I spent another day at the cabin finishing what I'd started for Karma, a practice dummy that she could play with as though it was a toy. It made her happy, and for a bit gave me something to focus on. Something to help me figure out where my headspace was.

Did I go? Did I want to find him? Did I want to open that box? And what would be there afterwards? These were questions that I just… I didn't know what answers I wanted, much less whether or not I actually wanted answers at all.

I was saved from this by Mick calling. "Kylie! How has your assignment been?"

"It's been well. I sent Ketch a copy of a grimoire to be forwarded back to London."

"I saw that. Excellent work, save for the delayed check-in." I grimaced a little.

"Sorry, sir."

"Don't be! It was still excellent work nonetheless." He complimented. "And speaking of it, what are you currently working on now?"

"I'm currently trying to track down new leads." I explained. "I'm looking for older sources and was about to use a tracking spell to kinda ping for them."

"Good, good, good plan." He commented. "How attached to it are you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I require assistance in some work." He explained. "Putting up the same tracking and… 'pinging' sigils that you put up in London."

"What for?"

"Vampires."

"Why vampires?" I took a glance outside. Almost out of pure coincidence, Karma's dummy toy had just morphed its signature in to that of a vampire. I watched it sprint off, Karma hot on its heels.

"Call it a trial run." He said. "We've come to the conclusion that the best way to recruit more Hunters is by a display of what we can do."

"So what, you want to show them you can put tracking chips on vamps?" I asked.

"No, we're going much bigger than that." He said. "We're going to work to exterminate all vampires within the continental United States."

I almost dropped the phone when I heard that. "All vampires?" I asked.

"Yes, all of them, just as we've done for the most part in London." He said. "We believe that if we can do that and take out the vampire population in America, we can get other American Hunters more in tune with our operation and more open to cooperation and future recruitment."

"Wow." I muttered. "That's… that's a huge step you're wanting to take."

"Yes. We also want your help and consultation on how best to go about Project V in America."

"Project V?"

"For Vampire." He laughed. "Come on, Kylie, I know you're quicker than that. I'll send you a text with the coordinates for a temporary base we've set up. It'll be easier for you to be here in person so that we can collaborate better."

"What about Mary?" I asked. "Are you bringing her in for this?"

"Yes, but currently she's out on assignment with Ketch."

"Ketch takes partners?" I raised an eyebrow at that. I'd always seen him on his own, lone wolf style. It was strange to even hear about him working with another person.

"Mary's… situation," Mick explained, picking each word carefully. "Puts her in an area where Ketch feels the need to monitor her progress more closely to ensure that she is reaching her full potential."

"He doesn't trust her." I summed up.

"He sees extreme value in her, as he did in you." Mick corrected. "Remember he did keep extended awareness of your progress while you were with us in London."

"Fair enough." I conceded. "Is he aware of my assignment change?" Ketch was in charge of handing me assignments, after all.

"Yes. He actually recommended you for it."

"Oh?" I furrowed my brows. "When was that?"

"We've been working at the ideas and possibilities of Project V for the past few weeks now," he said. "But Ketch wanted to see what information you could gather through witchcraft and other Hunters before you were brought in for this assignment, to see as to whether or not you would find any more useful information."

"Alright." I thought for a moment. "I'll leave immediately, then."

"Excellent. Standard security protocols will be in place, of course." I knew what he meant on that. "And I hear that you've taken to riding a motorcycle around instead of just… appearing everywhere?"

"It helps keep appearances when need be." I said. "Besides, I wouldn't want my legs getting flabby." Mick laughed at that.

"You do have a splendid sense of humor." He commented. "However it is good that you have done this. The wardings we have already put up at our new safehouse are intended to keep out anybody or anything that may feel inclined to quite simply appear instead of coming in through the front doors."

"You want me to test them out later?" I asked, putting a hand to the necklace I wore. If they were using my designs, I would be able to get through. If not, I still could probably get through, but it was only a 50/50 chance.

