Armistice, Part 1
ARMISTICE
if you be weak, then i’ll be strong,
when the night is long.
trust all the years you’ll wait to find
this man who’s loved you your whole life
so come closer, closer to where we belong
"Are you okay?"
Blaine stares up at the boy standing over him and finds he's not entirely sure how to answer. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but only two that are probably important in the grand scheme of things.
Firstly, the boy standing over him has a sawn-off shotgun in one hand and a packet of salt in the other and that's threatening and weird all at the same time. And well, secondly, this boy has just used that gun to blast away a ghost before shoving Blaine down against the wall and running a salt line across the floor, cutting them off into a slice of the kitchen.
There's other stuff, too, like how this stranger has stunning blue eyes and how Blaine is almost positive that's an Alexander McQueen sweater that he's wearing with those really, really, oh, really tight black pants.
But it's mostly the first two reasons.
The boy waves the salt packet in front of Blaine's face. "Hello? Are you okay? Spirit didn't get you or anything?"
Blaine blinks twice, slowly, and says faintly, "Oh, no. I'm fine. Just fine. Why have you put salt everywhere?" He reaches a trembling hand up and says, "I'm Blaine, by the way."
The stranger raises an eyebrow and tucks the salt under his arm to shake Blaine's hand before pulling him to his feet with surprising strength. "It wards off spirits and demons. They can't cross it. And - Kurt," he responds, lips quirking into a smile.
~***~
Blaine hasn't been this worried since - well, since ever. He dials Kurt's number again; he's had it on speed dial for years but right now, in this moment, he physically punches it in from memory, hoping that his phone is just malfunctioning and it's like, dialing the number incorrectly or something, anything along those lines.
It goes to voice mail, just as it has for the past sixteen days. The message was recorded forever ago, so long ago that Blaine remembers being there for it, remembers that it was a new voicemail that Kurt recorded after a werewolf crushed his old phone with dead weight after being shot down. Kurt's voice drawls, "You've reached Kurt. Obviously, I can't get to the phone right now. You know what to do."
The long bleep sounds. Blaine contemplates leaving another message similar to the thirty or so he's left already, begging Kurt to please, please call, that Blaine is worried sick about him. He takes a deep breath after a second of silence, but he can't bring himself to talk to the phone again, not when he's sure now that nobody is going to listen any time soon. He hangs up, slamming his cell down on the table, and shuts his eyes.
Perhaps Blaine shouldn't be so concerned, but the thing is that long ago they made a pact. Blaine and Kurt made a pact that no matter what happened between them, they'd call each other at least three times a week, to make sure that they were both okay, alive at least. They've had their share of scares. A shape shifter in New York put Blaine into the hospital for half a week. A werewolf down in Texas held Kurt hostage for three days. Things like that. But it's never, ever been longer than a week, never been longer than two, never been sixteen days of silence.
They've never broken their promise and Blaine doesn't see why Kurt would now. Blaine's gut had jumped at five days, every instinct telling him something was amiss, but he knew that he had to listen to his head, listen to rational thought and bide his time. He couldn't tear apart the country trying to find Kurt when there might be nothing wrong.
Blaine stares at his phone on the table and makes the decision then and there. Sixteen days. It's time to tear the country apart. Perhaps maybe he's even left it too long, but he doesn't let that thought fester. He rings Kurt again on the speed dial and the voicemail tells him yet again, "You've reached Kurt. Obviously, I can't get to the phone right now. You know what to do."
He takes in a deep breath and talks after the bleep, telling Kurt, trying to keep his voice as steady as he can, "I don't know if you're okay. I don't know if you're even able to get this message, but... Kurt, you hold on, please. I'm coming to get you. I'm gonna find you." Blaine almost adds the I love you that's on the tip of his tongue, the words that are always on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn't. The fear that he's talking to something less than a ghost won't let him. He exhales shakily and hangs up, gives himself approximately three minutes to compose himself, fingers curled tightly around his cell phone and eyes shut to hold back tears, before he pushes away from the table and heads to the bedroom of his small flat.
