Crossroads of Eden - Section Two

[glasslogic]

Chapter Two

When Sam startled awake as the sun slipped under the horizon, what immediately depressed him wasn’t just that he was in a trunk, but that he had enough experience to instantly know he wasn’t in the Impala’s trunk. On the heels of that was the panic-inducing realization that if Dean had been forced to abandon the Impala and move them in a hurry while Sam was still unconscious, even if he had for some reason thought it wise to dump Sam in the trunk, it was unlikely Dean would have had a reason to truss him up like a festive turkey first. That left two probable candidates in the abduction: hunters or demons. Neither thought filled Sam with joy and he struggled to keep his racing thoughts focused on escape and not on what kind of horrors the next few hours might bring.

After squirming around proved there was nothing in the tight, uncomfortable space with him that he could use either as a weapon or to cut himself free, Sam tried yelling-- for whatever good it would do him, but there was no change in the motion of the vehicle. From the unevenness of the scratchy carpet he could tell there was probably a spare tire compartment under the trunk floor, but there wasn’t enough room to get into it when he was taking up almost all the space himself.

Eventually boredom and the heavy weight of the exhaust fumes worked on Sam to lull him into a state he hadn’t experienced in more than six months, an almost natural sleep. He woke up an unknown length of time later with a dry mouth and an aching head when the car rumbled to a halt.

He lay still, wrists already rubbed raw from his earlier escape attempts. Car doors slammed and then a moment later he heard the click of the lock and the trunk lid flew up. A nearby floodlight was blinding to eyes made overly sensitive from hours in the darkness, but he could make out two figures in front of him. Rough hands dragged him out then let go before he could find his feet. With his hands bound Sam couldn’t catch himself and he landed hard on his shoulder. By the time he managed to struggle upright his eyes had adjusted better and he could make out one of the people crouched in front of him-- a petite blond. She flashed him an edged smile and her eyes flooded black. Door number two then. It was stupid, but he rolled back onto his hands and kicked out.

She caught his bare feet and shoved back hard. Sam’s head slammed into the bumper and he furiously blinked back tears of pain.

“Now that you’ve got that out of your system, you want to walk into the house, or would you prefer to be dragged by the hair?”

She looked entirely willing to do it. Sam swore silently and struggled to get his feet under him. Her companion grabbed him under one arm and pulled him up, then bent to slice the rope around his ankles. Sam grimaced as the circulation returned to his feet in a wash of pins and needles.

“What do you want with me?” he demanded.

“I don’t want anything with you,” she replied flippantly. “But my vote didn’t count, so you and I and a few associates of mine are going to be spending some quality time together. Just think of us as your own personal intervention. You don’t really want to be a vampire, do you, Sam?”

Sam didn’t answer her. She grabbed him by one arm, ignoring his violent flinch as her touch made his skin crawl, and started pulling him towards a small house set back in the trees. The floodlight was attached to the corner of a dilapidated barn. Sam resisted, at a loss for anything else to do, until his free arm was grabbed by the other demon and then he stopped fighting before he really did end up being dragged.

“Can you cut my hands free at least?” he asked as they reached the house. She nodded to her silent companion and a moment later Sam felt a tug in the bindings and then the rope was pulled away.

“This way.”

Sam followed her through the dimly lit interior of the house. It looked old and shabby, but clean and obviously well-lived-in; the olive shag carpet was heavily worn and framed pictures covered the walls. They reached a plain wooden door and she shoved it open, reaching in to flip a switch on the wall. Inside was what looked like a guest bedroom. A low dresser with a few knickknacks and photos took up most of the free wall space and a plain wooden twin bed with a simple green comforter was pushed into one corner. An open accordion closet door showed that the tiny area was empty except for a few neatly folded blankets at the top. A window was set back in an alcove by the closet, blinds dusty even from a distance.

“So... what?” Sam looked around at the little room. “You’re going to keep me here until I give up my evil vampire ways?” he asked skeptically.

“We’re going to keep you here until we’re told to do otherwise. And if you behave yourself and don’t make me get nasty, you might even survive the experience. This is your room. Stay in it.”

“Or what?”

She smiled at him; it raised all the hair on the back of his neck. “I’m a demon. What do you think?”

“I think I want to know why I’m so interesting to demons that you’ve been chasing me for the last two years. Why the hell do you care if I want to be a vampire?!”

“You’re just that special. Now shut up and do what you’re told,” she suggested.

“Yeah,” Sam growled back. “I’ll just sit here a prisoner of my demonic kidnappers and wait to see what they decide to do with me. That sounds healthy.”

“If you hadn’t decided to go play with the undead, we would both be having a better time, but you let your boyfriend corrupt you with his nasty disease and some of my acquaintances find that upsetting. We’re going to put you back on the straight and narrow.”

