Best Served Cold

By Mellaithwen

Rating: T

Genre: Angst/Action/Adventure

Disclaimer: If I owned them, then I'd know what the hell was going to happen in the last episodes, as it stands, I don't, so I'd appreciate if you kept spoilers to yourself :)

Summary: AU. The vampires want revenge. Post -Dead Man's Blood.

Chapter 1

These walls I make they hold me in and hold me back today

Her eyes held such fury as she stared at the wall. She was shaking with anger, with grief. Her lover was gone, her leader, murdered by a god damn gun. She screamed, a high pitch shriek, as she threw the numerous stolen items from the table, letting them crash to the floor as she began throwing everything within reach. The shot still sounded in her ear. She shouldn't be afraid of guns, her kind should never be afraid of ridiculous mortal weapons, but this gun? This god damn gun in that Bastards hands had ended him, ended Luther, killed him in a way she never thought possible.

She screamed again, shouting more now, until what little of her pack came in, unperturbed by her outburst but curious nonetheless. One of the few male Vampires, Adam, strayed forward, grabbing her by the shoulders and forcing her to look straight at him.

"We will get revenge, Kate, I swear it."

"I want it now," She hissed, "I want them dead,"

"No, you want them to suffer, and they will, I swear to you, they'll regret this."

"We'll head out in the morning," John Winchester said simply to his boys, still standing at the foot of their beds, reeling from the acceptance in their father's tone as he said quite simply, that they had been right all along.

"To where?" Sam asked, before Dean even had a chance.

"Back to town first, then we can pick it up from there, keep moving, keep hunting." John said simply, trying to make Sam understand that sometimes even he did not have all the answers and it wasn't always a simple case of him keeping them at a distance. Sam nodded in understanding, finishing the last of his packing, and tossing the bag next to the chair, Dean following suit.

The oldest Winchester son looked over to their father as he was about to get settled in the same chair he had sat in the night before. He offered the bed, not actually tired himself, but John quickly declined content with the chair and his leaning against the wall. "All right, but don't say I didn't offer," Dean muttered, grabbing his older clothes as sleep wear and heading for the bathroom.

When he came out, somehow Sam had already dozed to sleep, and John himself, though still dressed in the same clothes, looked ready to fall asleep. Dean however, couldn't even yawn...

Hours passed by and soon, dawn was barely breaking across the horizon, the sky still so dark, and only now the light was beginning to make itself known. Dean was trying to be quiet as he walked around the room, dressed and more than awake.

"Where are you going?" John asked suddenly, startling Dean who had assumed his father to be asleep, he shrugged once he was able to breathe again.

"There was a diner on the way back into town, thought I'd get us some breakfast,"

John quirked his eyebrow at this, and wondered the real reason for Dean waking up that early, and being that coherent before coffee. He would never ask; he never had. Dean always had a way of dealing with his own problems, and who was John to interfere?

Dean unlocked the bolt, and the door creaked open, he winced, looking back at his younger brother, but his father nodded in his direction. The younger boy was still asleep, and lord knows he needed it. He returned the gesture and stepped into the barely-morning air. He shivered from the change in temperature, hugging his black jacket closer to him, his leather one annoyingly folded beneath Sam's arm, unable to reach it without rousing his brother.

Dean looked around outside for a moment, before twirling the keys once in the air and heading for the impala. As soon as he gunned the engine, he realised that Sam would probably wake up at that, putting all of his efforts in vain. The car purred as he backed up and drove down the small road heading to town.

The road seemed endless though he knew it was anything but, the miles few past as he increased the speed, pushing his car to the limit, because no matter how his father might berate him, he had given it to him, and thus it was now his, to gather rust or not.

As if he would do that. It had taken him over a year to convince his father to let him share it with his son let alone give it to him and when he had finally forked over the keys Dean hadn't hidden his happiness, or made a sarcastic comment either. He had been grateful and had shown as much in his thank you's.

His stomach growled as he continued driving. The last meal he had had, not counting whatever snacks he had stashed away in the car, had been well over a day ago, and considering the same went for his father and brother, he figured he might as well do something more productive than staring up at the dark ceiling.

