Armistice, Part 5
PART FOUR
Blaine is not good with knives, swords, whatever you’d like to call them, once they’re... big enough to kill big things with, really. He gets nervous far too easily. He’s paranoid that one wrong swing and he’ll lop off someone’s arm, Kurt’s arm since Kurt is the only one who’s ever within swinging distance anyway.
This is why he isn’t particularly looking forward to facing up against vampires. Whilst most things can be killed by cutting off their heads, vampires are the only things that literally require it. Blaine’s much more comfortable with a gun. Hell, give him a flamethrower so he can race after a Wendigo. He’ll do it, but he hates hunting vampires.
“Here you go,” Kurt says pleasantly, after cleaning the blade that he hands to Blaine. It’s a little longer than his forearm, with one sharp, smooth edge curved to one side. It’s an odd design, he thinks, not that he knows anything about swords.
“Why’s it like that?” Blaine asks, gesturing vaguely.
Kurt looks at him blankly. “Why is it like what, Blaine?”
“It’s not sharp all over or something.” He frowns. He hates that sometimes he still feels at a total loss in this hunting business when put up against Kurt’s vastly superior knowledge in everything. They’ve been hunting together two years now, and Blaine is still surprised every day.
Kurt makes a noise and then explains, taking the sword back and gesturing down the sharp edge, “It’s a type of scimitar. A backsword. They’re light and easy to use, and strong and sturdy because,” he runs his fingers along the blunt edge, “this part is the thickest, and it supports it.”
Blaine nods, drinking in the information. Scimitar. Right.
“Sharp, too,” Kurt murmurs, handing it back to Blaine. He tests it in his grip, nervous. Kurt watches him. “I know that last time we came up against a vampire, you had a heavier thing and you didn’t do too well and it almost killed you. We’re up against two this time, so you need to be better prepared. You remember how I taught you to handle it, yes?”
“I remember,” Blaine murmurs, and with that, they’re out to the car, and off to the house that they found the two vampires squatting in.
“They’re probably going to be hungry,” Kurt whispers when they pull up down the street from the house. “Pickings are slim around here. They’ll be weak, but they’ll also rip your throat open any chance they get.”
“Great,” Blaine mutters, and they climb out, weapons held close to the chest. Kurt’s sword is heavier, thicker, longer, and Blaine feels just the tiniest bit inadequate next to him, but he pushes the feeling aside. They have a job to do. He can get picky about the size of his sword later.
When they enter the house, it appears empty. These things always do, Blaine reasons, and he keeps his back close to the wall, edging through and searching. He’s about to abandon the south room of the house, declare it clean, when there - out of the shadows, lurches a vampire, eyes wide and teeth extended down.
Blaine wishes, as he yelps and swings the blade messily at the vampire - slashing open its belly - that these things were more like the vampires of movies. These beasts are something far more primal, far less sophisticated, far less beautiful.
They have normal teeth most of the time. Then they get hungry, and the second row of big, sharp, white teeth descend from the gums, and they’re suddenly animalistic.
Blaine ducks and swings the scimitar, jamming it into the neck of the vamp that then howls and yells in pain and manages to yank out of Blaine’s grasp, flailing messily before collapsing on the floor in an unpleasant heap, trying to crawl towards Blaine with a sword sticking out of its neck.
Blaine would much prefer to deal with shiny, sparkling Robert Pattinsons any day.
He dips low and retrieves his sword from the vampire’s neck, dodging the stream of blood that spurts out everywhere. He presses his foot down into the center of the vampire’s back, flattening it to the floor, and then swings high above his head and hacks messily - one, two, three, four, five -until the head finally separates from the body and drops to the floor, rolling a little.
Kurt appears, and says, “Oh, you did it” and he sounds surprised. Blaine pouts a little. He’s rather proud of himself, personally.
The second vampire appears behind Kurt, and he doesn’t so much as get to yell a warning when Kurt turns and in one swift, strong movement severs the head.
Blaine stares as the body crumples and the head bounces away.
~***~
“Remind me, why are we attacking at night?” Blaine murmurs, eyeing Jesse and Rachel and running a stone across the edge of the clunky machete they’ve given him. It’s already sharp, but honestly, this passes the time a little, steadies his nerves as they stake out the nest. “The vampires will be strong and awake. Granted, they’re not much weaker during the day, but all the same.”
“The vampires will leave to find food,” Jesse drawls, in very much an “I’m-reminding-you” voice, and Blaine narrows his eyes a little at him as he keeps talking. “The others will be around the outside. It’s all about the element of surprise. If we can get inside, and kill those in there, we can kill the rest one by one as they come in.”
“This feels like a death trap,” Blaine moans, dropping the stone and sighing. “The aim of being a hunter is to kill, not be killed.”
“We’ll be fine,” Rachel shushes him, and they duck low as vampires slowly start to mill out of the nest; it’s in the form of an abandoned, half torn-down, old school, and the deceptively human looking creatures split off in several directions. Six or so leave, and five others come out and just bask in the night air, patrolling the grounds. Blaine wonders how they’re getting away with all this undetected, but then humans have a remarkable ability to be ignorant of the things happening under their noses. Blaine would know.
Jesse gestures silently for Blaine to go in one direction, for Rachel to go in another, and that’s what they do, stalking silently through the grass. They manage to take out the first three vampires virtually at the same time, and undetected; Rachel lops the first head off and breaks to her knees to catch the body and head and lay it still. Jesse less subtly slams them into a wall and runs his machete through their throat. Blaine punches his, gets it down, then hacks hard and fast in two strokes to get the head off.
The other two are trickier. Blaine’s ambushed when he’s spotted; a vampire is on his back all of a sudden and clawing at his skin. It takes all of his restraint to not howl in pain - and all of his energy to throw it off him, spinning and driving the machete into its chest. Jesse comes out of nowhere, swinging down and beheading it.
Blood splatters them both. “Thanks,” Blaine murmurs, looking down at how he’s drenched already. Chopping off heads is a messy business.