“How?” Sam demanded. “I’ll die without his blood now. You’ve spent too much time chasing us around not to know that. You think trying to make me swallow demon blood instead is going to keep me alive somehow?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think there is going to be much try about it, do you?”

“Why?! ” he exploded, furious and frustrated.

“You’re kind of hot when you’re pissed.” She eyed him speculatively, played with the zipper on the front of her shirt and took one half-step closer. Sam stumbled back, startled.

She took another step, an amused smile twisting the corners of her mouth.

Sam got a chair between them and searched desperately for a different topic. The demon was obviously not feeling chatty about her plans and he didn’t like the direction her thoughts seemed to be going in instead. His eyes fell on a framed portrait on the dresser. “Whose house is this?”

She gave a significant look out the window and Sam followed her gaze; even with his enhanced vision, it took him a moment to realize what he was seeing in the distance. But having made out the forms of several dog-sized scavengers tearing at what seemed to be a large carcass in the leaves, he couldn’t miss the implication. He swallowed.

“No one’s now,” the demon told him with a dark edge to her smile. “Any more questions?”

“Where’s Dean?”

“The vampire?”

Sam nodded mutely.

“You need to stop worrying about vampires, Sam. You should be more worried about yourself.”

With those ominous words, she left the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

The house was completely silent in her absence. Sam crossed his arms and sat on the bed. It sank under his weight with the protest of ancient springs. He counted five minutes, then shoved the window open and slipped out into the night.

~~~~~
Once outside, Sam’s first instinct was to go for the car, but when he peered around the corner of the house, the demon was standing by it, seemingly deep in discussion with a third person Sam hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. He drew back hastily and struck off into the woods, skirting widely around the dogs and their meal. Leaves crunched under his bare feet and his sweatpants and thin t-shirt were in no way appropriate for the weather, but he couldn’t believe that death from exposure wouldn’t be a better option than whatever the demons had in mind for him.

He had been on the move for about twenty minutes, half running and half sliding through the undergrowth of the steep hillsides, when something incredibly heavy hit his back and slammed him to the ground. Claws scratched over his skin and hot, rancid breath made him gag as something snuffled against the side of his face. He turned his head but saw nothing. Panicked, Sam struggled to get free but all that earned him was a low growl he could feel vibrating through his body. After much twisting and cursing, he finally squirmed out from under whatever it was far enough to slam an elbow into what he hoped was its face, and was rewarded by a sharp yelp that made his ears ring. Agonizing pain seared his nerves and he screamed as sharp teeth sank through the cloth of his t-shirt and into his bicep.

A shrill whistle cut through the haze of pain and the teeth released as the weight jumped off his back. He sucked in a lungful of oxygen and rolled over. He still didn’t see any sign of what had attacked him, but the blond demon was standing a couple of yards away.

“Do you like my dog?” She reached out and stroked a hand over what Sam saw as thin air. “Dogs, really. Hellhounds,” she smiled, her free hand gesturing to the woods around Sam as he sat up slowly, the ache from being flattened nothing compared to the pain in his arm.

With his attention directed to it, he noticed uneasily that there did seem to be an unnatural sort of stillness around him. Dried leaves on the ground that didn’t rustle in the breeze, as though something weighed them down. As he watched, one leaf fluttered down from a tree and then just hung in mid-air, like it was caught on something.

“What?” She chuckled at his expression. “You didn’t think I was going to sit outside your room and guard it myself, did you?”

“You could have warned me,” Sam spat, using his good hand to try and stem the bleeding from his wound.

“I could have,” she agreed. “But I told you to stay put, and you strike me as more of a ‘learns from experience’ kind of guy. You do learn, don’t you, Sam? Maybe next time I tell you something, you’ll pay attention.”

She turned and started back up the slope. Sam sat in the leaves glaring at her until hot breath on the back of his neck and a low growl that vibrated through his body sent him scrambling to his feet and hurrying after her retreating form.

~~~~~
Sam was no stranger to the sight of his own blood. He could hardly have spent most of his life as a hunter without acquiring a certain familiarity with it, but since his career change from hunter to one of the hunted, most of his bleeding had been voluntary and under circumstances that were generally quite enjoyable. As a result, the visceral memory of how much being injured hurt had faded somewhat. Trailing along in the demon’s wake during the interminable hike back, Sam had plenty of time to reacquaint himself with the sensation. So much so that by the time they finally reached the house, his shirt was wet with as much sweat as blood and he felt tired and shaky.

He kept his focus, though, and deliberately didn’t glance at the car as they passed. If one escape had failed, he could always try another later. Hotwiring cars was a time-honored family tradition.

Not necessarily one of his better skills, but he figured the current predicament would be good inspiration.