The thing is, Blaine doesn't really hunt anymore. Not for a year or so now, but he still has everything hidden away behind panels in his closet and beneath his bed: guns, salt, stashes of holy water, silver knives, a magic-imbued knife that can kill demons, spray paint for Devil's Traps and magic sigils, stacks of bandages and first aid kits, fake IDs and cards stretching from simply fake names and credit cards to FBI identity badges. Blaine has done some very illegal things with Kurt over the course of his hunting career.
Blaine sighs and drags out his travelling bag from the depths of his belongings and begins to pack. He needs to hit the road as soon as possible. He's going to find Kurt if it's the last thing he does, and with Kurt having been missing for sixteen days, it occurs to Blaine that something might have taken him - and if something bad has taken Kurt, finding him may well be the last thing Blaine does.
Blaine calls all the authorities that he can when he's packed and dropping his bags (two of them - one with clothes, the other with all his supplies) in the trunk of his car. It's a crappy, small thing, only enough room inside to breathe really, but it gets the job done, and it's pretty good at not eating up fuel. Blaine can't say the same for Kurt's car, a '67 Chevy Impala passed on from his father. It downs fuel quicker than Blaine downs food, and well, when Blaine's hungry, it can get disgusting to watch.
He asks for John Does who match Kurt's description; he asks specifically for a Kurt Hummel, for his aliases Kirk Anderson and Cameron St Andrew but nothing comes back. Not from hospitals. Not from morgues. Not from the police. Nobody has seen or heard of Kurt or anybody like him.
Blaine hangs up as he climbs in the car and sighs deeply, tucking his cell into the glove box before resting his hands firmly on the wheel. He does his best to clear his head; there's no point in driving aimlessly, no point in just driving town to town and asking "Hey, have you seen my friend? He's about yay-high, amazing blue-green eyes, probably looking way too fabulous for this town?" to every person he meets. He thinks, looks back seventeen days in his memory to the last call he got from Kurt.
"I'm working on something in Salem," Kurt had said. Now that Blaine thinks of it, Kurt had seemed a little distant, edgy. He hadn't talked about what he was hunting, if he was hunting at all, in Salem. A spark of worry hits him. This could be something big, bigger than the idea of Kurt being dead, and Blaine suddenly can't get the engine on fast enough. He pulls out of the drive and hits the road way, way faster than he should. It's nearly two days drive to Oregon, and that's if Blaine doesn't hit traffic or take too long of a rest stop.
He'd take a plane, but how's he supposed to get guns on a plane? Instead, he just shifts the car into gear and breaks the speed limit at every chance he can.
If Kurt is alive, he's probably not in Salem anymore. But, he thinks, it's a start.
~***~
Blaine squeezes the trigger one, two, three, and cheers himself when he dares to look and sees that he's successfully hit the dirty old road sign that Kurt had set up for target practice. Kurt laughs from behind him, pure and clear, clapping, and Blaine turns to him with a smile.
"I hope that's not beginner's luck and that I'm actually decent at his," he says breathlessly as Kurt comes closer, shoes crunching across the ground.
"Practice makes perfect, as they say," Kurt tells him, and his smile fades a little from his face as he reaches across and smoothes the lapel of Blaine's coat. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Blaine wrinkles his nose and pauses before he answers. "Yes and no." Kurt raises an eyebrow, posture stiffening, hands dropping fast to his sides. Blaine clicks the safety on the gun, as he's been taught, and explains, "I want to. I do. But I'm just scared that it isn't the right choice."
"Of course it isn't the right choice," Kurt deadpans, and Blaine blanches. "We're seventeen. We've known each other what, two years now? Ever since I saved you from the spirit of that girl. In those two years I've come to your house with more black eyes and scrapes and cuts than I can count. I mean," Kurt swallows, uneasy, and his eyes well up. "I've just lost - you know what I've lost, and you're offering to let me teach you stuff so that you can abandon this safe, normal life in favour of running around nearly getting killed with me." He blinks away the tears, his tone taking on something of a reprimanding edge. "Of course it's not the right choice."