Jesse shrugs, “You need to be more careful.”
Jesse jogs off to find Rachel, and Blaine yanks his blade from the vampire’s chest, wondering if it would prevent Rachel from helping him if he killed her husband. He follows to see Rachel finish cutting off the last patrolling vampire’s head, dragging it up by the hair that she grips tightly in one hand. The body falls away. The head stays in Rachel’s hand until she throws it across the grass.
The tiny, bubbly girl he’d met early is rather terrifying to him now, frankly. “We’ll have to pile the bodies and burn them once we’re done here,” she says, strolling towards them and wiping her machete carefully on her tiny skirt. Blaine stares. Jesse smiles like this is a normal sight.
“Let’s go,” Jesse instructs, and with that, they head in, stepping carefully through the building. There’s a slumbering vampire in the first classroom; Jesse kills him with ease, setting the body and head down gently. They try to pad silently through, but before long, down a wide corridor that extends through the very center of the building, they’re beset with vampires, fanged teeth extended and eyes violent.
“Backs to me,” Blaine yells, without thinking, and they fall into a formation, keeping close with their shoulders touching in a triangle and warding off attacks from all angles. There is no real good way to cut off the heads of the vampires surging towards them - it’s all too fast, not good enough, can’t get the machete in the right way.
There are ten or so and it takes three minutes for the first vampire to go down, but not before it sinks its teeth into Jesse’s calf. The man bellows, though, and swings down hard, hard enough to half-sever the neck, and that’s enough to leave it twitching and bleeding on the floor so they can keep fighting without worry of it fighting back.
The vampire going for Blaine is distracted by the casualty and Blaine kicks it down and drives his blade through its neck twice, not pausing to see the head wobble when it rolls separate - he’s too busy slashing out at the next vampire, yelling with exertion when he has to use his elbows to try and keep one out of his face and its teeth away from his body.
Jesse grunts and Rachel screams to him as she cuts another down dead, “Is it bad? Jesse!”
“I’ll live,” Jesse assures her, and they smile at one another and continue to hack at the remaining vampires. Blaine would roll his eyes if there wasn’t a female vampire trying to eat him. He manages to boot her in the stomach, kicking her away long enough to get the swing right and he surprises even himself with a clean cut that kills the vampire instantly.
There’s lots and lots of slashing and hacking; the dull, wet thud of swords chopping through flesh. Blaine’s highly surprised that save for scrapes and bruises, and Jesse’s leg having been somewhat snacked on, they make it through alive. They kill all the vampires that are after them, and relax when they finally realise that no more are coming.
They’re alone, with decapitated corpses littered at their feet. Blaine squeezes his eyes shut to collect himself, because when he really thinks about how many things and people he’s killed as a result of his job, he starts to get queasy. Murder is murder, after all.
“You okay?” Rachel whispers, and Blaine nods. Jesse slides down against a wall and tends to his leg, grimacing. Blaine decides that for once, Jesse has the right idea, and joins him, simply sitting back. They can breathe for the moment. Rachel, seemingly wound up tight with energy, chooses not to sit.
“More vampires will return soon,” Rachel reasons, and Blaine nods, but all the same remains seated. He’s pretty quick at getting up onto his feet - a place like this, a lot of sounds echo, particularly once it reaches this main hallway. Even their soft steps gave them way, and when vampires return with food the last thing on their mind will be being discreet within their own nest. They’ll hear them coming from way off.
But then an hour passes, and then two, without a single sound. They split up at the two and a half hour mark, with Jesse remaining in place as Rachel prowls the inside of the building and Blaine circles the outside. He ends up dragging the vampire bodies in, simply nervous about them leaving corpses around, but it’s otherwise empty. He wipes his brow and sits, leaned up against the opposite wall to Jesse.
Rachel reports back similarly. The three of them share concerned frowns.
Four hours pass, and then a few more hours go by and the sun rises and the vampires still aren’t back. Now, the sun doesn’t turn a vampire to ash like the myths try to claim. It gives them a rather nasty sunburn, and they have light-sensitive eyes, but it doesn’t kill them. They would have, none the less, returned by now, and Jesse is the first to say factually, “They’re not coming.”
Rachel tosses her hands up in the air, still remarkably pacing. Blaine, personally, has weary, tired eyes now, drooping shut with every other word, but he strives to listen as Rachel stalks up and down. “Oh, brilliant! We’ve lost this nest of vampires. How do we lose a nest of vampires?”
Without thinking about it, Blaine pokes the head of one of the creatures with his machete and murmurs, “Well, they’re the ones who’ve been managing to lose their heads. I reckon we’re faring okay.” He stifles a grin and a snigger. Apparently he’s at that stage of tired where everything slowly becomes hilarious.
Rachel glares at him. Blaine casts his eyes down apologetically, clearing his throat, and collecting himself, becoming sensible once more. “Where have the vampires been picking up people to feed on? Has it been all within the same area?”
“All within a mile radius of a group of very particular buildings,” Jesse fills in. He shifts where he’s sitting, hauling himself to his feet, testing his leg which he barely winces in response to. These two are tough, Blaine realises, and for all that Jesse greatly irritates him, he gives them credit for that. “They’re all night clubs, shady places.”
“Perfect spots for vampires to pick up unsuspecting victims, then,” Blaine says, and he too stands to his feet. Rachel looks between them and Blaine nods at her, then glances at Jesse. “Are we going there or what?” Now that they’ve started this particular job they can’t leave it half-finished; the vampires could still come back to a mess of death and will go wild.
Jesse looks as though he’s contemplating shooting Blaine down, but he then waves a hand and says, “We need to burn these bodies first.”
“I’ll go to the car and get what we need,” Rachel says, and the two men nod in acknowledgement and Blaine starts to drag the bodies into an empty classroom. Jesse stalks down to find the vampire they’d killed upon first entering, carrying it into the classroom that Blaine is now slowly stacking the bodies in.
