Summary:

Dean and Sam fall into a vampire hunting pack's trap; Sam manages to escape but has to leave Dean behind. When he loses the trail to the nest, he calls on the vampire who's life he saved, Lenore, to help him find his brother. Kate, part of the nest that has Dean, decides Dean's punishment for helping to kill her mate, Luther, should include becoming a vampire himself. Post Croatoan.

Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own the copyrights to the Boys. But thank you Kripke for such fab characters and letting us play in your universe!!

Rating is for some bad-boy language.

Blood Debt

Chapter 4

Sam couldn't remember the last time he'd slept. He'd lost the trail of the vampires three days ago. They'd just vanished and by now, they could be ten states away. Sam stared blankly at the hotel's yellow walls.

He had stayed on their trail for nine days but never managed to catch up to them. He'd repeatedly found signs that Dean was still alive; a receipt from their stop in Knoxville, a folded up cocktail napkin from Wichita with some waitress' phone number on it, a piece of the lining of his leather jacket. One time he even found his own name scratched into a post. Something about it all didn't feel right, but Sam couldn't put his finger on it and he wanted desperately to believe the clues had been left by his brother, ignoring that nagging fear that he had been led on a wild goose chase.

When he lost the trail he went back repeatedly to the last place he knew they had been, the outskirts of Atlanta. They could have gone any direction from there. Sam feared Dean's time was rapidly running out. According to Daniel Elkins journal, the longest a typical nest would keep someone alive was two weeks, though in a few instances, they had kept people alive for much, much longer. Then there was always the possibility they might decide to turn Dean. Sam shuddered at the thought of beheading his own brother.

He never should have left him.

Sam continued to stare at the yellow wall, absently studying the periodic brown streaks of cockroach crap and small flecks of unknown dried fluids. Two days after Dean had gone missing, he'd called Ellen. She alerted several hunters to be on the watch but no one had come up with anything. He'd called Missouri a few days ago after he'd lost the trail, but she wasn't much help beyond saying that she felt Dean was still alive.

Sam pulled out his cell phone and opened the phone book, slowly scrolling through the names. He paused at the name as he had for the past two days. He didn't know if she'd help for something like this. She owed Dean almost as much as Sam, though, and maybe that would be enough. At this point, he didn't have anything to lose and his options—well, hell, he was out of options, plain and simple. Why couldn't his damned psychic ability work to find his brother? No, he decided, that would be bad seeing as how he only had death visions. Best he not have a vision of Dean in this particular instance. He looked at the name once more and punched the "1" and then "send".

A sleepy sounding voice answered the phone. "Yes?"

"Lenore?" Sam asked hopefully. He couldn't be sure from the one word answer if it was her or not.

"Who is this?"

"Sam. Sam Winchester."

"Sam…Oh, hello, Sam. Yes, it's me." She sounded more awake and he could hear her moving, then heard her yawn.

"I'm sorry I woke you. It's 6 pm where I am. I guess—I guess I just didn't think that you would be asleep."

"Oh, I was going to get up in four hours anyhow." She yawned again. "From the sound of your strained voice, I'd guess you didn't call to exchange social pleasantries. Who's in trouble, us or you?"

Sam swallowed hard. "My brother, Dean. He's missing. He's been taken by some vampires, a Suzanne and Janine. We were in Eastern Tennessee off of state route 74."

"Were you hunting them?" she asked, an edge coming into her voice.

"No. We stopped to help them. It was 2:30 am, cold and rainy, and they had a flat tire. They were—it was a trap."

He heard her muffled laughter. "I'm sorry," she said, then laughed again. "I shouldn't laugh, it's just the complete irony that the two decent vampire hunters out there get caught in a vampire trap," she said. "I assume you're okay?"

"Yes, but I had to leave Dean. There were too many and Dean was knocked out and I never should have left him. I should have tried harder. I should have tried something!" Sam said, the frustration and fear coming into his voice. "I've lost the trail, Lenore. I've put off calling you, hoping I could pick it back up, but I don't know what else to do. Please, Lenore, I just want my brother back. I was hoping that maybe you might be able to help, or offer some advice, something," Sam pleaded. "I'm out of ideas and I'm afraid my brother is running out of time."

