Chapter 3

"What is it with bad guys and abandoned warehouses?" Dean says as they pull up outside a dilapidated building on the edge of town. "Seriously, dude, it's becoming cliche."

The first vampire, the dark haired kid with the pretty face, pats Dean on the cheek. "It's not abandoned, dumbass," he says. Then he grabs Dean by the upper arm and when the back doors of the van they're in open, he drags Dean out.

Dean could make a run for it now, but he doesn't. There are enough of the vampires around that he wouldn't make it. If he just waits, Sam will find him.

Sam will find him.

"Whoa," Dean says, when they go through a door at the side of the building, his breath huffing out of him as he takes it all in. The smell of motor oil and grease and tire rubber overtakes him, and he breathes it in deep. "Sweet," he says, as his eyes travel over the garage he's walked into.

"Right?" the vampire still gripping his upper arm says. "This is why you're here, Dean. We laid the breadcrumbs, and you followed them."

Dean's head jerks around. "You what? You killed people so me and my brother would come here? That's messed up."

"You, Dean. Just you. You belong to us now." He lets go of Dean's arm, and walks out into the middle of the vast space, toward the bare bones of a race car, a skeleton, but Dean can already see the car it will become.

Sparks fly as a vampire in overalls welds the firewall in. Other guys mill around, vampires with dirty hands and tools. Dean's fingers itch to have something in his hands, to get closer to the massive engine block sitting on the concrete floor off to one side of the room. "What do you need me for?"

The vampire looks back at him. "The boss will be here soon. He'll explain everything. You're going to be one of us, Dean. It's going to be sweet."

"Um," Dean says.

A door opens high above their heads, and the workshop goes quiet. The background noises, the clanging of steel against steel, the harsh squeal of the welding apparatus, and the chatter, all fades away, and all eyes turn to the mezzanine above.

Dean follows their gaze.

A man, older-looking than the vampires in the shop, leans against the railing and looks down. "Dean Winchester," he says. "You look like shit."

The hair on the back of Dean's neck rises. "Who the hell are you?"

The guy doesn't flinch. "I'm the boss." His eyes track over the shop, the car parts, the vampires in overalls. "I made all this. Turned the best people. I have everything I want here, and we're making a good car. But I need you."

"What the hell for?"

"You're going to be my driver."

Dean chokes. "Hey dude, sorry to burst your bubble, but you'd be better off handing me a wrench. I'm no race driver."

"A vampire, with a hunter's reflexes?" The boss grins, closes his eyes, tips his head back. "No. A vampire with a Winchester's reflexes." He drops his head back down, and his eyes snap open. He looks right through Dean. "It's perfect."

Dean coughs. "You're... Oh my god, you want to turn me." He laughs, shakes his head. "Sorry to break it to you, boss man, but someone already tried that. Didn't take."

The boss narrows his eyes. "Bring him up here."

The young vamp grabs Dean's arm again, tugs him toward the stairs. Dean rolls his eyes and allows himself to be led up onto the mezzanine, dragged along until he's standing right in front of the boss.

The boss tips his head to the side and studies Dean. "I think I'm going to do it now. You should turn in time for your brother to come rescue you, I think. He'll be a perfect first meal."

"What?" Dean starts to struggle, throws off the young guys grip, but two others come up behind him, and he stops. "No frickin way. You're not turning me into a monster and then feeding my brother to me." He blinks. "Even if you could. The moment he sees that I'm not human, he'll take my head off, I guarantee it."

But that's not true. He cured Dean when he was turned before. He brought him back when he died, bound his spirit to his dead body. Dean's not human now. He's dead. There's dead blood in his veins. He laughs out loud, laughs harder when he sees the puzzled look on the boss's face.

"Yeah," Dean says, and though he fights his laughter, he can't suppress his smile. He drops his eyes so he doesn't have to look at the vampire's face, so he can hold it together. "Okay." He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow, then looks up. "Well, I can see you're determined. No point to delaying the inevitable." He tips his head to the side, exposes his throat. "Go nuts, boss. Bite me. It'll be fun."

The boss narrows his eyes, but takes a step forward. A vampire behind Dean holds his arms immobile, and Dean shrugs, because there's no way he's going to miss this.

The boss gets close enough to bite, and then freezes. Long moments pass, and then he lets out a growl and jerks back. "Your heart's not beating," he says.

"Damn," Dean says. "I was kinda hoping you wouldn't notice."

"You're dead," the vampire says. "How are you dead?"

Dean lifts an eyebrow. "Wrong end of a pointy thing, lots of blood, you would have loved it." He pats his bandaged leg. "But I'm better now. Pretty sure I'm not going to turn, though, so—"

There's a sound, downstairs, like a door ripping off it's hinges. "Dean?" Sam's urgent yell comes up from below, along with the whistle of a machete moving through the air, and the shouts of vampires below.

