A/N: Okay, first of all, I want to apologize for the RIDICULOUSLY late update. I recently underwent surgery for a torn ACL and really wasn't feeling up to typing for a while. But even after I began feeling like myself again, massive amounts of school work began to take up literally all of my time :( And then, when I finally did get time to type, my stupid computer lost the file and I had to type the chapter over again. Ugh, I hate the world sometimes.
So anyway, I'm really REALLY sorry for all who guys who had to wait for this. Don't worry. I haven't given up on this story :) Anyway this chapter is on the longer side so I hope it sort of makes up for it.
Warnings: Graphic violence, derogatory name calling, and copious amounts of gore.
Kurt can't squander his remaining supply of air.
He can almost feel the scent around him, how it hangs like weights in the air, how it brushes seductively past his inactive nose, how it twists and turns in a balletic dance through the interior of the car. He can nearly hear its call, its voice not appearing literally to him but rather in the form of Blaine's wheezing breaths, of the boy's stuttering, frantic heartbeat...
…of the faint, but compelling drip, drip, drip of blood on glass-littered pavement.
He can hear it.
It pounds in his ears like a tribal drum.
And as Blaine chokes periodically on his own breath, as he trembles and coughs, as it spatters in globs onto the ground beneath his chin, Kurt begins to feel a whirling in his skull, a lightness that brings panic and the reminder of decaying time. A voice, different from the hypnotic calling of Blaine's blood, flickers to life in his mind, shouting, pleading…
Help him.
But Kurt can't take his eyes off the policeman just outside the opposite window.
He can't stop staring at the man's face, the features drawn together in twisted malice and hatred, the smile so horrifyingly familiar it sends a jolt straight to the middle of Kurt's chest, knocking away the last of his clean air. Kurt sputters in surprise, his head pounding with the beat in his ears, with the drip drip outside of the cab, with the wheezing, the coughing, the terrifying groans and whimpers. On an impulse, he yanks the collar of his shirt up and over his mouth and nose, gasping the slightly less tainted air that filters through the fibers of the cloth. His other hand whips over and grips the driver's side door behind him, his knuckles white and straining, his arm trembling with desire and fear and panic.
Half of the man's face hides in shadow, the blotches of darkness hugging the wide set plane of his forehead, conforming to the wrinkles around his eyes that accompany his threatening sneer.
Kurt doubts he will ever forget that sneer.
He's certain that, if he makes it out of the garage alive, he will remember it for the rest of the endless number of days that stretch before him. For the rest of what society has come to call life.
His head gives a tiny, weak shake of disbelief.
"Karofsky…" he breathes. "No…no…"
The man's grin grows impossibly wider until it's nearly manic, his teeth glinting in the artificial glow of the lamps above.
"Hey there, Kurt."
Kurt's breath hitches and quivers. His eyes finally break away and dart around the car, searching for an escape route. His head swivels to look out his window and he swallows with dread as he sees three more policemen standing just outside his side of the car.
He's trapped.
He turns at the return of Karofsky's voice.
"It's been a while, hasn't it, Kurt?" the man begins, clasping his hands behind his back and stepping casually forward, closer to the passenger window. "How long's it been, huh? Ten years? I'd say that's about right."
He takes another slow step and lowers his body to peer inside the car at Kurt, like an exterminator leering at a cornered mouse.
"Ten years…and you haven't changed one bit. Literally."
Kurt shudders violently as he notices the nearly imperceptible change in Karofsky's demeanor, at the way his hateful eyes grow darker, shinier, hungrier.
With trembling lips, Kurt forces a small pocket of air through his throat to form a few fearful words.
"You've changed a lot," he whispers.
He's right. The Karofsky he knew at McKinley is only a shadow of the one standing in front of him, the boyish features replaced with muscled masculinity. The man is almost twice as built as he was before, his stature straight and solid, his arrogance giving off an aura of power and invincibility. The only recognizable trait is the trademark smirk and glare, both disgusted and perverse.
