"Dean, she's dying."

Dean cursed, kicking Henry's corpse in the side. "Shouldn't have taken his word for it. Should've done a fang check."

Sam stared at his brother, brow furrowed. "Dean, she's dying." His words were like an admonishment. Dean rolled his shoulders, jaw tight.

"Yes, Sam, I can see that. And that's on us, I know that. But she won't survive a trip to the hospital." Dean paused, stare growing more intense, and then said his next words carefully, deliberately. "She would need an angel to save her."

Sam made an impatient noise in the back of his throat. "Well Cas is human now, and also not here. Even if there were any angels around, I doubt we're on their nice list right now."

Dean's face fell a little and his shoulders slumped. "I don't know what else to tell you, Sammy."

Sam glanced around the clearing desperately, gaze landing on Henry's severed head and lifeless eyes. He stared for a moment, lips pursed in thought. "I have an idea. But I don't think you're gonna like it."

Dean followed Sam's gaze to Henry's head. It took him a moment to follow his brother's train of thought. "No. No way, we're not making another vampire."

"Just temporarily!" Sam stood, leaving Nell on the ground and walking over to Henry's corpse. "We feed her some blood now to start the change, heal her up, then take her back to the bunker and give her the cure before she drinks any blood."

"Oh, so you don't just want to make a new vampire. You want to take her to our secret hideout, too!"

"She was our responsibility, Dean."

"So is Kevin," Dean shot back. "You're seriously going to bring a baby vampire to the bunker while he's there? It's too dangerous."

"No more dangerous than being alone in the bunker with Crowley!" Sam shook his head. "We don't have time for this. She's dying, and if this could save her, we owe it to her to try."

Dean crossed his arms, but didn't move to stop Sam as he dragged Henry's corpse over to Nell's body and fed her the blood of her fellow camper turned near-killer.


Nell did not anticipate waking up.

The first thing she felt was a sense of wrongness. It took a moment for her to place that the wrongness was that she felt anything at all.

Nell was not a religious woman. She had obediently attended church with her parents through high school to avoid arguments with her mother, but the services had never resonated with her. As a child she had never felt that there was a higher power listening to her prayers, and over time she gave up on the idea that there was any sort of higher power at all. She didn't believe in God, or heaven, or any sort of an afterlife.

Death was just death. Game over. Worm food. Which is why Nell was so disoriented at having a sense of self when she was 99% sure she bled to death on the forest floor after Henry tore her throat out.

But this didn't seem like any afterlife Nell had ever heard of. It was dark, and stuffy, and smelled vaguely of gasoline. Come to think of it… Nell tried to move. She encountered two problems. The first was that the cramped space was too small to stretch out. The second, and much more concerning issue, was that her hands and feet were bound in what felt like rope.

She was in a fucking trunk. She was alive, in a fucking trunk.

Maybe she'd never been hurt at all. Maybe Henry had slipped something into her beer or served her a bad hot dog and everything else she remembered was just a weird, vivid dream. There was really no way for her to tell, so she decided to set aside the mystery of how she was alive until she found out the how and why of the trunk.

Whatever car she was in was still in motion. Though her hands and feet were tied, she had not been gagged. And so, she made a ruckus.

She shouted and screamed and flailed, banging against the trunk as much as possible. It was an exhausting effort, and after some time she gave up pounding on the lid of the trunk and resigned herself to half-hearted shouting.

"LET ME OUT!"

"Please let me out?"

"If this is some kind of Hell, it's weird and underwhelming!"

After a while Nell's mouth was dry, her throat sore, and there'd been no sign that whoever was driving the car had heard any of her protests. Exhausted, Nell allowed herself to be lulled to sleep by the warm, stale air of the trunk and the gentle rocking motion of the car.

She woke when the car halted. Two loud thunks marked the opening and closing of car doors, and Nell did her best to roll so she was facing the trunk's lid as footsteps rounded the car. Her heart raced. The trunk clicked open, and Nell blinked rapidly at the two figures silhouetted in the light. It took a few seconds of blinking for her eyes to adjust.

