A/N: Just a little warning - there's a fair amount of blood and action related violence in this chapter, and a little bad language. Nothing too much worse than we get in the Hollows books and definitely no worse than an average episode of Supernatural, but I figured I should mention it just in case. You have been warned.

Thank you all for the reviews! I super appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts! *heart*

CHAPTER 6 - "There Will be Blood"

I shivered as consciousness seeped slowly back into my mind. It was cold. Must have kicked the blankets off ... I groped for them automatically, but instead of finding the edge of my bed, my arm scraped against something rough and hard. Pain flared to sudden life in my head and my limbs as if triggered by the movement, or because my brain was finally waking up enough to process it.

I winced, repressing a groan at the throbbing in my head and shoulder as I forced my eyes open quickly. The exact order of events right before I'd been knocked out were a little vague in my memory, but I remembered enough to be both surprised that I was still alive and pretty worried about why.

Something rough prickled my skin as I shifted I realized I was lying on the ground atop a thin carpet of straw. Pushing myself unsteadily up to my knees and looking around, I saw that I was inside a stall in what looked like some kind of barn or stable. The light was dim, but my eyes were already adjusted from unconsciousness. My mouth felt sticky and disgusting. I spit clumsily and saw red on the straw. Wiping my mouth hastily, I realized my lips were smeared with blood that I didn't think was mine. The vampire woman must have given me more of hers while I was unconscious. At least, I hoped that's what it was. I scrubbed my mouth with my sleeve, spitting in disgust and trying not to gag. The reek of blood was strong and it was turning my stomach.

Finally dragging myself to my feet, I held onto the wall until I was sure I had my balance. As I did, I took stock of my physical condition. My head hurt, but I didn't think I had a concussion - I knew what those felt like. My shoulder ached, but not as badly as it should have. I drew in a deep breath as I remembered the woman's teeth sinking into me and I turned my head, trying to get a look at the awkwardly placed injury. I was surprised to see that it had been bandaged, the white edges of the dressing just showing under the blood-stained edges of my shirt. I gave my shoulder an experimental roll and winced. It hurt, but I could push through it. Either she hadn't bitten me very savagely, or for some reason it was healing abnormally fast.

I didn't want to think about why the latter might be true, but I forced myself to do just that. I looked at the blood on my shirt and remembered the taste of blood in my mouth, waiting for some kind of reaction. All I felt was nauseous.

I took that as a good sign. If I'd been changed in some way, I'd feel hungry or aroused at the thought of blood, right? Not like I wanted to puke my guts out. Maybe I just hadn't been hurt as badly as I thought, or maybe the blood the woman gave me had accelerated my healing, even if it had been unable to change my already modified DNA.

I quickly felt my way around the small enclosure, looking for a way out. To my surprise, that was easier than I expected. There were two ways to access the stall. One was a doorway set into an exterior wall that was clearly bolted shut from the outside and wouldn't budge when I tried it. The other was the high gate of the stall itself, which probably let out into the rest of the barn. The gate was padlocked closed - but it was fastened from the inside, and they key was still in the lock.

I frowned as I carefully turned the key and slid the padlock free. This was weird. Whoever put me in here hadn't been trying to keep me in but rather keep others out. Why?

When I stepped cautiously out of the stall and into the barn, the first thing I realized was that the nausea I was battling wasn't just because of the blow to my head. The heavy smell of blood in the air wasn't actually coming from me. It was coming from the two bodies dangling from the rafters. They hung from their arms, just above the ground. A man and a woman, I thought, judging by what was left of their clothes. I couldn't be sure. The damage was too extreme. They looked like they'd been mauled by wild animals.

I lost the battle with my stomach at that point and ended up hunched over my knees, vomiting up the remains of the pizza I'd eaten earlier. In my periphery, I caught a rustle of movement.

Shaking, I forced myself to stop heaving and spun towards the sound. I caught the arm reaching for me and twisted my body, flipping the other person over my back and slamming them hard into the ground as I jumped to my feet. I came upright in a guarded stance, only to find myself looking into the face of a young woman who couldn't have been much over twenty, if that. She looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes and I quickly relaxed my stance. Jumpy much, Rachel?

"D-don't hurt me..." the woman's face was terrified and her eyes darted wildly around the room. Her clothes were rumpled and stained, her face smeared with blood like mine probably was.

"I won't. It's okay," I reassured. "Sorry, you just startled me." I saw movement at the other end of the barn and realized there were at least two others people in here as well - a man and another woman. They both looked a bit older than the girl, but it was hard to tell at this distance - they were hunched warily, hiding in the shadows.

