Chapter 6: The Taste Of Ink

Just as he'd seen on the television screen in the front room, Sam was strapped to a chair. His eyes were slightly open, but he seemed to be in a trance, for his head lolled from side to side and he drooled out of the corner of his mouth. Every few seconds his body would twitch, then he'd moan, and then he'd go still again.

"Sam!" Dean shouted, running into the room. "Oh, God. What've those bastards done to you?"

Kate stepped into the room, but immediately gagged. "They've got him on drugs or something," Kate said.

Dean was momentarily stunned when he turned around to see Kate walking over to the lab table to examine the solutions scattered across it. What was she still doing here?

Kate picked up bottle after bottle, peering into them, shaking them, and even sniffing them. "Take out the IV. They're drugging him with LSD, or amphetamines of some kind of exotic dopamine agent."

Dean felt his mouth fall open a little. "And you know this how?"

Kate pursed her lips. "I was in medical school when I was blooded."

Dean didn't press the issue any further. He gently tugged on the IV in Sam's arm.

"Ah!" Sam suddenly shouted. Something had stung his arm.

"Sorry, Sammy," Dean apologized as softly as possible. "Just taking out your IV. Just hang on, okay? Almost done."

The steady beeping coming from the machine near Kate suddenly began to act up.

"What's happening?" Dean asked.

Kate gave him a small smile in response. "It's his EKG. Looks like he's happy to see you."

"Dean," Sam whispered faintly. His eyes began to roll back into his head.

"I'm here, Sammy. I'm here. I'm gonna get you out of here, okay?" Dean carefully shook Sam's shoulder. "Just stay with me, Sammy."

Dean. The name was such a small word, but at the moment, it filled up Sam's entire being. Dean was here to save him, like always. Dean was here, so everything would be all right. Dean would save the day. The hero of the story was here. And now all Sam wanted to do was sleep. He was so exhausted and spent, and moreover, every time he kept his eyes open too long, he'd end up seeing things that weren't there. He was tired of it all, and with Dean here at his side, Sam wanted nothing more than to fall asleep under his protective eyes. He was finally safe.

Just as Sam felt himself lose consciousness, he was pulled back by another stabbing pain. Blood welled up from his arm after the needle of the IV slid out. Sam reflexively tried to bend his arm to stop the bleeding, but leather straps bit into his wrist.

"Hold on, lemme get those," Dean said. He started to use the edge of the machete to try and saw away the leather straps, but then he saw the controls, pressed a button, and the straps immediately loosened enough to where Sam could slip out of them.

Sam experimentally flexed his arms. They crawled with pins and needles, and he still felt tired and slow.

"Uh, do these guys have reason to believe your brother has telepathic abilities?" Kate suddenly asked.

"No," Dean answered almost too quickly.

Kate looked at him curiously. "Well, I think they tried to use him as an eye into the future," she said. She flipped through the pages of notes on the table. "They were drugging him with LSD, but they were pumping him with dopamine."

"And?" Dean asked. He had no clue what Kate was talking about.

"Well, the LSD was so they could control him because it caused him to temporarily lose proper control over his body. And dopamine is produced in the human body. It's used for several things." She ripped out a page of the notes and showed Dean a technical diagram of Sam's brain. "In the frontal lobe of the brain, dopamine controls the flow of information from other areas of the brain. But by systematically increasing the dopamine, and by altering a few other aspects of the brain so that the increase in dopamine doesn't make his system melt down, these notes make it look like they were trying to use him to control the future."

Dean looked at his Sam worriedly. They were trying to get Sam to control the future? Was that even possible? "That's ridiculous," he muttered to himself.

Dean gingerly wrapped his arms around his brother as he pulled him to his feet in one swift motion. Sam blinked wildly, confused by the sudden movement, then crumpled to the floor as he threw up.

"Well, at least he's getting the drugs out of his system." Kate cringed as she walked over to the boys. She looked at Sam. The boy looked pathetic. So pathetic she almost felt sorry for him.

Dean scrunched up his nose as he bent down to help Sam to his feet again. Dean let go of him once they were standing, but Sam immediately began to wobble on his legs, so Dean slung one of Sam's arms over his shoulder and began to walk toward the door.

"Let's get out of here," Dean said.

Sam seemed to be staring ahead, intently focusing on the door. "He's coming," Sam wheezed.

Kate looked at Sam. "No, your brother's already here."

When Sam didn't blink, realization dawned on Dean. "No, he's having a vision."

"You mean he really can see into the future?" Kate said, shocked.

