CHAPTER EIGHT
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."
~Frederick Nietzsche
xxxxXxxxx
Cedar Rapids, Michigan
2010.
The alleyway was like countless others: dirty, rat infested, and smelled like stale beer and piss. A drizzle of rain painted abstract paintings on the crumbled surface of the road. A tall figure leaned against the brick wall of a bar that had seen better days since its last health inspection, but was still lively and loud even through the bricks that hid it away. The man had hands deep in his pocket, his breath making a smoke signal into the air.
The alley was narrow, and the sound of a half dying motor reverberated around the brick, creating a tunnel kind of echo that pulled the man away from the wall and over to a dark Dodge Charger that sat under the bar's neon sign with the arrow pointing towards the Charger's roof.
Sam Winchester leaned against the trunk of the car watching the van, painted a rusty white as it crawled like a bug into the narrow space, finally dying a complete death a foot away from the car. Sam stood up to his full height, removing his hands from his pockets, his right hand now around a silver handgun.
Two men exited the van, the sound of the doors slammed shut. The driver's heavy work boots splashed through the puddle on the road.
Both men wore navy blue mechanics jumpsuits, and as they neared Sam he could see the caked black ring of grime under their nails. At least the mechanics uniforms weren't completely bogus things.
The driver eyed Sam like he hadn't decided whether to talk to him or simply kill him outright. The second man gripped a dirty crowbar loosely in his hand and stared at the gun in Sam's hand like it was a toy compared to the metal he grasped.
"Why'd you call us?" The driver snapped in a voice that would make a mockery of sandpaper. "Your little vampire bitch almost killed two of our best guys!"
"If your guys were really the best they would have done their jobs right and wouldn't have been Vamp chow," Sam stated this it like it's a clinical fact, his eyes drew a bead on the crowbar as its raised in the air, countering by raising his gun."We can keep this professional gentlemen, or I can blow your heads off right now, your choice."
The driver of the van stared at Sam with eyes that were too small for his head, and anger that was too large for his body. "What the fuck kindz business has someone with nothing to offer?"
Sam laughed dryly, wetting his tongue with a quick motion. He leant away from his Charger and opened the door to the backseat. He ducked inside and came back out pulling out a girl, seven-years-old with dark brown hair braided down her back. She wore black t-shirt and jeans that both looked brand new and, held onto a white stuffed polar bear, a pink backpack on her back.
"Where are we?" the girl clutched the bear tighter to herself and stared with wide eyes at the men in front of her then to Sam. "You said you were taking me to my Aunt Jenny's-"
Sam knelt down next to the girl, lowering the gun. "Marissa, your parents were killed, remember?" he spoke softly, watching her nod, tears welled in her eyes. "You remember how they died?"
"You said it was vampires," Marissa said the words around a choked sob like she couldn't understand what she was saying.
"That's right," Sam returned, still in that soft voice. "Vampires, are ruthless monsters who kill people and drink all the blood in their bodies." He had to stop as Marissa mewled out a sob and clutched her bear closer to her. "I wasn't able to stop them before your mom and dad were torn apart, but I'm going to find those monsters and kill them, alright?" Marissa nodded, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "But I need your help, can you help me?"
Marissa sniffed and wiped more at her eyes, and nodded. "Okay."
Sam cocked his head towards her. "You're going to go with these men-"
The men behind her stood up straighter, and Marissa's eyes grew wide and scared.
"They're going to help us kill all the vampires, so they can't hurt anyone else."
Marissa shook her head more frantically. "No I want to go to my Aunt Jenny's!"
"This is for the best Marissa okay?" Sam took her bear from her and unzipped her backpack, closing it and around the toy animal, adjusting the pink straps on her shoulders, for all the world like he was a father about to send his child off to school in the morning. "We all have to do what we can to keep the vampires away."
"No!" Marissa ran at Sam and threw her small arms around him. Sam untangled the child's arms from his jacket and took her by the arm pulling her over to the driver who grabbed her forcefully and picked her up by the waist. "No please! I don't want to go!"
Marissa began to scream and cried louder, but the sounds of the bar behind the bricks and alleyway was louder than her, and the alleyway itself was narrow and half deserted. So no one heard the girl's screams except the three who already knew about them.
The driver pulled the girl to the van, her high pitched screams echoed off the bricks of the alleyway.
The second man reached into the pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a wad of money.
Sam took it with no hesitation. He had first refused on the grounds that he considered himself too above the street crowd to take bribes. But he needed untraceable cash when he hunted, so he started taking it; he hadn't told Samuel because it wasn't the old man's business.
The wad of folded twenties went into Sam's pocket and there was a struggling screaming sound as Marissa screamed erupted even louder, clawing at the back of the van's opened back hatch door.
"Please! Don't make me go Agent Jennings! Please!" Marissa was shoved into the van, her screams died out with the hard closing of the doors.
"We're done here." Sam told the man.
"Until the next time Agent," the man returned walking back to his van, 150 dollars lighter, but his van one person heavier.
Sam waited until the van backed out the narrow alleyway before he climbed back into his Charger and gunned the V8 engine, not looking back at the van once as he drove away.
xxxxXxxx
'Lydia's' and 'Tyler's' head laid with on the rot that lined the forest floor with opened, fang barred mouths. Their eyes had glazed over opaque, frozen in the rage that had caused their violent ends.
Elena stood beside Stefan whose skin had gone from third degree raw hamburger patty red to angry sunburn red in the span of a few minutes. The vampire's clothes still smoked, and the air smelled badly of burnt flesh, but he batted at the third degree burns like they were a minor inconvenience.
He looked over to Sam then Dean. "Why'd you help me?" His question wasn't stunned gratefulness; it was a demand to know.
"Because vampire or not, you haven't given us a real reason not to," Sam returned. His eyes turned away from the looks of Stefan and Elena and landed before they could be stopped, onto his brother.
Dean's look was a scraped raw moment of emotion that Sam couldn't handle so he looked out over tree line until he managed to find the sliver of the road they had been forced to abandon after they had been ascended on by the Alpha Vamp, Darius, whoever the hell he was.
"Was he lying about how far it was?" Sam asked of Stefan.
Stefan only took a few seconds before responding, despite being half burned alive. "No. I haven't been back here in almost 150 years, but it looks like the same place; there used to be a carriage path, down there," Stefan gestured to the speck of road that was visible from the thicket of trees.
