Title: Now I Know My ABC's

Author: Disasteriffic Kaz

Info: A hurt/comfort romp through the alphabet, one letter at a time from A to Z. Each chapter is a stand-alone one shot. There is hurt, comfort, angst, humor, feels and all around fun.

Author's Note: This one is set in season 1 after 1x20 'Dead Man's Blood'. Give me a little AU leeway on the timing here. I'd written almost all but the last couple paragraphs before I realized I was remembering the show's continuity wrong. LOL I've fixed it but it is, necessarily, a little AU in terms of timeline now. Should still be a fun romp!

Beta'd by the always awesome JaniceC678 :D– Friend and Muse's co-conspirator.

**Follow me on Facebook as "Disasteriffic Kaz" for frequent fic updates or just to chat!
~Reviews are Love~

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K is for Kudzu -

Dean backpedaled frantically and narrowly avoided falling on his ass as a four-foot-tall stuffed bear slid across the floor at him. He braced himself on the wall, the bear crashing beside him, and looked up with a frown when he heard Sam laughing. "Shut up."

Sam chuckled and waved a hand. "If you two want some alone time..."

"You know I can kick your ass, right?" Dean promised darkly and jerked away when the taxidermied bear rocked beside him. "Go plant your damn mojo bag."

"That raccoon over there is eyeing you. Watch out." Sam grinned and ducked out of the room before Dean could beat the poltergeist to hitting him with something. He found the stairs and started up them at a run while the house banged and rattled around them. The poltergeist had clearly figured out what they were up to. They had planted two of the gris-gris bags already, using Missouri's recipe, and Sam jogged down the upper floor of the house toward the north wall. He ducked into the last room at the end of the hall and then dropped to his knees as a stuffed squirrel flew at his head and out the door to crash in the hall.

"Why'd this guy have to pick taxidermy as a hobby?" Sam groaned of the house's owner. He went to the north facing wall and knelt with his hammer. He gave a long look to a lamp across the room with a shiver for the last time he had done this. Sam couldn't make himself turn his back on the seemingly innocuous appliance and crushed a hole in the wall while never removing his eyes from it. He grunted as something slammed into his back and banged his head on the wall. "Ow." He didn't look, instead opening the hole up just enough, and he shoved his gris-gris bag into the empty space in the wall.

"Hurry up, Dean!" Sam shouted. He turned around and found a taxidermied falcon on the floor beside him, rolled his eyes, and got to his feet. He made it to the door and heard a shout from Dean on the floor below. Sam ran. It hadn't been victory in his big brother's voice but pain. "Dean!" Sam pelted down the stairs and ran, orienting himself and headed toward the south side of the house. He found Dean knelt behind a couch in a large office. The laugh bubbled up without his permission. "Dude, are those... stuffed chipmunks?"

"Sam, I swear to God..." Dean snarled. He raised his head up and had to duck another volley of the taxidermied rodents. The entire opposite wall of the room was decorated in the things on little shelves, like a small army of chipmunks to watch over the home's owner while he worked. He heard Sam laugh even harder and grabbed one of them. Dean lobbed it out the door at Sam and smirked when it hit him between the eyes. "Get in here and draw some damn fire already!"

Sam pulled a decorative plaque off the wall beside him, took a deep breath, and stepped into the room. He flung it up in front of his face as the first of the stuffed chipmunks dove for him. "Move it!"

"I am!" Dean leaped out from his hiding spot and ducked low on the side of the desk. He pulled the gris-gris bag from his pocket and kicked at the wall opposite him. He threw his arms over his head as taxidermied rodents rained down on him suddenly, and then Sam was there, standing over him with his makeshift shield. Dean gave a lopsided smile and slammed the heel of his boot into the wall. The plaster gave with a crunch. He lunged forward, shoving the bag into the opening and then pulled Sam down with him as a wave of light blew out and through the house.

"Wow." Sam blinked as the light waned and looked around as chipmunks clattered to the floor. "Was it like that the last time? Don't really remember."

"Yeah." Dean sat up and pulled a stuffed chipmunk out of the neck of his jacket with a shudder. "You were kind of out of it at the time."

Sam nodded, seeing the sudden grim look on Dean's face. He smiled. "You've got a little chipmunk in your hair." He grunted a laugh when Dean's elbow caught him in the ribs.

"Come on. Let's get out of here before Mr. Wayland comes looking for..." Dean trailed off and dug out his cell phone when it went off. "Huh. Dad's number."

Sam looked over his shoulder and sighed, seeing a set of coordinates. "Of course. Why do I get the feeling he's ditching us yet again and just hasn't told us yet?"

"Don't start. He's just running down a lead and he'll be back in a week. You know that." Dean was about to put his phone away when it beeped again.

"Uh huh," Sam said and made an effort to let it go for Dean's sake. And his own. He really wanted to believe that this time dad wasn't lying, that he really was coming back and wasn't trying to leave them "for their own good" again. He'd sounded so convincing when he'd told them only days ago that they were going to stick together from now on. And then, of course, he'd gotten a call and left them to check out some information with a last warning to them both to stay together and wait for him.