Once inside the house, the demon headed back towards the bedroom she had left him in earlier. Sam followed her, but stopped on the threshold. The demon looked unimpressed with Sam’s condition and raised one sharp eyebrow at his hesitation.

“Look,” Sam tried, “whatever you want me for, I’m not going to be very useful if I bleed to death.”

“From that little scratch? Please.” She raked him with an appraising look. “You don’t look like that delicate of a flower.”

“There has to be some place in here I can clean up a little,” he gritted out.

She looked at him expressionlessly for a long minute. Sam tried to look pathetic and exhausted. It wasn’t hard. Finally she sighed and rolled her eyes. “I have better things to do than babysit. We’ve established what happens if you leave, right? I know you hunters aren’t too bright, and you’re an unusually dim example of the breed, but I haven’t been too subtle for you, have I?”

“I understand,” Sam agreed tightly.

“Then do whatever you want. But if the hounds catch you outside again your last encounter will seem like a friendly lick.” She must have seen the thought flicker through Sam’s eyes because she smiled. “Oh, they won’t kill you. You’re not getting off that easy. However much fun I’m not having, we aren’t going to actually let you die. But a little excruciating pain never hurt anyone,” she added meaningfully.

More blood fell while she studied the set of his jaw and his refusal to meet her eyes. “Well then, I think we’ve covered everything. Try not to drip on the carpet.”

She slipped past him and headed for the front door. He watched her silently.

“Oh, and Sam?” she called just as she opened the door, turning back and pulling something out of her jacket pocket. She dangled the object up for his inspection. Even at a distance it was easily identifiable as a distributor cap. “Some of these old cars, they need this to run, right?”

Sam refused to give her the satisfaction of a response. Point made, she re-pocketed the cap and left. The thud of the door closing sounded like the lid of his casket slamming down.

He went looking for the kitchen as soon as the door was shut. The wound needed care, but it wasn’t his first priority. If the house had been inhabited by humans until only recently there was a good chance he could find something to wipe the smile off a demon’s face. It wasn’t a large home and he found the room he was looking for down the hall and around the corner. It wasn’t quite as useful as Sam had hoped, though. He swore as he searched the counters and tossed the cabinets.

If there had ever been salt in the house, it was gone now.

Sam slumped down into one of the rickety wooden chairs in frustration. He hadn’t seen any phones or computers in the house, and now, no salt-- and nothing else that would make an effective weapon against demons. The only knives he had found would barely cut warm butter and other than a cast iron skillet he had spotted in the stove, he was coming up completely bust. Demons didn’t like iron, but the vivid image of how a Hellhound was likely to respond if he smacked it with a skillet made him quickly discard the idea.

Thinking of Hellhounds... Sam sighed and turned to his second most pressing problem. He gingerly peeled a little of the blood-soaked shirt away from the wound in his bicep to try and assess how bad it really was. The bleeding had mostly stopped and it didn’t look life threatening-- though Sam certainly didn’t want to make any guesses on what kind of bacteria a Hellhound had in its mouth. But whatever plans the demons had for him, he wasn’t ready to give up quite yet, so the bite needed cleaning and some care. Resigned, he stood up to go find a bathroom and hopefully some supplies. Sam stumbled against the table, sending the collection of vitamins and supplements in the middle sliding and rolling in all directions across the smooth, wooden surface. One rolled to the edge by his hip and he paused in the act of reaching for it, staring at the label.

Garlic supplements.

Maybe the kitchen wasn’t entirely worthless after all.

Sam grabbed the bottle and started to unscrew the lid, meaning to dump a handful into the pocket of his sweatpants.

“What are you doing?”

He spun at the new voice, letting the bottle roll back into the middle of the table with the rest. Sam had to assume anyone freely wandering the house was a demon, and did not have his best interest at heart. This new one was as blond as the first, but her long, loose hair framed features more angular and her expression, while suspicious, didn’t immediately raise his hackles.

“Looking for first aid supplies.” Sam made a show of shrugging his injured arm with a grimace. He was relieved when her eyes shifted from the clutter of bottles on the table to track the movement. She glanced around the mess he had made on the kitchen counters and frowned.

“Did you look in the bathroom?”

“Not yet.”

She looked at him like he was a little dim and made a ‘come with me’ gesture.

“Apparently I missed something good,” she commented as he trailed her down the hallway. “What did you do to piss off the dogs?”

“What do you think I did?” Sam asked, irritated by both the interruption and the small talk.

She led him into the small bathroom and pointed at the closed toilet lid. Sam took a seat while the demon started opening cabinets. She set a roll of gauze and some band-aids by the sink, then crouched to rummage underneath it.

“Why are you helping me?”

“I don’t have anything else to do, and you won’t be good for anything if that gets all infected and you die. Do you want me to stop?”

