In Arcadia Ego - Section One
Sep. 30th, 2010 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glasslogic
Sam swallowed hard.
Probably.
He lay on the cold, broken stone and distracted himself from dwelling on how thirsty he was by wondering where his dad was, and what he would think when he heard what happened. If he heard what happened. Hunters liked his dad. His father had always been a hard-drinking, humorless son of a bitch as far as he could tell, but hunters thought he was a hero. They wouldn’t want to tell him what happened to his son. Better to let him think Sam had just vanished.
Sam snorted weakly at the thought. They would do better to just fess up. His dad might not take his calls or want him around, but he knew a damn sight more about what was going on than anyone else did, Sam was dead certain of that. John Winchester wasn’t going to buy any crap-story about Sam vanishing without a trace, and he would settle the score with anyone who had a hand in what happened to his son.
But that wasn’t helpful now. If he was going to be saved, it wasn’t his father who was going to do it. Sam closed his eyes and let the cool mountain air slide over him, waiting for death.
Or a beginning.
“Just give me the girl!” Sam kept his back to the wall, trying to project authority in his demands while fighting down the first twinges of panic. He knew there were at least three vampires in the room with him, one of whom had a knife to the throat of the woman whose picture he had in his back pocket. Her husband’s frantic, dark eyes burned in Sam’s memory as he shifted, trying to track the presence of the others by sounds from the dark edges of the room.
Before one of them had killed the lights, there had been three. God knew how many there were now. The only one Sam was certain of was the one standing in front of him holding the hostage, a vague mocking expression on his face and no waver in the hand that held the blade. Sam kept his shotgun trained slightly off to the side and the flashlight firmly focused.
“The girl?” The vampire cocked his head, considering. “This girl? Are you sure this is the one you want?”
“Let me have her and we can all walk away!”
A bass voice rumbled from the shadows to his right. Fuck. He hadn’t thought anyone was over there. “Not all of us; seems you’ve already done for a fair number.”
“And why this girl?” The voice was a woman’s this time, and amused, drifting from the left. “Why not one of the other dozen or so locked up downstairs?”
The heavy, acrid odor of smoke and gasoline still stung Sam’s nose from torching the larger structure -- after boarding up most of the vampires inside. There wasn’t much time for this conversation. The location was remote, but someone had to have reported the fire by now. It was too big of a blaze. But the vampires confronting him seemed entirely unconcerned.
He had assumed at least a couple of the monsters would be guarding the captives, but he had thought he would be able to do a better job sneaking up on them. Vampires were notoriously lethargic when the sun was up, but this bunch seemed wide-awake. He didn’t think he was going to make any headway trying to explain why he barbequed their friends, so he ignored the accusation and focused on the woman’s comment.
“Them too. All of the humans.”
“Now wait a minute, I thought I just had to give you this girl -- now you want them all? That’s getting a little greedy, don’t you think?”
Sam felt his frustration soar to new heights. “I want all the girls, anyone you have. Bring them here and I’ll let you go -- now!”
The female vampire laughed. “Let us go? There’s three of us and one of you, honey. And I’ll bet cash prizes that you don’t even know what we are. Gotta love hunters, all balls and no brains. You are a hunter, right? The shotgun and bravado are suggestive, but I suppose you could just be a hick.”
“You’re vampires,” Sam hissed. “I know everything about you I need to.”
“Sounds like yes,” the vampire holding the woman commented dryly. “You sound awfully confident about your knowledge. But what happens when what you don’t know comes back to bite you in the ass?
“For instance,” he continued, pulling the captive up tighter to him so that she gasped in pain, “I bet you had no idea we were keen bargainers.”
“Bargainers?” Sam repeated blankly.
“It seems we have you outnumbered, and significantly outgunned -- just with our sheer natural awesomeness. We could add you to the menu easily enough, but it would probably be annoying and someone might get hurt. I don’t see why we can’t all just be reasonable people and come to some agreement instead.”