"So I wasn't roofied." Not only were Sam and Dean proof, but in the light Nell could see the dark blood that had dried on her shirt. It was a shame, too. She'd liked this shirt.

Sam had the decency to look a bit shamefaced about keeping a woman in his trunk. Dean didn't blink, looking irritated—though thankfully the irritation seemed to be directed towards Sam rather than Nell.

"'Fraid not," Dean said. Sam, gently and with exaggerated motions so as not to startle Nell, lifted her out of the trunk, propping her so she could sit on the edge. Nell allowed it without struggle, though she glared to let him know just how little she appreciated the mode of transport. "Your buddy Henry really did try to rip your throat out."

He said it in a serious, final-sounding tone, and Nell remembered that just before she'd passed out from blood loss she'd seen one of them chop Henry's head off with a huge knife.

"You're not going to lop my head off too, are you?" Nell asked warily, glancing between the two. "Or were you hoping I'd bleed out in your trunk?"

"We don't wanna hurt you," Sam reassured her hastily. "We're trying to help, I swear."

The puppy dog eyes were less convincing when Nell had seen the guy take another guy's head off with one swing. Unimpressed, Nell said, "Like you helped Henry."

"No time to ease her into it, Sammy." Dean said shortly, patting Sam on the shoulder. "It wasn't some killer that got Henry, it was a nest of vampires. We killed the vamps, but not before they turned Henry. You remember that? Nasty, pointy teeth? Drank your blood?"

Nell was quiet. On the one hand, she was a staunch atheist. She didn't believe in religion, superstition, or magic of any kind. There was no such thing as ghosts or goblins or monsters under the bed. Most of what people declared supernatural mysteries could be explained by simple science or human psychology.

On the other hand, she had seen Henry grow teeth. Had felt him rip into her neck with those teeth. Nell reached up to her neck tentatively, anticipating a raw, angry wound. Instead there was smooth skin, though it was crusted with dried blood.

"It's gone." Nell's brow furrowed, confused, and she looked back to Dean. "I remember the teeth, and the blood, so where…" There was no way her neck could have healed on its own in the few hours she'd been locked in their trunk. Speaking of, "Also, I was bleeding out on the forest floor. I thought I was going to die—why did I wake up in your fucking trunk, and not a hospital bed?"

Dean gave Sam a hard look. "You tell her."

Sam sighed, shoulders sagging a little. He looked guilty, and Nell frowned before he even started talking. "Look, Nell, Henry… he got you good." Sam's voice was gentle and quiet, as if he could control the violence of Nell's reaction by exuding excess calm. "You lost a lot of blood. You wouldn't have made it to a hospital." Nell nodded, impatient. She had thought she was going to die, after all. "So, we—" Dean cleared his throat pointedly. "Okay, I couldn't just let you die if there was a way to save you. So I fed you a little bit of Henry's blood, to turn you." Sam rushed out the rest of his words as if he was afraid Nell would interrupt to start yelling at him. "Just enough to heal you! There's a cure we can make that'll make you human again. Just give us a few days, and this'll all just be a bad dream."

"Not convinced it isn't one." Nell tilted her head up to the sky, pondering. While she knew that a dying brain could manifest some weird illusions and hallucinations, she always figured it would be more along the lines of her grandmother welcoming her into the clouds. "If I were a vampire, wouldn't the sun hurt me?" The light was warmer than she'd expect, and so bright it nearly hurt her eyes, but she figured she still needed time to adjust from the darkness of the trunk.

"You're still turning," Dean said shortly. "And sun's not actually deadly to vampires, anyway. More like a really bad sunburn."

Nell shook her head, unable to believe the story from the almost-certainly-not-agents. It was true that Henry had attacked her, and she had indeed seen him grow a whole new set of teeth right before he feasted on her blood. "Vampires exist" did seem to explain pretty much all the questions she could come up with about the events of the last day or so, but just because it might explain things didn't mean it was the right explanation.

"Speaking of sunburn..." Sam nodded over Nell's shoulder. She'd been facing away from it before, but they were parked in front of an odd door built into the side of a leaf-strewn dirt slope near the road. If she'd passed it while driving, she might have thought it was a maintenance hatch or some sort of old bomb shelter. "We should get her inside."