"But I want to," Blaine murmurs, brushing his fingers up against Kurt's, hooking his index finger around the taller boy's pinky. Kurt swallows and looks away. "I do, okay, I really do. You're not - you're not alone, Kurt, I'm never gonna let you be alone." He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and says, "Not ever again."
Kurt looks up, and Blaine takes it as an opportunity; he leans in and kisses him softly on the mouth, like he has a thousand times before.
~***~
Blaine is exhausted by the time he pulls into the outskirts of Salem, but he has to, at the very least, track down the last motel Kurt was in before he can collapse to sleep. He avoids the more obvious motels; he knows Kurt's modus operandi, and it's low key, crappy motels. Nothing big or fancy that he could be easily traced back to. The sort of thing where he can dole out some extra cash and quietly ask them to leave him be for a week, for them not to send maids in.
He goes from motel to motel, exhaustion making his legs heavier every time he's required to step out of the car and trudge indoors to inquire about who could possibly be staying here. Blaine's eyes get more difficult to keep open with every no, every rejection, every odd look. He's surprised he doesn't crash his car at any point.
He's ready to fall over when he goes into the seventh motel of the night and asks, "Has anyone called Kirk Anderson, or maybe Cameron St Andrew, come through? Just over two weeks ago maybe?" Kurt never uses his real name at motels. He just doesn't. At first Blaine could never see the issue, but Kurt never liked to have anything traceable back to his own identity. I don't want that on my family, he would say. What's left of it. Plus, in the end, as a hunter you tend to leave bodies and destruction behind you and it's best not to wind up with the law on your tail.
The woman behind the counter is a skinny peroxide blonde in her late thirties, rich blue eyes watching him cautiously. Blaine blinks earnestly and eventually she responds with a flippant sigh, "Lemme take a look." She flips through the large, old book, and says, "Uh-huh. I wasn't on shift when he signed in but we've got a Kirk Anderson. He paid through the roof to book a room out for three weeks and not get disturbed. Normally don't let that sorta thing happen, but..."
A bribe is a bribe, Blaine thinks, and he breathes a heavy sigh of relief. That's part of a weight off his shoulders, at least. He meets her eye and makes the most passionate plea he can, "Can I have his room number? He's my cousin and he told me to find him here."
She's reluctant and shifts to defensive, suspicious even, folding her arms and squinting at him, asking, "Who's the Cameron fellow if Kirk is your cousin?"
Blaine swallows. He can't blame her caution. He quickly bullshits off the top of his head, "Kirk ran away. A while ago. From a bad home situation. Took all the money he could and fled. Sometimes he uses Cameron because he doesn't wanna be found." Blaine gestures and sighs, "I'm the only person he trusts enough to know this stuff." She nods slowly, acceptance gracing her face much to his internal relief. Blaine taps the countertop and asks, "What kind of room did he get out?"
"Two bed room," she answers, her voice laced with calculated disinterest now that nothing suspicious seems to be afoot.
This is so much easier than I anticipated, Blaine thinks and asks, "Can you put me down to share the room with him for the rest of his stay? I'm Everett Hummel." It had been a sort of inside joke with Kurt and Blaine, to use each other's last names. It kind of kept them grounded with each other, kept the notion that they were all they had even when separated.
The lady looks dubious for a moment then consents, scribbling in the book and reaching under the counter before handing Blaine a key. "He's in room seventeen. Go out the front and down the lane and it's across the courtyard."
Blaine dares to ask, "Know if he's actually there right now?"
She shrugs. "Told us not to disturb him, didn't he? I don't know. Me personally, I don't even know what he looks like."
Blaine nods, frowning. He hadn't expected her to know, but it would've been helpful. He turns the key in his hand and says, "Thank you, ma'am. I didn't catch your name - ?" He glances at her. It pays to be polite.