“What agreement?” Sam was wary.
“You for them.” The man smiled, showing a full set of gleaming white teeth -- all human for the moment, but the threat was obvious. “You hunters like to pride yourselves that you’re saving people from us monsters; time to put up, or shut up. These people are all alive and mostly unharmed; they can walk out of here, go back to their regularly scheduled lives. But only if you make it worth my while.”
“Or maybe I just hold this gun on you until the cops show up. Cops, firefighters, spectators -- that would put an end to any of your bargaining, wouldn’t it?”
“You think I’m afraid of that gun?” the vampire scoffed. “How long do you think it would take us to take you out and kill everyone alive in this building? Three minutes? Five? You’ve irritated me enough that I’m pretty much willing to do it out of spite.”
A shuffle in the shadows to his left reminded Sam that he was only still standing there because they were letting him do so.
Sam grimaced. He was without backup, and seriously outnumbered. He could probably extract himself from the situation --maybe-- but that left the others alive in the hands of the vampires, to be tortured and transformed. Sam had found himself capable of living with a great deal more than he would have thought possible when he was a younger man, before Jessica and what happened at Stanford drove him back out onto the road, but he didn’t want to add these people to his burden of guilt. Not if he could save them.
“What do you mean, me for them?”
“Your blood,” the vampire smiled thinly, “whenever, and wherever, I want it. For as long as these people live.”
“I won’t let you make me like you,” Sam said flatly, a chill creeping up his spine at the idea of what was being proposed.
The creature facing him snorted. “Why would I want to do that? I want you for fast food. It defeats the purpose of the entire exercise if I make you a vampire.” He grinned suddenly as something occurred to him. “You think I want you for information, for all those big, super secret hunter things you have in your head.”
Sam stiffened and heard a muttered, “Oh, please,” from the darkness to the right.
“I couldn’t care less about whatever the hell you all are up to,” the bargainer went on. “The only thing I want from you is what’s running in your veins.”
“What’s in his pants might be interesting too,” suggested the female casually.
Sam felt like he was losing ground and cut in hastily. “You said blood. I let you feed on me, you let the captives go -- unharmed and human.”
“Sure.” The apparent leader gave kind of a shrug, the movement of the knife causing the captive to whimper. “We’ll just put this one back with the rest, call the authorities, and you can lurk outside until the cops show up. See that they find themselves back into the proper hands and all. The police get to solve their missing persons case, you get to see that they’re safe, and I get a free meal whenever I call. Everyone goes home happy.”
“I just torched your nest; all of your friends are ashes -- why are you willing to do this?” Sam looked suspicious. Vampires weren’t common enough that he had encountered many of them in his career, but he had run into enough to know that anything beyond immediate gratification was unusual. But then, so was a kidnapping and gambling ring, so maybe it was just local flavor.
The leader smiled. “I never liked them much anyways.”
Sam expression hardened at the flippancy, but he nodded shortly and let the shotgun dip towards the floor a fraction.
“I want to be clear on how this works before we do anything rash now,” the vampire said, eyes locked onto Sam’s in the harsh glare of the flashlight. “It would make me unhappy to have to hunt down all these sweet people and rip their throats out because you were confused about our terms. And I do mean sweet. A full-grown hunter like you should know you can’t hide them from us, not now that we have their scents. It might take some time, but eventually...”
Sam swallowed back a nasty retort. “Okay.”
“You’re going to give me a phone number, and I’m going to give you a phone number. When I want you, I’ll call, and you show up. Immediately. You get a number, in case something happens to your phone and you need to give me a different way to reach you; otherwise, I don’t want to hear from you. I won’t transform or kill you, and you won’t hunt me or any of my kind. Unless they are hunting you first, naturally -- it wouldn’t be sporting, otherwise.” His smile implied he might enjoy that.
