Chapter 18

They're staring at eight foot high chain link fences again, but this time there's no barbed wire on top. It's almost as if they're not trying very hard to keep people out.

"Why would they?" Sam says, and his voice is pitched low, rough. He's barely slept, and he's quiet, subdued. Dean doesn't blame him. "Anyone that goes over is a free meal, right?"

"Right," Dean says, trying not to think about the fact that that's why they're here. The vampires might not find him particularly palatable, but the whole reason they've come here is so that Dean can feed his brother to a nest of vamps.

He puts the toe of his boot into one of the links, and hauls himself up.

Sam follows, and their feet hit the ground on the other side almost at the same time. "Right," he says. "Now what."

A twig snaps. Thick woods belt the edge of the compound, and Dean goes on high alert. His hand settles on the handle of his machete, ready to swing.

"Wait," Sam says, as two guys step out of the trees.

They look like Dean expects, like a couple of commune rejects from the 70's, homespun shirts and drawstring pants. They're both big, tall and muscular. The only thing that sets them apart from the usual compound sentries is they have no guns.

Who needs them, when they've got a set of teeth.

"Take me to your leader," Dean says with a smirk, but then thinks better of it. "Never mind. I'll find him myself." He swings, and the head of one hippy vampire rolls off broad shoulders and bounces off the trunk of a tree.

The other guy roars, rushes Dean, but he's not too bright, because his head bounces off the ground seconds later.

Dean turns to Sam. "Where do they usually keep the boss in a place like this?"

"Dean," Sam says, face twisting up in disapproval tinged a little too much with pain for Dean to take it seriously. "They could have taken us right to the guy."

"Thin the herd, remember, Sammy?" Dean starts to walk through the trees. "This might be a hopeless case, but if you're just going to walk up to the guy and bare your neck for him, we might as well have done this back at home." He stops and turns, as much to check that Sam's following as to make his point. "We're going to put a dent in them, Sam. So other hunters can come and finish them off when we're gone."

Sam drops his head and nods, but the fight has gone out of him. He's already given up.

---

The information Sam got was crap. They get all the way up to the house, vamps only ever coming at them in twos and threes, and whether it's because Sam and Dean have been doing this since they were kids, or that the heavies this cult leader vampire is turning are as thick as pig shit, it's probably too late to find out. There are seven headless bodies on the ground when they get to the guarded door, and then they make it nine.

Sam looks concerned, brow furrowed, mouth turned down.

Dean gives him a weak smile. "Cheer up, Sammy," he says. "Maybe your guy was really wrong, and there's actually a hundred of these bastards inside."

Sam lifts his eyes and he offers Dean a weak smile, huffs out a soft laugh. "Maybe," he says.

Dean kicks in the door. "Oh, look," he says, as his eyes scan the interior. The building is one vast room constructed of cinder block, and every spare bit of floor is taken up by vampires, either standing in groups or lounging on large cushions. Every single one turns to him, and then all he can see is teeth. "We're in luck."

"There must be..." Sam's eyes flick around as he hovers in the doorway. "Yeah, a hundred. Maybe more. Dean?"

Dean's head snaps around. There's fear on Sam's face, uncertainty. "We can walk out of here right now, Sammy. You just say the word."

Sam looks back at the approaching vampires, swallows hard. Then he shakes his head.

"I mean it, Sammy. I don't want this. I don't want you to die."

Sam shakes his head again and raises his machete. "No. We're doing this, Dean." He glances quickly at Dean. "I'm ready." Then he throws himself into the mass.

Dean follows, and there's blood, and a vicious, outraged screaming in his ears. He loses count of the ones he takes out. Someone tries to take a bite out of him, but lets go quick. Dean throws his head back and laughs, and all the time, he's got one eye on Sam.

Then it's too much. There are too many of them. Dean's machete is wrenched out of his hand. Sam comes at him, takes out another three on the way before his is gone too, and then the room goes quiet except for the curses Dean throws. Sam is silent, his eyes on Dean, gives an occasional ineffective struggle.

