CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Screw destiny, right in the face. I say we bring the fight to them and we do it are way."
~"Dean Winchester"
"Supernatural" Episode: "Point of No Return"
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There were explosions, and then there were the sounds of a mass of vampires breaking apart an industrial landscape.
The vampires ran without flair, instead with a murderous fuel that was a million times more deadly.
The brunette met Dean's blade midway through her neck, and he wrenched it out sideways cutting her head off in a jagged tear, the Dead Man's Blood on the knife ending her before the blade did.
It was the act that signaled the start of hell.
The other vamps tore into the throng of vampires and hunters like a carcass of meat. One of them leapt down from the ceiling and onto Elena's back, tearing into her flesh. She screamed, and a second later dropped forward as the weight of the body fell off of her.
Sam pulled the head of the dead vamp off of Elena, its fangs still embedded in her skin. "Move!" He pushed her and Stefan sideways.
Sam was slammed hard to the ground, a vamp snapping above him like a rabid dog. He held the vamps neck up with his knife trying to push the blade into his flesh, but the vampire kept moving, venom leaking out of its mouth and onto Sam where it burned his skin like acid. He reached out his hand for the gun that had fallen away when he was thrown. His fingers closed around the Tarus and he aimed a headshot the vamp and fired, the bullet tore through the vamp's skull and Sam threw his blade behind the vamp's neck when the kick back from the shot happened, slicing it clean off, toppling the head backwards at his feet.
He flung the headless body off him, Dean grabbing him up by the arm, pulling him upright.
An earsplitting snap echoed as Damon grabbed two of the vamps and broke their necks with simultaneous movements. He was so focused on the fight in front of him that he missed the sight of the vampires leaping up behind him.
But Dean didn't, he drew his gun and fired a rapid fire of rounds at its neck, its head fell on Damon like a rotting melon.
The head toppled down Damon's shoulders, then dropped by his feet, the stump of the neck spraying him with blood. He kicked at the decapitated head into the vampire melee.
The head bumped the mud caked black riders boots of a vampire with fire red hair and eyes that matched. She stared down at the head's dead eyed expression and roared in a rage that shook the earth. She leapt in a hard arc that threw Damon against the wall in full body indentation force, grabbing his throat as pieces of the ceiling fell on him like hail.
"You little piece of shit!"
"I've been called worse," Damon said around the need to breathe.
Her eyes grew from murderous to pure death, she shoved her head into his chest.
Damon's body shook in a gasp from the force, his rib bones snapped, he felt her fingers squeezed the blood from his heart. His gasp began to fade away into the choking sound someone made when they were seconds away from not being able to make any more sounds at all.
A brutal ripping sound echoed and reverberated behind him, a sensation totally absent of any increasing pain.
The vampire's face contorted from mid-retribution rage into sudden shock and Stefan emerged from her sideways falling descent, his hand gloved to the wrist in dark blood, fingers curled around her still warm heart.
Stefan's skin gleamed with sweat, his own blood a black stain on his clothes. He grunted something that tried to sound like words, falling forward in a complete vertical slide, the dead heart dropping out of his hand to the ground.
Damon stomped it to a mass of splattered blood, grabbing Stefan's shoulders and jerked him to him back up.
Dean yanked the knife out of the stump of a vampire's neck, and turned around at a yell from Sam to face another vampire mid-attack with two head shot rounds that tore its face apart like a gory explosion.
The vampire's failing body came seconds before Sam plowed his knife into the neck of still another vampire that had descended upon him.
None of them knew how long they fought, time didn't exist, only the sounds of a blade, a ripped heart, and dying screams existed. Damon fought off Vampires one handed, Elena shouldering Stefan's weight long enough for Damon to bite the neck of a vamp clean off, body recoiling in spasms. Blood was everywhere, stained up to the knees of Dean and Sam's pant legs as they shot and sliced their way through countless attacks.
But, even with all that carnage, the fighting did not release its hold. It seemed for every vampire any of them killed, another emerged from the shadowed hallways to take its place, like a swarm of ravenous locusts.
"Go!" Dean yelled behind him to where Damon and Elena were, Elena taking Stefan's weight. Dean aimed another three rounds at the neck of a vampire, cutting her head clean off, her body joining the grave at their feet. "Get him out of here!"
"You can't do this on your own!" Elena shouted at Dean over the noise of the dying vampires.
"I said go!" Dean turned to face her moments after dodging an attack to the neck.