“I can’t promise not to hunt any vampires unless you can promise me that they won’t kill any humans.” Sam nodded towards the woman standing still as death in the vampire’s grip. “Not even for their lives.”
A ripple of what looked like anger crossed the vampire’s face. “I’ll settle for you agreeing not to hunt any of my kind in retaliation for this particular… encounter.”
“Fine,” Sam agreed impatiently, “and you won’t make any other vampires as long as this lasts.”
The leader looked amused. “Agreed.” Then something colder flickered through his expression. “But it’s going to hurt.”
“What is?”
“The feeding. It’s going to be painful. Very painful.” The tone of anticipation in his voice was unmistakable, and made Sam’s skin crawl with uneasiness. “And it’s going to happen often. Maybe even every month -- at least until I get bored.”
Sam’s expression darkened, he opened his mouth to argue -- and his gaze shifted back to the captive, her long, blonde hair sliding over her face making it too easy to recall the thousand and one times he had watched Jess’ hair slide just like that. Sam killed the memory before the pain welled up and distracted him. Jessica was three years dead.
This woman, he could save.
“Fine.”
The vampire arched one eyebrow. “That easy?”
“I still have to prove they’re human and get the cops here,” Sam pointed out. “Put her with the others then get lost. I don’t want to see anyone around unless they climb out of a police car, or the deal’s off.”
“You’ll have to see me at least one more time for our little phone number exchange. And just to be perfectly plain -- the deal ends, they die. And then you.”
Sam nodded tightly, and then backed out the door into the next room, heading for the outside and its bright sunlight. He would wait until the three left before he went back in and finished the job.
Deal or no deal, he didn’t trust them.
“Oh, by the way,” the vampire’s voice floated after him with a mocking edge, “I’m Dean.”
A few minutes after Sam had stepped back into the lawn the vampire had slipped out the door after him, watching with seeming impatience while Sam wrote his number on the back of a receipt. He handed Sam a folded piece of notebook paper, gave Sam a quick look the hunter couldn’t interpret, and then disappeared back into the depths of the house.
When Sam heard the sound of a car engine a few minutes later, he went back inside to check on the captives. They had been shocky and terrified, but not seriously harmed. The woman the vampire had been holding was particularly hysterical; mumbling about psychos and lunatics, so Sam figured that anything she said to the police about vampires would be roundly discounted. The rest didn’t even seem to know that much about their captors. Sam told them the police were on their way, and then slipped off. He stayed where he could observe, but left as soon as patrol cars pulled up in the yard.
There hadn’t been any conversation when the vampire finally called him, just a tersely given address and then the click of a handset. Sam had been left giving the phone in his hand an irritated look until the waitress trying to get his order tentatively asked if he needed any help.
He paced around the city for a few hours, trying to figure out anything that he could use to avoid the meeting that wouldn’t make the situation even worse. But the vampire had been pretty clear on the terms, and with an attitude of deep resignation Sam finally looked up the address.
When he showed up, his host, for lack of a better word, had unlocked the door at his knock and pointed at the neatly made bed. The vampire’s attention had been more on the cell phone glued to his ear than the hunter standing uneasily in the doorway. Sam finally entered, closed the door behind himself and sat in one of the plastic chairs at the tiny table.
If the vampire wanted him on the bed, he was going to have to explain why first.
The surreality of having shown up for an appointment to be bitten by a vampire seemed even more pronounced by the utter normalness of the surroundings. The motel room only differed from the one he was staying in across town by the paint on the walls and the patterns of water damage on the ceiling.
Dean finally hung up the phone and tossed it on top of an open duffle bag with a disgusted look.
“Problems?” Sam asked.
“None of your business. Take off your shirt.”
Sam tightened his arms over his chest. “You think maybe that’s a little fast? You don’t even know my name.”
The vampire leaned against the wall and eyed him. “I didn’t realize this was a date. I would have worn my new socks. I can compliment you on your shoes and go pick you some flowers -- how much hand-holding do you usually need? As for your name, Sam, it’s sheer arrogance to think only hunters have connections.”