My gaze was drawn unwillingly back to the two bodies dangling in the center of the structure. I should probably go check on them, but I could tell from here that they were dead, and I really didn't want to get any closer. Was that the purpose of this place and those of us trapped in it? Were we quite literally cattle being kept here until it was dinner time?

"I'm Rachel," I said, trying to put on a calm, confident tone for the frightened woman as I quickly made my way to the two large barn doors that stood off to my right. I didn't really expect them to open, so I wasn't all that disappointed when I found them firmly locked - this time from the outside.

"Kelly," the girl said, picking herself up from the ground. She winced when I rattled the doors in frustration. "They're locked," she added.

I could obviously see that for myself, but I refrained from pointing that out as I quickly started scouting for other possible points of exit. The girl followed me as I moved about, although she stayed several wary yards away.

"Where are you from, Kelly?" I asked as I checked inside each of the stalls in turn and then started eyeballing the half-loft that ran along the back wall of the barn. There was no ladder, and no windows or doors up there to make it worth trying to figure out how to shimmy up.

"Cincinnati," she replied quietly. "I share an apartment with some friends off-campus at the university. I ... I volunteered to make the late night food run last night ..." a small sob caught in her throat. "Or maybe a couple nights ago ... I don't know ... I ... they ..." she curled in on herself, turning away, her body convulsing as she hugged herself.

I frowned in sympathy and took a step towards her, but she stumbled backwards away from me, obviously still afraid. I stopped, and just fixed her with my gaze instead. "It's going to be okay, Kelly. We're going to find a way out of here and get you home. We'll all go home."

The man in the corner snorted softly, a strangely amused and bitter sound. "No we won't."

I resisted a surge of irritation at the way they all seemed to have given up, reminding myself that they'd probably been here longer than I had and had obviously seen some pretty awful things.

"We will," I countered. "You'll see." Giving up on the doors as a lost cause, I started kicking the walls in different places to test their strength. This barn was old, perhaps even ancient. The aging timber might not be what it used to be.

"Where are we?" I asked the room at large, although Kelly seemed the only one interested in talking to me. "How many of them are there? Was anyone else brought in when I was?"

"I don't know where we are, exactly," the girl replied. "There's woods outside, so we must be somewhere outside the city. I've seen six or seven maybe, but I think there are more, and no, you were brought in alone."

I tried not to worry about that. I tried to tell myself it was a good thing that I was here alone. That it meant Trent hadn't been taken too. I didn't want to consider the possibility that it meant he was already dead.

I focused in on an area of the wall near the stall in which I'd awoken. There had been some patch work done here at one time, part of the wall replaced either due to damage or because of modifications to the structure. I looked around for any kind of tools to use. Finding nothing, I finally attacked the wall with my boot instead. Bracing, I delivered a series of quick, precise kicks with which I'd broken more than a few boards during classes and work outs.

The others visibly tensed up. Kelly covered her ears with her hands, hunching over as if in pain or fear. "Stop! Stop it, they'll hear you! They'll think we're being bad!" she pleaded.

I could feel the wood starting to splinter under the assault and kept it up. "Not if we can get out of here first," I told her, considering the risk worth it. I'd take going down fighting over standing around and becoming lunch any day.

The barn door creaked open with a sudden groan of rusted hinges and I swung towards the sound, fists clenched defensively. Yup, I'd gotten someone's attention.

Two vampires stood in the doorway. I recognized one as the waitress from the restaurant. The other was a man I didn't know who looked roughly around the same age, although I guessed that was deceptive because he carried himself like he was older, perhaps significantly older. I caught a glimpse of at least two more vamps beyond them, outside the barn. I could also see a narrow swath of snow-frosted ground and trees through the partially open doors that confirmed the notion that we were somewhere in the woods, perhaps even the same ones I'd trudged through last night. Great, back out where I started, more or less. The sudden exposure to the pale winter sunlight after the dimness of the barn made me squint and the influx of cold air made me shiver.

Kelly hid her eyes with a small cry and scrambled backwards, darting to hide in one of the open stalls.

"Now, now, what's all the noise out here? Not hungry again already are we? I told you, no food if you don't behave," the man said with the smooth, condescending tone one might use on a child.

From inside the stall, I heard Kelly whimper pitifully.

"Hey!" I said, mostly just to get the vamp's attention away from the others and focused on me.

