Chapter 7 Elements of Surprise

Three quarters of a mile to the west, Colette saw a light flash on her display and she turned to Paul, nodding once sharply. There was a small thunk, as the shell filled the tube, then Paul pulled the guard free and the backflash from the rear of the launcher filled the small clearing on the side of the hill, the coordinates flashing in synchronisation on both the digital display of the field launcher and on Colette's radar screen.

She saw it hit, her gaze jumping upward from the screen to see the explosion in real terms, the second storey of the big house hit and more than half vaporised with the detonation.

"Go."

The single word sounded in the earpieces of the men at the edge of the estate's grounds and through the glasses, she watched Denis, Maurice and Etienne racing across the lawns, their doubled-over figures lit up by the fires raging through the upper storey.

"Can you manage this?" Michel asked her, taking the launcher from Paul and checking his machete. His wife turned around to look at him with a mock scowl.

"Of course, go – there were more than thirty in there!"

She watched Michel and Paul start running, following their progress down through the thin growth of woods to the estate walls, then checked her monitors again. The thermal scan was almost useless with the fire, but still showing movement in the largest room. A distant creaking crash came to her, along with the scent of smoke, and she looked back at the house. According to the sparse research she'd managed to find before they'd left, it'd been built in the early eighteen hundreds and despite the general humidity of the region, its timbers would be aged and dry. It would be only minutes before the entire place was an inferno and falling in on itself.

Keeping one eye on the monitors as she disassembled and packed the launcher up, gathered her data collection devices one by one, and repacked the ammunition into the steel boxes. Katrina had brought more than floods and devastation to her family and her life. It'd changed the very core of what she and Michel had done all their lives, adding an aspect she still wasn't sure she cared for. Maurice had been the hunter in their family, and he'd put his skills to work for the Army. Now they were all in it. It was spilt milk, she told herself for the thousandth time, frowning a little as she loaded the cases into the van. Closing the door, she wondered absently if Dean had had a chance to kill the 'master' of the nest, and if it had been the firstborn vampire.

Dean closed his eyes, concentrating every part of his attention on listening. The distinctive whistle came less than a second after he'd activated the signal and he jabbed one elbow back, feeling it hit the vampire behind him in the ribs, his other hand scrabbling on the floor for the hilt of the machete.

He lost a patch of scalp as he tore free of the fang's grip, rocking forward to get some distance, the heavy blade slicing upward and taking its hand off at the wrist, continuing around on its flat arc to scrape over the Alpha's dark suit. Usiku's hiss was lost in the thundering roar of the explosion as the shell hit the upper level of the house and half the ceiling in the study came crashing down onto them.

"Dean!"

Head snapping around at Ellie's cry, Dean saw the interior wall bulging toward them. The female vampire had been buried under the big beams supporting the ceiling, and flames were already licking over them. The male was at the door, arm held tightly against his chest, and Dean saw his eyes open wide in shock when the Alpha appeared beside him, mouth bloody from the bite that had almost severed the vampire's head. For a second, the ancient vampire stared at him and he stared back, unable to move, sound and vision receding and muting, leaving only the Alpha's pale eyes, fixed on him. A hand grabbed his arm and the spell, if that's what it was, was broken, leaving Dean staring at nothing. The Alpha had gone, and he scrambled to his feet, following Ellie as she ran to the window, arms bent over her head to crash through, diving through the shattered panes after her.

Outside, the night air seemed cold, and it was as if his hearing had come back, not just the crackle and roar of the fire, he could hear sirens somewhere distantly, the screams of the vamps trapped inside, shouts of familiar voices.

"C'mon," he said, looking at Ellie, and wiping a dust-covered hand over a thin cut that ran down her cheek. "Time to go."

She nodded, shaking off the splintered wood and bits of glass that covered her, stumbling a little behind him, her hands still cuffed together. From the French doors just ahead, two men burst out of the house, turning mid-stride on the broad porch as a screaming shape emerged behind them.

Dean accelerated toward the burning vampire, swinging his machete mid-stride and watching the flaming head flying into the garden as the body collapsed.

"Where're Denis and Paul?" he asked Maurice, his gaze flicking from him to Michel, standing beside Ellie.

"On the other side," Maurice answered, waving an arm at the corner of the house. "We barricaded that ballroom and most the first floor fell into it."

"Sacre bleu!"

Dean and Maurice turned at Michel's shout, raising their arms to shield their eyes against the brilliance of the flames. Inside the house, Dean made out the Alpha, his form wavering through the rising heat distortions, his arms stretched out to either side, apparently sheltering his fledglings. There was a rush of air and the fire came billowing out the breaking windows at them, and when he looked back, there was nothing but flame in the room.

"Get out of here, now!" he yelled at the others, turning to jump off the porch. The gardens and drive were lit up by the conflagration behind them, and as they rounded the corner of the burning house, the light brightened, a white heart in the centre of the interior. Flares, he remembered Colette saying.

"Magnesium," Ellie gasped, her voice still a little hoarse, as she ran beside him. "Don't look at it."

It was too bright to look at it anyway, he thought, watching his shadow racing ahead of him, the drive disappearing under his feet when they turned off the gravel and the bleached-out and rapidly drying grass of the lawn taking over.

On the low ridge above the estate, headlights came on, flashing once and going off again and he altered his direction. The sirens he'd heard before were closer. Fire department, and probably cops. He hoped there'd be nothing but ash left in the building or the city's finest were going to have nightmares.

A crackling in the undergrowth to his left snapped his head around, the brief spurt of action-ready adrenalin receding when he saw the familiar tall outline of the houngan striding toward them. Behind Etienne, he caught a flash of Paul's dark features, darker now with soot and ash coating him, and beyond Colette's younger brother, Maurice and Michel were climbing steadily through the thin woods.