"Bring them to me."

"Huh?" Dean's head jerks around to to the source of the sound, to the direction the voice is coming from. And there, on a raised platform at the far end of the room, is a girl. "What the hell?"

"Were you expecting something a little more David Koresh, Dean?" Sam says, and there's a mirthless laugh in his voice. "She's a vampire. Probably one or two generations removed from the alpha. And would that surprise you?"

Dean shakes his head, nice and slow. He's dragged, along with Sam, to the edge of the platform, then forced down to his knees.

She looks about fourteen. "You're hunters?" she says, head tipped to the side, curious. "What are your names?"

Dean lifts his chin defiantly. "Sam and Dean Winchester."

There isn't even a flicker of recognition on her face. Dean blinks. "Are you fucking kidding me? You don't know who we are?"

"Should I?" she says, and then she crouches down to bring herself eye to eye with Dean. "You think you're special, don't you? Different from the rest? Hunters have come in here before, lots of them, over the twenty years I've been building my family. I like hunters. I keep them for myself." She grins, a row of vampire fangs almost completely obscuring her human ones. "I think they taste better."

She leans in toward him as one of her people pulls Dean's head to the side to expose his throat. Then she pulls back, narrows her eyes accusingly. "But you're already dead." She gives him a shove, and he sprawls back onto his ass.

Then she turns to Sam. "You know, your boyfriend's already dead."

"He's my brother," Sam says, voice breathy and rough.

Her smile comes back, spreads wider than before. "Well. You're a little more than that, aren't you?" She breathes in through her nose. "Yeah. Close family."

"You shut the hell up," Dean spits, shoving off the hands that seek to hold him down and scrambling to his feet. "You don't know anything about us."

The girl just smiles at him. "Apparently, I do." She looks up, at the vampires who have grasped hold of his arms to hold him again. "Bring him back here."

They push Dean forward again, force him down with heavy hands on his shoulders. He kneels, shoulder to shoulder with Sam. The girl hops down to sit on the edge of the platform, legs dangling between them.

"So, Dead Dean. What's your story?"

Dean stares straight ahead, shakes his head. "No story. Died. But kicking your ass was on my bucket list."

She smirks. "Cute." Then she turns to Sam. "Your heart's beating, though. It's beating fast. You scared, Sammy?"

Sam jerks his head to face her. "You don't get to call me that."

She purses her lips, then beams at him. "I like you." She puts her hand on the back of his neck and pulls him toward her. "I'm looking forward to this."

Dean stares as she bares her teeth, opening her mouth wide to bite. Tendons stand out on Sam's neck as he strains, perhaps away, perhaps to stop himself from fighting.

"No," Dean says, and struggles in the grip of the vampires holding him. "No." He starts to push, to slither out of his body, instinct not allowing himself to simply watch.

Sam's eyes are on him. Dean sees the pain in them, the wince as she bites down, hears the crunch of sharp teeth breaking skin and sinking into muscle. Sam doesn't fight. "It's okay, Dean," he says. "It's okay." And then he's fucking crying again, and those words are on his lips and Dean can't, he can't— "You can go," Sam says. "You can go now, Dean. It's what I want." His voice grows thin and his eyelids flicker as the audible suck and swallow of the vampire in his throat continues. "Go, Dean."

Dean slides out of his body, watches from the platform as the vampires holding it let him fall to the floor.

Sam goes limp, would have fallen if it wasn't for the vampire holding him. Dean flickers uncontrollably as he watches his brother die. "No," he says, and it's all he can think. He needs the girl to get off his brother, to get her fangs out of Sam's throat, and when he rushes her, his intent is to beat the girl to death, and the fact that he doesn't have a solid form, doesn't have solid fists to hit her with, doesn't even occur to him.

She jerks back before he's even reached her, thrown away from Sam. The vampires holding him jerk back away as if something yanks them from behind. The girl lets out a cry of rage as she climbs to her feet, baring her teeth in a bloody snarl. And that's Sam's blood on her lips, Sam's life.