"Well, look who's finally up and causing trouble," the male vamp said with the same, mocking expression as his gaze settled on me. "Don't blame me if they didn't leave you anything. You need to be on your toes around here, darling."

My brows furrowed at his words. A sudden, ugly dread crept up from the pit of my stomach and I pushed it back down, not wanting to be distracted by considering it too deeply just now. "So, I guess you all are the reason those people have been going missing off the highway, huh?" I prodded instead, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together and feeling sure they were connected in some way. "Snatching your restaurant patrons wasn't enough anymore? You needed a little late night take-out on your way home?"

The man and the woman both made faces of distaste, as if I'd touched on a sour subject. The man came a step closer and I forced myself not to retreat automatically.

"No, that's much too gauche. We'd never be that sloppy or draw that much attention to ourselves," he said, his lip curling with disgust. "Those filthy tomb robbers have been swarming out of the woodwork like cockroaches all of a sudden and encroaching on our territory. It's one of the reasons we decided it would be prudent to expand our little family."

"It wasn't enough they decided to crawl out of their crypts and start craving live flesh, they had to go about it like such stupid amateurs! We've been here for generations and no one ever got on to us until they started causing trouble," the woman put in bitterly. "They're what drew you all here, aren't they?" she demanded.

It seemed that vampires were territorial in any universe, but aside from the fact that some other group was responsible for the highway disappearances, I didn't really understand what they were talking about and my face scrunched in confusion.

"Me? No. Believe it or not, pizza is what drew me to you," I said sarcastically. That wasn't entirely true, but I wasn't about to go into my actual reasons for having gone to check out Pizza Piscary's. I was tempted to ask if there actually was a Piscary here, or somewhere in the restaurant's history ... but I wasn't sure I actually wanted to know.

"I know you think I have something to do with those two other guys in the restaurant," I fixed my eyes on the woman. "But I actually met them for the first time last night, and running into them again at lunch was a coincidence. So! If that's all cleared up, maybe I should just be going ...?" I said with fake brightness, but without any actual hope of them agreeing. Still, never hurt to try.

The man took my arm when I tried to walk past him, halting me. "Ah, no, I'm afraid there is no going back for you now," he said. "We are your new home, your new family. Don't worry, we take good care of our own, as long as you're good and learn the rules ..." I saw something flicker across his face and his practiced words trailed off, his patently condescending and patient expression suddenly shifting. He frowned, his gaze becoming more intense as he leaned a little closer to me.

"You smell wrong," he said, he said, his grip tightening on my arm. I could smell nothing in here but the blood and offal of the two dead bodies, but I supposed his senses were keener.

I tried to pull my arm free and took a quick step back. He didn't release me and my ability to retreat was limited. My hands curled into fists and I wished I had a weapon. "Well pardon me," I mocked. "If I'd known I was going to be vamp-napped today, I'd have worn stronger perfume."

"Suzette, you told me you turned her." His gaze stayed on me, but his words were for his vampire companion. "Tsk, how very sloppy of you. It's not like it's rocket science, my dear."

He tried to pull me closer and I swung a quick right at his face. He dodged, of course, but I expected that and he dodged right into a nose-crunching blow from my left elbow. I jumped away, attempting to wrench my arm from his grasp, but I could never match a vampire for speed, not even a wounded one. His fingers slid but then snagged again in my shirtsleeve. His grip crushed down painfully on my forearm, arresting my movement and making me spin around. I kicked at him. He cursed, but didn't let go. Instead he grinned at me, as if enjoying the struggle.

"I begin to see why you're still alive despite Suzette's incompetence. You're going to be a lot of fun."

"Don't count on it!" I gritted back, twisting and getting another solid elbow jab into his ribs even as he drew me in too close for my swings to do much real damage.

I felt a second set of hands close on me as the waitress - Suzette - grabbed my arms from behind, twisting them and attempting to hold me still for her companion.

"I did it right, there's something wrong with her," Suzette defended herself with irritation. "Her blood is strange, Ray."

"Really? Well maybe I should try it for myself then," the man drawled, sliding his hand underneath the neckline of my sweater and easing it slowly and meaningfully as far down as it would go, baring part of my un-bandaged shoulder. I guessed this must be the Raymond she had mentioned back in the restaurant - the one who was going to like me. Well, he was going to get a chance to like my foot up his ass if he kept this up.