Dean looked down at the new message and frowned. "He says, 'Sounds like vamps. Don't forget the dead man's blood.'" Dean snorted and rolled his eyes. "Like I'm ever going to forget that after the last time." He glanced at Sam and shook himself with the vivid memory of nearly watching his little brother's throat ripped out and the equally terrifying moment their dad had fired the Colt and Dean hadn't been sure if he'd hit the vampire or Sam or both.

"He's does remember we've been training to do this crap since we could walk, right?" Sam rolled his eyes and slapped Dean's shoulder. "I'll look it up when we get back to the motel."

"Probably oughta pack up and boogie before this dude comes home and sees his house." Dean chuckled and led the way out of the house. "And, dude, dust that plaster crap off before you get in my car."

Sam laughed and reached out to Dean's neck. He plucked something from his collar and showed it to him. "You might want to get all the dead chipmunk off you."

"Aw, that's wrong." Dean shook his jacket out with a body-wide shudder and grimaced at the severed chipmunk leg that fell beside him. "Dude needs to get a less creepy hobby."

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Dean shoved his dirty shirts into his duffel bag, zipped it shut and looked over at his brother. "Dude, are you packed?"

"Hmm?" Sam said absently. Dean's question registered and he nodded, not looking away from his laptop screen. "Yeah."

Dean straightened and scowled. "What? Why are you wearing constipated face?"

"Consti..." Sam looked up at Dean and then rolled his eyes with a smirk. "Shut up. I got a hold of the coroner's report on a few of the victims. These bites are weird. The bodies are covered in them and they're small. There's no way these are made by adults."

"So, drained by pint-size bloodsuckers." Dean rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "That's a little disturbing. Are we talkin' vampire kids?"

"I don't know." Sam ran his hands through his hair, pulling it off his face, and tried to avoid the sickening thought of maybe having to behead children. It turned his stomach. "It could be. It would explain why they're staying in the forest. They'd be noticed in public. People notice kids wandering around on their own, especially at night."

Dean grimaced. "I think I hate this job."

"We can hit up the morgue on the way out to the forest and stock up on dead man's blood. We still have the crossbows?"

"Hell, yeah." Dean grinned. "Swiped 'em out of dad's truck before he took off."

Sam chuckled. "He's gonna kick your ass."

"Only if he catches me. Let's roll."

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"Glad you found that rest stop on the map," Dean observed a little breathlessly as he hiked up another incline. He adjusted the straps of his pack and wiped the sweat off his forehead. "This would'a been hell from the other end."

Sam smiled to himself, following along behind his brother. He'd spent most of the drive to the forest studying topography maps for the area and realized they could cut three miles off their hike to the area where most of the bodies had turned up if they hiked in from a rest stop, cutting across the forest rather than following the winding trails. "Of course, coming in this way has its issues."

"Yeah, no shit." Dean groaned and used his machete to hack a hole through a wall of green vines. "This crap is everywhere."

"Kudzu. It's pretty much swallowed..." Sam ducked his head to get through the opening Dean had made and took a moment to catch his breath. "... swallowed this whole area of the south after it was transplanted here from Asia. It's a menace. Be careful where you cut through the stuff. Could drop a wall of it on top of us."

"No thanks." Dean brushed yet another spider from the sleeve of his shirt with a grimace. They seemed to enjoy breeding in the kudzu vines. He brought his arm and sniffed his sleeve, then sneezed. "This crap smells funny."

Sam moved ahead of his brother and took the lead to give him a respite. "It has medicinal qualities. At least, the Japanese think so." He smirked. "That farmer at the rest stop seemed pretty sure the only thing this crap is good for is burning."

"Gotta agree." Dean looked up at a pine tree, or what he thought was a pine tree, but he couldn't see it for the kudzu vine that shrouded it from ground to tree top. It was like someone had thrown a giant, green cloth over top of the tree. It hung in veils between all the trees around them and had choked off everything growing, even along the forest floor, except for itself.

Sam took the handheld GPS out of his pocket and checked the screen. "I think we're getting close. The bodies weren't all discovered in one place, but pretty much in the same square quarter mile."

"Good." Dean slapped a vine away as it slithered down from above and into his face. "'Cause I'm about ready to set this whole mess on fire."

Sam chuckled. He climbed a vine-choked log and slid down to the other side. He stumbled to his knees and had to free his legs from the clinging tendrils. "Frigging kudzu crap."

"Look out." Dean pulled himself up and knelt on top of the log for a moment before jumping off to land a couple feet ahead of his brother. The vines on the ground cushioned his landing, and he smirked back at Sam who was only then pulling himself free. "You done playin' Twister with that crap yet?"

"Shut up." Sam pulled his other leg free and climbed up to his brother and more level ground. He looked at the GPS again and pointed to their left. "That way, more or less."

Dean swung the machete and cleared them a path through another screen of hanging vines and whistled when they emerged into a wide open space. It was a clearing the size of a city block. The kudzu crawled across it in thick carpets in some places, while in others the ground was bare earth, and the forest surrounding the clearing was draped completely in the leafy vines. "This looks promising." Dean put his machete into the sheath at his hip and reached around to pull off his crossbow.