"Possibly, but let's put a pin in that for now." Mick decided. He was confident in them working, then, but not 100%. "We'll have a place for you to store your motorcycle and any belongings you have when you get here. Where have you been staying?" He sounded curious at the last sentence. "We have no records of you checking in to any hotels or renting out any apartments as of late."

"I've got a place I used to crash out before." I said. "A personal safehouse, if you will. I promise, it's safe."

"You know that we would prefer to keep an eye on where you are staying."

"This is the safest place I can be." I stated. "I give you my personal guarantee." Mick paused, then let out a small sigh.

"At least get a hotel room when you are out working on your assignments next time, alright?"

"I can do that." I promised. Oh no, I'm being forced to accept a hotel room at a nice place and not pay for it. What an awful twist of my arm, Mick. I feel so used.

"I'll see you when you arrive, then." Mick sounded happy and assured.

"Sounds great." I hung up, happy for the distraction. I smiled a little. Work was good. Work was extremely good. I packed up my things immediately, rooting around for a bag I hadn't seen in a while. My suitcase had been blown up with the Loughlin house, and in turn a lot of the new clothes I'd gotten through them. I'd been wearing the clothes I'd had here, from Crowley, but…

Nobody knew I'd taken my Canada backpack from the Bunker. It hadn't been in the apartment when Lucifer had thrown me out in to the cold. I'd had it with me at the Bunker. I was doing a book exchange.

I grabbed it and brought it back here before I made everyone forget. It was the only thing I had left for a while that was just… Just mine. I'd stashed it here when I went to college. I didn't think I'd see it again. It was nice, having it.

I opened it up, taking a look at everything I just hadn't used in so long. I still had salt bombs. I still had that notebook I'd started out with. I still had that slingshot, even! I opened up the notebook, going to the contacts page I'd started in the back.

I.C.E. Dean Winchester

I.C.E. Sam Winchester

I.C.E. Pray to Castiel

I stared at it, remembering my hesitancy on writing that, when I was still figuring out everything. I'd kept up with notes, though. I'd added in names and numbers of other Hunters that Dean and Sam had told me about, ones that I'd contacted myself when I'd been running phones. The rest of it was filled with notes and spell ideas from, well…

Before.

It was my whole history in Hunting up until the point of Lucifer, pretty much.

I left it in the backpack, and rooted around the dresser for any last sort of clothes that I may have. A few of Amara's cast-offs still, yeah, and at the bottom of the lowest drawer a simple shirt, flannel, and jeans.

I left them in the bottom of the drawer, finished packing my things together, and left for the coordinates that Mick had texted me. It was a day's ride, non-stop.

It was early in the morning. I could be there in two, taking a stop at a hotel (to make the Old Men happy) along the way for sleep. Hell, they may even want me to get food.

I smiled at that, throwing a ribeye out to Karma before I decided to hit the road. I had clothes. I had my laptop. I had the road. I had…

A distraction from making a choice. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was fully aware of that. Project V was a work distraction.

But it was work, and it was a distraction, and I wasn't going to say no. Hopefully it would just help me sort things out, give myself a good and productive focus until I knew what I wanted to do.

I got there in the two days' time, no problem. Mick greeted me once I had my bike parked, as sharply dressed as ever.

"Miss Dillinger!" He crowed. "Good to see you! How was the journey here?"

"Uneventful." I said, taking off my helmet and shaking out my hair. It looked like a compete rat's nest, but I had a hairbrush and things in my backpack, so I couldn't have cared less. "Were the boys back across the pond happy? I checked in at a hotel. Decent one, too. Got food and everything." I smiled, raising an eyebrow. Mick chuckled as well.

"I know you're still working to assimilate to our beliefs, but tell me, is it really that bad to have a roof over your head at night? A stable, secure roof?" I thought back to all the times I hadn't had just that.

"No." I agreed. "It's not that bad."

"Wonderful. Now, let me show you your new accommodations, and we'll get started on setting up a base plan for Project V."

"Accommodations?"