Sam scowled. “Why do I have to take my shirt off?”
“So we don’t get blood on it, but it’s your shirt.” Dean shrugged. “If you don’t mind, I certainly don’t.”
“Fine. It stays on then.” Sam hesitated. “Can’t you do this with my wrist?”
“I can; I’m not going to.”
“There isn’t anything sacred about my neck,” Sam gritted.
“I agree, so stop being such a baby about it. You’ve agreed to meet up with a vampire and let him drink your blood; you’re honestly going to quibble about from where?”
Put that way… Sam sighed. “People know where I am. I didn’t tell them anything else. But if I don’t show back up, I’ve made arrangements for that information to get out.”
“Duly noted; you want to get on the bed now?”
“What’s wrong with this chair?” Sam was starting to feel a distinct attachment to the chair.
“Nothing, if you don’t mind me sitting on you. Though I have to say, it doesn’t really strike me as that sturdy of a piece of furniture. If you sit on the bed, I can kneel behind you. Be a whole lot better angle, which is mostly to your advantage.” The vampire smiled thinly. “Less poking around in your neck with my teeth looking for just the right spot.” He shrugged. “But like I said before, you don’t want to take my advice -- you can learn from experience like most idiots have to.”
Sam glared again, but moved reluctantly over to the mattress, the springs protesting as he sat down. “Now what?”
“Now,” the vampire kicked off the shoes he was wearing and padded over to the bedside, “you do what I say, don’t fight me, and then you leave. It’s simple enough, even a hunter should be able to stay with the program.”
Sam ignored the dig and tensed as the mattress sank behind him. He felt the vampire twist fingers in his hair and let the hand guide his head until the line of his throat was clearly exposed.
“You doing okay?” Dean asked, sweeping hair away from his neck.
“Yeah, peachy.”
“You might want to breathe then; you’ve been holding it since I got on the bed.”
Sam deliberately drew in a deep lungful and let it out through his nose. Focusing on his breathing was a welcome distraction from feeling the vampire settle in behind him. It was strange to feel the press of another body against his back. Especially one that was obviously not female.
“Are you always this cold?” he asked, as another strong hand locked around his bicep, holding him in place while the vampire nuzzled against his throat.
“Only when I’m hungry,” the vampire muttered distractedly.
It was… uncomfortable, to be on a bed in a motel room with another person’s hands on him; the soft, short hair brushing against his ear, and softer lips on his throat. It had been a long time since his last lover, and though this entire affair was the furthest thing from passionate that Sam could imagine, his body seemed to have some confusion about the situation. He opened his mouth to ask another question, anything to cut the tension he could feel starting to build, when the vampire gave a low chuckle, and then there was a bright, sharp sting in his throat. Sam jerked reflexively, but the vampire’s grip was unyielding. After an instant, he was able to force himself to relax into Dean’s hold, but then there was acid etching its way through his veins and he was struggling all over again despite himself.
He lost track of time after that, aware of nothing but waves of white fire sweeping through his body and the relentless grip that held him in place. He wanted to scream and fight, but managed barely to keep that much control over himself. He used images of the people he had rescued to help him endure, and after that, just the raw edges of his nerve and stubborn pride. Sam could taste blood in his mouth and didn’t even have energy to spare hoping he hadn’t bitten through his lip. Or his tongue. It seemed to go on for an eternity, and then it just stopped.
Sam fell forward, bent over his knees as if he had no ability to sit upright. His ears buzzed and he was dimly aware of movement behind him. Forcing his eyes open he saw the red glow of the alarm clock. Less than ten minutes since he had entered the room. Ten minutes. The pain had stopped, but his body still ached, and he thought nothing sounded so wonderful as curling up in a dark closet and hiding from the world for awhile.
“Look up.”
When Sam didn’t immediately respond, a firm hand grabbed his chin and pulled so that he had no choice but to sit up with it.