“The other one didn’t seem concerned about it.”

“Other one?” she asked.

“The other demon,” Sam clarified. “You... are a demon, right?”

She looked directly at him, then blinked her pale blue eyes to inky black. Another blink and they were blue again. Sam shuddered as she turned back to her rifling of the cabinet, unconcerned.

“Meg gets bitchy when she’s bored, and there’s not much to keep her occupied out here. I wouldn’t antagonize her if I were you.”

“Meg is the other blond?”

“At the moment.”

Sam let that go. “Who are you?”

She gave a smile edged in something Sam read as bitterness. “Who are any of us? You can call me Ruby.”

Ruby plunked a bottle of Tylenol on the counter beside a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a tube of ointment, then filled a paper cup with water from the faucet. She shook out a couple of pills and handed them to Sam. He swallowed them and then the water.

“Thanks.”

“No charge. Now strip and get in the shower.”

“What?”

“The shower,” she repeated, as if trying to convey the meaning of the words to a slow child. “You’re covered in forest crap from head to toe and your arm is a disaster. Your feet are probably torn up too and who knows what else. Get in there and at least get all the blood and dirt off. I’ll try and wash your shirt in the sink, then hit it with the hairdryer. I don’t care if you want to run around half dressed, but you might.”

Sam definitely did, especially after Meg’s earlier performance. Ruby’s suggestion was a reasonable one, no matter how much it griped him to follow her directions. He turned the water on to let it warm up and waited for her to leave, but after a minute it was obvious she had no intention of moving.

“Can I have some privacy?”

Ruby rolled her eyes but turned her back with exaggerated movements. Sam skinned out of his clothes and tossed them onto the tile before sliding behind the shower curtain. He hissed in pain as the water hit his wounded arm, then set about the grim task of scrubbing it out as much as possible. There was a half-empty bottle of what seemed to be a body wash with the label peeled off, and some generic, flower scented shampoo that lathered up well. Ruby had been right about the state of his feet after his barefoot hike in the forest, but the damage seemed mostly limited to shallow cuts and scrapes. He was highly aware of the demon on the other side of the curtain washing the blood out of his clothes, and after a few minutes the high pitched whine of the hairdryer, but she didn’t speak and Sam had nothing to say to her. He finished rinsing off the soap and stood under the spray until it started to turn cold, then twisted the faucet off.

“Are my clothes dry?”

“Mostly. Sit on the edge of the tub so I can tape up your arm.”

“How about you give me my clothes first,” Sam hedged.

He heard her indelicate snort through the flimsy opaque vinyl. “I just scrubbed your clothes clean with a bar of soap in a sink. You aren’t getting them back until I’m sure you’re done bleeding on them.”

Which left Sam with the alternative options of either getting out of the shower naked and possibly having to fight a demon for his pajamas, or staying in it... indefinitely. He wrestled his pride back and finally sat gracelessly on the edge of the tub and pulled the curtain aside enough for Ruby to treat his arm. Clothes weren’t going to protect him from an attack, or anything else, in his current state. But there was a level of vulnerability in being naked that he wasn’t willing to subject himself to. Not unless he absolutely had to, or there was something to be gained from it. Ruby had a point about his injury, though; after being scrubbed and cleaned out in the shower, it was bleeding freely again, spotting watery blood on the white porcelain of the old bathtub.

Thankfully, other than a quick glance over and an eye roll, the demon kept her comments focused on the wound she carefully finished cleaning then slathered down with antiseptic and bandaged.

“This could probably use some stitches,” she observed, pressing the last of the tape into place with surprising gentleness.

Sam flexed his arm and grimaced at the pull of torn flesh. “It’s fine.”

“Demon blood doesn’t have the same healing properties that your friend’s does,” Ruby remarked.

“What do you know about that?” Sam asked warily.

“Not much,” she admitted easily, tossing bloody gauze into the trash and handing Sam a skimpy, threadbare towel. “But like most of the other monsters out there trying to stay under the humans’ radar, they don’t give much of a damn about the demonic. We aren’t the ones they’re hiding from usually, so they don’t make the same effort to keep their secrets from us. They go their way, we go ours.”

“You aren’t doing a great job of going your own way right now,” Sam growled, drying off briskly before he pulled his clothes on behind the curtain. The bloodstains were still obvious, now rinsed to a rusty brown. There wasn’t anything washing could do for the holes from the Hellhound’s teeth, but Sam would take what he could get.

Ruby didn’t respond and the silence from the other side of the curtain was such that he was surprised to find her perched on the sink when he finally stepped out.

“Thanks,” Sam said reluctantly.