"Of course." Mick said, smiling.

"What's wrong with where I was living?"

"I would have thought you'd like the upgrade." He commented. "New place to live. Good security, nice open space for your… Dog…" I could see him fighting back a grimace at the mention of Karma. "To roam around. Plus, it'll keep you closer to the action."

"Alright, then." I nodded. "Good thing I brought an overnight bag."

"Speaking of which, we heard your clothing and such was destroyed in the Loughlin fire."

"Yeah. I always keep spare though." I shook the bag to prove my point.

"We'll make sure you are supplied with new as well." He replied.

"Thanks." I smiled a little. It was nice, having these options. A place to stay. New clothes when they were destroyed. Understanding. Acceptance.

"I remember when you were hesitant about working with us," he reminded me, clapping me lightly on the shoulder. "Guarded. Jaded. Quiet. Look at you now," the praise was strange, but nice. "You've come in to your own quite nicely."

"Trying to butter me up for something Mick?" I asked.

"Just ensuring you're aware of how well you've done so far." He answered. "And that you'll continue the good work."

"Sounds easy enough to me."

"In which case, allow me to give you the tour." He said. I followed, listening as he gave me the important information. Security measures, magic merged with technology, where everything was, the whole nine. I even had my own little bunk room. It was bare, with metal walls and a metal closet, but it was a pretty nice room, and one I could put my bag in. I kept my notebook, though. I had a feeling it would be useful.

All in all, I was impressed with what they'd done.

"How long did it take for you to get this all set up?" I asked, once we were in the main room. It had its own B.A.M.T., even, which I couldn't help but have mixed feelings about.

"A month."

"When did you do that?"

"I was quite busy while you were training in London." He said, offering me a sly smile. He was proud of what had been done, no doubt.

"Impressive." I nodded with the word, looking around at everything.

"Thank you." Oh yeah, Mick was definitely pleased with himself. Others walked in shortly afterwards, taking seats at the table. Mick motioned to it as well. "Shall we begin our work?"

I took a seat as well, glancing about at the people at the table. One man, and a woman. The man was obviously not Men of Letters. I took a seat next to the woman, offering her a small smile. She smiled in return.

"Everyone, I believe introductions are in order." Mick stated, moving to stand at the head of the table. "You all know who I am. I've brought you all together here so that we can do something monumental for America, and rid it of vampires completely." He motioned to the woman sitting next to me.

"My name is Serena Colman." She introduced. "I'm the Head of Security and Surveillance for the Men of Letters, and I'm here to monitor our security measures here at the base as well as aid in creating a system to track and monitor vampire nests and their movement habits." Mick nodded to her once before turning to me.

"I'm Kylie Dillinger." I introduced. "I'm a witch working with Men of Letters and I guess I'm kinda here for my mix in Hunting knowledge in America and what I can do with magic."

"You're Kylie?!" The man sitting across from me asked, the one that wasn't Men of Letters. "Shoot, I'm Pierce Moncrieff!" I knew his name. I'd gotten his number through a few different Hunters, and had called him once or twice with different leads for him to check out. Hadn't met him in person though, until now. "We all thought you were dead, Little Winchester!"

"Little Winchester?"

"That's what we called you, me and a few buddies of mine! It's because of your pretty much being adopted by Sam and Dean, you know? Do they know you're alive?"

"No, and I think I'd rather keep it that way for now, if it's all the same to you." I said. He nodded.

"Gotcha. They'd probably put a bullet through your brain if they learned you went witch, right?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "I got no problem with it, so long as you keep your hexes and spells off of me."

"Alright then." I said, making a mental note to ask Mick where he'd pulled Pierce from, as well as if he'd briefed them on a bit of who I was already. Mick nodded again, turning from me to look at Pierce.

"Well, I'm Pierce. I'm a Hunter here in these United States." He said. "I guess I'm here because, well, I'm a Hunter." He said, smiling to himself. "I'm the Hunter King of Baton Rouge." Mick nodded, and all our attention went back to him.

