AN: Hello all,
I know the wait for the next chapter (if anyone is still following this) was INCREDIBLY long. I seriously lost my motivation to write for a while, but have dug it back up again. I'm working on this one until I figure out what I want to do with my original works. Please review and let me know what you all think of the plot and the characterization. I haven't edited this or had it Beta'd, please forgive any mistakes and enjoy this LONG chapter.
Dean came back after about an hour to find Nicole and Sam watching TV, Sam on his own bed and Nicole on Dean's. When he walked in Nicole met his eyes and immediately started to get up. "Sorry! You can have your bed back."
"You don't have to move," Dean replied, taking a bottle of blood from his bag and tossing it to Nicole who caught it aptly.
"It's fine, I don't mind!" Nicole said already unscrewing her bottle as she relocated to the couch. She tried not to let out a groan as she gulped down the blood. Truth was, she would have preferred not to sleep on a lumpy fold up mattress, but she couldn't be so close to Dean while she was still constantly hungry. Also if she had a nightmare while sleeping over here, Dean was less likely to wake up and question her about it.
"You don't have to sleep on that thing either," Dean raised an eyebrow at her.
"I want to." She flopped down to make her point.
"No one wants to sleep on a pull out."
Nicole closed her eyes with a sigh. She and Dean were both too stubborn for their own good and she knew that this would just lead to another fight.
"Leave it alone, Dean." Nicole said before throwing a pillow at him. She knew it was childish, but the lack of sleep and near constant hunger was making her irritable and she didn't want to deal with any of it.
After another night of fitful sleep and waking with her throat on fire, Nicole made sure to put on some make-up to cover the dark circles under her eyes. She didn't know if vampires could suffer from exhaustion, but it felt like she was quickly reaching that point.
She and Sam and Dean were currently stomping their way through some farmer's property trying to find the crops that had mysteriously died which the brothers thought signified that there was a demon at work in the town. Well, that combined with some strange weather and cattle mutilations. When they finally reached their destination, Nicole let out a sound of awe at the massive perfectly round circle they were standing in on top of shriveled and dried plants.
The brothers fanned out around the circle, Dean kicking some dead leaves around. Sam was holding a dried vine close to his face and frowning slightly.
"Somethings not right here," he called to his brother.
"I'll say," Nicole agreed. "This place smells terrible."
"That's the sulfur from the demon," Dean explained.
Nicole sniffed and wrinkled her nose. "This doesn't smell like sulfur. It smells like chemicals."
Nicole saw Sam and Dean lock eyes, looking nervous. "Sammy's right," Dean said, "Something isn't right and I don't think this was a Demon. I'm not sure who would destroy a perfect circle of crops, but it can't mean anything good. We should get out of here."
Dean immediately began leading the group back the way they came and as they cut their way through the underbrush, Nicole stopped still whipping her head around to stare into the brush. She had sworn she heard the distinct sounds of leaves crunching underfoot that wasn't from either her or the brothers. Squinting into the brush, she looked for any signs of movement, even going so far as to sniff the air to try and discern whether she had actually heard something or not. All she could smell was the strong scent of chemicals coming from behind them.
"Nicole!" Dean's gruff voice broke her out of her reverie, "What are you doing?!
Shaking herself and setting off down the path stomped down by Sam and Dean, Nicole let out a sigh. The lack of sleep was clearly starting to make her hallucinate.
"Coming, Dean-o," she called back with a roll of her eyes.
"Well stop lolly-gagging. You're supposed to have super speed."
Everyone was silent on the drive back to their hotel. The brothers each pondering the strange deliberate destruction of crops they had just seen and Nicole yawning in the back seat trying to stay awake. It had been less than a week since they left Bobby's but Nicole was pretty sure she hadn't slept well since then. She'd had horrible nightmares multiple times each night which caused her to only sleep fitfully for a few hours each night. Vampires may need less sleep than humans, but she was finding out that even they had their limits. The nightmares almost always ended with her killing someone she loved. Sometimes it was her sister and brother, or Allison, but mostly it was Sam and Dean.
There were always a few horrible moments when she woke up that the dreams felt so real, she was sure she had just murdered someone. Worse was the intense hunger that followed. She was starting to have a hard time surviving on the normal amount of blood that they stole per day, but was too scared to admit to the brothers that she needed more.