"There was a leviathan," Ellie muttered, turning her head to look back at him. "In the house –"

He nodded. "Yeah, I saw him leave."

They reached the county road and saw the van. Following Ellie up to it, Dean felt the last of his adrenalin-fuelled energy starting to seep away, and remembered that he still had to deal with the confession that'd precipitated the last four hours. He climbed into the back of the van and sat beside Ellie, chewing on the corner of his lip as Michel and Etienne got into the front seat, crowding against Colette, and Paul, Maurice and Denis squeezed into the back with them.

"Are you – uh – alright?" he asked Ellie, his voice low as Colette started the engine and the van began to reverse up the narrow road.

"Fine," Ellie replied, glancing at him then away.

Fine, he thought, unwilling to go any further in front of the three men sitting on the other side. He looked down at a clinking noise and suddenly realised she was still cuffed, the chain between the metal circlets darkened. He remembered the deep indentation in the female fang's neck.

"You got anything handy to get these off?" Ellie asked Maurice, holding out her hands.

Dean reached for his coat pocket. "I got –"

"Perhaps we should leave these on," Maurice said, leaning forward to catch the chain between her hands and grinning at Dean. "Keep you out of trouble."

He felt his stomach churn as he saw Ellie's expression smooth out. Dammit, don't make the situation worse, the acerbic thought flashed through his mind. He had no idea how he was going to deal with the situation when they finally got some time alone as it was.

Maurice unlocked the cuffs, and Ellie rolled her wrists gingerly, the bruising and tears in her skin, where the metal edges had cut into her when she'd tried to strangle the blonde vampire, aching fiercely.

Paul pulled off his coat, handing it to her. "Here. Not much of that dress."

Taking it from him and swinging it around her shoulders, she heard Dean's frustrated exhale beside her. She wanted to tell him it didn't matter, that she knew he'd had other things on his mind. She couldn't make herself to do it. There was a wall there, between them, invisible and inelastic, and she kept her gaze on the floor of the van.

He'd found her, and come for her, bringing the whole cavalry in defiance of the way he usually worked, and she guessed that might've been a sign of how worried he'd been. It meant something. She couldn't reconcile what he'd told her with that, in fact. Couldn't make the edges fit at all.

The whole lot was an unholy mess, she thought, pulling the edges of the coat more closely around her. She couldn't make any of it fit and she wondered what it was she wasn't seeing clearly. Dean and his contradictory accounts and actions? The presence of the Alpha vampire and its plans with the peculiar-looking nest and the apparent deal between it and the leviathan weren't any more explicable, but at least they weren't hitting her on a vulnerable level.

The leviathan had seen her. Seen her and, she thought with a slight shiver, recognised her. Not well enough to have done anything, but its expression had been thoughtful. She straightened slightly on the narrow bench seat, wondering how hard it would be for them to check the hotels in the area and get the name and all the details of her current alias. It only led to a postal box in Richmond, but that was still far too close for comfort. Worry about it when you have some information, she told herself firmly. She didn't need the heebie-jeebies about something that might not've occurred at all.

The Alpha had only kept her alive to get Dean. She stole a sideways look at him and a small crease appeared between her brows as she reminded herself that she'd known when Usiku had asked, he hadn't needed her confirmation on the man his servants had seen her with. What had he wanted from the hunter? Dean had mentioned his grandfather's collecting, working for Crowley to capture the firstborn monsters. Crowey'd been looking for a way into Purgatory, he'd said. It didn't explain why Usiku had wanted him, she thought.

You're going to dance around questions that have no answers all night instead of focussing on what caused this mess in the first place, she asked herself acerbically? It wasn't something she had any answers for either.

Had he changed in the last couple of months? Had the job gotten too hard? Made a choice like that seem reasonable? The apathy in him, when she'd gotten to the motel room in Pennsylvania, came back to her, the way he'd slumped back against the door, shoulders dropping. She'd seen him low before. Seen him fighting against his fear, against the memories of what he'd done and the uncertainty of what the angels were telling him. Seen him trying to pretend that he and Sam were still good, still solid. She'd hadn't seen him like that. And, she realised slowly, that was what was scaring her.

There were the problems with Sam. The hallucinations and hownervous they were making him, on top of lying about what he'd done. She remembered his recounting of finding Sam in the warehouse, waving a gun, firing it. He thought he'd had a good reason to doubt Sam's ability to judge the kitsune and while he might not have felt guilty about killing her, she had no doubt he'd felt guilty about killing a friend of his brother's. A childhood friend. Sam hadn't had that many. Dean would've been trying hard to not make a comparison between the monster and himself, and what he'd done for family, she knew. It was one of the things that'd made dealing with his memories of Hell so difficult … and now … She let out a soft exhale, wishing she'd had the time to think all of this through earlier. Now, whatever he hadn't gone through about that would have come back. Maybe stronger.

Losing Cas was yet another thing. Another thing not dealt with. Another thing he hadn't been able to work his way through. His relationship with the angel had been difficult, she knew. Cas had been pushed and pulled around by Heaven as much as the brothers had, believing he knew what was happening and being deceived by his own kind. He'd come through for Dean at a time when Sam hadn't been there, and that'd had its own impact. The angel's subsequent lies, the betrayal of trust and the destruction of Sam's fragile well-being had been a hammer-blow to Dean and one which he hadn't been able to get clear in his head before the leviathan had consumed Cas and escaped.

They were far off the grid, he'd told her. No Impala. Not able to see their old contacts. Changing numbers and aliases all the time. More time spent in condemned squats than anywhere else. Rufus' cabin was a base of sorts, but it wasn't a place they could spend much time, too far out of the way. And another one of their childhood homes, Bobby's place, was nothing but wreckage and ash. It was another thing that'd been taken from him, another thing lost to the life that he seemed to be hating, more and more.