Dean glanced down where Sam was looking and where Stefan was pointing. "That looks about a quarter of a mile away, with your calculated two that makes almost three miles we're got left to cover on foot." Dean broke off at Stefan's grunt of pain. "And since I'm guessing that you're not exactly up to warp Vamp speed yet it's going to take a while."
"He needs blood," Elena set her hands on Stefan's shoulders.
"So tap open one of your unkillable veins," Dean returned to her.
"Human blood works better than vampire blood," Elena returned like it was a fact that all Vampires learned when they turned.
"Evolve and make due," Dean said. "I'm not sticking a spile into my blood bank just because I decided to save your life."
"Fine I'll do it," Sam drew out the switchblade hidden his boot. 'Darius' and the other vampires had been through about frisking both him and Dean for weapons they had missed a few, including the extra machetes Sam and Dean had strapped under their jeans, which had cost them their lives.
Dean turned to him in total, shock. "What the hell Sam-?" He grabbed the blade Sam had raised to his wrist, jerking it away.
"Stefan knows how to get there," Sam returned. "And if he's dead he won't be able to show us," Sam raised the blade again.
"It's not his death that I care about Sam," Dean barked. "Look I get it, this is about what you did back in 09, but a few dick moves a lifetime ago doesn't constitute you splitting open your veins for vampires-"
"No, you don't get it, Dean!" Sam's yell reverberated over the trees. "That's the problem!" He drew in a hard breath, breathing in the scent of vampire blood and his own. "You don't get anything about me!" Sam raised the knife again before Dean could counter with physicality and slit the blade into a thick line of leaking blood across his skin. He squeezed his fist tightly, keeping it closed as he stepped over to Stefan and Elena. When he opened his hand a small lake of dark crimson sat on his palm.
Dean stepped forward with all the calm of a charging bull, but he didn't make a move to stop Sam. Instead he raised his machete and set the blade high over Stefan's neck. "I saved your life once, but if you over indulge, I'm going to rescind my offer."
Stefan stared at the blood on Sam's hand with harsh pants, like a starving beggar who had a heel of bread placed in front of him. There came a crackling sound like paper crumpling, and dark blood drew upwards in the veins under Stefan eyes. Fangs detracted from his teeth and he bit into Sam's palm.
It was like being stabbed simultaneously by two ice picks. Sam felt and saw the blood rush up out of his palm, his hand began to spasm.
All the while this was going on, Dean had his machete kissing the side of Stefan's neck like a guillotine blade.
Ten seconds past, 15, Sam's hand began to curl in on itself like a claw, the pain traveling hotly up his arm. Sam couldn't keep the pain of it all off his face anymore.
Dean noticed it in a second, all the fibers of his body that went against this damn deal in the first place tightened his fingers around the handle of his machete.
A second later the blade moved, back as Stefan pulled his fangs out of Sam's skin.
Sam's felt his fingers uncurl like they were spring loaded. It felt like someone had pulled all the bones in his hand back into place all at once after a were now a set of jagged bleeding puncture marks, like eyes above the cut Sam had made. Blood still puddled freely onto his skin.
Stefan's face dripped with blood like a hideous goatee, but he kept his distance from Sam.
"You're right Sammy," Dean rumbled in a low voice as he pulled a worn red bandana from his jeans pocket. "I don't get you-" He wrapped it around Sam's palm before Sam could counter for him not too.
For a moment the trees around them became the clapboard of a weather worn church half eaten by dirt and rot. There was a demon tied to a chair, and the smell of blood.
Dean tied the knot hard above Sam's hand making him wince, drawing away what had been to what was. "But did you ever think that maybe I used to?" Dean released Sam's hand back in silence.
"Stefan," Elena looked at the other vampire, who despite having drunk however much volume he had managed to extract from Sam, didn't look revitalized. "That's not enough," Elena's voice was insistent. "You need more-"
"No," Stefan panted the word out, still eying the blood on Sam's hand, still not making a move towards it, but watching it like he wanted to. "If I keep going I'm not going to stop-" He wiped the blood off his face with his leather jack sleeve the hem of the fabric crumbled to powder from the movement. The crackling sound came again as the vampire's fangs retracted back into his mouth. He raised his dark eyes over to Sam.
Dean shrugged a look at Stefan. "Works for me," It wasn't that he didn't give a crap about the humanity that was obviously still clinging around the vampire like a vine on a brick wall. But even with as much, what could only be described as 'grudging respect' Dean was now feeling for Stefan, out in the woods with two severed vampire heads and the smell of blood and acrid smoke wasn't the place to get all touchy feely. "Alright, you're topped off we need to go."
"Thank you," the words were a messy breath, but they were heard.
Sam blinked up from the bandana, to the line that had blurred in the sand between him and Stefan from the vampire's words. His throat felt like he had swallowed a mouthful of thorns. "Dean's right, we need to move- you know the way-" Sam looked to the vampire who had thanked him for saving his life by ripping away a little of his. "So you're out in front."
"Sammy you're on point with him-Elena stays back with me," Dean lowered his machete to the ground but didn't put it away completely. "We're doing human speed, understand? Just because we're all quasi-friends now doesn't mean I trust either of you out that far ahead."
Sam was now standing on an outcropping of stones that had become slick with a neon green lichen moss from the constant rains that had fallen over the area in the past few months. This put him about a foot away from where Dean stood on a downslope of brown leaves and about two feet away from Stefan and Elena. What could've been a moment where both vampires attacked or killed Sam and Dean, turned into neither as Stefan hiked the small numbered distance over to him. Even at a regular human pace his speed was slower, Sam that he could hear the broken bones in Stefan's legs grinding against each other with every step.
Sam saw Elena shoot a glance upwards to Stefan and him return hers in the same silence, whatever connection they had meet in the open air before Stefan took the first step and the rest of them followed.
xxxxXxxx
The speck of road that had revealed itself in the trees seemed to elude them. Every time it appeared like they were getting closer to it, another set of trees seemed to grow in their way, or another boulder emerged in the path they were trying to break.
Sam kept step pace behind Stefan all the time, though it wasn't hard given Stefan's slowness. As the minutes wore on the grinding sound seemed to lessen, and his walking became more under his control. Sam knew he could've easily bolted. He'd been around enough vampires to know the quickness of their agility. But Stefan just continued to walk, like this was the only speed he knew.