The vampire’s green eyes bored into his for a moment before he nodded as if to himself and tilted Sam’s head to one side. He pressed a washcloth to Sam’s throat. “Can you hold this?”
Sam fumbled one hand to his neck and took over.
“Keep pressure on it. It should stop bleeding in a few minutes.” Dean examined Sam’s face again, his lips twisted into a half smile. “We might have to get you a mouth guard; you know you have blood on your lips?”
Before Sam could properly process that comment, the vampire leaned in and ran his tongue over Sam’s mouth. He pulled away almost immediately, leaving Sam staring at him dumbly in surprise.
Dean walked away, fishing through his duffle bag, leaving Sam with nothing to do but hold the washcloth and stare blankly at his reflection in the mirror over the low dresser. He was pale from the pain and maybe blood loss, and his t-shirt was damp against his skin, stained scarlet around the collar along the right side of his neck. Sam leaned forward a bit and pulled the washcloth away from the bite long enough to examine it; two dark holes were visible on the reddened skin; after a moment, blood slowly seeped up. He felt ill and quickly pressed the washcloth back down.
“I didn’t know vampires could control their fangs.”
“What?” The vampire in question raised an eyebrow.
“Your fangs. Only using two instead of the whole row.”
“The whole…?” Dean’s expression of confusion cleared suddenly. “Yeah, well, there’s a lot more out there you don’t know than you do. So why don’t you shut your mouth, and get the hell out of my room. I’ve got things to do.”
Sam scowled in irritation, testing the wounds on his throat to see if they were still bleeding. It seemed to have stopped and he tossed the bloody washcloth at the sink. “You called me. This wasn’t my idea.”
“I called you for a snack, but I’ve had my snack now, and you’re taking up space. Get out.”
“Is this how it’s going to be?”
“Yes. Gotta problem?”
“No.” Sam stormed out, barely resisting the urge to slam the door behind him. He still hurt and he was pissed, but he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he wanted to stay with the vampire. He sat behind the wheel of his car without turning it on, trying to chase the source of his annoyance down. When it dawned on him, he groaned aloud. Despite the unpleasant nature of the visit, the pain that he could still feel like an ache in his bones, and the vampire’s obvious disdain, he had spoken to Sam like a real person. Even if the conversation was mostly curt and insulting, it was still more honest communication than Sam had with someone in months, nothing covert or hedged about it.
Sam abruptly abandoned his plans to check out a haunting in Wichita and decided to go visit with Pastor Jim for a few days instead. If he was getting so starved for contact that spending time in the company of a vampire was starting to be attractive, the ghost was clearly not the most pressing concern.
“I called you four days ago.” Dean’s voice was ominously level, his eyes sharp with annoyance.
“I was in Southern California,” Sam snapped. “This is Rhode Island. And I was in the middle of something I had to clean up.”
“I don’t give a damn what you had to finish or where you were. We have deal. Next time I call you, you have forty-eight hours and then the deal is off.”
“The deal goes off, it’s open season on you and your friends.”
Dean snorted and stepped aside to make room for Sam to enter the apartment, a year of familiarity giving the exchange the cadence of routine. “My ‘friends’ and I aren’t really worried about one little hunter and whatever tantrum you feel like throwing. And haven’t we had this conversation before?”
“Frequently.” Sam stepped past him and looked around, checking the layout by habit. It looked much like the other apartments he had met the vampire in, on and off over the last couple of months. Sometimes it was motels, sometimes hotels, and sometimes apartments like this one; bland, sterile and spotless. Dean had dropped vague hints when distracted that suggested the apartments weren’t actually his, or maybe they belonged to several people, but Sam wasn’t sure. Asking never got him anything but a cold look and an especially vicious bite.
“Strip.”
“You wish.”
Dean shrugged and sprawled on the sofa. “It’s your clothes, but I’m feeling messy tonight.”