He had tried sleeping, and normally, no matter what was going on, he had managed it. He could sleep through the loudest of noises, but be on alert instantly if he knew there was real danger in the air, any other time he settled for the groggy response followed by yawning for almost ten minutes straight. He gripped the steering wheel, his hands holding tightly as he let his mind wander. Not only had he stood up against his father, he had disobeyed an order, and rubbed his father's face in it.

He was beginning to scare himself, and he wondered if it had anything to do with the length of time he was spending around his brother, and without his father. After all, whenever they were younger Sam would storm off, be it to his room, or to college, and John would give a Dean a look that told him quite simply who was wrong in the situation, and it was never their father. Not even once.

"Vampires? I thought there was no such thing?"

"You never even mentioned them, Dad."

"I thought they were extinct, I though Elkins and others had wiped them out," The pause seemed to last for eternity before, "I was wrong,"

That had surprised him. The first time the great John Winchester had been wrong, or rather, admitted to being so.

He squirmed in his seat when unbidden thoughts arose. Sammy had told him days afterwards about the voicemail, the message that told John Winchester his son was going to die and in all honesty, Dean wished Sam had kept it to himself. He didn't like seeing his father in a new light, especially when it was so harsh on his eyes. He'd lain in a hospital bed for three days before he had enough of the doctors, hell, even the pretty nurses weren't helping his frustration. Sam hadn't been there in a while, as soon as Dean was moved up to the ICU Sam's ability to visit often was struck down.

He would lie there on his own, watching as others came and went inside, though, the visitations did seem to be limited to those with mere hours left. Dean would think that soon, he would be one of them. He didn't want Sam to come here, but he didn't want to be alone either. He had gotten himself ready, and left despite the protests from the medical staff. He'd gotten the taxi and made his way to the motel room door, wondering how his brother might react.

Not once had he felt nostalgic for his father not being there, because he knew John was hunting the demon, he did not want to come in-between that, and it was okay, because John didn't know, and there was no way of him finding out until Sammy might call up with the funeral date. He sighed a lot in that week, berating his morbid mind as he kept mulling over his death. All lonely and slow.

They had been driving on the roads far away from Nebraska, Sam driving and Dean still weak from his most recent bout with the Reaper. He ached but it was nothing like the sharp agony of the electricity bolting through his body, he knew.

"I called him," Sam said quietly, when he realised Dean wouldn't be letting him fall asleep any time soon. Dean grunted, unaware, and Sam continued.

"Just before you came back to the motel, I called Dad, left a message."

Dean was more alert now, though he tried to act as though he wasn't.

"He never called back, never picked up, he didn't even text."

"He probably doesn't have his phone, Sammy." Dean ground out, and one look from him stopped any scoff on Sam's lips. Dean wanted to believe that, and Sam let him.

After all, John hadn't turned up when Dean had phoned back in Lawrence, but then, in Chicago he had turned up after one of Dean's far more simple messages, almost completely devoid of emotion, all business as he asked simply for the older man's assistance, baiting him with promises on a lead in finding the demon.

And as he drove, Dean's morbid thoughts once again went to the darker confines of his mind. He and Sam had been bait, and he wondered, perhaps, if they hadn't gotten free as they did, would John have saved them like Meg said? Or would it be too much of a risk? He didn't want the demon and his cronies to think he was predictable after all...

Of course he'd have saved you.

The lighter part of him said, a tone akin to duh, and Dean wondered how many more doubts could cross his mind before he reached the god damn diner.

He wasn't paying attention to the road, his thoughts elsewhere, so when he saw a figure in the middle of it, his instincts made him grab a hold of the wheel and swerve dangerously to avoid hitting whoever it was. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, before his eyes widened when he saw the shadows at the side of the road where the forest trees dwarfed the grassy embankments into darkness. He saw her getting closer, eyes glinting with something far more dangerous than he had seen earlier.

Vengeance.

It was the bitch. His jaw hurt thinking about her, and he shuddered at the thought of her kiss. He wouldn't go as far to say she was ugly, but the whole no-pulse thing, didn't really appeal to him. She had been the figure in the road, and oh how he wished he had continued driving at full speed, if only to send her crashing into a god damn tree...

He quickly reversed, his hands gripping the wheel even tighter as he took the sharp turn and began driving in the opposite direction, dimly aware of the few shadows following on either side, and her footsteps increasing in speed as he put his foot on the gas, hell bent on getting back to the cabin where his brother and father were. There was no way he could fight them off without his weapons, and no way of getting to them either.