She leaned back against the side of the van and closed her eyes. The previous year had been no better. Dean had told her about Cas pulling Sam from the cage without his soul reluctantly. Not, she'd thought at the time, because he didn't want her to know about it, but because he hadn't wanted to look back at those memories, hadn't wanted to relive them. He'd told her that trying to make it work out with the Braedens had been something he'd held onto, thinking he couldn't hope for anything else, and maybe he even saw it that way. She didn't think he realised how much he'd gotten from that year, stepping outside of his life and seeing it from a different perspective, from an observer's perspective; learning about himself, even if he hadn't seen it all that clearly. His grief had been immense and he'd found his way out of it, or most of it.

Was it the cumulation of all those things, perhaps bearable if they'd come separately, one at a time, or if he'd had the time to work his way through them, but unendurable when piled one on the other, in days or weeks, with no way out but through and no time at all to deal with one thing before something else happened?

And then, in Dearborn, he'd been forced to relive some of the worst times. There was something about what he'd said about Osiris that was nagging at her, something that continued to scratch at the back of her mind, a phrase or a word. She tried to call it back, but it wouldn't come, dancing out beyond conscious recall. Something about punishment, she thought, trying to force the conversation to return. Or guilt. Or both.

"Michel, take the van back to Lawrence, please, ma cher," Colette's voice interrupted her futile attempts at recollection as the sound of the engine idling and the cessation of movement registered.

"End of the line," Maurice said, getting to his feet and ducking his head. "Prepare yourself for my sister's interrogation, Ellie."

She opened her eyes and looked up at him, getting to her feet as the side door opened, and reaching for his hand. "Thank you," she said to him, squeezing his hand lightly and looking back at Paul and Denis. "All of you."

"Ah, chère, we are just the grunts, you will have to make your thanks to Dean," Denis told her, getting to his feet. "He would've gone alone, nearly did when he thought we were taking too long."

Glancing down at him, Ellie saw his discomfort at being singled out, knew he didn't want to talk about that – or anything else – in front of an audience.

"I'll do that," she said, watching his head lift and his eyes widen a little in question as they met hers. She looked away and followed Maurice out of the van, finding Colette beside her.

"A hot bath," the small woman told her in a low voice. "Good food. And then, the whole story."

It was, she thought, both a promise and a threat.

Dean grimaced as he climbed out of the van, a host of aches stiffening up on the drive back and his head pounding with the thought of having to talk to Ellie when Colette and the others left them alone.

He watched her climb the stairs to the house, and slowly followed Maurice, Paul and Denis inside.

"There's a shower in the laundry, Dean," Maurice said, gesturing down the hall. "Make it quick, the rest of us need it too."

Glancing down the hallway, Dean thought of arguing. The hot water would do something for the general aches, but he couldn't find any enthusiasm for getting clean only to get back into blood and ash-covered clothes.

As if she'd read his thoughts, Colette appeared at the foot of the stairs, her arms full of clothes. She pushed past the men and headed for the laundry, calling back over her shoulder, "Clean clothes and hot water and we can talk after, oui?"

He shrugged inwardly and walked after her, standing in the doorway as she set the piles of clothes on the dresser and waved a hand at the generously proportioned shower cubicle.

"There are towels, soap, antiseptic in the cupboard," she instructed casually, looking at the wall cabinet above the dresser. "Michel will be back in an hour."

Nodding, Dean pulled off his coat, then peeled off his blood-soaked shirt and dropped it in the deep laundry tub.

"Dean," Colette said softly from the door and he started a little, thinking she'd left.

"You were as surprised as we were when Etienne said he could see her in that place," she continued. "You thought she would be dead – or turned – already, didn't you?"

He looked down at the clothes in the tub, wondering how much he could tell her. They were friends, good friends, but they weren't hunters, not really, and civilians had some funny ideas about some things.

"I didn't know," he hedged, turning to look at her. "I hoped …"

"Maurice and Paul say there were more than thirty vampires in that house," Colette said. "In cages. You know why a nest would have cages, cher?"

"Yeah, I know," he admitted, his breath gusting out. "It's, uh, a new playing field now."

"You will tell us about this, later, won't you?"

It wasn't a request and his mouth lifted to one side in a rueful smile.

"Yeah, I'll tell you what I know."

"Good," she said, her hand reaching for the door knob. "And Dean –"

He dragged his tee shirt over his head and dropped it on top of the shirt and coat. "Yeah?"

"You don't wear your heart where others can see it," Colette said, her voice gentling. "But whatever is wrong between you and Ellie, it would be better to talk about it, yes? Rather than lose each other to some random – or not random – incident?"

"Yeah."

"Good." She withdrew from the room and Dean dropped to one knee, unlacing his boots and pulling them off.

He would've talked about it if she'd given him the chance, he thought, his brows knitting together as he unbuckled his belt. Would've kept talking until he'd made her understand. He stripped off his jeans and socks and turned on the water in the shower, stepping in when the first wisps of steam began to rise. He'd been worried enough to follow her – or try to. But he hadn't thought of monsters. Hadn't considered them at all.

The heat loosened the stiffness and soothed the aches, and he tipped his head back, letting loose the reactions he'd kept jammed behind the walls in his mind for the last four and a half hours. Fear and anger and that yearning ache he had no real name for. Worry and guilt. He let them shudder through him, tightening his chest and closing his throat, feeling them dissipate gradually in the rush of hot water and steam.

He hadn't known for sure it'd been the Alpha there, but he'd felt some kind of certainty about it, he remembered, despite not having given Eve or her kids a single thought in the last few months.