“Like I said,” Ruby hopped down and pushed the door wide, “I didn’t do it for you.” She disappeared down the hallway, leaving Sam alone in the wan yellow light from the ancient fixture overhead. He waited until he heard the front door open and close again, then headed back to the kitchen. There was something he needed to get.

~~~~~
Sam was lying on the bed in his room reading when the next round of company showed up. The battered book he had found wasn’t really holding his attention, but it was better than staring at walls and the irony of reading The Count Of Monte Cristo in his present situation wasn’t lost on him. The clock showed fifteen minutes to sunrise and Sam had been hopeful that he might be able to slip into oblivion without any more incidents. Every minute he was left alone was another free minute Dean had to find him.

He was just giving thought to getting under the covers when Meg shoved the door open so hard the knob took a chunk out of the drywall. Sam scrambled to sit up as she entered with two other presumed demons on her heels and Ruby trailing behind. Sam couldn’t say he knew Ruby well, but he didn’t think she looked happy.

“What do you want?” he demanded, standing up.

“To save you from your evil vampire ways, remember?” Meg asked sweetly. She grabbed Ruby by the arm and yanked her forward. “This one looks delicious, doesn’t she?” Meg didn’t wait for a response from Sam before pulling a wicked looking knife from a sheath at Ruby’s waist and slicing deeply into her unresisting arm. The blade was serrated and cast sparks as it left an ugly furrow in the pale skin of Ruby’s forearm.

“This is a cute toy; you’ll have to tell me where you shop,” Meg said with narrowed eyes.

Ruby glared but didn’t reply. She twisted her arm so that most of the rich, dark blood dripped into the glass one of the other demons held under the wound. Sam had no idea how Dean would feel about the tableau before him, but he was distantly grateful that all he felt was revulsion. And fear. He was already so screwed up, he couldn’t imagine what more demonic blood would do to him-- but he was certain it wouldn’t be good.

“I won’t drink that.” Sam backed away as much as he could, but with five people in the tiny room there wasn’t anywhere for him to escape to.

Meg glanced at the other two demons and they grabbed Sam, holding him in place. There was no give to their grip no matter how he twisted. She held up the half-full glass and stepped towards him. “You wouldn’t have to drink so much if you didn’t have that nasty infection we have to fight. Now suck it up, and open wide.”

“I can’t drink that,” Sam insisted, letting some of his panic edge his voice.

Meg stopped her advance and frowned. “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think? I’m sure you can; there isn’t anything wrong with your throat, is there? We’re going to prove it right now.”

“I thought you wanted me alive,” Sam hissed, giving up the fight for the moment.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“That blood. Demon blood. It will kill me if I swallow any now. If you want me alive, you can’t give me that. Like you said, I have this infection.”

“And this is just something you and your boyfriend happened to discuss? A little pillow-talk maybe?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm, but Sam pressed on. Desperation was the mother of invention, and if his childhood had prepared him for anything, it was lying on the spot.

“You’ve been interfering in my life since I was a baby! You killed my mother, got me ostracized from my own people, and since I’ve been with Dean you’ve been stalking our back trail all over the country! So yeah, you could say we’ve discussed a few possibilities. We know you’ve done this,” he nodded towards the glass in her hand, “to me before; it seemed like something you might try again if you got your hands on me. But it’s too late. If you make me drink that now, the reaction could kill me. How does that fit into your plans?” he spat.

Meg searched his face, looking indecisive for a moment. The demons holding Sam shifted restlessly, and back by the doorframe Ruby stood like a statue, the wound in her forearm gone to nothing but a few blood smears and no expression at all on her face.

“You’re lying,” Meg said flatly. “Or you would have mentioned this when we spoke before.” The demons’ grip on Sam tightened again. He went limp, the move so unexpected that he actually managed to pull free from one of them. Sam seized the advantage, immediately throwing all of his weight into the demon still holding on to his arm, causing it to stagger and then they were both on the floor in a confusing tangle of limbs. It only took a second for Sam to slip the capsules hidden in the pocket of his sweatpants into his mouth under the cover of the chaos. He had barely swallowed before he was grabbed around the waist and hurled onto the bed.

Pinned flat on his back, Sam was too busy fighting his gag reflex from swallowing the garlic to worry about Meg crawling up on the bed next to him, but she had his undivided attention when she threw a leg across his stomach and straddled him. She didn’t weigh that much, but with the other two demons holding him down she was enough to stop him from being able to wrench free.

The next few minutes were some of the worst Sam could remember. The sun hovering just beneath the horizon had warning signals shrieking through his head as the poison in his stomach was starting its inexorable work. The demons held him pinned in place just as fiercely by his wounded shoulder as his well one, and worst of all was the demon sitting astride his waist pouring blood down his throat. She forced his mouth open and she wasn’t being very particular about where the thick, metallic liquid ended up. As much seemed to be running up his nose as into his mouth while he sputtered and struggled. Despite Sam’s best efforts, he couldn’t help but swallow some and he was still choking on it as the sun finally rose and slammed him mercifully down into darkness.


Chapter Three

In the two days since the demons had snatched Sam, Dean had hit a wall. He had torn through the miserable town they had been holed up in, spent hours on the phone, and traded more favors than he cared to think about-- all for nothing. As far as the world was concerned, it was as if Sam had simply vanished into thin air and no one Dean spoke with had any idea of how to find the demons that had stolen him. Dean knew from talking to Sam that even the human hunters, who had more reason than anyone to be interested in that information, didn’t know how to track the demonic.

There was only one man rumor said might have the ability, but getting the information without killing him would be tricky, if the asshole could be convinced to share at all.

Fortunately they had something in common, and Dean had something he needed. Even if John Winchester didn’t know it yet.

Tracking a hunter wasn’t nearly as much of a challenge as trying to track a demon, and when Dean finally ran his quarry to ground he felt stupid for not having simply guessed. Bobby Singer’s wonderland of a junkyard was just as heaped up, unkempt and trapped as it had been the last time he had visited, but this time Dean was desperate and furious. It wasn’t the best state for a vampire to be in when dealing with hunters, but he was out of any other options. And quickly running out of time. Someone in Sam’s position could usually only survive about a week without the blood of the vampire turning them. Sam was different in some respects because of his demonic issues, but Dean didn’t think that would get him off the hook. It might give Sam more time, but it could equally likely mean less time, or it might not make a damn bit of difference at all. Dean couldn’t feel Sam like he should have been able to, but he felt certain Sam was still alive.

