Introductio in Analysin .... (FNL/SPN) 6/12
Title: Introductio in Analysin Daemonium Infinitorum pt 6
Fandom: SPN-FNL
Pairing: Sam/Tim (Sam/Tim/Dean in a few places)
Rating: Adult (Here there be smut!)
Length: 50k words
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five
Author's Note: This is the cleaned up master version of a story I began writing for MiniNano back in November 2007. Sam Winchester is racing against time to save his brother Dean's life, and he's got Tim Riggins along for the ride ... and a bit more. ;)
The plan was to finish it and post it before the end of S3 of SPN and S2 FNL -- obviously that didn't happen.
Thank you to![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
tartysuz and ixchel55 for their swift beta.
Legalese: SPN and FNL are copyright their respective copyright holders. This work is a labor of whatiffery, not a labor of lucre.
Maybe it was the monotony of the scenery -- endless rolling hills of winter bleached grass, long straight roads, waiting and waiting for the Rockies to finally show on the horizon -- or the fact that Tim sat so quietly in the back seat, simply watching the world drift by that you could forget he was there, but 6 hours in, Sam and Dean had an intense screaming fight about It like they hadn't had in weeks.
When they stopped for gas, still not speaking to each other, at a miserable little speck on the map in Nebraska, Tim came out of the store with a six pack.
Sam glared at him. Tim gave it right back to him, eyes as hard and glassy as agates.
Dean shrugged and said that he hoped that Tim didn't just rent beer, because the car wasn't stopping for at least another 200 miles.
"I'll just whip it out and piss out the window."
Sam saw the anger flare in Dean's eyes, but almost immediately dark amusement replaced it. "You'd better have the biggest dick in Texas and piss like a firehose then, because if you get any on my girl here, you are walking back to Bobby's." He patted the car lovingly.
Tim didn't say anything in reply, just got in and set about downing the six pack in a steady, methodical way that made Sam equally sad and angry. When he had emptied the last can, Tim silently curled up in the back seat, knees tucked up, and just stared blankly and fixedly at the seat back.
When Dean couldn't stand the stony silence any more, he pulled over at a rest stop so that he could pee and "take ten."
"Look, Tim, I know why you got the six pack," Sam began when Dean got out of earshot.
"Yeah, because I didn't have the cash for a twelve pack," Tim snapped before stalking over to a picnic table.
Sam forced himself to count to 60 before he walked over.
"I can't do it, Sam," Tim said in a flat, bitter voice. "I can't just sit there while you scream and yell the way my parents used to."
So you tried to tune us out the only way you could think of. Sam half-sighed, half-groaned and eased himself down next to Tim. He crossed his arms on the splintery, warped wood of the table, paused for a moment, and rested his chin on top of them. "You can't just drink it away." He peered up through his bangs at Tim.
"And you should stop being such a touchy bastard to Dean."
Sam snapped upright. "It's not that easy," he hissed.
Tim's expression grew mule stubborn. "Is too. Dean says what he says, and you just shut your mouth and make other plans. Learn to embrace the suck."
Sam looked at him.
A sad smile crawled across Tim's face. "I have. It's how I got through a lot." Pause. "Letting things go in one ear and out the other is pretty much what I did with Billy. Although he was right about a lot of things ... I see that now."
Sam kept his voice neutral. "That probably explains a lot about you that I never knew."
Tim sighed and dragged his hands through his hair. "Yeah, probably." He sprang off the table and headed for the men's room.
Sam waited until both Dean and Tim had exited the men's room before he took a "just in case" piss. He came back and Tim was talking almost heatedly to Dean about something. He paused a few feet away and stood quietly. If he strained, he could just make out the words.
"Stop fucking baiting Sam."
"I'm not baiting him, Tim, just telling the truth."
"And maybe we all know it already and it kills Sam inside when you say it."
"He can't deny --"
Tim flung his arms out in exasperation. "It's not denying -- " he exploded, then dropped his voice back down to its previous level, "just don't rub his damn nose in it all the time. You gotta talk to somebody about it, talk to me, okay? I'll suck it up. But I'm asking you nice, Dean. Give it a rest. Sam's not going to stop trying. He's just not. Deal with it."
"Or what?" Dean asked, slightly amused.
Tim's voice dropped a notch towards a growl. "I'll slobberknock the two of you for starters and then ... well, I'll think of something. Maybe drive back to Bobby's with whoever pissed me off more at the time stuffed in the trunk."
Sam cleared his throat.
They got in the car. They still weren't speaking to each other, but at least the worst of the tension was gone.
~oo(0)oo~
Bored and in need of a friendly voice, Sam popped open his cellphone and called Bobby.
