Naomi was paying incredibly close attention to driving. She had passed her test as soon as she could but her time behind the wheel since then was fairy low and Arran's Alfa felt nothing like her father's old Ford Focus. Moreover, paying attention to every little detail was a half-successful attempt to block out the events of the last ten minutes.

Arran looked rough. Even as she tried to keep her eyes on the unfamiliar road he pulled her attention every few seconds. She allowed herself brief glances every now and then but with each time the urge to properly asses the damage grew stronger.

The blood stains on his shirt were still spreading, smearing red onto the leather seats. He had pushed his head back against the headrest and was panting hard, the movement of his breathing shaking tears from where they pooled under his eyes.

She only looked lower than his shoulders once. Through the tear in his trousers she thought she might have been able to see bone.

He would be okay. He would have to be. He just had to make it through the next half an hour until they were at his house and then hopefully his mother would be back from the airport. All Naomi had to do was get him there. It was all that she could do. Once again, she felt helpless.

"Naomi, I'm scared," Arran said through a gasp.

"Don't be scared, you'll be fine. We're not that far from help."

"No. I'm scared I'm going to go for you. Feels like...I'm drowning and all I can think about is how much I need to drink blood. If I get any worse I won't be in control anymore, I'll just do it," he said, his words making Naomi grip the steering wheel even tighter to stop her hands from shaking. "And I don't think that I would stop when I started to heal. I'm so fucking sorry. But if I make one move toward you, you should just throw me out of the car. Easiest way."

He reached out with his uninjured hand to the console above the gear-shift and manually unlocked the doors. He really meant what he said.

If Naomi had just listened to him, let him properly explain instead of go off investigating on her own, this would never have happened. He had come to rescue her from her own stupid decision and then gotten injured protecting her and now he was telling her presumably how to kill him. The threat of him losing control did scare her, but he clearly wasn't like the other vampires that she'd seen today. There was no way that she could ever hurt him.

"How much?" she asked, eyes still glued to the road. "You're not out of control now, so how much blood to start you healing?"

"I don't want to hurt you-"

"Well I don't want to kill you!" she shouted, cutting him off. "And I don't want to die any sooner than I have to. So hurt me, scare me, whatever. Let's just both make it to your house alive."

She held out her left wrist to him and pushed it toward his face. After the slightest hesitation, Arran grabbed her arm with his good hand and twisted it into a better position. Because of the awkward angle, or perhaps out of desperation, he bit her several times before properly opening up a vein.

The pain was incredible, far worse than any she had felt over the course of the day. Everything about it screamed threat. She had been held captive by a vampire, she knew how strong and powerful they could be. With his grip on her arm, she was now passed the point of no return, she would never be able to push him out of the car even if she wanted to. She was at his mercy and it was terrifying. But she kept her eyes forward and her foot steady on the accelerator.

After a solid minute of him drinking the pain started to abate but just as it became bearable Arran tore himself away from he wrist and the pain returned. Clearly whatever had been making it better had been coming from him. Yet another magic thing that she had no frame of reference for.

In her periphery she saw Arran push his head back into the backrest of the car and close his eyes. His breathing began to slow and after another few miles he had passed out.

With no idea how to deal with what had just happened, she called up her driving theory and made herself occupy every single millimetre of headspace with the minutiae of driving.

Pick a landmark parallel to the car in front of you, count how many seconds it takes to reach that landmark, decelerate until there is enough space between vehicles. Even though Arran is unconscious and injured next to you and you need to get him home as fast as you can.

Check your mirrors and blind spots at least once every eight seconds, and again before slowing or turning. Try not to look at the blood dripping onto the gearshift from your own wrist.

If you are driving while stressed, angry or upset, take deep calming breaths, pull over or consider delaying your journey. Or keep driving as far over the speed limit as you dare, deal with what you're feeling later.

She was, in fact, paying such forced attention to the road that when the bluetooth connection to Arran's phone rang out over the car's speakers she nearly jumped out of her skin. She jabbed at the answer button to receive Celyn's call desperately, she could not even comprehend how out of her depth she was and Arran's mother was certain to know how best to help.

"It's Naomi," she said as soon as the connection established, her own voice much more steady than she thought it would be.

She recounted what had just happened as concisely and quickly as she could. It was as if something had taken over inside of her. All her life she had been the calm one in any crisis, but this went beyond what she had ever expected to face.

In return, Celyn told her to stay on the road and get back to Rose House as quickly as possible. Even though it was exactly what she had planned to do, it was some comfort to have instructions to follow, but the anxious lilt in Celyn's normally steady voice was deeply unsettling.