Rachel returns when they still have a few bodies to go, armed with a bag of salt and a can of gasoline tucked under one arm, and her machete and a box of matches balanced a little awkwardly in the hand of the other. “Ready?” She asks after a few minutes, and Jesse plants the last head ceremoniously on top of the bloody pile and nods.
She hands off the gasoline to him, and he, limping a little, wanders around the mound in a circle, pouring it across the bodies, splashing it as much as he can. Blaine takes the salt and does the same. Salt is useful for so many reasons, and when it comes to bodies, it ensures that nothing nasty comes back from beyond the grave. Salt and burn the bones. It’s a way too common practice in this line of work. Usually, though, it’s a singular grave, or a couple of bodies, and it’s not as... unsafe as this. He asks, warily, as Rachel prepares to strike a match, “Should we really be lighting up a pile of gasoline-laced bodies indoors?”
Jesse shrugs. “The building is hardly being kept safe as it is. We’re doing the town a favour.” Blaine can’t really argue that logic, in reality, so he just steps out of the room and watches as Rachel chucks three lit matches onto the pile. It catches and lights up fast, and then the three of them make a swift exit from the school and drive off into the town.
Blaine drops off asleep within a minute or two of the drive. The city lights at night are soothing, the glowing orange more comforting than a disturbance as they flicker by, and when he rests his forehead against the cool glass of the window in the back of Rachel and Jesse’s car, it’s too tempting. His eyes slip shut. He gives himself over a welcome, restful oblivion, but it doesn’t last long.
Nothing ever does, he thinks in a sleepy unexpected bought of negativity when Rachel shakes him awake. “We’re here,” she says, and he immediately rouses himself and gets out of the car, rubbing his eyes and inhaling the cold night air so sharply that it hurts his chest.
They’re parked down a wide, but nonetheless dingy and dirty alleyway, and they clean off their weapons in the shadows. The constructions around them are all long and connected, but they’re all separate establishments, and a very quick peek out along the street shows various club names. Blaine hums and, just in case, plucks his gun and the demon killing knife from a bag of his things on the back seat, tucking them into the back of his waistband. Jesse beckons for Blaine to follow as they make the walk down a right in the alley, behind the places. They’re going to enter the clubs from the back, Blaine realises as he looks around, and he’s quite glad of that. If the light hit them and there were people outside - well. The blood on their clothes would be hard to explain away.
He eyes the buildings, frowning at how graffiti-covered they are. It’s stylistic, he supposes, but all the same, he swears he’s never seen a building with quite so many markings on it. He pauses to stare at one symbol, though, in a faint green-yellow spray that glows in the dark. “Guys,” he calls, glancing at them as they keep walking down the alley. Blaine sighs and glances along the building. Some are small but numerous, others large but spaced out, and something clicks. He yells, then, “You guys!”
They finally stop, and Blaine runs to catch up with them, breathless by the time he gets there and exclaims, “They’re trying to keep something out. Or something in.”
Jesse raises an eyebrow and Rachel says in a panic, “What?!”
Blaine swallows, catching his breath before he says, “You didn’t notice, or recognise them? Those symbols in the glowing paint all over this building?” he gestures wildly, “It’s Enochian.” They look at him blankly and Blaine scowls a little. Okay, so he’s not proficient in the language, but he knows what it looks like, and he thought it was general hunter knowledge. “Angelic language. Or, that’s where it originated. I have,” he laughs a little, because it feels ludicrous to talk about, “I have an Enochian symbol carved into my heart. If someone’s put Enochian on a building, it’s to keep something out, or to keep something in. Either way, it’s not good.”
Just because it’s an angelic language, it doesn’t mean it’s just used by the angels, unfortunately. Blaine, having never encountered angels whilst he was with Kurt, doesn’t know all that much about it, but he’s studied it long enough (part of a Required-Reading-If-You-Don’t-Want-To-Die series established by Kurt back when they first began hunting together) to recognise it and to know that it’s commonly used to lock things up or hide them. The building might well be invisible or non-enterable for angels or hell, even demons, or any kind of supernatural being that the painter so wished to keep out.
“Something big and bad, then?” Rachel asks, and Blaine nods.
Jesse tuts as though he doesn’t believe anything could be big and bad enough for them not to handle. Blaine is sorely tempted to point out that out of the three of them, he’s the only one who’s come out of tonight with a genuine injury, but then Jesse is pulling open one of the back doors, so he doesn’t.
They walk in with their weapons down, expecting to find something of an active club, but it’s deadly silent. Yes, they’re in the back rooms, but it shouldn’t be this quiet. They exchange wary glances, then head deeper inside. There’s not even music playing, but the lights are all on...
They hit the kitchen and Rachel slips in to investigate, and Blaine walks past her to get out towards the bar. There’s a gagging noise from the kitchen - and Blaine would find out why, but he doesn’t have to. He’s pretty sure, as he walks out and observes the state of the club’s main room, that he knows what Rachel’s found. “Oh, hell.”
One or more gruesome bodies if what he’s seeing is anything to go by.
There are bits of bone, flesh, and blood everywhere, as though people have literally exploded. Blaine picks up a tooth that’s still got bits of gum stuck to it from the bar surface and grimaces before he flicks it across the room. There are larger, lopped off bits of bodies, dismembered hands and arms, some people cut into messy big chunks and others cut off finer at the joints. Other people have simply been stabbed to death, or had their stomachs or throats torn open, sometimes all three.
Blaine feels sick, he won’t lie. The carnage is simply that: carnage. But he can’t afford to get really upset over it. It’s awful, god fucking awful, but now they’re here, they should definitely investigate. He steps over a pair of shoes with feet in them but no body attached, and wonders if that was the bartender. He holds back a wave of nausea as his shoes squish in goo and strips of flesh and skin. It’s practically unavoidable, though. He kneels down by the first intact head and pulls back the gums.