["Damon came this way, I know it-"
"Then let's go,"
Dean and Elena took off in a run down the hallway, but only made it three seconds away before Dean grabbed Elena's arm, halting her.
"What is it?" she asked.
Dean looked up to the ceiling, when a Grow Bulb had loudly started to hum like a fire cracker, orange sparks flew from the long bulb as it went out, casting a small part of the hallway into shadow. But that wasn't what he was looking at. The ceiling in this part of the hallway slopped upward with a wooden support beam, creating a gap in between the burnt out grow bulb and the next lit one in the line. Nestled in in that gap stood a large perforated old railway lantern. Dean looked around the cluttered ground, finding a rock the size of his palm, he took a sling shot accurate aim and hurled the stone at the lantern. The iron and glass fell to the ground and shattered loudly.
"What are you doing?" Elena turned quickly behind her, listening for the sounds of anyone approaching, when none came she turned back to see Dean lift the dented top off the lantern.
The light was old, rusted at the top, but the ground below where it had smashed was littered with glass and a dampness that Dean put his fingers too, and was met with the pungent smell of newly filled Kerosene. He looked up again and spied a second lantern like the one he had just broke, but this time, he crouched into a jump, and leapt up, his six foot frame just making the clearing to grab at the lantern and pull it down. He opened the top and was met with an almost full container of Kerosene. He pulled an old bandana from his shirt pocket and poured the kerosene over it until it was soaked through.
"Dig a hole there," Dean pointed to a spot on the ground in the center of all the concrete.
"What are you doing?" Elena repeated as she tore through the hard packed dirt with her bare hands until it became powdered sand under her fingers.
Dean crouched down and dropped the bandana into the hole. He removed the clip from his gun and broke apart two of his bullets and sprinkling the gun powder over the fabric. He covered the cloth with a flat piece of stone, splashing the remaining kerosene over the bars, and inside the cells, leaving just enough to make an ignition trail that snaked ten feet away from the cells.
"After we get your boyfriend out," Dean flattened the hole with his boot, leaving just a peaking of wet rag out visibly connected to the damp kerosene trail. "The next time I tell you to run, you get the hell out, don't ask questions, don't hesitate."]
Elena was jumped on by another vamp who came down from the ceiling, it was like the hallways were growing them. She screamed as her neck was torn into and Stefan's arm fell off her body.
"Stefan!" Elena grabbed at the vampire as he moved off her body and tore into Stefan's shredded chest.
His scream was horrendous.
She grabbed at the vampire's neck snapping it the moment Damon tore his heart out and flung it aside. The move produced a chain wave reaction and backed up the vampires that were closest to them, like they were realizing that their numbers, while still numerously vast, were diminishing by the second.
Stefan lay in one breathless moment, then shuddered a cough that sounded more like a gasp. "Damon-" He coughed out a Roschart Ink test splatter of blood, hand finding the cloth of Damon's torn shirt sleeved shoulder "You have to go!-"
"Already the plan Brother," Damon grabbed Stefan's arm off his shoulder. "Since your rescue attempt is sucking so hard right now," he jerked Stefan to his feet into half fireman's carry stance, lifting his weight off the ground.
"No!" Elena moved her eyes over all the noise and the smell of blood to Sam, then Dean, then Damon. "Damon we can't leave them here!-"
"You know the way!-" Sam brandished his machete to the group of vampires that had gotten bolder again, creeping forward. "You have to lead them out the way we came-"
"You heard him!" Damon shouted to his girlfriend over the hissing sound that had started to pick up again. "Elena!"
Elena stared at Sam and Dean like it was the last look that she would ever give them.
Dean's blade found the vamp's neck and he plunged the blade into the pulsating carotid artery, then out again, lopping of her head, blood going everywhere. He raised his eyes to Elena and shouted: "Run!"
Elena her expression died on words that she didn't have time to say before the first of the bolder vampires was only a step away from her. She ran in a blur, Sam shooting the hands off the vamps that reached for her, their outraged howls splitting apart the air into complete violence.
Damon eyed Dean and Sam, a look that had no love loss, but wasn't void of emotions entirety. He lifted the weight of his brother up fully and ran at a speed so fast that none of the other vampires were able to grab at anything but moving air.
Dean finally saw that the vampire crowd had an end, but that that end was 20 strong, moving through the dead vampires at their feet.
"Sam!" Dean's warning reached Sam's ears seconds before the vampires came unglued from their shock and turned to them, not roaring, but screaming, horribly, as they leapt for blood.