"Right." Dean nodded, swiftly hoisting Nell into a fireman's carry. Nell's breath escaped her in a whoosh as his shoulder dug into her stomach, but her hands and feet were still bound, so she couldn't struggle much. "To the dungeon."

"Wait, what?" Nell had been prepared to complain about the ropes, but now she was much, much more worried about this 'dungeon'. What kind of person has a dungeon?

"Come on, Dean, is that really necessary?" Sam tried to reason as he opened the door in the side of the slope. "There's tons of empty rooms."

"Nuh-uh, no way. Bad enough we're bringing in a baby vampire while Kevin is here." Dean kicked the door closed behind him. Nell watched with dismay as it slammed shut. "What if she vamps out and slips the ropes before we get her the cure? No, she's going in the dungeon, inside the wards, until she's 100% human again."

"Seriously? Dean, Crowley's in there." Nell twitched. So not only did they have a dungeon, they already had someone locked up in it.

"Warded circle's big enough for the two of them, Sammy." Dean tromped down a set of steps and walked down a narrow hallway. Nell couldn't get a good look, though, with her head at Dean's lower back and her hair falling around her face.

"But it's Crowley."

"If my opinion matters at all," Nell tried, bolstered a bit that, at least in this, Sam seemed to be on her side, "I'd really like to not be put in a dungeon."

"It doesn't," Dean said simply. "This isn't up for discussion." Dean re-positioned Nell on his shoulder, and Nell could hear the opening and closing of a door, and then what sounded like a heavy sliding door and the click of a light switch.

"Moose! Squirrel!" The voice that greeted them was sardonic, gravelly, and British. Nell guessed that this must be the Crowley person Sam was so wary of. "And I see you've brought a guest."

Dean ignored Crowley entirely. "Get a chair and some rope, Sam." Sam sighed heavily, but Nell heard his footsteps and rummaging as he obeyed the order.

"Ooh, kinky." Crowley's voice was thick with dark humor. Nell couldn't help wondering how he could sound so teasing and self-assured while locked in a dungeon. "Careful, Squirrel, I might get jealous."

"Shut up, Crowley." Dean walked forward and deposited Nell in the chair, then set to tying her up securely before she had the presence of mind to try to wiggle free.

Sighing, Nell took in the room: vast, concrete, and largely bare. There was some sort of locker or storage closet on one of the side walls and some odd, ritualistic-looking markings on the floor. The only furniture, other than the chair she was currently being tied to, was a metal table sitting just in front of her, and one other chair, which was occupied by a dark-haired man in a sharp suit—presumably Crowley. His hands and feet were shackled with metal chains, and his neck was secured to the back of his chair with a thick metal collar which was engraved with more occultish symbols like those on the floor. As she took in her surroundings, Crowley watched her with interest, and when she turned to look at him he smiled.

"A vampire? Boys, you shouldn't have." Crowley gestured at air with his bound hands, chains clanking. "I don't have anything to give you in return."

"Shut up, Crowley," Dean repeated in a growl, cinching the ropes around Nell's torso tight.

"I'm not a vampire," Nell protested, though only halfheartedly. She didn't think anyone in this room would believe her. Crazy as it was, she wasn't sure she entirely believed it, herself.

Crowley's dark eyes scanned her face, her neck, and her bloodied shirt before fixing back on her face. "Maybe not yet," he shrugged carelessly. "But you're getting there. I'm curious, boys—I could have sworn your position on vampires was strictly pro-decapitation."

Sam crouched down in front of Nell's chair, looking apologetic. "Look, I'm sorry about all of this. But I swear, we'll give you the cure and you'll be out of here in no time."

If Nell had been in her right mind, she would have screamed and fought. Surely, Sam and Dean and even this Crowley person were insane, to believe in vampires, and she should be doing everything in her power to escape them and whatever they might do to her in their mad conviction that she was turning into some sort of undead creature.