"Landry and Tyra are out trooping all over my back 40. I've tried to tell them that I don't care if my property line is off a little, neither does my neighbor, but it gets them out of the house and gives me more time for research."
"Anything new there?"
Bobby sighed heavily. "Nothing worth sharing with you right now, but I'm working on a few things ... that don't involve cutting another deal of the kind that got Dean into this mess.
"Hmmm ... looks like they're back now. Probably going to start ransacking the cupboards and -- " Bobby raised his voice so that it would carry into the next room " -- make some hot cocoa to share." To Sam he said, "I swear I had no idea a girl could eat like Dean, but that Tyra can put it away, give Dean a run for his money."
Sam laughed.
"And then I've had to shell out for winter gear, since they're so damned determined to walk around in the cold and wet. Can't have them dying of exposure -- yes Landry, I would salt and burn your bodies. I know you'd try to be a helpful poltergeist, but you'd be a poltergeist all the same."
Despite his words, Bobby's grousing held no heat. It took Sam a moment to figure it out, but Bobby was happy.
"I'll catch you later, you seem like you've got your hands full," he said.
"Yup. And I'll keep you posted. And, who knows, my survey could be way off."
Sam snorted in laughter and hung up.
"How's Bobby?" Dean asked carefully.
Sam smiled and looked at nothing in particular. "Happy. Bitching about it, but happy."
Dean gave him a "well, duh" look and said, "Of course. It's Bobby."
"How are Tyra and Landry?" Tim asked.
"Doing fine. Landry seems to have finished that theodolite, because they're out and surveying Bobby's property."
Dean said he was in the mood for White Zombie and popped a tape in.
Nobody said anything more until they pulled into Trinidad, Colorado.
~oo(0)oo~
As they sat around the table in the midst of sandwich fixings, Sam pondered the fact that the problem with Las Animas and Baca counties was that they were incredibly rural places. Trinidad was only about 15,000 people, and Springfield, the biggest city in Baca County, had less than 2000 people. Kim and Pritchett , the two towns closest to the mutilations were little more than a gas station surrounded by a few houses. If they wanted motels they would have to work out of Springfield or Trinidad. They could sleep in the Impala if they had to, but it was decidedly cold out, below freezing at night, and certainly cramped with the three of them in the car.
This was a get in, get it done, get out kind of job.
"What's our cover?" Dean asked around a mouthful of turkey and Swiss. "Agriculture? Fish and Game? The Bureau of Land Management?"
Sam swallowed his roast beef. "I'm thinking of something a bit different, less official. Like ... college students doing a research project on the Santa Fe Trail."
Dean grumbled, "You're shitting me."
"Do you think Tim here can pass as a government official?"
Dean scowled for a moment. "No. He'd need to work on it."
"Yeah, but how am I going to learn that sort of thing? Seems to me if you blow it and get caught ...?" Tim wiped at a smear of mustard below his lip. "I mean, I can turn on the charm, but nobody here gives a shit that I'm a Panther and we went to State."
"Dad taught Dean and me by having us play a lot of poker."
"Really?"
"Yup," Dean said. "It teaches you to control what you let show on your face."
"Well, it's going to have to be strip poker, because all I've got on me is 56 cents."
Dean choked on his Coke.
"What?" Sam and Tim asked in unison.
"That's all well and good," Dean said when he regained his composure, "but you two lovebirds would be playing to get naked."
Tim shot Dean a mock scowl. "Cockblocker."
Dean flipped him the bird. "Hater."
~oo(0)oo~
"I'll tell you one thing," Dean said, looking down at the body of a sheep. "This is no chupacabra."
Tim crouched next to him, stick in hand, and pointed at the massive neck wound. "How do you know?"
"Too big," Dean said. "A chupacabra's about the size of a medium-small dog, like a Cocker Spaniel."
"Yeah, but those little fuckers can bite if they want."
Dean slipped a glove on. Tim raised his eyebrows and then looked up at Sam.
Yeah, Sam also had a bad feeling about where this was going, and it felt as if a rock dropped into his stomach when Dean held up a slender, almost opalescent looking piece of a tooth and swore under his breath.
"So, what is it?" Tim asked, taking the tooth from Dean and studying it curiously. "Some sort of snake?"
"Vampire," Sam replied.
Tim's mouth opened and shut a few times in surprise.
"Yep, they're real, and just about everything you've heard about them is wrong."
"Figures," Tim grumbled. "So, what do I need to know?"
Dean counted on his fingers. "Garlic, holy water, stakes, crosses? No good. Sunlight bothers them. Slows them down, hurts them, disorients them, but it doesn't make them burst in to flames. Dead man's blood poisons them, so it's useful when you've got to interrogate them --"
"Does a woman's blood work, too? Why do you try to capture them?"