"S'cause I didn't tell you my name, sweetie. It's Holly, though. Holly Holiday."
Blaine raises an eyebrow as she flips her hair over her shoulder. Holly Holiday, running a motel. There's a bad joke in there somewhere, and it's probably one that she's heard before. He just says quietly, "Thank you, Ms. Holiday."
"Let me know if ya need anything," she says, and he nods graciously before turning and walking out. He climbs back into his car and drives it down to the courtyard, eyeing everything there carefully. He can't stop the moan of surprise and hopeful relief when he sees it: Kurt's Impala, parked neatly out the front of his room.
He pulls up next to it, parking as fast as he can, and nearly falling on his ass from scrambling out the car so quickly. He peers in through the windows of the Impala just in case there's something to be seen, but it's immaculately clean as always, and bare as far as he can see. He pats it softly, and expresses out loud to it, "It's so good to see you, you beautiful monster. Where's your daddy, huh?"
Blaine leaves a little time for the pretend response from the car, gazing over the glossy black surface before he turns and approaches the room, casting his eyes over the faded, peeling, yellow paint of the door and the black letters on the bronze-colored plaque saying "17".
Blaine rests his hand on the door knob, nervous. He takes a deep breath and tries the door, just in case. It's locked, unsurprisingly, so he puts the key in the lock and exhales quickly as he turns it, then turns the knob and pushes the door, letting it swing open.
The first thing that hits him is the smell, rotten and sending his head reeling, and before he can see beyond that, he turns tail and runs to his car, scrambling across the ground to the trunk and grabbing a bottle of holy water and the magic, demon-killing knife from within. What he can smell is the single most alarming thing, the thing that tells him something is very, very wrong.
He can smell sulfur.
~***~
Blaine has been on the road with Kurt a couple of weeks now, and okay, he didn't expect it to be easy by any stretch, but he didn't actually anticipate it being this hard. He's out of breath as he drives the iron rod into the chest of the demon; there's the sound of flesh sizzling and burning around the entry wound and Blaine staggers back as she screeches in pain, clasping the rod and then dropping away as blisters rise and burn the palms of her hands. Ghosts and demons are similar in a lot of respects - both can't cross or touch salt or iron, but the latter is a lot more solid and frankly a lot more dangerous. As she flails around in pain, Blaine takes the opportunity to shove it into the Devil's trap, painted in red on the floor of the room.
It had come in through the window, shattering through like it was nothing. The element of surprise, born from a simple mistake on Blaine's part: he didn't salt the window. As Kurt, bleeding from a cut on his forehead from the demon blasting him across the room, stands up, Blaine mouths sorry, panicking a little that he's going to get hollered at, but Kurt just shakes his head professionally.
Kurt clears his throat and stands over the demon as it yanks the rod from its chest, casting it aside. The creature is possessing a young Asian woman with blue streaks through black hair. It blinks and its eyes fill from corner to corner with black and it snarls, "Let me go."
Kurt shakes his head. He begins to recite, pronunciation perfect, "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii..." It's the Latin exorcism ritual, and as he talks, Blaine gingerly rolls up his shredded cardigan sleeve. The demon had scratched him with its damn nails when it came in, slicing his arm open cleanly. He's bleeding, but the edges of his wounds are touched with something yellow, a paste or powder, and it stinks to high heaven. Stings, too.
He turns his attention back to the exorcism when the demon begins to scream. Kurt continues to talk, "...inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis. Humiliare sub potenti mana dei, contremisce..."
The demon howls in pain, but Kurt just shouts above it. It writhes and snarls and snaps its head to look at Blaine and says, panting, eyes still black, "You get rid of me, you kill her. This innocent little girl - " It throws its head back to shriek in agony again, and Blaine panics because the demon is right. He'd grabbed the iron rod from by the fireplace of this old house, thought only of his and Kurt's safety, thought nothing of the life this demon had taken over. When the demon goes, the girl is going to die from her wounds.