Suzette's fingers twisted in my tangled hair, pulling my head to the side for her companion. I watched with horrified fascination as Raymond grinned and that spiny second set of teeth descended. My heart was in my throat, but my little tugs against Suzette's arms were intentionally ineffectual. I waited until the man was going in for my neck before switching direction and throwing my real weight against her. I slammed my head back into her nose, at the same time bringing my knee up into the man's groin.

Suzette growled and the Raymond roared in anger. The three of us went down on the ground in a tumble. I landed on top of Suzette and she wrapped her arm around my throat. The two of us rolled through the lumpy straw on the floor as we struggled. From my periphery vision I saw other vampires rushing in through the doorway, drawn by the sounds of the fight. The odds were most definitely against me.

Someone screamed. The angry voices sounded alarmed in a way that I didn't think I warranted. Everyone was growling and shouting and I didn't have the luxury of being able to try to make sense of the chaos, my whole attention focused on the woman who was very definitely trying to kill me now.

Suzette got her knees around my hips and pinned me down, stopping our mad tumble. I punched her square in the face and she howled, her fangs extended and snapping as she descended on me.

Right before she reached me, there was a faint whoosh of air, a warm spatter of moisture, and her head unexpectedly disappeared.

I blinked, not understanding what had happened until I saw her headless body toppling sideways off of me and found myself staring up at the unexpected sight of Dean Winchester standing over me, holding a bloody machete.

For a moment I was frozen by shock over the sudden turn of events and the man's unexpected presence. Dean's face was set, his eyes holding a focused, piercing intensity. In this moment he looked very little like the young man who had made amusingly lame passes at me in the car and spent the better part of ten minutes in the restaurant arguing with his brother over why pineapple was sacrilege to the sacredness of pizza everywhere.

Then he knelt over me and the expression of tense concern in his eyes made him seem again the man we'd met on the road last night. "Shit," he swore softly, the fingers of his free hand urgently wiping my mouth clean from the moist castoff spatter of the vampire's blood, which had cut a crimson swath across the front of my shirt, and - I only realized now - had gotten on my face as well. Ew!

"Don't lick your lips, don't swallow," he said with urgent authority. He quickly yanked a rag and a flask from the pocket of his coat and dashed water onto the rag before using it to wipe my face like he was cleaning up a messy toddler. I spluttered in protest and grabbed for the cloth, but he'd already finished and tossed it aside into the straw.

He suddenly grunted and jerked forward as someone tackled him from behind, almost forcing him down onto me. Nails raked sharply across Dean's jaw as the vampire woman who had pounced on him tried to get her hands around his throat. The force of her impact knocked the machete from his grip.

Dean immediately reared backwards, throwing them both off of me. They tumbled together and Dean rolled back to his feet with a swift sureness that told me he either had training or a lot of experience under his belt. Probably both. I saw him glance towards his fallen weapon, but there wasn't time to go for it, the woman was already on him again. Instead he blocked her strike and plowed a shoulder into her middle, flinging her backwards, into someone else who was coming up at a run.

The other person stumbled, but didn't go down. He grabbed and grappled with the woman. I realized that it was Dean's brother, Sam, at about the same moment I saw that he too was carrying a machete.

Who the heck were these people?! Feeling uncomfortably like I'd just landed in some B-rated slasher flick, I got my arms under me, hands sliding and slipping in the loose straw as I sat up a little too quickly.

Dean bent to retrieve his weapon from beside me and when he straightened he offered me his free hand.

"You okay?" he asked as he quickly tugged me to my feet. His gaze flicked across my face, looking for any remaining blood, or perhaps any sign that I was about to sprout fangs. By now I had figured out that in this world, ingesting the blood of a vampire was all it took to turn a human and that the change must be fairly swift compared to the much more involved process with which I was familiar. That thought was more than a little disturbing.

Speaking of disturbing ... I looked down at the blood on my shirt and swallowed, trying not to think about how strong and practiced you had to be to take someone's head off in one swing like that. Dean had made it look easy, but I was pretty sure it wasn't.

"Fine," I responded quickly, trying to keep my voice from shaking with the adrenaline pounding through me. "I'm fine, and not a vampire," I added. Dean seemed to already have ascertained that, but given the way he handled that machete, I figured a little extra clarity couldn't hurt. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Dean shrugged, shooting me a half-grin. "Told you we had a job that was going to involve a lot of cleanup work, didn't I?"

Someone rushed us with a cry and I side-stepped quickly, automatically jutting out my leg and giving the man a hard elbow jab to the shoulder blades, using his momentum to send him stumbling forward.

