The Huntress

Instead of answering Sam, Dean just looked out of the window and kept driving. He didn't want to give Sam anything to talk about. Sure he thought that Janie was beautiful but he didn't need anything that could distract him from hunting.

But he did like her...

The rest of the drive to the motel was quiet. When they got there Dean plopped down onto the bed while Sam sputtered something about the case they had both silently decided to take. Before he knew what had happened Dean had slipped into his own little world until...

"Dean?" Sam was now waving his hand frantically in front of his brother's face

"Uh...yeah?"

"I said are you hungry?"

"Yeah. You want to go get us some burgers?"

"Sure"

"Don't forget the pie!"

He could hear Sam grunt in disapproval, but quite honestly as long as he got his pie he didn't care.

It would be a while before Sam got back and Dean didn't really know what to do with his time so he started flipping channels until he could find something to quell his boredom. Before he could really realize what he was doing he found himself thinking of Janie. Somewhere in the back of his mind he hoped that she would call him and maybe it wouldn't have to be about her sister or anything supernatural. He just wanted to hear her again, of course he would never admit to it.

When Sam got back Dean was still flipping through channels and he almost didn't notice the door open until he could smell food coming into the room. The two brothers sat down at the table and had their dinner.

"So what do you think it could be?"

"What are you talking about Sammy?"

"The thing that took Janie's brother, sister, and niece?"

"Honestly, it's got some mixed signals. On one hand it sounds like a demon, but then there are some things that just don't add up."

"It's really weird demons don't take the blood out of their victims, that's vampires, but they don't have the ability to get into a home that way. Do you think that maybe it could be both?"

"I don't know Sammy demons don't even like to work with each other so why would they team up with a vampire? It just doesn't make any sense."

"I just hope Janie was wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"You know when she said that she just didn't want to be next."

"Well it's our job to make sure that whatever the hell this thing is it doesn't get her and that we can kill it before it kills her sister and her kid."

Meanwhile;

"Gus come here boy"

Janie was about to take Gus out for a walk.

"I know. Its late, but I can't sleep and you love walks." She quirked her eyebrow at the dog and hooked him up to his leash. Her mind was still reeling from her talk with Eric and Paul. As she was walking Gus she was being hyper-vigilant to her surroundings, must have been an instinct. At the end of his leash Gus seemed just as nervous he was tugging and that wasn't something that he ever did Janie had him trained.

"Gus easy boy!"

All this was making her even more frightened. She kept walking in hopes that everything would calm down. Janie gently put her hand on her hip outlining the gun she had taken with her just in case. It wasn't like her to be so scared, but she didn't know what was out there and whatever it was it seemed to have a taste for Morrison blood and she didn't want to be next. Still she kept her hand on the gun, she was a good shot, her father had taught her how to shoot when she was 16 and she never missed a shot. If only something like that would keep her calm.

"Maybe I should take him up on that offer and call him, what do you think Gus?" it seemed silly talking to her dog but some days she'd swear that he knew exactly what she was saying. At that point things seemed to tense around them. If she hadn't thought that this would calm her nerves she would have stayed home. The darkness something that she usually found welcoming and almost comforting, tonight seemed to hide all her childhood nightmares. Gus stopped for a moment and she checked the time. It was 11:45pm. She really needed someone to talk to that could actually answer her and not just stare her in the face and wag his tail. She grabbed her phone again looking through her contact list one more time realizing that everyone else she knew would be asleep by now. She landed on his name, only this morning he had invaded her life, and he did give her that offer. Not to mention since when did reporters go to bed early? So she dialed. As she waited she was getting cold feet about this call. It wasn't like her at all to be nervous about things like this. She just pushed it to the back of her mind attributing it to everything that had happened over the last few days. Just as she was lost in thought something had brought her back, it was his voice, his smooth and yet raspy voice coming through the speaker of her phone and gliding in her ear.

"Hello?"

Shit, she hadn't expected him to actually answer. Didn't he have better things to do late at night like rush through some article that was due in the next morning?

"Hello?"

Oh god she needed to say something soon or he might just hang up.

"Hey Eric, it's Janie, you know from this morning" she thought that it had sounded stupid, almost childish.

"Oh! Hey! I wasn't expecting you to call, what's up?"

It seemed even sillier to her now, what was she going to say 'well, you know all this talk from this morning really freaked me out, and now I'm out walking my dog also I now have an irrational fear of the dark'.

"Nothing really, I was just thinking about this morning, and well Gus wanted to go for a walk. Normally I talk to my sister when I'm-"

"-you're not out alone are you?"

He sounded worried. That really wasn't doing anything to help her with her nerves.

"Well yeah, but I have Gus." The dog looked up at the mention of his name and wagged his tail at his owner. "He's quite the protective dog if anything I'll be fine."

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"I mean it's not safe. Where are you, I'll come meet you."

"Eric, I'll be fine." 'I have a gun'

"You're the one who said it got through your locked doors. I have no doubt that Gus would die to protect you, but I'm still coming."

She caved. What was she supposed to do refuse his protection? Even Gus was looking at her like she was crazy.

"Fine, I'm not too far from my house anyways. I'm coming close to the motel in town."

"You call that close to your house?"

She laughed he was right. She was a lot further from her house than she'd expected to be.

"Look I'll be there sooner than you think."

Dean looked over at Sam. "I'm leaving." It was blunt and to the point but it got the job done. Sam looked at him mildly confused until he figured that it must have been Janie on the phone, he had sort of zoned out when Dean started talking.

"Is she ok?"

"She's scared, I mean she has every right to be, but she went for a walk. I'm going to make sure that she gets home alright. Until we know what's after her and its dead I'm going to keep her safe."

"I thought I was the one that got attached."

Dean didn't even look at him, he just walked out of their room and on his way out the door uttered "Bitch."

Which Sam followed with "Asshole."

As he had promised it hadn't taken him long to get there. "Eric, I'm glad you came. Everything seems so different now. I always feel like I'm being followed, you know there are times when I could swear that I can even see something out there behind me." She had wanted to say more. To say something that would make him understand that it wasn't only because she was scared that she was happy to have him there with her, but she couldn't. 'I just met him. I can't possibly even think that I might even just a little bit maybe like him. It's crazy. It's probably just some kind of fear based attraction or something.'

Dean's face visibly tensed at that, he didn't like the sound of that. Knowing that she could be next if they were right and that thing was after her family. It was nothing that he was about to take lightly. Even if he knew that they still didn't have anything. They were so far from knowing that he couldn't even tell her his name wasn't really Eric. Yet every time he looked at her, he wanted to tell her everything, he wanted her to know.

Something behind them had caused the leaves to rustle. Gus had stopped moving…