But maybe the madness was catching, because no matter how hard she tried, Nell couldn't quite dismiss the notion. Couldn't forget the wet sound of shifting bones as Henry grew a new set of teeth, or the pain as he sank those teeth into her mysteriously-healed neck.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" Nell asked finally, voice soft and tired. "How can I be sure any of this is even real, and not some horrible dream?"

Sam hesitated, looking unsure what to say to reassure her—or perhaps unsure if he even should. At his silence, Crowley said silkily, "You couldn't dream me up, darling."

Dean made a noise of irritation in the back of his throat, though at whom Nell wasn't entirely sure. "You want proof?" Dean loudly rummaged in the room's storage locker, coming back with a mirror and a long metal instrument. "I'll give you proof." He sat on the table in front of her and held up a mirror.

Nell grimaced at her reflection. Her curls were matted and limp from her time in the car's trunk, and her face and neck were still crusted with dark, dried blood. But that wasn't the most startling thing.

"My eyes…" At first she thought her eyes were simply bloodshot, but with a jolt she realized that something was horribly wrong with them. They looked like Henry's had—darker than their usual pale blue, ruddier, and somehow overflowing from her iris into the whites of her eyes. They didn't feel painful, but they looked horribly inflamed.

"Henry's eyes looked just like that, didn't they?" Dean's tone was unsympathetic, like he already knew the answer. "And then there's this." Holding the mirror in his left hand, he took the metal instrument in his right and brought it towards Nell's face. She tried to jerk away, but her motion was limited, and Dean stuck the instrument in her mouth, pulling her upper lip up and away from her teeth.

Nell felt something shift in her mouth, like the flexing of some muscle she'd never known she had. She looked away from Dean's hardened face and back to the mirror. Wide-eyed, she took in the sight of the sharp, jagged teeth that now filled her mouth, just like the ones Henry had grown before her eyes. Disbelieving, she ran her tongue along the teeth.

Sharp. Real.

"Holy shit."

"Yeah, holy shit," Dean repeated, tucking away the mirror and the metal instrument. Nell felt the extremely bizarre sensation of the sharp teeth retracting. "Now we're gonna go make a cure. You'll be in for a rough couple of days, but when it's done you'll be alive and human again. So just sit tight, and ignore anything this asshat says." He jerked his thumb at Crowley, who clutched his heart in mock-offense with a rattle of chains.

Nell ran her tongue over her human teeth in wonder, glancing between Dean and Crowley. "Is he a vampire, too?"

"He's a demon."

Nell blinked at Dean, but his face was dead serious. "You're joking, right?"

Dean hopped off the table with a shrug. "I'm not gonna sit around trying to convince you."

Sam slowly stood, looking at Nell earnestly. "He is a demon, and he lies and manipulates people. Just… don't let him get to you. We'll be back soon." Sam patted her on the shoulder, probably trying to be reassuring, and he and Dean left, closing the door behind them.

Nell was left with Crowley, who watched her with undisguised interest. "What's your name, darling?"

Nell's lips twisted. On the one hand, Sam and Dean had told her not to listen to this guy. On the other hand, Sam and Dean had also nearly gotten her killed, shoved her in a trunk, tied her up, and locked her in a dungeon.

"Nell."

Crowley leaned back in his chair, smugly satisfied at her response. "Well, then, Nell. How does a lovely lady such as yourself wind up in the Winchesters' dungeon with the likes of me?"

Nell considered the question for a moment. Just where had everything gone off the rails? If she had to pinpoint a cause, it was her decision to go after Henry in the first place. "Foolish heroics, I guess. Although," Nell amended, "if those two hadn't come investigating I'd have just reported Henry missing, and none of this would have happened…"

"When in doubt, blame it on the Winchesters," Crowley said, in an almost weary tone, like he'd said it often and not been listened to. He shrugged off the discontent easily enough, though, waving his hands a little. "But you've got to give me a little more than that. We're both stuck in here. You might as well give me all the…" His eyes flicked down the the dark blood staining Nell's shirt. "...gory details."

"You know what? Just for that comment, I'm not telling you." Nell had been willing to humor the 'demon', but she drew the line at punny innuendos about getting her throat ripped out.