Kurt knows now why he hadn't recognized him at the apartment building; there had been too many differences and too much panic to fully focus. He hadn't been on top of his fear. He had put Blaine in danger.
"Yes. I have," Karofsky states candidly in response. He draws one of his hands in front of him, examining the inside of his wrist with mild interest. A small scar consisting of two darker pinpoints and a faded crescent rests on the deathly pale skin. After a moment of tense silence, he glances back at Kurt from beneath the lids of his eyes. "But unlike you, I decided to wait until I was older to take the plunge. You have to be at least twenty-one to join the force and, since football wasn't an optimal career path for me, I decided to go another route. It gave me a chance to find myself. To find my calling. I bulked up, as you can see," he paused with another smirk. "And then once I was changed, I signed up for the required restraint classes in order to be considered for a position on the squad. I passed them with flying colors."
Karofsky smiles even wider at how Kurt's body grows ever more tense as time goes on, as the scent of Blaine's blood permeates everything in the immediate vicinity. Not even Kurt's shirt can mask all of it, and it slowly begins to seep into his mind; it begins to unhinge him.
"Restraint classes are a necessity, you see," Karofsky drawls, turning his body partially so his eyes rest on Blaine's writhing figure, the boy still spitting up drops of blood here and there, past the point of groaning and gasping, enduring the pain in a choked off silence.
"Being a part of this system means you are bound to encounter rogue humans at some point. Sometimes, if the situation calls for it, you're forced to get rid of some that possess unfit blood to be sold on the market. You know these kind," he says, his eyes narrowing as Blaine attempts to pull himself off the concrete, only to lose balance and collapse again, his mouth gaping with pain. "The diseased, the drug users…you can't keep them and you can't let them go. So there's only one other option."
He looks back over at Kurt, keeping his body turned away. "What life has not taught you yet is the difference between packaged blood and fresh blood. Because, there is a difference. A huge one."
Without hesitation, Karofsky bends down and fists his large fingers in Blaine's hair, yanking the boy upwards and onto his feet. Blaine lets out a strangled yelp but does not struggle, perhaps too exhausted or too frightened to summon the nerve. Two other police step forward to flank him, grabbing Blaine's arms and twisting them roughly behind his back.
Kurt's breaths are short and raspy, his eyes darting back and forth between Karofsky and Blaine, between the sadist and the victim. Blaine's face is white with pain and fear, his lips no longer sporting the healthy, natural pink Kurt has come to love. A few trails of red spill from his mouth and down his chin, disappearing temptingly underneath the curve of his jaw. The boy's breath whistles raggedly through his clenched teeth and send shivers of sorrow and terror down Kurt's spine.
"This," Karofsky begins, gesturing to the tracks of red, "is so, so much stronger than what you buy at a store, so much more potent. The farming companies; they knew that an average man couldn't control himself if presented with the original, organic product. So they decided to find a solution. They infused chemicals to dull the effect, to dilute it. Consequently, this made the actual nutritional value plummet. But what they found out was that, rather than being a drawback, this was a bonus. It meant people would be buying a less fulfilling product more often than buying a more fulfilling product less often. It meant more dollars in the companies' pockets."
As Karofsky trails off in his digression, Blaine begins to stir, tugging weakly against the policemen's hold.
"K-Kurt…please…" he rasps before Karofsky turns on him with a horrifying glower.
"Shut up," he growls, simultaneously drawing back his fist and slamming it into Blaine's jaw with a dangerous amount of force. Kurt's stomach lurches with desperate fright and terrible desire as Blaine's face crunches beneath the policeman's knuckles, his head whipping sideways much too fast. The sound of his scream blasts through the garage and Kurt see's his eyes roll back in their sockets before his body slumps like a dead weight. The only things holding him up are the two men at his side. Silent tears build and fall down Kurt's cheeks.
"Now," Karofsky continues, his brow still set in a glare. "The reason I'm telling you all of this is to drive home the point that, no matter what your goddamn fairy mind chooses to think or believe, humans are our prey. We feed on them, sometimes for sustenance and, hell, sometimes for the fun of it. It's our natural instinct."
