Bobby's mouth dropped open as he stared at Sam, perfectly mirroring the young man's expression of frantic worry and then the pair of hunters simultaneously turned their heads to stare at Jo, who gaped back at them in horror as she grasped the reality of Sam's statement. She's dead. She's fucking dead. She was thrown by a super-charged vamp through a second story window. She's dead. They smelled the blood. Not the old, unappetizing blood from the dead victim, but fresh blood, from the newly decapitated vamps. The smell of the blood that she'd put in the air, too soon, before everyone was ready. Her still upheld and blood-soaked machete trembled violently in her fingers, her ears turned red and throbbed as the sound of pumping blood filled them, her face flushed, and her throat tightened.
"Jo?" Sam's eyes were open wide, eyebrows brought together worry, frowning mouth opened slightly. "Jo, hey – hey – hey, are you okay?" He shyly outstretched his hand, reaching for her shoulder and she, although repulsed at the very idea of him touching her, was still about to let him when a sudden loud, fury-laden scream from behind her made their them both jump and snap their heads up to turn towards the source of the sound.
"No!" Dean was still near the doorway but quickly barreling towards them, a look of rage evident on his face as he raised his machete high. "Sam, look out!" She and Sam whipped around just in time to see a close-up of the buggy eyes and extended teeth of a young, male vampire who had silently descended from the top loft and was only inches away from Sam, right before Dean practically slid in front of his brother and decisively swung his blade, bringing it down right on the creature's neck. It all happened so fast that she missed the actual decapitation; the next moment she smelled iron, felt the hot, sickening spray of blood spatter on her skin, and heard two thuds as the head fell, shortly followed by the body, its limbs crumpling to the ground. Dean then turned to Bobby, looking right past Jo as he spoke. "Why are there so damn many of them?" he demanded, standing defensively in front of Sam and holding his machete at the ready for any vamp who dare cross his path.
Sam cast his eyes up to the loft. "There weren't three of them upstairs like we thought; there were seven!"
Seven? That would make the nest…seventeen vampires! She'd never even heard of a nest that big before. And it also meant that even after Bobby and Sam and taken out a few and she'd killed so many that her shirtfront was drenched in blood spatter, they were still outnumbered with seven of them left! She remembered what she had said to her mom near the beginning of the hunt; who's to say that a couple of the people they captured haven't already been turned? There could be even more of them by now. And, what, you want to go in there with three hunters armed with a few machetes? Oh god. This was her fault. She killed her mom. The sound of small pieces of glass falling to the ground and shattering could be heard above, quickly followed by a loud thud as something landed on the ground outside. It was one of the vamps from the nest jumping out of the window behind her mom, had to be. They smelled the blood. The blood of newly decapitated vamps, the blood of a still living but bleeding hunter outside. They could hear the sound of a heart beating from a quarter of a mile away and whether they wanted revenge or food, jumping out through the window to go after a dead body would make very little sense. She was alive. But not for long.
"Ellen?"
"Mom!"
Her and Dean's shouts filled the barn, but they were met with no answer from outside. They turned to each other and the look in his determined and frightened eyes told her that, for the first time all day, they were finally on the same page. Saving her mom was first priority. As they turned towards the exit though, she found that the four of them were surrounded by the three remaining vampires from the first floor, who circled them with looks of menacing rage. The hunters crowded into each other's space and held their weapons up defensively in front of them as the circle became tighter. Mom. She had to get to her mom. She was alone outside and bleeding, completely defenseless outside with some vamp no doubt feeding on her right at that moment. The vampire closest to her bumped her small foot against the head of one of the dead and looked down into the lifeless fact of a young man whose lips had still been upturned into a peaceful, dreamy smile when he'd died. The monster's face turned into a grimace and she stopped moving, leaving an extra wide opening and that was when Jo took her chance. She charged through the opening before the thing could react and sped towards the barn door.
Alive, alive, alive, alive. The same word screamed in her head over again. She was halfway to the door when a flash of tan and black suddenly appeared before her and she ran into something warm and hard, only to realize in the next second that it was a vampire wearing torn black jeans and no shirt. He had jumped down in front of her from the top loft and was now standing in front of her, blocking her way to the exit. He had one thick eyebrow raised in amusement and, as gave her a lopsided smirk that almost made his crooked nose look in proportion to the rest of his face, he didn't even look annoyed that he'd just been awakened to half his nest being slaughtered.