The dried blood on Sam's jeans were now the only outward sign that he had been shot at all. The blood that Katherine had force fed him had healed the bullet wound completely. Sam was glad have full functional use of his leg again, but he would have preferred a half cauterized, painful bullet wound versus a mouthful of vampire blood in his body.
Sam turned to Stefan. "What happened to Katherine?"
It would had been idle chit chat conversation, were Stefan not a vampire, were Sam a hunter, and were they both not walking towards something that was most likely a huge trap.
"She probably bolted during all the commotion. I've known Katherine for 147 years," Stefan returned, keeping his eyes to the path he was creating. "Looking out for herself has always been her number one priority," Stefan stole a glance down to Sam's pant leg, the veins in his face remaining flat this time at the sight of blood. "She fed you Elena's blood didn't see?"
"How about we not talk about this?" Sam snapped, still tasting the coppery taste of Elena's blood on his tongue.
"You know that's how my brother and I turned," Stefan went on in spite of Sam's warning. "Katherine fed us her blood- but the town wasn't exactly partial to vampires back then, so when our father found us trying to help her escape Mystic Falls he shot us both-"
The snap of Stefan's boot on a branch coincided with the flickered look that Sam cast over to him after he had just revealed that his own father killed him.
"-when we woke up we were vampires. It's not like we asked for this-"
Father back, though not by much, came an echo of the same conversation.
"-You kill people sweetheart," Dean interrupted Elena Gilbert's 'Give Vampire's a Chance' lecture as he walked behind his brother and Stefan.
"And how many people have you and your brother killed?" Elena's brown ankle boots were ill equipped to be hiking in the woods, but she acted like she didn't care.
"We kill monsters, alright?" Dean snapped. "Not people."
"I used to be a person too Dean-"
"Used to be," Dean returned. "You can try to play the part of a regular girl all you want, but at the end of the day, it's not who you really are."
"I was driven off the road and drowned with vampire blood in my body-" Elena countered, she looked ahead and caught the sight of Stefan's back. "Stefan and Damon were both tricked by Katherine and turned into vampires when their father killed them. We didn't asked for this," Elena stopped for a fraction of a moment, and stared at him. "If I hadn't become a vampire my brother Jeremy would've been all alone, I couldn't do that to him, we're all we have left of our family. How does any of that that make me a monster?"
Dean watched her back not able to tell her anything before the roadside finally erupted just past two pale beech tree trunks that were as thick as a telephone pole.
Up ahead Stefan stumbled, a full on ungraceful, pitch towards the ground
Sam yanked Stefan up by the crook of his elbow before his hunter logic could counter. "You okay?"
Stefan braced an arm against the tree like he wanted to hug it. He grunted a bracing for a second. "The breaks take longer to mend if I'm walking on them."
By this time Elena and Dean had caught up with them and Elena immediately ran over to Stefan and set a hand on his arm, her face awash in concern for her friend.
"Why are you really helping us?" Stefan turned to Sam.
"Because Darius was telling the truth," Sam never expected he'd be telling a story to two vampires as well as Dean in air that smelled like rot and blood, one that he didn't want to tell at all. "I first met Katherine when I handed her over to the Augustine's. I didn't know that the Alpha Vamp was running the show, but I knew about the Project, it was story circulated in the Hunters circle I was with."
None of the looks given to Sam was as piercing as Dean's.
"The Augustine's whole agenda was to eradicate vampires, but they were burning through them before their experiments could find the solution."
"What do you mean solution?" Dean returned.
"They wanted a way to kill vampires without having to keep doing it themselves." Sam took a hard breath, the forest betrayed him by not taking the same pause, not allowing him a moment for the earth to shatter. The chirping birds, the breeze, they still continued on, forcing Sam to continue on with them. "But, they needed fresh supplies, so I gave them to them-"
Dean's eyes were hard set on him, not angry or hateful, not anything but a blank look like he was reserving a space for later emotion that would eventually catch up to him.
"I didn't even flinch when they said they needed kids, because of their virility. My Logic-" Sam huffed a quick laugh as he said 'logic' with a capital inflection to try and describe away what he had done when he hadn't been attached to his soul. "-about what I was doing at the time was justified to me. Using people as bait to track the Augustine's location. And even if I didn't find the location in time to save those kids, eradicating vampires wasn't something to waste sleep over." Sam shrugged like he wanted to shrugged away the tick, the corroding acid like feeling that came with the memories he buried in the same place he buried the fire and blood memories of the 180 years of torture with Lucifer in the Cage. "One of them never stopped screaming the entire time they dragged her away-"
Dean showed Sam more courtesy than the forest, and gave the revelation the sharp, clarifying pause. "Sam-"
Sam snapped his head to his brother like it had been jerked off scene by a marionette string. He didn't say anything, not because he couldn't find any words to say, but because he found hundreds of words to say, but even if all those hundreds escaped him all at once, it wouldn't change a damn thing. "We need to move before we lose the light," Sam said this to everyone he stood in front of, but the only gaze he saw was Dean's as he stepped down the path, the forest resembling the footpath he traveled in his mind to meet Death months ago.
Reality and dream broke into dust on the first step Sam's boot made on the hard asphalt. There was a harsh wind on his left side when he turned Stefan had moved a handful of paces ahead of him, but no more than that, observing the land like it was answering his questions. He turned back to face the other way.
"Stefan, what is it?" Elena could apparently sense something in his gaze that went beyond the surface color of his green eyes.
"It's close," Stefan's face was turned to the wind like he was a dog that had caught the scent of something.
"How close?" Dean's machete hung loose in his hand, but his grip on the handle remained tight, and he raised the blade after what Stefan said, watching the road with the calculating eye of someone knew that such things didn't remain silent for very long.
"A mile or so," Stefan twisted up to a twisted oak tree that looked much older than the other trees that surrounded it, a triple thing with branches larger than most tree trunks, gnarled like an old washerwoman's knuckles. Stefan rested his finger on a circled groove no bigger and no wider than the tip of his thumb. "There used to be sign posts here, pointing towards Parkesburg."
Sam had been observing people his entire life, his father, Dean, watching their mannerisms, with Dean learning to imitate the brother he considered very much a superhero when he was still a kid. And his senses were now honed enough to see the way Stefan's hand lingered on the tree like it was alive in the way that people were alive.
"What?"
The look on Stefan's face went almost whimsical, peeling away the vampire mask for just a second. Sam's boots crunched and snapped the twigs beneath his feet until he was behind the Stefan and saw something that wasn't noticeable until he was right up to it.
