Don't Fear The Reaper

Part 7

Smile. Get the hand ahead. Hold his palm. Squeeze it. Release.

Automatic. The automatic gestures, but so fucking hard to do.

Did Marat know? Is he's a hunter too?

Long ago, Ran showed him the most famous and well known vampire hunters from all over the world. There were not a lot of them, just a dozen of faces.

Vampires are not really wide spread in the world. They try to avoid overly hot and overly cold climate and places where people are tend to stick together. You barely find a vampire in some African tribe or a small village in Siberia, like the ones Tsukki has seen on the way here.

It's more comfortable to feed in the average and big cities. True, due to the raising amount of cameras, you have to think more about where you're going to find the food and the way to lure the person into the space where the Big Brother's eyes are not going to pry on you. But as most vampires are now tend to keep a certain amount of people they feed on constantly, you gotta be in trouble only if you decide to kill someone on the street like Ran, the day Tsukki met him.

So vampire hunters are usually people who survived the interaction with some random vampire and were meant to be killed. Or whose close people got injured or dead by a vampire. The first group was the biggest - it's natural for a human to seek revenge. A lot of them made it their life purpose, even if they led absolutely trash life before it. The second group was smaller. Normally, it was hard to get the evidence of what happened to be a vampire attack unless you've became a witness.

Kentaro was the rarity. To have the whole family of vampire hunters - there were only three like this in the world. And the another one was Suvorov's family.

All of it comes in flashes in Tsukki's mind. How come he didn't ever asked Marat's second name? He was never interested in it, never could assume he get himself, with his own hands between a nail and a hammer. That must be it, the real reason why Marat went to Irkutsk - to get his brother to help to kill Tsukki.

"Hey, you look nervous," Tsukki flinches as Marat slapping his shoulder. "Is there anything wrong?"

'Nothing besides I probably won't fucking survive this winter,' Tsukki thinks and comes up with a lousy excuse. "I was just worried maybe there're some robbers got into the house. And I didn't sleep well while you were away, so I guess it made me all jumpy."

"Do you have a crush on my baby brother?" Vladimir winks to him. "Couldn't sleep without him?" He got smacked in the head by Marat immediately.

"Stop insinuating, it's nothing like that!"

"Oh, baby brother, are you guarding the honour of your boyfriend?" Vladimir laughs out loud, shuffling Marat's hair like he's a seven year old kid and Tsukki somehow feels the tight spot in his chest loosen up. Surely they wouldn't joke around like this if they were sensing any danger from him?

'Hell yeah they could,' someone is whispering in his mind and Tsukki recognise Ran's voice. 'Good hunters don't live long being bad actors. They make sure you believe their lies and wrap you around their fingers in no second. You should never put your defence down if you encounter one. Bad hunters are easy to kill, but good... Usually they kill you before you even realise that's a hunter.'

"I'm going back to sleep," Tsukki fakes a yawn, though he feels far away from relax and watching dreams.

"Yeah, we're gonna go to sleep too as soon as we'll unpack all the stuff. By the way, thanks for making the road and keeping it clean," Marat beams at him and Tsukki waves off: "Not to worry," and gets back up the stairs.

Fuck as hell, he's gonna blink an eye this night!

He's gotta think how not to look suspicious about getting away from the house. If he's gonna just jump out of the window, Vladimir might get a hint something's not quite right and investigate more on his matter. Hopefully he isn't some friend of Kentaro's and Kyoushi didn't send him photo.