He clung to that for calmness as he circled the house, deciding how best to make his approach.

He didn’t want to be trapped up against the building, not until he found out how receptive John was going to be at least, so Dean gathered pebbles out of the dirt of the yard and tossed them towards the kitchen window. Shades were drawn across it but there was light visible through them.

Dean was almost out of his second handful when a figure emerged from the back door, shotgun first.

“There something I can maybe help you with?” Bobby Singer called out in sharp annoyance.

From the position he had chosen to stand in, Bobby could not have made out more of Dean than the dim shadow of his general shape. He took the few steps forward to bring himself into the circle of light from the back porch. Bobby swore, but the tip of the gun lowered a notch.

“Let me guess: you ain’t here to see me?”

Dean snorted. “John Winchester and I have business to discuss. Tell him to get his paternally incompetent ass out here before I have to get nasty about it.”

The distinctive cock of a shotgun from a few feet behind his head wasn’t much of a surprise since he had been aware of the steady, cautious footsteps for several minutes, but Dean still had to bite back the instinct to take the weapon away and beat the man with it, unfortunately. He had gone through too much trouble to arrange a meeting where Winchester could feel he had the upper hand to give in to a petty impulse. Retribution could wait until after he had Sam back and secured. Then maybe he and John could... chat.

“I appreciate you saving me the trouble of hunting you down; most monsters aren’t that accommodating,” Winchester drawled.

“I’m all sorts of helpful,” Dean said sarcastically. “I thought you might want to talk with me.”

“Talk with you? About how you are corrupting my son, or about how much I’m going to enjoy putting a bullet in your head before I cut it off?” On the surface, John’s voice was cool and skeptical, threatening and not at all willing to compromise, much better controlled than two days earlier when the underlying emotions had been broadcast clearly. Dean was still betting on it being a mask, though. It wasn’t that he thought no man could abandon his child as comprehensively as John had seemed to, he just didn’t think the man who had raised Sam could have. Regardless of what Sam seemed to think. Dean had a hell of a lot more years judging people’s characters and had found over his many, many decades that the apple didn’t usually fall that far from the tree.

But he had been wrong before. All actions were gambles.

“How about we talk about how you need my help to find him before you get to spend the rest of your miserable life wondering about what happened to your son that you sold out to demons?!”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” John growled.

“This is starting to sound familiar, but you know something about what I’m talking about or you would have pulled that trigger already,” Dean snapped, out of patience for games.

“Maybe I just want to know what you are before I burn your bones.”

“Your son is suffering god-knows-what at the hands of the creatures that killed your wife and all you’re interested in is another footnote for your freaking bestiary?! Maybe the rest of your peers were right about a Winchester working for the devil; they just got the wrong one.” Behind him Dean could hear John’s breathing roughen and had no doubt the man was resisting urges similar to Dean’s own. Without Sam between them they would have happily tried to kill each other.

But then, without Sam, it was doubtful their paths would ever have crossed in the first place.

Finally, John spoke up again. “You’d better start talking damn fast.”

“I want the same thing you want: Sam safe.” Dean wasn’t actually entirely sure that was what John wanted, but he knew John didn’t want Sam in the hands of demons, and that was all Dean needed to get what he was after.

“That’s what I’m supposed to think you’re so concerned about: his safety?” The rising note of angry incredulity in John’s voice made Dean clench his teeth.

“Whatever is going on between me and Sam is consensual. Which means you don’t get a goddamned say. You want to try and talk him out of it? You go right ahead. You want to kill him over it? You have to go through me. If you really care about him you’ll shut your mouth and walk away after this is over, but any of those options are better than what he faces now, which I think you goddamn well know! But all of it is just hot air if we can’t get him back, and the fact that you’re sitting on your ass in a junkyard tells me that you’re not having a whole lot of luck in that department.”

“What do you want?”

Dean spread empty hands helplessly. “I don’t know how to track demons; the rumor mill says you do.”

“If I could track demons, what would I need you for?” John asked scornfully.

“Other than sheer bad-assery and my usual charming ways? To deal with whatever the freaking holdup is. Every minute they have him worsens our chances of getting him back... intact. So let’s put our cards on the table and our issues aside long enough to do what we both want done. Afterwards we can find a suitably dark alley and beat the crap out of each other to your heart’s content.”

John said nothing for such a long moment that Dean swore and started to walk away. “Fine. I’ll drop Singer a postcard when I find Sam’s corpse for you. Since you’re so concerned about him and all.”

He only made it about five feet before John spoke up. “Wait.”

Dean turned to face him for the first time. He hadn’t paid a lot of attention during their last encounter, but Dean was still struck with the distinct impression that the man had aged in the two days since. The shotgun had been lowered and the hunter was watching him with conflicting emotions in his dark, deep-set eyes. Finally he seemed to come to some kind of conclusion.

“What are you?” John asked flatly.

“I’m a vampire; you know that.” Dean rubbed a hand in reminder over the phantom ache in his chest from a wound that was days healed.

John’s eyes narrowed. “That shaft was soaked in dead man’s blood and went straight through your heart. You sprang up off the ground like I’d inflicted a paper cut. You think I’m green? You aren’t a vampire.”

Dean shrugged. “You missed.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You can think whatever the hell you want. Can you track a demon or not?”

John didn’t look like he was going to let the subject lie, but he answered Dean’s question readily enough. “It’s not that easy. I can find places where demonic activity is likely, trace where it’s probably been happening, but I can’t draw a line from one place to another and say for sure where they’ve taken Sam.”

“It sounds like your method sucks.”

John’s nostrils flared.

“Do you know where he is?” he demanded.

Dean crossed his arms and looked away.

“At least I’ve got leads,” John snorted in derision.

“What leads?” Dean asked intently.

Bobby cut in then, reminding the two that they were not alone in the scrap yard. “As much as I’m enjoying this spirited discussion, my arm’s gettin’ tired. What are we doing, John?”

John met Dean’s gaze over the shotgun. “We’re finding my son. One way or another.”

“Then let’s everyone get their asses into the house,” Bobby grumbled. “The mosquitoes have had enough of my blood and I can already tell this is the kind of night that’s going to require heavy drinking.”

