is being silly by not agreeing with him.
He’s just telling Kurt that everything would be even better than the best if Kurt was drunk too (in fact, it might be the second... or third?... time he’s told Kurt that. He’s not sure, it’s hard to remember) when Blaine trips over his feet and stumbles, and the sound of Kurt’s laughter makes a man a few paces away glance up at them. He’s clearly been hitting the bars as well; he smells of rum and bar nuts and a woman’s perfume under his collar, the smoky chemical burn of the lit cigarette in his mouth unable to conceal any of the other scents that tell the story of his evening like a book. The man smiles politely over his cigarette, pulling in smoke, and the two of them are about to continue on their way when something... changes.
Blaine smells the man’s emotions change and shift before he properly sees the shift register in the his rumpled, middle-aged face. From neutral recognition to hesitation to suspicion; then doubt to confusion to surprise. Every shift is as clear as a choreographed dance across Blaine’s mind; simple to understand and immediate, cutting right through the haze of the alcohol.
“Hey,” the man says suddenly, tossing the mostly-finished cigarette on the ground and crushing it under the toe of his boot as he takes a step forward. His eyebrows are drawn together in confusion, and he looks uncertainly between the two of them. When he speaks, there is a strong slurred lilt to his voice. “Hey, wait, I know you,” he says, gesturing at Blaine with almost accusation in his eyes.
Blaine quickly looks him up and down, feeling a bit lost - but all of his nerves are on edge nonetheless. “Sorry,” he says, because some habits die hard, “I don’t know you.”
“You’re that kid who was on the news a while back,” the man insists, seemingly shocked at his own recollection. “I remember because you lived so close to my neighbourhood, yeah? Shit, man, your parents are freaking out. Where the fuck have you -?”
Without even thinking about it - no thought or contemplation even crosses Blaine’s mind, it’s a lightning-quick response that barely even registers - Blaine takes a step forward, reaches out toward the man’s neck, and snaps it one handed.
It’s quick, and easy, and barely feels like anything under his hand. The man is dead before he hits the ground, crumpling onto the ground with his neck at the wrong angle and the wide-eyed expression still on his face, and for a few moments Blaine just stares at his body on the ground. There is a long, long pause - before laughter bubbles up inside Blaine’s chest, escaping out of his mouth in a nervous burst.
“... I don’t even know what to do know,” Blaine confesses, giggling slightly as he looks at the lump of limbs and torso on the ground. He tries to run a hand through his hair, finds it thickly-gelled, and rubs his eyes instead as he stares. “I don’t... do we hide it? What do we do next? We didn’t do that last time.”
“You never think before you act, do you,” says Kurt quietly, letting out a little sigh as he gives Blaine’s hand a squeeze. It’s a statement, not a question.
Miraculously, no one around them seems to have noticed that anything is wrong. There aren’t that many people, really; it’s late at night, and none of the bars have really started closing yet. The man hadn’t made any noise as he died, either; there had been no raised voices to draw stares and curiosity. There are two women across the street who seem too sloshed and engrossed in their conversation to notice them at all, and a man maybe five yards away with his mp3 player plugged in as he smokes. No one else to silence, or Kurt would insist on silencing them.
One person is nothing, he had told Blaine earlier tonight, leaning in over the table and holding up a single finger. A scared city is a mob, Blaine, and that’s how our kind dies. Hunters and mobs, the only real things to fear.
“Come on,” says Kurt, his beautiful voice that had sounded so amazing up on stage all twisted up with some emotion. Slight anxiety, Blaine can smell; he’s still getting used to determining how Kurt is feeling, which seems different to him than the way ordinary people smell. Determination, yes. Efficiency. And... apprehension?
Kurt hoists the man up, pulling his arm over Kurt’s shoulder - so that it might look as though they’re just helping a drunk friend home, Blaine realizes. “We’ll take his wallet and valuables, make it look like a robbery. There’s a storm drain around the corner, I noticed when we walked here. We can dump him down there.”
“Okay,” says Blaine complacently, slinging the man’s other arm around his own shoulder so that the corpse is dangling in the middle of them, feet dragging on the ground. The alcohol has worn off a little bit, but not much. He still feels just fine - and besides, he’ll get to see some of the ways that Kurt disposes of his bodies. He had always been morbidly curious about that, when he was human. “Let’s go.”
They start down the street, the sound of the toes of the dead man’s shoes dragging on the ground loud and jagged on Blaine’s ears. They don’t speak until they get home. Not as Kurt pockets the man’s wallet and takes the watch from around his wrist; not as Kurt disfigures the man’s face and wrenches out his teeth one by one (depositing them into a plastic bag to take with them - to avoid dental recognition, Blaine realizes), and not as Blaine heaves and hefts up the storm drain for Kurt to dump the body down the hole while the street is clear.
There is a realization creeping up Blaine’s spine that he would voice if he wasn’t so sure that Kurt is feeling it, too. It’s in the looks they share over the dead man’s body, in the way Kurt holds him close as they walk back to get their car from the parkade. They don’t need to say it with words, but it’s there nonetheless.
New York is a big city, and Blaine can’t stay tucked up in their apartment forever. No matter how much stronger and faster and better they are than everyone else, it’s still two against eight million if it came down to a fight. It’s inconceivable that they’ll never run into someone that Blaine knew from before, especially since his disappearance was apparently something of a public fuss. It will be a good few years before everyone who has known Blaine in living memory is gone.
The two of them are a pair of dark smudges on the night; raised hairs on the back of the neck, only the alarm has already been sounded.
And they can’t stay here forever.
Epilogue