Kurt swallows against the drum in his head, against the fluctuating shadows lining his vision, slowly but surely turning his world a deep burgundy. His hands are trembling so violently, the one gripped to the door makes it rattle in its frame.
"But you, for some unexplainable reason, choose to go against your nature," Karofsky continues, his voice dropping to a lower, more threatening tremor. His entire body tenses with unmistakable anger and loathing. "You choose to be a traitor to you own kind. You choose this," he spits, pointing a finger at Blaine who now remains hanging in the policemen's grip, unmoving, lifeless. "You choose this thing over your own world, your own family. How dare you? Is it really that important of a plaything that you'd keep it to yourself and deprive the rest of the world of a meal?"
He leans away from Blaine and back towards the car, dipping his head through the window this time, his face closer to Kurt than ever before.
"Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you back in the city?" He hisses menacingly. "Did you really think I'd be that stupid? You know Kurt, I've always known that you were a disgusting little faggot, but I never pegged your scrawny ass as inconsiderate."
Kurt's entire body shakes, his eyes wide and staring, his breath gasping, wheezing, shuddering…
His tongue slicks unconsciously against his fang-like canines.
His stomach hurls, his chest aches…
The smell…it's too much.
Karofsky pauses, examining the boy coming to pieces in front of him, and grins.
"You're going to crack," he says darkly. "And I'm going to stand by and watch as you shred your precious little toy to pieces."
Kurt begins to shudder audibly, his head twisting around, looking for something, anything that could stop him. But Karofsky's patience wanes quickly and the man reaches in and grips Kurt's face forcefully, twisting it back around. A short laugh escapes his lips before he shoves the hand he'd used to strike Blaine less than an inch from Kurt's mouth and nose.
And everything, every sound, smell, taste, and sensation, explodes.
Kurt's glinting pupils retract and then burst outward, nearly matching the circumference of his golden irises.
Every single thought process in his mind immediately shuts down.
Because, the hand that rests in front of him, the hand of the man he fears and hates the most in the world, is smeared with Blaine's blood.
"Quinn, why do we have to keep waiting? We've been trailing these guys for hours. I'm bored; I want some action—"
"Shut it, alright? I told you on the way that this kind of thing is a delicate process. You can't just barge on in; you have to wait for the opportune moment."
"But all these guys have been doing is sitting and talking —"
"Hey!"
Silence fills the air, a sharp, tangible warning. The eager boy's words die and hang between them.
"Don't call talk about those things like they're people. They're not like us."
"But…" the boy protests weakly, "they were at some point…right?"
Another beat of silence. But this time, the tired girl is massaging her temples delicately, moving her pistol temporarily to the holster on her belt. She sighs heavily and squeezes her eyes closed, wishing, praying that all this is some god-awful, extended nightmare she would wake from.
"Sam…" she murmurs petulantly, shaking her head the way a parent would when scorning a child. "Just…grow up a little, okay?"
She opens her eyes in time to see the boy swallow heavily, hiding his misery behind the façade of innocence and childishness.
"I…okay…" he replies after a while, his eyes downcast and sorrowful. "Sorry…"
Quinn chooses not to respond, instead letting her head peek around the corner again and observe the bizarre interchange between the two creatures in the car.
The engine is off and they don't show any sign of emerging any time soon, both of them engaged in some kind of important conversation that involves somewhat intimate body language. Her head cocks to the side in confusion as she sees their two silhouettes join in what must be—has to be—a kiss, a kiss so meaningful and heartfelt she can feel it in her bones only from watching, a groundbreaking thing, a miracle. Her mind twitches with intrigue as she sees their outline of their arms and hands, tracing and memorizing one another's face as if it were something holy or sacred, like two deities blind to their own individual elegance.
"I don't understand this…"she mumbles to herself, her fingers absentmindedly brushing against the comforting steel of her gun, as if the small contraption could explain and justify this anomaly, this rarity of feeling and compassion.
She has been tracking the pair since they left the city. Her interest had been piqued at the sight of them entering the parking garage together, when she'd realized the shorter of the two was indeed human and not the excuse for life the rest of the city was filled with.
