Kurt was shaking, tears streaming down his face as his bloody and bone-white hands gripped the steering wheel of Blaine's car. The snowstorm was growing thicker and he had the lights and wipers on fullblast but he still nearly missed the turn-off for his house. He turned the car sharply to the left and stopped just inside the gate before rushing out of the car and closing it behind him, securing the lock. He got back into the car and sped down the long driveway.

A very very small part of him was wanting to feel guilty for just lurching off the snow and stumbling into the open door of Blaine's still-running car and taking off, but that small part was all-but silenced by the sheer amount of overwhelming fear and confusion and horror that was rushing through him. 

He parked the car diagonally in front of his door and stumbled out, one leg bruised and the other one feeling like it might be sprained in an area or two.

A horrible creaking screeching noise came from behind him and he turned to see Blaine wrenching the gate open, snapping the lock like it was a twig. Kurt hurried inside, locking the door firmly behind him and backing away, tripping over the rug and falling back on it.

The entire door shook as something crashed into it and then there was an earth-shattering pounding against it. 

"Kurt Elizabeth Hummel! Open this door this instant!" 

Kurt burst into tears, clutching his face that was wet and sticky with melted snow and blood. "Please go away, please go away, please go away--"

"I'm not going away now open this door and invite me inside!"

"Go away go away go away go away--"

Blaine's voice turned slightly desperate. "Kurt you have to invite me in!"

Kurt winced as he got to his feet and stumbled up the stairs. The pounding on the door echoed through the house and he ran to his room, closing the door shut and locking it. His room was dark and he sank down on his bed, clutching his pillow to his chest and trying to calm his breathing as the pounding on his door eventually subsided. 

Lightning flashed through his room from the storm outside, illuminating the window and what was just outside it.

Blaine was hanging onto the top ledge of his window with one hand and staring inside at him, expression livid.

Kurt jumped off the bed, hand covering his mouth.

"Kurt." Despite the glass between them, Blaine's voice rang loud and clear. "Open. This. Window."

Kurt shook his head, slowly backing away.

"Kurt, you're injured," Blaine tried again. "You need to tend to them, now open the window."

Kurt tried to stop crying but it didn't really work.

Blaine glared at him before gripping the bottom of the window and shoving it up, sliding easily into the room.

"What--" Kurt gasped and suddenly Blaine was standing just inches away, dripping water and slush all over the carpet, the snow running down his face causing the blood to smear and streak down into his cardigan. "You said I had to invite--"

"Oh you invited me into this room years ago," Blaine said darkly before he grabbed Kurt around the waist and hauled him out the window. Kurt screamed as they fell but Blaine landed softly in the snow and suddenly they were in front of his car. Kurt looked behind them and there were no footprints in the snow. 

He blinked and he was in the passenger's seat, buckled in, and Blaine was starting the car, pealing out of the driveway and into the woods. 

Kurt clutched his seatbelt tightly and stared straight ahead, willing himself not to look to his left. He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door.

Blaine snatched him back by his collar and snapped the door shut, locking it, all without swerving an inch. "Nice try, Kurt."

Kurt burst into tears. "Please let me go, Blaine. Just please I haven't done anything wrong, please--"

"You wanted answers, you're going to get answers," Blaine replied darkly and Kurt curled up in the seat, sobbing into his knees.

It didn't take long to reach Blaine's house and Blaine unbuckled him before throwing him over his shoulder and walking into his house, slamming the door shut. There was a giant blur of color and Kurt was dropped on something soft. It was dark until one by one candles were lit all across the enormous room and he saw that he was on a giant four-poster bed with a thick maroon comforter. He looked up and Blaine was suddenly standing in front of him again.

Kurt tried to scurry backwards across the bed, but Blaine held him firmly in place by the back of the neck.

"Calm down," Blaine said, pushing Kurt until he was lying down. "And hold still, or else this is really going to hurt."

"Please don't!" Kurt said, shoving against Blaine's shoulders, but Blaine just leaned down and sunk his teeth into Kurt's neck.

It burned and hurt and Kurt screamed and thrashed and pleaded and cried. It felt like hours, but couldn't have lasted more than five seconds before Blaine was pulling back and biting down sharply on his own wrist until his cheeks were bulging and he went back to Kurt's neck, pushing the liquid out of his mouth and into the wound. 

It was like a fever ran through Kurt's body at rapid speed until he went lax, eyes hazy as he grew incredibly lethargic. 

"There we go," Blaine muttered, wiping his mouth before he leaned over Kurt and started licking at his head wound, tongue lazily tracing back and forth, before moving to a scrape on his jaw, then--oh god was that a rib?--something poking out of his stomach that he pushed back in with a finger before licking over it. 

The pain started to dull to a point and the fever rushed through Kurt again before gathering up in his neck and Blaine lurched forward, licking over his neck in a long broad stripe and Kurt felt his skin start to stitch back together.

"There," Blaine muttered, backing off of the bed. "You're done."