There were scratchings in the tree trunk, deliberate ones most likely made with a knife. Letters. 'D.S.S.' The scratches were faint and almost worn smooth from the bark that had grown over it, in what Sam suspected was a century that had passed since it was first carved.
"Damon and I, we broke down here once, in our Father's carriage. He carved this with the knife he got for his birthday, while we waited for the wheel to be mended-" Stefan moved his hand like a slight movement would erase the scratches completely like pencil marks as well as the memories that came with it. But his eyes lingered on it just a moment longer before he pulled away. "He never got to finish it."
Dean saw the barely there carvings done most likely over a hundred years ago, and he can feel the knife in his hands, scratching his initials beside Sam's by the rear window of the Impala. On those nights in the hospital after the Third Trial, Dean would sometimes sit in the Impala and run his hands over those initials. And each time he touched them he had some insane hope that just maybe the part of Sam that still was alive in those words would give his brother strength to come back alive for real.
"Back there," Dean eyed Elena, then Stefan, not a sizing look, one that bore its own statement. "I didn't mean half of the crap I said. I was playing my role to get it out of you both about what the hell was going on. But if you're really legitimate about this," Dean glanced up to the carved initials in the tree. "Then I'll be legitimate and say we're not pulling any tricks in helping you-" For Dean to say those words, it wasn't something he gave lightly. "You and her want to take things south afterwards, you better be prepared to deal with the consequences. But I know a thing or two about family, so right now," his eyes shifted to Stefan. "I'm helping you find your brother."
The forest held its breath again, for a moment, before Dean walked off in a path that he didn't know, leaving his brother, and two vampires to follow him.
xxxxxXxxxx
The road started out smooth, like glass, or as smooth as asphalt could be in relation to glass. But the further on they walked it began to show its age like a child walking along their own timeline. Dean kept up the lead for about a quarter of a mile before Stefan drew his pace faster to match, then overtook him, leading the way down the crumbling asphalt.
Pot holes as big as Sam's feet began to emerge at random places, weeds choked the pieces of road that were still viable making the path cumbersome to walk with especially if you were carrying weapons. At one point Sam slipped up enough in his footing that his machete was sent dropping to the roadside with a thundered clang. The blade made a slice of a noise before Sam could reach for it.
Elena rose up from a crouch and handed it to him by the hilt, the blood of dead vampires staining the curved blade.
The silence that followed was thick, both sides that the blade divided comprehending the gesture.
Sam grabbed the handle of his machete, ghosting over Elena's fingertips in the movement. "Thanks."
"You saved Stefan's life with this," She watched him with eyes that were older than her age would ever be able to reach. "Whatever else you may have done with it, that's all I need to know."
She stepped past him, her boots breaking up bits of the road. She stopped so suddenly a moment later that Sam nearly collided with her. Stefan had stopped a foot in front of her and she had nearly collided with him.
Raising his head Sam could see why.
The road stretched and grew wider winding down a sloped hill until it melted into a town that spread out over the landscape like a blooming flower. Bricked buildings shaded by tall green oak and walnut trees were intermixed with three story tall white clapboard structures, some topped with the peaked spires and crosses of churches. A brown lake emerged like a stain, bordering the left side of the town. The entire landscape was bathed in the honey gold light of the approaching evening position of the sun.
Dean stood next to Stefan and surveyed the landscape, even with the sparse amount of time he'd spent in Mystic Falls, the similarities of Parkesburg to it were very noticeable. Even from this far away he could make out a central town square, a tall building with a domed roof that looked like a government building and a center of shops circled around it.
But what caught Dean's attention, was what had most likely stopped them in the first place. Gauging the distance to be about a half a mile out from the town he saw the pale brown colors of a field spread over the land like a checkerboard. And at the very end of the horizon that Dean could view, a white spec sat like a fallen star. Dean hadn't paid a whole lot of attention in school outside of wood and metal shop, nor was he some vamp who knew the town when it was built, but he still knew about the plantation houses that existed in Virginia. Most of them were now nothing but giant historical tourist traps, places for people to dress in bad period costumes and sell cheap wooden replicas of civil war cannons. No one would suspect a vampire killing floor to be in so obvious of a place.
Which made it the ideal location for such a place to exist.
The part road where they stood was set at a high vantage which gave them almost a view of the entire town. The tree line was thick enough behind them, and the town low enough in elevation that the chances of being seen were minimal. But even with these factors, Dean felt too exposed. First rule of Hunting: never announce yourself to your target if you weren't sure where that target was.
"Alright," Dean turned to Stefan. "So what's your game plan? Cause Alpha Vamp, or Darius, whatever the hell that son-of-a-bitch calls himself these days, is sanctimonious not stupid, those hills down there are gonna to have eyes."
"What about the tunnels?" Sam asked. "This used to be a hub for the Underground Railroad; some of them connected to plantation houses."
"The closet access point is at the east edge of town," Stefan stared over the town like a surveyor until his eyes fell where Dean's did, to the white building far off at the end of a whole lot of nothing. "Darius already knows we're coming, trying to hide now is just going to waste time."
"So what do we do?" Elena directed her question at Stefan.
"We go in," What Sam was saying held no inflection of a grand speech like Braveheart, it wasn't a warrior's call to battle. It was echoless words on a crumbled roadside as he stared down at a town where he had sent dozens of innocent kids to be turned into vampires.
"He's right," Dean cut in, seeing the look Sam gave him that he knew his brother was doing despite himself. Some things simply became ingrained overtime. "Our best bet is to go towards the tunnel, use it to get to Scarlet O'Hara's harem. Two vampires, and two hunters should be enough to even the odds for a while."
"But what if it's not?"
Dean had known Elena Gilbert for barely a day, half of which he spent debating whether or not to kill her. But he now knew her long enough to know that her innate sense to question everything was always the first thing that came out of her.
"Sam and I are going down there with or without you," Dean responded. "After what that son-of-a-bitch Alpha Vamp pulled I'm not letting him live. If you want to save your boyfriend, you're going to have to stow the internal battles for another time, you understand?"
"The tunnels used to start behind the old livery," Stefan had his phone out, and was flipping through screens, making Dean wonder for half a second what he was doing, until he saw a black and white map image. "Latest web feed of the town says it's still standing."
"I could've done without the ad for Motorola, but it works for me," Dean agreed. "Let's go."
