Okay, I believe I told you guys in the last update that my computer hates me, and it's still true. I can sign on and then it cuts me off and then I'll try again, same results. Anyway, as I said before, I'll update when it lets me.

Thanks to those of you who are still reading and waiting.

Fresh Blood

Sam, Dean, and I had stayed with Missouri for about two weeks, but we'd had to leave, sadly. It was halfway through December and we were in Albany, New York. Winter in New York; fabulous. We'd be lucky if we didn't get stuck there for a month.

We'd originally come there because Sam had read about a few girls going missing. All blondes. Hopefully we weren't dealing with another H. H. Holmes deal. That had been my thought until bodies had started turning up. Bloodless bodies with bites on their necks. One short step to vampire later and we'd begun tracking one. It wasn't hard; we'd followed the fairly fresh trail of bodies.

We weren't stupid, though. We all three had machetes and syringes full of dead man's blood. We'd drawn the vampire out by Dean cutting his arm a little too close to his wrist for my liking, but it had worked. I'd give him that. All Dean had been able to say was 'ow' when he noticed the pain from the slice on his arm and I was sure I'd given him a 'sometimes you are so stupid, but I love you anyway' look. I healed his arm when I realized the vampire was unconscious, courtesy of dead man's blood.

"That was reckless, Dean," Sam complained, and I agreed with him totally.

Dean had fallen back into his 'I'm dead already' ways and it had given him a good ol' Kamikaze spirit. But we'd gotten the vampire and now she was tied up in a room in an old abandoned hotel.

The woman-vampire had blond hair and, more importantly, blood on her mouth. It took her a while to wake up but when she did, she freaked out. Might've had something to do with the machetes we had, and also the fact that she was tied up.

"Where's your nest? Where do you and your blood sucking pals hang out?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the chick said. "Please, I don't feel good. Just let me go."

After we went through all that trouble to get her? I don't think so.

"You know we can't do that," Sam said.

"Look, I took something. I'm freaking out, I don't know what's going on. I can't come down. I just wanna come down."

Oh, my God. She really didn't know she was a vampire. Somebody had given her something, tricked her into taking it, probably, and now…now we were going to have to kill her.

She told us she'd been at some club called Spider - I wouldn't go because of the name; who names a place after an arachnid? Jeeze. Some guy was buying her drinks and then he offered her something. Something new. He put some in her drink.

"Was the drug red and thick?" Dean asked, and the girl nodded.

"Huh. That's pretty smart. In a really bad way," I said. Pretending it's a new drug, offering it to idiots who are, well, idiotic enough to drink it…

"That was vampire blood he dosed you with," Dean said. "The nastiest virus out there."

"You're crazy, he gave me roofies or something. The next thing I know we're at his place and he says he's gonna get me something to eat, just wait. But I get so hungry…"

"So you busted out?" Sam asked sympathetically and she nodded.

"But it won't wear off…whatever he gave me."

All three of us were sympathetic to the poor girl, but the three of us also knew that we couldn't just let her go.

"Lights too bright? Sunshine hurt your skin?"

"Yeah…" The girl was suddenly listening very intently. "And smells. And I can hear…blood pumping."

"I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but your blood's never pumping again," Dean said, not without feeling.

"Not mine," she said. "Yours. I can hear a heart beating from half a block away. I just want it to stop."

"It's not going to stop," Dean said, almost gently. He was probably feeling involuntary sympathy for the girl because she hadn't known what she was getting herself into. "You've already killed two people…almost three."

"No, I couldn't. I was hallucinating," she sobbed out. "It wasn't real. It was the drug."

"No, you killed them. A'right? We've been following a sloppy trail of corpses, and it leads straight to you."

Sam then jerked his head towards the door and Dean and I followed him.

"Poor girl," Sam said.

"We don't have a choice," Dean said and, because Sam and I both knew he was right, we nodded.

Dean took out his machete and I saw him push back any emotion that could stop him from doing his job. That was how he got through things - he knew he had to do them, end of story. And he did them so neither Sam nor I would have to.