“We found our vampires,” Blaine calls, and Jesse emerges with a very green looking Rachel. She takes one look at the mess and covers her mouth and runs out. Jesse hesitates, then decides not to go after her, and steps further in. Blaine eyes him. “She spent half of tonight cutting off heads. Why is she squeamish now?”
Jesse shrugs, disgust written across his face as he examines the disaster. “She deals with things in different ways.” Blaine doesn’t get it, but he lets it go, and he’s moving on to examine a body with its throat torn out when Jesse says, “There’s someone alive.”
He’s leaning on the bar and pointing, so Blaine turns and indeed, someone is struggling up on the other side of the room. They’re covered in blood and wounds, and Blaine gets up and nearly slips on entrails as he dashes over and supports their body in his arms. “Hey, hey! Don’t try and move too much. What’s your name?”
They’re a very pretty, small Filipino woman, and she coughs hard and sags against Blaine before she regains strength and laughs. “Shit, I’m Sunshine, but I’m just fine, thank you.” She looks at him, and Blaine goes cold when her eyes flood black. She blinks and they’re brown again, and he drops her. She falls onto the soaked floor and scowls. “Now that’s just rude.”
“Demon,” Blaine says blankly. She lies back in the mess and claps sarcastically.
“You seem real good at pointing out the obvious.” She looks over at Jesse, who’s still stood behind the bar, and says, “Are you gonna just stand there all night?”
Jesse seems quiet for once, unsure what to do, and looks to Blaine. He waves a hand. “Go find Rachel. Make sure she’s okay. Go back to the car. Wait for me, would you? This won’t take long.”
“What are you planning?” Jesse asks, skeptically.
“I don’t have a plan,” Blaine says, honestly. He keeps his eyes firmly on Sunshine, who just blinks up at him innocently. Once Jesse has left, doors slamming behind him, Blaine leans over her and says, “You’re dying.”
“M’not,” Sunshine responds defiantly, and scowls.
“Yes, you are.” He looks her up and down. “I don’t know how I didn’t notice right off the bat. Your body is basically dead because it’s taken so much critical damage. Is Sunshine your name or hers, by the way?”
“Hers,” Sunshine shrugs, and she scrapes her fingers through the gaping hole where her stomach used to be. “But I like it.” She sags her shoulders. “Alright, yes, I’m dying. I need a new body soon.” She eyes him.
Blaine shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. I’m protected against possession.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Fine,” then asks, “What do you want? You haven’t killed me yet, and we’re all alone, and whilst I do believe our bodies have some kind of Asian solidarity, I don’t think you’re quite into that enough to bang me when I haven’t got a stomach. So what do you want?”
“What happened in here?” Blaine asks softly.
Sunshine’s eyes go dark and angry. “Balaam. A demon. Some idiot hunter rocked the boat, performed a bad ritual, and out he swoops from hell, and he comes after us all.” She sits upright. “He’s been walking across the country. Finding his old followers. Killing the traitors who got him caged.” She giggles, but it’s violent, unhappy. “So many fucking cages in hell, you think they’d have better security.”
Blaine’s stomach lurches. Walking across the country. Old friends. “Balaam?”
“Balaam,” Sunshine murmurs, plucking at her intestines. “Oh, gross,” she grumbles, then says, “Gathered us all up in here and locked us in with warding symbols. Us and some vamps. I don’t know what he wanted the vamps for, but there he went, killing us all. Except me, it seems.”
Blaine reaches behind himself, finds what he’s looking for tucked away in his waistband, and says, “No, he killed you too.” He pulls out the knife and drives it down hard into her chest, and she gapes wide-eyed at him before she goes limp and lifeless like everything else in the room.
Blaine pulls it from her chest with a slick crunching noise as it scrapes across bone, then leaves the club, going down to the car where Rachel (who is a little pale, but far less ill looking) and Jesse are waiting in the front seats.
He climbs in and shuts the door hard, and Jesse says, “Well?”
“A demon lured them there,” Blaine murmurs, but he doesn’t reveal the name, or the possibility that it was Kurt. God, Kurt. If it was the demon inside him - he was so close and Blaine missed him. He knows it can’t be helped, but god, he’s so angry at himself. “The demon’s moved on. Old news now, I think. They were old enemies of his or something.”
Jesse nods. Rachel reaches back and hands Blaine a brown envelope. “You’ve helped us now,” she says, turning awkwardly in her seat to face him. “This is everything we have on Kurt.” Blaine stares at her then rips it open, not even caring that he’s smearing bloody fingerprints on the papers and photos he pulls out. She talks as he examines them in the dim lights. “He’s become quite the internet phenomenon. Bare footed, sharply dressed, but no single photo ever comes out right when depicting his face. It’s like it’s moving in all directions, all at once... It just becomes a black mass.”
Blaine swallows hard as he pulls at one particular photo. It’s definitely Kurt. The tall, lithe body, the suit that Blaine recognises as a favourite of Kurt’s. The face is indeed black and blurred with motion. His hands and feet are dirty and rough-looking. The hard evidence of Kurt’s fate sends a shiver down Blaine’s spine, and then the nausea of earlier returns in waves and hits him hard, and he just opens the car door in time to vomit into the alleyway.
“Jesus! Are you okay?” Rachel exclaims, and Jesse just makes an appalled noise and turns his head away.
Blaine manages to sit up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and shuts the car door. The moment is over and he slides the photos away into the envelope, deciding to look at them later when he’s not quite so...ill from everything. “I’m good,” he murmurs, clutching his stomach.
“If you throw up in my car, you’ll be paying for the cleaning,” Jesse warns.
Blaine waves a hand. “I won’t throw up.”
Jesse starts the engine and reverses out of the alley. “Good.”
“We’re just going to leave that building?” Blaine hears Rachel murmur.
Jesse responds, “Do you want to clean someone’s brains from the walls...?”
“Oh. Not particularly, no...” Rachel giggles, a marked sudden change in mood, and she’s animatedly talking to Jesse about what they should do with some free time in the next few days when Blaine passes out in the back seat.