"Now that we're all acquainted, let's get to business." Mick said, moving the conversation forwards as he turned to the large screen behind him. He held up a remote, turning it on to another map of the continental United States. "Our aims are to exterminate every vampire right now in these 48 states." He said, pressing another button. Multiple red dots lit up on the screen, as well with the map. "These are the approximate projections of vampires within them, thanks to Ms. Coleman and the data her agents have gathered." I furrowed my eyebrows, as did Pierce.

"Your numbers are off." I stated.

"There's not nearly as many as you believe in sunnier areas like Texas and New Mexico." Pierce added. "But they're more clumped in bigger cities to make up for it there." I nodded with him.

"And they're a lot more scattered than you guys have them planned out." I added. "As well as varying. Vampires make nests, yeah, but they also like their space. The number of solo vampires is almost equal to the number of nests, and your graph, though impressive," I motioned to all the lights on the table. "Doesn't account for the different nests versus individuals on their own." I thought for a minute, remembering some information from Sam and Dean when I had been first learning. "What about the Alpha?"

"He's in Morocco." Pierce said. "A buddy of mine was tracking him for a while." Pierce shook his head. "Lost his life trying to keep track of him."

"Our intelligence states the same." Serena added.

"And with the Alpha out of the way, we have a perfect opportunity to strike." Mick added. "The question that now lies is what would be the best method of going about this?" Everybody turned to look at me and Pierce, then.

"Shit, I feel like I'm getting put on stage now." He commented, looking over at me with a laugh. I thought for a moment, trying to examine it like a math problem or something. I opened up my notebook to a blank page and started scribbling down some ideas.

"We can't go at it all at once." I said. "Nor will it be easy. I know you guys did it in London, but we're looking at a serious area difference here. We've got 48 states to work with, and over 3 million square miles that vampires could easily be hiding in."

"London isn't much bigger than 150,000 kilometers." Mick agreed. "How would you suggest making up for the size difference?"

"The best way to do this would be to separate out our area in to smaller sections, that was we can also run trial and error in with keeping it vampire-free afterwards." I decided, earning agreeing nods all around the table.

"What would you recommend?" Mick asked. I looked over at Pierce, who appeared to have an idea.

"What if we started with just the Midwest?" He asked. "48 states total. Why not cut it in to 12 for now?"

"The Northwest region?" Mick asked. Pierce and I nodded. "Seems viable. Would it be in 1/4th increments completely or just for the trial phase?" Mick asked.

"Completely." Serena said. "It will make monitoring easier if we focus our efforts that way, and will also ensure we don't spread ourselves too thin."

"Alright." Mick agreed. "The American Midwest. How do you propose going about it?"

"Similarly to how we did in London." Serena said. "We monitor. We watch. We wait. We track and catalogue and find the best way to kill them off without alerting the others. Like you said, vampires talk amongst each other. If they hear that their own kind is being murdered, they'll band together."

"Why don't we let them?" Pierce asked. I looked over at him, confused. "Hear me out. It's like trying to track down a rat problem. Why kill them individually instead of watching where they go, and when they do band together killing them off as a group?" I thought about that, scribbling down a few more ideas.

"What about the risk of them creating more?" I asked.

"Cut 'em off, smoke 'em out." He answered. "See if we can drive them to a safe haven of our choosing, and go at them from there."

"But what about the people that we put at risk?" I persisted. "Scared vampires will react for survival. That'll mean an increase in deaths, an increase in turns," I shook my head. "It's a bad idea."

"It may be a casualty we'll have to accept." Mick said. I shook my head.

"No." I argued. "It's not. If we're going to do this to protect people, we shouldn't put them at risk along with it."

"What would you recommend, then?" Pierce asked. I thought, looking at what I'd written.

"Start off with the loners." I said. "Kidnap them. See how social they are and who they know. Let them lead us from vampire to vampire, and go from killing off loners to being able to track and maintain better knowledge on where they are as groups. Monitor how they interact with each other." I thought about that. "This actually has the potential to exponentially increase our knowledge of vampires as social creatures and interlocking groups.