Sam shot him a withering look. “The deal is for blood, not sex.”
“And yet, I don’t recall saying anything about sex. You reading something into this conversation I don’t know about?”
Sam ignored that. The vampire hadn’t let a visit go by without either insinuating or telling Sam outright that he would be happy to add sex to their arrangement. When Sam had proved not just reluctant but actively hostile to the idea, he had added the sweetener that feeding during sex wouldn’t hurt. Much. It made the possibility... interesting, but Sam had a hard enough time facing himself in the mirror after their visits as it was; he figured he’d be shaving by touch for the rest of his life if he caved to anything else. On long, dark nights when he found himself hesitantly musing over the idea, all Sam had to do was imagine the look on his father’s face if he found out, and his resolve fell firmly back into place. It didn’t hurt that bad.
But even though the offers were explicit and easily turned down, something had shifted in the twelve months Sam had been answering the vampire’s call. Something subtle that evaded Sam’s attempts to define it, but he found himself more aware of Dean than he was comfortable being.
It didn’t make the vampire any less irritating, though.
Sam pulled his jacket off with harsh, jerky movements and tossed it over the back of a chair. He grabbed a folded dishcloth from the counter and threw it at Dean, before slumping down onto the couch himself. He unbuttoned his shirt, refusing to look at the man sitting on the other end of it.
“Why can’t you just use my arm?” Sam hated the whine in his voice, but he was tired and there was no damn reason the vampire had to bite his throat. Or bite at all, really. But Dean had found the idea of using a knife amusing enough that one time Sam had mentioned it that Sam’s pride wouldn’t let him ask again.
“Because I don’t want to,” Dean reminded him lazily, watching the unbuttoning with interest. “When you’re drinking the blood, you can choose. When it’s me, I get to pick the vein.”
“Get it over with then,” Sam grumbled, unhappy but compliant. “I have more things to do tomorrow.”
Dean’s eyes narrowed at that. “I might not be done with you tonight.”
“I have a job. You said you wouldn’t go out of your way to interfere with it!”
“Keeping you with me for a day or two isn’t going out of my way,” Dean said pointedly.
Sam shifted as Dean slid across the couch and straddled his lap, knees pressed up against the outsides of his thighs. It was uncomfortably intimate, but complaining would eventually just land him in a worse position.
The vampire settled himself then raked casual fingers through Sam’s hair, before locking them tight and using the grip to tilt Sam’s head sharply to one side.
Sam winced. “I cooperate; you don’t have to grab me like that.”
Dean ignored him, rubbed his cheek against Sam’s throat, inhaling deeply and dragging his tongue over the pulse point like he could taste blood even through the skin.
Sam focused on trying to relax into the sofa cushions. Dean sucked over the vein without breaking skin until some of the tension began to ease out of the muscles beneath him. With no warning, his fangs slipped in, just deep enough to nick the thick vessel before they were sliding back and blood welled in the wound. Pinned beneath him while he fed, Sam was shivering with waves of pain, fingers locked tight in the cushions and eyes clenched shut.
By the time the vampire finished and pulled back, Sam was white and sheened with sweat. Dean licked the skin around the puncture wound clean of blood, then covered it with the dishtowel and applied pressure. After a moment, Sam batted his hand away from the cloth and held it in place himself. Dean straightened up and stretched leisurely.
“You know, you really should reconsider my offer. Think of how much more... enjoyable, this could be.
Sam opened hazel eyes and glared. “I told you no. I always tell you no.”
Dean shrugged and climbed off his lap. “If I don’t ask, I won’t know when you change your mind.”
“It’s not going to happen.” Sam tried to stand, but after a moment, gave up and sank back down.
“Dizzy?”
“Get me a band aid?”
“No. Come into the bathroom when you can stand, clean it up right, then take a shower. You can sleep it off in the spare bedroom tonight; do whatever you have to tomorrow. Going to visit that priest friend of yours?”
