You have to be able to appreciate these things. How many people can say it was a full moon last night and appreciate it?

Sandy Miller


"Sam…" Zoe gulped, willing herself not to look down at her shaking hands, where she knew she would find dried blood under her nails. Her eyes were transfixed on the TV that she had turned on this morning without further thinking; it was just a routine action.

Memories tentatively sneaking their way into her mind, Zoe realized that her routine was going to be shaken in its deepest manifests. In fact, she might as well draw up a whole new plan of life, seeing as her past life was history at best, destroyed at worst.

"Yeah?" He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at her from the bed.

"What do you remember of last night?" Zoe did her best to keep the quiver in her voice under control; it was a mission bound to failure.

Sam frowned, surprised at her question. "Why do you ask, Zo?"

"Because the news are swarming with the discovery of bloody murders here in Bemidji this morning, and I wake up with blood on my hands, not remembering a damn thing of last night?"

Sam was about to soothe her, tell her that it would be okay– when he realized that he didn't remember, either. In his werewolf life, that was the first time he had turned and blacked out in the morning. What the hell had changed last night, what had they done, where have they been?

Sam didn't need his former premonitional skills to know that blood was about to hit the fan.

"Sam!"

"Okay, Zoe, don't freak out, alright? It'll all be okay." No way would it be okay, but his main concern right now was keeping Zoe calm.

Zoe huffed. "How? Sam, what the hell happened last night? Why can't I remember?" In her agitation, Zoe's robe slipped from her shoulders and revealed the mark on her left breast, and Sam became all too aware of 'what the hell had happened last night', or at least, parts of it. Experience told him the rest.

'Oh, God, please, no,' Sam couldn't believe he really had turned this sweet young girl, made her into a monster because of his own cowardice that had forbidden him to tell Dean to end him. Had it really been cowardice, or basic survival instinct taking over? At this point, it didn't even matter anymore.

Zoe was a werewolf.

Because he had made her one. He'd marked her, claimed her as his, and ripped her life to bits in the process; he would never be able to make that alright again, and if he had ten lifetimes to make amends.

"Zoe… we have to talk."


"Okay, fine, let's start with why on earth is there a pile of bloody clothing in my hallway? And what exactly did you give me last night that I don't remember a freaking thing?"

'Death,' Sam thought dryly.

He tried to soothe Zoe, but not only was he far from being the epicenter of serenity, but also did he not know where to start once she let him. "Zoe, sweetheart, calm down, I'll explain."

"And while you're at it, explain to me again why I'm 80% certain that I initially intended to never see you again last night."

"If you'd shut up for a moment, I would explain," he snapped, harsher than he meant to.

Zoe closed her mouth, but the tight line her lips formed told Sam that she was far from happy, and would let loose another canon of questions at the first chance she got. He would have to make good use of the time he had.

"You might want to sit down for this."

"I'm comfy right here."

Sam bored his eyes into her, and even though they hadn't transformed, some deep-rooted instinct told Zoe to throw free will and emancipation out the window and comply. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at Sam, who noticed a certain glow in her eyes and a new strength, as if the werewolf virus had erased all remnants of the introverted girl incapable of defending herself and bending to anyone's whim.

Yet, he refused to see any advantages to this situation. After 29 years of this crap, he wouldn't suddenly believe that something good could come out of being a monster.

The sheets tangled around their hot bodies as they mated for the umpteenth time that night, Zoe's lips caught by his as he moved deep inside her. He could still taste the last man's heart on her lips, his blood in her mouth and feel the strength it had given her as she dug her nails – claws – into his back.

Sam suppressed a flinch at the sudden flashback. He didn't want to remember more, but his memory sadly enough was something he couldn't control; he had had to experience that before, when the wall had crumbled for a brief moment. What horrors would he find this time? "Zoe, what's the last thing you remember?"