"Dead person's blood," Sam amended. "And because they usually live in packs -- you need to find the nest and destroy it."
Dean hawked and spat. "They're stronger, faster, immortal, can see in the dark, hear a heartbeat a block a way, and have a sense of smell that puts a bloodhound to shame.
"The only way to kill them is to whack their heads off, or shoot them in a place that would kill a human with The Colt."
Tim made a rueful face and snorted.
"Vampirism is a virus," Sam explained. "If you get their blood in you, by drinking it or getting in your eyes or an open wound, you'll get infected and you'll turn." Pause. "A girl we had to put down a few months ago described it like a high you can't come down from."
Tim shrugged, "So, what's the downside? Why aren't we trying to get vamped?"
"You frenzy," Dean said low and deadly. "The craving for blood is almost impossible to control. That girl we put down? We caught her because she left a trail of bodies for us to follow. She didn't really remember killing them, either. Thought it was part of her bad trip.
"It makes you an animal, is what it does." At Sam's sigh, Dean continued, "Okay, yeah, we met this one vamp named Lenore. She and her pack had sworn off humans, but they're the one exception we know of, and they probably killed a lot of people before they stopped. But, they're not human. Not anymore."
"I don't think this is her or her pack," Sam said. "Too messy. I think they learned their lesson after Montana."
Tim circled the body and said, "I thought you said vamps eat people."
"Vamps can live on non-human blood. They just don't like the taste." Sam put his hands in his pockets and scuffed the ground in thought. "I wonder if this is maybe a newly turned vamp, separated from its maker, struggling with it."
"Might be," Dean shrugged. "What do you want to do?"
"Contact it. Lenore left me a way to get in touch with her so that we could warn her about possible Hunters headed her way, but it's roundabout."
"But how are we going to find it, or them, if you can't get in touch with Lenore quickly?" Tim asked.
"Look for ravens or vultures," Dean explained, pointing to where several circled overhead. "They always know where a fresh kill is."
Nor did it take long for the scavengers to start stepping in. Sam was barely 30 feet away when he heard the flap of wings.
~oo(0)oo~
After two days of hard work in the cold and wind -- the only good things being spooning with Tim (who liked the novelty of being held by somebody larger than him) and giving each other a quick handjob in the morning -- they finally tracked the vampire to a ratty looking isolated doublewide, that, like most things in Baca county had seen better days. A few rusting junkers were parked around it. Sam thought that the red pickup might still run, the tags on it were only slightly out of date.
It was afternoon, so the vamp would still be sleeping. A good time to enter its lair.
Dean quietly picked the lock and they crept in, guns drawn, Tim bringing up the rear. This vamp might have sworn off humans, but Sam didn't believe in being too trusting, either.
They found her in the master bedroom, sprawled across the bed.
Even in the dim light they could see it was Kate.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Sam could tell by the set of Dean's shoulders that he voted for "waste the bitch now." Sam shook his head and held up a hand, forestalling Dean, because he wondered what could have gotten her to switch to sheep and cows after centuries of positively reveling in her lifestyle. She had turned vamp and never looked back ... but perhaps now she had.
"We should kill her now," Dean whispered.
"What if she's changed?" Sam whispered back.
They locked stares, each willing the other to back down.
"Her eye just opened," Tim said softly.
Damnit. Sam took a deep breath and said calmly, "Look, I know there's bad blood between us ...."
"Bad blood?" She hissed, sitting up. Hatred laced her words.
Dean stuck his chin out and said, "So, did you kill the people who lived here?"
She glared at them for a long moment. "No." She spat the word. "It was abandoned when I found it."
Dean gave an "okay, I'll buy that" nod and asked, "So, livestock these days? What made you change your mind?"
A look of bitter rage contorted her proud features. "Navajo woman cursed me as she died."
"Oh." The word numbly fell from Sam's lips.
Slowly Kate scooted to the edge of the bed. In the light that filtered in from the hallway, Sam could now see how gaunt and unkempt she was, dressed in filthy, bloodstained clothes. Her hair hung in stringy tangles. They studied each other for several moments, her eyes filled with such loathing and contempt that Sam sighed inwardly, sensing that offers to help her find Lenore's pack would fall on deaf ears.
And while that curse may have bound her against eating humans, Sam didn't want to see if it prevented her from attacking them out of revenge.
She sniffed the air. "Who's the new one?"
"My name is Tim."
"You smell like Sam, Tim." Pause. "You his man?"
Ice formed in the pit of Sam's stomach.
Tim gave a cocky smile and coolly replied, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
She launched herself at him, fangs barred, knife drawn from the top of her boot.
Dean spun, ripping the blackout curtains from the window, brightening the room, but since it faced north, it was not enough to hurt her badly, while Sam fired, clipping her at least once, but the injury was an inconvenience at best.