The guilt sets in. The demon preys on it. "Her name is Tina. She's got a boyfriend in a wheel chair and he's expecting her at home right now. You're killing his only family."
Blaine can't help it when the tears well up. He blinks them back and focuses in on the ritual; Kurt chants the final words - "Ut ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos!" - and the demon howls again, screeching as black smoke expels from the woman's mouth and drains, vanishing, into the trap on the floor.
The woman, Tina, coughs blood and clutches at herself before she goes limp, eyes no longer black but going empty with death. Blaine closes his eyes and hopes Kurt doesn't notice how upset he is.
He opens his eyes at the feel of Kurt touching his injured arm. "I'll fix this up for you at the motel," Kurt says, inspecting it and wiping away a little of the yellow substance with the tip of his finger, wrinkling his nose. "I cannot tell you the amount of beautiful, expensive clothes I've lost as casualties of war." Blaine winces when Kurt dabs some more at the yellow stuff.
"What is that? The paste thing," he inquires. His voice is unexpectedly strained.
Kurt looks up sharply at him. "It's sulfur. Where demons go, sulfur is left behind - and this demon, well, it manipulated its host's body and attacked you. I've not seen this kind of body manipulation before, but my... my dad did."
Blaine nods and looks past Kurt to Tina's body on the floor. Kurt looks over his shoulder then back at Blaine and he stresses, firmly but softly, "You know we can't save everyone. It’s enough that we got the demon."
"But if I didn't stab her," Blaine begins, and Kurt hushes him with a finger.
"Nuh-Uh. Don't think like that. It’s a doorway to too much unpleasant thinking, to doubt. Not many people survive what demons put them through anyway. And if she didn't die, if we let the demon live..." Kurt looks at Blaine expectantly.
Blaine closes his eyes and nods sadly, sighing. Of course. "It would have killed other people and she wouldn't have been living much of a life anyway."
"Exactly," Kurt confirms, then links fingers with Blaine on the arm that isn't injured. "Come on. Let's get out of here. We need to clean up. Your arm and my - " he points at the bloody swelling on his forehead.
Blaine frowns at it, then says, "Yeah. Let's go."
"Do you know why demons leave sulfur behind?" Kurt says, sounding surprisingly chipper as they make their way down to the car. Blaine shakes his head, and Kurt opens the car door for him and says, "It's brimstone. As in fire and brimstone. Born straight from the pit of Hell, and they can't ever shake off where they came from..."
~***~
The room turns out to be empty - of people, at least - and with a half-full packet of salt that Blaine finds discarded on the bed he quickly lines the window and door, even kneeling to shake a line of salt down in front of a low-lying wall vent. There are remnants of old salt lines in here, but they're broken, presumably by something or someone that wasn't Kurt. When he's lined the room, he forces himself to stop freaking out and flicks a light on; it shudders and threatens to blow, but soon steadies, casting the room in a yellowish light and revealing what there is to see.
And oh boy, there's a lot. It's paper, mostly. Sheets of A4 and smaller cuttings plaster the far wall. Some have been ripped down and litter the floor, crumpled and messy. The beds have been dragged forward, shoved together in the middle of the room. The sheets are clean, rumpled but spotless otherwise. They don't look like they've been slept in; slept on, maybe, had things on, but not pulled back and slept under. Blaine frowns. The end tables are turned over on their sides, drawers pulled open, one entirely disentangled from the rest of the cabinet and all the way on the other side of the room. The T.V. is smashed, tipped on the floor.
Blaine runs a hand through his hair, lost for words or thought, and that's when he sees the phone, peeking out from under one of the end tables. He dives for that first and curses when he picks it up. He doesn’t immediately recognise it, but it’s not likely to be a demon’s or something. They don’t exactly need to carry phones (demons have far more sinister ways of keeping in touch with each other). Just beyond where that was laying are the keys to the Impala; Blaine swears and stuffs them away in his pocket and instead turns to the phone.