Maybe it'd been at the back of his mind, he considered, turning off the water and grabbing a towel, working away back there because of what he'd seen in that nest. All those kids. He'd told his Samuel and his brother that the Alpha was building an army, and that alone should've gotten them moving on doing something about it, but too many other things had gotten in the way. The jolt he'd gotten, when the tramp'd said 'master' … it'd brought it all back and the thing he'd been most scared of; the thing that'd been driving him the whole way there, that'd jerked his adrenalin levels to new highs, had been that the Alpha would turn her.

He ducked his head, leaning on one arm as he forced himself to face the last of that fear, to let it bubble through his blood and go. They had the cure, but he didn't think anyone could get that vampire's blood, not and live to do anything with it. Like demon's teeth and dragon tears, it was one of those ingredients that defied the realms of possibility.

Against the black of his closed eyes, he saw Ellie's face again, drawn with a painful belief that he was going to give up. He hadn't been able to tell her it wasn't real. Straightening, he turned off the taps and stepped out of the cubicle. She wouldn't have believed it … before, he thought, would've known it was a ploy, would've been ready for whatever he had in mind. He'd broken something between them, broken something in her, the part that'd believed in him completely.

In the bathroom upstairs, Ellie dried herself off, dressing quickly in the too-short jeans and too-small top Colette had left for her. She looked down at the ragged edges of the cuts on her wrists and opened the wall cupboard, pulling out iodine, antiseptic powder and a couple of dressings and swabbed and puffed at them, wrapping the short dressings around them and clipping them tight. They wouldn't take long to heal, she thought, replacing the items in the cupboard, but it would go faster if she wasn't knocking and scraping them on everything in the meantime.

Colette had made good on her threat to question her, trapping her as she laid in the bath. She'd told her what she could. What had happened to Dean, and the way she'd reacted, was no one's business but their own. The Alpha, the nest, the leviathan, those things she could talk about. Every hunter needed to know what was happening out there, and through Colette and Michel, Etienne and Maurice, the people who lived on the edges of their world would be warned as well.

Wiping away the condensation from the mirror, she looked critically at her reflection. For one heart-stopping moment, when Dean had dropped to his knees and laid down his machete, she'd thought he was going to do it. Sacrifice himself for her, give up and let the Alpha kill him. It'd been so close to what he'd said, she hadn't been able to make herself not believe in it. He'd looked at her and his eyes had been full of shadows, regrets, she'd thought then. Or an apology. She hadn't been able to see anything else.

When the shell had hit the house, she'd been as stunned as the vampires, barely able to move when Dean'd attacked Simon and nicked Usiku. That reaction, that lack of reaction, was bothering her more than she was ready to admit to, she realised, picking up a comb and running it through her hair.

That first time, in Ellen's bar, when he'd sat down next to her and started to talk, she'd looked at him and memory had returned. Not all of it, just one fragment. His eyes. Looking down at her. His face. Very young and screwed up with what he'd known was coming, his hands holding her tightly. Most of the memories of that time were gone. Trauma or self-preservation, she wasn't sure why, but when Sam had told her about them finding her that day, she figured it might not have been a bad thing to not remember the details.

Over the last four years, that first jarring thunderbolt of memory had built into something that exhilarated and scared her, for its promise and for what it could do to her. He had a hold on her heart in a way no one else had come close to, but it came with a price that often felt too high. A need that left her so vulnerable she couldn't stand to show it. And an unvoiced and, for the most part, unacknowledged yearning to give everything, no matter what the cost. It was diametrically opposed to the way she'd grown up, keeping her business – and herself – to herself.

It was making it hard to trust in him, that feeling, she thought, putting down the comb, her fingers automatically separating her hair into three skeins, and she couldn't think of a way to get around that. Loving someone – it was supposed to mean that you could trust them, she thought. And until he'd told her he'd wanted to die, she knew she had. As much as she could, she amended a second later, fastening the elastic around the end of the braid and turning away from the mirror. Not nearly enough.

I didn't have time to do anything but get my crap swept away and held down as fast I could shovel it.

An old god; a questionable monster; witches with marriage issues; leviathans, wearing their faces, spree-killing across the country … and instead of the break he'd wanted and desperately needed, he'd had to go Full Metal Jacket through the house of the oldest vampire and his nest of – what? – fledglings?

She caught her lower lip between her teeth as she paused at the bedroom door. Thanks to her, right? Running out, letting emotion drive her. Forgetting the rules. Forgetting what she did … forgetting who the hell she was.

Dean pushed the plate aside, most of its contents uneaten. Dawn had come and gone an hour ago and the kitchen was full of pale, early sunshine, pitilessly showing the lines and shadows denoting a lack of sleep on the faces of those sitting at the table.

"Right now, he's succeeding," Paul argued with Denis, stabbing his fork in the air for emphasis. "There were more than thirty in that nest – and in –" He turned and looked at Dean, brows lifting. "– Limestone, was it? – he says there were at least twenty. There aren't that many hunters who can handle vampire nests at the sizes they used to be, let alone nests like that! They'll overrun us as well as the bigmouths within a few years."

"If he wants a war, we can give him a war –" Maurice muttered.

"Will there be reprisals? Against us?" Colette cut him off with an impatient glance, turning back to Dean.

He glanced at Ellie and saw her slight head shake at the question. He didn't think so either. "I don't think so," he said. "The Alpha left, and he's got a tiger by the tail if he thinks he's gonna make deals with the levis."

Looking around at the others, he added, "But this town, you know, it's always been easy for them."

Denis nodded. "That is true, for more than just the bloodsuckers. The bokor have been active in the last year, ghouls too in the cemeteries of Metaire."

Dean looked at Ellie. She was listening, a small crease between her brows, but her gaze was on the window, and she hadn't looked at him directly since she'd come downstairs.