"Really? In what part of mechanic school did they cover fighting vampires?" I demanded flatly, fists up defensively and really, really wishing I could tap a line.

Dean didn't give the vampire a chance to recover and come back around for us. He turned in one smooth movement and took off the vampire's head like he was hitting a baseball.

I didn't even have time to think about trying to stop him. I looked away, not wanting to see the body fall. My stomach clenched and I struggled to breathe normally. I was not a squeamish person, but I was going to be seeing headless corpses in my dreams for weeks, I was sure. "Do you have to do that?" I grit out.

"The best part," Dean replied, the familiar cockiness from earlier definitely showing again. "And yes, I do. Taking their heads off is the only way to actually kill them."

Good to know, I supposed, but that wasn't exactly what I'd meant. Obviously, all the vamps here were killers and they were trying to kill us, so this certainly qualified as self-defense, but that didn't mean I was at all comfortable with the level of bloodletting happening around me. The runner in me wanted to arrest them, not kill them. Without a legal system and prisons built to handle their kind, however, I realized that may not actually be feasible. It was like being in the old wild west or something.

"Rachel!" I turned toward the sound of my own name and saw Trent coming towards us through the open barn doors. He carefully stepped over a body lying in his path and dodged Sam who was fighting with yet another vampire nearby. He looked okay. I saw his green eyes lock onto the blood on my shirt with concern. "Rachel, are you all right?"

"I told you to wait outside!" Dean said, his annoyed gaze leveling on Trent.

Trent, never good at following anyone's orders, ignored him. "Rachel?" His attention was still fixed on me.

"I'm fine!" I said brusquely, wishing everyone would stop asking me that. It was bad enough feeling like I was in a slasher flick without feeling like I was also the idiot damsel in distress. My boobs-to-brain ratio was way off, thank-you-very-much. "What happened?" I added, nodding towards the two brothers, my gaze on Trent. Dean pushed past us, heading for his brother's position. Sam was still tussling with one of the few remaining vampires, but it looked like most of the rest of them were down and the fight as a whole was all but over.

"We were drugged," Trent said.

"Yeah, I got that part. I meant after that," I replied. I was trying not to glanced around at the bodies on the floor, but it was hard not to. There were three of them. Suzette was the only one I recognized. I didn't see Raymond among them. If Kelly's estimation before had been right, there were others missing as well. Maybe they'd made a run for it?

"One of them grabbed me in the restroom," I said. "I woke up in this lovely little place. How'd you get here? And what is up with the Van Helsing brothers over there?"

Trent glanced over to where Sam and Dean had just put down the last vampire, bringing the body count up to four. He frowned. "That, I don't know. There hasn't been much time for questions and they seem rather ... reticent. I don't remember a lot from the restaurant after you left for the restroom," he admitted. "Our friends over there," Trent nodded towards the brothers, "noticed there was something was wrong with me at right about the same time I realized we'd been drugged. They bolted for the back of the restaurant but I believe by that time you and most of the vampires were already gone. The next thing I remember, I was in the back of their car again and we were parked in the woods by an old mill. They somehow seemed to know that the vampires were out here in this general area, but weren't sure exactly where. I assisted in the search, and here we are. You know," he added slowly. "When we get home, maybe we should get you something with one of those GPS transponders in it, considering this is the second time I've needed to come searching for you." He gave me a smugly sarcastic little smile.

"Maybe you should save your money for some body armor for when we get home and I kick your butt into next week," I muttered in retort, rubbing my bandaged shoulder with a wince. I looked, felt, and probably smelled like crap. I shivered, feeling increasingly cold on top of the rest of the aches I was dealing with. A lot had happened in a very short time and I wasn't sure that my chill was purely because of the weather.

Trent frowned and shrugged out of his thrift store jacket. I hesitated to take it from him and he gave me a look. "Rachel, you look a sight. Put it on before you scare someone to death."

Making a face at him, I snatched the jacket and shrugged into it. I knew he didn't really need it and I had to admit the warmth felt good.

A cry of fear drew my attention back into the barn. I saw Kelly cowering just inside one of the stalls, backing away from Dean as he approached her, machete in hand. Sam was walking towards the back of the barn where the bodies hung and where the other two prisoners had been, although I didn't see them there now.

"No! Wait!" I cried, pushing past Trent and rushing over. My feet slipping on the loose straw, I thrust myself into the stall between Kelly and Dean. "They took her! She's a prisoner same as I was," I said in a rush, standing protectively in front of the younger woman.

Dean's expression was grim and sad as he faced me. "No, not quite the same," he said quietly.