~~~~~
Inside, Bobby’s house was almost exactly as Dean remembered. The few minutes he had spent there, years earlier when Sam had finally decided to confront his old family friend for answers, had left Dean familiar with the layout and the knowledge that Bobby wasn’t much neater inside than outside his property. On that trip, Sam had sat in one of the kitchen’s rickety wooden chairs while Dean leaned against the wall and Bobby finally confessed the big secret that had shadowed all of Sam’s life, the demon blood he had been fed the night his mother was murdered. It was that chair Dean took now, recognizing it by the patterns of wood whirl and dings that he had barely been aware of noting.

Bobby and John were having a heated discussion on the porch, but Dean made no effort to listen in. There was no need; what was coming through the walls without effort made the point of the conversation perfectly clear. “Insane,” “crazy,” “desperate,” were being repeated at some volume. He wasn’t at all surprised when John entered the room alone a few minutes later.

“Bobby not want to help rescue Sam?” Dean asked pleasantly.

“He has some business in town.”

Dean gave the clock on the microwave that read eleven a pointed glance, but refrained from comment.

“If you’ve got any weapons, I want to see them on the table.”

“You going to search me to find out?” Dean asked. John’s baleful stare didn’t flicker. Dean rolled his eyes. “I don’t need guns; I have hands.”

He put his palms flat on the table and gave John a challenging look. John was apparently willing to take his word at face value, because he shrugged off his coat and leaned the shotgun against the wall, then slumped down into a chair. Careless, or just exhausted.

“I didn’t sell my son out to the demons,” John said flatly.

“I find it to be an amazing coincidence that you completely vanish from his life, we go on the run from demons for a couple of years, they can’t find us, then suddenly one of the greatest hunters alive turns up on our doorstep and presto magic-- Sam is snatched!”

