Chapter title: Vampire's trap
Characters: Caroline Forbes, Elena Gilbert, Stefan Salvatore, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Notes: Just a few words. I want to apologize to all of you for being MIA for a year. I have been (and keep being) very busy with university; I graduated and was therefore busy with my thesis, and then I just started university again (master degree) (I know, I'm a masochist). I also want to thank you for all the wonderful reviews I received from you during my absence. I loved your advices and comments and it is therefore thanks to you if I'm publishing this new chapter tonight. Your reviews made me realize that I owe you at least to try to continue writing this fanfiction. I can't promise you anything, can't give you dates or set any deadlines, I'll just try to do the best I can. In the meanwhile, enjoy your reading!
This chapter's title comes from SPN 1x22.
"Caroline!"
At the sound of Elena's voice over the noisy crowd, Caroline turned. Her lips curved in a quick smile: her friend didn't need to yell, she would have heard her even if she had whispered.
The brunette reached her blond friend and threw herself into her arms without any notice. Caroline was surprised and did nothing at first. Her friendship with Elena hadn't been so strong lately, but she'd been too busy dealing with Matt and Tyler's transformation to do something about it.
Now that Elena was holding her tight, she realised that it hadn't happened in a while.
"How are you?" Elena said worried as the two parted and she lowered her eyes and scanned Caroline's body for injuries still to be seen.
Caroline smiled a big smile. "Fine,"
"Fine? Aren't you scared? Where did you spend the night? You should have come over."
The blondie giggled again and said "What, and play gooseberry? But maybe you're right, we haven't had a sleepover in ages anyway!"
Only as she said that she noticed that Stefan was a couple of steps behind Elena and was smiling at her.
He went closer only as she smiled back. "Hope you're alright," he told her "I have to apologise for what happened yesterday. I knew about these guys but I underestimated them. I thought we could deal with them at any time we wanted."
"You know, Stefan, it's alright, really," Caroline said, shaking her head "Whoever they were, it was just humans. I was taken by surprise, otherwise they wouldn't be still alive."
She caught a glimpse of disapproval in Elena's eyes but tried not to care and focused on the fact that Stefan believed they should solve the problem as soon as possible.
"Yeah, apparently they surprised us all," Stefan said thoughtfully "Damon's still home licking his wounds."
"Yes, mum told me," Caroline said gravely. Her mother had told her how she'd find Damon Salvatore lying half-dead on the floor and how he had miraculously awoken after some minutes.
"Is she suspecting anything?" Stefan asked as he knew Damon had fainted after being hit with a stake.
"What, about the stake? No," Caroline denied "She thinks it's just a shame that those people had to hit him with such a rudimental weapon. Of course she knows what that is, but she trusts Damon too much to connect the two things."
Caroline suppressed the grimace that she always felt like doing every time her mother showed her great trust in Damon. Although it was probably because she looked like she trusted Damon more than her own daughter, Caroline still felt that her trust was misplaced and that it could get her killed one day or another.
"Good," Stefan commented, nodding thoughtfully. Elena smiled a half smile and squeezed Caroline's right shoulder.
"Of course they're looking for them," Caroline added after a moment "I tried myself all night long, but I couldn't trace anything."
"You keep your eyes open and let me know if you see anything strange," Stefan recommended "Look for anything that may belong to them, we'll follow their trail."
"You don't see, Stefan, it's useless!" Caroline repeated and invited them to follow her out of the crowd to a quieter corner "I've tried to follow their smell but it feels like they never even entered this town! I can smell nothing!"
"Well, they probably know how to not smell," Elena commented with a grimace.
"Yeah, they know some tricks," Caroline agreed, still annoyed "Question is, how. And who are they and what they want."
"Apparently, " Stefan began with a sceptical smile "They're looking for Klaus."
"What?" Elena turned to face him "Why?"
"I don't know, they didn't say."
"But why attack Caroline then?"
"They went to Tyler's too," Caroline pointed out "What about him? Do they think he's a vampire? But why would they?"