"Up here, Sammy," Dean says, and looks over. Sam's machete flies again, blood sprays across the concrete floor, and the head of a vampire bounces. "Nice one," Dean says.

Sam looks up. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Oh. Right." Dean turns to the boss. "Sorry, man," he says. "You just came in last." He squats down, grabs the guy by the legs, and heaves him over the railing.

"Jesus, Dean," Sam says, as he sprints toward the vamp, writhing in pain and frothing at the mouth in anger. "Thanks a lot."

"You can handle it," Dean says, and tosses the other vampires from the mezzanine before he turns and runs for the stairs. He looks around for a weapon, picks up a large wrench, takes out a couple vamps as they run at him, then he looks around.

Sam drops the machete. It's slick with blood. He hunches over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath. "You okay?" he rasps.

Dean hasn't even broken a sweat, nor is he winded. Sure, he didn't do as much as Sam did, but the run downstairs should at least have got his heart pumping a little—

"Huh," he says. "Yeah. Good. Apparently better than good. Ghosts don't get tired."

Sam looks up at him from beneath his hair. "Be careful," he says, then pushes himself up to his full height, still panting. "You can overdo it, you know."

Dean grins and swings his arms. "I'm good, Sammy. Besides, you did all the hard work. My hero." He winks.

Sam grimaces and shakes his head. Then, as if for the first time, he looks around. "Oh my god, Dean. Did they lure you here with promises of car parts and grease?"

Dean grins. "They wanted me to drive a race car."

Sam's eyebrows draw together in confusion. "Monsters have no standards anymore."

"Right?" Dean scoops up the machete from the floor and wipes it down on the overalls of the closest headless vampire, and then heads for the door with it slung over his shoulder.

---

The heating in the motel is almost non-existent. Dean rubs his arms and shivers as he stretches out on the bed on his side of the room, a book from the Men of Letters archives open in his lap.

"Cold?" Sam asks. He's spread out likewise, but his feet reach almost to the end of the small bed, even sitting up with pillows stuffed behind his back.

Dean shrugs. He shivers again. "How do you suppose vamps deal with it?" he asks. "Being cold all the time?"

"They probably take warmth from their victims," Sam says. "I never thought of it before, but it makes sense."

"Yeah." Vampires, surviving not only on the blood, but on the warmth, the body heat, of their victims. It's not necessary for their survival, though. Benny kept his donated blood in a cooler. Did Benny feel like this, all the time? It must have been incredibly hard, not only fighting the hunger, the blood lust, but the cold as well.

Dean tries to push away the sick feeling in his gut, but it won't go. That last, desperate hug, before Dean cut off his head. Was Benny savoring the last warmth he might ever feel?

He looks sideways at Sam, head down again, one large hand splayed out on the page as he reads the other. Dean looks at his own hand, compares the color.

His skin is pale, bloodless. His fingernails are blanched almost white. Sam's skin, by contrast, is flushed and healthy. Dean shoves his book to the side and twitches off the bed, comes down on the edge of Sam's.

"What, Dean?" Sam says, but Dean ignores him. He puts his own hand over Sam's, almost twitches back at the heat in that simple touch.

"Holy crap," Dean says, and twines his fingers between Sam's, pulls his hand off the page. He turns it over, presses his other hand around it. "You're so hot."

"Well, thanks," Sam says with a laugh. He's grinning when Dean jerks his head up.

"Shut up," Dean says. "I'm frickin freezing to death over here, okay? Or I would be if I was still alive."

The smile slides off Sam's face. "I know." He puts his book to the side, brings his other hand up, and encloses Dean's hands in his own. Sam's hands are larger, Dean's hands seem tiny wrapped up in them, and the chill in Dean's fingers, in his knuckles, slowly seeps away.

"That's good," Dean says, but now he can feel the chill in the rest of his body more keenly. He fights the shiver that starts in his shoulders first, but fails. His teeth chatter together.

"Jesus, Dean," Sam says, and pulls him closer, sliding his hands up Dean's arms, spreading them out over his biceps. "Why didn't you tell me? God, you're freezing."

"Well, I'm not actually going to die of it, right? It's only because I'm stuck in this corpse, ghosts don't usually feel the cold, do they?"

Sam shakes his head, slides one hand up to wrap around the back of Dean's neck. "I don't know. I don't think so." He pulls Dean closer, into a hug, wraps the other arm around his back.

Dean just melts into it, into the warmth, taking heat and comfort from Sam's body. "This is going to get weird really soon, little brother," he says, but he can't bring himself to pull away.

"It's fine," Sam says, and he doesn't move, either. His body is relaxed, and surely he'd stiffen up if he wasn't comfortable with this. So Dean takes it, lets Sam hold him for long moments.

Then Sam yawns, his hold tightening for a moment, then releasing. "I should get some sleep," he says. "Take a shower, hell, take a long one and warm up." He shrugs and looks down at his own small bed. "If you want, you can— You're welcome to—"

Dean pulls back and blinks. "Weird," he says, and then he slides off the edge of Sam's bed, and heads for the bathroom.

