Dean's stomach heaved mightily and threatened to expel the blood she had force-fed him. After a few minutes it quieted and a feeling of well-being crept over him as his regurgitated blood flowed back into his weakened body renewing his strength and energy. He sat up, brushed the straw from his hair and looked around for the vampire. He found her standing over him. She offered him her hand. When he touched her Dean realized that his teenage Elvira was very, very old, not just in decades but in centuries. Her memories flooded his mind and almost knocked him back down again. Ancient places and people swirled in his mind's eye, the beauty and the enormity of it all causing his head to spin. As he fought to keep his balance, the memories were suddenly replaced by a lone figure, A handsome man with curling, coal black hair that hung past his broad shoulders and eyes that burned intensely...like quicksilver.
The girl forced the memory from her mind and from his as well but it left behind raw, emotional pain so intense that , even after so many years, she saw Dean falter. Fearing for the hunter's sanity, she slammed the mental door into his mind so hard that his teeth actually snapped together.
Dean staggered away from her and shook his head, scrubbing his hands across his face. "What the hell was all that?"
She felt it best to just remain silent and to just let the blood take him...and take him it did.
The first change Dean noticed was that he could see in the dark. He could not only see in the dark but he could almost see things on a molecular level. As he looked around he could see the scurrying rats that abounded in the myriad of nooks and crannies running the length and breadth of the barn. He could not only see the vermin that dwelt there but he could practically see the greasy hair on their bodies growing. "Oh, man," he whispered and looked this way and that, trying to take in every square inch of the hayloft.
The vampire watched his reaction to his transformation and, instead of being appalled as she thought he might be, Dean Winchester seemed to actually enjoy his heightened ocular sensory perception. His only complaint? No x-ray vision she heard him silently bitch and she laughed.
He looked at her sheepishly and asked, "That thing about Victoria's Secret?" She nodded and he stood staring intently at her, his face contorting every few seconds. He finally sighed and his features relaxed. "Okay, you can read my mind...but why can't I read yours?"
"It takes discipline and many, many years."
Dean looked disappointed momentarily then returned to studying his surroundings.
"You would use such a gift to win bets in bars?" she then asked him.
"Goddamn it, Abby," he snapped and turned to look at her angrily.
She dipped her head regally as if to acknowledge his boundaries. If she could help it, she would not consciously trespass again. She stepped back into the shadows and the blood took him again.
In addition to his enhanced vision, Dean noticed that he could smell...everything. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, inhaling the dry musty smell of the hay, the coppery smell of blood, the noxiously sweet smell of rotting flesh and the pungent stench of pure evil that permeated the barn. He sniffed again and recognized the scent of his brother even though he was across the hayloft.
Amazed at his new found olfactory prowess he inhaled again and smelled the familiar odors he complained about when he and Sam went too long without a shower or a stop at a Laundromat, The closer he got to his brother, the more he noticed three particular odors. The essence of what he and his brother sacrificed every day of their lives...blood, sweat and tears. Oh yeah, and beer.
He smelled the cheap kind of light beer Sam liked and the more full-bodied lager he favored mixed with pheromones so powerful that he suddenly realized Abby was standing right behind him. He spun around and her scent, now altered as his blood flowed through her veins and permeated every cell of her body, wafted around them and he, in effect, could smell himself. Dean smiled with satisfaction as he now smelled beer and lust, the staples of his life.
As he continued on with his new found self-awareness, Dean suddenly found that he had an overwhelming urge for a nice cold one and to bang Abby on the spot. He thought better of it because sex with a vampire, gorged on your own blood, would be kind of incestuous and pretty disgusting and he'd get a beer as soon as he sliced and diced Abby.
Yeah, a beer and a cheeseburger...or three or four cheeseburgers...dripping with ketchup. A hunger, stronger than any bong-induced case of the munchies he could have ever imagined, suddenly overcame him and saliva literally dripped from his mouth. Looking over at his brother, Dean noticing the still oozing wound where Sam's head had connected with the stall and was drawn to the crimson gash. He tried to kneel down next to his prone form, the smell of Sammy's blood a veritable siren's song, but Abby placed a hand forcefully on his arm and yanked him back up.
"You would never forgive yourself and..." she opened her mouth and tapped a fingernail against one of her elongated k-nines.
Dean ran his tongue over his teeth and found that they were dull and blunted; the same teeth he'd had since loosing all his baby teeth. By the time he was six, Dean was fully versed on the evils that hid in closets and under beds and after that he'd flushed each and every one of his lost teeth down the toilet as soon as they fell out to avoid a visit from the tooth fairy. He looked at her and fear and confusion quickly replaced the blood lust that had shown in his eyes just moments before.
"You haven't asked me...yet," she told him answering his unspoken question.
Dean's hearing was just as acute as his other senses but he couldn't hear her thoughts. He could however hear the rustling of something much larger than barn rats and he turned just in time to see another vampire rise up out of the straw and hiss like a scalded cat. But before he could open his mouth to call out, Abby, without even a sideways glance, lifted a hand and the creature erupted into flames. Screaming, it fell back down into the straw setting it ablaze.