PART SIX
Blaine is not good with knives, swords, whatever you’d like to call them, once they’re... big enough to kill big things with, really. He gets nervous far too easily. He’s paranoid that one wrong swing and he’ll lop off someone’s arm, Kurt’s arm since Kurt is the only one who’s ever within swinging distance anyway.
This is why he isn’t particularly looking forward to facing up against vampires. Whilst most things can be killed by cutting off their heads, vampires are the only things that literally require it. Blaine’s much more comfortable with a gun. Hell, give him a flamethrower so he can race after a Wendigo. He’ll do it, but he hates hunting vampires.
“Here you go,” Kurt says pleasantly, after cleaning the blade that he hands to Blaine. It’s a little longer than his forearm, with one sharp, smooth edge curved to one side. It’s an odd design, he thinks, not that he knows anything about swords.
“Why’s it like that?” Blaine asks, gesturing vaguely.
Kurt looks at him blankly. “Why is it like what, Blaine?”
“It’s not sharp all over or something.” He frowns. He hates that sometimes he still feels at a total loss in this hunting business when put up against Kurt’s vastly superior knowledge in everything. They’ve been hunting together two years now, and Blaine is still surprised every day.
Kurt makes a noise and then explains, taking the sword back and gesturing down the sharp edge, “It’s a type of scimitar. A backsword. They’re light and easy to use, and strong and sturdy because,” he runs his fingers along the blunt edge, “this part is the thickest, and it supports it.”
Blaine nods, drinking in the information. Scimitar. Right.
“Sharp, too,” Kurt murmurs, handing it back to Blaine. He tests it in his grip, nervous. Kurt watches him. “I know that last time we came up against a vampire, you had a heavier thing and you didn’t do too well and it almost killed you. We’re up against two this time, so you need to be better prepared. You remember how I taught you to handle it, yes?”
“I remember,” Blaine murmurs, and with that, they’re out to the car, and off to the house that they found the two vampires squatting in.
“They’re probably going to be hungry,” Kurt whispers when they pull up down the street from the house. “Pickings are slim around here. They’ll be weak, but they’ll also rip your throat open any chance they get.”
“Great,” Blaine mutters, and they climb out, weapons held close to the chest. Kurt’s sword is heavier, thicker, longer, and Blaine feels just the tiniest bit inadequate next to him, but he pushes the feeling aside. They have a job to do. He can get picky about the size of his sword later.
When they enter the house, it appears empty. These things always do, Blaine reasons, and he keeps his back close to the wall, edging through and searching. He’s about to abandon the south room of the house, declare it clean, when there - out of the shadows, lurches a vampire, eyes wide and teeth extended down.
Blaine wishes, as he yelps and swings the blade messily at the vampire - slashing open its belly - that these things were more like the vampires of movies. These beasts are something far more primal, far less sophisticated, far less beautiful.
They have normal teeth most of the time. Then they get hungry, and the second row of big, sharp, white teeth descend from the gums, and they’re suddenly animalistic.
Blaine ducks and swings the scimitar, jamming it into the neck of the vamp that then howls and yells in pain and manages to yank out of Blaine’s grasp, flailing messily before collapsing on the floor in an unpleasant heap, trying to crawl towards Blaine with a sword sticking out of its neck.
Blaine would much prefer to deal with shiny, sparkling Robert Pattinsons any day.
He dips low and retrieves his sword from the vampire’s neck, dodging the stream of blood that spurts out everywhere. He presses his foot down into the center of the vampire’s back, flattening it to the floor, and then swings high above his head and hacks messily - one, two, three, four, five -until the head finally separates from the body and drops to the floor, rolling a little.
Kurt appears, and says, “Oh, you did it” and he sounds surprised. Blaine pouts a little. He’s rather proud of himself, personally.
The second vampire appears behind Kurt, and he doesn’t so much as get to yell a warning when Kurt turns and in one swift, strong movement severs the head.
Blaine stares as the body crumples and the head bounces away.
~***~
“Remind me, why are we attacking at night?” Blaine murmurs, eyeing Jesse and Rachel and running a stone across the edge of the clunky machete they’ve given him. It’s already sharp, but honestly, this passes the time a little, steadies his nerves as they stake out the nest. “The vampires will be strong and awake. Granted, they’re not much weaker during the day, but all the same.”
“The vampires will leave to find food,” Jesse drawls, in very much an “I’m-reminding-you” voice, and Blaine narrows his eyes a little at him as he keeps talking. “The others will be around the outside. It’s all about the element of surprise. If we can get inside, and kill those in there, we can kill the rest one by one as they come in.”
“This feels like a death trap,” Blaine moans, dropping the stone and sighing. “The aim of being a hunter is to kill, not be killed.”
“We’ll be fine,” Rachel shushes him, and they duck low as vampires slowly start to mill out of the nest; it’s in the form of an abandoned, half torn-down, old school, and the deceptively human looking creatures split off in several directions. Six or so leave, and five others come out and just bask in the night air, patrolling the grounds. Blaine wonders how they’re getting away with all this undetected, but then humans have a remarkable ability to be ignorant of the things happening under their noses. Blaine would know.
Jesse gestures silently for Blaine to go in one direction, for Rachel to go in another, and that’s what they do, stalking silently through the grass. They manage to take out the first three vampires virtually at the same time, and undetected; Rachel lops the first head off and breaks to her knees to catch the body and head and lay it still. Jesse less subtly slams them into a wall and runs his machete through their throat. Blaine punches his, gets it down, then hacks hard and fast in two strokes to get the head off.
The other two are trickier. Blaine’s ambushed when he’s spotted; a vampire is on his back all of a sudden and clawing at his skin. It takes all of his restraint to not howl in pain - and all of his energy to throw it off him, spinning and driving the machete into its chest. Jesse comes out of nowhere, swinging down and beheading it.
Blood splatters them both. “Thanks,” Blaine murmurs, looking down at how he’s drenched already. Chopping off heads is a messy business.