The speed of her thoughts matched the racing car all the way down the motorway and onto the winding smaller roads to Arran's house. Every unnecessary twist that nearly turned the road back on itself wound the tension inside of her further. Arran had not woken up and even though she could see his chest rising in her the frequent glances that she allowed herself, his breathing was light and shallow.

This last leg of the journey felt the longest and most infuriating but then, at last, the large house came into view over the hedgerows. Naomi had not even killed the engine before the passenger door was ripped open and Arran was pulled deftly but swiftly upwards and out of the car. It happened so quickly that she could barely even process the sight of Arran's seldom-seen uncle carrying him into the house.

Her hands stayed on the steering wheel as if she had been gripping so tight for so long that they no longer knew how to release. Her head fell without being told to, forehead resting on the wheel as she gasped for breath. She could no longer order her thoughts or begin to rationalise what had just happened, the panic felt like a roaring ocean, loud inside her own mind and drowning out any attempt at coherency.

Slowly, she started to pull herself together again. She took control of her breathing, counting each inhalation and holding it before expelling it again. She had to go into the house and find out what was happening. She needed to know that Arran was going to be okay. She sat up and forced herself to move, twisting the ignition and ripping the keys out in one motion. After one more calming breath, she ran towards the open front door.

She was still running as she entered the house, but at the end of the hall she came to an abrupt stop. Arran was laid out on the large coffee table in the main living area, his bloodied clothes torn and discarded. Celyn was knelt by his head, her hands holding a sickeningly familiar object to his open mouth.

Naomi had had blood transfusions before when she was a child, too careless with her own, defective body and in need of borrowed platelets to help stem the bleeding from a fall from a ledge during a family trip to the beach. It was the first time that she had ever really considered her own mortality and the limitations set by her faulty blood production. But it was not the memory of the rushed trip to Accident and Emergency that set her heart racing with fresh dread.

Arran was awake, gulping down blood from the transfusion bag, ripping it open with his teeth to get more of the viscous brown liquid. When he had drained one another was brought to his lips instantly and he tore into that one too, like a tiger biting through the skin of its prey.

Like he had just bitten into her own skin.

She still had the keys clenched tightly in her left hand. The last time that she had been in this room Arran had given her the same keys and told her that if he scared her she could drive herself home, that she was not trapped here in the house with him, miles from civilisation. She had not been scared then, only angry, but now she was terrified.

Still, she did not turn back to the car, she just watched as Lex started to pin Arran's fingers in place to a plastic board using wire, occasionally snapping a bone before securing it, making Arran yell in wordless pain as Celyn ran her fingers through his hair and whispered words of comfort to him.

Naomi stood watching the whole process, becoming dimly aware that her tight grasp around the metal in her hand was only exacerbating the persistent drip of blood from the bite wound on her wrist. But just as she could not tear her eyes away from the scene in front of her, she could not force her fingers to open.

"The girl is hurt, she will need attention," said Lex, glancing in her direction while carefully positioning Arran's disfigured leg.

Celyn did not respond to her brother-in-law, her eyes still fixed on Arran, her lips parted slightly in concern. But now that Naomi had been mentioned she felt exposed, the more that she watched the more inhuman the two older vampires seemed; Lex's movements inconceivably quick and Celyn stopped impossibly still.

"Did you hear me, Celyn?" Lex's voice was louder this time, "her wrist needs tending to. Your son will be fine, eventually. Go."

Arran was going to be fine. He certainly did not look it, half-conscious, covered in blood and whimpering in pain but it was a relief to hear nonetheless.

But Naomi did not have much time to enjoy this news as Celyn stood and turned to face her.

Arran's mother crossed the room without looking down at the slew of medical equipment that was laid out on the floor. She placed her bare feet in small spaces between glass vials and packaged syringes as she had navigated them every day for a year. Just before she reached Naomi she snatched some gauze from an industrial sized first aid bag.

Celyn grabbed Naomi's arm without a word and pried the keys from her palm easily, the tension in the fingers clearly no issue for the older woman. Now Naomi had no chance of getting away from Rose House and the vampires inside of it.

"Go and sit in the dining room," ordered Celyn, pressing the gauze to the wound where it immediately began to soak up the blood, a bright red stain blossoming across the stark white. "Keep the pressure on it, do not move from there."

Naomi nodded, unsure of what else she could possibly do and turned further into the house, her feet finding the dining table without instruction from her brain. She did not sit, but stood staring out of the door back toward the living area, from here she could no longer see Arran but the occasional cries of pain still carried into the room.