Dean stood still, waiting for Sam's episode to pass. "Don't look so surprised. You're a vampire, and you're surprised just because he's got ESP?"

Kate was about to answer when Sam came out of his trance. "He's coming," he warbled over and over again.

Dean continued to walk toward the door and kept Sam talking. "Who's coming, Sam?"

"He's… He's…" Sam's body suddenly went limp, but his eyes were wide open.

"Sam!" Dean shouted in panic. He dragged his brother along.

Kate opened the door, but as soon as she did, Sam sprung back to life and began to scream at the top of his lungs. "HE'S COMING! HE'S COMING! HE'S COMING!"

"Dammit, Sam!" Dean pulled his brother out the door, looking at him in confusion, but not for long.

A sickeningly cheerful voice cut through the darkness. "And now I'm here!"

As soon as these words were uttered, Sam began to blink and his body started to relax again. Dean carefully placed him on the floor, making sure Sam could sit up against the wall before he turned around.

Dean gasped when his eyes landed on Garmr. His head was in the arms of his headless body. He had started to turn a faded shade of green, and maggots were crawling all over his body.

Instinctively, Dean grabbed his gun from the back of his pants and pointed it at Garmr. For this level of stupidity, he could've shot himself. Guns weren't going to work on this demon!

"Big mistake, Dean," Garmr said. With the wave of his arm, Dean's pistol flew out of his hand and into Garmr's, and without flinching, Garmr cocked it back and shot Sam just below the shoulder.

"AAAAHHH!" Sam yelled, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Sam!" Dean yelled as he landed in a heap next to his brother. "Sam, can you hear me?"

Sam's eyes were wide open and his breath trembled as he replied. "The light…"

"Oh, God. Sammy, stay the fuck away from that light! Don't you go near it—!"

Dean's attention was suddenly ripped away from Sam when he heard movement behind him. He turned around to discover that, for the second time tonight, Kate was in a stranglehold. Her eyes were filled with terror as Garmr steadily tightened his grip around her neck. He had every intention of decapitating her with his bare hands.

"Mah—" Sam choked. "Machete," he managed to say before he was consumed in a fit of coughing.

Dean gawked at him for a moment. Sam was coughing and coughing, but his eyes were wide open and unblinking the whole time. Then he heard Kate choking on the other side, so he grabbed the machete, and aimed for Garmr as best as he could. But just as he launched it, Sam's leg shot out and kicked Dean, causing the machete to severely veer off course and strike a water pipe.

"Sam!" Dean wailed. That had been their one chance to get the upper hand.

But Sam didn't respond. His eyes were closed now.

When the machete struck the water pipe, Garmr had been squeezing Kate's neck with one arm and holding onto his head with the other. He noticed too late as the pipe burst into two pieces, unexpectedly drenching him in cold water. Surprised, he let go of Kate, who fell gasping to the ground and crawled away. The two pieces of the water pipe sprayed water where Garmr was standing, and eventually, the water pressure swerved one of the pipes into a wire that suspended a lamp from the ceiling. The wire was no match for the blow from the pipe, and Garmr had barely registered he was drenched in water when the lamp swung through the air and hit him square in the chest, immediately electrocuting him.

Dean's mouth fell open as he watched what was happening, and Kate's words ran through his mind. Was Sam really controlling the future right now? Because the water pipe and the wire and the lamp… it was all just so bizarre!

Just in time, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the bag of salt. "Kate, get away!" He shouted at the wet vampire. Then Dean threw handfuls of salt at Garmr as he continued to shake and convulse from the electric currents running through him.

Eventually, the electricity stopped, except for the occasional spark snapping here and there. Garmr's body was completely black, burned to a crisp. His remains were still smoking, and suddenly, the smoke began to turn black. Dean realized what was happening and moved back as the demon that had been using Garmr Medgard's body as a shell rushed out of him in a thick cloud of black smoke. It hovered near the ceiling for a few seconds before it seemed to consume itself and disappear.

"Dean," Kate said. She flinched a bit. It was the first time she had really called him by his name. It felt weird on her tongue. "I don't think your brother's—"

"Sam!" Dean's eyes were plates on his face as he rushed to his brother's side. "Wake up, Sam!" Dean shouted as tears welled up in his eyes. "Sammy, c'mon!"

"He's still alive," Kate said calmly. "But I can hear his heart and it's getting slower and slower every few minutes."

Protect Sammy, Dean said to himself. He gently placed his arms under his brother and scooped Sam up. He sagged under his brother's weight, and Sam's lanky body lolled in every way possible, but Dean ignored this and staggered forward.