It's extremely rare to run into another human nowadays. And when one does, the poor fellow is usually twisted out of his mind, every function stunted with fear and terrible memories that recur over and over like a broken tape. But, as she crouches behind the sheltering plane of the wall, she can tell this one is unlike any she's encountered outside of her colony. He seemed alert back in the city, frightened nonetheless, but whole. He seems whole now.
And he's sucking face with a vampire.
Quinn's face sinks into a frown.
"There's got to be something wrong with this picture," she mumbles again to herself.
"Why, what's going on?" Sam questions rather loudly.
"Shush!" she hisses, eyes darting back to the car, where the vampire and the boy are still tightly embraced. "What are you stupid? We'll get caught."
"What's going on…?" Sam asks again, his voice dropping down to a whisper. Quinn rolls her eyes with an exasperated sigh and furrows her brow.
"I've never seen this happen before, "she answers. "A human and…one of them, together. It's not natural."
Sam's lips purse in confusion. "Is it because they're both guys? Because that's kind of an unfair judgment, Q—"
"Sam. Shut. Up." She spits with gritted teeth. "I mean that there's got to be some kind of motive for the vampire. Blood, maybe…or sex….or sex and then blood, if it decides to use him and then kill him after. It's just bizarre that it would got to all that effort to get it out of the city…maybe he didn't want to share."
Suddenly noise begins to echo through the interior of the garage, faint but distinct. A group of men dressed in uniforms—authority figures, no doubt—saunter quietly up to the lone car, some with short, blunt objects in hand. The human and creature don't seem to notice, too wrapped up in their exchange to realize what surrounds them. Quinn backs up behind the corner, keeping the majority of her head out of view but nevertheless allowing herself to watch the events unfold.
The peculiarity of the situation dawns on her when she notices the black masks obscuring their faces, but she doesn't get the chance to delve into it further before they rear back in unison and bash the windows in with a few devastating blows. Their clubs send the glass flying in all directions, though most of it is directed inwards at the two inhabiting the car. The shards that fly astray glance off the side door, twirling in the air and catching the lights above like razor sharp confetti as it rains onto the concrete. Quinn gasps audibly in surprise, but thankfully it goes unnoticed from beneath the cacophony of bellows and screams emanating from both the inside of the car and the burliest officer.
She can hear the human as clear as day, can see him through the now busted back windshield as he pinches something out of his forearm. She would not have known what it was had the small piece of glass not glinted in his grip.
"Sam…" she breathes her eyes wide with shock. She watches in horror as two of the officers step forward and reach through what is left of the passenger window, grabbing a hold of the dark haired boy and yanking him through. The sound of glass shards tearing through his shirt and skin reach her even through the sound of his screams and she grits her teeth against a wave of emotion, one so strong it threatens tears in even her eyes. She reaches her empty hand back and fumbles in the air before Sam finally accepts it in his, and is immediately comforted by the warmth there.
Quinn chances a look back at Sam and is greeted by the strong, mature expression he adopts in situations such as these, so different from before it's almost as if a light switch had flicked on in his brain. She doesn't smile, but instead gives the blond boy's hand a small squeeze, feeling a comforting warmth spread in her chest. This is why she brings him on these types of missions. Not entirely because he's strong, or cute—though those are definitely contributing factors—but because, when the time comes, he acts as her anchor. Her grounds her in place, like the roots to a flower in a strong wind.
Quinn looks back just in time to see the rubber sole of a boot connect with the boy's torso.
"Oh god…" she grimaces, watching as he coughs and sputters up mouthfuls of blood, his choked off gurgles echoing against the walls. "Sam, what do we do? These monsters are killing him…"
"I'll radio Mike and Rory to get down here."
"Where are they right now?"
"Mike's scouting the second floor and Rory's right behind him. Don't worry' they're fast. They'll get here soon."
Quinn nods, her face set in businesslike determination though her insides feel like a swirling torment of confliction. Her left hand curls tightly around the butt of her pistol and she takes additional comfort in the feel of textured metal beneath her fingertips, reveling in the sense of power she is awarded, like a shot of adrenaline to her limbs.