The room started to spin around her but she could not tell if it was because of the blood loss or the rising fear that felt like it was filling her lungs. The sight of Arran sinking his teeth into bag after bag of human blood would not leave her eyes even when she closed them. He really was not human.

Celyn entered the room, making Naomi jump and step back out of fear. She carried a large wooden tray which she set on the table before pulling out the chair nearest to Naomi.

"Sit down," she said, her voice soft but commanding.

Naomi complied, still on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. She tried to focus on the assortment of items on the tray but all she could see were shapes, colours and materials. She could hear Celyn say something but did not catch any of the words. She felt like she was floating and sinking at the same time, her own head suddenly too heavy for her own neck to hold up. The top half of her body gave way and then she was bent over the table, breathing raggedly through sobs.

Time seemed to stop while the hysteria gripped her. She was no longer aware of anything that was happening around her. All that there was for her to feel was a blinding terror.

It was the pain in her wrist that brought her back into the real world. It was not the dull ache that had been there since Arran had bitten her but a new, sharper pain. She sat back up with considerable effort and leant most of her weight on the backrest of the chair. She could see Celyn more clearly now, one of her hands in a white latex glove and holding an antiseptic wipe that she was using to clean the set of rough bite marks.

"I need to go to the hospital," Naomi stammered, still gasping somewhat. "The bleeding won't stop, I-"

"I know about your illness," interrupted Celyn with a small, reassuring smile. Her voice had returned to its usual, level tone but it did little to put Naomi at ease. "I am better equipped here to help you. Besides, that is the kind of wound that would attract questions that I cannot permit to be answered."

Naomi gulped, remembering Arran's assurance that if Naomi went to the police then she would likely be silenced in a very permanent way. The angry bite marks on her wrist looked very distinctive and even before Naomi had known the truth, Celyn had always had a dangerous edge about her. Naomi had thought that she might have ties to mafia, but had laughed that off as ridiculous. Now that theory seemed incredibly mundane.

"You have nothing to fear from me, Naomi, I want to make that very clear," said Celyn, perhaps sensing Naomi's fear, maybe even reading her mind. Naomi had no way of knowing if that was a common gift. "From what I gather you have been acquainted with some very violent people today, but that is not how I or my family operate."

"But you killed someone, right?" said Naomi, unable to stop herself.

"I'm truly sorry to say," began Celyn with a sigh, "that you might have to be a little more specific than that."

The older woman looked saddened as she continued to diligently disinfect the jagged tears in Naomi's skin. Naomi could feel the panic start to rise within her again. But there was no reason for Celyn to waste time pretending to care about Naomi's injury or to lie about her being safe.

"I can remember, vaguely at least, how I felt when I first discovered the existence of immortals. But since that time my understanding has grown exponentially. What was once terrifying and mystical to me is now simply scientific fact and I'm going to use that biological knowledge to fix your wrist as best I can. Would you like me to tell you how it works?"

Naomi nodded, in dire need of some form of scientific reasoning behind all the madness.

"Arran tells me that you thought he might be the result of an oncogenic experiment so I assume you know at least a little about cell growth and healing? Well, you're not entirely wrong. Think of vampirism as a disease, it travels in the blood and triggers apoptosis, do you know what apoptosis is?"

"It's um, cell death, right?" Naomi's recollection of learning this seemed very distant but she pressed on, "it's what stops cells from becoming tumours."

"Yes, the disease triggers apoptosis and destroys the tumour suppressors, leaving the oncogenes unchecked so the cells start to replicate faster, replacing the cells that were initially killed at an incredibly rapid rate, but these new cells are built with damaged suppressants, unlocking the human ability to heal and regrow tissue just as some animals can. But it takes an awful lot of energy to achieve and maintain. It also, incidentally, does not interact well with a lot of other diseases, a cancer patient cannot become a vampire or be treated by vampire blood because the cancer will develop and spread too quickly."

"So you get the energy from other people's blood?"

"Yes, and provided that we do so our cells never change; they replace themselves perfectly and quickly, though there are certainly ways to interrupt that and injure or kill a vampire."

This was helping, albeit only slightly. Though the biology of a vampire clearly went above Naomi's textbook on cell reproduction it was a comfort to find a root in a concept that she understood.

"But I'm not a vampire, my genes don't even work the way that most humans' do. I don't even clot right."