They descended the roadside moving with the crest of the hill until they were able to abandon the road for the sidewalk that erupted from the right side of it like a clinging vine. The buildings and landscape encased themselves around them the further they traveled into Parkesburg
People populated the street: families with young children, touristy couples in their souvenir wear, camera phones out, snapping pictures of them smiling in front of a large wooden signpost behind an old gray bricked building.
The irony of the happiness of a town that did secret, torturous experiments hung prominently by a wooden sign:
Welcome to Parkesburg
Everything that's great about the country!
An open face carriage drawn by a cream colored horse with black blinders moved slowly past a red sports car like it was part of the traffic. The sun had begun to lower into night half misting the edges of the horizon in faded orange and inky blue black. Streetlamps switched on, outlining the town in blinking white. The air smelled like hot coffee and fresh pastries from the cafes.
The two hunters and two vampires were like rocks in the middle of this constant stream of activity. Somewhere in the distance a child laughed, a camera phone went off, a group of teenagers stumbled out drunk from behind a bar with an outdoor porch brightly lit with orange light.
"So where is it?" Dean moved past a blonde after she bumped into him with an 'excuse me' before she gave him a long, appreciative eye roam over her shoulder.
Stefan scanned over the crowd that moved in and between them. "Should be east."
"'Should be' isn't a direction-" Dean returned with growling impatience because they were blatantly out in the crowd for everyone to notice them, including the undead.
"I haven't been here in 157 years, geography tends to change every century or so." Stefan had barely been snarky, his voice kept having an edge of pain to it because of obvious reasons. But he didn't hold himself back this time.
"So all that map questing was for nothing?" Dean snapped back, but then he saw an opportunity walk past, a brunette with a dazzling smile. She looked like a local, dressed in a warm sweater coat and jeans, brown leather messenger bag hung over her shoulder. "Scuse me sweetheart-!" Dean waved at her.
The woman stopped and turned to him with dark blue eyes half hidden in the shadowed artificial light of the streetlamps overhead. She went from looking annoyed to looking pleased at the sight of him. "Hi."
"Hey there," Dean flashed her a smile that she returned eagerly. "You wouldn't happen to know where the old Livery in town? My brother and his friends are doing a paper on local town lore for their college history class-"
The woman looked from Elena to Stefan and then to Sam, and her eyes did a double take when she stopped on Sam, like Dean's lie fell apart there. "Aren't you a little old to be a college freshman?"
"My girlfriend was killed the first time I started college, it offset things," Sam weaved the truth into the lie that Dean had started.
The woman's eyes went from questioning Sam to a wide eyed apologetic shock for her judgment. "I'm sorry-"
"Like I said it was a while ago," Sam said quickly; he didn't want to keep picking at the wound of Jess. The pain of her death had dulled under the crushing weight of the other pains of his life, but it had never died. "If it's not too much trouble, we actually from out of town and it's a long drive back."
"Yeah, of course," the woman melted, as all women did whenever Sam enforced his docile look on them. "The livery's back there," she gestured behind her to a long sidewalk that bordered the road. "Just go straight down Avenue E and make a right at the third traffic light, that's 52nd Street; follow that and when you smell all the horses, you made it."
"Great, thanks." Sam returned, watching as she gave him one more sympathetic smile before she walked past him. "Shut up," Sam words were hard to what he could hear Dean was about to say, passing a glance over his brother and to turn to Stefan and Elena. "The crowd's big, too many places to hide vamps, we need to get going."
"Sam-"
"I told you I don't want to hear it Dean." Sam cut Dean off.
"And I'm telling you hold on!" Dean gripped the inside of Sam's elbow and halted his movements, the way Sam had done for him before when they were still in the forest. A group of tourists passed them, glancing back at the hostile sound of Dean's voice.
Dean kept a hold of Sam's arm and pushed him two steps back against a store front of pastries. "Listen man," Dean lowered his voice, looking back to the crowd to ensure that they were being ignored, then towards Stefan and Elena who had become invested enough in the both of them that they couldn't ignore what was happening. "You don't have to hear it but you need to understand it. Katherine shoving vampire blood in you, using Jess as a cover story- You're spiraling Sam, and you need to get it together before it gets you killed-"
"Why; because you're trying protect me? Or because you can't be alone?" All the things that Sam still managed to hold back from Dean, even with everything he managed to tell Dean spilled out in the din of passing tourists, and two vampires.
"Because it's stupid, Sam," Dean hissed, shooting a death glare to the man who stared at him for interrupting the cellphone call he was on. The man's glare grew louder until Dean flashed a bright silver end of his gun and the man scurried off. "You believe what you want about me, but you're not stupid enough to get yourself killed like this, I know that."
The streetlight above them drew long shadows across the sidewalk, and it glared shadow into the expression Sam had on his face; he pushed away from Dean and continued down the din of people.
The walk to the livery hadn't been given in a measurable distance by the blonde who had wanted to pity fuck Sam. But after following her directions they walked three blocks down Avenue E turning right at the third traffic light that marked 52nd Street. Across a puddle of black road, stood a bricked building with a slanted tin roof; another guilt lettered sign hung at the front of a line of tourists, still out in drones even though it was nearly dark outside. The line of people wound by a stable where a group of horses were corralled next to black carriages like the ones that were being pulled on the roadway. Two workers were viewable in the stable: one of them shoveling manure into a wheelbarrow and the other petting the neck of a dark brown mare and answering a woman and eager child's questions with a warm smile.
One that didn't match the face of one of the vampires that had led Dean through the woods and stripped him of his weapons. He glanced across the door to the entrance of the livery where the second vampire from the woods led the unsuspecting woman and girl into the livery.
"Damnit," Dean swore audibly at the presence of the two vampires. Which meant that the place was warranted enough to be guarded, which also meant that the others couldn't be far behind. "Two vamps out in front, guarantee there's more where that came from; we're going to need a distraction."
Stefan glanced left and right like he hadn't heard Dean, then crossed the roadway directly into oncoming traffic. Cars slammed on their breaks, but a gray Volvo didn't have time to stop before it hit him on an impact that sent him up and over the back of the car and hard onto the road.
People screamed, climbing out of their cars in shock.
Elena, pushed her way through the cars and the crowd to where Stefan was on the ground on his back.
The driver of the Volvo ran out into the road by the time Elena reached Stefan, falling on her knees.
More people in the crowded streets began to turn to the accident, including the people and the vampires at the stable.
The man's wife was out of the passenger side of the car, and looked on horrified. "Oh god!-"
"He just ran out into the road!" The man yelled like it would explain it away.
