The next few hours seemed distant, everything Arran heard seemed deadened and muffled. His mother had called Lex and together they had taken the corpse and the two remaining vampires away. She had explained that she was taking them to the nearest council building in Manchester and pressed a folder into his hands of things that he should go through with Cynthia. He had found his mouth too dry to answer so only nodded in response.

Celyn's history had always seemed just that to Arran, history. A set of stories taken out of context and always with a good justification. It is one thing to know that someone you love has a dark past and another to glimpse what it was like. He didn't know how to process it and at that moment he didn't have time to try, he needed to look after Cynthia.

They were still in the hotel room, Cynthia was taking a long bath to wash the blood off and calm down a little. Arran was sitting on the bed looking through the dossier Celyn had given him. He knew vaguely about the concept of council approved insurance wherein any human could be given complete, official protection from any vampire on the planet as long as they had a sponsor, but it was rarely used in Europe.

England in particular had a long history of stable vampire covens that ran things their own way. There were historic vampire covens in about half of the counties in England, each with their own set of rules for their territory. The legality of this system was notoriously tricky as some covens, like the Craykes of Yorkshire, the nearest coven to the Redferns, predated modern county boundaries by a few hundred years. Lancashire had technically been under Celyn's jurisdiction since 1869 when she inherited Rose House from her dead husband, then the county had been a lot larger than it was now.

In spite of this, it was fairly easy to map out the general no hunting zones in the country, almost every coven had a no kill rule, Lancashire also had a consent ruling which deterred most vampires from visiting, but it pushed hunting into the larger cities that were up for debate about who's territory they were in, like the council owned city of Manchester.

As such, protective insurance wasn't needed unless your human friends lived in a big city and even then it was a rare occurrence. The information in Arran's hands included a council approved guide to paranormal life for humans, it included photos of witches and vampires getting coffee in some fictitious show of friendship. The only photo that didn't look totally staged was a shot of some wolves laying in the sun in a werewolf camp, with some more in human form sitting a little way off. Even then, they seemed to have taken the photo on the only sunny day of the year in the Scottish Highlands.

The whole packet pissed him off. Beyond the ridiculously harmonious image that the council tried to create, the very fact that protection schemes were still in place was ridiculous. Every vampire in Europe had access to cheap, packaged blood and even though Arran didn't use it himself, he found it easy enough to find willing humans.

It was sheer indulgence that anyone had to be in any danger. He didn't care what his mother had to say about vampires being painted in a harsh light, most vampires were self-important and cruel. And he was cut from that cloth.

He swallowed. His spit tasted bitter.

He heard the bath draining and hastily shoved the papers back into the folder, throwing it to the side as Cynthia came out of the bathroom. Her damp hair clumped into larger strands and hung limply from her head. Her skin was pale and streaked with makeup, but at least she'd managed to wash the blood from her neck, exposing a rough bite mark on her neck.

"Hey," she said, her voice hoarse.

She sat down next to him at the end of the bed and rested her head on his shoulder. He put one arm around her and they sat like that for a while. Arran dug out a small blister pack of pills that his mother had given him and held it out to Cynthia.

"You should take these," he said quietly, "just in case."

"What are they?"

"Retrovirals I think; the stuff you can take after a one-night stand."

"They didn't-"

"I know, I mean good, but can get some things through a bite. Mum said that it's just a precaution but there's no harm in taking them anyway. You can trust her; she knows a lot about this kind of thing."

Cynthia popped the two pills out of their compartments and rolled them in the palm of her hand with her thumb. Their whiteness seemed far too uniform and bright, just looking at them was making Arran's head hurt.

"Arran I just watched your mother partially melt someone and make a quip, I'm not sure about trusting her." She sounded like she was making a joke, but she stared blankly at the pills in her hand.

She got up anyway and poured herself a glass of water from the small bathroom and took the pills while standing at the sink. Arran's head swam, he couldn't get the image of the acid clinging to the flailing vampire out of his mind's eye. He took a sharp breath and forced himself to focus on what was happening at that moment.

Cynthia was standing still in the doorway between the room and the ensuite. Arran got up and crossed to her, careful to move at a slow, human pace. He outstretched his arms questioningly, he wanted to hug her but he wasn't sure what she thought of him now that she'd seen what other vampires were like.

She put her arms around the back of his neck and pulled herself closer to him, Arran held her tight. She seemed small to him, she was always so loud and energetic that he'd never thought about how petite she was.

His fingers found the wound at her neck, it had stopped bleeding but would probably take days to properly heal.