"Let me," Kate suddenly said, looking away. "I'm stronger than you are."

Dean exhaled through his nostrils as he took large steps away from Kate. "I'm fine."

"Just let me carry him to your car. He needs quick attention, Dean," Kate said.

"No," he said through gritted teeth.

"Then you leave me no choice," Kate sighed.

When Dean turned around to face Kate, he ran into her chest again, but this time, it was because she was scooping him up into her arms. "I'll carry you both." She swiftly and quickly walked through the many corridors.

"Put us down!" Dean yelled.

Kate continued to walk as she spoke with Dean. "I am not going to let you kill your brother and then come after me in a mad state of revenge. That's my job, remember?"

Dean glared daggers at her.

"Besides, it's not like you two are heavy, if that's what you're worried about. You feel like a stack of library books."

"This is humiliating," Dean glowered. But he didn't say anything else after that. Every time he wanted to, his eyes fell on Sam's unconscious face. He had to make this right.

Dean was grateful that the front room was so dark. He had no desire to look at the dead bodies of Caine and Hel.

In no time at all, they were outside the building. Kate set the boys down and helped Dean get towels from the Impala's trunk and place them in the back seat. Dean carefully laid Sam on his back, and then closed the door.

"One more thing," he said. He found a large rock on the ground and pitched it through one of the windows. Then he found another rock on the ground, wrapped it with a towel, used a lighter to light the towel on fire, and then threw that into the window as well. "Takes care of the slightly shady evidence," Dean said.

He turned to look at Kate, but she wasn't there. He spun around and looked at the areas before him, but Kate had disappeared. She was nowhere to be seen.

Dean looked at the building again. Smoke began billowing out of the broken window. With one last scan of the area, he unlocked the driver's side door of the Impala, started the engine, and drove off.

x x x

Kate stepped out from behind a tree and watched as Dean's car rounded a turn and disappeared into the night. They were moving toward the next town over. It would take them ten minutes of driving through empty roads before they ran into any buildings with people in them, and fifteen minutes before they'd get to the hospital.

She could still hear the engine in the distance. She could take them both right now. They were weak, defenseless, unsuspecting. It would be easy.

That's what every instinct in her body told her, but for some reason, she just didn't want to listen to her instincts this time.

With one last look at the burning building, she began to walk through the forest toward her home.

Kate had lied to Dean when she'd explained why she was giving the boys a head start. Truthfully, she was still baffled over why she didn't flinch away when Dean had helped her to her feet earlier. Other than the obvious, the reason vampires lived in groups situated far from humans was because it was absolutely unbearable to be near a human without killing it on the spot.

But this was mind-boggling. In the car when Dean had simply hovered near her, she had moved away from him, but in the hallway, he had touched her arm, and it hadn't affected her at all.

Her mind raced through the events from the night. The demon had had Dean pinned to the wall, but she had saved him. At the time, she'd done this only to make sure she could be the one to kill him. And then the filthy werewolf guard had caught her, but Dean had saved her, but it was definitely because he needed Kate to find his brother. But what really left her disconcerted was the final confrontation with Garmr.

"Kate, get away!"

Kate had found Sam, the werewolves were dead, so their bargain was complete. She had told Dean that she was going to kill him and his brother the first chance she got, yet Dean was still fighting for her safety.

Why?

But the burning question only served to swing her full-circle and back to the initial question. Why was she letting the Winchesters get away again?

When Kate returned to the barn, she tried to enter as quietly as possible, but it was around three in the morning, so the vampires inside were wide awake anyway. Everyone seemed to have fully recovered from the dead man's blood, and once they saw she'd returned, they all began hovering around her until someone dared to ask about what they were all wondering.

"Did you get 'em?"

Upon hearing the question, all the vampires wore hungry smiles on their faces. They hadn't been in on the kill, but they still wanted all the juicy details.

"Tell us how they screamed," one begged.

"Which one did you take first?" another asked.

"Tell me you sucked on their eyeballs!"

"Did you torture them first?"

The questions came one after another until Kate finally threw her arms in the air to silence them all. They looked at her, waiting for an answer. She set her face. "They got away."

The group seemed to groan in unison, and after the initial disappointment of the news, they all began to suggest ways in which they could immediately start to track the Winchesters before they got too far away.

"No!" Kate growled.

Everyone stopped speaking and stared at her, bewildered. Kate's eyes were filled with fire, her eyebrows were slanted down toward her nose, and her second set of fangs just faintly peaked out through her lips.

"No one will go after them," she said sternly as she walked toward her room. She opened the door and stood in the frame. "They're off-limits. The Winchesters are mine."