She grabbed at Tim, knife slashing wildly, as he dodged and turned, bringing his own pistol up and around in an attempt to strike her, but her inhuman speed and strength were no match for him. She grabbed his arm, bent it painfully up and around, driving Tim to his knees, and placed the knife to his throat.
Never had Sam so keenly felt the loss of his gifts. Again and again and again he reached in vain for the place they used to be, only to find nothing.
Tim, however, didn't waste a moment on panic. As Kate locked her baleful, triumphant gaze on him and Dean, out of the corner of his eye Sam saw Tim reach down and back, grabbing the knife Dean had given him. In an instant he had it flipped around for left handed use, thumbed it open, and with one quick pull, he laid Kate's knife arm open to the bone. She shrieked in pain and the knife fell from her hand as Tim exploded into action, standing, snapping around, legs driving, slamming her into the wall so hard that the thin particle board cracked and buckled.
But she was still a vampire, unnaturally strong and fast. Kicking out, striking with her fists, she knocked Tim aside and scrambled for the door.
Sam and Dean unloaded several rounds, dropping her, and then pumped several more rounds into her before she could regain her feet.
Shaking with adrenaline, Tim climbed to his feet, recovered his pistol, and shot her knees out. "Do I need to hamstring her for good measure?" he asked, brandishing the knife.
"I'll get the machete," Dean said. He opened the window and hopped out.
To her credit, she fought to the end.
~oo(0)oo~
"Are you cut, Tim?" Dean asked, machete still in hand, all business.
"I ... don't think so," Tim said, looking a little pale and shaky now that the rush had worn off. He still kept his eyes still fixed on Kate's headless body, though, as if he didn't quite believe she was dead.
"Dean!" Sam hissed, appalled.
Dean's eyes bored into his, voice weary he said, "We have to be sure, Sam. We have to be sure."
Sam swallowed hard and prayed. To what, to whom, he didn't know. He just prayed.
"Did any get into your mouth? Your eyes?" Dean continued. Kate had flung blood wildly in an effort to infect them when Dean approached her to deliver the killing blow. It was a good thing they hadn't managed to give her a bloody mouth, because she would have spat it at them.
"No." Tim bit off the word. "And I didn't get any up my nose, either. I'm not going to vamp out on you." Pause. "But if I did, I'd turn you before I went looking for dinner."
Sam sighed. "That's what you like to think."
"And the idea of being vamped still isn't much of a comfort," Dean said.
To Sam, it was. He wondered if vampires still had souls.
(Probably. Damn it.)
"What?" Tim asked, still looking down at the body. "You don't want to be young forever?"
Dean shook his head. "It's a moot point -- the price is too high. You ... you stop being human, Tim. Really. And you'll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder."
Tim looked at him. "I'm doing that now. So are you."
"In 10 years you can go back to Texas. This isn't like being a vampire from some Anne Rice novel." Dean replied.
"Who?" Tim asked.
"Somebody whose books I am never, ever, reading to you," Sam said, wondering how the hell Dean knew Anne Rice. Dean snickered at that, and Sam continued, "There's a reason we've hunted them nearly to extinction, Tim. You've never seen these things on a rampage. We have."
Tim pursed his lips in thought. "Okay, I get it."
No you don't, not really, until you've seen it, Sam thought.
Dean gloved up and went through the kitchen, looking for salt. He also took a dish towel and wiped down anything he thought they might have touched. "We'll salt her and torch this place. You two get in the car while I rig a delay that should let us get back to the highway before this thing really gets going." He pushed the front door open with his foot.
As Tim climbed into the back seat, Sam said to him, "You did good in there today. Kept your cool, didn't lose your head."
Tim guffawed and said, "I'm glad you think so, because for a moment there I thought I was going to wet myself." He cleared his throat. "But it was after I shot her, and I stood back and realized ...." He shuddered and shook his head. "So, how do I clean my knife to make sure it doesn't infect anybody?"
Yeah, it was a lucky thing that Dean had given Tim that knife. "Bleach," Sam said, "Swish it through bleach for at least a minute and then rinse it really well."
Dean climbed behind the wheel, started the car, and drove steadily, but not excessively fast down the dirt road that lead back to the highway. They were on the road and cruising towards Springfield at a steady 65 when the first black smoke became visible in the rear-view mirror.
Five minutes later, the adrenaline hit Sam. Within a minute, all of them were shaking in their seats.
It would be Sunday night and dark when they got back to Springfield. Sam didn't know what Dean had planned, but he needed to have Tim as soon as they got a hotel room. He glanced over into the back seat and saw the same thing burning in Tim's eyes. Damn. He had half a mind to climb into the back seat and get started on taking the edge off.