I tried to block out the girl's pleas to let her go and not to hurt her, but I just couldn't. Sam and I both flinched when we heard the machete slice into her neck and I even shut my eyes to avoid having to watch her head come off.

Sam and Dean had gone to that club the vampire had talked about and I was left to take care of the body. I was not going to enjoy that because to get rid of the body I had to burn it.

One of the guys would have done it, but they both went to the club because I couldn't. Being around big groups still gave me a headache and I didn't want a repeat performance of what had happened at Missouri's, so I was left to take care of something I really didn't want to take care of.

I wasn't much into the burning of bodies. The smell alone was enough to turn me off of it, but it was better than coming away with a migraine from having too many thoughts in my head that weren't mine.

I'd gotten better at blocking Sam and Dean from my head, which was good because they were both driving me insane. Though Dean's thoughts sometimes turned amusing, mostly they bordered on depressing now. It was getting closer and closer to the day he was supposed to die and we still hadn't saved him.

I used to be at least a little enthusiastic and lively - I wasn't a spaz or anything, but I'd been able to handle things better, get past things quicker, move on and have fun - but whatever I'd been before…I wasn't anymore.

I'd burned the body behind the hotel we'd had her in. The neighborhood we'd been in was pretty much deserted so the fact that something was burning went unnoticed. And it wasn't for lack of gagging, but I didn't throw up. Then the waiting began; the nerve-wrecking waiting that always happened whenever I was away from the guys when they were working. Granted, I knew it was necessary for me to stay behind and I wasn't going to complain, but it also made me edgy because I didn't know what was happening to them at this very instant.

As the two hour mark passed, Sam came into the room and he looked…mildly upset and worried.

Ever since I'd told him I wasn't going to put up with his crap anymore, he'd been nicer to me; maybe that had been all I'd needed to do. Point was I still cared about him and I didn't like when something was wrong with someone I cared about.

"What happened? Did you find the vampire? Where's Dean?"

"Gordon's out of jail, he came after us. Yes, we found the vampire, but we didn't kill him; we were interrupted. He didn't get to change anybody tonight, though."

"And Dean?"

"He told me to leave. He drew Gordon off. He had that crazy guy with him, the one that we met in Black Rock."

"Kubrick?" The one who'd thought he was on a mission from God. Great. He thought Sam was some kind of Anti-Christ - or the Anti-Christ. "Great, so now we have to worry about a raging psychopath as well as a vampire." At this point, I was feeling better about the vampire.

Neither Sam nor I wanted to be a mother hen to Dean because Dean knew what he was doing and could get the job done on his own, but - and there was a but - he was beginning to take stupid risks. Like telling Sam to go and then taking off on his own. And not answering when we called, and then showing up about an hour later saying he'd 'stopped for a slice'.

If I had been closer, I'd have punched him one. Stopping for a slice while we were sitting here in a dingy old motel room was a definite way to piss me off.

"Nice move you pulled back there, Dean, running right at the weapons."

"Well, what can I say? I'm a bad ass."

"No, you're a dumb ass," I muttered, but he heard me anyway.

He ignored my comment and Sam's worried face, which kind of made me angrier.

"So, I guess Gordon's out of jail."

"Uh, yeah, I guess so," Sam said, still worried but willing to move on. "You know, how the hell did he know where to find us?"

There was a moment of silence and then Dean seemed to have a light bulb moment.

"That bitch."

I figured out who he was talking about after the word bitch came out of his mouth. But even if I hadn't known, the 'hi, Bela' that came out next would've helped me figure it out. He'd called her on his cell phone.

"Question for you. When you called me yesterday, it wasn't to thank me for saving your ass, was it?"

The phone wasn't on speaker, but I could still hear somewhat well.

"Gordon Walker paid me to tell him where you were."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, he had a gun on me. What else was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know, maybe pick up the phone and tell us that a raging psychopath was dropping by!" Dean yelled. "He tried to kill us!"

She said something I didn't quite catch and then… "Bela, if we make it out of this alive, the first thing I'm gonna do is kill you."