"Where you think you're going, honey?"
She grunted in exertion as she wildly swung her blade but the vamp caught her by the hand and gripped it so tight that she felt her bones might break. She dropped the weapon, hearing it clatter to the ground. The vamp gave her wrist an extra hard squeeze and her eyes crossed as hot, fiery pain shot up her arm, making it jerk involuntarily in his grip. He looked at her hungrily and then opened its mouth, displaying a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. In a last-ditch effort, she swung her leg out in a sweeping motion, trying to take the thing's legs out from under him, but once again he was too fast. With his free arm he reached down and grabbed her leg, digging his fingers in so hard that she winced at the feeling of four half-moon shaped puncture wounds being shaped into her flesh.
"Alright, enough foreplay then, I guess."
The vamp leaned in towards her neck and she closed her eyes as she readied herself for the painful bite that was to come when suddenly, her face was hit with a sickening, hot fluid that smelled of iron. Blood. She opened her eyes and saw the headless vampire drop to the ground and Sam standing behind it with his newly sharpened machete at the ready. He swung and killed another vampire as it ran at them from the side and then wiped his hair from out of his face and turned to Bobby.
"Go get Ellen, she can't protect herself and she needs a hospital!"
"You bitch!" She whipped her head around and saw Dean rubbing at a deep scratch mark on his face, the culprit no doubt the headless petite blonde vamp lying on the ground at his feet.
Bobby took one look around him, first at Dean who was swinging his machete as he tauntingly beckoned the three vampires surrounding him and then at Sam as he stood in front of Jo with one hand on his upheld machete and the other stretched out defensively in front of her.
Sam shot him an incredulous look. "Go!"
The older hunter gave them all one last worried look before he turned quickly ran out of the barn before he could be accosted by any more vampires. As he ran out the door, two more vamps, the last of the nest, jumped from the loft above. One followed Bobby out the door and the other one stood by the exit, sealing the rest of them in.
"Oh yeah, come on Ugly!"
Jo whipped around at the sound of Dean's voice behind her. He was holding his machete up at chest level with one hand while he used the fingers on his free hand to tauntingly beckon a large vamp who was moving in on him faster than the other two. The vamp, a big blonde guy in a tight-fitting, dirty white t-shirt and fitted light blue jeans and who had a crew-cut haircut a squared face, massive under bite, and jowls that made him resemble a pit-bull, looked down with a pained face at the bleeding corpse of the blonde female vamp Dean had just decapitated. Dean smirked at him.
"Aw, I'm sorry; was that your girlfriend?" He lightly touched the body on the shoulder with the toe of his boot. "Doesn't look like she's gonna be ready to suck face with you any time soon."
The vampire screamed in rage and charged. Dean swung his blade like a baseball bat, leaving a deep cut on the vampire's arm, but missing his neck. The thing tackled Dean, making him lose his footing, fly backwards, and hit the ground on his back. He raised his machete as best he could and tried holding it to the monster's throat, but the creature grabbed Dean's hand and banged it forcefully on the ground, one, two, three times and he grimaced in pain and finally lost his grip on the blade. It fell from his hand and the vamp then reached over and pushed it out of Dean's grasp.
Jo and Sam both made a move to run in, but were stopped by the other two vampires, who turned on them and moved in, teeth extended and ready to kill. Sam slashed at the closest vamp, a thin woman in her mid-forties with long black hair, but she dodged the swishing blade once, twice, and bared her teeth at him. The other, a young man, advanced on Jo, blocking her way, and she held up her bloodied weapon defensively to keep him from attacking. She watched helplessly as Dean struggled with the vamp on top of him, pushing against the thing's shoulders and barely able to keep its teeth from tearing at his throat. He shoved at the thing and raised his hip, trying to flip their bodies, but the huge vamp had him hopelessly pinned. The thing laughed and sneered while Dean frantically wriggled and gasped beneath him.
"Dean!" Sam was clearly frantic as he slashed at the vamp blocking his way, trying anything to even just get it out of his way so he could get to his brother and save him.