Sam followed his example and took out his own crossbow. He took out a bolt already dipped in dead man's blood and loaded it as he looked around. "I don't see anything but..."

"There could be six vamps five feet away and we wouldn't see 'em if they're hiding in this crap." Dean kicked the vines and headed out into the open space. He kept his eyes to the ground, trusting Sam to watch their backs, and stopped when he reached the first vine-clear space. "Hey. You see this?"

Sam moved up alongside his brother and looked. The earth at their feet was scuffed and marked. There were boot prints and clear signs of a struggle. He narrowed his eyes and moved toward the other side and knelt down at the edge of the kudzu. "These are drag marks."

"Yeah, and that's dried blood." Dean scuffed the toe of his boot through it and scowled. "Not much of it though."

"Well, vampires." Sam looked up and around the field of vines warily. "They probably drank most of it."

"Neatest damn vamps I've ever seen," Dean grumbled. He moved past his brother and back into the vines toward the next small clearing of greenery.

"These drag marks are... weird." Sam ran his fingers lightly over them and leaned closer for a better look.

"Define 'weird'," Dean called. He pulled his legs free from the clinging vines and looked at the next clearing. Like the last, there were a few small spatters of blood and drag marks criss-crossing it. "Why are they dragging the bodies around if they just leave them here? Doesn't make any damn sense." He dropped to a knee to get a closer look and shook his head. "It's like they flung 'em around like a dog with a chew toy. That's comforting." He frowned and looked around for his brother. "Sammy?"

"Dean!"

Dean jerked to his feet, adrenaline flooding his system, and followed the sound of his brother's shout. He saw Sam's back bent over and half-covered in the damn vines. He was struggling like something or someone had hold of him. "Sam!" He tripped in the vines and stumbled to Sam's side. He lowered his crossbow to aim below his brother and scowled; there was nothing there. "Sam, what's goin' on?" Dean took hold of Sam's shoulder and gave a tug, trying to straighten him up, but Sam made an odd, choking sound and stayed hunched over.

"Dean..." Sam gasped and turned his head toward his brother. "Vines!"

"What about the vines?" Dean knelt in the leafy things and finally got a good look at Sam. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw a length of the kudzu wrapped around Sam's throat. There were spots of blood as his brother pulled them away from his neck. "What the hell? How'd you get wrapped up?"

Sam reared back as far as he could as his air was choked off and gave Dean a shove out of the vines into the open space. He tore at the vine, but it was tough and refused to tear. He managed to loosen it just enough and pulled it up and over his head. He heaved in a gulp of air and threw himself after his brother.

"What the hell, Sam?" Dean grabbed his brother as Sam came tumbling toward him. "Why'd you..." His voice trailed off as the sea of kudzu around them moved. It rippled all across the clearing, the sound filling the quiet day. There was a sudden explosion of sound as birds in the nearby trees erupted up into sight like something had scared them.

"That... can't be good," Sam panted and kicked his feet, shoving back further to get away from the shifting vines.

"What's goin' on?" Dean got to his knees and somehow still had hold of his crossbow. He raised it toward the vines and felt a little foolish. "Tell me there's some midget vamp in there and he grabbed you."

Sam shook his head. "No. No. It's..." he watched the kudzu rippling around them and stared in confusion. "It's the vines. The... they grabbed me."

"Like freakin' tentacles?" Dean asked in disbelief and watched Sam nod. "You gotta be kidding me."

Sam flinched when the vines around them jerked and began to inch across the open space toward them. He ran a hand over his throat, feeling blood and then looked at his hand. There were wounds on his hand, and, as he pushed back the sleeve of his jacket, on his wrists as well, and it all fell into place. "Dean. The bite marks. It's not vampire children."

"What?" Dean looked away from the vines and to his brother. He followed Sam's gaze and grabbed his arm to look for himself.

"It's the kudzu. Those are the same marks on the bodies; the same size. The kudzu is feeding on the victims."

"Vampire fucking vines? Oh, COME on!" Dean yelled. He let go of Sam's arm and got to his feet. "We gotta get out of here. You walk?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Sam coughed to clear his throat and got to his feet. He looked at the vines where he'd been caught and blew out a breath, ruffling the hair on his forehead. "My crossbow's in there."

"Shit," Dean groaned with feeling.

"I'm gonna get it."

"Whoa! No you're not!"

"We might need it!" Sam argued and took a step toward the vines.

"Nope. Come on college boy, let's be smarter than the plant life about this." Dean tugged him back and aimed at the vines. He loosed the bolt from his crossbow. It pierced a thick tendril of kudzu and sunk in. The vines convulsed with a loud, slithering sound and then settled back, once more shifting closer to them. He slung the crossbow back over his shoulder and drew his machete instead. "No point in diggin' it out if it's not gonna do any good. Don't think these things care about dead man's blood."

"Damn." Sam looked around the clearing with a sinking feeling. "Dean, those vines are covering the forest all the way back to the rest stop."