Blaine stabs at the buttons until light flickers up and the phone turns on. Ignoring the situation being as weird as it already is, with the trashed room and the papers across the walls that Blaine hasn't so much as glanced at yet, it seems strange that the phone was just off and didn't have a drained battery or something like that. After a browse of the contents, looking over the contacts and messages, it’s definitely Kurt’s. His own number is in there, and text messages are signed off with his typical “xx K” that he offers to his friends. The phone is not what Kurt last had, though, and after investigating, it’s not registered with a number that Kurt has ever called Blaine from. A spare, perhaps?
It seems strange that the phone is even here. Kurt is the sort of person who has his phone - or, as it seems, phones - surgically attached, and with good reason considering some of the situations they can get themselves into as hunters.
Blaine chews his lip and pockets the phone, finding nothing of worth on it for the moment, turning his attention to the notes pinned and plastered to the wall. His forehead creases and his eyes widen, suddenly, as one newspaper headline circled in red marker catches his gaze.
4TH FOUND STABBED OUTSIDE OF HOME
And then another story, dated a month earlier. MAN FOUND DEAD IN DRIVEWAY. Then more articles, later and earlier, articles titled POLICE CONFIRM BELIEVED CONNECTION IN SALEM STABBINGS and NO LEADS IN HUNT FOR SALEM STABBER. Blaine feels the bubble of worry, the panic burning low in his stomach, threatening to turn to nausea as he puts it together, stepping closer to inspect the small text.
He only has to catch one line in an article about the police connecting the stabbings to understand: Traces of yellow sulfur were found at all scenes.
Blaine looks around the room and takes in the acrid stench and whispers to the air, "Kurt. What did you find?"
~***~
They drive to Lima on the eve of Kurt's 18th birthday, and they visit his mother’s grave. It must be just gone ten in the morning when they stand in front of the white marble marker, her name engraved in black. Kurt kneels and lays white roses across it, and Blaine stands at a distance, feeling like he's intruding as Kurt closes his eyes and touches the headstone.
Kurt looks up after a minute, maybe two, and just turns his head enough to make it clear he's acknowledging Blaine but not enough to look at him. "Did I ever tell you what happened to her?"
A crisp breeze blows by, sending shivers up Blaine's spine, and he quietly clears his throat and says, "I - no. Just that her - that she was the reason that your father started hunting. That he taught you to hunt."
Kurt swallows and Blaine dares to step closer. Kurt pats the ground next to him and Blaine kneels beside him as Kurt begins to talk, voice strained with grief. "I was seven. She was driving home from work. Back then, dad used to mostly look after me and she went out and earned the money." He laughs weakly, a sad fondness to his voice, "Dad wasn't ever the vastly intelligent sort, not the intelligence you need to hold for a job anyway. Too grumpy, too."
He clears his throat and continues, "She pulled into the driveway and... All I remember of it was her screaming. The rest is everything he told me. Dad ran out but by then it was too late. These men, with...black eyes, black like marbles, they were...stabbing her, holding her down. And they vanished by the time that dad was close enough. Just vanished. She died in his arms. And all Dad could smell was this peculiar stench, like rotten eggs. Like sulfur."
Blaine nods and says softly, "I'm sorry."
Kurt closes his eyes and leans against Blaine. He wraps his arm around Kurt's shoulders and listens as he continues, "Dad never believed it could be human. He spent all his time trying to hunt down the things that got her. She wasn't the only one stabbed at the time, so he thought it would be easy. But we never even found a trace. He didn't even get the names of the creatures. So him, and me when I got old enough, we hunted everything evil we came across."
He turns his head to face Blaine and says, "It's never been enough to just take out revenge on miscellaneous beasts. I don't remember her that well, you know, and that's what hurts the most. They didn't just steal my mother from me. They stole my childhood, my innocence, my father's heart, they stole my entire life." His voice trembles with growing anger. "I could have been normal. Happy. Safe."
