"It got away, Dad."
"Shut up and eat your burger."
Abby scowled and hunched over the diner table, pulling her trucker's cap low. A failed hunt never exactly succeeded in lightening her father's mood. Then again, not much did nowadays.
She looked out of the window. It was foggy, the moonlight reflecting off the bumpers in the parking lot the only thing even remotely visible through the mist. She ignored the cold finger that traced down her spine and turned her attention back to her food, but the nagging little voice in the back of her head could not be placated. Her eyes looked up across the table to her father from under the brim of her hat.
"It's still out there."
"I said shut up."
"You know what I love about you? Your sparkling personality."
He gave her a look that could possibly kill a small mammal. "Whaddaya want me to do now, huh? I saved your skin, it could've killed you. Try being grateful for once."
She snorted. "Grateful? Do you know how many more lives we just wasted? It was a grade A case! It's gonna find and demolish any other hunter it can find and then it's gonna hit the road. They're still out there, we could just get back out and-"
"My ass we could. I've got business to attend to. Besides, we can't stay in this town any longer, or something worse's gonna get our stink."
"Something worse?" Abby barked a laugh. "This can't possibly get worse. This is as bad as it gets, Dad."
"Yeah, well, 'as bad as it gets' is going to have to wait a while."
Abby massaged her temples, exasperated. Suddenly, her ear pricked up to voices to the far left of her, by the counter.
"Can I get a Meat Supreme, side of fries, extra onions?"
"Sure. And for you, sir?"
"I'll have a, uh, taco salad and an expresso. Thanks."
Abby froze, hands remaining unmoved from her temples to shield her face. Her dad raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"Don't move." Her voice was barely above a whisper. She lowered her head and her father watched as her eyes followed something behind him, eyes diluting like a cat. He turned to match her gaze.
"I said don't move."
He gave her a sardonic look. "What is it?" he hissed, looking as if he was trying not to roll his eyes.
With a great deal of effort, she swallowed, and looked at the two men, hard.
"You know when I said things couldn't get any worse?" Abby said, trying her best to keep her voice from trembling. "I think they just did."
"Dude, I'm telling you, he was here."
"How do you know, Dean? We've been chasing the guy's tail for two weeks now with nothing to go on, and we've got nothing to show for it. I mean, we've got bigger fish to fry here. Maybe he'll come back."
Dean leaned over the table and looked his brother in the eye, watching his mild discomfort. "I know Cas better than anyone," he said with conviction, "And if I know anything I know that if we want any chance of talking to him we need to hunt the bastard down first."
"Talk to him about what? You told me he was protecting the tablet from you. What makes you think that he'll hand it over?"
"If I could just get through to him I-"
"Dean." Sam's eyes were pitiful, his brows furrowed in a way that made Dean feel a small stab of annoyance. He didn't want his sympathy. He didn't want sympathy, period.
"The angels screwed with his head pretty bad, and after all that crap with Purgatory and the mental hospital and the Leviathan, I… I don't think his mind can take much more of it."
"What are you trying to say?" Dean was bristling now, despite himself. He wasn't even sure why anymore –he had betrayed them, fought them, broke Sam's friggin' sanity – why did he still trust him?
"I just don't think we can trust him anymore," Sam said as if he had read Dean's mind, his palms upturned. "He's-"
"He's what? A time bomb? A loose cannon?" Dean spat. "'Cause yeah, sure, he is, but you know what else he is? He's family." He spoke the word with reverence, as if he were speaking in a church, but Sam only rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, nobody gets left behind, I get it. I do. I just think we should focus on the bigger picture here."
Dean threw his burger down in disgust (a rare feat) and got up, straightening himself out. "I'll meet you back at the motel, we're leaving in the morning."
"Dean, don't be a baby." Sam was starting to get pissed. He grabbed his brother's jacket as he passed him and yanked his arm so that Dean was looking down at him, a sour look on his face. "Look, I'm not saying that Cas isn't important, but he's not exactly our top priority right-" suddenly, he froze, his eyes narrowing at something over Dean's shoulder.
"What?" he said petulantly. But Sam just flapped his hand at him to shut up, watching intently as a man with greying hair and hiking boots and a teenage girl with a Red Sox cap pulled over her eyes stood and left the diner, a little too hastily for his liking. His eyes widened. Was that..?
Dean watched as Sam shelled out a couple of dollars, tossing the notes on the table before rising and following the two out the door. Dithering for a bit between him and his previous annoyance, Dean swallowed his pride and went hurriedly in Sam's direction.
As he caught up, Sam motioned for Dean to get his gun out. "Dude, what the hell?" he hissed. "What are you doing?"
"Just follow my lead," his brother said quietly, as he followed his marks into the fog.
Abby scurried at her father's heels as they headed down the street left of the diner, trying to match his brisk pace as he compelled her to keep up. The hairs on her arms stood up as she sensed them behind her, a couple of yards back. Even so, they felt so close it was like they were breathing down her neck. "Dad, they're the Winchesters," she choked, trying to hold back inane tears. "They're looking for the angel. There's no way out of this."
"You hush up, now, there's always a way," her father told her earnestly, with a surprising amount of compassion – well, for her father – before without warning dragging her into an alleyway partly hidden by the dark and the mist, and running down it and around the corner. Doing all her best not to yelp, Abby followed, running on the balls of her feet so her steps wouldn't resonate out onto the main street.
After about ten minutes they stopped, and leaned against the wall to catch their breath.
"You think we lost 'em?" Abby turned to her father, panting.
"I would say so."
She looked around, trying to discern any figures hidden in the shadows, straining her senses, but saw nothing. They were alone. She exhaled, watching her breath turn to white smoke before dissipating into the fog. A sudden anxiousness took her in the unnatural stillness of the alley.
"We need to get back to the motel. We've gotta leave, now."
"So what are we looking at?" Dean breathed, glancing at his brother as they walked along the street, guns up.
"If I'm right, a Viti."
"A veetee?"
"Yeah, V-I-T-I. Bobby told me about them once, they're a type of vampire, but get this, instead of feeding on blood, they feed on human energy."
"Define 'energy'."
"Like, uh, thoughts, emotions. Sometimes even a life force, but that's only a last resort. It's too strong a source; if they intake too much, they could burn up."
"Alright, how do we kill it?"
Sam grimaced. "I don't know. Same way as a normal vamp, I guess. Oh, and there was something about their eyes-"
"What?"
"He wasn't entirely clear on that part. He kinda zoned out for a bit. Besides, he said they were extinct. I didn't think I'd ever have to kill one."
He stopped, peering into a darkened alleyway to their left, head tilted. Just as the anticipated silence was starting to make Dean uncomfortable, he turned back round and started to jog down the street again, motioning with his gun.
"This way."
"Alright, Abby," he said at the door to the motel room at the side of the building, sparing her a quick glance as he reloaded and thumbed back the hammer on his gun, "I'll empty the room. I'll be five minutes. You stay out here and keep watch."
Abby put the barrel of her own pistol to her head in a salute, and stood to attention by the doorway, staring out into the night. It wasn't five minutes before she felt the cold steel of a knife digging into the side of her throat and a voice in her ear, startlingly loud in contrast to the deadened lull in the atmosphere.
"Abby. That's a pretty name."