Sam sighed, checking to see if the bleeding had stopped yet. “He wasn’t a priest; he was a pastor, and no. He’s dead.”
The vampire turned back to regard the hunter, all hints of levity gone. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for; it wasn’t your fault.”
Dean leaned back against the dresser. “I didn’t have the impression he was that old. Accident?”
Sam tried standing again; his balance was better and he stayed on his feet. “There wasn’t anything accidental about it. His throat was cut to the bone and the whole place reeked like sulfur.”
“Did you catch it?”
“No.” There was finality and grief in the tone of Sam’s voice. The vampire gave him a considering look, but let the matter drop.
“Go shower, then get some sleep.”
“I can go tomorrow, and I don’t have to come back?” Sam asked warily.
“Right. I’ll call you in a few weeks.”
“Fine… thanks for not ruining my shirt.”
Dean paused in the act of closing his bedroom door. “Just remember next time -- forty-eight hours, or this whole thing is off.”
“I’ll be there,” Sam sighed.
Sam sat on the back of the rusty pick-up truck; sodium streetlights emphasized the paleness of the woman sitting next to him. There was a dirt road beneath the tires and dark fields stretched out for miles, the lights of the nearby city lined the hillsides in the distance. Somewhere in the darkness, Lenore’s nest was finding dinner while Lenore herself kept Sam company.
“So what did Gordon say?” she asked quietly, once the last of her people disappeared into the night.
Sam grimaced and gingerly touched the split in the skin over his cheekbone. “It wasn’t so much a discussion as a... demonstration of opposing viewpoints.”
“I can’t believe you attacked another hunter to save me.”
“Because you’re a vampire?”
She nodded, and pulled her legs up to rest her chin on her knees.
“I’m not a hunter just so I can kill things, Lenore. I’m a hunter so I can save people; stop the things that want to hurt them. You and your nest aren’t attacking people. It’s one thing to not know any different, but Gordon doesn’t get a free pass to slaughter you after he knows you aren’t doing a damn thing to hurt anyone.” Sam was still angry, hours and miles away from his showdown with the older hunter.
“I don’t think you are going to get any support from the rest of the hunters on that.”
“No,” Sam kicked at the dirt, “I don’t think so either.”
She turned her head to watch him. “Going to cause you problems?”
“It’s a big country, and we don’t exactly advertise our whereabouts. I can avoid Gordon.”
“And the other hunters?”
Sam shrugged. “They don’t seem to like me much anyways. I might get a few more nasty looks, but I don’t think anyone is going to get that excited about Gordon and me trading a few punches.”
“What about the part where you left him tied to a chair?”
Sam shrugged again.
“Well, thanks for helping us blow town,” she said wryly. “I wouldn’t have let them pull the engine apart on the other truck if I’d realized we were about to be moving.”
Sam looked over to where the Impala was cooling in the pre-dawn air; a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth despite the seriousness of the situation. “My dad would have kittens if he knew I had used his car to rescue vampires.”
“We don’t make others, you know. All of my nest, they were like the others until they found me. And once they are mine, they abide by my rules. Or I kill them.”
They let that hang in the air for a little while. Sam had made a moral call when he had stopped Gordon from killing Lenore, and outside of the drama and adrenaline of the situation, found he was still comfortable with his decision. She and her people weren’t the monsters he had dedicated himself to fighting.
Sam wasn’t blind to Gordon’s position; he had seen the raw hatred in Gordon’s eyes, heard the grief in his voice when he spoke of his sister. If it had been a demon Gordon was determined to kill, Sam wasn’t sure he would have been able to bring himself to intervene, no matter how sympathetic their cause. Not when some mornings he still woke up sure he could smell the nauseating mix of burning flesh and Jessica’s perfume.
But none of that was here and now, and Sam wasn’t willing to lose the opportunity to ask some questions.
“I have some… familiarity, with another vampire,” Sam began slowly.
“I know.”