He walked over to his dresser and started unbuttoning his cardigan. He blurred, and then he was shirtless and in a different set of pants, pulling a long-sleeved striped tee shirt over his head, wiping the blood off his mouth and the snow out of his hair with his bloodied dress shirt. "Here." He threw a pair of matching pajamas at Kurt. "Come downstairs after you change."

And then he was alone. 

Kurt breathed heavily, looking around the giant room before slowly taking off his clothes, surprised to find no discomfort or soreness or...anything. He touched the side of his head where he'd been bleeding profusely, but found only smooth skin. He hurriedly pulled off his clothes--which had been drenched with his blood and that of the field hockey team's--and pulled on the cotton pajamas before cautiously walking out into the hall, his legs feeling completely healed.

He found the top of the staircase easy enough and looked down, all the way down to the bottom floor. He had no idea what waited for him down there, but this past week had been completely terrifying and he honestly didn't want to know.

He gripped the railing tightly and pushed himself over, headfirst. 

The fall was incredibly fast and terrifying, but he closed his eyes and--

--landed firmly in Blaine's arms.

"You really need to stop trying to take your life," Blaine said darkly and suddenly they were in a large hight-ceilinged sitting room and Kurt was being deposited in a squashy armchair. "That trick with the knife you pulled earlier this week wasn't funny. Drink."

Kurt looked to the table to his right and saw a glass of...cognac?. "That wasn't the intention," Kurt said faintly as Blaine sat in a chair across from him, watching him broodily. "And...how did you find out about that?"

"Your bathroom door was open when I went to put the gardenia on your bed. There was blood on the knife but it doesn't take a genius to put together a knife and a full bathtub."

"You put the gardenia in my room?" Kurt asked.

Blaine rolled his eyes. "I thought that'd be obvious by now."

Kurt licked his lips. "Why?"

"Because you said you'd been having bad dreams."

Kurt flushed and snatched up the tumbler, taking a long gulp before coughing and spluttering into the glass.

"Try sips," Blaine said dryly. "The intent is to warm you up and calm your nerves, not get you hammered."

"So," Kurt coughed. "So...you...you're a...a..."

"A vampire."

"Yeah," Kurt said quietly.

"Yes," Blaine said. "I don't age, I drink blood from the living, can't go out in extreme sunlight, no footprints or reflections, the whole deal."

 Kurt nodded, taking another sip of cognac. "And you...sent...me...dreams?"

Blaine's lips curled up in a smile. "I merely replaced myself in your dreams. What your subconscious decided to do with me...that was all on you, Kurt." 

Kurt's eyes widened as he took another long sip, hoping to change the subject. "You uh...you said that you replaced yourself? So...do you know who that woman was? With the long dark hair?"

Blaine's smile turned grim. "Marlene Rose. Or Marley, as she liked to be called."

"Marley," Kurt mumbled. "Does...does this have to do with my great grandmother?"

Blaine looked at him in surprise. "Yes. How did you know that?"

"I saw a picture," Kurt said, fiddling with the glass. "Of my great-grandmother and your great--wait a minute..." he whispered. "Was that you? Are you Blaine V?"

Blaine nodded with a sigh. "Yes, that was me."

"You were engaged to my great-grandmother."

"Yes."

"So..." Kurt started piecing things together in his mind. "So Marley's a vampire too, right?"

"Yes."

Kurt licked his lips. "So she turned you? And that's why everyone thought you two ran off together?"

Blaine stared at him before bursting out into a laugh. "Wait, is that what you think?"

Kurt blinked. "That...isn't what happened?"

"No no no, Kurt," Blaine chuckled. "1914 is what happened. Here--" he was suddenly across the room, in front of a large wall of drapes. Kurt assumed they hid windows, but was proven wrong when Blaine pulled open the one on the far right side. "This is Duke Blaine Anderson VIII." It was a painted oil portrait of him looking exceedingly dashing in a black suit. "And VII." Blaine again. "VI." Blaine. "V." Blaine, in the same suit that Kurt had seen in the photo with his great-grandmother. "IV." Blaine. "III." Blaine. "II." Blaine. "I." Blaine. All Blaine.

Blaine was back in his chair. "Kurt, I'd been a vampire for a very long time before I met your great-grandmother."

Kurt stared at the eight oil paintings of the same face and shook his head. "I'm confused."

"Then let's start at the beginning," Blaine suggested. "I was turned in 1783 by a vampire named Wesley Montgomery. Well...I think that was his name. I joined his coven. It was just me, him, Mike, and Tina. Pretty simple. We didn't draw attention to ourselves or kill needlessly or anything stupid like that.

"We moved to England for a while and thrived there in secret, gaining titles and land and prestige even though no one really knew who we were. Victorian society was emerging and..." He looked off into the fireplace, expression growing dark. "That's when we met Marlene Rose.

"She was a regular girl. Lovely voice. Wes took an interest in her originally and started using her for feeding. She desperately wanted to become one of us, but Wes didn't want to turn her because...he'd grown attached to her...well, how alive she was and he didn't want to see her light go out or something or other. I'm not entirely sure.