"No shit. We just climbed up here through it." Dean took a couple steps forward and swung his machete through a knot of vines. They parted, and he grimaced as a blood-colored sap oozed out. "I can set it on fire. Flamethrower would be better, but that's back in the trunk because someone didn't want me to start a forest fire."

Sam couldn't help the snort of amusement when his brother glared at him. "Still don't. I need to think."

"We need to move. Our little island is shrinking." Dean rolled his head, stretching his neck and scowled. "No choice. We're gonna have to cut our way back down. Let's move."

"This is gonna be bad," Sam observed as he turned and looked at the kudzu covered trees in their way. The path they had cut through to get in was long since gone, and the entire forest seemed to be moving around them. "How does kudzu become vampiric?"

"Mutter to yourself later, dammit!" Dean leaned down and sliced off a tendril of vine that had snaked its way toward Sam's left foot.

"Right. Sorry." Sam followed his brother and stayed just to his left. "It's gonna wrap us up as soon as we get in there. We've got to have a better plan than this."

"Well you got any brilliant suggestions, I'm all ears!" Dean shouted and had to spin and slice several more vines before they could wrap around his own legs. "We are runnin' out of room to have this conversation!"

"I don't... ok, let's move." Sam swallowed and followed his brother as Dean began to slice through the writhing vines ahead of them. He waded in beside Dean and slashed left and right with the machete. He had to keep tugging the blade free each time the kudzu wrapped around the blade or worse, his wrist. Sam's legs were being wound up as he moved, and a quick glance at his brother showed Dean in the same predicament. Sam looked over his shoulder to see how far they had come from the clearing and groaned. They had moved barely ten feet. "Dean!"

"I know!" Dean shouted and gave in. They were never going to make it moving this way. "Back! Go back! Hurry up!" He knew they would have a slightly better chance of fighting the stuff off on level ground. On the slope, they were just slowly moving targets. He turned around and began hacking a path back up with Sam beside him. "MOVE it, Sam!"

"I'm trying!" Sam snarled and jerked his leg free with a gasp when he felt more than one sharp set of teeth slice through the leg of his jeans and into his flesh. He looked more closely at the vines moving around him and could see the small mouths that ran the length of each, each one baring rows of miniature vampire fangs.

Dean cut through vines as he slogged the ten lousy feet back to the questionable safety of the clearing. He could feel blood running down his legs beneath his jeans from more bites than he wanted to think about. He was nearly there when he heard Sam's voice cry out. "Sam!" Dean spun as well as he could and watched his brother go down, a length of kudzu wrapped around his chest. "Shit! Hang on!" Dean fought the few feet back to Sam and punched one length of vine away from him before it could latch on to his throat. He reached into the wriggling mass of vines until he felt his brother's flannel and latched on to Sam's arm. "Come on!"

Dean half-dragged Sam with him as he turned and fought the last few feet. He pulled Sam out and slashed away vines until his brother was free. "Holy shit." Dean pulled him a few more feet away into the center of the shrinking clearing and dropped down beside him. They were both covered in blood and sap from the vines, and Dean grimaced when he saw several pieces of vine still latched on to them both, severed and twitching like green tentacles while they continued trying to feed, and blood dripped steadily from the cut ends. "Jesus."

"That was... bad idea," Sam gasped. He plucked a piece of vine from his stomach with a flinch as the teeth pulled free.

"Yeah. Got that. Hang on." Dean unwound the vine from around his brother's chest and threw it away angrily. "Sam, you ok?"

Sam nodded and then shook his head. He was woozy from blood loss, and they hadn't had him for long. His whole body felt like it had been attacked by a school of angry piranha. "Can't... do that... again."

"Yeah, no." Dean pulled a still feeding vine from his own leg and glanced warily around them. The rustling sound of the vines was becoming louder by the moment and it filled him with dread. "Not gonna have much choice here soon." He looked back down at Sam and frowned for the pale, waxy look of his brother's face. "Dude, how bad did they get you?"

"Bad." Sam shifted with a groan and tried to sit up more. The machete slipped from his fingers to fall to the ground. His hands and feet were tingling, another symptom of blood loss. "I, uh... I'm not doin' so good."

"I can see that. Crap, how much have you lost?" Dean picked at the blood-sodden right leg of Sam's jeans and swallowed hard against a lump of real fear for him.

"Other leg's... just as bad." Sam tugged his flannel up and grimaced at his own chest and the bloody bite wounds there. "Not much better here." He slowly toppled to his back on the ground and panted, trying to catch his breath while the world did a lazy spin around him and his stomach threatened to revolt.

Dean wasn't feeling spectacular himself. He'd lost enough blood to make him a little nauseous, but at least the damn things hadn't managed to wrap him up twice like they had Sam. "There's gotta be a way out of this," he said while he pulled his pack off and dug through it for the first aid kit.

Sam nodded and tried to think it through. It was no small feat with his head feeling like it was stuffed with cotton. He felt something slithering up his ankle and jerked his head up in time to watch Dean slice another kudzu vine from him. "Thanks."