For the briefest of moments, he looked like he'd been slapped, eyes wide and disbelieving. "You serious?" Nell shrugged carelessly. Why would she relive the whole bloody thing for his amusement? "Oh, come on. What are you gonna do, just sit there and mope?"

Nell pretended not to hear him, looking around the dungeon again with interest. "Hmmm, look at those markings. Wonder what language that is…"

"Oh, come—" Crowley shook his head, then said through his teeth, "Please?" Nell raised an eyebrow at him, wondering if she was supposed to be impressed by his utterly lackluster manners. Still, eye contact prompted him to continue his appeal.

"Please. Nell. I have been sitting in this damn chair for three weeks—no visitors, no entertainment, nothing. I'm going mad in here!" His voice climbed to an almost-shout, eyes wild with repressed fury, before he seemed to remember that he was trying to get something from her and tamped down the violence in his gaze. "Please, Nell. Tell me a story."

Nell considered him. He didn't precisely look like a man who'd been in a dungeon for three weeks. A bit rumpled, yes, but his suit still looked clean and his eyes were alert, if a little… manic.

And he had said the magic word.

"I was camping," Nell began with a sigh, "at the Grand Canyon, and the man at the campsite next to mine went hiking and never came back. I went to report him missing to the park rangers, but when I got there…" Nell paused. "You called them Winchesters?"

"Yes. Sam and Dean Winchester, brothers and general pains in my neck," Crowley drawled, a shadow of the irritation he felt at his jailors creeping into his voice. "Let me guess: they flashed some official-looking badges, used transparent aliases, and poked their noses where they don't belong."

"Yeah, well." Nell had been a bit too distracted by Henry's disappearance to pay too much attention to their swiping the names from the lead actors in Star Wars. "They were apparently investigating a string of disappearances in the park, of which Henry was the latest. They were pretty adamant about handling the matter themselves instead of calling in search and rescue, but I could tell from the way they talked that they thought Henry was already dead."

"Ah." Crowley's eyes lit with recognition, apparently seeing where the story was going. "Hence, your foolish heroics."

Nell shrugged uncomfortably. "They clearly weren't in any rush to look for him, and the longer Henry was gone, the more likely he would die, so yes. I packed a bag and went to look for him." Which had been a terrible idea. Nell normally would have never done such a stupid thing, but her illness had greatly reduced her sense of self-preservation.

"Go on," Crowley prompted, encouraging, when she didn't continue immediately. Nell cleared her throat, trying to figure out how to continue.

"I followed the trail Henry had told me he was going to take." Nell stared at her dirty, scraped hands in an attempt to distract herself from the memory of the crow eating Roxie's cold, still body. "I found his dog with her neck snapped, but no sign of Henry."

Crowley's only reaction to this part of the story was a thinning of his lips, but Nell got the sense he disapproved. "The Winchesters caught up to me soon after that—carrying flamethrowers, I should add—and they had me walk between them to look for a nearby cave where they thought they might find Henry, or whatever took him."

"Of course they did," Crowley said, clearly unimpressed with the Winchesters' actions. "I take it you found it?"

"Yes, and Henry," Nell agreed. "Though he was an absolute mess, tied up and covered in blood. Sam said something about vampires and Henry rambled a bit about whatever attacked him drinking his blood, which I mostly dismissed at the time because I didn't want to argue with men with flamethrowers and big knives and because vampires aren't supposed to exist." Nell shook her head, still unable to believe what was going on even though she'd seen it all with her own eyes, and only minutes ago had watched herself grown a whole new set of teeth.

"We got Henry him up and walking and got out of the woods as fast as possible, and Dean told me to drive him back to the ranger station for medical attention—which I did, but not before getting a good look at what I guess were vampires running out of the woods at them. I don't know how many there were, but I did see Dean take one of their heads clean off."

"Yes, for all their faults that is one thing they excel at," Crowley murmured. "What then?"

"I drove back to the ranger station with Henry. He'd been unconscious, but he woke up on the drive…"

"With a bad case of pink eye and a thirst for human blood," Crowley finished for her. "Tore your pretty little throat out." Crowley tsked. "And after you went through all that trouble."