The largest of the officers is facing towards the car now, speaking quietly to the smaller, brown haired creature still sitting in the driver's seat. Upon closer inspection, Quinn notices that it is covering its face with its shirt, shrinking into the corner of the seat in fear. Its face is scrunched up with a mixture of pleasure and disgust, but either way the tautness of its muscles indicates a high level of discomfort and desperation. A small flicker of curiosity lights up in the back of her mind, a fragment of thought, nothing more.
What if, it begins, the creature actually cares for the human? What if it's different from the rest of them?
But she shoos the traitorous notion away with a scoff.
Apparently she'd lost track of how long she'd been watching them, because all of a sudden a hand grips her shoulder lightly and Mike's voice sounds in her ear.
"What's the game plan, Q?"
Quinn manages to cover the small jolt that the contact caused and turns to face her team. Mike, as tall and lean as ever, towers in the small corner of their hideaway. Rory, much shorter and a tad bit wider framed, leans around the dancer and waves meekly, still not accustomed to the groups operative style.
"How's the rest of the building doing?" She asks, skipping pleasantries to save time. Mike gives a thumbs up, responding shortly with an "All clear."
"I killed one of them just now," Rory pipes in from behind Mike in his Irish drawl, an excited sparkle giving extra life to his olive eyes. "We were walking along the edge of the wall when one of them got out of their car. Mike was reloading so I got to shoot it. I had pretty good aim if I say so my—"
"That's nice Rory, but you can tell your stories later. We have a situation here," Quinn interrupts. She gestures silently around the corner of the wall and allows the two of them to draw their own conclusions, though it's pretty obvious now that the human is being held forcefully upright and his face, chin, and shirt are soaked in blood. Rory gasps in surprise and Mike's lips pull down in a frown.
"How long has this been going on?" he asks, his eyes still fixed in front of him.
"A few minutes," Quinn responds immediately. "I think the boy is unconscious now. At least, he was moving a lot more a moment ago."
"So, how do you think we should handle this, then?"
Quinn ponders the question for a minute, pulling out her gun and idly switching off the safety.
"Mike, take off your silencer. The more noise we have the better our advantage; they don't seem to be expecting any company so it'll be easier to startle them if we go in shooting. Sam, you and I will take the two holding the boy and the big one next to them. Mike, since you're a good shot, I'm assuming you can take out the ones standing by the trunk from here; get them now while their backs are turned. After that there are three more standing on the driver's side that we'll divvy out when the time comes. Everyone okay with that?"
Sam and Mike nod together, their brows set and their mouths pressed into a thin line.
"Wait," Rory cuts in, "what about me? I didn't get an assignment."
"You're in charge of covering our backs. You're the lookout in case those demons send any backup."
"But…but you're not letting me fight?"
Quinn barely conceals her exasperated sigh. "Look, you're a newbie and we can't risk you getting yourself into trouble. We're all going to be busy with our own kills, and we don't have the time or manpower to save you. Once you go through full gun training and target practice you can help us fight, but until then, it would be absolute stupidity if I sent you out there."
Before Rory has the chance to protest again, Quinn cuts him off a final, sharp comment. "Just because they're only armed with sleepers doesn't make them any less dangerous. Get one of those lodged in you and you might as well consider yourself farmed already."
Rory swallows heavily at the word 'farmed' and steps backward, lowering his head in embarrassment.
Quinn gives him a small, empathetic frown before turning back to Mike and Sam, both of her hands wrapped firmly around her weapon, her index finger nudging at the trigger.
"On three."
Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing is concrete. The only thing he can fully trust to be reality is the thoughts swirling in his mind, no matter how dulled they are with panic and fear.
I thought dying was supposed to be peaceful and happy, his inner voice wonders. I thought you were supposed to feel warm...warm and just like you were floating…but I'm not floating, I'm drowning…why am I drowning…?
