Ali packed her bags, still fuming. She had gone to sleep pissed and was still upset about it, fire in her blood that prickled beneath her skin, making her irritated at everything. Water faucet that dripped consistently in her crappy motel room? She almost tore it from the sink. Slipped on ice and spilled her coffee? She almost screamed. Heater didn't work fast enough in her car and some of the ice wouldn't scrape off? She about scrapped the entire thing.

She just wanted to move on to the next town and the next job and forget about this all. She wanted to forget about the damn Winchesters and her blast from the past and everything that had happened in fucking cold ass Minnesota. She wanted to get somewhere warm and far away. California. New Mexico. She'd find some jobs on the other side of the continent, as far from Sam and especially Dean as she could possibly get. Those jerks. Those complete dicks.

Well, not Sam. But Dean. Her fingers clamped tighter on the wheel, her teeth grit. Just thinking about him again and the night before made the edges of her vision go red. She could not believe what had happened. And she should have. She honestly should have. Dean had been a dick before, hadn't he? Nothing had changed. So they had gotten drunk and talked. So they had kissed. So she thought they were going to sleep together. There had been every indication. He had made it clear what was going to happen.

And then he had stopped. Just stopped.

And she got it. She did. She understood that he wanted to protect his brother—but he never should have done anything in the first place. She liked Sam. He was a sweet guy. He was the kind of guy that girls dreamed about meeting and building a life with…except that was never going to happen in her case. Or his, as far as she could see. They were both tied to their separate paths and there was no changing it. They had no white picket fences and rugrats in their future and she felt like Sam thought there was. She got the impression that he thought after he and Dean took out the demon that had killed their mom that he was going to go back to the life he had had before.

She had no such disillusions.

Ali knew this was going to be her life until she reached the end of it and she knew she was probably going to die trying to take some creature of the supernatural out. She had accepted it long, long ago. She had spent every waking second of the last several years of her life preparing and training and carrying out what she did. She had spent every waking second trying to kill the thing that had taken her parents from her and ripped her family apart. There was no turning back. It was plain and simple. She was a killer and that was not going to change. She didn't think she could ever fit into the normal world again, could never fit into a job that didn't necessitate constant travel and bad food and learning how to get bloodstains out of fabric. It just wasn't going to happen. She knew Dean understood that too, no matter how she currently felt about him. Maybe that was why she had been drawn to him, when she had been repelled before. Maybe it was because she recognized the base instinct in him and the primal hunter he didn't fight to hide. Sam was sweet and dangerous when he had to be; Dean was menacing all the time and charming when he remembered to be.

It made the brothers quite the pair.

Ali stopped as the sun was setting, not wanting to risk driving on ice along the isolated highways she tended to favor. The cops were always on the interstates, scoping for the drivers who set their cars on cruise control and zoned out. The only problem with her preferred method of traveling was the fact that the highways were rarely lit, or maintained, nearly so well. She found a motel in Sundance, South Dakota, halfway between Rapid City and Gilette, and considered the day's drive successful. She had about another full day's drive to do and then she'd be in Los Angeles, where it wasn't as ridiculously cold as it was this far north. She'd scout around online for some of the spooky and find a job—it usually wasn't hard in huge, sprawling cities. She'd snag some sleep and leave as the sun was coming up again so she could get to an actually habitable place as fast as possible.

She checked into the Roadway and grabbed some burgers before she returned, bag thrown in the corner by the scratched tabletop. She ate and screwed around on the Net before she started sifting for stories she could work with. Anything. Even the hint of something. She'd take it. She wanted sun and civilization and to forget about the damn Winchester brothers as quickly as she could. They were certainly pushed to the back of her mind when she found an article about three mysterious deaths that had occurred. Apparently, middle-aged office workers were dropping dead from brain aneurysms, even though nothing had been noted in their medical records about any of them having such a condition. It definitely seemed like her kind of thing, at least, and she'd take anything she could get.

Ali showered off and threw on sweats for bed, crawling beneath the sheets gratefully. Over nine hours of straight driving could be exhausting and she fell asleep quickly, fingers brushing against the handle of the knife she always kept under her pillow—just in case.

It was no match for what did come for her though.

Ali was rudely awakened in the worst way possible. She was grabbed by the ankle and thrown to the ground before she could even think of grabbing her knife, years of training be damned. Her hip made contact with the ground, meeting it brutally, enough so that she cried out, twisting to meet her attacker. She was captured again and hurled into a wall, earning another cry of pain. She twisted, fighting to see, fighting to engage whoever had attacked her. In the light, dim as it was coming through the thin curtains, she was able to see a woman, hair as dark as her eyes, and mouth full of needles.

"You should have hidden yourself better," the vampire hissed, slamming Ali's head against the wall until her eyes swam, stars popping into existence in her vision. "It wasn't hard tracking you down at all."

"How did you—get out?" Ali gasped, fighting to even breathe through the straw her throat had become because of the abnormally strong hand grasped about her windpipe.

"I didn't." The woman—or what used to have been a woman—glared at her malevolently. She would have been beautiful if her mouth wasn't straight out of a horror movie. "I wasn't there. I was out scoping new targets and then—" She hissed, straining closer, eyes lit by an inner fire. "You and those Winchesters were there, your smell all over the fucking place."

"So why…come after…me?"