"Marley left and Wes was devastated. He even stopped feeding for a while before we helped him get back on his feet. A decade later Marley showed up again but she'd been turned. And she...killed Tina."

"Oh my god," Kurt whispered.

"We didn't even see it coming," Blaine murmured, eyes sliding back to Kurt. "Wes had just been so overjoyed to see her again and we'd left the two alone when we went out one night and we came back and...Mike was beside himself because they'd been together for nearly two hundred years. We ended up breaking apart after that. I went to the Americas and gained a friend in a young Charlotte Waldorf. She was only fourteen at the time and I was posing as seventeen. She grew up and was engaged to a man she loathed so I stepped in and offered my hand just to help her out of the situation.

"And then Marley showed up again. She...became obsessed with destroying me since I was Wes' creation and she went after Charlotte. I would've just grabbed her and gotten off the cape but..."

Kurt waited patiently. "But?"

"1914," Blaine said grimly. "The canal was built. Cape Cod stopped being a peninsula officially and became a technical island."

Kurt stared. "So...?"

"So..." Blaine sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Vampires can't cross running water. And there wasn't a bridge yet, just a ferry, so Marley and I were both stuck." 

"What did you do?"

"Built a trap. And I fell for one as well. The old well on my property. I made sure it was stable before pouring dead man's blood all along the walls and into the water. No one used the well, so it was fine. And vampires can't drink dead man's blood or they'd die. I made it a hawthorne lid and gave it iron latches. We can't cross iron and hawthorne makes us sick to the touch."

"Really?" Kurt frowned.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"We can only be killed with hawthorne stakes."

"What about garlic?"

Blaine rolled his eyes. "No, garlic's fine."

"Oh," Kurt settled back into his chair, disappointed. He took another sip. "So you caught her?"

"Threw her down the well," Blaine nodded. "And latched it shut. It was foolproof. She couldn't get out. But..." He sighed, running his hands through his hair. "I fell for another trick. Charlotte's suitor...knew what I was. He was from an old family of vampire hunters and...and I was stupid. I smelled Charlotte's scent. Fresh blood. And I ran towards it into the lighthouse. It was just a handkerchief, drenched in her blood. Then the lighthouse door slammed shut. And locked from the outside."

Kurt stared. "Couldn't you just break your way out?"

Blaine smiled grimly. "Iron. The entire outside was made of iron. I couldn't cross it. Even the diamond strips over the window was made of iron. And the entire interior was made of hawthorne wood."

Kurt licked his lips, already guessing how this ended in the back of his mind, but still needing to confirm it. "Blaine...how long were you in there?"

Blaine smiled at him, but it held no amusement. "Until a little eight-year-old boy opened the door and let me out."

Kurt gaped in horror. "But that was--"

"Nearly ninety years," Blaine answered. "Hell of a time to go without blood, let me tell you."

"And Marley?"

"Still down there in the well. First thing I did was make sure she was secure. She was, mostly, except someone had pushed a small stone inside so she stared at me for a good minute while I found another stone to jam in."

"That was me," Kurt murmured, glancing down in his lap.

"I know," Blaine said grimly. "I didn't at first, but when you started having nightmares that first night..."

"How did you...you were in my room, weren't you? When I woke up and thought I saw someone in my room?"

"Yes," Blaine nodded.

"How did you get in? You said that I invited you..."

"When you were eight. I--" he broke off and looked to the side, suddenly ashamed. "I'm not proud of it, but I almost...I mean, I hadn't drank in nearly a century and you were right there..."

"You--"

"No. I mean, almost, but I ran off and found a bear." His nose wrinkled. "It was disgusting. But it got me clear-headed enough to go check on Marley, then I went back and found you. You were so little and you looked so much like Charlotte had. I found your house and woke you long enough to persuade you to invite me into your room before tucking you in."

Kurt nodded slowly as silence filled the room for a time. "Why...why did Marley start showing up in my dreams?"

"Because you're back here and close to her," Blaine said, leaning forward. "You were the first face she saw in nearly ninety years and you look remarkably like Charlotte. This is her favorite method. Stalk you in your dreams until you either die of fright or you go to the well seeking answers, which you did until I stopped you."

"But I saw her everywhere," Kurt murmured. "In the woods, in the bath with me..."

"The nightmares caused you to stop sleeping, didn't they? You were so sleep deprived that you were half asleep most of the time and she just kept invading your subconscious, feeding off your fear. That's why I intervened."

Kurt nodded softly. "So she's just...waiting down there to kill me? Or you?" 

Blaine nodded. "Which is why we have to keep you alive."

Kurt sagged in his chair, overwhelmed. "Why...why did you kill the whole field hockey team?

In the blink of an eye, Blaine was right in front of him, leaning over his chair. His eyes had turned black. "Because they harmed you," Blaine murmured. "And trust me, their deaths were much faster than they deserved, but I had to tend to your wounds."

Kurt shuddered slightly but gave a soft nod.

"Come," Blaine said shortly. "Let's get you to bed."