"You're not serious."

"Listen to my voice and tell me if I'm serious."

He was. I could tell it; Sam could tell it. I wondered if Bela could. And part of me didn't care because I didn't like Bela anyway. She was a nuisance and always got in our way.

Dean hung up and looked like he was going to throw his phone against the wall, but he didn't. It occurred to me that since I wasn't spending all my time with him and Sam that I missed a lot; I hadn't even been aware that Bela had called the day before.

Dean didn't say anything after that. He just went on to sharpen his machete; Sam and I were cleaning our guns.

"The vampire's still out there, Dean," Sam reminded him.

"That's assuming he's the only one," I said. "The girls that have gone missing."

"First thing's first," Dean said.

"Gordon," both Sam and I said.

Dean looked at us both and he had an almost cautious look in his eyes.

"About that…when we find him, or if he finds us… I'm just saying he's not leaving us a whole lot of options."

"Yeah, I know. We've gotta kill him," Sam said calmly.

Dean almost did a double-take. Me? Not so much. Sam had been changing recently, just like I had, and had become harder, so I wasn't much surprised.

"Really? Just like that? I thought you would've been like 'no, we can't, he's human, it's wrong'." Dean had finished in a mock-whiny voice.

"No, I'm done," Sam said steadily. "Gordon's not gonna stop until we're dead…or until he is."

Dean arched an eyebrow in agreement. Then he turned to me. What, was I the swing vote?

"Aly?"

"Whatever you guys decide. I know Gordon needs to be dealt with and being nice didn't work, so…"

"Yeah, but can you kill him if he comes after you?"

"If it comes down between him or me or any other innocent person? Yeah, I can kill him."

I realized I was talking about a human, like Dean had mentioned, and just a few short months ago I wouldn't have been able to say what I'd just said, but I wouldn't have been able to burn a corpse either. Not without vomiting anyway.

Bela called back about an hour later to tell us where Gordon was and that we shouldn't look for him. Her exact words were 'run like hell.'

We didn't, of course, because we didn't run away from our problems. No, we rushed headlong into trouble, that's what we did. Bela had said Gordon was being held in a warehouse with a neon sign outside. Would've been helpful if we weren't in the warehouse district.

But eventually we arrived at a warehouse that had a neon sign reading Trade Co. on it. We went in the basement because that was where my radar was leading - the steps had blood on them; it looked like footprints or something. In the basement we found the bodies of two girls, they were headless and hanging by their wrists from the ceiling.

The room was kind of set up like a living room suite. Two chairs, table, carpet. The two bodies took away it's charm. Then there was a guy - the vampire Sam and Dean hadn't gotten to get rid of earlier because of Gordon - kneeling on the floor in front of the two bodies.

Dean picked up a knife from the nearby table, and the vampire said, "Go ahead. Do it. Kill me."

Hm. The guy must've been messing with us. Vampires don't just let people kill them.

"What happened here?" Sam asked.

"Gordon Walker," the vampire spat. "I never should've brought a hunter here. Never. I just…I just wanted some kind of revenge." He stood up to face us. "So stupid…exposing him to my family."

"Oh, yeah, you're such a family man," Dean quipped.

"Dean…" I chastised. No, I didn't agree with what this guy was doing, but he was genuinely hurting all the same.

"You don't understand. I was desperate. You ever felt desperate?" The vampire and Dean started circling around each other - predator/prey; I wasn't sure who was who in this scenario - and I had to force myself not to roll my eyes. If they were going to attack each other, why didn't they just do it already?

"I've lost everyone I've ever loved. I'm staring down eternity alone. Can you think of a worse hell?"

A pause from Dean, then… "Well, there's Hell."

The vampire scoffed. "I wasn't thinking. I just - I didn't care anymore. Do you know what it's like when you just don't give a damn? It's like…it's like being dead already. So just go ahead. Do it."

Sam went around Mr. Undead and started inspecting the headless bodies. My stomach kind of rebelled at the sight, but it only lasted a second.