Jesse shrugs, “You need to be more careful.”
Jesse jogs off to find Rachel, and Blaine yanks his blade from the vampire’s chest, wondering if it would prevent Rachel from helping him if he killed her husband. He follows to see Rachel finish cutting off the last patrolling vampire’s head, dragging it up by the hair that she grips tightly in one hand. The body falls away. The head stays in Rachel’s hand until she throws it across the grass.
The tiny, bubbly girl he’d met early is rather terrifying to him now, frankly. “We’ll have to pile the bodies and burn them once we’re done here,” she says, strolling towards them and wiping her machete carefully on her tiny skirt. Blaine stares. Jesse smiles like this is a normal sight.
“Let’s go,” Jesse instructs, and with that, they head in, stepping carefully through the building. There’s a slumbering vampire in the first classroom; Jesse kills him with ease, setting the body and head down gently. They try to pad silently through, but before long, down a wide corridor that extends through the very center of the building, they’re beset with vampires, fanged teeth extended and eyes violent.
“Backs to me,” Blaine yells, without thinking, and they fall into a formation, keeping close with their shoulders touching in a triangle and warding off attacks from all angles. There is no real good way to cut off the heads of the vampires surging towards them - it’s all too fast, not good enough, can’t get the machete in the right way.
There are ten or so and it takes three minutes for the first vampire to go down, but not before it sinks its teeth into Jesse’s calf. The man bellows, though, and swings down hard, hard enough to half-sever the neck, and that’s enough to leave it twitching and bleeding on the floor so they can keep fighting without worry of it fighting back.
The vampire going for Blaine is distracted by the casualty and Blaine kicks it down and drives his blade through its neck twice, not pausing to see the head wobble when it rolls separate - he’s too busy slashing out at the next vampire, yelling with exertion when he has to use his elbows to try and keep one out of his face and its teeth away from his body.
Jesse grunts and Rachel screams to him as she cuts another down dead, “Is it bad? Jesse!”
“I’ll live,” Jesse assures her, and they smile at one another and continue to hack at the remaining vampires. Blaine would roll his eyes if there wasn’t a female vampire trying to eat him. He manages to boot her in the stomach, kicking her away long enough to get the swing right and he surprises even himself with a clean cut that kills the vampire instantly.
There’s lots and lots of slashing and hacking; the dull, wet thud of swords chopping through flesh. Blaine’s highly surprised that save for scrapes and bruises, and Jesse’s leg having been somewhat snacked on, they make it through alive. They kill all the vampires that are after them, and relax when they finally realise that no more are coming.
They’re alone, with decapitated corpses littered at their feet. Blaine squeezes his eyes shut to collect himself, because when he really thinks about how many things and people he’s killed as a result of his job, he starts to get queasy. Murder is murder, after all.
“You okay?” Rachel whispers, and Blaine nods. Jesse slides down against a wall and tends to his leg, grimacing. Blaine decides that for once, Jesse has the right idea, and joins him, simply sitting back. They can breathe for the moment. Rachel, seemingly wound up tight with energy, chooses not to sit.
“More vampires will return soon,” Rachel reasons, and Blaine nods, but all the same remains seated. He’s pretty quick at getting up onto his feet - a place like this, a lot of sounds echo, particularly once it reaches this main hallway. Even their soft steps gave them way, and when vampires return with food the last thing on their mind will be being discreet within their own nest. They’ll hear them coming from way off.
But then an hour passes, and then two, without a single sound. They split up at the two and a half hour mark, with Jesse remaining in place as Rachel prowls the inside of the building and Blaine circles the outside. He ends up dragging the vampire bodies in, simply nervous about them leaving corpses around, but it’s otherwise empty. He wipes his brow and sits, leaned up against the opposite wall to Jesse.
Rachel reports back similarly. The three of them share concerned frowns.
Four hours pass, and then a few more hours go by and the sun rises and the vampires still aren’t back. Now, the sun doesn’t turn a vampire to ash like the myths try to claim. It gives them a rather nasty sunburn, and they have light-sensitive eyes, but it doesn’t kill them. They would have, none the less, returned by now, and Jesse is the first to say factually, “They’re not coming.”
Rachel tosses her hands up in the air, still remarkably pacing. Blaine, personally, has weary, tired eyes now, drooping shut with every other word, but he strives to listen as Rachel stalks up and down. “Oh, brilliant! We’ve lost this nest of vampires. How do we lose a nest of vampires?”
Without thinking about it, Blaine pokes the head of one of the creatures with his machete and murmurs, “Well, they’re the ones who’ve been managing to lose their heads. I reckon we’re faring okay.” He stifles a grin and a snigger. Apparently he’s at that stage of tired where everything slowly becomes hilarious.
Rachel glares at him. Blaine casts his eyes down apologetically, clearing his throat, and collecting himself, becoming sensible once more. “Where have the vampires been picking up people to feed on? Has it been all within the same area?”
“All within a mile radius of a group of very particular buildings,” Jesse fills in. He shifts where he’s sitting, hauling himself to his feet, testing his leg which he barely winces in response to. These two are tough, Blaine realises, and for all that Jesse greatly irritates him, he gives them credit for that. “They’re all night clubs, shady places.”
“Perfect spots for vampires to pick up unsuspecting victims, then,” Blaine says, and he too stands to his feet. Rachel looks between them and Blaine nods at her, then glances at Jesse. “Are we going there or what?” Now that they’ve started this particular job they can’t leave it half-finished; the vampires could still come back to a mess of death and will go wild.
Jesse looks as though he’s contemplating shooting Blaine down, but he then waves a hand and says, “We need to burn these bodies first.”
“I’ll go to the car and get what we need,” Rachel says, and the two men nod in acknowledgement and Blaine starts to drag the bodies into an empty classroom. Jesse stalks down to find the vampire they’d killed upon first entering, carrying it into the classroom that Blaine is now slowly stacking the bodies in.
