Chapter Fifteen

Author's note - Hey there everyone. I'm so sorry for being so late with this one. I swear the story gods have been working against me all this month. Whenever I tried to find time to sit down and write, something else came up that I just couldn't ignore. So I locked myself in my room last night and refused to come out until I was finished...except for food, because chilli is just too good to refuse. =D But anyways, here it is. Happy reading!

Words failed Sam for a moment. What was he even supposed to say to that? It was so obviously untrue that he would have laughed in the hunter's face, if he weren't so busy trying to figure out John's angle.

"You're lying," was the statement he settled for when his brain finally reconnected with his mouth.

John shook his head hard. "I'm not."

Sam looked back down at the aged photograph, taking in the planes of the woman's face, the ever so slightly crooked smile and the green eyes that twinkled with a barely contained mischief. There was no way that this wasn't his mom.

"What is your mother's name?" John repeated his earlier question, voice soft this time instead of demanding.

For a second, Sam considered refusing to answer again. It was none of the hunter's business after all. But Sam had questions of his own now. Questions that might get answers if he cooperated at least a little.

"Her name is Mary," he said finally, glancing up at John to gauge his reaction.

The hunter stared back at him with dark, impossibly wide eyes and Sam had trouble trying to place the emotion on his face but if he had to guess, he would have said it was something close to horror.

"Campbell?" John whispered and then it was Sam's turn to be horrified. The last thread of hope he had clung to, the hope that the picture was some kind of trick or a purely bizarre coincidence, snapped.

John was telling the truth. How else would he have known that name? Sam had never mentioned it before, he was sure.

He shook his head in denial. "This isn't happening."

None of it made sense to him. His mom had never mentioned being married to anyone, much less a hunter!

John opened his mouth to say something but then snapped it shut again when the sound of two sets of footsteps hurrying down the outside corridor reached their ears.

"Sam?" Jodie's voice called, right before she and Bobby came racing into the room.

She flipped on the lights and then groaned when she saw John. "And here I was hoping Bobby was just being paranoid. Let me tell you now, John Winchester, if you have harmed my patient in any way, there will be hell to pay."

Bobby stepped forward. "What are you doing here, John? The vamp is Novak's prisoner now. You said so yourself. You have no business with him."

"But Bobby, he's…I'm…" John struggled out before taking a steadying breath. "He's Mary's son."

There was an ear shattering silence after the statement left the hunter's lips and both Jodie and Bobby stared at Sam like they were seeing him for the first time.

The attention was uncomfortable to say the least and Sam felt a childish urge to crawl back under the covers of his bed and just disappear for a while.

When the silence was almost unbearable, Bobby broke it. "Mary…as in your wife, Mary?"

"Yes," John breathed.

"But I thought she was dead?" Jodie broke in.

"She's not dead." Bobby said. "Not in the conventional way in any case. That's just what we told everyone."

Jodie frowned in confusion but didn't question the matter further. Instead she turned her attention back to Sam. "Wait. So you're Mary Winchester's son?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm Mary Campbell's son."

Jodie blinked. "Maiden name. Right. Sorry. You're Mary Campbell's son?"

Sam nodded.

"And you say your father was human?"

He nodded again.

"So then…" she looked at John, clearly putting the pieces together in her head.

Bobby finished her unasked question. "John, do you think that this boy is your son?"

Sam couldn't believe what was happening right now. It was like he was stuck in some awful nightmare. If it was true…if Sam really was John's son…well, that was something he didn't really want to think about.

It was strange. He'd spent a lot of his childhood wondering who his father was, wishing he could meet him at least once just so he could know what he looked like, what his voice sounded like. But now that he was here, stood before his potential paternal parent, he wished more than anything that he had never met him.

"John, do you think that this is your son?" Bobby asked again.

John nodded slowly, averting his gaze from Sam as he did so. He was pale again, skin almost translucent under the florescent lighting.

"No," Sam growled and everyone else jumped a little, clearly not expecting his input. "I am not his son. And he is not my father. I don't have a father."

"Well, I doubt you were immaculately conceived." Bobby grumbled.

Sam threw him a sour look before glaring back at John. "And besides that, what you're saying makes no sense. You're a hunter. Why on earth would you marry a vampire?"

John looked taken aback for a moment but then his face clouded over as he replied. "I didn't marry a vampire. I married a human."

"But my mom is a vampire."

"She wasn't always."

"What is that even supposed to mean?" Sam ground out, not wanting to believe what he was hearing. His mom had been human once? She'd never told him that. She'd never even hinted at it.

"Mary was human when I met her. We were teenagers when she moved into the town I grew up in." John said, no longer looking at Sam but through him, already lost in his memories.

"She came from a family of hunters. She was actually the one who introduced me to the business. I won't say it was love at first sight. She actually punched me in the mouth for being rude the first time me met but we did eventually fall in love and we were married the moment we graduated school. A few years after that, she told me she was pregnant." He snapped out of his reverie to look at the photograph still clutched tightly in Sam's hand. "In fact, I took that picture the very same day that we found out she was going to have Dean."

Sam's stomach lurched. He hadn't even thought of that. If John truly was his father then Dean was his brother, and possibly Adam too. He'd always wanted siblings but this wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind.

John continued, "We were so happy and only a few years after that, she was pregnant again and we decided to get out of the hunting business so that we could focus on raising our family. But a friend of ours, Bill Harvelle, needed help with one last hunt. Just one. And then we were done. It was that one hunt that changed everything.

"We were tailing a group of fangs. Something we had done a hundred times over already but they must have caught our scent. Before we knew what was happening, they were on us. They killed Bill before going for Mary and I, giving us chance to fight back but there were too many of them and they took a liking to Mary, told her she'd make a great pet." He spat out the word angrily and Sam felt himself go cold.