"Yes." Nell was actually rather glad Crowley had deduced the ending of the story. She wasn't keen to relive the struggle, the pain, the blank eyes of Henry's decapitated head… "I was sure I was going to die, but then I woke up in their trunk."

"Ah, the trunk," Crowley said, mock-wistfully. "I have such fond memories."

Nell was almost relieved that she wasn't the only person who'd received such treatment. "What are you in for?"

"Weren't you listening to the boys? I'm a demon." Crowley's smile was slow and languid, his eyes flickering oddly in the dim light of the dungeon. "King of Hell, in point of fact."

Nell tilted her head to the side and squinted at him, trying to tell whether or not he was joking. He looked as proud as one reasonably could while shackled to a chair—which was to say, not very. Finally had to ask, "You're not serious, are you?"

Crowley looked mildly offended, though not particularly surprised. "What, vampires you'll accept, but demons are out of the question?"

The 'accepting vampires' bit was still very much a work in progress, but, "Yeah, pretty much."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "Humans. Honestly."

Nell tilted her head back and closed her eyes, the hard wood of the chair digging into her neck. It felt real. Everything felt real. As insane as the events of the last few days had been, they felt, in many ways, more real than anything else. Ultra vivid. Ultra sharp. It didn't feel like a dream, but...

"Maybe I am asleep," she murmured to herself absently. This could still be some odd, weird concoction of her dying mind. "Slowly dying in a hospital in Arizona… or Virginia."

"Not exactly close," Crowley remarked.

Nell rolled her head down to look at him again. "If this is some weird, painkiller-induced dream, I'm probably dying in a hospital somewhere. So either I'm in Arizona, slowly dying from blood loss after Henry ripped my throat out in some manic episode, or I never left Virginia in the first place, and this whole trip was a dream that has only recently gone very, very weird." Nell thought back over the last few weeks, pondering that last possibility. "Maybe a medically induced coma?…"

Crowley's eyes narrowed. He leaned forward as far as he was able with the collar fastened around his neck, eyes darting from her face, to her neck, to her wrists. "You were already dying before the vampire got you," he realized aloud. "Let me guess… cancer?"

His voice was casual, almost bored. There was no pity, or sympathy, or even kindness in his gaze—just a mild interest in whether or not his guess was right.

Nell didn't miss the pity, but she couldn't help but find the lack of it slightly unsettling. "How'd you guess?"

Crowley relaxed back against his chair, smugly satisfied. "I've seen the signs often enough over the years. You must have had…" His eyes raked over her again. Nell wondered what sort of information he could glean just by looking at her. "Five, six months?"

"You're good," Nell admitted, morbidly impressed.

"I'm Crowley." The words were prideful, but they meant little to Nell. "So you get the bad news, and, what? Take a road trip?"

"That was the plan," Nell mused, lips twisting. "My mother wanted me to get treatment, but my odds of survival were in the single digits. I'd much rather enjoy the time I have left than try to fight a losing fight." Nell sighed. "But my mother's not one for odds or statistics. If she convinced a court I was suicidal, got power of attorney and put me in treatment…" Nell hummed doubtfully. She didn't think her mother was resourceful enough to pull something like that off. And surely, even if this was a dream, Nell would remember something like that happening. Plus, "The Grand Canyon was pretty amazing… I doubt I could dream that up."

"You're not dreaming, darling." Crowley flashed her an almost charming smile. "As of this moment, you're not even dying. But you will be, once those boys come back in the room with their little cure."

Nell thought she could see where he was going with this, and refused to entertain the notion. "I thought vampires were undead? So I'll die no matter what, really."

"There are other ways," Crowley said, voice low and enticing. "Right now you're about 80% vampire. When those apes come back and shoot you full of vampire cure, you'll be right back where you started. Just months to live. I could give you years."

Crowley's face was quite serious and earnest. Nell raised an eyebrow. "For what, Mephistopheles, my soul?"