Sam withdrew his gun and shot down one of them as he leapt at his throat, having no time to recover before he shot three rounds in the next one, dropping her jerking to the ground. He fired again, and again until his gun ran out of bullets, the vampires not dead at his feet, but only stunned.
They reached and tore at Sam's pants with tearing hands, but Dean ripped their heads off with his knife.
The screaming ended into a blood filled silence.
"Did we get them all?" Even as Sam asked this in breathes he couldn't find, he felt the falseness of the quiet, like he was stepping on a pressured trigger sensor and about to step off again.
No new screaming came, but there came an echoing scrapping noise from the other side of the concrete wall.
Dean turned, Sam turned, both of them listening to the noise moved down the wall like it was trying to find them.
"That means a definite no-" Dean handed Sam his spare clip. "Come on!"
Sam reloaded in a single second and ran over the pile of dead and stunned vamps, and back to the halls of empty cells that reeked of blood and stale air.
"Wait-!" Sam grasped Dean's shoulder and he halted. They were in a junction where a hallway split like a dividing maze, each direction equally dark.
"What, what?" Dean barked watching as Sam stared at the pathway to the right.
"You go, there's something I have to do-"
"Sam-"
"Go! I'll catch up to you-"
"We don't have time for this man! I soaked half those hallways in kerosene, I'm torching this place down-"
"Give me 5 minutes before you light the fuse-"
"Sammy-"
"Five minutes and I'll meet you outside!"
Dean smelled the faint odor of kerosene, the noise from behind the wall now seemed to come from directly behind them, only yards away. "Five minutes and I find you, drag your ass out of here!"
Sam gave a nod, Dean slapped him on the shoulder before they split apart, each taking a different hallway, Sam to the right and Dean to the left.
Dean ran down the hallway, machete raised and gun drawn over it the entire time, more empty cells came at him like monsters until he reached the spot in the hallway littered with glass shards, the odor of kerosene reaching its apex.
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Sam navigated through sensory memory back through the darkened hallways until he came to a cell door slivered open in the rock, he pushed it open with a thick screech and stepped inside.
The bed frame had been righted in a wobbled slant on three legs, Marissa's body lay on the exposed springs on her back, skin gray, white dress stiff with drying blood. Darius sat on the edge of the box spring, one of Marissa's hands grasped in his.
"I knew you'd come back here Sam."
Sam cocked his gun. "Get the hell away from her!"
Darius stroked Marissa's hair with his long, curved, yellowed nails. "You were the one that brought her here."
"I said get back!" Sam's roared.
Darius hand moved down to the skin of her face. "I could have turned her into one of us; instead you brought her here for food," He made a clucking tsking noise in his throat, tracing the curve of Marissa's cheek with his nails. "Such a waste - Her fate was sealed the moment she met you Sam." Darius dark eyes raised up to Sam, his curved nails still on Marissa's face. "What can you do now that it's too late?"
"It's not too late, until I say it is!" Sam stepped closer and closer to Darius with the gun with with each word, his last movement with the gun used as a cover until he raised up his machete blade. "Give me the ring."
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Dean glanced down at his wrist, watching as five minutes came and went around the watch face. He looked up and down the direction he had just run from, seeing nothing but shadow. "Son-of-a-bitch!" He flipped his phone open, but no bars were visible at all. "Damnit Sammy!" He slammed the phone shut, and gripped his zippo lighter inside his jacket pocket and waited for the empty hallway to not be empty anymore.
The sound of footsteps that were to light to be Sam's made him lose his grip on his lighter and find his grip on his knife.
A solitary vampire stood behind him, a short cropped blonde in nearly all leather. She watched Dean with amusement like she was imaging him already dead at her feet. "Guess I missed the show."
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"I take it Damon has survived then." Darius said this not angry, but like it was a fact that was spoke in a gentlemen's club over brandy and the haze of cigar smoke. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and produced the sliver ring with the blue lapis lazuli setting, holding it up in between his fingers.
Sam raised his machete in striking mode. "Set it down on the bed."
Darius did what he asked, an impressed smile on his face.
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Dean aimed his machete out at the vampire. "Well you're here now bitch, so that's what counts."
The vampire half glared, half laughed at him. "What is it with Winchesters and smart mouths?"
"It's a family trait," Dean kept the knife where it was, and reached around with his gun, raising it up behind his back and out into the open air. "Kinda like how death is yours."
Her smile turned jagged, and she cocked her head at him like he was an amusing sort of thing. "Is that what you think?"
"No that's what I know," Dean countered.