"They think there might be something wrong with him too," Stefan explained, "The fact that they know about the stakes and the way they tricked all of us means that they're hunters – and they're good ones."
"So you think… you think they're basically after any non-humans in this town?" a gloomy Elena murmured.
He turned to her and said in a soft voice "It's only a matter of time before they show at someone else's door. And since we can't anticipate them or find them, we'll have to wait for them to find us – and be prepared when they do."
"Next move is ours, Dean," Sam insisted on telling his brother "They can't find us and we should use that to our own advantage."
"Yeah, like how, Sherlock? There's a whole army out there, and we've only found two vampires, let alone the werewolf who could have his own gang of friends too."
"We knew there were many of them, ok? This detail never stopped us from going for it."
"What about they can walk in the sun? Does that sound enough important a detail to you?" Dean grumbled from the bed.
Sam massaged his own temples and shook his head. "Well, there's not much we can do now without getting exposed. Actually, we've exposed ourselves too much already. There's no turning back. I say we make raids in town, and watch them and the people they interact with every day. If we're careful and move in daylight, we should be able to get back here without getting followed."
"But that will take us ages to do!" Dean protested childishly. He closed his eyes and leaned down on the blankets. "Bloody bloodsuckers with their damn daddy issues – why don't they just tell us where this Klaus guy is?"
Sam sighed and turned to face the table. He drew his laptop closer, opened it and googled 'Verbane'.
Silence fell in the room, a silence made of Dean's heavy breathing and of Sam's soft typing. Dean hated being in this position, he hated being worried when his brother wasn't at all. Being the oldest, Dean was supposed to be the most experienced and courageous as well, but it proved very hard to do lately as his brother didn't know the meaning of 'worry' anymore. By losing his soul, Sam seemed to have lost every kind of survival instinct.
"You think we killed that one?" Sam murmured out of the blue.
"Who? The John Travolta one?" Dean raised his head from the pillow "I really hope so, since he was this close from breaking my neck – I don't want to have to go through that again. And then, for God's sake, he wouldn't stop talking! Aren't they supposed to just bite?!"
Sam giggled. He was reading through a website about botany in the hope to find out where verbane was most likely to be found.
"You said there's a wood just out of town, didn't you?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I'm going looking for verbane."
"What? In the woods? Are you insane?" Dean stood up "It's like inviting those freaks over for tea!"
"I'm all set, Dean!" Sam reminded him, lifting his shirt to show his knives, a wooden stake and the syringe of dead man's blood.
"Look, I'll come with ya. But I'm going for a shower first." Dean shushed him, and to Sam he sounded like a father who finally agrees to take his son somewhere fun so he will stop pestering him about it.
The brothers spent two difficult hours in the woods and hurried up while looking for the magic herb. As soon as they found a consistent bush in a small hollow they dived deep into it until they managed to pick up enough of it for the "whole army" – Dean feared it wouldn't be enough anyway.
The woods around them were so silent that their every step sounded like a battle cry. At least this way their senses were high and their hearing was no more disadvantaged if compared to a vampire's.
During that time they didn't even speak to themselves, the thick silence weighing on their shoulders like the cold fog of lies that from months had descended upon them.
And if Dean couldn't help but rant in his head for the big amount of obstacles that lay ahead between them and Sam's soul, Sam was feeling strangely at ease and found himself measuring the time that passed with extraordinary calmness. What had started as a quick last-minute mission was turning into an interesting series of events that made him lose his focus. This hunt/be-hunted thing was thrilling and so was the prospective of facing more vampires, while the prospective of getting his soul back looked boring to him in contrast. The old himself would have certainly not liked being the prey of the situation.
Getting his soul back now looked like something that could wait, a problem that they would solve only eventually. Or maybe not: it felt like it was more Dean's problem than his after all.
That night, back at the motel, Dean expressed his wish to try one more burger from the Mystic Grill, and Sam almost took it as an excuse to tell him that they should probably go back the following day.