"Dean. Head wasn't cut off, it was ripped off. With someone's bare hands."

I let out a sharp breath; it wasn't hard to put the pieces together. "You turned him. Gordon. Didn't you?"

Sam and Dean shared an almost panicked look. I didn't have to read their minds to know what they were thinking. Gordon Walker, vampire hunter, was now a vampire. A vampire with a mission - a mission to destroy Sam. Not good.

I jumped with Dean decapitated the vampire - Jeeze, warning next time. I kind of felt sorry for the vampire. He'd been lonely; he hadn't changed anyone because he was evil - excluding Gordon - he changed them out of the fear of being alone. Didn't make it right, but still…

"Damn it," Dean muttered. "Gordon with super powers. Friggin' fantastic."

"Tell me about it," Sam said.

"Well, he'll have to feed soon. Assuming he hasn't already," I said. "I don't think he'll be sloppy enough to leave bodies behind, though."

"No, he wouldn't," Sam said. "We need to find him before he does any real damage."

"Well, the sun will be on our side for a while. He wouldn't want to be out in the light. Not when he's this new," Dean said. "So we split up. Check motels, empty buildings, warehouses."

"That could take a while," Sam said. "It's a big city, Dean."

"Yeah, I know. You two take one side, I'll take the other."

"You wanna go alone?" I asked. "After Gordon the vampire?"

"Don't have a choice. Neither of you should be by yourself, I can handle it."

"Oh, and we can't?" Sam asked.

"Not what I meant. I just meant…Gordon is after you, Sam. You shouldn't be going after him yourself. And Aly shouldn't be alone either. What if she has an episode or something. Best you two stick together."

"Well, why don't we go together, the three of us?"

"No, we cover more ground if we split up."

"Or we can cover no ground and continue talking," I said, rolling my eyes. "Let's just go. Let's agree to call if we find him, yeah? No taking him on alone. Okay?"

Dean didn't speak; Sam nodded.

"Okay?" I asked again.

"Fine," he muttered. "I'll behave."

I smirked a little, though I wasn't sure he was being honest.

"Thank you."

Then we left. It was daylight so we couldn't really do anything about the bodies at the moment. We probably wouldn't do anything anyway - nobody would come in here; not anybody that would be able to turn it in without they themselves getting in trouble.

As Sam and I were hunting for Gordon I noticed that a few houses had Nativity scenes up outside. It was that close to Christmas. Christmas wasn't that important to me; my mother and I had stopped celebrating after Jack had left. We had never put much stock in the holiday; we knew a lot of people celebrated it as Christ's birthday, but it was actually supposed to be a Pagan holiday, so…

Point was the time was flying by and I couldn't get it back.

Sam and I checked motels, empty buildings, warehouses, and places that seemed weird for vampires to frequent - Gordon would know we'd be looking in the other places so he'd probably stay away from them.

We stopped for lunch around two-ish and then continued searching until six, then Sam picked up a tourist map so we could find other places we hadn't looked yet. Why hadn't we picked one up in the first place and scoped out all the likely places?

When Sam and I got back to the motel - the abandoned one we just happened to have to stay in just in case we had to take care of a few more vampires - we saw Dean was already there. He obviously hadn't found anything either; he was frustrated.

"It's like a giant haystack, and Gordon's a deadly needle. We're running out of daylight. Won't have the sun to slow him down."

"Yeah, he'll be unstoppable."

The three of us ended up getting new phones because Sam said if Gordon knew our numbers he could use the signal to track us down. I was more of the opinion that if he tracked us then we wouldn't have to track him, but I went along with it anyway; Sam destroyed our old ones.

Once that was taken care of Dean dropped us off at the motel and attempted to leave Sam and me there by ourselves. Sam and I both said 'no' right away.

"I don't need you to sign me a permission slip, okay? He's after you, Sam, not me, and he's turbocharged. I want you to stay out of harm's way. I'll take care of it."

"You're not going by yourself," Sam argued. "You're gonna get killed."

"It's just another day at the office. It's a massively dangerous day at the office."