The big vamp on top of Dean turned to look at Sam and then looked back at Dean with childish glee. "So, that's your mate?" He picked Dean up by the shoulders and banged his head against the hard-packed dirt beneath them, making Dean groan and wince in pain but he still solidly pushed his hands up against him to keep them from getting too close. "You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna kill you right in front of him."
Dean's face twitched into a cocky grin. "Alright Jowls, just make it fast; I'm tired of staring at your ugly mug."
Jowls frowned, the long teeth from the bottom row of his mouth poking out over his lips. "No. You know what? I changed my mind. You killed my mate in front of me," he clenched his jaw so hard that his face shook and then he spoke through his teeth, "so I'm going to do the same to you." Dean made a pained oomph noise as the thing once again banged his head against the ground. "I'm going to make you watch as I kill him, nice and slow. I'm not going to bite him; at least, not right away. He's awfully pretty, isn't he? So I think first, I'm going to cut at that pretty skin of his–"
Dean gritted his teeth in anger. "Don't you dare touch him, you son of a bitch!" Without warning, he sprang from him position on the ground with newfound strength and the surprised vamp fell backwards underneath him. Dean took advantage of the split second he had during that time and grabbed his machete. The black-haired vampire turned to face the fight and hissed in anger for a split second before Sam swung and sliced off her head with a single clean strike. Dean killed the ugly vampire beneath him at the same time, chopping at his head so violently that it sliced through several inches of dirt beneath, only stopping when it hit a rock with a resounding thud. Dean wrenched his weapon from out of the dirt and stood up, his entire shirtfront and jacket soaked in blood from the last close-range kill. He kicked the head of the black-haired vamp that Sam had just killed aside and stood in front of him holding his blade up in front of him at chest-level, eyes full of murder and rage. He swung at the vamp that had been attacking Jo, but the creature swung around and dodged at the last minute, then took advantage of the split second where Dean didn't have the machete held up protectively in front of his chest and kicked him hard in the stomach. Dean doubled over in pain and then the thing went for Sam with his fangs exposed.
The monster guarding the door ran in and headed straight for the shed where the victims were being kept and, with trembling fingers, pulled a key out from under her t-shirt and fit it in the padlock. What the hell? Did she think she was going to be able to hide out among the victims? That they wouldn't recognize her? Jo ran over to her and the thing barely had time to yank the padlock open before her head was on the floor, a thick trail of blood leading away from the body beside it. Jo reached up to remove the padlock. It wasn't completely safe yet for them to be milling around, but she could at least get inside and assess everyone's injuries so she and Dean could take the worst of them to the hospital while Sam stayed behind and took care of the ones who didn't need immediate medical attention.
"No!"
Sam's voice resonated through the barn, quickly followed by the sound of quickly approaching feet. She turned her startled head and held her machete up defensively, expecting to see the last vampire running up to her, having escaped Sam and Dean and wanting to re-secure its food source, but was surprised to instead see Sam's tall, wide-shouldered frame barreling towards her for a split second before he wrapped his arms around her and then tackled her to the ground. She hit the ground on her back, but to her surprise found that, even with Sam's massive frame and crushing weight on top of her, the fall didn't hurt; he had his arms wrapped protectively around her, making sure that they took the brunt of the shock.
As he lay panting from his run and still cradling her in his arms, she beat her hands against his chest in fury. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
His face quickly went from confusion to embarrassment and he let her go and got quickly to his feet. His voice was loud and urgent as his feet beat against the ground in his desperation to cover the few steps back to the door of the shed. "You can't open that door!"
"What? Why?"
Her question was answered soon enough when Sam was hit hard in the face with the door as he tried to shut it. The unlocked padlock flew free and landed on the dirt beside the door. Blood flowed freely from his nose and down Sam's face, but the knock only made Sam hesitate for a second before he was once again pushing on the door, trying to force it closed.
From across the room, Dean swung his machete and once again narrowly missed as the vamp stepped sideways and let out a cold, cruel laugh. He narrowed his eyes and once again assumed his defensive stance, not daring to move his eyes away from him. "Sammy, better keep that door closed!"
Jo looked from one brother to the other, wondering what they could have figured out that she was still missing. "They're not victims?"
Sam had the door shut and was standing with his back up against it as whatever it was on the other side pounded so hard that the door violently shook behind him. Sam gritted his teeth and the muscles in his arms bulged and flexed from exertion. "No! They're vampires!"