The door opened and Michel came in, trailed by his twelve-year old daughter, Monique.

"They found the hotel," he said without preamble, going to the stove and the coffee pot. "It's still burning."

"The vampires?" Paul asked. Michel picked up his cup, turning and shaking his head.

"The leviathan, I think," he said. "There were at least two interested parties watching the scene; one of them matched your description, Dean."

"Waiting for you," Colette mused, turning to look at Dean then Ellie. "The register, it was in a different name?"

Ellie nodded, letting out a soft exhale. "Yeah, I used an alias, but the truck's useless now. They'll have the details of the alias." She rubbed her fingers over her brow. "I have to get back to Richmond."

"We have vehicles," Michel told her. "Clean ones. They're in the alley."

"You need to get some sleep," Colette said disapprovingly as Ellie got to her feet. "A few hours."

"I'll get some on the way," Ellie said over her shoulder, following Michel, and Dean got up, scowling.

"We'll get some on the way," he corrected tersely, directing the comment to her departing back as he started after them.

Ellie stopped at the doorway, her shoulders hunching up for a second, then dropping, appearing to rethink the prospect of having an argument in front of everyone. Letting out his breath, Dean looked at Colette.

"It's not me who doesn't want to talk," he said and Colette got her feet, walking to him.

"You remember Yvette, Dean?" she asked him, one hand dropping to his arm as he looked at the doorway.

Dean nodded warily. Colette's cousin had been one of the reasons he'd met the family. One of the reasons too, he'd ended up with cracked ribs and a three-month stay with them.

"She asked me, after you'd left, if I thought you were worth pursuing," Colette told him with a bland expression. "I told her that you were already committed – to the life you were raised in. The life you knew. I was wrong, wasn't I?"

"No," Dean said, his gaze dropping uncomfortably. "Not then. Now? Maybe." He looked at the doorway again. "Maybe not."

"Do you really not want to know?" she asked, releasing him. "Despite everything, cher, it has been good to see you again."

"You too," Dean said. "Can you, uh, say 'bye to the others?"

"Of course."

Michel walked with Ellie to the garage in the rear lane, taking a set of keys from a board and handing them to her.

"It's the wagon at the end of the lane," he said, looking at her truck. "We can do something with that. A new colour, new plates. Paul could return it to you in a few months?"

"Keep it," Ellie said, putting the wagon's keys in her pocket and opening the truck door. "I'll get something else when I get home."

She lifted the rear seat and pulled out a canvas bag, transferring her belongings, weapons and miscellanea from the truck to the bag. "Do you have the stuff I asked for?"

"Yes, sorry," Michel said, turning away and stepping to one side as Dean came up behind him. "We had it all ready – I'll get it."

Dean watched him walk out of the garage and looked back to Ellie. "Got a car?"

"Yeah," she said, checking that the rear compartment was empty and pulling the bag out. As she closed the rear door and moved to the front, she glanced at him. "It's probably going to be less conspicuous if we take separate cars."

He gave a snort of disbelief, then looked more closely at her. "You think I'm okay with splitting up – after that?"

"I'm sorry. That was my fault," Ellie said bluntly, transferring the contents of the console and glove box to the bag. "I wasn't paying attention. It won't happen again."

"No," he said, his voice deepening a little as he realised what she wanted. "No more taking off. Okay? It doesn't work. You ask me anything you want, Ellie, but ask, alright? Don't just quit on me 'cause you think you got it all figured out."

He watched her zip up the bag and sling it over her shoulder, her head bowed as she seemed to stare at the floor.

"Alright." She lifted her head and handed him the keys. "Your stuff in the lock box?"

He nodded and she reached into the truck and pulled out the keys, giving them to him.

Two hours later, I-20N Louisiana

Ellie drove the unexceptional station wagon toward Meridian, keeping to the speed limit. She wore sunglasses to cut the morning glare and a narrow-brimmed sunhat, to hide her hair. On the passenger side of the bench seat, Dean was sleeping, contorted into the corner between the seat back and the door, his legs askew in the generous well. Two bags, both ex-Army duffels, were in the back seat.

The sum total of their possessions at this time, she thought with a slightly sour smile, glancing at them through the rearview mirror. It was lucky they'd left their gear in truck. The hotel had been gutted, the street stinking of wet ash and melted plastics as they'd driven down the cross street, seeing the thinning smoke on their way out of the city.

They'd talked a little, had stopped for gas and coffee in Picayune and were taking a different route to the one they'd come in on. She'd asked him where he wanted to go, and he'd shrugged, telling her he could get another car in Richmond if he needed to. He'd asked her what she was going to do, and she'd told him the rough plan. Get her stuff boxed up and put into a storage place until she could figure out a better base, something she could protect. She didn't really have much of an idea of what she was going to do, only that her library and the artefacts and weapons she'd collected over the past few years were irreplaceable – both for the power they contained and the knowledge they held and she needed to make sure they were safe.

Don't give up on me just 'cause you think you've got it all figured out, he'd said. She wondered if that's what she'd wanted to do. It was hard, harder than she'd thought it could be, but at the same time, even now, she couldn't imagine walking away, not saying goodbye and meaning it.

It's only hard because you're afraid, she thought. There wasn't any getting around that. It was as real a risk as their lives were.

Beside her, there was a groan and she glanced to the right as Dean levered himself upright, one hand rubbing over his eyes, the other patting his pockets as if he were looking for something. He blinked and focussed on her and the patting stopped as he straightened up against the back of the seat.

"Where're we?"

"About fifteen minutes south of Meridian," she told him, looking back at the road.

"You wanna break?" he asked, the words distorting as a yawn overtook him.

She shook her head. "No, I'm good for a while. Got some kind of second wind about an hour back."