"I'm calling an ambulance!" The woman yanked a black cell phone from her purse and dialed frantically, looking down to Elena. "Honey is he breathing?"
Elena played her part and shook her head frantically, face white with shock. "I don't know!"
The entire time this was going on, Dean and Sam had hung back and watched it happen. They both saw the way Stefan walked right into the path of the oncoming car, it wasn't an accident, or suicidal, it was him giving them their distraction.
Dean moved past the stragglers as they filtered into the people who had formed a circle around Stefan and Elena, Sam following close behind him, pushing past the remaining onlookers who were just there to gawk. They moved across the street like this until they were at the start of a dirt path, only ten feet away from the Livery. A dark brown quarter horse watched them with wide eyes and shook its head in a quiet whinny.
Dean turned to the animal and put a finger to his lips like was quieting a child, the horse was having none of it and whinnied louder. The livery stable stood empty now except for the horses, the vampires and people were no longer there.
Sam watched the commotion behind him. He had little knowledge about vampire compulsion, but from what Katherine had bragged about, he suspected it only worked on one person at a time. There was no way Stefan and Elena could compel the half a dozen people around them to just let them walk off without resorting to something that would expose them as not human.
"We gotta get them out of there," Sam said.
"I know-"
"They led us this far, vamps or not-"
"I know, Sam-" Dean retorted again, staring at Sam then across the street at the crowd and the accident. "Follow my lead." He removed his gun from his jacket then walked back across the road.
"Hey!" Dean's voice thundered and boomed and demanded attention, which it got from the crowd behind him. He raised his gun in a two handed aim, the crowd screamed, "Federal Agent, move aside!"
"Back up!" Sam's barking voice picked up behind him, waving his fake FBI badge into the crowd, Taurus out, he pushed through the crowd and to where Stefan was writhing on the ground, his shoulder thrown over his body in a crooked, unnatural angle. After seeing him walk on two broken legs, and survive being half burned alive, Sam knew that the vampire was faking it for the crowd. He shoved Elena away and grabbed Stefan by a hard jerk to his uninjured arm.
"What are you doing?" Elena's voice betrayed actual shock, like she believed Sam to be finally breaking their deal. But Sam had done this on purpose. Actual emotions to a situation would always be superior above even the best acting abilities to fake them.
"I didn't ask you to talk!" Sam barked at her.
"Your boyfriend violated his parole in five states sweetheart-" Dean pulled Elena up off the ground at the same at the same time Sam placed his knee on Stefan's back, gun aimed at the center of his chest; hearing him groan in pain.
Dean knelt down and stared hard at Stefan, jerking him up by his hair. And it was testament to how much Stefan was willing to trust Dean because he let him. "You shouldn't have run pal!" He slammed his head back down, and dug out a pair of handcuffs, manacling them to his writs.
Elena's face contoured into fear and hurt. "You're hurting him!"
A skinny teen with black hair held an iPhone up only a foot away from Sam, camera recording everything.
"Shut off the phone!" Sam barked.
"No way Pig!" The kid's voice was as skinny as the rest of him, high pitched even when threatening. "This is Police Brutality! I'm YouTubing this shit-"
Sam shifted his gun to one hand and snatched iPhone from the kid slamming it apart on the pavement.
"You can' do this!" The wife of the driver of the Volvo shouted to Dean, her gaze hostile. "The boy is hurt, he needs a hospital!"
"Ma'am, this is official FBI business, I suggest you stay out of it before I have you arrested for obstruction!" "And you," Dean looked to Elena. "Aiding and abetting?" He glanced over at Stefan like he was a piece of discarded trash. "Hope he's worth the congecial visits." Dean sneered at Elena, and her resulting angered look and the way she began to thrash against him even harder was a clear indication that she had started to play along. Dean looked to Sam "Get him out of here-" He then cast his glance over to the gathering crowd. "Show's over!"
Sam grabbed at Stefan's wrist and hauled him up to his feet. "Back up!"' Sam yelled to the crowd that kept pressing themselves in. He flashed his badge at them again to get them to disperse. The families did, the mom's with little kids in strollers, yanking them by their arms to keep them away from the weapons. The handful of teenagers and gawking adults didn't heed the warning, camera phones out. Sam waved his gun at them for emphasis. "I said back up!" He yanked another smartphone away from another teen in a gray converse shirt and the other people who had cameras out finally took it as a cue and scattered like frightened geese.
Sam shoved Stefan through the thinning crowd.
"You can't send me back there!" Stefan struggled in the cuffs, doing a good impression of a terrified kid about to be sent to prison. "I ran because I was innocent!"
"You better shut up, you understand me?!" Sam barked at Stefan, pushing him harder, hearing as Elena screamed obscenities at him and Dean who led her away by her arm.
"Stop hurting him!"
They pushed the vampires through the crowd like this until they neared an empty unmarked white car parallel parked against the sidewalk. Dean slid his lock pick kit out of his sleeve and popped the lock open on the driver's side. He then opened the back seat and Sam shoved Stefan inside harshly and slammed the door, Dean doing the same to Elena on the other side.
Dean climbed into the driver's seat, and hot-wired the car while Sam kept an eye on the crowd.
The white Lincoln roared to life and Dean pulled it off the curb and down the street. A set of wooden rosary beads complete with a large crucifix hung on the rearview mirror and the car stereo blasted out the song in the old tape deck:
"When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul-"
In the backseat Elena broke the cuffs off of Stefan's wrists. She gripped his dislocated shoulder and jerked it back into alignment with a quick, fast movement. Stefan grunted a scream, and drew his hand tight to his body.
"It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well with my soul. "
Dean ripped the tape out of the deck mid old time religion and flung it out the window.
"Are you okay?" Elena's words were a breathy whisper, her hands moving from Stefan's shoulder to his neck.
Stefan grunted one last time, head dropping back against the stolen car. "I'll heal faster this time."
Elena's face contorted. "Why are you doing this?" This time her anger was directed at Stefan.
"I have to find Damon." Stefan's words were said through staccato breaths.
"How? By getting yourself killed?" Elena's hands hovered in, like she didn't know whether she was going to comfort Stefan or strangle him.
"He's my brother Elena," Stefan grunted again and flexed his hand which had been pale as bone earlier, but started to flood back with a tanned color like paint bleeding in a canvas. "I didn't come for him before-"
"He wouldn't want to be saved if it meant it killed you Stefan!"
