Sex, Blood and Rock 'n' Roll
Dean Winchester was at an even dozen. Pulling off a glove, slick and dark with blood and other visceral fluids, he wiped sweat from his brow on the only spot on his shirt not similarly smeared with gore. He grabbed another stake from his bag, the one before now protruding from the chest of a biker straight out of From Dusk 'Til Dawn. An ear splitting scream came from the far end of the old barn and he smiled in satisfaction. Sam Winchester had uncovered another vampire and dispatched it to hell.
"How many's that for you, Sammy?" he called out as he made his way back to his brother searching for more tell-tale signs among the bales of hay and old farm equipment as he went.
"Too many," Sam replied. He grasped a stall wall and puked up his breakfast and his lunch both. Wiping his mouth he added, "Way too many."
Dean walked up and smiled at his brother's obvious discomfort and slapped him on the back. "One more for me and it's a Dracula's dozen."
"Yeah, great man." Sam tried to feign enthusiasm but couldn't bring it up. What he did bring up was more bile.
"Oh, man," Dean laughed, quickly backing away, "You'll get used to it."
Sam hoped with all his heart that he never would. He loved his brother more than anything in the world and, despite Ruby's urging, he never wanted to be so much like Dean that taking a human life, no matter how mutated and twisted, was just another day at the office. As it was, he'd killed half a dozen teenagers and young adults in just under two hours. Granted, at sunset they would have bled him out then gutted him but they were once sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. Now they were just dead.
"You want to help Bobby with the out buildings? Take a breather?" Dean asked.
"No, I'm all right. Just something I ate, I guess."
"Dude, you are really green around the gills," Dean teased looking at Sam's pained expression, "How 'bout you take the hayloft and I'll catch the basement or whatever you call that Hell Mouth down there. Not even a wet werewolf smells that bad."
Sam smiled his gratitude. Knowing that manure and animal carcasses were routinely shoveled through the large square hole in the main floor to decompose below, there was no way he could have ever done the basement. He would take his queasy stomach and his chances in the hayloft above. He started up the ramp while Dean descended down a ladder built into the wall into the barn's bowels.
The sub-level of the barn was about half the size of the upper floor and opened out into a wet, muck filled pasture. It was damp and teaming with rodents and probably a million airborne diseases but Dean stepped gingerly toward the center anyway and quickly came upon a rotting corpse. As his eyes grew accustomed to the meager light he spotted a second.
The dump hole was directly above the bodies that had been unceremoniously thrown out like so much trash - if people were in the habit of throwing their offal down the basement of their homes through a hole in the floor. The stench was overpowering and he pulled a small plastic container of Vicks out of his pocket. Reapplying a pinch under each nostril he remembered thinking that his dad must have had the world's longest running cold. It was only later that he discovered the real reason behind all the small blue containers that were always kicking around when he and Sam were growing up.
"Man, you do not shit where you eat," he muttered to himself and used the steel toe of his boot to kick aside more moldered hay revealing the very fresh corps of a young woman. As he stepped back and heard the unmistakable crunch of bone.
Skin crawling, his heart rate kicked up another notch as he toed away more of the hay. A fourth body, dried and blackened, older than the previous ones, was also loosely buried under the straw and half sunk in the muck. How many more humans had been tossed into the pit below like the carcasses of dead farm animals?
Maybe they were, in fact, "cows", captured and penned up and "milked" for blood. Food for the monsters that inhabited this particular nest. It was a concept that, at the least, made him sick to his stomach and, at most, made him mad as hell.
A shower of hay fell from above and Dean looked up and saw Sam's face come into view at least two stories above him.
"Anything?" he shouted up to him.
Sam grimaced. The sun was beginning to set and he didn't know if they'd found all of them yet and he feared Dean's shouts might 'wake the dead' as it were. "There's something up here covered up by a tarp," he replied in a loud stage whisper.
Bag over his shoulder, Dean headed toward a ladder and made his way quickly up the two flights into the hayloft. He walked quickly over to where Sam stood, his brother clutching a sharpened stake tightly in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Sam nodded toward the stiff tarp hidden between bales of hay, a tarp that obviously hid something. Neither had a clue as to what it might be but Dean was taking no chances.