The day was sunny, the wide open skies blue and the traffic was moving well. The station wagon was an auto, and all she had to do was steer … and think. She could feel Dean's thoughts as well, his face far more expressive than he liked to believe, and even his silences gave something away.

She didn't want to ask him about the god again, she thought. Not yet. Taking a deeper breath, she said instead, "So, uh, you recognised the levi?"

She saw him turn toward her in the periphery of her vision, heard him shifting his position.

"Yeah," he said. "We ran into that one at Bobby's. Edgar." He shook his head. "Seems like one of the higher ups in whatever chain of command they got."

"The Alpha didn't seem to know much about them."

"No, I don't think he got the low-down from Eve before we killed her," he said, his tone a little wary. "Did he say anything while Edgar was there?"

"Something about having an agreement," Ellie told him, brow furrowing as she recalled the exact wording. "He told Edgar to 'tell his master' that they had an arrangement."

Nodding half to himself, Dean stared through the windshield. If the levis were divvying up the population between themselves and the rest of the monsters, it could only be short term.

"Usiku said you were almost one of his," Ellie said, and he belatedly caught the hint of strain in her voice. He hadn't told her about that. Hadn't told her much about Sam when he'd been walking around without his soul. He'd wanted to … but a lot of the memories of that period blew bigtime and he hadn't wanted to revisit them.

"Sam told you about Cas leaving his soul down in the cage when he got him out, didn't he?" he asked.

Ellie nodded. "He said Cas told him it wasn't deliberate."

Letting out a gusty exhale, Dean shrugged. "Doesn't matter if it was or wasn't," he said. "Sam was hunting without a soul for more than a year, and he was –"

He hesitated, wondering how to describe how different his brother had really been. Empty. He'd looked into Sam's eyes and seen nothing there. Not really. A sharp intelligence and an uncaring curiosity. His brother had been a very good hunter in that time, he'd said.

"Cold?"

Turning to look at her, he nodded. "Yeah. I thought he'd been possessed – or that Lucifer was controlling him somehow, just biding his time to screw us both over."

"What did he do?" Ellie asked.

"We picked up that vampire case, in Limestone," he said, rubbing the heel of his hand over his forehead. "Sam – he knew Samuel had a cure – but when I got trapped by a fang, he didn't move."

"What?"

He felt an instant surge of gratitude at her reaction, ducking his head to hide it. He'd gone over the whole scenario so many times, he'd just about talked himself out of the disbelieving anger he'd felt when he'd realised what his brother had done. Soul or no soul.

"He waited 'til I'd been turned, then came in, drove the vamp off," he said. His memories were too vivid of those few hours following. Light and sound that'd reamed his senses. And the hunger that'd come too close to devouring him.

"Why?" Ellie demanded, and he saw her hands were tight around the wheel, the freshly scabbed knuckles showing white.

"He figured it was the best shot of getting into the nest and finding out what was going on," Dean explained, as neutrally as he could. He'd had to get into the nest. The cure'd insisted on the blood of the vampire that'd turned him. He was still a bit surprised that it hadn't occurred to him then that Sam had known that – had known and could've killed the vamp straight away but hadn't.

"But – god, Dean – the risk –"

"Yeah."

Risk on risk. Risk that he wouldn't be able to keep control of that ferocious hunger. Risk that he'd harm someone, and he almost had – he'd been so close to the edge when he'd gone to see Lisa, he still didn't know how the hell he'd gotten out of there without tearing her throat out. Risk that he wouldn't be able to find the vampire – or kill it if he did. Risk that in that situation, inside the nest, and under the hypnotic control of the Alpha, he would do something irrevocable, something that would damn him to becoming a monster, becoming what he hated and that Sam – or some other hunter – would have to kill.

"You said – uh, your grandfather had a cure?" Ellie asked.

"Yeah, old family recipe, apparently," he said, taking a breath and leaning back. "The key ingredient was the blood of the vampire who turns the victim, so I had to go into the nest for him anyway."

"And it was like that one? The one I was taken to?"

"Down to the cages," he confirmed. "The vamp running it said he was old, six hundred years old."

He saw her startle again, her fingers biting into the wheel. "Dean, that's – you had to kill a vampire that old? How did you even see him?"

"That's – uh – that's kind of where it got funky," he admitted. "I had dead man's blood, a whole syringe full, but he figured it and broke the damned thing along with my fingers … then … we got a message."

"Message? From who? Usiku?"

"Yeah, telepathically or through the bloodlines or something, I don't know," he said, eyes closing as he recalled the floating sensation he'd had, the room spinning around and around, watching the eyes of the vampire rolling back into its head and watching it collapse to the floor, then feeling himself falling as well, his mind hijacked and image after image inserted into his thoughts. The symbolism had been disorienting but there'd been no mistaking the intentions.

"I came around and the fucker'd unlocked all the cages and it was me against them," he said. "I think he thought I might feed on them if enough blood got spilled."

"But your body had adapted by that time, hadn't it?"

He looked at her profile, surprised at that understanding. He hadn't gotten that until afterward. How much stronger, how much faster he'd been. All his skills plus a super-charged power that'd amped it all up to eleven. He'd been able to hear Sam's heartbeat from across the room. Had been able to see in total darkness, not using some sonar pinging like a bat, but just his eyes, and maybe, he'd considered later on, some kind of thermal sensitivity. To the living. The warmth of their blood.

"Yeah," he replied, trying to shake off those memories. "I got him and Samuel made the cure and it felt like I was dying, but it worked."

It was, he thought, too summarised a version to give any indication of what any of it had felt like. His memory of driving back from Battle Creek was surreal, like a video game, the car redlining in total darkness, no need for lights, just him and the car and the road. A bat out of Hell if ever there'd been one. The cure had dragged the vampire's blood back out of him, out of his cells, out of the marrow of his bones, and it'd been agonising, but at the time he'd've preferred death to what he'd been turning into and he'd known he couldn't keep a grip on the hunger for much longer.