Dean muttered "For medicinal purposes," reached into his jacket, and handed Sam the flask.
---
Part Seven
Fandom: SPN-FNL
Pairing: Sam/Tim (Sam/Tim/Dean in a few places)
Rating: Adult (Here there be smut!)
Length: 50k words
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five
Author's Note: This is the cleaned up master version of a story I began writing for MiniNano back in November 2007. Sam Winchester is racing against time to save his brother Dean's life, and he's got Tim Riggins along for the ride ... and a bit more. ;)
The plan was to finish it and post it before the end of S3 of SPN and S2 FNL -- obviously that didn't happen.
Thank you to
tartysuz and ixchel55 for their swift beta.Legalese: SPN and FNL are copyright their respective copyright holders. This work is a labor of whatiffery, not a labor of lucre.
Maybe it was the monotony of the scenery -- endless rolling hills of winter bleached grass, long straight roads, waiting and waiting for the Rockies to finally show on the horizon -- or the fact that Tim sat so quietly in the back seat, simply watching the world drift by that you could forget he was there, but 6 hours in, Sam and Dean had an intense screaming fight about It like they hadn't had in weeks.
When they stopped for gas, still not speaking to each other, at a miserable little speck on the map in Nebraska, Tim came out of the store with a six pack.
Sam glared at him. Tim gave it right back to him, eyes as hard and glassy as agates.
Dean shrugged and said that he hoped that Tim didn't just rent beer, because the car wasn't stopping for at least another 200 miles.
"I'll just whip it out and piss out the window."
Sam saw the anger flare in Dean's eyes, but almost immediately dark amusement replaced it. "You'd better have the biggest dick in Texas and piss like a firehose then, because if you get any on my girl here, you are walking back to Bobby's." He patted the car lovingly.
Tim didn't say anything in reply, just got in and set about downing the six pack in a steady, methodical way that made Sam equally sad and angry. When he had emptied the last can, Tim silently curled up in the back seat, knees tucked up, and just stared blankly and fixedly at the seat back.
When Dean couldn't stand the stony silence any more, he pulled over at a rest stop so that he could pee and "take ten."
"Look, Tim, I know why you got the six pack," Sam began when Dean got out of earshot.
"Yeah, because I didn't have the cash for a twelve pack," Tim snapped before stalking over to a picnic table.
Sam forced himself to count to 60 before he walked over.
"I can't do it, Sam," Tim said in a flat, bitter voice. "I can't just sit there while you scream and yell the way my parents used to."
So you tried to tune us out the only way you could think of. Sam half-sighed, half-groaned and eased himself down next to Tim. He crossed his arms on the splintery, warped wood of the table, paused for a moment, and rested his chin on top of them. "You can't just drink it away." He peered up through his bangs at Tim.
"And you should stop being such a touchy bastard to Dean."
Sam snapped upright. "It's not that easy," he hissed.
Tim's expression grew mule stubborn. "Is too. Dean says what he says, and you just shut your mouth and make other plans. Learn to embrace the suck."
Sam looked at him.
A sad smile crawled across Tim's face. "I have. It's how I got through a lot." Pause. "Letting things go in one ear and out the other is pretty much what I did with Billy. Although he was right about a lot of things ... I see that now."
Sam kept his voice neutral. "That probably explains a lot about you that I never knew."
Tim sighed and dragged his hands through his hair. "Yeah, probably." He sprang off the table and headed for the men's room.
Sam waited until both Dean and Tim had exited the men's room before he took a "just in case" piss. He came back and Tim was talking almost heatedly to Dean about something. He paused a few feet away and stood quietly. If he strained, he could just make out the words.
"Stop fucking baiting Sam."
"I'm not baiting him, Tim, just telling the truth."
"And maybe we all know it already and it kills Sam inside when you say it."
"He can't deny --"
Tim flung his arms out in exasperation. "It's not denying -- " he exploded, then dropped his voice back down to its previous level, "just don't rub his damn nose in it all the time. You gotta talk to somebody about it, talk to me, okay? I'll suck it up. But I'm asking you nice, Dean. Give it a rest. Sam's not going to stop trying. He's just not. Deal with it."
"Or what?" Dean asked, slightly amused.
Tim's voice dropped a notch towards a growl. "I'll slobberknock the two of you for starters and then ... well, I'll think of something. Maybe drive back to Bobby's with whoever pissed me off more at the time stuffed in the trunk."
Sam cleared his throat.
They got in the car. They still weren't speaking to each other, but at least the worst of the tension was gone.
~oo(0)oo~
Bored and in need of a friendly voice, Sam popped open his cellphone and called Bobby.
"Landry and Tyra are out trooping all over my back 40. I've tried to tell them that I don't care if my property line is off a little, neither does my neighbor, but it gets them out of the house and gives me more time for research."