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Sam picked up the ring, the silver cold was against his fingers and smudged in dried red fingerprints. "Now your blood."
"And what makes you believe I would keep my word with hunters who mutilated and maimed dozens of my kind?" Darius ghosted his eyes over the blood that patterned Sam's pants in a tye-dye of red.
"I don't." Sam returned, machete bared. "But if you don't hold up your end it's not your word you're going to have to worry about keeping."
"I am an Alpha boy-" Darius said.
"You're still a vampire, and you can still die like one." Sam's voice had become a growl, something angry emerging from a barrage of adrenaline, of a need to end things before it ended him. He bared the machete blade out like it was attached to him as a barred claw. "You bleed, or I make you bleed-"
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"Speaking of family," The vamp backed up and circled Dean like she had all the time in the world, her boots cracking and crunching through the concrete. "Where's your Jolly Green Giant of a brother? Probably nothing but leftovers for my friends-"
"Keep talking scank, and I'll make sure your trip to Purgatory is painful, just like I did with them."
The vamp laughed. "Haven't you heard? Purgatory's a revolving door thanks to you. You might want to try a scarier threat."Her fangs crinkled and retracted, she lunged.
Dean swung his blade at her, swiping up, then down, slashing a jagged gash through her shirt. "How's that one for you?"
She looked down and plucked at the stain of blood leaking through the fabric of her gray shirt. "That's going to stain-" she leapt at him again, grabbing at his arm to reach his neck.
Dean deflected the attack, shooting her in one shoulder, then the other. It wasn't a kill shot, but it wasn't planned to be. Dean watched her back up until she was directly over the covered hole, her riding boots displacing the concrete dust at her feet.
Dean sank his hand back into his jacket pocket and came up empty, fingers closing on nothing but the soft lining.
The vamp held up his zippo lighter. "Is this what you're looking for?"
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Darrius raised his hand to the blade but didn't touch it, instead he removed a syringe from his jacket and plunged it into the underside of his wrist, dark blood flowing upwards into the tick marked plastic. "I am not doing this for reasons of humanity. I simply cannot stand to have a living mistake of my failures walking around." He withdrew the needle and placed it on the bed beside Marissa's body, so that Sam would have to retrieve it. "In reality I shouldn't even let Damon live."
Sam knew a trap layout when he saw it, in order to pick up the syringe, he would have to drop either his gun or his machete, leaving him vulnerable. But if he wanted all that he came for, he would have to take the risk. He lowered his gun, choosing to keep the machete blade out, drawing close to Darius, never once taking his eyes off of him as he reached out with slow deliberate movements to the syringe. His fingers closed around the plastic.
Darius fingers closed on his wrist, bending it backwards. He slammed a curved nailed hand into Sam's face flipping him backwards hard onto the concrete, his face slashed with long jagged claw marks.
Darius rose from the bed and stared down at Sam "Which is why I'm not doing this at all." He stepped over Sam's form and out of the cell, locking it behind him.
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"I could smell the Kerosene yards away, Dean." The vamp stared at him in full on accusation. "Not trying to burn me alive are you?"
"Not trying too," Dean reached back into his pocket and pulled out a match, striking it against the concrete with a fizzed popping sound "Gonna."
The vampire eyed the flickering orange flame at the end of the match stick. "Burning vampires only works on that hybrid trash."
"If that were true then you wouldn't be telling me that," Dean called her out on her bluff.
She stared at him hard, but she didn't call him a liar. "How about your new vampire hybrid besties? You forgot about them being invited to the barbeque?"
"Oh they're long gone by now bitch," Dean's voice was a feral thing. "So how about you quick with the half assed stalls?"
"How about Sam?" She stared down at him like she towered over him instead of the opposite way around, casting an appraised look over him like his plans were something that were seen visually. "You pretend to be bunk buddies with those abominations of vampires in order to use them to find this place; that I get. But burning your baby brother extra crispy? I doubt Sam would like that."
A dry laugh forced its way out of Dean's mouth, nothing about where he stood was amusing; but he stood right at that moment he in-between toeing the edge of a cliff face and falling into abyss, so everything seemed amusing. "You know your problem besides the monster thing and the jacked up dental work? - Thinking you know my brother better than me-" Dean threw the lit match at the vampire's feet.
The kerosene ignited in a glow of hot orange, crawling up the vampire's pant legs. She screamed as the flame found the rest of the kerosene and the gun powder from the bullets that rocked a mini explosion that threw Dean off his feet into a line of fire and smoke.