"Hey!" Dean snapped his head around to them with this bellowing roar. "We don't have time for your Sid and Nancy shit understand?"
Stefan stared at Dean but didn't answer, turning his gaze moment later out the window. Dean drove in the stolen car a short distance, turning onto a side street that hugged the stables of the livery.
Another horse, the color of a Hershey bar watched Dean from its corral as he pulled the car into a driveway made of hard packed dirt. There was no place nearby that would successfully conceal a giant Lincoln Town car, so Dean didn't bother wasting any time with trying. He threw the car into park and turned his eyes out the window to the crowd that was dispersing, but slowly, the trauma that had just happened to them wanting to keep them grouped together to talk about it. Dean couldn't see any of the vampires that he saw earlier among them, but he was far from calling it a blessing.
"You came here before." Dean turned towards the backseat to Stefan. "I don't care how many centuries ago it was, you need to show us where this tunnel starts, because we've got about 2 minutes before the Apple Dumpling Vampire Gang realizes we played them."
"Actually – you don't."
The voice was right at the driver's side window. The Vampire Dean had seen at the stables now stood inches from his face.
The Lincoln had crank style windows, and Dean tried to roll them up manually, but it only rolled one crank before the mechanism became jammed.
The vampire smiled in amusement "Having trouble getting it up Dean?" His razor sharp teeth detracted and he snapped his head through the half-mast window.
A harsh wail erupted a second later when Dean slammed open the driver side catching the vampire right in the chest and throwing him to the ground. He didn't stay down for long, but Dean was out of car in an instant, his machete drawn.
Something grabbed Dean's shoulder in an inhuman blur and slammed him to the ground at the feet of one of the horses.
"Dean!"
Dean heard Sam's cry of his name amidst the rumbled high pitched whinny of the horse. The animal reared back in fear, its iron clad hooves came down and cracked the packed dirt inches from Dean's neck. Dirt was kicked up in his face, billowing a dark brown fog like cloud. His machete spun away from his hand and underneath the horse's hooves. The animal whinnied and reared in fear at the sharp blade.
There came a sound like crunching metal, and the split moment image of Sam being tossed into the hood of the car, his body cracking the windshield.
"Sam!"
Dean's echoed scream for his brother came in a horror filled gaze as Sam rolled off the hood of the car and out of sight behind the Lincoln. The male vampire jumped up on the hood of the car then down on the ground like a lion from a rock about pounce a wildebeest. There came the sound of struggling and the noises Sam only made when he'd been attacked.
"Sam!" Dean's fear became raged anger when he lost even the sounds of Sam's breathing under the hissing snapping sounds of the vampire snapping its fangs into something that broke like sinews. The echoed whinny of the horse's fear broke into his skull as he dodged the animal's flailing hooves, reaching for his machete, his vision stained a dark red at the noises he heard and the brother that he didn't.
A brunette in princess curls and plaid looked at the horse for a moment, like she was mad at the animal for taking a carnival prize from her. She parried the machete out of Dean's hand with her bare hand, a spray of dark blood coating his jacket. She straddled him, slamming his head down hard onto the packed dirt.
Pain shot up the back of Dean's skull, his vision whited out. He shook his head forcefully to clear it, hearing nothing but a ringing in his ears, his anger gone from red to white hot. The noises behind the car had stopped. He saw neither Stefan, nor Elena, but he didn't know if it was because they were out of sight, or that his vision had tunneled.
"SAM!" Dean felt his chest explode outward like a bomb, "If you've killed my brother, you're all dead do you hear me!"
The vampire spat something fowl which had the consistency of glue into Dean's eyes. He had enough experience with Vamps to know that it was venom; it burned his vision like nails scraping across his eyes.
"You've killed hundreds of my 'brothers' Dean," She slammed his head down again with an enormous crack; this time his vision was blanketed in black. "I'm simply returning the favor."
Dean's vision came back slowly, but it was still wrong, grays muted over a veil of blood red, turning the late evening into midnight.
"I never got to thank you for the Leviathans that you let out of Purgatory." The vampire leaned over him, hand pressed hard into his forehead, dark curls blocking out the streetlights, hissing a sound that resembled over a dozen feral cats. Another foamy line of saliva and venom fell onto Dean's face like rancid rain. "How about a kiss baby?" Her teeth detracted in a crinkling sound like a fire about to set the forest alight.
"How about you go to hell?" Dean was barely able to even see. But there was no time to dwell on if his blindness was permanent or not. He forced his mind away from the lost sense and went with Plan B: he reared back and head butted her, hard. She jerked back stunned, a movement that allowed Dean to feel down his leg and grab his switchblade. He aimed up and straight. He had heard enough noises from supernatural creatures rearing away to calculate where she would end up.
But nothing concerning the supernatural would ever fit into a rubric mold. The vampire dodged the movement, the blade instead catching her on her hand going right through her palm.
She screamed and pulled the blade out of her like it was a splinter. "You're going to pay for that!"
There came a slicing sound from behind and the vampire turned in time to see the other vampire's head roll off of his shoulder from Sam's machete. A crimson stain ran down the side of Sam's face from his ear to his chin, and he was breathing hard and heavy.
"You're not touching him again, you understand me?!" Sam was panting breath as hot as a lava, no matter how angry he was at his brother, the sight of Dean his big brother, who seemed all but indestructible, down at the feet of vampires was something he would never just ignore.
The vampire's eyes became the black color of death, "I dispatch him,"she squeezed Dean's neck hard enough to cause his consciousness to blur "Then you!-"
She reared like something had shocked her, the end of a wooden awl poked through her plaid shirt like a bleeding thorn.
Dean's neck was released as the vamp turned around in rage to stare at Elena with hate filled eyes.
"Dean!-" Sam grabbed at his brother's hand, pulling him back up onto his feet. Dean's eyes were translucent, scratched over like a blind man, trails of blood went down his skin. Sam didn't know how badly the damage was, or if Dean could even see him, but he didn't have the luxury to panic. He snatched Dean's fallen machete up and set it in his brother's hand.
Dean grasped the blade, barely sight-filled eyes tracking the shadows that had taken the place of the real world. A year in Purgatory running from monsters had often times forced him to compensate for missing senses. A Banshee's wail had deafened him for days (at least he thought so, Purgatory had no real time), and he had to keep on constant alert on what was all around him, never sleeping, on the chance something attacked that he couldn't even hear. So being half blind now had switched that survival mode on, turning his hearing up like the volume adjustment on a speaker. But it wasn't like vampire hearing, it was still disorienting with the blood and pain from his eyes.