"Anything new there?"
Bobby sighed heavily. "Nothing worth sharing with you right now, but I'm working on a few things ... that don't involve cutting another deal of the kind that got Dean into this mess.
"Hmmm ... looks like they're back now. Probably going to start ransacking the cupboards and -- " Bobby raised his voice so that it would carry into the next room " -- make some hot cocoa to share." To Sam he said, "I swear I had no idea a girl could eat like Dean, but that Tyra can put it away, give Dean a run for his money."
Sam laughed.
"And then I've had to shell out for winter gear, since they're so damned determined to walk around in the cold and wet. Can't have them dying of exposure -- yes Landry, I would salt and burn your bodies. I know you'd try to be a helpful poltergeist, but you'd be a poltergeist all the same."
Despite his words, Bobby's grousing held no heat. It took Sam a moment to figure it out, but Bobby was happy.
"I'll catch you later, you seem like you've got your hands full," he said.
"Yup. And I'll keep you posted. And, who knows, my survey could be way off."
Sam snorted in laughter and hung up.
"How's Bobby?" Dean asked carefully.
Sam smiled and looked at nothing in particular. "Happy. Bitching about it, but happy."
Dean gave him a "well, duh" look and said, "Of course. It's Bobby."
"How are Tyra and Landry?" Tim asked.
"Doing fine. Landry seems to have finished that theodolite, because they're out and surveying Bobby's property."
Dean said he was in the mood for White Zombie and popped a tape in.
Nobody said anything more until they pulled into Trinidad, Colorado.
~oo(0)oo~
As they sat around the table in the midst of sandwich fixings, Sam pondered the fact that the problem with Las Animas and Baca counties was that they were incredibly rural places. Trinidad was only about 15,000 people, and Springfield, the biggest city in Baca County, had less than 2000 people. Kim and Pritchett , the two towns closest to the mutilations were little more than a gas station surrounded by a few houses. If they wanted motels they would have to work out of Springfield or Trinidad. They could sleep in the Impala if they had to, but it was decidedly cold out, below freezing at night, and certainly cramped with the three of them in the car.
This was a get in, get it done, get out kind of job.
"What's our cover?" Dean asked around a mouthful of turkey and Swiss. "Agriculture? Fish and Game? The Bureau of Land Management?"
Sam swallowed his roast beef. "I'm thinking of something a bit different, less official. Like ... college students doing a research project on the Santa Fe Trail."
Dean grumbled, "You're shitting me."
"Do you think Tim here can pass as a government official?"
Dean scowled for a moment. "No. He'd need to work on it."
"Yeah, but how am I going to learn that sort of thing? Seems to me if you blow it and get caught ...?" Tim wiped at a smear of mustard below his lip. "I mean, I can turn on the charm, but nobody here gives a shit that I'm a Panther and we went to State."
"Dad taught Dean and me by having us play a lot of poker."
"Really?"
"Yup," Dean said. "It teaches you to control what you let show on your face."
"Well, it's going to have to be strip poker, because all I've got on me is 56 cents."
Dean choked on his Coke.
"What?" Sam and Tim asked in unison.
"That's all well and good," Dean said when he regained his composure, "but you two lovebirds would be playing to get naked."
Tim shot Dean a mock scowl. "Cockblocker."
Dean flipped him the bird. "Hater."
~oo(0)oo~
"I'll tell you one thing," Dean said, looking down at the body of a sheep. "This is no chupacabra."
Tim crouched next to him, stick in hand, and pointed at the massive neck wound. "How do you know?"
"Too big," Dean said. "A chupacabra's about the size of a medium-small dog, like a Cocker Spaniel."
"Yeah, but those little fuckers can bite if they want."
Dean slipped a glove on. Tim raised his eyebrows and then looked up at Sam.
Yeah, Sam also had a bad feeling about where this was going, and it felt as if a rock dropped into his stomach when Dean held up a slender, almost opalescent looking piece of a tooth and swore under his breath.
"So, what is it?" Tim asked, taking the tooth from Dean and studying it curiously. "Some sort of snake?"
"Vampire," Sam replied.
Tim's mouth opened and shut a few times in surprise.
"Yep, they're real, and just about everything you've heard about them is wrong."
"Figures," Tim grumbled. "So, what do I need to know?"
Dean counted on his fingers. "Garlic, holy water, stakes, crosses? No good. Sunlight bothers them. Slows them down, hurts them, disorients them, but it doesn't make them burst in to flames. Dead man's blood poisons them, so it's useful when you've got to interrogate them --"
"Does a woman's blood work, too? Why do you try to capture them?"
"Dead person's blood," Sam amended. "And because they usually live in packs -- you need to find the nest and destroy it."
