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 and some implied violence.
Blood Debt
Chapter 5
He felt giddy. Although pain still emanated from various parts of his body, he realized much of it had dulled. He knew his leg hardly hurt—though why it ought to hurt he didn't remember—and his hands hurt a lot less, too. He stared at his hands. Both his palms had puncture wounds clear through them but the wounds seemed to be rapidly healing. He wondered how'd he'd gotten the punctures but couldn't remember. Shackles and chains were on his wrists but that didn't seem odd to him. They'd always been there. But why were his hands slick with blood?
Blood.
He licked hungrily at the blood on his hands. The liquid was like ambrosia. After cleaning his hands of most of the red liquid he noticed that the front of his shirt was splattered with blood. He furrowed his brow, confused. In front of him was a woman laying on a tall wooden table, a very dead woman who looked like she'd been gnawed on by wild dogs. He moved closer to her, trying to remember something, anything about her. He gently touched her pretty face and was surprised to find it so very cold. Did he know her? He looked at his hands again. Fingers. Weren't his fingers broken? He slowly made a fist with his right hand, wincing as the wound in his palm complained. The fingers didn't quite work right, but he wasn't entirely certain they were broken, at least not anymore.
A cool hand ran across the back of his neck. "Feeling better, Dean?"
He turned and looked at her. She was stunningly beautiful and he wanted to make love to her. Forever.
"Yes," he said, his voice dreamy and distant, his eyes shining with happiness and adoration of the one before him.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Beautiful," Dean said, smiling dazedly at her. He admired her tight-fit black shirt and the silver cross that rested between her breasts. A faded denim miniskirt clutched her pleasant hips and had rivets that flashed like her dark eyes.
She laughed, showing her perfect, white teeth. "Dean, I'm Kate."
"Kate," Dean repeated. "Hello, Kate. You're beautiful."
The world suddenly swam before his eyes and he fell to his knees and onto the hard-packed earth of the barn. The giddiness faded just as suddenly and Dean snapped fully aware. He tasted the blood in his mouth, smelled it in the air, and felt the disgust and nausea twist his stomach. Oh, God, no. He'd killed that woman. He'd killed her by slicing her wrist and drinking in as much blood as he possibly could. The others had come and finished her off, but he should have found a way to protect her. She begged him to let her go, not to hurt her, and he'd just stared down at her, grabbed her wrist, cut it, and started to drink. Mercifully perhaps, she had passed out just as the rest of the vampires descended on her. Dean ran his tongue over his gums. No fangs. He didn't have fangs yet.
Small freaking consolation that. I didn't need fangs to drink that girl half dry, Dean thought, his fury equal to any bloodlust he'd felt. His lips curled into a snarl as he exploded from the ground and slammed his fist into Kate's face.
She fell back but kept her feet. Grinning, she danced further back from him, putting the dead woman between them. She flicked open a pocketknife and gashed her own arm with its blade. Dean feinted right, then dove left, around the corpse. He took another swing at Kate but barely clipped her chin. It was then that the smell assailed him, a smell of salt water and wine, of sweat-drenched passion and promise. His eyes went to her wound and he froze.
"Do you want it, Dean?" she asked, smug arrogance in her every word as she tensed her arm muscles and the blood flowed more freely. Three long rivulets dribbled down her forearm, their droplets falling to the ground in a slow, steady splatter.
Dean's mouth was slightly open. He tried to tear his eyes away from the ruby red blood dripping from her arm. No! He wanted to kill her! He'd behead her then cut the rest of her up into little tiny pieces, but none of it before he'd burn her. He'd listen to her screams and delight in them the way she had delighted in his. He'd kill her, he'd kill her…oh, the precious blood. So very delicious. He felt his body quiver with desire and need. No matter what she asked, he would serve her to get that crimson ambrosia.
…No! Dean screamed in his mind, denying the voice that begged for the blood.
"Get down on your knees and ask me, your mistress, for it."
Dean slowly lowered himself to his knees. "Please, Mistress Kate," he whispered, "Please," he begged, all thoughts of attacking her washed away by the sight of the delectable blood running down her arm.
She stepped forward and offered him her arm. He grabbed it hungrily and drank as if he were dying of thirst. After a handful of seconds, she pulled her arm away. He reached towards it longingly, desperately.