But Dean had heard Sam, and it was more than enough motivation to shut out the pain.
"Bad move bitch!-" The vampire jerked the awl out of her body with a squelching sound. "Your Buffy the Vampire Slayer moves don't work on me." She flipped the awl around and aimed at Elena. "But they will work on you-"
The vampire's words died on her lips as Stefan threw himself on her at an impossible speed, slamming her up against the Lincoln's already shattered wind shield.
She growled a half choked sound like she'd been forced to eat rancid garbage. "Working with hunters-" She breathed a hot, hate filled growl in Stefan's face. "You aren't worth the energy it takes to kill you!"
Stefan raised her high by the neck like she was on a hangman's noose, before slamming back down with a rattling bang that cracked the glass apart. Before she could fall through the now jagged hole, he grabbed her arms smashing them both up through the roof of the car, the sounds of her wrists breaking echoed like pop shot. He did the same to her feet, tearing them through the metal of the hood until was she was pinned like she was strung out on a Medieval rack. He torqued her broken wrists inwards like locking mechanisms, and her scream tore across the stables, causing the corralled horses to rear up and try to break down their barricade, finally sending up a few screams of the tourists from a distance that none of them had the luxury to calculate.
Stefan raised his head up to Sam and Dean. "The entrance should be under the floorboards in back-"
Sam pulled Dean back towards a half hacked room with a floor lined in hay. A workman's table was scattered with iron horse shoes and rubber mallets, and more of hung suspended on cables overhead. Despite all the tourists who had paraded through moments before, the livery looked badly kept: the mallets had half rotten handles hay smelled sour and crawled with maggots.
Sam caught sight of Stefan leaning over the splayed out vampire, watching as he picked up the discarded awl and jammed it back into her body. "I'm not going to kill you," his threat resonating audibly back into the stable. "You're not worth the energy either." He twisted the awl hard like he was screwing it into her heart. Her wail tore apart the air. "You tell your little faction if they're as stupid as you, then then I will kill them-" He moved away from the carnage he created and into the barn.
Elena kicked up the hay with her dirt encrusted boots, the stench of the rotting grass wafted higher as she did so making Dean wish that that bitch had cut his nose off instead of blinding him. He made out a mass of her dark brown hair as her boot finally hit something with higher resonance, like there was something hollow underneath it.
"It's here!" She dropped down to her knees and tore away at the straw until she found an iron latched trap door. She pulled hard, but was jerked back down with resistance even stronger than her vampire's strength. She pulled harder, but it still wouldn't give. Stefan reached down and jerked the handle, the metal screeched discordantly, but didn't move the door enough to be noticeable. "It's reinforced iron," he jerked again with a screamed grunt that would have torn his arms off had he been human.
Dean pulled out his Colt aiming it at the latch he was able to see because of its contrasting darkness from the hay. "Where is it?"
"Six thirty," Sam responded watching as Dean lowered the gun's barrel right at the center bolt of the ring.
Dean fired three solid rounds at the direction Sam had given him. The floorboards were solid walnut, aged how many hundreds of years the stable had been built, and the ring and brackets solid iron all the way through. But it wasn't about destroying the lock, it was about hitting it at the right angle so it could be destroyed. And even half blind Dean was still a marksman. The tip of a square headed bolt blew apart at the last bullet, and Dean heard the supporting lock beneath give just enough. "Pull it now."
This time when Elena and Stefan both jerked up on the trapdoor, it came up with a splitting groan, the door slamming hard against the hay.
They dropped one by one into a stone walled cave that trickled water overhead and blew a thick stale smell at them.
The tunnel ran long in the darkness and their shoes were damp in stagnant smelling water. They moved in a run away from the door several dozen feet before stopping for lack of breath.
"Dean hey!" Sam righted his brother, who despite his earlier marksmanship, wasn't standing as straight as he should in the standing water. "Hey hey, hey, look at me-!" Sam set a hand under Dean's right eye, shining his flashlight into his face. A dried puddle of blood rung around both his lower eyelids, and a bloomed yellowed stain coated his pupils, clouding them almost completely over.
"Really bad choice of words Sammy," Dean grunted and smacked Sam's hands away from his face.
Sam turned to Stefan. "Give him your blood-"
Dean grunted again, the pain his eyes ramped up as some of the adrenaline died down. "Sammy," that word meant 'not a chance in hell' to Sam's suggestion.
"You didn't give me a choice, so I'm not either!" Sam retorted snapped at Dean, he swept his eyes to Stefan "I saved your life back there, and I'm cashing in – blood for blood-." There was no hint of a suggestion in his remark.
Fangs ripped into skin on Dean's right, and the salty heady smell of blood hung centimeters from Dean's mouth. "Take it, it should heal you."
There was no chance to debate, to weigh the choices, the hole and the smell of the vampire blood erased them like pencil marks. Dean swiped a thick trickle of blood off of Stefan's wrist, and smelled the thick coppery smell of it. "You gotta be kidding me," He made a noise of disgust but sucked at it like jam, screwing his face into more disgust a second later. There was no magic trick result, his vision was still blurry, red and barely there. The only difference was that his mouth bore the salty taste of blood. "Well that was disgusting."
"These tunnels go back five miles before they reach the plantation," Stefan looked down the endless darkness in front of him. He turned back towards Sam and Dean.
"Awesome," Dean ground out, trying not to spit out the vampire blood that he still tasted like a shot of rancid whiskey.
"We're going to have to do this at 'vamp speed' or we're never getting there," Before Sam could react Stefan had grabbed ahold of his wrist like they were awkwardly holding hands in middle school. "Elena get his arm."
Elena looked afraid to touch Dean like he might chop her head off just on principal, while Dean was trying to figure out how this could be accomplished without his feet being worn down into bloody nubs in the process. He finally ended both their silent questioning by grabbing at her hand. "No killing me on our first 5 k run sweetheart, understand?"
"No one's killed anyone yet," Elena insisted, her dark eyes visible to Dean even through the blindness. "You can trust us."
"Close your eyes."
"Seeing isn't a problem for me Stargate Atlantis," Dean returned to Stefan. "Make the jump."
They remained there for several seconds then there came a rush of wind, and a blur of speed, and they vanished down the long and endless tunnel.