"Yeah, but…you can't go alone," I said. "He could rip you apart without batting an eyelash. Then we'd be here thinking 'Gee, it's too bad we weren't there getting in the way of that'."

"I'll be fine. Quit worryin'."

"I can't! You're being reckless. Going after Gordon alone is stupid."

"We're sick and tired of you Kamikaze trip," Sam added.

"Kamikaze? I'm more like a ninja."

"You're not funny," I said. "You're taking stupid risks and -"

"Part of the job, Aly," he interrupted.

"Only when you do it. If we did the things you do you'd be on our asses so fast -"

"It's because he's the guy with nothing' to lose now," Sam said. "Because, uh, it's because you're already dead, right?"

"If the shoe fits." Dean shrugged indifferently. "I mean, what do you want me to do, Sam, huh? Sit around all day, writing sad poems about how I'm gonna die? You know what? I got one. Let's see, what rhymes with 'Shut up, Sam'?"

"Dude, drop the attitude, Dean. Quit turning everything into a punch line. And you know something else? Stop trying to act like you're not afraid."

"I'm not!" Dean yelled.

"You're lying," Sam countered. "And you may as well drop it 'cause I can see right through you."

"You got no idea what you're talkin' about."

Dean had turned away from us with his 'this discussion is over' tone and it made me want to smack him.

"Yeah, I do. You're scared, Dean. You're scared because your year is running out, and you're still going to Hell, and you're freaked."

Finally someone that wasn't me had pointed that out. Though, personally, I thought Dean was just being an ass. He had to know how he was acting would affect us this way.

"I've been following you around my entire life! I mean, I've been looking up to you since I was four, Dean. Studying you, trying to be just like my big brother. So, yeah, I know you better than anyone else in the entire world. And this is exactly how you act when you're terrified, and, I mean, I can't blame you. It's just…"

Throughout Sam's tirade I felt his emotions as if they were my own. It only happened when someone was feeling something extreme, like now. I could feel how Sam's chest had tightened almost painfully, how desperately he wanted to get through to Dean.

"It's just I wish you would drop the show and be my brother again. 'Cause…just 'cause."

"Because you're not dead yet, Dean," I finished for Sam. "But you could be soon and we want to remember you how you really are. Not like this."

Dean's emotions were to complex for me to even begin to comprehend, so I didn't try. I just waited to hear his response.

"A'right, we'll hole up." His voice was softer now that he knew how we felt. "Cover our scent so he can't track us, wait the night out here."

Dean's eyes were filled with surprise, probably from Sam's speech. Had he not known that Sam looked up to him? Dean was oblivious like that sometimes. Part of his charm, but still…he should open his eyes more.

The three of us began doing stuff to keep us safe through the night. Dean and I began barricading the door and windows - the first with the bed frame, the latter with whatever was available - and Sam began gathering together stuff to make the mix John had told us about; the stuff that would cover our scent because the mix smelled so bad.

"Thank you," I said softly as Dean and I worked. "For listening."

I touched him on the arm briefly before I got back to work. That was all I'd wanted to say. I needed him to know that I was grateful for him at least trying for us.

"A'right, guys. Here we go."

Sam began burning the stinky-ass mix and then I began breathing through my shirt. Jeeze. I knew this was necessary, but why did it have to be so smelly?

I had just dozed off when Dean's new phone rang. I groaned; I needed my sleep, damn it, it was doctor's orders.

"You've had that phone two hours, Dean. Who'd you give the number to?"

"Nobody," he answered. "Hello?" Then, "How'd you get this number?"

Dean put the phone on speaker.

"You're scent's all over the cell phone store. Of course, I can't smell you now. Where are you?" It was Gordon, of course.

"I guess you'll just have to find us," Dean said.

"I'd rather you come to me."

"What's the matter, Gordo? You're not afraid of us, are you? We're just sitting here. Bring it on!" Dean was doing his while taunting the enemy thing; it either pissed the enemy off to the point of violence or it made said enemy make a mistake. I wondered what it would do this time.