Dean hawked and spat. "They're stronger, faster, immortal, can see in the dark, hear a heartbeat a block a way, and have a sense of smell that puts a bloodhound to shame.
"The only way to kill them is to whack their heads off, or shoot them in a place that would kill a human with The Colt."
Tim made a rueful face and snorted.
"Vampirism is a virus," Sam explained. "If you get their blood in you, by drinking it or getting in your eyes or an open wound, you'll get infected and you'll turn." Pause. "A girl we had to put down a few months ago described it like a high you can't come down from."
Tim shrugged, "So, what's the downside? Why aren't we trying to get vamped?"
"You frenzy," Dean said low and deadly. "The craving for blood is almost impossible to control. That girl we put down? We caught her because she left a trail of bodies for us to follow. She didn't really remember killing them, either. Thought it was part of her bad trip.
"It makes you an animal, is what it does." At Sam's sigh, Dean continued, "Okay, yeah, we met this one vamp named Lenore. She and her pack had sworn off humans, but they're the one exception we know of, and they probably killed a lot of people before they stopped. But, they're not human. Not anymore."
"I don't think this is her or her pack," Sam said. "Too messy. I think they learned their lesson after Montana."
Tim circled the body and said, "I thought you said vamps eat people."
"Vamps can live on non-human blood. They just don't like the taste." Sam put his hands in his pockets and scuffed the ground in thought. "I wonder if this is maybe a newly turned vamp, separated from its maker, struggling with it."
"Might be," Dean shrugged. "What do you want to do?"
"Contact it. Lenore left me a way to get in touch with her so that we could warn her about possible Hunters headed her way, but it's roundabout."
"But how are we going to find it, or them, if you can't get in touch with Lenore quickly?" Tim asked.
"Look for ravens or vultures," Dean explained, pointing to where several circled overhead. "They always know where a fresh kill is."
Nor did it take long for the scavengers to start stepping in. Sam was barely 30 feet away when he heard the flap of wings.
~oo(0)oo~
After two days of hard work in the cold and wind -- the only good things being spooning with Tim (who liked the novelty of being held by somebody larger than him) and giving each other a quick handjob in the morning -- they finally tracked the vampire to a ratty looking isolated doublewide, that, like most things in Baca county had seen better days. A few rusting junkers were parked around it. Sam thought that the red pickup might still run, the tags on it were only slightly out of date.
It was afternoon, so the vamp would still be sleeping. A good time to enter its lair.
Dean quietly picked the lock and they crept in, guns drawn, Tim bringing up the rear. This vamp might have sworn off humans, but Sam didn't believe in being too trusting, either.
They found her in the master bedroom, sprawled across the bed.
Even in the dim light they could see it was Kate.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Sam could tell by the set of Dean's shoulders that he voted for "waste the bitch now." Sam shook his head and held up a hand, forestalling Dean, because he wondered what could have gotten her to switch to sheep and cows after centuries of positively reveling in her lifestyle. She had turned vamp and never looked back ... but perhaps now she had.
"We should kill her now," Dean whispered.
"What if she's changed?" Sam whispered back.
They locked stares, each willing the other to back down.
"Her eye just opened," Tim said softly.
Damnit. Sam took a deep breath and said calmly, "Look, I know there's bad blood between us ...."
"Bad blood?" She hissed, sitting up. Hatred laced her words.
Dean stuck his chin out and said, "So, did you kill the people who lived here?"
She glared at them for a long moment. "No." She spat the word. "It was abandoned when I found it."
Dean gave an "okay, I'll buy that" nod and asked, "So, livestock these days? What made you change your mind?"
A look of bitter rage contorted her proud features. "Navajo woman cursed me as she died."
"Oh." The word numbly fell from Sam's lips.
Slowly Kate scooted to the edge of the bed. In the light that filtered in from the hallway, Sam could now see how gaunt and unkempt she was, dressed in filthy, bloodstained clothes. Her hair hung in stringy tangles. They studied each other for several moments, her eyes filled with such loathing and contempt that Sam sighed inwardly, sensing that offers to help her find Lenore's pack would fall on deaf ears.
And while that curse may have bound her against eating humans, Sam didn't want to see if it prevented her from attacking them out of revenge.
She sniffed the air. "Who's the new one?"
"My name is Tim."
"You smell like Sam, Tim." Pause. "You his man?"
Ice formed in the pit of Sam's stomach.
Tim gave a cocky smile and coolly replied, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
She launched herself at him, fangs barred, knife drawn from the top of her boot.
Dean spun, ripping the blackout curtains from the window, brightening the room, but since it faced north, it was not enough to hurt her badly, while Sam fired, clipping her at least once, but the injury was an inconvenience at best.