He looked surprised. “How?”
“You’re marked. It happens eventually, if a vampire feeds from a regular donor. Most of my kind can’t detect it.”
“What does it mean?”
“That this person is claimed -- hands off.”
“I didn’t think enough of your ‘donors’ survived for that to have any real value. Especially not if most vampire don’t even know it’s there.”
“Well,” Lenore stretched her legs back out, “there are vampires, and then there are vampires.”
Her tone seemed odd and Sam looked at her curiously. Lenore was staring off into the field, though, and didn’t turn to meet his eyes.
“Can I get rid of this ‘mark’?”
“It will go away on its own if they stop feeding from you. But not other than that. When you die, I suppose.”
“Thanks,” Sam said dryly.
“I was surprised that a hunter would have that kind of relationship with a vampire,” Lenore said curiously.
Sam grimaced. “He had hostages, and I was there alone. He agreed to let them go alive and unharmed if I would show up and cooperate whenever he called. There were more vampires there than just him; they all have the scent of the hostages. If I try to go after any of them, they will just kill everybody and me. It’s annoying, and painful, but not worth gambling their lives with.”
“Painful?”
“Not when he bites me, really, but afterwards.”
Lenore frowned. “He bites you? Instead of cutting you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“My neck, usually. I was half strangled by a poltergeist before he called once and he used my wrist instead that time. It was the exception, though. Why?”
“I’m just… surprised. I didn’t see any scars on you. It’s unusual for a vampire to bite a victim they don’t mean to turn or kill. Our physiology makes it difficult.”
“He doesn’t use the whole set of teeth, just two. Makes neat little holes, they heal up in a couple of days.”
Lenore had gone still as death. All the little signs of life, the rise of fall of a chest, blink of an eyes, a shift of muscle, minute things that marked the living, or those trying to imitate the living -- all gone.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked sharply.
“What’s his name?”
“What does that matter?”
“His name, Sam.”
“Dean,” he answered, after considering her still profile for a moment.
She swallowed hard.
“Lenore.”
“It’s nothing for you to be concerned with. Vampire nests are pretty isolated. We don’t often have interaction with others, so it’s unusual to be familiar with the names of other vampires.”
“I can’t believe Dean is a unique name.”
“No, probably not, but combined with the way he bites you, that’s unusual enough.”
“I’m letting him bite into my throat on a regular basis,” Sam pointed out. “If you know something about him… You said you owed me, Lenore; I would really appreciate being let in on whatever information you have.”
“I’ve been around for awhile, Sam. The longer you’ve been around, the more rumors you pick up. I can’t tell you anything specifically, but if he came to my town, I’d pack up and move. But you’ve been doing this with him for awhile now. If he’s honoring your agreement…” She shrugged.
“Can’t tell, or won’t tell?”
“Does it matter?”
There was no sound but the rustle of long grasses in the night breezes and the low call of an owl.
Finally, Sam stirred with a sigh. “Do you have a place to go?”
“Here, actually.”
“Here?”
She smiled at the surprise in Sam’s voice. “This is farm country. Lots of places to hunt, for us. And plenty of abandoned houses and barns overgrown and forgotten in the area. I’m in the mood to lay low for awhile. Very low.”
“Gordon isn’t going to give up.”
“No; he struck me as that flavor of psycho. But it’s okay, we won’t stay here long. Move on in a week or so and then… just keep going. Eventually he’s going to have to stumble over another nest and get distracted. We can hold out until then.”
“So why are we sitting here on the tailgate if you’re planning to move in?”
“Maybe I enjoy your company.”
“I think I have enough vampires in my life, Lenore.”
“Do you have enough friends?”
Sam smiled. “No, I can’t say I have too many of those.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder. “If you need me, call.”
“Are you sure you can’t tell me anything about Dean?” he tried again.
“He’s lonely.” Lenore flashed him one last smile, then slid off the tailgate. “Good luck, Sam.”