In one hand, the elder Winchester held a stake at the ready to incapacitate whatever was under the tarp and, in the other, he held a sickle to finish the job. He took a deep breath and slowly pulled the odd square of oiled, olive drab cloth back revealing a small figure, the head fully encased in a metal helmet adorned with a grotesque mask.
"Another vampire?" Sam wondered aloud as he took in the sophisticated cruelty of the headgear's design.
Dean saw the delicate bones of the arms shackled to the beam above and the long, matted, red-gold hair that snaked out from beneath the headpiece. Now, more sure of his cow theory he replied, "Nah, just a little girl I think."
Sam noted that the mask, fastened to the globe-like headpiece, was a replica of some sort of stylized bird and that the headpiece itself was unmarked except for two small holes through which to breathe. The whole contraption looked heavy enough to snap the girl's slender neck.
In the flashlight's beam Dean could see the bruised and blood-caked puncture wounds that covered almost every inch of the up-stretched arms. The vampires had fed but he wondered why they had even bothered. How much blood could they have gotten from someone so small? He pulled the tarp the rest of the way off.
The girl was completely naked and Dean could see that she was not a child at all but still couldn't have been more than a teenager at most. He noted the same bloodied bite marks all along her rail thin legs and emaciated torso. Her breasts were riddled with puncture wounds as if she had suckled a demonic infant.
Sam hunkered down in front of her and put his fingers to her neck. Her skin was cold to the touch as he felt for a pulse and he thought she was dead until a weak, muffled moan came from behind the mask. "She's alive but barely," he said softly and gently pushed the encased head forward to study the locking mechanism that held the medieval contraption together and in place.
The lock was based on an ancient oriental puzzle that Sam had seen in his father's journal. Shifting a few metal pieces barely visible to the eye, the mask separated into three pieces which he gingerly removed to reveal a delicate heart-shaped face, frightened gray eyes and a mouth bruised and covered with blood. Sam noticed traces of blood on the solid metal ball that protruded inwardly from the helmet and the two spikes on either side. The ball had served as a gag while the spikes had more than likely punctured her eardrums making her deaf.
Sam stood up and stepped back to give Dean enough space to go to work on removing the shackles that held the girl's hands fast above her head.
Before Dean could finish Sam grabbed his arm and asked, "Do you think she's turned?"
The girl remained mute, her eyes wide with fear. She cringed when Dean slipped off a glove and lifted her upper lip with his finger. Her teeth were small and straight and she twisted her head away from his prying fingers.
"I don't think so but have a steak ready just in case." Dean told him. The girl didn't respond. He doubted she could hear but tried to sooth her anyway, "It's okay. They're all dead. We're here to help you."
Sam hoped to hell they had cleared the entire nest. If they had overlooked any, they needed to get a move on. Daylight was quickly burning away.
Dean picked the locks in mere seconds and the shackles came loose and slid off of the beam noisily, dropping neatly into his hands. He stood and tossed them off to the side next to the now discarded mask and helmet.
The girl sighed and Sam could see relief in her eyes as he squatted to help her up. She smiled weakly and stretched out her cramped arms, rubbing her wrists. He watched as she slowly stretched out a leg then kicked him hard in the chest with her bare foot. The force of the blow slammed him into the hayloft wall and, if darkness hadn't engulfed him, Sam would have warned his brother. He would have told Dean that the girl's k-nines had distended grotesquely and that her gray eyes had turned to quicksilver and that she had, in fact, turned.
But Dean already knew. He knew it the moment she rose up with incredible speed and grabbed him with tremendous strength and pressed her sweet bow of a mouth against his neck. She sank her teeth painfully into his jugular vein and began to drink thirstily. He wanted to push her away but he couldn't move a muscle. It was as if she was some kind of insect and her bite had paralyzed him and, as her strength grew, he became weaker and weaker.
Dean's heart beat slower and slower as his life's blood drained to what he knew must be a dangerously low level. Bright dots swam before his eyes and he knew death was eminent until the vampire suddenly let go of him and he crumpled to lie at her feet.
The girl slumped back against the barn wall, eyes closed, panting noisily, his blood dripping lazily down her chin and, as the minutes ticked by, the wounds on her body began to heal leaving her skin glistening like polished white marble. Her sunken cheeks grew plump and pink, her red-gold hair began to sparkle, the long spiral curls growing thick and luxurious once again and, as he watched the transformation, Dean longed to kiss her sensuous rosebud mouth despite her lips being drenched in his own blood.