Rachel returns when they still have a few bodies to go, armed with a bag of salt and a can of gasoline tucked under one arm, and her machete and a box of matches balanced a little awkwardly in the hand of the other. “Ready?” She asks after a few minutes, and Jesse plants the last head ceremoniously on top of the bloody pile and nods.
She hands off the gasoline to him, and he, limping a little, wanders around the mound in a circle, pouring it across the bodies, splashing it as much as he can. Blaine takes the salt and does the same. Salt is useful for so many reasons, and when it comes to bodies, it ensures that nothing nasty comes back from beyond the grave. Salt and burn the bones. It’s a way too common practice in this line of work. Usually, though, it’s a singular grave, or a couple of bodies, and it’s not as... unsafe as this. He asks, warily, as Rachel prepares to strike a match, “Should we really be lighting up a pile of gasoline-laced bodies indoors?”
Jesse shrugs. “The building is hardly being kept safe as it is. We’re doing the town a favour.” Blaine can’t really argue that logic, in reality, so he just steps out of the room and watches as Rachel chucks three lit matches onto the pile. It catches and lights up fast, and then the three of them make a swift exit from the school and drive off into the town.
Blaine drops off asleep within a minute or two of the drive. The city lights at night are soothing, the glowing orange more comforting than a disturbance as they flicker by, and when he rests his forehead against the cool glass of the window in the back of Rachel and Jesse’s car, it’s too tempting. His eyes slip shut. He gives himself over a welcome, restful oblivion, but it doesn’t last long.
Nothing ever does, he thinks in a sleepy unexpected bought of negativity when Rachel shakes him awake. “We’re here,” she says, and he immediately rouses himself and gets out of the car, rubbing his eyes and inhaling the cold night air so sharply that it hurts his chest.
They’re parked down a wide, but nonetheless dingy and dirty alleyway, and they clean off their weapons in the shadows. The constructions around them are all long and connected, but they’re all separate establishments, and a very quick peek out along the street shows various club names. Blaine hums and, just in case, plucks his gun and the demon killing knife from a bag of his things on the back seat, tucking them into the back of his waistband. Jesse beckons for Blaine to follow as they make the walk down a right in the alley, behind the places. They’re going to enter the clubs from the back, Blaine realises as he looks around, and he’s quite glad of that. If the light hit them and there were people outside - well. The blood on their clothes would be hard to explain away.
He eyes the buildings, frowning at how graffiti-covered they are. It’s stylistic, he supposes, but all the same, he swears he’s never seen a building with quite so many markings on it. He pauses to stare at one symbol, though, in a faint green-yellow spray that glows in the dark. “Guys,” he calls, glancing at them as they keep walking down the alley. Blaine sighs and glances along the building. Some are small but numerous, others large but spaced out, and something clicks. He yells, then, “You guys!”
They finally stop, and Blaine runs to catch up with them, breathless by the time he gets there and exclaims, “They’re trying to keep something out. Or something in.”
Jesse raises an eyebrow and Rachel says in a panic, “What?!”
Blaine swallows, catching his breath before he says, “You didn’t notice, or recognise them? Those symbols in the glowing paint all over this building?” he gestures wildly, “It’s Enochian.” They look at him blankly and Blaine scowls a little. Okay, so he’s not proficient in the language, but he knows what it looks like, and he thought it was general hunter knowledge. “Angelic language. Or, that’s where it originated. I have,” he laughs a little, because it feels ludicrous to talk about, “I have an Enochian symbol carved into my heart. If someone’s put Enochian on a building, it’s to keep something out, or to keep something in. Either way, it’s not good.”
Just because it’s an angelic language, it doesn’t mean it’s just used by the angels, unfortunately. Blaine, having never encountered angels whilst he was with Kurt, doesn’t know all that much about it, but he’s studied it long enough (part of a Required-Reading-If-You-Don’t-Want-To-Die series established by Kurt back when they first began hunting together) to recognise it and to know that it’s commonly used to lock things up or hide them. The building might well be invisible or non-enterable for angels or hell, even demons, or any kind of supernatural being that the painter so wished to keep out.
“Something big and bad, then?” Rachel asks, and Blaine nods.
Jesse tuts as though he doesn’t believe anything could be big and bad enough for them not to handle. Blaine is sorely tempted to point out that out of the three of them, he’s the only one who’s come out of tonight with a genuine injury, but then Jesse is pulling open one of the back doors, so he doesn’t.
They walk in with their weapons down, expecting to find something of an active club, but it’s deadly silent. Yes, they’re in the back rooms, but it shouldn’t be this quiet. They exchange wary glances, then head deeper inside. There’s not even music playing, but the lights are all on...
They hit the kitchen and Rachel slips in to investigate, and Blaine walks past her to get out towards the bar. There’s a gagging noise from the kitchen - and Blaine would find out why, but he doesn’t have to. He’s pretty sure, as he walks out and observes the state of the club’s main room, that he knows what Rachel’s found. “Oh, hell.”
One or more gruesome bodies if what he’s seeing is anything to go by.
There are bits of bone, flesh, and blood everywhere, as though people have literally exploded. Blaine picks up a tooth that’s still got bits of gum stuck to it from the bar surface and grimaces before he flicks it across the room. There are larger, lopped off bits of bodies, dismembered hands and arms, some people cut into messy big chunks and others cut off finer at the joints. Other people have simply been stabbed to death, or had their stomachs or throats torn open, sometimes all three.
Blaine feels sick, he won’t lie. The carnage is simply that: carnage. But he can’t afford to get really upset over it. It’s awful, god fucking awful, but now they’re here, they should definitely investigate. He steps over a pair of shoes with feet in them but no body attached, and wonders if that was the bartender. He holds back a wave of nausea as his shoes squish in goo and strips of flesh and skin. It’s practically unavoidable, though. He kneels down by the first intact head and pulls back the gums.