"They were turning young guys, who'd go out and turn girls," he said, shaking his head a little. "All of 'em thinking it was some kind of romantic thing."

"No trick to getting teenagers to believe that the life of a vampire is a tragic romance," Ellie said, her tone dry. "Even from Bram Stoker, all the foundations were already there."

He got a flash of the bedroom. The girl they'd gone to the place to find. Red and black and about as designer goth as it got, he'd thought back then. A little too clean. The well-thumbed paperback novels.

"The guys seemed to buy into it too," he said. "Figured it was an easy way to get laid."

She snorted and his mouth lifted on one side. He'd been surprised at the teen's confession. He couldn't really imagine pretending to be a monster in order to get some, although, he admitted to himself, he'd pretended to be practically everything else.

"Why didn't you tell me about that?" she asked, a few moments later.

"I didn't want to think about it," he told her. "When I figured it, that Sam'd done it deliberately … I mean, I didn't know he didn't have his soul then, and it felt –"

It'd felt worse than his betrayal over Ruby, he thought, turning away and looking out the window. It'd felt like trust was something he wouldn't have, would never have again.

"Another betrayal." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah."

Staring at the landscape speeding by, Dean realised that he hadn't told her much about that year at all, partly because a lot of it had been confusing and painful and he hadn't looked at it that much himself, partly because he didn't want to keep bringing up his time with Lisa and Ben, time when he'd thought he'd needed them, time when Ellie had heard from Bobby that he'd been still trying and had stayed away. The entire time she'd been gone had been a disaster zone and he'd just as soon as forgotten it all completely.

"A lot of crap went down, over those first few months that Sam was back," he said. "He'd been hunting with Samuel and our cousins, no soul, no conscience, just doing whatever the job'd demanded, and we had to clean up some of those messes. I don't know. No one thought it was a good idea to get his soul back, but I couldn't leave him like that. It was – pointless, you know? It wasn't Sam. And it sure as hell wasn't anyone I could trust to have my back. Not after that."

"How – how'd you find out?" Ellie asked.

"Cas finally showed up long enough to check," Dean said, his stomach rolling a little at that memory. After Veritas, everything had crashed down on him, every second of doubt, every moment of fear, and he'd trussed Sam to a chair and beaten the crap out of him, trying to get to the truth. Sam hadn't known what the truth was, and, he thought, Cas hadn't admitted to what'd happened.

"Cas made out like it was a surprise, Sam's soul being left in the cage," he told her. "He didn't tell us he and Crowley'd pulled him out for a long time after."

From the corner of his eye, he saw her flinch, guessing at the reason. He'd needed someone he could trust, back then, had been desperate for that. He'd tried talking to Bobby, but it'd left him feeling weaker and more vulnerable, having to spill his guts to the old hunter, just to get the mess out of his head. Bobby'd understood, most of it anyways, he just hadn't had the time to walk him through it.

Sam, Dean, I love you like my own. I do. But sometimes you two are the whiniest, most self-absorbed sons of bitches I ever met. I'm selfish? Me? I do everything for you. Everything! You need some lore scrounged up –? You need your asses pulled out of the fire – you need someone to bitch to about each other, you call me and I come through every damn time! And what do I get for it? Jack! With a side of squat!

Bobby's scratchy voice, rising in pitch with his frustration, came back to him. It'd hit him then, how much they'd come to rely on Bobby – for everything. He hadn't been able to figure out how that'd happened, not really, but he'd thought it'd started to get worse around the time she'd disappeared and told the angel she wasn't coming back till Heaven and Hell had stopped hunting for them.

Bobby'd been on the clock, and somehow they'd forgotten about that.

Do I sound like I'm done? Now look, I know you've got issues. God knows, I know. But I got a news flash for you. You ain't the centre of the universe. Now, it may have slipped your mind, but Crowley owns my soul, and the meter is running, and I will be damned if I am gonna sit around and be damned! So how about you two sack up and help me for once?

They had. Hell, he'd even gotten on a fucking plane and made the flight to Edinburgh, sweating and drinking the whole damned way. But on the flight back, relieved that the job was done, and half-comatose with in-flight booze, he'd come uncomfortably to the realisation he was going to have to keep his crap to himself. Deal with it on his own, 'cause there'd been no one else around, no one he could trust to let it out with.

He slid a glance to the woman beside him and let out a soft exhale, wondering how different things would've been if she'd been around.

As if she'd read the thought, she said, "Dean, I'm sorry –"

He smiled, feeling it crack a little. "Don't, okay?" Pulling in a deep breath, he added, "Nothing worked out the way it should've, but that – that's how it played out."

He saw her catch her lip between her teeth, and looked away, pushing back against the seat, his breath stopping for a moment in his throat. It was too easy now to imagine how it could've been, how he might've felt. Pushing that aside, he tried to remember where the conversation had started.

"Anyway, I, uh, took out the whole nest, and got away, and the Alpha figured I had some payback due."

Ellie drove on autopilot, her thoughts chaotic and her emotions caught somewhere in her chest, aching and chilling her.

She couldn't have come back. Bobby had told her that Dean was trying to make it work out with Lisa and Ben, trying to be what they wanted, and needed, and find what he'd wanted and needed at the same time, and when she'd heard that, she'd run again, all the way to another continent and into a relationship she'd known was nothing more than an attempt on her part to forget about him.

No matter which way she tried to look at it, he was right. The way things had played out hadn't left either of them with choices, just worse and worse options. She couldn't shake the feeling that it hadn't been by chance.

"It didn't feel normal," Dean said, breaking into her thoughts, his voice low. "Didn't feel like me."