I wanted to pretend I didn't know what he meant. But I did. I had already figured it out. I shook my head anyway. "It's not her fault, they're the victims here. This was done to them."

"It doesn't matter," Dean's voice was a mixture of weary determination and jaded sorrow that didn't let me hate him as much as I wanted to at that moment. He didn't look as if he liked this any more than I did; he looked as if he simply saw no other alternative. "They're not who they used to be anymore. The bastards killed them the moment they turned them. She's already fed on human blood, we can't save her. "

"You don't know that!" I cried, feeling both indignant and sick as things that hadn't made sense before fell into place and all the pieces I'd not wanted to consider clicked together. This wasn't a barn were the vampires were holding those they intended to feed on. This was where they were holding their new recruits until they had been properly trained. That's why the padlocks on the inside the stalls - so we could protect ourselves from one another as we adjusted to our new needs and abilities. That was probably the only thing that had kept me from turning into a snack while I was unconscious.

Glancing behind me at Kelly's hunched, wary form I wondered if perhaps my instincts had been right after all and there had been the intent of threat in her initial approach. Had my fellow captives only left me alone as long as they had because they deemed me not yet worth the effort after the forceful way I had reacted? Seeing Kelly's young, frightened face my jaw hardened. It didn't matter, these people were victims. They should be helped, if possible. They could learn to control their blood lust, couldn't they?

"Yes, I do," Dean said firmly. "Trust me, I do. I'm not saying it's their fault, but it's the facts. You saw their handiwork," he nodded towards the two bodies strung up from the rafters. "Who do you think mauled those folks? That was training chow the older vamps left in here for them. They're monsters, Rachel, they have a hunger in them nothing can quench, and sooner or later they will kill to get what they need."

"I think sooner has already happened," Sam put in from the end of the barn. "It looks like these two were probably still alive when they were hung up in here." His voice was measured but tinged with distaste and pity.

"Giving them fresh meat," Dean said with tense scorn. "How classy."

"They can learn," I insisted. "They don't have to be killers." I believed that, but a part of me wondered, even as I said it. Back home, my best friend was a vampire. A man I'd loved, who had loved me ... who had died for me had been a vampire. I would never have doubted the truth of my words in my own world, but here in this place, everything was so different I couldn't be 100% positive about anything.

"Rachel," Trent's voice came to me from behind Dean. I had the nasty suspicion he wanted to remind me of exactly that same thing, so I ignored him. Trent could go be practical somewhere else and Dean could take his fatalistic attitude there too. I wasn't letting this happen and that was that.

I grabbed Kelly's arm, keeping her behind me and trying to push forward out of the stall. Dean gave me a frustrated look and didn't move out of my way, blocking the entrance.

"Look, I know this is hard to understand, but you gotta trust us on this," Dean said, his body lined with tension and his voice becoming irritated. "You don't know how many times I've seen this go down."

"I don't have to do jack squat," I declared defiantly. Just then there was a loud shriek from the back of the barn, not of fear but of rage. Dean's head swiveled in that direction and whatever he saw painted alarm on his face.

"Sammy!" He called out, dashing towards the rear of the barn.

I took the opportunity to edge quickly out of the stall, still keeping Kelly behind me. Looking in the direction that Dean had disappeared, I saw that Sam had apparently been set upon by both the man and the woman who had been my fellow prisoners earlier. They must still have been hiding in the back of the barn and had perhaps caught him by surprise because Sam was down on the ground with the man on top of him. The woman was shrieking and trying jab or scratch his eyes out. Even as I watched, he rolled and gave a powerful upward heave, dislodging the man and evading the woman as he scrambled to his knees. Dean reached his brother's side and I turned away, unsure I wanted to see whatever was going to happen next.

Kelly slipped out of my grip and I turned quickly towards her. "It's okay," I said quickly. "Kelly, we'll work this out."

Kelly just looked at me as she backed away, her face a mask of fear, pain, and regret. "We didn't mean to kill them," she whispered. "They were crying and ... and I never thought I could do something like that. But I was so thirsty and when I started, I couldn't stop. I knew I shouldn't but I just ... I couldn't care. I knew this girl once, she got hooked on some bad shit and she got like that. She just didn't care about anything but her next hit," the girl was babbling, her mind obviously severely traumatized by everything that had happened. Her gaze darted towards the rear of the barn as she kept retreating backwards through the open doors. "He was right you know," she said, obviously harkening back to what the man had told me earlier when I was trying to rally them for escape. "We can't go home, not really. I can't go back to anyone important to me, not when I could kill them and not care."