As if she knew he'd been thinking lascivious thoughts, the vampire opened her eyes and looked down at him, a half smile on her face. Then, as if lifted by preternatural strings, she rose up and in a graceful fluid motion and floated to where Sam lay in a crumpled heap in the course hay.
Her long hair caressed him as she hovered over him like a malevolent angel and just listened to his deep steady breathing and to his heart beating soundly, pumping his blood throughout his body.
"No!" Dean tried to shout but his voice came out as only a panicked whisper.
The vampire heard him and, assured that the taller of the two men was only unconscious, glided silently back to Dean.
"Kill me but please don't hurt my brother," he begged her. His heart turned in his chest when she smiled showing him her fangs.
"I have no intention of hurting Sammy or killing you, Dean Winchester," she explained settling into a cross-legged position beside him, "I'm just getting to know you."
"Oh, crap," he thought, his mind's eye conjured up a picture of her slicing open a vein and them becoming 'blood siblings'.
"Business first," she told him and asked, "There are three of you. Where is the other?"
She spoke English but it was stilted and strangely flat and with an accent he couldn't begin to place. It sounded like she might have been from Europe or a lot further south, Hell maybe, and she was asking a question he didn't want to answer.
Dean closed his eyes and tried to think of anything but Bobby Singer but his thoughts went directly to where they had left him searching the many out buildings on the Mayfield farm. He opened his eyes again and knew she'd seen just what he'd pictured. She evidently didn't feel threatened by the older, more experienced hunter because she continued to sit and calmly watch him.
"You killed the fledglings?"
Through his mind's eye she saw him and his brother methodically search out and destroy the vampires that had held her captive and, although she felt no remorse that this particular group had been decimated, she did want to know why killing vampires was so important to the brothers.
Weak as a kitten, Dean lifted himself up and rested on his elbows. "Damn straight, sweetheart. I would have taken your head in a New York minute, too, if I'd have known they'd turned you," he said with false bravado.
"Turned me?" she asked with a quizzical frown.
"You know, mix vampire blood with human."
"You watch too much television. The change would only be temporary," she told him contemptuously and wondered when humans would stop killing innocents?
Dean looked stunned for a moment at her revelation and then forged on pragmatically. He couldn't afford to cry over spilled blood. "You mean I didn't have to kill the hot blonde chick."
The vampire saw the blade slice through Lucy's neck. She saw the woman's head spin and fall to the floor; saw the blood spurting furiously at the very same moment Dean replayed the disturbing events in his mind. "A waste of life...a waste of life's blood," she said in a harsh, angry whisper.
"It's always all about the blood, isn't it?" he laughed contemptuously, "Thanks to your kind I can barely look a rare steak in the eye anymore."
"Gordon Walker," she said and her hand went to her throat and her eyes to Sam's prone form, "wasn't my kind."
She was tuned into Dean TV and watched the past few months play back in living color in his mind and for the life of him he couldn't stop it. The more he tried to dis-remember the more he could see his brother Sam's face as he pulled the razor wire tighter and tighter all the while Gordon Walker's head became looser and looser.
"Couldn't be avoided," he said simply and lay back in the hay, his energy now spent. "Old Gordo's change may have only been temporary but the dude's bat shit crazy was permanent."
Looking up at her again and into her eyes, Dean got the feeling that this particular vampire might not be a trainee after all. As a precaution he changed the subject to tried and clear his mind of all of the rest of the vampires they'd dispatched along the roads they'd traveled.
"What's your name anyway?" he asked but didn't wait for an answer, "Never mind. I'll call you Abby. You know, short for abomination. So tell me Abs, are you gonna turn me or let me go on about my business?"
She tilted her head and looked at him, a smile quirking her full red lips. She enjoyed this mortal's thoughts even though most of them were dark and filled with pain. She also liked the fact that he was a consummate smart ass and told him, "Since your business is staking and decapitating "my kind" I don't think I'll be letting you go any time soon. I want to get to know you better."
"Ah, the curse of the Winchester charm. Well, maybe just the Dean Winchester charm," he said rolling his eyes "So you want to get to know me, huh?"
She nodded and smiled, the fading light reflecting off of her teeth.