Nicole's exhaustion must have gotten the better of her because the next thing she knew she was in their hotel room, in Dean's bed and not on the pull out sofa that she had been sleeping on. She must have fallen asleep in the car and Sam or Dean, though probably Dean had carried her in. Per usual, a nightmare had woken her. She sat up, breathing heavily with her hair sticking to her sweaty forehead and was horrified to find that her fangs were out. Both of the brothers, who were sitting at the small table near the window, turned to look at her. Both of their eyes were wide and their faces etched with concern.
"This is getting ridiculous," Dean was the first to speak.
Nicole's face flushing pink and she glared at him. "I'm fine."
At that, even Sam snorted. "How did I know you were going to say that?" He asked.
Out of desperation, Nicole decided that she needed to go for a really long and hard run. Hopefully she would be able to run her hunger off and exhaust herself enough to get some more sleep later that night. Without even looking at Sam and Dean, knowing they would start to badger her with questions about her nightmare, Nicole began pulling her running clothes out of her bag before retreating to the bathroom to change.
"Where do you think you're going?" Dean's voice floated through the door to her and she rolled her eyes. She should have known that she wasn't going to get off that easy.
"For a run," she shouted back through the bathroom door as she pulled a sports bra over her head.
"Nicole… are you sure that's a good idea?" Sam's voice joined his brothers. They were tag teaming her and she mentally cursed them.
"Yes." The other side of the door was silent for a moment before Sam spoke again.
"Are these nightmares about Piedmont?" He asked tentatively.
Nicole let out a small chuckle at just how wrong Sam was. She hadn't thought about her purposeful kidnapping and hostage situation in weeks. "No!"
More silence as Nicole finished dressing.
"Is um… this about you and I?" Dean's voice came tentatively through the door and Nicole whipped her head to stare at it incredulously. She had not been expecting that. Half of her was insulted that Dean thought something as silly as boy drama could twist her into knots like this… Though boy drama may be putting it lightly. The other half of her wanted to laugh at how completely out of their depths the Winchester brothers were at trying to deal with not only a girl, but a girl who was clearly dealing with some issues.
Instead, she jerked open the door and leveled Dean with a hard stare. "Not everything is about you, Winchester."
Sam pushed his brother in the shoulder. Clearly he had picked up on the fact that that had been the wrong thing for Dean to ask. As Nicole was making her escape out of the front door, she vaguely heard Dean say defensively, "You heard her Sammy! Not everything is about me."
Nicole's plan to run herself into exhaustion the night before hadn't worked out that well. She still ended up only sleeping for a few hours and they were full of nightmares. So when Dean shook her awake the next morning she was less than happy. Bearing her fangs at him, Nicole rubbed the sleep from her eyes and tried to ignore the hunger pangs in her stomach. Today they were going to check out some cattle mutilations at a nearby farm, another potential demon omen that was hopefully more helpful than the fake crop circles they looked at yesterday,
The boys were wearing their standard flannel and jeans to go look at some dead cows, but Nicole's wardrobe still hadn't completely adjusted from student to hunter so she had some black skinny jeans and a v-neck tee shirt. When Dean saw her in her skinny jeans, his eyes widened slightly before he shook himself.
"How can any one run in those things?" He asked, gesturing to her pants.
"They stretch," Nicole rolled her eyes at him while Sam impatiently ushered the two of them towards the door.
When they reached the farm, Sam and Dean immediately started picking their way through the fields leaving Nicole to put her jacket and hat on and scramble after them. When she caught up, Dean was already poking a dead cow with a stick and Nicole had to clamp her hands over her mouth because the smell of the rotting meat was sickening.
"Oh god, please say we don't have to stay here long," she moaned and looked skyward, praying she wasn't going to be sick.
"First we get those crop circles that looked like they were made with chemicals rather than being burned like what usually happens with demons, and now we have these cows who look more like they were cut with knives than ripped apart," Sam mused, kneeling next to one of the bodies.
"These wounds are way to clean to have been made by a demon. There aren't any of the jagged marks we usually see," Dean agreed. "What the hell is going on here?"