"Yeah, because I'm going to go after the Winchester brothers alone." She sneered. "Do you think I'm an idiot? You were easier. Faster. Pretty little girl all alone? Easy pickings."

"Good to…know. I'll…work on it…next time."

"Next time? You're not going to have a next time. You're dying right here for taking out my family."

Ali hoped she was going to be played with first. Most predators put in this position liked to play first, extend the pain, opt for a little torture before they went in for the kill—the equivalent of a cat batting around a mouse before it devoured it. She hoped that happened here. She had the knife under her pillow, and she had her machete in her bag, a mere three feet away. If she could just be thrown to the ground again, she could get one or the other. She could have a fighting chance then. She prayed that the creature in front of her was a vindictive bitch, and strained to catch any movement she would make—

when the door came crashing in.

The vampire turned, screaming obscenities. She let Ali go, turning to defend herself against the intruders. Ali fell to the ground, coughing and gasping for air, and immediately scrambled to her knife. She stood, rubbing her throat, knife extended defensively. Over the shoulder of the vampire crouched between them, she saw Sam and Dean, long knives in their own hands.

"So nice of you to join us, boys," she coughed, wincing, "but I've got this handled."

"Yeah, clearly," Dean retorted sarcastically.

"I'm going to kill you all! All of you! You killed my family! My brothers, my sisters! My lov—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it." Dean jerked his head. "Sam."

Sam stepped forward, crouching low. The vampire looked at Ali, to her left, and the Winchesters to her right, snarling, mouth full of nightmares. Ali looked at Sam, eyebrows raised. He nodded. Ali went in low, ducking, as the female turned toward her. Sam rushed at the same time and the creature turned, trying to anticipate them both. Ali hacked viciously at her hamstring, seeking to sever it and at least incapacitate the thing. Sam swung high, aiming for neck.

There was a spray of blood and a thunk and the danger had been avoided.

Ali stood slowly, surveying the damage. The vampire's head was on the floor, near the legs of the Formica table, her body collapsed, blood already collecting in a pool. A blood spray filled the room, including the three of the hunters standing there. Ali looked at it all for a moment before she licked her lips slowly.

"Wonderful. Now I'll have a police investigation for the murder in my room."

"What? Would you have liked us to taken it outside? Saved a little clean-up time and increased the chance of being seen decapitating someone?"

Ali looked at Dean coolly, not saying a word, until he shrugged and turned, avoiding her gaze.

"Come on, Sam, help me get some stuff to clean this place up."

Sam nodded slowly and walked toward Ali, eyes so full of concern and worry that it hurt. She didn't deserve being looked at like that. She didn't want to be. She was supposed to be forgetting them, both of them.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she lied. Her throat hurt like a bitch, she was sure to have bruises all over the next day, and her heart had sank like a lead-coated stone. "I'll get started in here."

He nodded and followed his brother outside, sending one last anxious look at her over his shoulder. Ali stood for a few moments, fists clenched. Of course they would show up. Of course they would save the day.

The three of them cleaned in silence, wiping down walls and surfaces. They bagged up the body, head and all, and threw it into the trunk of the brothers' car. They were trying to lie low here and that meant hiding it, hiding it all. Ali took the sheets to the laundry to be washed with a cup full of bleach. As far as the motel was going to know, nothing had happened at all.

Once it was done, she watched them, silent, knowing what was coming but hoping she was wrong all the same. She sat on the stripped down bed, Dean in one of the chairs at the table and Sam standing between. The pacifier. Always the pacifier.

"So…you know what this means," Sam began, rubbing a hand nervously over the back of his head. He was so cute. He was so wrong for her.

"No, please tell me," she intoned. She watched Dean for a moment but he shifted, staring at his hands clasped between his knees. Of course. Of course he didn't want to look at her. No one liked being reminded of what a coward they had been.

"Well…we'd like it if you joined us. We obviously don't know if we cleaned that entire nest out, since she showed up, and it's safer to be a group of three than alone." Sam threw his brother a nervous look before he swallowed and continued on. The look he gave Ali was soft, pleading. The puppy. "We can't let you go on alone again, Ali. We have no idea who else could be there and we don't want to risk it."

"I'll just—"

"No." Dean cut her off, finally focusing on her, nothing but grave. "We're going to work together because we're not going to let you get choked to death by some vamp with a grudge. That's final."

"I don't need—"

"I don't care what you do or don't need. This is what's happening so there's no use in fighting it. If you take off, we'll just follow you."

Dean scrutinized her for a moment and Ali had no idea what the brow-wrinkled look was for and could not begin to think of what it could mean. Dean's face was closed, serious, but she could sense a brew of emotions lurking beneath that calm exterior, the storm that had no quite swam into view.

"C'mon, Sam. Let's see if we can grab a room next door."

Dean exited into the frigid night, Sam following as soon as he smiled at her in attempt to bolster her spirits. It left Ali alone in the room, a room that suddenly seemed much more ominous. She saw a drop of blood they had missed on the carpet and muttered a curse.

She felt like she was back at square one. Once again, she was beholden to the Winchesters and was being protected by them against her will. How had this happened again? And how had they found her? She had never told either of them where she was headed. She sighed, flopping back onto bed, more tired than she could describe. The situation may have eerily felt like some strange case of deja vu but it wasn't an entire carbon copy because she had slept with Sam and almost slept with Dean now.

And Sam was never, ever going to find out as far as she was concerned.