“What possible reason can you think of that I would be a part of that?!”

“I can’t think of a reason you would have left him in the first place,” Dean snapped. “Especially considering all the freaking family history you left him in the dark about. You might as well have shoved him bloody into a pool of piranhas as what you did. It took the hunters, what, a couple of months to turn on him after you vanished? If you wanted him dead you should have had the balls to do it yourself, and if you didn’t want him dead-- then what the fuck were you thinking?!”

John’s brows drew together and the hand on the table was fisted so tightly that the bones of his knuckles showed yellow through his skin. “I don’t owe you any explanations for things that are between me and my son.”

“That might be true, if it was between you and Sam. But now it’s me and Sam, and you’re the asshole that keeps almost getting him killed! He’s mine now, it’s my blood in his veins, and my bed he sleeps in! All I need from you is where the demons took him, and then you can crawl on back to your hole and rot.” Dean waited for the explosion, would have welcomed it as an excuse to lash back-- but John didn’t seem as offended as Dean had expected.

“Your blood in his veins?” the hunter echoed in an odd tone.

“Well, you know, all it takes is a drop,” Dean hedged, swearing silently at himself for his carelessness.

“To do what?”

“What do you mean ‘to do what’?” Dean demanded. “To turn someone into a vampire! You think Sam was taking up knitting with me?”

John scooted his chair back from the table. It did not escape Dean’s notice that the shotgun was easily within the hunter’s reach again from his new position. “What I think is that vampires might not like sunlight, but they can move around freely in it. But you said Sam was so unconscious when the demons took him that there wasn’t even a struggle. I think dead man’s blood is an incapacitating poison to a vampire, but you took a shaft soaked in it to the heart and barely noticed. I think my son would rather have died than become a monster, but Bobby swears he was keeping company with you voluntarily. You say it’s your blood in his veins, but like you also said, it only takes a drop. And he’s not like whatever you are, not if he sleeps in the daytime while you walk around free. Not yet. I think you say a lot of things that don’t add up, and I want answers. Now.”

“Sometimes knowledge is a dangerous thing,” Dean finally said, meeting John’s level gaze.

“You level with me now, or you walk out that door.”

“At the cost of Sam’s life?” Dean asked coldly.

“If you can’t trust me enough to even tell me what the hell you are, then keeping you near me is a bigger risk than doing this on my own.”

Dean locked his eyes with John’s for a full minute, but saw nothing but resolve in them. His internal swearing kicked up another notch, but indecisiveness wasn’t a fault of his profession and it sounded like John was at least considering being reasonable. “If you repeat what I tell you to anyone, if any of my people even suspect you know, they will kill you. They will kill anyone you tell, and any one they think you might have told. They will kill me, which you probably don’t give a damn about, but they will also kill Sam. It won’t help you hunt me, and it won’t help you find my kind.”

“Keep talking,” John grunted.

“I told you the truth in the first place: I’m a vampire.” Dean shrugged. “Just... a little different.”

“Different how?”

“What do you think I’m going to tell you?” Dean demanded, exasperated, and not about to give a hunter a detailed rundown on strengths and weaknesses. At least not a hunter who wasn’t in the process of joining them. “I’m not a monster zoologist, or whatever the hell you would call an expert in this kind of crap. It takes a decade to become one of us, we don’t give a damn about community living, we’ve been known to avoid Italian cooking, and I personally enjoy a nice beer on occasion. During the transition, we’re more... vulnerable. The rules are different.”

John looked unimpressed. “But you still drink human blood?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Half the things out there drink human blood. We generally use a lower octane, and when we do indulge, the donors almost always survive. We aren’t a scourge on humanity. At least not by any reasonable standards.”

“You said almost always.”

“Sometimes they know a little too much,” Dean replied pointedly.

John seemed to consider that for a few minutes. “A decade, huh?”

“Yes,” Dean snapped. “But the fucking demon blood had Sam all screwed up. He sleeps in the daytime, he might combust in the sunlight. I don’t even know where he falls in the process now. There’s a possibility...” Dean trailed off, frustrated and worried.

“A possibility of what?”

“Being cut off from your maker’s blood will kill you, and it only takes about a week. Sam’s been gone for two days already...” He hated the franticness of his worry. Hated feeling so out of control of himself, the panic instinctive with a fledgling in peril. He couldn’t wait for Sam to finish the transition so he could have his nice, steady nerves back.

John interrupted his thoughts. “That should give us about five more days then.”

“Did you miss the part where I said he was screwed up?” Dean growled. “He has things going on that don’t usually happen until year eight, and things he should have at month three that haven’t happened! I don’t know how long he’s got. I don’t know anything except that the fucking demons took him, and I need to get him back.”




Part Three