If only she could figure out what that exactly meant.

x x x

Fifteen minutes later, Dean skidded to a halt in front of St. Joseph's Hospital. He left the car parked in front of the emergency room, scooped Sam into his arms, ran into the building and set him down on the first stretcher he saw.

"Hey!" A nurse complained.

"Move it!" Dean growled. People stood frozen against the walls as Dean hurtled himself through the hospital. Sam's long legs knocked into people, but Dean didn't have time to apologize.

When he caught sight of the front desk, Dean sprinted toward it. All the attendants looked up at him when he got closer. "I need help!" Dean shouted. "My brother! He's been shot!"

Once he'd announced what was going on, it was like someone pushed the fast-forward button. Two doctors whisked Sam away through a pair of swinging doors, and a nurse led Dean to a chair and handed him several forms and a pen.

Dean scribbled through the forms, looking at his fake IDs several times to get the information correct. About forty-five minutes later, he returned the forms to the front desk. The woman there asked him for a method of payment.

Dean looked through his wallet and pulled out the first MasterCard he found, which belonged to a Mr. Padalecki. Dean sometimes wondered how people even believed these cards were real. Padalecki? What kind of name was that?

When Dean turned to go back to his chair, a doctor stopped him. "Sir?"

Dean looked up at a tall man with glasses and a receding hairline.

"We've stabilized your brother, but we need to know what happened," he trailed off.

Dean did the first thing he could think of. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the FBI badge that was still there. "We're with the FBI," he said a little shakily as he swiftly opened and closed the badge. "We were just outside of town investigating that homicide case. We got a lead on the killer and we followed him to some abandoned building in the woods. One thing led to another and…"

The doctor had barely had a chance to look at Dean's badge, but he still looked confused. "Your brother's been injected with drugs. We thought at first he had taken them himself, but the dopamine levels in his brain are abnormal. There's no way he could've done that himself."

Dean nodded like this was all new. "Doc, can you help him?"

"We already are," the doctor said. "But we just want to know if you knew anything about this."

Dean pursed his lips. "No. Nothing at all."

A couple hours later, the doctors finally allowed Dean to come inside Sam's room.

"Sammy," Dean whispered when he looked at his brother.

Sam lay peacefully in his hospital bed. The covers were pulled up just over his waist, and a series of bandages were wrapped around his shoulder, upper arm, and chest. The steady beeping from the machine next to his bed told Dean that Sam was going to be fine soon, but the whole setting was still so unnatural.

Dean pulled a chair up to Sam's bed and sat in it backwards. He tried to place a hand on his brother's, but the whole environment just looked so sterile and foreign. Finally, Dean got up and untucked the sheets around the bed. At least now, Sam, champion of the insomniac gymnastics, actually looked like he was just sleeping.

Then he took off his necklace and placed it around Sam's neck. Right now, he needed the protection more.

Dean returned to his chair. Sam was finally safe. They both were. He let out an enormous sigh of relief. He watched the sunrise through Sam's window and suddenly realized how exhausted he was. Dean looked at his watch, and by the time he'd registered it was 5:28AM, his head lay next to Sam's hand and he was fast asleep.

x x x

When Sam awoke, he immediately tried to sit up, but a weight on his right arm and several wires attached to his body prevented him from doing so. He began to panic because he thought he was still in the building with Garmr, but when he began to stir, the weight on his right arm was lifted.

Sam turned his head to discover Dean had fallen asleep on his arm.

"Sam," Dean said, an enormous grin breaking across his face. "How're you feeling?"

Sam opened and closed his mouth a few times to try and get rid of the funny taste on his tongue, but his efforts were fruitless. "Like crap," he said. "But hopefully I don't look like crap." He eyed Dean, whose eyes were still tired and whose hair stuck up in random directions.

Dean smirked. "You should take a look at your own hair before you start staring at mine."

Sam winced as he propped himself up on his elbows and scooted into a sitting position. He made a face as he felt something on his neck. "Dean, why am I wearing your necklace?"

Dean gawked. "Uh…"

Sam realized Dean had put it on him.

"You bastard, you stole my necklace, give it back," Dean quickly muttered. "You're such a pain in the ass."

"Right." Sam smiled as he let Dean take the necklace off his neck.

They sat in silence for a long time before Dean finally asked what they were both trying to avoid. "Do you remember anything from last night? What was Garmr doing to you?"