"Yeah, but they're still monsters." Pierce muttered. "Who cares about how they act?"

"It just helped us set up a game plan." I pointed out.

"Yeah, but once they're all gone," he argued. "What's the point in having that information?"

"Record keeping." Mick answered. "Maintaining knowledge. Preserving the information for future research and generations that may have questions."

"Whatever." Pierce said.

"So what do we do?" Serena asked.

"Find some vampires, I guess." I said. "Get an estimate of how many we're working with here. From there, we'll start monitoring them."

"Should we find a nest or just an individual?" Mick asked.

"I like Kylie's plan of having an individual lead us to a nest." Serena said. "We gather as much information as we can – names, places, habits, etc. cetera. From there, we bug them, follow them, and watch."

"I can set up some tracking spells if needed, as well as alerts to let us know if they leave specific areas." I offered. "See if we can keep track of how they move and why."

"I've got a few buddies that may have leads on some vamps." Pierce added.

"And we've got the facilities to contain one." Mick concluded. "Excellent. When can you have those leads ready for us?" That one was aimed at Pierce.

"At the earliest, probably tomorrow." He said.

"Then we'll ship out in two days to go acquire a vampire." Mick decided, turning to Serena. "Do we have a portable containment unit?"

"I can be one." I said, looking around. "Karma is trained to find a vampire and alert me. We can get it back no problem."

"I'd prefer a physical unit, as a precaution." Mick said. "One that we can get in to the compound and in to a secured room much easier."

"Don't ward it, then." I said. "I'll pop him in and pop myself out. No harm to me. Easier to get him there. Once we have the unit in the room I can pop back in, knock him out, and it'll be easier to tie him up so we can get to work."

"Ketch will want to be here for this." Mick said. "He does love a good hunt, and I'd rather send you in with a partner."

"I'll go with her." Pierce offered. "I've heard about what you could do before you went all witchy woman. I'd love the opportunity to see you in action."

"You heard about me?" I asked.

"A lot of Hunters have." Pierce said. "You stuck it to demons before you even knew what demons were. Everyone knows that story." He laughed. "They heard about the salt bombs you used. A few of my buddies are trying it out now and like the idea."

"Damn." I muttered. "Cool."

"Pierce, you can accompany Ms. Dillinger," Mick said. "But Ketch will still want to come."

"The more the merrier." I said. "Will Mary be coming?"

"Most likely, yes."

"Sweet." I looked over at the map behind Mick, thinking. "We're actually going to do this, aren't we?"

"We've done it before." Mick said. "You've seen the results of it."

"Yeah, but seeing it already done and actually doing it…" I shook my head. "What about vampires that haven't killed anyone?"

"I've never heard of a vampire that didn't." Pierce said.

"They're still monsters." Serena added.

"Yeah, but… Aren't they also still people?" I asked. "Don't they still have the ability to make a choice? Rugarus and Wendigos, I get. They kinda can't make choices. But vampires don't always choose to be vampires, they're made that way, and they can make choices."

"And they chose to kill." Mick reminded me. "They chose to drink people, to turn people against their will, and to kill."

"Aren't there any ways to cure a vampire?" I flipped back to my notes on them. "Yeah, there's a mixture you can drink if you haven't had blood yet."

"But other than that, there are no known cures." Mick said. "And even then, that one is extremely painful and has a high likelihood of killing the infected."

"But it's still possible." I said.

"Then if we come across any new vampires as collateral, who haven't fed yet," Mick said. "We shall cure them and send them on their way."

I still wasn't certain if I liked it, but at the same time I couldn't help but be a little happy. We were about to take a big step towards creating a safer America, where people weren't left with questions after a loved one died or worse – tried to kill them.

We were going to do something good, something big.

I just couldn't help but wonder if it would just end with vamps, or if they would move on to others like werewolves or demons.

Or witches, for that matter.