"Well, yes." Crowley looked put out, but only for a moment before he smiled again. "What do you say? Not a bad bargain. One measly little soul for ten more years among the living."

Nell huffed a laugh. "I don't believe in souls, but if I did, I wouldn't trade it away for a hundred years, let alone ten."

"If you don't believe in souls, what's the harm in trading it away?" Crowley wheedled, leaning forward again as much as he was able.

"It's a pretty hefty price to pay if I turn out to be wrong."

"You'll die." He said it like a warning, but his face was more than a little disbelieving.

"Yes, I know."

Crowley's brow furrowed suddenly. "And you don't believe in souls. What, exactly, do you think is going to happen to you?"

"I'll cease to exist." Nell had accepted that a long time ago. It didn't bother her, or scare her. It sounded, frankly, more peaceful than any other version of the afterlife she'd ever heard proposed.

"And you're just… fine with that?" His voice was heavily skeptical.

"Yes."

Crowley opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut, eyes flicking behind Nell. She, too, heard the approaching footsteps, and soon after she heard the door behind her open. Sam and Dean's footsteps seemed terribly loud, now, as did their breathing, and their…

Heartbeats?

Nell could make out three steady heartbeats, one each for Sam, Dean, and Crowley. They were quiet and faint, like the hum of electricity in the walls—easy to overlook, but easy to tune into if you realized it was there. Her own heart was audible, too, but it was faltering, beating sluggishly in an irregular rhythm.

"Okay, Nell, here you go." Dean's voice was cheerier now, but he might as well have been shouting, everything was so loud. "One dose of Vampire-Be-Gone." He held up a needle filled with a dark liquid.

Crowley sat back, pulling his hands into his lap with a soft jingle of chains that nonetheless rang in Nell's ears. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he sing-songed.

"Shut up, Crowley." Dean glared at him while Sam ignored him, kneeling down next to Nell and rolling up her right sleeve to reveal her pale forearm.

"I'm serious," Crowley insisted. Nell eyed him warily, wondering what he was trying to pull now. "Moose. Sam. Was it your idea to turn Nell, here?" Sam shot him a glare. Crowley smiled, slow and smug. "I'll bet it was. You're incapable of letting people die when they're supposed to, especially when it's your fault. That's why I thought you might like to know that if you press that plunger, you'll kill her."

"Shut up, Crowley," Nell sighed, echoing Dean. Whatever was happening, whether she was cured or woken or killed—it didn't much matter, in the end. Any of those would get her out of this dungeon and away from all this madness.

Unfortunately, Sam hesitated. He had looked prepared to ignore Crowley's words until Nell spoke, but now, as Dean handed him the syringe, his brow furrowed in concern. "Hey, wait—is he telling the truth?"

Dean folded his arms. "Of course he's not telling the truth. He's Crowley. Hurry it up, Sammy." Sam shot Nell an inquiring look, and she nodded encouragingly. Looking reassured, Sam slid the needle into her arm.

"Oh, but I am," Crowley said quickly, eyes on the syringe. "Or didn't she tell you she's dying of cancer?"

Sam froze with his hand on the plunger. He looked between Crowley, whose eyes were still locked on the syringe, and Nell, who had rolled her eyes toward the ceiling in impatient disbelief. "Nell? Is that true?"

"Does it matter?" Nell nodded to the syringe impatiently. "I was promised that soon this would all be a bad dream."

Still, Sam hesitated. "How long do you have?"

"None of your business," Nell snapped.

"Months," Crowley breathed.

"Press the plunger, Sam, or I will," Dean said, voice hard.

Sam looked at him in disbelief. "Dean, she'll die."

"Well her other option is to be a vampire, and then we'd have to kill her anyway." Nell shuddered involuntarily, remembering vividly just how easily he'd taken off someone's head.

"Not necessarily!" Sam's voice rose a little. Nell winced at the volume, and he lowered his voice apologetically. "Lenore and her nest fed on animals. Nell could, too."

"Lenore's nest gave that up, remember?" Dean looked utterly unswayed. "Lenore almost did, too—that's why Cas killed her."