"Seems like someone wanted you guys or some other hunters to think there was a demon in this town," Nicole said, pulling her hands away from her mouth just long enough to speak.
"I think you're right," Sam agreed. "Whatever this is, it can't be good. Let's head back."
In the car ride back, Nicole sucked down a fresh bottle of blood and listened to the brothers make plans to leave town. Whatever was happening here, they were fairly certain there wasn't an actual demon endangering this town and who ever had tried to lure hunters to this town, they weren't sticking around to find out.
They drove two hours farther south before stopping for the night and calling Bobby to let him know that something strange was up and that other hunters should probably avoid Huntsville for the time being as well. Against Dean's wishes, the three of them decided to stay an extra day in Arkansas just in case something did come out of the strange omens in Huntsville so they had a rare day of relaxing in the hotel room which Nicole used to order her textbooks for next semester, a task which set her back a couple hundred dollars, and skype Allison. The whole time they were on the phone Sam was anxiously hovering over Nicole's shoulder until she finally gave him the okay to take over her laptop and chat with Allison alone. Dean just stood off to the side and rolled his eyes at the entire scene.
In an effort to give Sam and Allison a little privacy and not get stuck watching pay per view with Dean, Nicole decided to go for a run, so with one last look at the goofy smile on Sam's face, she ducked out the front door and allowed herself to fall into an easy rhythm.
The sound of her own breathing and her shoes pounding on the pavement relaxed her and she almost forgot all about her constant nightmares and her feelings for Dean and her stress about finding this Alpha and returning to med school next semester. Almost. One thing she couldn't ignore, was the burning hunger she felt nearly all the time now and after about 20 minutes of running, it became so strong that she couldn't ignore it any longer.
Pulling out her phone, Nicole began to google the locations of animal hospitals and butchers shops around them. She didn't need the Winchesters to get blood, she told herself. She could do this on her own. She was a vampire for christ's sake. She didn't need Dean's crowbar to get the locked doors open, she just needed her own super strength. According to google there was an emergency animal hospital about a mile from where she was which she was sure would have blood. Setting off in the direction of the hospital, Nicole smiled to herself. By getting her own blood, she could drink as much as she wanted without alarming the brothers. She could do this.
Jogging up to the front doors of the hospital, Nicole thanked her lucky stars that they were in rural Arkansas at the moment and there was no need for security cameras. The handle on the front door broke easy enough when she put enough pressure on it and the bolt gave way with a swift kick to it. Whispering a sorry to the building owners as she moved past the reception area, Nicole confidently located the refrigerated storage and was pleased to find that it wasn't locked. Picking her way past various medications and vaccines, she found the emergency storage of blood used for transfusions.
Staring down at her hands, Nicole had no sense of how much time had passed. All the knew that that her hands were covered in blood and the room around her was completely destroyed. Scratch that… as she went to wipe her hands on her shirt, she realized it was her entire body that was covered in blood and not just her hands. Her breath started to quicken as she took in the scene. If she didn't know any better she would have thought that a wild animal tore through this place, but judging by the fact that she was FINALLY no longer hungry, she knew it had been her.
Nicole's mind flashed back to watching nature documentaries on sharks when she was younger and the words "feeding frenzy" stood out in her mind. Bracing herself on an upturned shelving unit, Nicole's stomach clenched. She thought she might be sick, but nothing came up. She had to get out of there. Nicole wasn't sure how the made it back to their hotel without someone calling the police on a woman covered in blood sprinting down the road. She can only assume that her new found speed and the fact that it was dark out helped conceal her from anyone who might have been passing by. Skirting around the illuminated parking lot, Nicole finally made it to the door of their room and beat the living daylights out of it.
"Sam! Deam!" Nicole was trying to be quiet to keep from drawing attention to herself, but her panic was clearly leaking into her voice. "Let me in!" When the door didn't immediately open, she kicked it with her trainer. "Damn it, guys! This isn't funny!"
"Keep your hair on, I'm coming!" She heard Dean's voice coming through the door, and as it opened, she tumbled through it, straight into Dean. He caught her, eyes wide in panic.
"What the hell happened?!"
AN: No more hiding her blood lust now! Review!