"They held me down whilst one of them sliced open his wrist and forced Mary to drink…" John trailed off, face awash with grief.

"That's when Ellen and I arrived." Bobby stepped in to finish the story. We killed the rest of the vamps off together but we were too late to save Mary and Bill."

Sam frowned. They hadn't been too late to save Mary. She was still alive.

"We stayed with her," John said, voice rough and breaking. "We hoped, I hoped, that maybe Mary hadn't drunk enough of the blood for it to have been affective but all it took was a few hours. And she was changed."

Sam was breathing hard by the time John finished his story. There was no wonder his mom never mentioned her previous life. Why she always looked so sad whenever Sam tried to ask about his father.

"And that's when you abandoned her?" Sam ground out. "When she was confused and scared out of her mind, when she had nothing and no one to turn to except for her husband, you just ran off and left her on her own?"

"It wasn't - "

"You betrayed her!" Sam yelled, anger and hurt roiling inside him.

"What was I supposed to do? She was a vampire. It was either leave her or kill her. And I couldn't kill her. I just couldn't."

"Those were not the only options. You could have stayed with her. Taken care of her. Helped her."

"No - "

"She loved you."

At this, John's face crumpled in devastation and he staggered back as if struck. Then, without another word, he turned and fled from the room.

Sam watched him leave, wishing he could feel some form of satisfaction from knowing he'd managed to hurt the hunter, the man who'd hurt his mom, but he felt nothing.

"I can see her in you, now," Bobby said. "Only Mary could wound John that much using only words. You really are her son, aren't you?"

Sam said nothing and Bobby sighed. "Well, this situation just got a whole lot more complicated. I'm going to go check on John. You two should get some rest. There's still a few hours till sun up. Goodnight."

Jodie bid him goodnight too and then proceeded to usher Sam back into bed but he knew there was no way he was going to be able to get back to sleep now. His head was in too much of a mess.

When morning came, and Sam was still as messy-headed and sleep deprived as he had been a few hours ago, he was allowed something he hadn't had in a long while.

A shower.

He hadn't really taken any notice of what he'd smelled like but in the past couple of weeks he'd bled, sweat, vomited down his front and then bled some more. He probably reeked something awful.

Jodie certainly seemed to think so when she'd gotten close enough to inspect his healing wounds, if the barely controlled gagging was anything to go by.

After she had finished the brief examination, Sam suddenly had his arms full of clean clothes and towels and was being ushered into a small adjoining bathroom, complete with corner shower.

The warm water felt incredible as it ran down his skin and washed off layers of grime and filth. And there was soap, shampoo and even a razor in there for him to use. He didn't really have much of a beard. That was still something he seemed unable to fully grow but he certainly had a lot of itchy, wiry whiskers that he couldn't wait to get rid of.

After he'd washed, he tried on the clothes, just a simple pair of briefs, jeans and a white t-shirt and they fit for the most part. The jean legs were maybe a little too short but it wasn't all that noticeable. Besides, right now, they could have been half way up his shins and he wouldn't have cared. He was clean.

"That's much better," Jodie commented when he exited the bathroom, fresh faced, glossy haired and smelling faintly of coconut thanks to the shampoo. "You actually look human now."

Sam raised an eyebrow and she quickly added, "Or half-human…whatever."

"What should I do with those?" he indicated the soiled pants he had left discarded on the bathroom floor.

"Just leave them there. I'll burn them later."

Sam inwardly conceded that that probably was about all they were good for now.

"Well, now that we've sorted out your need for hygiene, we have only one more problem to figure out." Jodie said.

Before Sam could ask what that problem was his stomach gave a particularly vicious growl and Jodie barked a laugh. "Yes, that's the one. When was the last time you ate?"

"Yesterday," Sam supplied immediately, and whilst Dean's blood had most definitely saved his life, he was still a little horrified for losing himself like that.

"I mean, the last time you had more than just a couple of mouthfuls."

Sam cast his mind back and though he could remember the last time he ate, he didn't know how long ago that had been. He shrugged.

Jodie sighed. "I thought as much. Okay, so here's the problem." She sat down on Sam's newly changed bed and patted the space next to her, waiting for Sam to situate himself too.

Once he was sat down, she explained. "You're a vampire. Or at least, you're half vampire."

Sam nodded, he was with her so far.

"Which means you feed on blood. Which I'm sure seems perfectly normal to you but to us, it's not. In fact, most people here would be repulsed by the very idea so finding willing donors is going to be difficult."

Willing donors? The idea both disgusted and comforted Sam. Jodie really must care for him at least to some degree if she was thinking about this.

But blood wasn't what he wanted. It was never what he wanted.

"No," Sam interrupted. "I don't need donors."

Jodie frowned slightly. "What do you mean?"

Taking a deep breath, Sam prepared himself to release another closely guarded secret. He had confessed so many of them already. He had even told everyone he was a half-blood. What was one more truth?

"I don't need blood. Normal food works just as well…and it tastes better too."

"Are you serious? You really don't need…" A small smile worked its way onto Jodie's face. "That makes breakfast so much easier."

Sam wanted to make it even easier for her. "I like apples," he suggested, before recalling his last solid meal. "And granola bars."

Jodie chuckled. "As glad as I am to hear it, that won't be what you're getting." Jodie stood and made her way over to the door. "You haven't eaten properly for a long time so I doubt your stomach could handle something like that at the moment. I'll fetch you some porridge for now. How does that sound?"

"Porridge?" Sam asked. He had never heard that word before. It must have been another unknown human meal.

"You've never had porridge before?"

"No."

Jodie gave him a grin. "Well, considering you have such a fondness for granola bars, I think you're going to love it."