He heard her sigh followed by long seconds of silence. He practically held his breath, afraid she would deny him.

"I owe you and your brother my life, but especially you. Where are you?" she asked.

"Just north of Atlanta," Sam said, relieved and grateful.

He heard her talking to someone, arguing with them. She came back on almost five minutes later. "Okay, we can be there about 6 am. We'll do what we can for you and your brother, but we can't make any promises."

"I understand," Sam said, feeling the first glimmer of hope in days. He gave her the address of the hotel and his room number. Once he hung up, he looked around and began to reorganize his research for her to look at when she arrived. Sometime during the night, Sam fell asleep, sprawled across the papers.

Sam jerked awake with the knock on the door. He looked blearily at his watch. It was 6:17. He wasn't really sure if that was AM or PM, and walked over to the door. He opened it cautiously. Lenore, her mate Eli, and a brown-haired man and blonde woman stood outside his door. The two unknowns eyed Sam warily.

"Hello, Sam," Lenore said and gave him a smile.

She'd cut her hair since he'd seen her last. He liked the short bob on her. It made her look even younger and complimented her high cheekbones. Eli, meanwhile, had let his brown hair grow and it was pulled back in a queue, wrapped in black leather.

"Lenore! Thank God you're here." Sam ran his hand through his hair and stepped back to let them in.

"God has little to do with it, Sam," she said. She brushed the back of her hand over his unbruised cheek as she walked into the room, followed by the others. Eli gave Sam a respectful nod. The other two ignored him.

She looked around the dingy room, her gaze scanning the papers and photos strewn everywhere. Her gaze lingered on the two machetes lying on the desk and the jar of deadman's blood beside them, then she sat down in the chair. Eli cleared off a corner of the desk and sat on it.

Sam winced and gathered the blades and blood and set them in his duffle lying on the floor by the bathroom. He knew the two strangers' eyes were watching his every move. "Sorry. I didn't know if they might come hunting me."

Lenore tilted her head in a nod. "I understand, Sam. I know you and Dean are not like the others. So you said two of the vampires' names were Suzanne and Janine. What else do you know?"

Sam grabbed his cup of cold coffee from the desk then sat down on one of the beds. He wished he'd had a chance to get some fresh coffee. His mind still felt a bit befuddled. "Well, like I told you, there were at least eight in the group and they had a 1999 dark blue Saturn, Tennessee plates, stolen. I think they also had a mid-sixties Mustang, dark in color. They chased me in it, but I never got a really good look at it. I've followed their trail through parts of North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia."

"Shelly?" Lenore asked the woman who'd accompanied them.

"Suzanne dark haired, Janine a blonde or redhead?" Shelly asked. Her voice was soft and deeper than Sam expected.

Sam nodded. "Blonde."

Shelly leaned against the wall, her arms folded across her chest. "Tell me everything that happened, everything that was said."

Sam recounted that dreadful night on the road. When he finished, Shelly glanced first at her male companion who nodded, then she looked over at Lenore. "Yeah, it sounds like Thompson's family all right."

Lenore grimaced.

"What?" Sam asked, concerned.

Eli spoke up. "They're long distance hunters. The hunting parties usually don't nest; they catch their food anywhere within a day's drive of their nest then head back home with it in their trunk. When one of their food can't feed them anymore, they go on another food run."

"Food. You mean people," Sam said.

Eli shrugged. "Yeah."

Shelly had been eyeing the bed Sam wasn't sitting on, and decided to give in. She flopped down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and laced her hands behind her head. "There won't be just eight He has a family of 20 or 25, depending. There's been as many as 40 there before." She twisted her head and looked at Sam. "And he likes his food to do tricks."

"Tricks?" Sam asked.