“We found our vampires,” Blaine calls, and Jesse emerges with a very green looking Rachel. She takes one look at the mess and covers her mouth and runs out. Jesse hesitates, then decides not to go after her, and steps further in. Blaine eyes him. “She spent half of tonight cutting off heads. Why is she squeamish now?”
Jesse shrugs, disgust written across his face as he examines the disaster. “She deals with things in different ways.” Blaine doesn’t get it, but he lets it go, and he’s moving on to examine a body with its throat torn out when Jesse says, “There’s someone alive.”
He’s leaning on the bar and pointing, so Blaine turns and indeed, someone is struggling up on the other side of the room. They’re covered in blood and wounds, and Blaine gets up and nearly slips on entrails as he dashes over and supports their body in his arms. “Hey, hey! Don’t try and move too much. What’s your name?”
They’re a very pretty, small Filipino woman, and she coughs hard and sags against Blaine before she regains strength and laughs. “Shit, I’m Sunshine, but I’m just fine, thank you.” She looks at him, and Blaine goes cold when her eyes flood black. She blinks and they’re brown again, and he drops her. She falls onto the soaked floor and scowls. “Now that’s just rude.”
“Demon,” Blaine says blankly. She lies back in the mess and claps sarcastically.
“You seem real good at pointing out the obvious.” She looks over at Jesse, who’s still stood behind the bar, and says, “Are you gonna just stand there all night?”
Jesse seems quiet for once, unsure what to do, and looks to Blaine. He waves a hand. “Go find Rachel. Make sure she’s okay. Go back to the car. Wait for me, would you? This won’t take long.”
“What are you planning?” Jesse asks, skeptically.
“I don’t have a plan,” Blaine says, honestly. He keeps his eyes firmly on Sunshine, who just blinks up at him innocently. Once Jesse has left, doors slamming behind him, Blaine leans over her and says, “You’re dying.”
“M’not,” Sunshine responds defiantly, and scowls.
“Yes, you are.” He looks her up and down. “I don’t know how I didn’t notice right off the bat. Your body is basically dead because it’s taken so much critical damage. Is Sunshine your name or hers, by the way?”
“Hers,” Sunshine shrugs, and she scrapes her fingers through the gaping hole where her stomach used to be. “But I like it.” She sags her shoulders. “Alright, yes, I’m dying. I need a new body soon.” She eyes him.
Blaine shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. I’m protected against possession.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Fine,” then asks, “What do you want? You haven’t killed me yet, and we’re all alone, and whilst I do believe our bodies have some kind of Asian solidarity, I don’t think you’re quite into that enough to bang me when I haven’t got a stomach. So what do you want?”
“What happened in here?” Blaine asks softly.
Sunshine’s eyes go dark and angry. “Balaam. A demon. Some idiot hunter rocked the boat, performed a bad ritual, and out he swoops from hell, and he comes after us all.” She sits upright. “He’s been walking across the country. Finding his old followers. Killing the traitors who got him caged.” She giggles, but it’s violent, unhappy. “So many fucking cages in hell, you think they’d have better security.”
Blaine’s stomach lurches. Walking across the country. Old friends. “Balaam?”
“Balaam,” Sunshine murmurs, plucking at her intestines. “Oh, gross,” she grumbles, then says, “Gathered us all up in here and locked us in with warding symbols. Us and some vamps. I don’t know what he wanted the vamps for, but there he went, killing us all. Except me, it seems.”
Blaine reaches behind himself, finds what he’s looking for tucked away in his waistband, and says, “No, he killed you too.” He pulls out the knife and drives it down hard into her chest, and she gapes wide-eyed at him before she goes limp and lifeless like everything else in the room.
Blaine pulls it from her chest with a slick crunching noise as it scrapes across bone, then leaves the club, going down to the car where Rachel (who is a little pale, but far less ill looking) and Jesse are waiting in the front seats.
He climbs in and shuts the door hard, and Jesse says, “Well?”
“A demon lured them there,” Blaine murmurs, but he doesn’t reveal the name, or the possibility that it was Kurt. God, Kurt. If it was the demon inside him - he was so close and Blaine missed him. He knows it can’t be helped, but god, he’s so angry at himself. “The demon’s moved on. Old news now, I think. They were old enemies of his or something.”
Jesse nods. Rachel reaches back and hands Blaine a brown envelope. “You’ve helped us now,” she says, turning awkwardly in her seat to face him. “This is everything we have on Kurt.” Blaine stares at her then rips it open, not even caring that he’s smearing bloody fingerprints on the papers and photos he pulls out. She talks as he examines them in the dim lights. “He’s become quite the internet phenomenon. Bare footed, sharply dressed, but no single photo ever comes out right when depicting his face. It’s like it’s moving in all directions, all at once... It just becomes a black mass.”
Blaine swallows hard as he pulls at one particular photo. It’s definitely Kurt. The tall, lithe body, the suit that Blaine recognises as a favourite of Kurt’s. The face is indeed black and blurred with motion. His hands and feet are dirty and rough-looking. The hard evidence of Kurt’s fate sends a shiver down Blaine’s spine, and then the nausea of earlier returns in waves and hits him hard, and he just opens the car door in time to vomit into the alleyway.
“Jesus! Are you okay?” Rachel exclaims, and Jesse just makes an appalled noise and turns his head away.
Blaine manages to sit up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and shuts the car door. The moment is over and he slides the photos away into the envelope, deciding to look at them later when he’s not quite so...ill from everything. “I’m good,” he murmurs, clutching his stomach.
“If you throw up in my car, you’ll be paying for the cleaning,” Jesse warns.
Blaine waves a hand. “I won’t throw up.”
Jesse starts the engine and reverses out of the alley. “Good.”
“We’re just going to leave that building?” Blaine hears Rachel murmur.
Jesse responds, “Do you want to clean someone’s brains from the walls...?”
“Oh. Not particularly, no...” Rachel giggles, a marked sudden change in mood, and she’s animatedly talking to Jesse about what they should do with some free time in the next few days when Blaine passes out in the back seat.
PART SIX