"What?"

"In Dearborn. When I was talking to Jo."

Once again, Ellie felt that irritating, prickling sense that she'd missed something, something of real importance in what he'd already told her. She turned to look at him.

"What do you mean?"

He huffed out an exhale, shifting restlessly in the seat. "I don't know … but … I thought I hit rock bottom when I was thinking about letting Michael use me, you know? Thought that was it. I couldn't see another way out of that and it felt like giving up everything."

Another thing she hadn't been around for, Ellie thought, trying to repress a flash of bitterness about that. She'd thought she was doing the right thing, keeping clear of them.

He hunched down a bit further in the seat, staring through the windshield, his expression tense. "I'd already given up on you," he admitted. "Didn't seem like there was anything else to do but make sure Lucifer couldn't fuck up what he hadn't already."

He'd told her the bare bones of that time, on the road to Lincoln. Told her how he'd packed up his stuff. Gone to say goodbye to Lisa and Ben. Sam'd figured where he'd be and Cas had put him out and he'd woken up in Bobby's panic room. Bobby'd been … uncomplimentary … when she'd asked him about it later on. House full of flight risks, he'd told her, Dean and Adam.

"That was bad, I mean, no question … but … it was a lot worse when I was sitting in that barn, listening to Jo and Sam."

He rubbed his hand over his face, and she saw him turn toward her from the corner of her eye.

"I don't know why," he said, his voice rising a little. "When Sam killed it, I thought all that – that darkness – despair – whatever the fuck it was – had gone. I mean, at first, I was – just – you know, glad it was over, and that held it off for a while, but even a month later, it still felt like what I was doing, what me and Sam were doing, was pointless."

"Maybe you had a good reason to want it all over," Ellie said, thinking of the last two years. "Maybe you've had enough."

"No!" he said, his voice thrumming with tension as he sat straighter and leaned toward her. "No, that's not it – and it wasn't, even then. I–I–I wasn't thinking about anything, when Jo was there, like it wasn't supposed to be something I–"

He stopped as his memories of the room, the spirit, the crushing strength of that absence of emotion, returned strongly. He'd been empty and dulled down to the point where the things that had been coming out of his mouth hadn't even made sense.

"I told Jo I should've sent her home to her mom," he blurted out, the moment filled with a sense of helpless bewilderment, even in recall. "Ellie, Jo died with Ellen. They were both there. A-a-and there were other things …"

He'd been in the circle and Jo had broken the window, pulling energy in the form of heat from the glass until it'd cracked. He'd watched the salt ring scattering, the circle breaking with the wind that'd blown in through the pane, and he hadn't moved an inch. Abruptly, he realised he hadn't been waiting for justice, but for–

"I was waiting for punishment," he said, the words coming out in barely a whisper.

"What?" Ellie asked, her head snapping around to look at him. "For what? Your guilt? Dean, you didn't do anything wrong!"

He nodded, hardly registering what she was saying, hearing the god's voice in his memories.

People want to be judged. They really do. When your heart's heavy, let me tell you, real punishment's a mercy.

Real punishment. Not repentance, not contrition, not atonement. But a life for a life. His eyes narrowed slightly as he tried to remember how Warren had seemed. He'd done his time. He should have felt that he'd paid. Thirty years. But he'd gone out of the circle, gone to the spirits who'd killed him.

Just like him. Standing there, watching Jo take his lighter, walk over to the gas stove and turn it on, the strong, sweetish smell of gas cut by the night air coming through the broken window, but falling, heavier than air, gathering on the floor, building up. He hadn't thought of Ellie. Or of Sam or Bobby. Just the weight on him. And being free of it.

Finally.

Not once had it crossed his mind that he didn't want to die, that he didn't deserve to die.

And that was wrong. There was nothing in his life that he'd ever wanted more than what he had right now, he thought, his gaze refocussing on the woman beside him. She'd given him what he'd wanted and had hidden, even from himself, and he'd looked too long, been through too much to ever let that go voluntarily.

He'd paid for his mistakes, paid for them a million times. He'd owned them and given up almost everything of himself trying to make what he'd done right. He had been punishing himself, for fucking years after he'd been raised from Hell, telling himself he'd deserved to have nothing after what he'd done down there, but that'd been a lie as well. A lie to keep him from wanting something he'd thought he'd never get. More lies to make the losses seem reasonable, acceptable.

Do you want to be punished? Do you need to feel like you're paying for what you did?

He blinked at that memory. That'd been in Nebraska and he hadn't known then, hadn't been sure that if what he'd felt – was still feeling – about himself, about what had been done to him and what he'd done, held a need for punishment … but, he suddenly considered … if he had … then Osiris hadn't been weighing his guilt. He'd been weighing that need. And accommodating it. What'd the fucker said to Sam?

I don't decide anything, Sam. I don't decide Dean's guilt. I just weigh the guilt that's already there. This is solely about how Dean feels, way down deep.

That'd been a lie, he thought suddenly. It hadn't been about guilt, not guilt for what he'd done but the need to somehow suffer for it. Pay for it. He hadn't thought much about how it'd felt like he shouldn't be living, shouldn't've been allowed to live, for a long time, but maybe he'd never really gotten through it the right way. When she'd gone, it'd been too hard to look at himself. To look inside. Her going had felt like a punishment itself. Punishment for daring to want something – someone – for himself. And then there hadn't been any time.

He blinked as Ellie flicked on the indicator and pulled the car over to the shoulder, her face drawn.

"What –?"

"Drive," she said, putting the car in Park and opening the driver's door.

He slid across behind the wheel, waiting as she walked around the front of the wagon and got in the passenger side. "What're you doing?"

"I want to call Katherine," she said, pulling out her cell and hitting a speed dial number. "About the powers Osiris had."