She saw the concerned look in his eyes. "Oh, don't worry. Thompson doesn't swing that way. He likes them to beg for the food and water. Call him master. And he likes his chains and shackles, and yanking the food around. If they're keeping your brother for food, he'll live so long as he does what he's told, and until they've simply fed on him too much for him to stay alive. Thompson can keep his food alive for weeks, if he wants. They are fairly diligent about keep their food fed and watered."

Dean doing what he was told, even if it meant staying alive? How likely was that? Dean's disdain for any authority figure that wasn't their father—Sam felt sick.

"Do you think you can find Thompson?" Sam asked, looking at each vampire in turn.

The one vampire whom Sam didn't know sat down by Shelly and gripped her shoulder. They passed a private look between them, then Shelly sat up and both turned toward Lenore. Sam watched the silent exchange curiously.

"Sam and Dean rescued me from a hunter," Lenore said to them. "And Sam, he gave me blood when I was so poisoned by that hunter that I didn't think I'd see another sunset. He helped our family escape, and apparently," she looked at Sam and smiled, "has told some of the hunters that our family doesn't kill humans to live. We've been passed by twice by hunters since then. We owe them a debt. Detroit, Shelly, I know you weren't with us when Sam saved my life, but you are part of our family now. That debt is your burden, too."

"I can find Thompson," Detroit finally, reluctantly, said. "I can tell you, he's not that far away. Two hundred miles, give or take."

"How do you know?" Sam asked, feeling hope flicker inside him.

"You always know when you're close to your sire," Detroit said. He kept his eyes locked on Shelly's face. She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

"He turned you?" Sam asked.

Detroit gave a jerk of a nod. "Yes. I was shot up in a drive by up in Detroit. His family was passing by and found me. I begged them not to let me die, that I didn't want to die. I knew what he was and still I asked him to bring me over." His voice edged toward frantic. "I just wasn't ready, and he thought it was too good to pass up—"

Shelley pulled him into a hug, quieting him.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

Shelly said softly, "He was on his way to becoming a Catholic priest. Thompson turned him, then made him feed on kids and pregnant moms, and anything and everything he could that would further torment him. He didn't plan to keep Detroit as part of the family. He just wanted to torture him for a few years. You can torture a vampire much more effectively than you can a human, especially the first few years when your conscience can still bother you. And we heal quickly, allowing a lot more physical damage to be done." She ran a hand over Detroit's shaggy hair. "I hated what Thompson was doing to him. It wasn't right. I knew about Lenore so Detroit and I and we managed to track her down, I guess soon after you two met." She twisted her head and looked at Sam with dark hatred in her eyes. "I'll be glad to help you behead that son-of-a-bitch."

"We don't kill our own," Eli snapped at her.

She turned her flashing eyes on Eli. "Bullshit. He does. Sometimes there are people that just need and deserve a good killing. Thompson is one of them. He's a sadistic bastard. I've been with ten different families through my years. His was the only one where I despised every minute of my time there. He and Suzanne don't have one damned redeeming quality other than their ability to survive. They take in any family that survives hunters and feeds their fury. I mean, hell, when Kate and Darlene came to us, they were scared and lost. He took them in and promised to teach them hunt down the hunters who killed their family. He started their training all right. They hunt, torture and kill entire families. They turn members one at a time. The families feed on their own, and then? Thompson and Suzanne, they starve the newly turned." She stopped her rant when Detroit clutched her tighter, burying his head deeper in the crook of her neck.

The cooler had drained from Sam's face.

"Sam," Lenore asked curiously.

"Shelly, did you say 'Kate'?" Sam asked. "She wears a silver cross, dark hair, slutty dresser?"

"You know her?" Shelly asked, surprised.

"My father killed her mate. Dean and I killed a lot of her family when we rescued their prisoners—their food."

The look she gave him was filled with sorrow. "Well then Sam, you don't have to worry about them killing Dean anytime soon. You might have to worry about if he's still sane when you find him, and not missing any pieces. But in all likelihood? She'll turn him. She can cause him much more pain if he's a vampire than if he were human."