Dean set the machete down and pulled out his pocket knife. "They're gonna be on us soon." He slit the leg of his brother's jeans up to the knee and shook his head. Blood was still flowing from what had to be over a dozen bites. "Dammit."

Sam let his head thump back into the dirt. He went over everything he'd learned about kudzu in his head. "Researched it," he muttered and waved one arm weakly toward the sea of vines.

"Of course you did." Dean snorted and taped another bandage to Sam's leg. He was going to run out long before he got his brother patched up and he hadn't even started on himself. They were in trouble. Going out being eaten by a bunch of damn vampiric plants was not a way he had ever envisioned dying, and he had envisioned plenty. "So?" Dean asked as he leaned down and put pressure on a particularly heavy bleeder. "What do ya' got?"

"Um..." Sam hissed in pain and shook his head. "Kudzu. Hard to kill. Burning... shit that really hurts."

"I know. I know. Come on. Keep going." Dean had to pull one hand from Sam to scoop up his machete and cut another vine before it could reach them.

"Burning doesn't work. Doesn't, uh... doesn't kill it. Roots just burrow and... and come back up." Sam panted and forced his eyes open. Dean was going to need him if they were going to get out of this. "There's a... a crown."

"What? It's wearing a damn crown?" Dean smirked down at Sam while his brother shook his head and grinned at the look of annoyance Sam managed even in his state.

"Not a real crown, dumbass." Sam scrubbed a hand over his face. "The root ball, basically. It's like... like its heart."

"Heart, huh? That I can work with," Dean said dangerously. "Where is it and how do I kill it?"

"Cut it off." Sam took a couple deep breaths and forced his body to rise up onto his elbows so he could look around. "That's how the farmers do it. They cut the crown off and the kudzu dies. Kills the plant almost immediately." He blinked, trying to clear his blurry vision. "Should be about the size of a basketball. Maybe bigger with this mess."

Dean put the last of the bandages on Sam's leg. He had to grab his brother's arms suddenly and jerk him back and away as a tangle of vines lunged out toward Sam's legs. "Crap!"

Sam kicked and helped Dean until they were back in the center of their ever shrinking sanctuary. "All the kills... they're here. This area." He made his aching, weary body get to its knees and took the machete Dean handed to him. "Root crown has to be here too, or close by."

Dean stood up and over Sam and looked out at the disturbing, ever-moving green landscape. The constantly shifting vines were like a rolling sea, and made it difficult to focus on any one thing as he turned slowly in a circle with a keen eye. He worked at ignoring the kudzu as it creeped closer and closer and finally narrowed his eyes. "Hey, I think I got it. Get up here."

Sam took Dean's hand and let his brother pull him the rest of the way to his feet. He swayed and held onto Dean's shoulder until he was steady. "Where?"

"Right out there. About twenty yards." Dean pointed and was sure he'd found it. Some twenty yards into the clearing was a larger hump of the kudzu vines, and resting in the center was a huge brown bundle of roots about the size of a beach ball. Even as he watched, it lowered under the twisting vines and nearly vanished before being pushed gently up again.

"Yeah. That's it." Sam blew out a breath. "How the hell are we gonna get close enough to cut it off without getting sucked dry?"

Dean shook his head. "No choice, Sam. We're just gonna have to go for it. I mean, it's right there!"

"May as well be a mile," Sam observed and looked down at his bloody, tattered jeans. He squinted in the sunlight and tilted his head to look more closely, then brought his left arm up to peer at it. "Hey, maybe this will work like dead man's blood."

"What?"

"This." Sam angled his arm so Dean could see the sap and fluid from the vines they had chopped free of the giant plant. "Look. There aren't any bites where this crap covers the fabric."

Dean looked, glanced out at the vines and then looked again and groaned. He rolled his eyes. "Aw, man. I am gonna need six showers after we get done with this crap." He leaned over to sniff his brother's arm and grimaced. "And it smells! Dammit!"

Sam chuckled and shrugged. "Do the job."

"Yeah. Yeah. Just... stay here and try not to get eaten for thirty seconds." Dean rolled out his shoulders and moved toward the edge of their little clearing. It was much closer than it had been, and he sincerely hoped that Sam's crazy idea would work. Otherwise, some other hunter was going to be finding their bones out here someday. And damn, that was a sobering thought. He steeled his resolve to not let this be the end of them and went fearlessly to the vines.

Sam watched Dean and flinched in sympathy when several lengths of vine lashed out toward him. "Careful, Dean!"

"No shit, Sherlock!" Dean swung and sliced through two of them. He ducked under a swipe from a third and caught it on the back swing, severing it neatly. He ducked down and scooped up the wriggling things then dashed back to his brother. "Ok, here we go. Grab a tentacle and start smearing."

"Could you not make this weird?" Sam took one of the vines and began squeezing the viscous sap out of the end. He felt the sharp teeth from the little mouth-like holes grazing the skin of his hands and shivered; even as it died, it was still trying to feed.