Abby then told him, "There are more starting to stir so you'd better call your Bobby Singer if you don't want your brother to burn with them."
"I can..." Dean started, fully intending to take on the stragglers by himself.
"Call your friend and follow me! I told you there are more," she said adding a tiny mental 'push' toward him.
Dean flipped open his phone and pressed Bobby's number while Abby picked Sam up effortlessly and headed toward the large sliding barn doors.
"Dean, what's going on? You find the sonsabitches?" Bobby wanted to know.
There was a strange echo through the phone and Dean realized he was hearing Bobby, not through the phone but first hand even though he was a quarter mile down the road at one of the holding pens. "Bobby, Sammy's out cold and this tinderbox is starting to go up. You gotta get him out," Dean said calmly following closely behind the vampire, his eyes searching the darkness for more of the nest.
"What about you? Where are you?" Bobby lowered his phone and looked toward the barn spotting the orange glow of the fire in the hayloft. Crap! Fire was the most efficient way to rid the world of vampires but with the size of the barn things just might get of hand. Bobby sprinted back to his car.
Abby deposited Sam none to gently by the door then turned toward Dean and raised both arms. Instinctively he ducked but she wasn't after him. Two screeching vampires swooped down from the rafters and exploded into fireballs slamming into the barn walls on either side of them.
Dean moved closer to Abby and she suddenly collapsed without warning. He scooped her up into his arms and, seeing that Sam was relatively safe just inside the barn door and finally coming around, he ran out of the conflagration just as Bobby was coming up the drive. His car skidded to a halt and he jumped out sprinting toward the barn as Dean came barreling past him, a naked girl in his arms, presumably headed for the Impala.
"He's right by the door, Bobby," Dean shouted back to him as they passed in the night.
Son of a bitch Bobby thought shaking his head as he headed into the barn. Leave it to Dean to find a live girl in the barn and a naked one to boot. He looked around and caught a glimpse of Sam's shirt as the young hunter headed back into the dense, gray smoke. "Sam!" Bobby shouted, "Dean's Okay! They're already outside!"
A minute later Sam bolted back out of the smoke and, with the metal headgear and chains clutched to his chest, he grabbed Bobby's jacket sleeve. The two of them stumbled out the door and didn't stop running until they stood next to the Chevelle. Sam looked around for the Impala but it was nowhere to be seen. He dropped the hardware onto the ground and started to cough up a lung.
"That was a damn fool thing to do, Sammy," Bobby chastised the younger Winchester glancing at the objects he had dropped on the ground. Sam continued to cough uncontrollably as Bobby squatted to study the medieval torture device. He'd seen one like it before but there had been a severed head in it and one less vampire in the world. "Tell me you beheaded whatever was in this before you took it off," Bobby said looking up at Sam.
"I don't know. There was a girl. She kicked me, knocked me out." Sam started not really knowing what had happened after she assaulted him, "That thing was on her head."
"Was she a redhead?" he asked and when Sam nodded the veteran hunter cursed. "Well, your brother just carried her out of here and, if I'm not mistaken, she's a vampire."
Sam was confused. If she were a vampire she could have carried Dean out of the barn with one hand so why was he carrying her? More importantly, why hadn't his brother killed her? Sam didn't understand but he nodded, "They had her chained to the wall and were feeding on her."
Bobby wiped away some of the black tarnish on the chains and then held up the headpiece to get a better look at the grotesque mask. It was quite different from the one he had seen and looked like it had may have come from the Middle or Far East. "Well, when you boys screw up, you really screw up. These things are solid silver, one of the only things that will render a powerful vampire harmless and you took it off of her."
"How were we supposed to know?" Sam asked plaintively.
"I'm surprised at your brother. What happened to shot first, ask questions later?"
After a short silence punctuated by more coughing, Sam asked, "I get the chains but why the mask and the helmet?" Sam reached down to pick up the chains and tossed them into the back seat of Bobby's car.
"The headpiece makes the wearer deaf, dumb and blind. If a vampire can't look you in the eye or whisper sweet nothings into your ear, it can't force you to let it go or make you to do something far worse. And, if it can't hear, it never knows when the death blow's coming." Bobby tossed the mask in with the chains, "
"So was she part of this nest?"
"Definitely not!" Bobby shouted and headed toward the driver's door as the roof of the barn gave way and fell inward with a tremendous crash.
As they backed down the driveway and drove away from the fire he told Sam, "I've heard of it before. Vampires capturing one of their own to feed from it. It's usually an old one directly descended from an ancient line and incredibly strong so they can assimilate the power. The old ones are few and far between and are the most dangerous - even to other vampires."
"And she's got Dean," Sam sighed and rested his aching head against the seat back.
"Well, let's go see if we can find him but it ain't gonna be easy. You'll need keep that silver rig close by. We'll need it to either save Dean," Bobby said and turned away from the younger Winchester to watch the road ahead of them, "or to kill him."