Blaine rubs a hand down Kurt's back as the boy spits, "That's why I'm gonna get those things one day, Blaine. If it’s the very last thing I do before I die, I'll kill them."
~***~
It takes Blaine an hour or so, but he pulls down every last piece of paper and organizes it. Every newspaper clipping he orders by date. There are pages of books strewn up on the wall too, so he picks them apart and puts them in something of what he thinks is an order. The last thing he comes to is Kurt's notes: handwritten in a swirly cursive. He stares up at them, stuck and tacked and pinned to the wall. Even in notes about death and demons, Kurt has to look impeccable. It makes Blaine smile despite the situation, but partway through the smile he has to stop himself from choking up when the full force of how scary this is hits him.
Kurt is missing. There is a dangerous, dangerous demon, maybe more than one, that Kurt was hunting. This room is upended and stinking with the trace of something evil. All that's left are notes and Kurt's phone.
Blaine pauses. Kurt's phone.
His phone. Of course. Blaine pulls it out and swears at himself for being so damned stupid. What if Blaine wasn't the last person Kurt had called? Someone might have information. He can't believe it didn't occur to him sooner. He flicks through the menus and gets to the recently called list and there - two days after he called Blaine, he had called someone listed as Cas.
Blaine blinks, not recognizing the name or number, but presses the call button anyway, bringing it to his ear, and he just hopes that whoever is on the other end picks up and isn't too hostile.
It takes three, four, five rings, but they do, and a gravelly monotone says, "Kurt?"
Blaine swallows. "I - no, this is Blaine, I -”
The voice cuts him off, saying in the most serious voice that Blaine has ever heard, "We'll be right there." They hang up, and Blaine stares at the phone in confusion. Out of nowhere, the lights spark and burst, going out, and the voice talks again, saying darkly, "Where's Kurt Hummel?" Blaine spins around, yells and stumbles back against the beds, grabbing his gun and aiming it.
There are two people standing there. The tallest is a man in his thirties with a mess of dark hair and blue eyes, the shorter is a delicately-featured blonde. Blaine rests his finger on the trigger, flicks the safety off, and demands, "Who the hell are you two?" He glances frantically beyond them. The salt lines are all intact. How did they get in?
The man begins to talk, but the blonde steps forward and cuts him off, speaking in a soft, ever so slightly rasping voice, "His name is Castiel. My name is Quinn. We're angels, Blaine."
Blaine has seen a lot. But he hasn't seen angels. Kurt never talked about angels. He shakes his head. They're shape shifters, or demons, or something, they have to be. "I don't believe you. What do you want? How did you get over the salt lines?"
Quinn glances back at Castiel, who narrows his eyes and steps forward and repeats himself, "Where is Kurt Hummel?"
Blaine swallows. "I could ask you the same thing." He steps back from the strangers. He hesitates though and lowers the gun on a realization. He points at Castiel. "You were on the phone. You're Cas? What do you have to do with Kurt?"
Castiel frowns. Quinn speaks up again. "He helped us last year. He's our...friend." She smiles softly, reassuringly and says, "We can't see him in our vision and so we must call him, or he must call us. He made himself unpopular with other angels when he helped us. We obscured him from our gaze, from the gaze of all angels, to protect him."
Castiel contributes, "We carved Enochian sigils into his ribs."
Blaine stares, taking a minute before he processes it. Enochian. The angelic language recorded in the 16th century, though rumoured to predate Latin. The men who recorded it claimed angels had passed the knowledge to them. Blaine had always assumed it was more likely to be demons, but if these people are telling the truth...perhaps not. "Oh. That's normal." He shakes himself, pulling himself together, telling them, "I don't believe you're who you say you are. Tell me who you are, or prove it, and," he bluffs, desperate, "I'll consider telling you where Kurt is."