Blaine's body sags motionless in his captors arms, his legs too exhausted to hold him upright on his own. The searing pain from before died down a minute ago and all that's left now is a numb and incredibly uncomfortable pressure on his chest, a weight that suffocates him slowly and yet at the same time allows him to breathe. With each ragged inhale he can feel the weight getting heavier on his lungs, and for a moment, Blaine's bleary mind debates whether he would prefer the pain over the horrible pressure. If he could make a sound, he would. But he can't. His throat is practically on fire.
Besides, he's screamed enough for one day.
He never thought about dying before the plague hit. And even after the plague, after he'd started running, he'd always known for some reason his own death would be quick and painless, something he would most likely inflict on himself so that nobody else could. He never contemplated what it would be like to die slowly. But who would? Who could imagine that torture, realistically?
The speech going on around him passes in and out of his ears, some registering with him and the rest completely ignored. He doesn't have the energy to focus on them. His world lies shrouded in a haze.
He can barely see the blurry outline of the largest officer standing in front of him, the man's muscled girth acting as a wall between him and the car. Blaine can hear small snippets of what he is saying, and the boy somehow registers that the man is talking to Kurt, calling him names, mocking him, taunting…You little fairy, you dirty faggot…
Blaine wishes he could stand up and tell the man to pick on someone his own size.
The darker side of his mind scoffs in response.
Since when have you ever stood up to a bully? Coward…coward…you ran away…
'Shut up' Blaine tries to say, but the only action his body allows is a slight movement of his lips and an almost inaudible, breathy moan.
Kurt….Kurt where are you?
He tries to open his eyes for the first time since they closed, and the florescent lights shoot daggers behind his retinas, making his world spin and his stomach heave.
Moving….everything's m-moving…why can't I move…?
He tries to shift his body somehow but all that amounts is a sort of twitch, his attempt immediately followed by a sharp jab in the back from the officers holding him, their gloved fingers digging cruelly into the long, bleeding gashes.
Blaine's body is reintroduced to the concept of pain. His eyes and mouth drop open in shocked agony, the twirling world around him almost forgotten. His abused throat refuses to allow another scream, settling for a quiet, choked off "Aah". He's weak. He can feel the waterfall of blood soaking the back of his shirt, reaching all the way down his jeans to the middle of his thighs. Eventually the torturous pain dies down and is yet again replaced with the pressure, even worse now from the short, jagged breaths he'd taken. The debate from before regarding the preference of pain over pressure seems ridiculous to him now. He'd gladly take the pressure. But even before that, he'd much more gladly take unconsciousness, possibly even death. Only if it meant some relief.
Suddenly, just before his eyes begin to drift closed again, a low growl cuts through the air.
Blaine's mind sputters into action. Small shots of strength pulse into his limbs. With the jolt of awareness comes the aching of other parts of his body—his jaw, his ribs, his back, his scalp—but he doesn't care in the slightest. Something about that growl had resonated with him, something about the delicate way in which it had been voiced, though mixed with wildness and ferocity at the same time.
The sound had been, unmistakably, Kurt's.
Blaine's wide gaze is fixed on his shoes, his head hung past his shoulders. After a small moment of preparation, he lifts up his face to look straight ahead, ignoring the way everything registers as swirls and blurred splashes of color. His stomach doesn't agree in the slightest, and he's forced to swallow back vomit, but as his equilibrium catches up with him he begins to see in more detail. Blaine begins to see that the largest officer had stepped out of the way of the passenger window, allowing easy visual access into the cab, much to Blaine's desperate excitement. He can see the blurred silhouette of Kurt now, and a feeling of relief overcomes him so strongly he lets out a happy, tear filled sob.
"Kurt…" he attempts to say, but all that comes out is the sound of the consonant and an exhaling breath. A large small pulls and stretches his cracked lips.
He wishes the garage would stop teetering on its axis so he could see the boy he loves clearer. In order to make this a reality, he summons all the remnants of strength in his body to pull his shoulders up around his chin, allowing his head to rest in them as if they were a steadying base. Somehow his plan manages to work, and everything shimmers back into focus, like the turning of a camera lens.