"Aw, yech." Dean groaned and turned his nose away as he smeared a handful of the sap on his neck. It took them several minutes to cover what they could of themselves and they took turns trying to paint each others' backs with the stuff. Finally, Dean was satisfied they were as protected as they were going to get. "Just for good measure," he said as he used one of the remaining vines and slathered the blade of his machete with it. He nodded when Sam did the same.

Sam took a couple deep breaths to steady himself; his nose burned from the smell of the kudzu sap. He flicked a glance to Dean and looked away. "You gonna tell dad we got our asses handed to us by a plant?" Despite the gravity of their situation, he couldn't help the small smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth as he pictured THAT conversation in his mind.

"Hell, no," Dean answered quickly. "Pygmy vampires. We're gonna tell him that, and no one's ever gonna know we almost got ganked by the weird Japanese porn monster."

"Oh, ew. Nice, Dean." Sam rolled his eyes and then nodded. "Let's do this."

"Go straight in. No stopping." Dean took a step forward and firmed his resolve. He strode to the edge of the kudzu field and managed not to jerk back when the first leafy tendrils swung out for him. He cut easily through them and kept his eyes on the root crown.

The kudzu seemed to erupt around them as they moved. Sam stumbled more than once as they moved. Either his feet rolled on the uneven bed of living ground cover or the vines slammed into him in an effort to knock him down. "Dammit." He felt his body weakening with exhaustion with every foot they gained, and jerked each time he felt something sharp try and catch in his skin.

"Almost there!" Dean yelled. He stomped down on one thick coil of kudzu before it could strike like an angry snake and pulled the machete through two more after they wrapped around his upper thigh. The dead kudzu sap was definitely doing it's job though. They should have been lifeless husks drained of blood on the ground by now, but they were still up and still fighting. Well, Dean amended when he caught a look at his obviously flagging brother, mostly up. "Come on!"

Sam hacked at a bundle of vines trying to encase his left leg. He nearly cut himself open doing it but managed to free it for the moment. He pushed on tiredly, hacking and slicing around him in an endless fight. There were just too many; the kudzu too damn massive and widespread for them to even create a safe harbor for themselves. And worse, the sap was beginning to dry and flake off him and his clothes. Very soon they were going to be unprotected again, or close enough not to matter. He checked Dean's position and heaved a sigh of relief seeing his brother reach the crown at last. "Cut it loose, Dean! Just hack all the vines away from it!"

"Watch my back!" Dean jerked his right arm and the machete free from vines trying to hold onto it and slammed the blade into the first, thick root that spread from the crown. Up close, it looked more like a tree stump covered in mutated growths that branched and spread, becoming the kudzu that covered the whole of the forest around them. "Damn... ugly... piece... of crap!" He punctuated each angry word with a swing of the machete, either freeing himself or taking another root from the crown. He kicked out and knocked the crown up and sideways, giving him access to more of the vines springing from it. The ground was becoming slippery with blood and sap beneath his feet.

"Dean! Hurry up!" Sam stumbled and went to a knee with a kudzu vine suddenly wrapped firmly around his left thigh. He twisted to cut it free and yelped when he felt the teeth digging into him and his blood running anew. "Shit!" He looked up and saw Dean pause. "No! Keep going! I've got this!" Sam urged and went back to freeing himself. "Hope I've got this," he muttered under his breath.

Dean shook his head and kept hacking at the crown. "Die already!" He reared back for another swing and snarled as his left arm was caught and held. The vine holding him pulled hard and nearly toppled him backward into the seething mess. A moment later, his arm was freed and Dean jerked his head back to find Sam giving him a wan smile. "Thanks."

"Stop... stop screwin' around." Sam's voice was raspy and faint. It had cost him to free Dean, giving the length of kudzu wrapped around his own leg more time to feed. He bent at last and sliced it away and felt a fresh rush of warm blood down his leg. It was taking a monumental effort of will to keep moving and fighting and not just give in, but he knew the moment he did would be the moment he cost Dean his life, when his brother would try to hopelessly save him, and Sam couldn't do it. He could never be responsible for that. He grit his teeth together and kept moving.

"Almost... got it!" Dean yelled. The crown tumbled down suddenly to the ground, and Dean leaned on it, reaching over to reach the vines growing out from the other side. There were only two left. He sliced one and then it struck him that the kudzu on his right, the whole field of the stuff, seemed to be settling. It wasn't writhing as actively as the stuff directly around them. It spurred him on with the realization that they were almost done, just a moment more and they could walk out of here alive. "Suck it, ugly!" Dean bellowed and leaned over the crown to cut the last kudzu root free. "Sammy, I got it!"

"Dean!" Sam lost his footing on the blood and sap slick vines and went down hard. More of them slithered over and around him, finding all the spots where the dead sap he'd smeared himself with had worn away during the fight. He heard Dean's voice call out but his head was too fuzzy to make out the words.

"Sammy?" Dean spun, slashing several vines away from his own body and saw his brother on the ground being wrapped up. "These things need to hurry up and die!" He cut his way to Sam, hacking kudzu apart and stumbling and slipping until at last he was standing over him. "Hang on, Sam!"