My heart clenched as I followed her, taking slow, careful steps and holding my hand out as if she was a spooked filly that might bolt. "Kelly, I understand you're scared. But you can learn to control this. It doesn't have to own you."

Kelly was outside now, squinting in the sun, which obviously hurt her sensitive eyes. I followed, drawing even with the ends of the open barn doors. The air was colder here, tinted with the piney scent of the woods and the crisp clean bite of winter.

Kelly shook her head, anger and bitterness showing in her eyes. "That's easy for you to say, you're the lucky one. You don't know. You have no idea what this is like. What I feel. No matter what you say, there's only one place I can belong now."

The young woman was still retreating, and I followed, stepping completely out of the barn and into the pale, late afternoon sunlight. "Kelly…" I began, then a flash of movement caught my eye. Before I could react someone had grabbed my wrist and spun me sharply to the side. My back crashed into the front of someone else's body, and a strong arm caught under my chin, gripping me in a choke hold.

"That's right, Kelly dear," a familiar voice said by my ear. "We're the only family you have now, I'm glad to see you understand that." It was Raymond. There were another eight or nine vampires out here with him, and I guessed that they hadn't run away after all - more like gone to get reinforcements. It looked like there were a lot more of them than we had initially thought. Fantastic.

I wasn't sure if Kelly had intentionally lured me out here to them, or if it had just worked out that way, but her face was guilty and she wouldn't meet my eyes as I struggled for air in Raymond's grip. She'd probably sensed, heard or smelled them out here. I felt as much frustrated as betrayed, because I realized she wasn't going to let me help her - if I even could.

"Rachel," it was Trent's voice, he had followed me out and was now standing tensely in the barn doorway, assessing the situation.

"Hey, Trent," I wheezed, feeling annoyed and a little stupid. "This is getting really old."

"Maybe, you should try listening to people once in a while," he opined, the bantering words a cover to buy time as his gaze darted across the assembly, no doubt trying to form some kind of plan.

"Well there's the pot calling the kettle black," I wheezed, hoping he wasn't about to do something stupid and get us all killed. I trusted Trent a lot more than I used to, but his plans still weren't always very good plans.

Raymond started dragging me backwards and the heels my boots scuffed against the hard packed, snow crusted ground. "Why don't you all just stay where you are," Raymond said, his gaze fixed on Trent. "And once we're away, we'll let her go."

It was a lie. He knew it. I knew it. Trent knew it. If they got me away from here, I was dead vamp food.

"Or," Trent countered in a reasonable tone of voice, "I could just stay right here, and let the two nice men with the machetes take care of you." His gaze shifted to a point just over Raymond's shoulder, and the vampire spun, dragging me with him.

There was no one there, but the fake-out had worked nicely. Raymond was off balance when I jabbed my heel into his instep. He fell forward as Trent slammed into his back, the elf moving with quickness that could almost rival the vampire's. I twisted away, out of his grip, as the man fell.

Someone else lunged for me and I dodged. About this time, the two Winchesters showed up for real, joining the fray. Trent went after Raymond, but the vampire checked him sharply with a blow to the gut. Trent stumbled, grappling with the man as they went down. I saw Trent's head hit the ground hard, his movements momentarily dangerously slowed by the impact. Snagging the only thing I found at hand - a fist-sized rock - I brought it down on the back of the man's skull as hard as I could. He reeled, giving Trent a chance to roll out from under him.

Trent caught the vampire's head and gave it a quick, precise jerk to the side, snapping the man's neck. Raymond slumped and Trent rose quickly to his feet.

"Trent!" I called in warning, remembering what Dean had told me and realizing that Trent didn't yet know quite how much these vampires differed from ours. True to my fears, the downed vampire was already rising up on his hands and knees behind Trent as if nothing had happened.

Lacking any better options, I flung the rock in my hand straight at his head. It hit Raymond in the temple, doing no appreciable damage but certainly ticking him off plenty.

"You, this is all your fault!" he snarled at me, enraged. "I'll kill you, bitch." He leaped. I had just enough time to see him do it, not enough time to get out of the way.

A body slammed into me and my back found the ground, hard. My head bounced against the frozen earth, making my vision explode in stars. A heavy weight pinned me, not allowing my gasping lungs to find air. Raymond's awful, guttural growling mixed with the sound of fabric and flesh tearing. The metallic scent of blood blossomed thickly on the cold air.