But once the clarity solidifies, Blaine's heart drops down into his stomach.
Because the person staring back at him is not his Kurt.
If one was to look at it from a logical point of view, they may argue that, yes, this being is Kurt, just not in his usual form. But no matter how convincing the evidence, Blaine would not agree.
The Kurt he knows doesn't look this…this feral.
The once golden eyes are replaced with ones as black and sinister as a great white shark, glinting with desire and hunger and an inherent evil that sends violent shivers down Blaine's spine. The brown haired boy lets his tongue glide along the upper set of his teeth, lingering on the sharpest pair and breathing heavily through his nose, all remnants of civility—of humanity—utterly and completely gone.
A snippet of a memory is pulled from the back of Blaine's mind, from when he'd hit his head on Kurt's shelf in his closet. He remembers the look on Kurt's face for that one, tiny moment, how the boy's features had betrayed that same want…that same need. But only for a moment, because Kurt had then thrown himself onto his bed.
But this time there are no scented pillows to save him.
"Kurt…no…no no no no…" Blaine whispers raggedly, the tears from a moment ago taking on a different meaning, changing into ones of fear and sorrow and heartbreak. They trail down his cheeks, mixing with the tracks of red to create sickly blotches of pink.
The not-Kurt begins to crawl towards him in the car, unblinking eyes never leaving Blaine's form as he crouches in the passenger seat and curls his fingers around the base of the ruined window.
"K-Kurt it's me!" Blaine shouts, though his throat feels like a tearing piece of paper. "It's Blaine! It's me! I love you! Come back to me!"
His words are barely distinguishable through the sobs and tremors.
It's the end, isn't it?
What a way to go…
Blaine closes his eyes. He doesn't want to remember Kurt like this. He waits for the pain, waits for the oncoming of death.
What he doesn't expect is for everything to literally explode in a cloud of red around him.
A BANG ricochets off the concrete walls, so loudly that it nearly shatters Blaine's eardrums. All that's left it a high pitched, squealing ring that sends shooting pains directly to his temples. Through the ringing he can just make out sounds of panicked screams and yells—one of which he recognizes to be the largest officer—and heavy thuds. All around him seems to be underwater, time speeding up and slowing down at precisely the same interval, though Blaine cannot tell which.
He opens his eyes again in time to hear another deafening BANG andsimultaneously, his entire right side becomes drenched in a warm wetness. Blaine lets his head turn on its own accord, gritting his teeth against the wave of nausea, and comes face to face with one of the officers holding him up.
Only…
The man doesn't exactly have a face anymore.
In fact, three-quarters of his head seem to have been blown away.
Cracked slivers of skull drop from the area and onto the cold shelf of his shoulder. Small sections of skin and flesh droop like slabs of uncooked bacon, falling to the floor with loud, moist squelches.
Blaine can't help it when his stomach finally decides to call it quits. His entire body rocks forward and he vomits onto the concrete. The image of the man—or what is left of him—appears branded into his memory, permanently scalding him…forever burning him. It takes a few moments before the body of Blaine's captor sinks to the ground, almost taking him with it. At the last second Blaine manages to pry the dead hand off of his arm, leaning into the other man to his left for support, shivering with fright and horror, his mind repeatedly chanting 'no…no…why this?...oh god no…'
He chances a glance at the car and is both relieved and terrified when he realizes that Kurt is no longer there.
After a moment, the man he is clinging to seems to find his bearings. With a frenzied motion he yelps, "Get off me!" and shoves Blaine away, sprinting in the other direction to flee the scene. Just before Blaine's wobbly legs give out from under him, he hears another BANG and sees a hole appear in the man's upper back, spattering a nearby column with an ungodly amount of red.
His entire body trembling, Blaine takes one step forward and then collapses, the side of his face scraping against the rough texture of the floor.
He sees another policeman a few yards away lying in a puddle of his own blood, his right arm only remaining attached by a torn muscle and a few putty-like sinews.
"Oh god…" Blaine rasps, unaware of the words escaping his lips. The ringing still assaults his ears, and he can feel the stuttering, rapid pulse of his heart pounding in behind his forehead.