Quinn smiles very sweetly and says, "I think you already gave away that you don't know where he is." She tips her chin down and shit, Blaine has no idea where it comes from, but light illuminates them, bright white and glowing. He winces back from it but then sees something and gasps: wings, cast in shadow on the walls, huge and unfurling from them both, spreading only as far as the restrained space will allow them.
Blaine can't back away much further and oh, he wishes he could. Somehow the knowledge that he is, in fact, faced with two angels is less comforting than he imagined. It's more soul crushingly terrifying, actually, because firstly that means God probably exists and is an unhelpful son of a bitch but more importantly, how do you kill an angel? Does he even need to kill them?
The light vanishes, and the shadows are gone. "Are you convinced now?" Quinn remarks, and Blaine nods frantically, swallowing dryly.
Castiel steps around the room, nudging the overturned television with his foot and asking, "What happened here?"
"I don't know. I only got here a while ago," Blaine breathes, following the angel with his eyes. "Demons, probably."
Castiel growls a little, quietly, a curious little crinkle appearing along the sides of his nose as he does. He says, "That much is obvious."
Blaine shivers a little. This guy’s voice goes right through him. "When - when I came in there were broken salt lines," he offers, stuttering a little. "And all the papers organised on the bed, they were pinned to the walls with the rest. I found his phone and car keys. Apart from that and, and the smell of sulfur, there's nothing."
Quinn walks over to the papers and shuffles through them, lips pursed just so. She pauses on a torn out page from a book and breathes out slowly, visibly, and says, "Castiel. Xibalba demons. He was looking for two of the Xibalba demons."
Blaine straightens his spine and looks to Castiel's face; a brief emotion flashes across it, lips tightening and brow furrowing. Worry. It's gone as quickly as it comes, but it's there alright. Castiel pushes over and takes the sheet of paper that is offered to him, and grunts in what could be frustration.
"What's going on?" Blaine speaks up, then clears his throat when the angels ignore him, trying to sound more demanding. "Someone tell me what the hell is going on."
Quinn flicks her hair and turns to him. "Xibalba. It's a part of Hell, distinct from the rest. Your Mayans believed it was the sole underworld. It has twelve lords and...Kurt was looking for two of them."
Castiel says, peering through the sheets, "It seems they've been making trips above ground." He sniffs deeply and looks around the room, blue eyes wide, almost as though he can see things that Blaine can't. Blaine just stares between the two of them in confusion, about to ask for hello, elaboration when Castiel continues, "They're not what was here though."
Blaine gestures wildly with his hands and says desperately, "How do you know this? What lords was Kurt looking for...?"
Castiel looks down, head tipped to the side, gripping the sheet of paper Quinn had given him tightly in one hand. He angles his body towards Blaine and says, sounding as if he's reciting, "All the lords had been assigned their duties. Each one was given his own authority by Hun-Came and Vucub-Came. They were, then, Xiquiripat and Cuchumaquic, lords of these names. Others were called Ahalpuh and Ahalgana, also lords. Others were Lord Chamiabac and Chamiaholom, constables of Xibalba, whose staffs were of bone."
He pauses and turns his eyes to Blaine and finished, "Others were called Lord Ahalmez and Lord Ahaltocob; their work was to bring disaster upon men, as they were going home, or in front of it, and they would be found wounded, stretched out, face up, on the ground, dead. This was the work of Ahalmez and Ahaltocob, as they were called."
He grumbles and seemingly as an afterthought adds, "Immediately after them were other lords named Xic and Patan."
Blaine turns to Quinn in search of less cryptic answers. She brushes her fingers over the papers and asks softly, "Those two, Ahalmez and Ahaltocob. Sound familiar?"
His eyes widen. "The stabbings." Then, the full force of realization hits Blaine in the chest and sinks down into stomach and he exclaims, "His mother! Kurt's mother was stabbed by two demons. He's been searching for what killed her his whole life."
Blaine spins to Castiel and said, "But you said they aren't what was here."
"No," The angel muses, then admits gravely, "I think he stumbled onto something much darker. Something bigger."
PART TWO