"Yes, but perhaps the most useful part of vampirism is that it's highly ineffective; you need vast amounts vampire blood in your system and for your body to completely shut down before it can reach a critical number of cells. I am going to give you a little of my infected blood and will rush to the easiest entry point. In this case, that would be the broken and damaged cells. The only factor in this case is that parts of the wound are too far apart and a sort of bridge of tissue will form rather than the two sides fusing back together."

"So there will be a scar? I can live with that."

"I'm going to stitch the worst of it together first, hopefully, that will minimize the effect or at the very least make it not look like a bite."

Naomi swallowed, she had never had stitches before and the idea of swallowing blood was repulsive but Celyn had not asked her opinion of the matter. She got the impression that this was going to happen, one way or another.

As if to confirm this suspicion, Celyn turned her attention to the tray that she had brought in with her, threading a vicious looking hooked needle with blue plastic stitching. All things considered, this was not going to be the worst part of Naomi's day, but she still did not look forward to it.

Celyn worked quickly, evidently well practised in the art of stitching up wounds and Naomi wondered why that should be since she and her family would surely never need them. The sensation was horrible, but grounding at the same time. The feeling of her skin being punctured and tugged closed felt much more concrete than anything else that she had seen or heard over the last hour. It was almost weirdly soothing.

"If you don't mind," said Celyn, not looking up from her work, "I would like to know exactly what happened today. In as much detail as you can manage.

Naomi did her best, but her thoughts were a mess and the adrenaline had scrambled her memory. Celyn listened intently while she continued to sew, apparently nonplussed by the blood oozing out with every movement. Occasionally, she would interrupt and ask for more information that Naomi had not thought to include, like clarifying the exact phrasing that Gavrail had used when he had been talking about the Redferns' insurance policies.

Celyn sighed when she got to the part where Arran had asked her to throw him from the speeding car if he hurt her, presumably Celyn would prefer a dead Naomi over her own son, which was logical but still chilled Naomi to think about.

Naomi finished the tale just as Celyn finished closing up the wound. She waited for a response of some kind but was surprised to instead be asked if she drank tea.

"Are you going to mix it with vampire blood or something?" asked Naomi, unsure if that would be preferable.

"Ah, I see," Celyn chuckled, surprising Naomi again, "this is what we might define as a cultural difference, but drinking the blood of your lover's mother would be, not exactly perverse, but definitely odd. A vampire sharing blood with a human is normally an intimate act, I had simply planned on injecting you with a little of mine."

This made Naomi feel like an idiot, there was clearly a lot that she needed to learn about the paranormal world but she did not ask any more questions as Celyn drew blood from her own wrist with a syringe and then plunged the needle into the crease of Naomi's elbow.

After that, Celyn left to make the aforementioned tea and Naomi watched with fascination as the bleeding stopped almost instantly and her skin began to heal before her very eyes. The process took longer than it had when Arran had attempted to prove his healing powers weeks before, but by the time that Celyn returned with two elegant mugs the stitches were nearly ready to come out.

Naomi drank slowly while Celyn began the process of pulling out each synthetic strand, the small puncture wound left behind healing perfectly and quickly. She could taste something earthy in the tea, like a herbal infusion but she could not place what it was. Regardless, it was relaxing and she felt her own muscles slowly unclench.

"There, practically as good as new," said Celyn, gently wiping away the last of the blood and revealing just a few, light pink dots from the deepest punctures, the only remaining evidence of the open wound that had been there a few minutes prior. "Now, with that sorted you are of course free to go."

"I can just leave? Just like that?"

"Of course. I like you, Naomi. I think you've done my son the world of good. You've helped him find a drive and, I think, more of a sense of self. Moreover, given all that you've just told me, you managed to fight your way through a very powerful potion that is usually reserved for detaining supernatural law breakers, risked your own safety to ensure the safety of people that you do not know and then got Arran back here even though you knew that you would be putting yourself into the path of someone you suspect to be a murderer. Even if I was as flippant about the sanctity of life as some of my peers, it would be a very great shame to bring yours to an end any sooner than it needs to."

Naomi nodded. Celyn was being blunt but Naomi was fairly certain that she was simply allowing Naomi to see the logic in the situation. It did give her comfort, just as learning the science behind vampirism had. This was the calmest that she had felt all day. She didn't think that she was in any danger and she desperately wanted to know that Arran was okay.

"Actually Celyn, is it okay if I stay here?"

The vampire gave her a warm and genuine smile, as if Naomi had passed some sort of test. And so Naomi Fall sat across from a woman purportedly a century and half older than her, who subsisted on human blood and together they drank their tea in a semi-comfortable silence.