"Does it hurt?" He asked. She nodded in response and he continued, "I know it sounds weird, but you could drink a little of my blood and it would heal."

"Drink your blood?" She pulled back from him but didn't completely break the embrace. "I think I'll just let it heal the normal way...I don't think I can do the whole vampire thing anymore."

Arran nodded, he knew that he was about to lose his friend, but he couldn't blame her for wanting nothing to do with her.

"I can help with that," he broke away and picked up the insurance dossier, opened it and handed her a small card with a 9-digit number on it. "This is a way to make sure you won't get threatened again, you can have proper insurance against any harm. You just have to remember the number, there's loads of information in here but that's all you really need."

"That's not really getting away from vampire stuff Arran, that's more."

"It's just peace of mind. Mine as well as yours."

She took the file and the card off of him and looked through it uncertainly, she picked out an envelope and asked, "what's this?"

"It's a cheque, for-"

"Oh my god," she had opened the envelope and thrown the rest onto the floor, now holding the cheque in both hands. "That's just stupid."

Arran craned his neck to see how much the cheque was made out for. £20,000 was written out neatly in Celyn's handwriting, Arran thought that in recompense for nearly dying it wasn't really enough, but Cynthia seemed to feel differently.

"It's compensation and it's a way of keeping you further away from all this; Blackpool is getting more vampires all the time, in fact a few places in the UK are, but Liverpool is pretty safe so you can use the money to stop working and stay there more. I can get you more if you need it."

"Holy shit," she whispered, looking back down from Arran to the cheque in her hands. She cleared her throat and said, "it would be nice to get some distance. But I'd never get to see you."

"Cynthia come on, I don't think you want to see me again anyway."

Suddenly there were tears in her eyes and her arms were around him again. She sobbed onto his shoulder and he rubbed her back.

"I can't. I'm really going to miss you Arran but I just can't do it."

"It's ok-"

"It's not ok! None of this is your fault and you're going to blame yourself, I know it. And I'm going to lose you as a friend and I wish that I wasn't but I know that I can't deal with this anymore."

He held her for a long time this time. They stood there until his arms felt tired around her waist, but he didn't want to let go. There was an air of finality in the room. This would be the last time they ever saw each other.

Eventually they pulled apart from each other, he couldn't tell who moved first. It seemed that this was the natural end.

Arran would have offered to drive her home, but the car was still miles away where he'd left it. Running to the hotel felt like something that had happened in a dream. He had felt so panicked and now everything just seemed dull.

Instead he called her a taxi and they waited in the deserted hotel lobby on two threadbare armchairs in an alcove, spending their penultimate moments in silence until Cynthia spoke up.

"I think that you should tell your girlfriend that you're a vampire," she said suddenly.

Arran nodded, he could see her logic in light of that night's events; it wasn't fair to put her at potential risk and keep her in the dark, but he still didn't want to tell her.

"I can't tell her. But I know it's not fair, I'm a hazard. I think I should just leave her." The words fell out of his mouth without thought, he didn't have the emotional energy to be upset by them. That would come later.

Cynthia shook her head, "you've got it wrong, you're not a hazard, Arran. If I didn't know you I'd probably be dead right now. But I think that you need someone to talk to, if not her someone else."

"I'll be fine," he said, he couldn't believe that she was worried about him after everything that had happened.

The lights of a taxi shone through the glass doors of the hotel and they got up. Arran walked her to the car, checked that everything was ok and then they shared one last hug.

"Find someone, ok?" She said, squeezing him tight and then opening the car door. "Your girlfriend, that guy James, some kind of counsellor, anyone. Just find a human you can talk to, don't let yourself get closed off from the human world again, Arran. Just promise me."

Then she was gone.

He watched the taxi turn off at the end of the street and felt her absence in his life as if it had been cut out physically. Though they had only known each other for six months, Cynthia had been so many things to him. She'd been a lover and the first person to make him laugh after his break up with Cree and then a good friend and confident.

If this was how it felt to lose her, he couldn't comprehend leaving Naomi. But he couldn't see another way out.

He felt wide awake and exhausted at the same time. The weight of the day hung from his every limb as he started the slow walk back to his abandoned car.

I'm so sorry that there was no update on Monday, I had my first bout of writer's block with Redfern ever but I powered through! This part was a bit of a downer (the next part is even worse) and I'm really going to miss Cynthia, I looked back over the other bits that she's in and they were always  fun to write. Do let me know what you think <3