Zoe sighed, "Having dinner with Lola. Something, something, driving here. To confront you about… I don't know. Do I even want to know?" She looked at him with her deep blue eyes, and he saw more trust in them than he'd ever deserved.

It was temptingly easy to tell her no and move on, but move on whereto? There was no place to hide any longer, and Sam owed her the whole truth, as well as an explanation, an abundance of apologies – not that they'd ever fix anything, but he had to say them anyhow – and he could never leave her alone with how, what, she was now.

He needed to keep her safe from hunters, and other werewolves possibly roaming the area looking for a hook-up. He'd dragged her into this mess, now it was his job to protect her from it as well as possible. That, and he had actually come to like her on more than just 'primal instinct' level.

"Honestly, I doubt it, but you need to know," Sam finally answered, "Remember I told you my brother and I were mechanics?"

"Yes." Zoe refrained from asking what that had to do with anything.

"That wasn't the truth."


The only lead he had was a bunch of corpses, all not related to each other, some killed sloppier than the others, but the fact remained that they missed their center piece. Dean had seen his share of mutilated bodies, and the sight of their marred dead flesh wasn't what caused that sick feeling in his gut. It was knowing that it was his brother who'd done it.

Granted, not quite his brother, but close enough.

"Judging from the difference in precision of the kill, I would say you are looking for two attackers," the coroner said absent-mindedly as he studied his charts.

Dean was about to nod, not paying any particular attention since he already knew what and who he was up against, but that made him pause. "Two?"

"Yup. One more experienced than the other, I would say – of course, that is if it was a human murderer, and not some stray pack of pitbulls roaming the streets. All of the victims were living on the street, more or less, and not that I'd say it's a common thing for a bunch of killer dogs gone rogue, but who knows."

"Okay, thanks, doc," Dean mumbled and left the government facility. They always made him uneasy, and he made a habit out of spending minimum time within them.

Two werewolves. That limited it down to a male and female, seeing as werewolves didn't take well to concurrence unless it was their own pack; said pack could only consist of mates and their young.

Just when Dean wanted to relax and cross Sammy off the list of suspects, it struck him like lightning: The girl Sam had talked about. What if that part about his absences had been true? What if…?

'No, Sammy, no,' Dean cursed and let the Impala roar to life. Why hadn't he insisted on more information? Hell, he should have just locked Sam down and never let him take off that frequently, or he should have seen the damn pattern before. The damn problem with patterns was that they sometimes took some time to surface, such as the moon cycle.

'Okay, Dean, stay cool. What did Sam say about her?' Dean cursed his memory, which seemed to go on a vacation whenever girls were involved. So far, he'd just believed that it concerned his long row of flings, but apparently, it was to be extended to his brother's (much shorter list), too.

College. He had once mentioned she was going to college.


"Zoe?"

Her eyes remained fixed on some point at the horizon, the early morning sunlight had diminished her pupils to small black dots, giving way to the complete beauty of her sapphire irises.

"Zoe, please say something. Hell, yell at me, throw things, just do something."

She hadn't interrupted him once as he told her everything; and by everything, he did mean every single thing, spared nothing. Not the demon blood, not Lucifer. Not Eve, not his former lack of a soul; but the hardest part had been telling her about what he was now, and what he had made her.

"Zo-"

"Let me sum this up," she interrupted him stealthily, "There is a God, which I find out just after I've abandoned my faith, and there is a devil. Just like there is basically every monster out there anyone has ever heard of. And you are one of them, after you have hunted them for your whole life. Ignoring the irony of that, that would leave us at you turning me into a werewolf as well. So then we most likely went on a killing spree yesterday night, throwing our very own monster ball. Did I get that right?"

"Zoe-"

"Yes or no?"

"Yes."

Zoe took a breath. She still wasn't looking at him when she said: "So now, what with the lunar cycle no longer being an indicator, I could turn wolfy any night, rip out some throats and go home happy because I will remember jack the next day."