He began to babble in hopes of keeping her mind squarely on him and off of Sam until Bobby could get to them. "Well, I'm just shy of thirty and an Aquarius. I like taking long walks down haunted hallways, killing Wendigos by moonlight and I want world peace. What else do you want to know?"
The vampire felt his fear and laughed softly to try and put him at ease. She truly meant him no harm. A solitary creature by nature, she never gathered in clans or "nests" as he had called them but, through the blood, she was now connected to this mortal and she wanted to keep him, if only for a little while. She was simply lonely and asked, "Why do you hunt us?"
Dean sighed wearily. He didn't want to answer any more of her questions. He just wanted to sleep. He did managed to muster up enough strength to reply testily, "You are blood sucking, murdering monsters that have no place here on earth, that's why."
"Don't hold back," she quipped stretching her arms above her head and added, "So, judging by your answer you, in effect, know nothing about vampires."
"What's to know? You kill humans, I kill you," he told her, "And what could you possibly tell me that would change my mind? Look at you. Those sons of bitches fed off of you. You're just one big, happy, friggin' family."
"These are deviants, mindless creatures carelessly created," she said with a sweep of her arm, "Do you want to know about true vampires? About me?"
Rolling his eyes, Dean snorted contemptuously, his lip curling. "I already know all I need to know about you, Abby. You're one of them - and a natural red head."
Abby looked down at her nakedness and, totally unaffected by it, laughed. She'd always thought the human body a work of art and was pleased that the pendulum had evidently swung away from puritanical views of life and love yet again. She also liked to shop, most especially for haute couture.
"Just like hunters we are not all the same. Your brother is...discriminating," she reminded him.
"To a fault and it might get him killed one of these days. For him there are degrees of evil. For me its evil is as evil does."
"I know of your life long hatred of evil and your hunting of it but it may not be prudent to lump all vampires together."
"Oh, I've met bleeding heart vampires before, no pun intended. Vampires trying for redemption but there aren't enough of 'em out there drinking cow's blood for me to worry about."
"And you don't think these vampires are worthy of saving? We have gifts to offer. Healing, vast stores of knowledge and..."
"Death!" Dean snapped, his fuse growing shorter by the second, "Like the Marines say "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
The thought of God had always intrigued her and she asked him, a mischievous grin on her face, "Do you think we'll see God some day? Me with my preternatural thirst and you with your deal?"
Amazed that he could mouth off to a vampire and not get bitch slapped, he was stunned that she knew about his deal. It was his turn to ask a rhetorical question. "You know about my deal?"
"I've drunk from you, Dean. I know your life's history, everything you've ever done and everything you've ever seen. I feel what you feel, love who you love, hate who you hate."
"Then you must not be feelin' the love from me right about now," he said and closed his eyes. Being a human Slurpee took its toll on a man.
The girl vampire sat silently for a few moments and studied his placid features and marveled at his emotional detachment. For all he knew these could be his last moments on earth but he had no fear for himself. Except for a brief but intense jolt when his mind had turned to thoughts of Hell, a feeling immediately brought under control and quickly dampened, his only concern was for his brother.
His was a disciplined mind but the place he stored his memories leaked like a sieve and, as his blood flowed through her veins, the connection grew stronger and churned up emotions she'd thought long since dead within her. She knew Dean held tightly to vague memories of a mother and of a father's love so strong that it transcended even death and blood tinged tears began to trickle down her cheeks. It was a love she had felt only once before in her long, long life and it had cost her dearly. She wanted to tell Dean that the cost of such a love was so very high but she feared he already knew. She could feel his strength ebbing even more and asked, "Do you want to know about vampires? About me?"
Dean sniggered, threw a dead weight arm across his eyes and, not thinking, told her. "Sure, why not? I'm sure there's a whole lot I can learn from a baby vamp like you."
With preternatural speed the girl grabbed his arm and pulled him up into a sitting position, his head flopping back on weakened muscles. She grabbed his face and pried his mouth open. With his remaining strength Dean tried to force her fingers loose but the more he pulled the harder she dug in until he thought she might break his jaw.
As her face drew closer he saw the blood tears and smelled the coppery scent of his own blood on her breath and, just as she pressed her lips to his, he thought, "They breathe...and they puke!" and blood flooded his mouth.