With dazed eyes, he rolls onto his back and stares up at the lights, desperately trying to escape the massacre happening around him.
And, almost as if the world is mocking him, a still-walking corpse—the body so battered it resembles Swiss cheese—hobbles its last steps and drops to its knees, falling directly on top of the horrified dark-haired boy.
The weight crushes Blaine beneath it. Its head lay twisted and sideways on Blaine's chest, the one remaining eye boring into the boy's own silent stare.
Blaine lets out the loudest scream he's ever produced. His entire body convulses in sheer, raw terror, trapped beneath the tonnage of the dead man. Black dots crowd his vision and threaten to swallow him whole.
At this point, he'd welcome anything at all.
But as soon as it came, the weight suddenly vanishes. A hand presses firmly over his mouth to quiet his screams and the black dots disappear, revealing the—very much living—face of a girl.
A girl?
Blaine blinks in surprise, trying to distinguish hallucination from reality.
He sees her mouth begin to move, forming words he cannot hear through the screeching tone in his eardrums. He sees her waiting for a response, but he cannot give it. After a moment, her other hand begins to gently smack his cheek, a concerned look overtaking the solemn one before it.
But his mind can't stop repeating the phrase.
A girl?
Once Blaine sees the hazel-brown mixture of her eyes, his mind tacks on another part to the mantra.
A human girl?
Suddenly she looks away to somewhere out of Blaine's vision. He tries to follow her but his neck only turns so far and all he sees is the side of the demolished car. His head snaps back to its original position and he continues to examine the new stranger; her odd athletic clothes, her tightly pulled-back hair…
…the gun in her hands.
Blaine's breath freezes. She was the one who did this. She killed all of them. A thought immediately appears in his mind, one that scares him almost as much as the body had: What happened to Kurt? With an insurmountable amount of effort, he tries to voice his question, only hearing muffled vowels through the haze.
But thankfully, the girl appears to understand. Her eyes immediately return to his face, giving him a questioning stare. He sees the name form on her lips—Kurt?—along with another line of inquiry.
"I love him," Blaine assumes is what comes out of his mouth. "Where is he?"
The blonde haired girl doesn't answer, instead biting her lower lip and sliding her thumb along the base of her gun.
"Where is he?" Blaine shouts, and this time the outlines of his words are audible to him. He begins lift himself into a sitting position, but her hand restrains him and forces him back down. This is when he begins to struggle, his heart pounding faster and faster with each jerking movement. Jabs of pain light up from various parts of his body, but he keeps repeating the question. "Where is he? Where is he?"
The girl looks down at him with a mixture of pity and worry, and she calls over to the same place she'd been looking before. Blaine can just barely make out a few words.
"Hey...problem…sleeper…"
At least, that's what he thinks he hears.
After a few moments, another hand enters the realm of his vision, handing the girl what appears to be a loaded gun. Blaine stops his struggling for a split second as his inner voice announces something horrid:
They're going to kill you, oh dear god they're going to kill you. After everything you've been through…
Another heartbeat passes before Blaine starts to wrench away, shocking even himself with the amount of strength his body allows him. His hands reach out for something, anything, his scratchy breathing sending flurries of lightheadedness to his brain. He can hear himself protesting vehemently, can see the girl lift a finger to her lips…
Shhh…
No, no, no, stop, WAIT…
A soft "tff" sounds from the gun and Blaine feels a sharp pain in his right thigh. Almost immediately, his movements begin to lose their strength, his thoughts begin to drift.
W…what?
His head tilts up weakly and his vision clouds over momentarily. When it returns, every line and shape seems softer, blurrier. The golden hue of the girl's hair is the second brightest color following the cluster of carnival red sticking vertically out of his leg. He dimly feels a sense of déjà vu, but he doesn't have the energy or awareness to process it.
Blaine keeps his stare fixed on his leg until the moment he passes out.
Even when the blackness blots out the light from his open eyes, he still can picture it in his head.
Something with feathers…