---

Dean plans to stay in the shower until the water runs cold. It won't take long, motel hot water is always limited.

It's never happened in the bunker. Probably won't, though Dean's never tested his theory that it'll just go on and on and never end. He's going to do that as soon as they get back.

Soap bubbles slide over his bare flesh. He probably wouldn't even need to shower if it wasn't for the cold. He doesn't sweat now, and Sam said something about Dean being 'on hold'. It's like he's frozen in time, preserved at the moment of his death, and his spirit is locked inside, unable to move on.

He's haunting his own goddamn body.

Bobby attached to that beat up old flask, but it wasn't a genie in the bottle deal. If that was all this was, Dean should be able to leave his body behind, just teleport out and away from the cold every now and then.

He closes his eyes and concentrates.

Nothing happens.

It might just take some practice. It's been a day, one day, and ghosts sometimes linger for years before they can go far from whatever they're linked to. He shouldn't leave his naked body here, anyway. The last thing he needs is to crack his skull open on the edge of the bathtub.

He slides soap over the bloodless wound on his thigh, avoids looking at it, because it's totally gross.

Sam didn't bother stitching it up. Most of Dean's blood is gone, left behind on that old lady's living room floor, so it's not like it's going to bleed.

But it's not going to heal, either.

There's a matching hole on the back of Dean's thigh, where the iron poker went right through, severing his femoral artery on the way. Sam had to take a saw to it to get it out without messing up Dean's body any more than it already was.

The water temperature drops. Dean climbs out of the shower, dries himself off and wraps a fresh bandage around his thigh, just to keep it clean. A hunter's life, you never know where you're going to end up, what kind of dirt and goo you're going to be covered in from one day to the next. No need to be picking grave dirt out of there.

Still warm, a little damp, he leaves the bathroom in a cloud of steam. Sam's under the blankets already, unmoving. Dean sighs and collapses on his own bed, picks up his book again, but can't help glancing over at Sam's back. Before long, Dean will be cold again.

Sam's blanket flicks back, and he looks back over his shoulder. "It's not that weird, Dean."

Dean drops his eyes to his book. "Dude, it's totally weird. I'm not sleeping with you."

Sam sits up. "Dean, it's not—"

"Weird." Dean keeps his eyes on his book.

"Fine," Sam says, lies down, turns away, and yanks the blankets up to his neck. "Freeze. See if I care."

"You care," Dean says, still not lifting his eyes. "You brought me back. You care too much."

Sam shoves the blankets back again as he turns over to face Dean. "Right. You're right. I brought you back. So yeah, I care about you, I care so much that I refused to do this without you. Hunting, life, it's just not worth it. I care, and sure, it's not forever, but I don't want you to be miserable the whole time. I don't want you to be cold. This is my fault, it was my idea, so can you just suck up your pride for one second and let me help you?"

Dean lifts his head from the words swimming in front of his eyes. He moves slow, because there's anguish in Sam's voice, and seeing it on his face hurts. But he looks, and something twists inside him. He looks down, to where Sam's shifted to the side of the bed, where he's pulled the blankets back to invite Dean in.

"Ghosts don't sleep, Sammy," he says.

"Bring your book."

"You're going to snore in my ear—"

"Dean. Jesus."

Dean swallows. His core temperature has already dropped a couple degrees. He puts a finger in his book to mark his place and slides one leg onto the floor.

Sam sits up and peels his shirt off, tosses it across the room. "Strip down to your shorts," he says.

"Sammy," Dean whines.

"Body heat, Dean. Clothes will just get in the way."

Dean rolls his eyes to the ceiling, but then he pulls off his shirt, shivers in the cool air, and steps out of his jeans. Then he closes his eyes, and stiffly climbs into bed beside Sam.

As Sam sighs, he pulls the blankets back over them, and immediately Dean begins to feel the warmth from Sam's body. There's air between them, still, but then Sam wraps an arm around Dean's waist, and presses his knees into the back of Dean's legs.

"I feel wood," Dean says, "and I am out of here, you understand?"

"Deal," Sam says, and his grin is evident in the sound of his voice and the way he holds Dean to him just a little bit tighter.

---

He doesn't relax until Sam's asleep and snoring in his ear. Once that happens, Dean actually finds the sound reassuring, and it's like an oven in here, body heat definitely a valid method of keeping a corpse nice and toasty.

He finds that when he's warm, his mind works better, his joints don't stiffen, even though he's barely moving. He lies on his side, Sam's hand on his bare stomach, Sam's long leg thrown over his own, Sam's heart beating against his back, and he reads.

He turns a page every few minutes, eyes scanning the text for something they can use.

And then there it is, right in front of his eyes.

The Men of Letters found the Holy Grail.