That dry sarcastic tone was a whole new side to Zoe, one he hadn't reckoned with, and hence didn't know whether it was a sign for acceptance or hysteria.

"Technically, it is controllable. The hunger, I mean."

"Oh, yeah, we did terrific on that one last night."

That's when Sam realized why he didn't remember yesterday night: Bloodlust and its satisfaction had transformed him more werewolf than ever before; it had erased his humanity completely, blacked it out. Whenever he wolfed out in so much as kill and take hearts, his human side would step back and only resurface when the moon disappeared, as if his own humanity was scared of him at night.

Wasn't that just a terrific prospect.

"Sam… we killed." Zoe sounded more broken up about that than her new physiology. "Humans. I mean, they were douchebags, and would have hurt people if we hadn't stopped them, but… that doesn't exactly give us the right to kill them."

"I wish I had some excuse for that, Zo, I really do," Sam said quietly, "but I don't." Guilt was weighing on him like it had when he'd been possessed by Meg and killed that other hunter; only now, it was about ten times worse.

Back then, it hadn't been him; his body, yes, but it wasn't his mind who'd been in control then. Unlike now. The monster that had killed last night was part of him, hell, it was him. No exorcism spell would change that. Or any other cure, for that matter.

"Even if we could move past that, which I'll admit will take me a long time, there's still no guarantee we won't do it again."

"No, there isn't," Sam admitted, "Zoe, I'm so sorry."

Finally, she looked at him. "You know, part of me wants to hate you. The other, much bigger, part can't. My reasonable excuse for that is arguing that you didn't get turned by choice, either, and though I still think you should have told me from the start, I understand why you didn't. Not like I would have believed you," she sighed, "And the real excuse is that I can't help but caring for the man you are when you're not, well, wolfed out. Whether it's intentional or not, I don't know, but you… you make me feel alive. As much as I'd like to freak out, scream and never see you again, I just can't."

"You're insane, Zoe." Sam had expected a lot of reactions, all reaching somewhere between hysteria and fury, but never coming close to acceptance. "You shouldn't even talk to me anymore after what I did to you."

She shrugged. "Maybe. But then again, we're kind of in the only boat on a wide empty ocean together, and bad company's still better than none."

Sam smiled despite the crap situation they were in; Zoe had a lot more strength than anyone, him included, ever gave her credit for.

"You know… there's something else."

"Something else? Geez, what could there possibly still be? The Easter Bunny? Hogwarts?"

"No, nothing of that kind."

Zoe took in the serious look on Sam's handsome face and hesitatingly scooted closer to him. The sane part of her rebelled against her decision to stick with him, and against her too easy acceptance of her new homicidal tendencies, but luckily enough, a good portion of her sanity had been erased as werewolfism took over. She needed him. "What is it, then?"

"It'll only be a matter of time before hunters catch our trace. And Dean will have figured it out by now, too…" Sam trailed off, and Zoe slowly took his hand in hers.

"You care about him greatly," she stated. She hoped for Sam's sake that Dean wasn't as quick to give up on his sibling like her brother Andrew had been.

"Yes."

"Don't you think he'd understand?"

"Understand that I've become one of the things we dedicated our lives to hunt down, understand that I turned an innocent girl into a…?"

"No," Zoe shook her head, "Understand that this wasn't your fault. Understand that when you dedicate your life to a selfless cause, it is no shame to need help yourself one day and to want understanding. You became what you are now because you protected innocent people, and put yourself into the line of fire between them and monsters. Believe me, I'd be the first to blame you, but I have no reason to. Yes, you've changed my life, if for the better or the worse yet has to show, but even if worst comes to worst… I don't blame you."

Sam tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "I don't deserve you."

"You know… I may not remember much of yesterday night," Zoe smiled, "but I do know you sounded a lot more confident of yourself."

Sam huffed, "Yeah, right. Well, there's a difference between the guy of last night and who I really am."

Zoe bit her bottom lip and brushed his hair from his forehead. "I think I'd like to know both."