I watched their easy interaction for a few minutes until they both decided that the game needed a full assessment, and wandered off in the direction that Mark had taken.
I was going to be a father. And a husband too, eventually. It was more, far more than I could ever have hoped for. I stood alone in that kitchen and slowly absorbed the reality of it all.
In three days I would be leaving for the UK again, for frantic activity and bloody destruction. It was something that had to be done, for us, the iron metabolisers, for the women incarcerated by Jack and his malevolent intentions, for the blood feeders imprisoned in their slowly decaying bodies and their addiction to blood and the iron within.
It would be done because doing nothing was not an option.
But when it was over, the dust settled, the evidence of our existence obscured, I would return to her, and to the opportunity she offered me to be something new. Something different. Something other than just the bad guy.
There was no doubt that blood would continue to sing to me. There was also no doubt that I would once again dance to its beguiling and hypnotic rhythm, and people would die. They would be corrupt and evil people, because that was part of the bargain I'd made with my blood lust, but they would die nonetheless.
But the blood song would no longer be everything. It would be only a fraction of who I was.
And that was something I could definitely live with.