"What are you?" she screams at him.

Dean bears down on her, not walking, not running, all he does is will it, and she cringes back. "Never seen a ghost before, bitch?" He throws all the rage he can muster at her. It rolls out of him like a wave, and then crashes down, swift, powerful, violent.

It hits her where she stands, and she crumples. She's still moving, though, twitching, making pathetic little mewling sounds. Something cracks, and she stretches out an arm, healing fast.

Dean looks up, locates his machete in the hand of a vampire halfway down the room. With a thought, he wrenches it free, pulls it through the air. It whistles as it flies, the sound reminiscent of the fire iron before it ended Dean's life.

It severs her neck with a sickening crunch, and she goes still and quiet. All the air seems to suck out of the room, and then explodes back in with a wave of sound and motion.

There's pandemonium. Vampires screaming, bodies just a roiling mass. They crawl over each other to get out of the room, dozens of them, running scared.

Dean wants to collapse, but all that happens when he lets go is a slow pull back to one of the bodies on the floor. He ignores it, instead crouching beside Sam's body. He wants to cry, doesn't even know if he can. There's a tightness in his chest that shouldn't be possible. "Sam," he cries, and it's almost a wail. "Oh, god, Sam."

Sam moves.

His finger twitches. He moans, and his head lolls on his neck. Then he goes still again.

"You're alive?" Dean reaches out, but his fingers go through Sam's body, through his face, and he can't even feel for a pulse.

With a thought, Dean's back in his meat suit, picking himself up off the floor. There's a pulse, steady, strong. Sam's just out. The relief that washes over Dean almost brings him to his knees.

He picks Sam up, and he carries him out of there.

---

Dean shouldn't even be driving, not with the way he's glitching, winking out and back in only to find the landscape twitching past him like a jerky silent film. He stares straight ahead, doesn't glance Sam's way, if he's lucky Sam will stay passed out the whole way home.

Dean's not lucky.

Sam moans and lifts his head. He winces, and his hand goes to his throat, the vampires bite not bleeding anymore, but still open and ragged. Then he jerks, stares out the window, and then turns to Dean.

"What did you do, Dean?" he hisses, gasping for air between the words. "What the hell did you do?"

Dean swallows and shrugs. He keeps his eyes on the road. "I lost it, Sammy. I lost it."

From the corner of his eye, Dean can see Sam gaping at him. "Are they all dead? Did you take them all out?"

Dean shakes his head. "Just her. I thought you were dead, I thought you were gone, and I just... I lost control. The rest of them ran. I let them go."

Sam drops his head, stares at his feet, still gasping for air. "You should have left me, or... Or you should have finished it yourself."

Dean shakes his head. "No."

Sam reaches out and pops open the glove box. They always keep a gun in there, and he pulls it out, checks the clip. "Stop the car, Dean."

Dean shakes his head again. "You're not blowing your brains out on the side of the road, Sam. We'll be home soon. With about an hour to spare. If you still want to do it—"

"I still want to do it," Sam says.

Dean swallows back the lump in his throat. "I won't let you."

Sam swallows hard, and then he fits the barrel of the gun up under his chin. His finger tightens on the trigger.

"Jesus, Sam. No." Dean reaches out to grab for the gun and glitches. The car swerves, and he barely corrects while fighting Sam for control of the gun. "I'll do it," he says. "I'm going to be the one to pull the trigger, okay? Because I can't let you do that to yourself. I won't. Please give me the goddamn gun, Sammy."

Sam turns, relaxes his hand, lets Dean take it from him. "You don't have to do that."

"I don't care," Dean says. He stows the gun beneath his seat, out of the way. "What, you think I'm just going to leave you to do that shit by yourself?" He shakes his head. "No, Sammy. I mean, we've always said it, right? Either of us needs putting down, we'd do it? Whether I think you need it or not, you seem think so. So I'm going to do it."

"Thank you," Sam says. "Thank you, Dean."