She grabbed at Tim, knife slashing wildly, as he dodged and turned, bringing his own pistol up and around in an attempt to strike her, but her inhuman speed and strength were no match for him. She grabbed his arm, bent it painfully up and around, driving Tim to his knees, and placed the knife to his throat.
Never had Sam so keenly felt the loss of his gifts. Again and again and again he reached in vain for the place they used to be, only to find nothing.
Tim, however, didn't waste a moment on panic. As Kate locked her baleful, triumphant gaze on him and Dean, out of the corner of his eye Sam saw Tim reach down and back, grabbing the knife Dean had given him. In an instant he had it flipped around for left handed use, thumbed it open, and with one quick pull, he laid Kate's knife arm open to the bone. She shrieked in pain and the knife fell from her hand as Tim exploded into action, standing, snapping around, legs driving, slamming her into the wall so hard that the thin particle board cracked and buckled.
But she was still a vampire, unnaturally strong and fast. Kicking out, striking with her fists, she knocked Tim aside and scrambled for the door.
Sam and Dean unloaded several rounds, dropping her, and then pumped several more rounds into her before she could regain her feet.
Shaking with adrenaline, Tim climbed to his feet, recovered his pistol, and shot her knees out. "Do I need to hamstring her for good measure?" he asked, brandishing the knife.
"I'll get the machete," Dean said. He opened the window and hopped out.
To her credit, she fought to the end.
~oo(0)oo~
"Are you cut, Tim?" Dean asked, machete still in hand, all business.
"I ... don't think so," Tim said, looking a little pale and shaky now that the rush had worn off. He still kept his eyes still fixed on Kate's headless body, though, as if he didn't quite believe she was dead.
"Dean!" Sam hissed, appalled.
Dean's eyes bored into his, voice weary he said, "We have to be sure, Sam. We have to be sure."
Sam swallowed hard and prayed. To what, to whom, he didn't know. He just prayed.
"Did any get into your mouth? Your eyes?" Dean continued. Kate had flung blood wildly in an effort to infect them when Dean approached her to deliver the killing blow. It was a good thing they hadn't managed to give her a bloody mouth, because she would have spat it at them.
"No." Tim bit off the word. "And I didn't get any up my nose, either. I'm not going to vamp out on you." Pause. "But if I did, I'd turn you before I went looking for dinner."
Sam sighed. "That's what you like to think."
"And the idea of being vamped still isn't much of a comfort," Dean said.
To Sam, it was. He wondered if vampires still had souls.
(Probably. Damn it.)
"What?" Tim asked, still looking down at the body. "You don't want to be young forever?"
Dean shook his head. "It's a moot point -- the price is too high. You ... you stop being human, Tim. Really. And you'll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder."
Tim looked at him. "I'm doing that now. So are you."
"In 10 years you can go back to Texas. This isn't like being a vampire from some Anne Rice novel." Dean replied.
"Who?" Tim asked.
"Somebody whose books I am never, ever, reading to you," Sam said, wondering how the hell Dean knew Anne Rice. Dean snickered at that, and Sam continued, "There's a reason we've hunted them nearly to extinction, Tim. You've never seen these things on a rampage. We have."
Tim pursed his lips in thought. "Okay, I get it."
No you don't, not really, until you've seen it, Sam thought.
Dean gloved up and went through the kitchen, looking for salt. He also took a dish towel and wiped down anything he thought they might have touched. "We'll salt her and torch this place. You two get in the car while I rig a delay that should let us get back to the highway before this thing really gets going." He pushed the front door open with his foot.
As Tim climbed into the back seat, Sam said to him, "You did good in there today. Kept your cool, didn't lose your head."
Tim guffawed and said, "I'm glad you think so, because for a moment there I thought I was going to wet myself." He cleared his throat. "But it was after I shot her, and I stood back and realized ...." He shuddered and shook his head. "So, how do I clean my knife to make sure it doesn't infect anybody?"
Yeah, it was a lucky thing that Dean had given Tim that knife. "Bleach," Sam said, "Swish it through bleach for at least a minute and then rinse it really well."
Dean climbed behind the wheel, started the car, and drove steadily, but not excessively fast down the dirt road that lead back to the highway. They were on the road and cruising towards Springfield at a steady 65 when the first black smoke became visible in the rear-view mirror.
Five minutes later, the adrenaline hit Sam. Within a minute, all of them were shaking in their seats.
It would be Sunday night and dark when they got back to Springfield. Sam didn't know what Dean had planned, but he needed to have Tim as soon as they got a hotel room. He glanced over into the back seat and saw the same thing burning in Tim's eyes. Damn. He had half a mind to climb into the back seat and get started on taking the edge off.
Dean muttered "For medicinal purposes," reached into his jacket, and handed Sam the flask.
---
Part Seven
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