"To what?" Sam asked hoarsely. The machete slipped from his nerveless fingers, and his body no longer answered his orders as he crumpled down, helpless with too much of his own blood lost.

"No, dammit!" Dean leaned down and cut three vines from around his brother, pulling them free with sick, squelching sounds and tossed them aside. The kudzu around them gave a sudden, violent convulsion. It threw Dean off his feet to land beside his brother, and he looked up warily and then began to grin as the kudzu slowly went still and settled to the ground. The little valley became quiet except for their ragged, harsh breathing.

"Holy shit." Dean pushed up with a grimace of disgust as his hands slid through the muck beneath them. "Hey, Sam?"

"Y-yeah." Sam's voice was little more than a whisper, and he couldn't do much other than roll his head over toward his brother's voice. "M'here. We get it?"

Dean nodded and got slowly to his knees. "Yeah, we got it."

"Help... help me up."

"Right." Dean wasn't sure Sam should even be moved, but there was little choice. He slid an arm under Sam's shoulders and slowly, carefully, pulled him up until Sam was sitting and leaning against his shoulder. "Ok. Ok. Hey, how you doin'?"

"Kudzu... lunch," Sam said wearily. He blinked his eyes open and looked around them with a small smile. "Nice... nice work."

"Friggin' took long enough." Dean looked down at Sam and wondered how the hell he was going to get his over-tall little brother back down to the rest stop and the car. "Damn, we gotta stop some of this bleeding."

"Dean. Look." Sam raised a shaking hand and pointed to the ground just below the root crown. He slowly pushed himself more upright and, with Dean's help, managed to crawl the few feet to it.

"Geez, take it easy. You're leaving a trail of blood, dude." Dean supported Sam under one shoulder and then his eyes went wide when he saw what he was looking at. "Is that a skeleton?"

"Yeah." Sam reached in under the edge of the crown and pushed some of the now dead kudzu away. He began to shiver with the effects of blood loss but ignored. Somehow, he knew this was important. "You see a sk-skull?"

"Let me look." Dean leaned in beside him and started digging through the vines and gore. He swallowed hard around the urge to throw up and then his fingers slid along something smooth and round. "Yeah. Got it. Ick."

Sam laughed softly and watched Dean pulled the skull out into the light. It glistened in the sun, covered in a mixture of blood and sap and Sam reached for it. "Ok, that's... that's nasty," he said as he took the bone in his hands. He sat back a little, grateful for Dean's supporting arm behind him and turned the skull's face up to the light.

"Holy shit," Dean breathed and leaned in for a closer look.

"Fangs." Sam ran the pads of his fingers carefully over the long row of vampire fangs visible on the upper jaw and then looked at the root crown. "That's how it happened."

"How what happened?" Dean asked and took the skull back, tossing it back to the ground.

"Someone, hunter probably, ganked a vamp here." Sam coughed and slumped back further into his brother. "The blood... gets soaked up by the crown and spread..."

"Spreads out to the rest of the damn thing and surprise! Blood sucking vines." Dean shook his head in a mixture of disgust and wonder.

"Need to burn... burn the crown." Sam's eyes slipped closed without him meaning them too.

"I'll go find our packs and torch it, but... Sam? Sammy?" Dean caught him as Sam's weight fell into him. He tipped Sam's head back, brushed his long hair out of his face and sighed. "Dammit." He took a moment and just sat there with Sam in his arms, exhausted himself. He'd managed to avoid the worst of the hungry kudzu, but he'd still lost enough blood to make him woozy and sick to his stomach.

Dean eased out from under Sam and laid him back reluctantly against a bed of now still kudzu. He stared down at several of the little, fang-filled mouths on the vines, waiting for any of them to move but they stayed still and he nodded. "Ok. Don't go anywhere." He got to his feet wearily and made his way back in the general direction of the clearing where he'd left their packs. Dean wiped a hand off on his shirt and pulled his cell phone out. He considered for a moment and then grudgingly dialed Bobby's number instead of their father's. Dad didn't exactly have a great track record of picking up the phone when he was into something.

"Dean?"

Dean smiled at Bobby's voice and knelt down when he found their packs. He shoved a tangle of limp kudzu off them and pulled them free. "Hey, Bobby. So, dad sent us on a damn forest hike with that marine crap of his."

Bobby snorted. "More coordinates? Thought your old man was stayin' close now."

"He was. He is." Dean refused to see it any other way; he couldn't. "He'll be back. So anyway, while he's, you know, wherever, me and Sam have picked up a couple jobs." He blew out a breath and got to his feet with both packs. "We're kinda screwed here right now. I mean, we ganked the nasty, but we're banged up. Well, Sam is."

"How bad?" Bobby asked and pulled over a map. "And where the hell are you boys?"

Dean rattled off the coordinates along with the mile marker of the rest stop they'd hiked in from. "He's lost a lot of blood, Bobby. Not doin' so hot myself," Dean said as he swayed and barely stayed on his feet while going back to Sam. "No way I'm dragging him down off this mountain. We could use backup here."

Bobby found their location on the map easily and nodded. "You boys hold out for about four hours? Or you need me to get search and rescue to you now?"