Sam sighed. "Well, he wasn't our demon, for one. I think he just worked for him. And all the deaths in Manning were him. He said that my visions only worked when he or the demons did something bad, and that's why he was killing all those people. He was luring me out and bringing me here." That part was easy enough to figure out, but Sam knew that wasn't what Dean was wondering about. "And… Dean, it was insane. They did something to me, and not only could I see the future, I could control it." He explained the quarter-flip experiment.

An expression passed across Dean's face, and Sam knew the look all too well. It was fear.

"Yeah. The doc told me about increased levels of dopamine in your brain. So, what else did you see?" Dean asked warily.

"Lots of things," Sam said. "I saw into the future whenever my eyes were open, but I can't remember much because they didn't want me seeing into the future until they needed me to. I remember seeing a lot of you, though. And you were with that vampire—"

"Kate," Dean said. "Yeah, I got her to sniff you out— wait a minute," he paused. "Last night, when you were saying 'the light' and stuff, you were talking about the lamp that hit Garmr and electrocuted him, weren't you?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "And that's why I kicked you. No offense, but your knife-throwing skills aren't the greatest, so if I'd told you to chuck the machete at the water pipe, you'd have missed completely. In fact, I know you'd have missed. But while I was sitting on the ground, I had a vision, and after I kicked you and the pipe busted open, well, everything unfolded just as I'd seen it in my vision. Well, I'm assuming everything unfolded correctly. I was kind of drifting in and out of consciousness."

"Thank God that demon's a bad shot," Dean murmured.

"Or a good one," Sam said grimly. "After Garmr saw me make the quarter land heads-up all fifty times, he was way more than intrigued. I don't think he'd just kill me so easily after all that. This isn't finished."

Dean scoffed miserably. "It'll never be finished until we finish them."

"I know," Sam said. He looked up, concern in his eyes. "But something's really been bothering me."

"What?" Dean asked.

"My visions show the future, right?"

Dean nodded in agreement. "Can you still see the future or something? The doc said he reset your dopamine levels."

"No," Sam shook his head. "I can't still see the future. I mean, no more than I could before, I guess. But what's bothering me is that Kate was in my visions. She was in several angles of the futures I saw." Sam had to stop to explain how different routes of the future worked. "And she was always surrounded by orange for some reason."

Dean almost forgot to breathe as he realized what this meant. He remembered how Kate had said she was only giving the boys a head start. She would eventually come after them again, and Sam was proving that right now. "What was she doing?"

"Not much," Sam answered, straining his memories to remember what he'd seen. "But in almost every angle, she kept talking about a bargain or something, like she was trying to justify herself to someone."

Dean set his face. The bargain had been that she find Sam and he make sure the werewolves were gone. The bargain had been filled, so what was this all about? "Who was she talking to? Other vampires or something? The demon?"

Sam's eyes suddenly became very dark. "No, she was talking to you."

"All right, then. I guess we have our next case," Dean said.

"Kate?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Dean replied, shrugging.

Sam examined his brother for a moment. "Are you sure about this?"

"Of course I'm sure. Why wouldn't I be sure?"

"I don't know," Sam said quietly. "But it looked like you two were friends."

Dean snorted. "You were seeing things, Sammy. Well, of course you were seeing things, but you interpreted your vision wrong. There's no way in hell I'd be friends with her!"

Sam looked at his brother empathetically. "I wasn't talking about the vision," he said, recalling the few memories he had of the night before.

Dean stared back uneasily for a moment before he suddenly plastered a big grin across his face. "Okay! Well, let's see what we can do about checking you out of here," Dean said, getting up and heading for the door.

Sam watched with concern as his brother left the room as quickly as possible.

Dean practically stomped through the hospital, making his way to the front desk. He was confused as hell about everything.

He cursed at himself for going soft. He should've killed Kate as soon as Sam was safe. He'd had several chances, yet he hadn't acted on any of them. Then he remembered that Sam had said Kate was always surrounded by orange in his visions, and Dean finally realized what Sam meant. The vampires lived in the woods, so the orange must've been the leaves changing colors in autumn.

Autumn, Dean thought to himself. It was late summer now, but that still gave him plenty of time to prepare. For what? He had no idea. But of one thing he was certain. He would never let anything jeopardize the Winchester family ever again.

Author's Note: And that's it! My very first Supernatural chapter-fic is complete! And yes, I purposely left room for a sequel... I'm gonna wait and see if more people begin to read this fic, and if I think enough people like it, I might try to write up a sequel. :)

Anyway, thanks so much to everyone who read this, reviewed it, and kept me going! I hope you enjoyed the fic and will recommend my fic to other Supernatural fic readers. Until next time, kids!