He hadn't been driving for that long, surely but he had gained quite a few miles. He growled; still seeing the shadows of her fellow Vampires following in the corners of his eyes. This was so not good. He reached into his pocket quickly, grabbing his cell and flipping it open, and suddenly he was at a loss. Was Sam's phone even switched on? Did his father still have the same cell?

Another growl as he decided on his brother's number, keeping his right hand on the wheel.

Ring, ring

"Come on, pick up," he muttered.

Ring, ring.

"Come on,"

"Dean?"

His father's no-nonsense growl met his ears, clearly having seen the caller ID before accepting the call. He didn't care what Sam said, if his father could text and answer Sam's phone (with far too many buttons for its own good) then he was clearly improving when it came to new technology.

"I'm beginning to see what you meant about that whole scent for life thing,"

And John caught on immediately, swallowing the lump in his throat for his son's safety, he quickly began to shake Sam awake. "Where are you?" He asked Dean as Sam shot awake and stared quizzically at his father and his phone. He looked around the room. No Dean.

"On the way back now, but they're uh- kinda quick on their feet." Sam heard his brother's voice through the phone and began to panic. Whoever they were, it couldn't be good. Not with their track record.

"What's going on? Where's Dean?"

"He's awake then?" Dean said, with a hint of humour in the far from laughable situation they were in.

John held a hand up to stop anymore questions from his son as he scrambled around for his shoes and jacket.

"Do you think you can make the stop for your weapons?" Their father asked simply, already looking around him for the truck's keys.

"I don't know, I cou-Shit!" He cried suddenly, dropping the phone, as Kate's Vampiric grace let her land in a crouch on the hood of the Impala. Dean was about to brake in the hopes of throwing her off and under the car when her fist punched through the glass of the front window sending it flying around him. He brought his arms up to shield his eyes from the shards and without his own hands to guide the Impala; she grabbed the wheel and turned it, before jumping off of the car in the space of a second.

The glass bit into his skin and the car swerved from her touch, sending his head into the driver side window and cracking the glass, before flying down the embankment, he managed to regain control enough to avoid hitting the base of the tree head on, but the side of the car still made impact enough to jar the car to a standstill, metal scraped on bark, screeching. Dean's hands flew out instantly as though to break a fall. They pushed hard against the impala's steering wheel. The embankment itself was not far down, and the car's back wheel's still span around at the side of the road where that car was tilted facing downward.

His head span, and his vision blurred as he tried to get a sense of the vertigo from not being perfectly upright. He fumbled for the door handle only to find his side jammed from the impact on its hinges. Every time his banged his fist against the door, his headache seemed to worsen.

His eyes widened when he saw the shadows of her fellow Vampires closing in quickly. "Shit, shit, shit," He muttered as she walked toward him, still fighting with the door handle. She stopped at the car window, cracked but not broken. He abandoned his attempts, and scrambled over the seat to the passenger side door, but the door creaked open, her strength and advantage from being on the outside letting it open up easily. She leaned in, grabbed a fistful of hair and dragged him backwards out of the car and onto the grass outside.

He struggled wildly, pulling at her wrist as she kept dragging him up the small hill. He dug his heels into the ground but she kept pulling, and he could feel the blood from a head wound flowing freely down his cheek. He grunted and tried to pull away, but as soon as she reached the tarmac of the road, her pack surrounded her. They sneered and glared, but none of them stood with their teeth bared. Dean was on his back looking up at them. He glared in return, and went to scramble away again, but was stopped by a sharp kick to his midsection. He groaned, doubling in on himself as more kicks followed, until finally one boot to the head knocked him out, and he panicked at the dark that swallowed him whole.

The cell phone had fallen onto the passenger side foot space, forgotten as the car was left abandoned, though not by choice.

Sam and John were already out of the door as they heard the first of many swear words, and Sam had begun screaming his brother's name down the phone as soon as he heard the distinct screeching of tires, and the crashing that followed. The broken glass, the fuck's and shit's his brother had mouthed off before silence.

"Dean? Dean! Dean!"

John heard every cry and drove that little bit faster each time.

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