It was a serious question and Dean debated it as he knelt beside Sam again. His gut reaction was to say they'd wait it out, but Sam... "Ah, hell. Better send search and rescue, Bobby. I ran out of bandages the first time these things caught us. Got nothin' left to patch him up with now and some of these are still bleeding. I don't know that he's got four hours. Hell, I'm not sure I do if I can't get at least a little patched up myself."

"Ok, do what you can. Just keep him stable." Bobby was already looking up the number he needed and calculating if he had enough gas left in his truck to make it there without stopping. "I'll have you boys outta there in half an hour. You just take care of each other for a little while longer, ok, son?"

Dean smiled and let his head drop in relief. "Yeah, Bobby. Hey. Thanks."

"Idjits."

Dean hung up the phone and tucked it away, then settled in beside Sam. He tugged off his jacket and then his flannel before pulling over Sam's pack and taking out the lighter fluid. "Gonna roast this thing before help gets here." He looked down at Sam's disturbingly pale face and swallowed. "Be nice if you woke up so I wasn't talking to myself here." Sadly, Sam stayed still and quiet and Dean got reluctantly to his feet to finish the job.

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Dean jumped and startled awake when something hit him in the face. "Huh? Wha'?" He blinked and looked up to find Sam's half-lidded gaze on him and a grin spread over Dean's face. "Sam! Hey!" He sat up and put a hand to his brother's shoulder. "About time you joined the party." Dean looked down and saw one of the pillows that had been resting under Sam's arm on the floor; Sam having used that to wake him. "You feelin' alright?"

"Hospital?" Sam asked and coughed around his dry throat.

"Hang on." Dean grabbed a cup of water and straw from the tray next to the bed and held it so Sam could get a drink. "Yeah. Search and rescue humped your gigantor ass down off the mountain on a stretcher." He chuckled and didn't mention that they'd carried Dean down as well.

"You ok?" Sam asked, studying his brother's face with a frown.

"Down a couple pints, but, yeah, I'm good." Dean smiled but it faded quickly. "You lost a hell of a lot more. They had to transfuse you twice, dude."

"Twice?" Sam asked and then looked up as the door to the room opened. His eyes widened in surprise when their father appeared and he quickly noticed the lumps of gauze taped to the inside of both of dad's elbows. "Dad?"

"Heya, Sammy," John greeted his youngest with relief. He handed one of the cups of coffee he'd gone for off to Dean and then reached out to brush the dark hair from Sam's eyes. "You're looking better."

"Dad, they gave me your blood?" Sam stared in surprise.

Dean snorted. "Offered mine, but they wouldn't let me."

John rolled his eyes and hooked a chair over with his foot. "He'd lost more than enough blood all on his own." He leaned back in his chair and smiled again. "Good to see you awake, tiger."

"How long was I out?" Sam asked and carefully sat up a little, not surprised when Dean was suddenly up beside him to help. "Dude, I got this."

"Whatever. Shut up." Dean shoved the pillows behind Sam's back more firmly and sat down again. "And it's tomorrow."

Sam looked over at his father and felt a nagging fear settle. He hadn't truly believed the man would come back, and yet there he was sitting beside him. "Where's my coffee?"

"In the coffee maker where it's gonna stay until the doctors say you can have some," John said firmly with a smirk. "No caffeine until your blood pressure normalizes."

"I feel fine," Sam said quickly and rolled his eyes at the looks of disbelief on both Dean and Dad's faces.

"Sorry, Sammy," John sipped his own coffee and shrugged when Sam gave him puppy-dog eyes. "Not gonna work. I'm immune."

"Dude. No one's immune," Dean said mock-seriously and studiously avoided meeting Sam's eyes while he sipped his own coffee and smiled happily. The doctor had given him the all clear right before Dad had gone to get it. "You should see him with witnesses. It's not even fair. He melts little old ladies. They suddenly wanna mother him and shit."

Sam snorted and leaned back further into his bed. "It's less risky than banging the information out of..."

"OH-kay then!" Dean cut Sam off with a worried glance to his father. "That's enough of that. You get some more sleep, Sammy."

Sam snickered and closed his eyes, satisfied. "It's Sam."

"Hey, Dean?" John met his eldest's eyes over Sam's bed and shook his head. "We need to have a discussion on practicing... safe interview techniques?"

Sam was surprised into laughter at that and curled his arms over his sore torso.

"Shuddup." Dean picked up Sam's discarded pillow and dropped it onto his brother's face. He met his father's gaze with flaming cheeks and cleared his throat. "Uh, no, sir."

"Uh-huh." John chuckled while his sons wrestled over Sam's pillow, and the fact that Dean let Sam win. He'd tell them what he'd discovered later, when Sam was recovered enough to get out of there. It could wait a day or two before he put their lives in danger again, he decided. He wanted them both to be fighting fit before he sat down and told them the truth; all of it. They were going to need to be sharp to follow the trail it had taken him twenty years to uncover. "Get some rest, boys. We've got work to do."

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The End.

Next Chapter: L is for Labyrinth