My body tensed, but the expected pain did not follow. Pale gold filled my vision. The scent of blood fused with a strong, spicy scent that made me think of crushed pine needles and hot mulled wine with cinnamon.

My head cleared and in a sudden rush, the world resolved itself back into a sensible form. I realized that it wasn't my flesh being torn, or my blood that I was smelling. Trent was on top of me, having somehow managed to throw himself between me and the enraged vampire. Unfortunately, that meant that Raymond was on top of him, and it was Trent who had caught the brunt of his attack instead of me.

Raymond had obviously been intending to tear my throat out in one swipe, but he'd caught Trent's shoulder instead and was now savaging the elf viciously.

Trapped face down, over me, Trent didn't have the angle or mobility to strike out at his attacker or push him away. His body was tense against mine as he jerked his elbows under him, his arms bracketing my head almost protectively. I felt him trying to heave upward, against the vampire on his back, but Raymond's body held his hips pinned flat and without being able to get his knees under him, Trent couldn't get enough leverage to buck the vampire off.

Trent and I had fallen at slightly askew angles but his head was close to mine and I could hear his sharp, choked grunts of pain as the vampire tore into him. I felt them reverberate in his chest where it was pressed against mine. Fear and anger clutched at me, hot and bright. I feared Trent must already be pretty badly hurt, because disadvantage or no, he should have been able to at least roll sideways and get himself out of Raymond's grip that way and yet he wasn't.

Trent slammed his head back, trying to get Raymond's face, but only catching his jaw. The vampire barely seemed to register the hit. He twisted a fist in Trent's tangled hair, attempting to jerk the elf's head aside enough to make his throat vulnerable - a move Trent was obviously fighting against with all his strength, keeping his chin tucked and his shoulders hunched. The vampire's other hand swung viciously, pounding the elf repeatedly in the ribs.

Trent's lips were moving and I caught the lilt of Latin or Elvish on them, the normally musical sound roughened by pain and broken up by the struggle and the small cries he wasn't managing to suppress. I wasn't sure if he was cursing, or trying to work a spell. I would have assumed the latter, except he'd already told me he couldn't. Maybe it was a desperate reflex, kind of like I was currently groping madly for a line I knew didn't exist.

I wriggled wildly, trying to free my arms so I could strike out at the vampire and make him stop, but both men were bigger than me and their combined body weight was crushing me into the ground. Each time one of them slammed into the other, they both slammed into me. The violent thumping of their struggle pounded the air from my lungs and I could barely breathe.

Raymond's burning eyes met mine over Trent's bloodied shoulder and I realized with a sudden, terrible jolt of clarity that I had this whole situation backwards. Raymond wasn't trying to pin Trent in place, he was trying to claw him out of the way.

I was the one he wanted.

I was the one he'd decided to blame for bringing about the destruction of his little camarilla, or family, or however he saw them. I would have pointed out that the Winchester brothers seemed to have been interested in the vampires even before Suzette kidnapped me, so I was probably not all that influential to the situation at hand, but I didn't think it would matter. He needed someone to blame and I was handy.

Raymond was trying to force Trent off of me or just kill him, whichever he could accomplish first. Trent was in his way, the elf's body curled protectively over mine. The instant he shifted position enough for the vampire to get at my throat or anything else vital, Raymond would kill me. With a slap of shock, I realized that Trent knew that. It was why he was fighting so hard to buck the vampire, but wasn't simply rolling off of me, not even to escape the man's tearing teeth and punishing fists. He hadn't gotten free already because escaping wasn't his priority.

My lungs were burning, screaming for air and my stomach clenched hard, an icy fist squeezing shut about my throat. A cold blade of horror slid between my ribs and twisted unexpectedly - not fear that Raymond would get me, but terror at what Trent appeared willing to do to prevent that from happening. Trent wasn't trying to escape. He was, in fact, fighting the vampire in an effort to stay right where he was - his body between me and Raymond's savaging fangs.

An angry vampire ... blond hair falling over a pale face ... blood ... blood ... my fault ... the situation tripped some very bad switches in my mind, bringing up a past I didn't like to remember and couldn't bear to repeat. Turn take it, I wasn't supposed to have to worry about something like this with Trent! I couldn't do this again. I couldn't.

The panic burning through me demanded more oxygen than my compressed lungs could provide. Light and dark spots flashed and floated in my vision as I struggled, desperately trying to get out from under Trent and draw Raymond away from him. Damn it, Trent, what the hell are you thinking?!