"Please, I'm so thirsty," Dean moaned. "Please Mistress, please." The blood she'd given him barely quenched his craving.
"No, no, Dean. Too much, too soon, will kill you. And we couldn't have that. It takes time for your body to adjust, for your body to die as the virus takes over. The virus has to multiply, has to start to change you and take over the process of keeping your body functioning." She watched him, seemingly waiting for something to happen.
The world reeled before him and he fell onto all fours. He felt his heart thump wildly in his chest and waves of pain rippled through him as he collapsed to the ground, writhing.
She clapped her hands with glee. "I knew it would be soon," she said and savored every cry he gave.
As the pain assailed him, snatches of the past days trickled back to him. He remembered her kissing him, putting blood in his mouth. He remembered spitting it out. The next day she took no chances; she intended to turn him. The others held Dean while she again put blood in his mouth. It was swallow or suffocate. He tried to choose the latter but when the world started to go dark, he swallowed the blood. Later that day and again the next morning, it was the same. The next time when she offered him the blood he took it willingly— no, not willingly, but it was a siren's call he couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried. He had to have the blood. Just like this time.
A few feedings later the terrible hunger had started. The vampire virus, she said, needed fresh blood to feed on, to multiply. He found himself desperate, willing to do anything when he smelled blood. The bloodlust was forming in him and he was becoming just what he loathed, just what he'd hunted. Evil. There was no other word to describe someone who'd drain a scared, young woman of her blood with hardly a thought beyond how delicious the blood was and how much he needed it. He remembered how much he'd enjoyed feeding on that woman and he shuddered, knowing he'd do it again if the bloodlust was upon him. He knew, too, that any rescue Sam might be trying was already too late. Sam would rescue Dean only to ensure Dean never hurt anyone else again.
The waves of pain receded and he lay on the ground gasping. "What did you do to me, Bitch?"
"Oh, it's just the next step toward your transformation, Dean," she said, slowly circling him where he lay, her black boots scuffing the dirt. "The virus is beginning to feed on your living cells now, beginning to invade them and take them over." She kicked him hard in the ribs.
Dean cried out as he curled into a ball, trying to protect his ribs from being kicked again. He hadn't felt any ribs crack, but they were still tender and healing from his previous injuries.
"Get up," she ordered him.
Dean found himself rising to his feet. He tried to make a fist, tried to pull back his arm to punch her again, but he couldn't. His arms hung limply at his side, beyond his control.
"Are you mine?" she asked sweetly.
"Anything you want," Dean found himself saying while vehemently denying those words in his mind.
She gave him a long, slow smile. "When you are almost fully a vampire, but still under my control, do you know what I'm going to have you do?" She ran her hand slowly through his hair and along his chin.
He shook his head as he shivered in delight at her touch.
"I'm going to release you to rejoin your brother and father. And then you'll bring them back here to us. And then I'll have you slowly drain them and let their blood help finish your transformation. It'll be your own flesh and blood that you'll first use your new vampiric teeth on. It will be their blood that makes you one of us. Do you know what I'll do then?"
"No," he said quietly. He took silent pleasure that she thought his father was still alive and still a danger.
"Then I'll turn them. First your brother, Sam. Making your father watch in horror as his beloved sons kill time and again innocent delicious children and whole families. I'll make sure he survives long enough to watch both you and Sam die of starvation, screaming your agony."
She placed her hands on either side of his face and gazed into his eyes, her own glowing with delighted triumph. "I'll lock you in your cages. I'll feed you rats and cats. For awhile. And then eventually, I'll let you starve. Do you know what a painful death it is for a vampire to starve? It's agony. To have the bloodlust and not be able to feed? Maybe, at the very end, I'll use that little magic gun on you so you'll experience the same pain that Luther experienced when he died. And then I'll do this to Sam. And then to your father. And you want me to do this, don't you, because you are my dog on a leash. Say it."
"I am your dog on a leash," Dean repeated, fighting to stop every word. He knew that as every day passed it was becoming more and more true, and he just wanted to crumple and die. His destiny as hunter was gone. His future was her lap dog, his brother's killer, and then a long, slow, agonizing death at Vengeful Kate's hands. He knew he would grovel, beg, or denigrate himself to any level for the blood. He felt the tear slide down his cheek as he stared at his mistress, waiting for her next order.