"Yeah, but that was only because of Eve, and she's dead now!" The conversation was now entirely over Nell's head. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the two, trying to figure out her fate from the mess of names and allusions the two were bickering about.

Dean shook his head resolutely. "The point is, Lenore was an exception. Most vampires aren't like her."

"Dean, it's our fault she's like this. We owe it to her to do our best to save her," Sam insisted.

"It doesn't count as saving her if she's a monster!" Dean shouted. Nell grit her teeth, the sheer volume of his voice causing ringing echoes in her head. "Look, Sam, if she was already dying when we met her, all we owe to her is to put her back how she was."

"But she'll die!"

"Everybody dies sometime," Nell said, voice quiet. Her words shut Sam and Dean up, and Sam turned to her, eyes wide and looking like a kicked puppy. It was a little much, Nell thought, considering she was the one who was dying. "Now shut up and give me the shot."

Cacophony. Nell cried out in pain as the sound of metal on metal reverberated in her head. It was like her skull was a church bell that had been rung, and it ached.

And then the pain was forgotten, because Nell tasted the most wonderful thing she'd ever tasted in her entire life.

It was dark and warm, like mulled wine at Christmas and bloody steak and sweet tobacco smoke all at once. It was smooth and thick as cream, with a bite like the darkest chocolate. It was every wonderful, sinful pleasure she'd ever felt put together, plus something new and wonderful and addictive. And now that she'd had a taste, she was starving for it. She couldn't get enough.

"CROWLEY!" Nell moaned in loss as the taste was yanked away. "Sam, do it!"

Sam cursed and pressed the plunger on the syringe.

Nell winced, blinking from disorientation and loss. Sam knelt on the ground next to Nell's chair. The table in the center of the circle had been knocked over, as had Crowley's chair. Dean was hunched over him, viciously beating him. Despite the violence, Nell could hear Crowley laughing wildly. At his side, his still-chained hands were covered in blood.

Blood.

Nell stared. She licked her lips cautiously, closing her eyes as she caught a few more drops of that heady, addicting liquid. What she'd just enjoyed more than anything else in her entire life, what she now craved, was blood. Crowley's blood.

"Oh, my god," Nell moaned, horrified. "I am a vampire."

"No, you're not," Dean pushed back, halting in his assault on Crowley's face to glare stubbornly at her. "You got the cure. The cure works. You'll be human in a couple of days, tops."

"Dean." Sam's voice was bleak. "The Campbell recipe is pretty clear… drink any blood, even one drop, and the cure won't work."

Dean growled. "But Crowley's a demon, right? She hasn't drank any human blood, so maybe it'll work just fine."

"I don't know, Dean. I've never even heard of a vampire drinking demon blood before. This is uncharted territory, but I think we have to be prepared for the possibility…" Sam swallowed loudly. Or maybe it was quiet, and Nell's senses were simply that much sharper. "We have to be prepared for the possibility that it's not going to work."

"Uncharted territory," Crowley repeated, chuckling through a bloody smile. "I have to thank you boys. This is the most entertainment I've had in weeks. And what a fun experiment. Which will win out: your cure, or my demon blood?"

Dean punched him in the face again. Nell heard the crack of Crowley's skull against the concrete, but still he laughed. "I should just kill you right now. We should've killed you ages ago!"

"But you won't." Crowley's tongue ran over his bloodied lips. Unconsciously, Nell mimicked the movement, but grit her teeth when she caught herself. "You might need me. I'm still useful to you."

Dean delivered a final, solid punch to Crowley's face before climbing off him, leaving him sprawled on the floor. He crossed over to Nell's chair, and she leaned back, eyeing him warily. She had, after all, seen him decapitate vampires, and since she now was one… But he didn't pull out any large knives, thankfully. Instead, he knelt down, silently beginning to untie the rope binding Nell to the chair.

Sam eyed him cautiously. "Dean?"

"We'll ward a spare room while the cure does its stuff," Dean said gruffly. "It's a rough time. Shouldn't leave her here with Crowley."

With Dean's attention on the ropes, only Nell could see the dismal, pitying look Sam was giving his brother.. "...Yeah, okay."