Then there was the sound of a sobbing girl - it filled the line. Gordon had…kidnapped some poor girl? Had he fed from her? Did he plan to? Or was she just leverage?

"Factory on Riverside off the turnpike. Be here in twenty minutes or the girl dies."

"Gordon, let the girl go," Dean said and he wasn't taunting now. He was being completely serious. "You don't kill innocent people. You're still a hunter."

"No, I'm a monster."

In my opinion, he'd never been anything else.

Dean cursed as he hung up the phone; we didn't have a choice but to do as Gordon had said.

So when we got to the factory we looked for the girl - she was our first priority now. The girl was still sobbing and could barely walk for freaking out - I understood; she'd been through quite an ordeal - so Dean began carrying her.

"We're gonna get you out of here," he said. "Guys, stay close."

That's not a problem, I thought.

Only it was a problem because, even though Sam had been following us closely we still got separated. A door slid down and cut us off from each other. Sam was on one side; Dean, the girl, and I were on the other.

I watched as Dean put the girl down and began kicking at the door, because, yeah, that would get the job done.

"Damn it, Sam!" Dean yelled in frustration.

"Dean!" I could hear Sam doing the same as his brother was - kicking at the door.

"Sam, be careful!" Then to me, "Aly, can you get this thing up?"

"I can try, but I'm running on no sleep here, so I probably can't do much of anything."

I concentrated on lifting the door because I'd been the one who had said we shouldn't face Gordon alone and Sam would have to if we didn't get on the other side. My efforts were interrupted, however, by a sharp - sharp - pain in my arm. My first thought was 'What the hell?' and then I saw that the girl we'd come for…well, she wasn't a girl at all; she was a vampire. A vampire that was biting me and draining me so fast my head started spinning. It kind of disgusted me since I should've been able to tell she wasn't human right away, but no I couldn't differentiate when there was more than one thing around.

A shot rang out and the vampire eased up on the killer grip she had on my arm. Dean had shot the creature in the forehead and it was now slumped over on the ground. There was the light display that the Colt usually produced.

I fell to my knees and let out a few shaky - almost laughing - breaths and then I semi-glared at Dean. "I was standing right there. What if - what if you had missed or the thing had moved me?"

"I don't miss." Dean knelt by me to check out my arm. "Are you okay?"

The pain had faded, so I figured I had already healed.

"I'm good. In serious need of a blood transfusion, maybe…but I'm good."

Then there was a crash and it took me all of about fifteen seconds to realize what had happened. Gordon and Sam had come flashing through a wall that was separating us. Sam lost his machete in the process of hitting the ground and Gordon flung him across the room.

"Don't move," Dean said to me, and, hey, massive blood loss, couldn't have moved if I wanted to.

Dean pointed the gun at Gordon's head, but the vampire was too fast. This time it was Dean who got tossed across the room. He was pinned to the wall and Gordon began biting him. I found I could move if I wanted to - I had motivation to. I hadn't seen Sam get up, but he was there pulling Gordon from Dean and then Dean fell to the ground, unconscious.

I tried to block everything but Dean. I couldn't care that Sam was now on his own fighting Gordon because I had to make sure Dean was okay.

Dean was deathly pale, but he was breathing. His pulse was steady, but he had lost more blood than I had. I wiped the excess blood away from his neck just to take in the damage. The marks weren't that deep, so I used some of the last vestiges of strength I had to heal him. I wouldn't feel better until he was up walking around.

I heard a choking sort of sound; Sam was using razor wire to try and rip Gordon's head off. Sam was working off of pure hatred and adrenaline. First thing I could think was 'ew', second - Go, Sam!. Third 'please don't get his blood in your system.' And I vaguely thought 'ow' and winced as I felt a phantom pain in my hands just by thinking about how much the wire would be hurting Sam.

I grimaced as Gordon's head came off. I forgot all about Gordon when Dean woke up, however. His hand instinctively flew to his neck, but I caught it and covered it with my own.

"I got it. You're good."

He then moved on to the next order of business - standing up. I helped him to his feet and he stumbled a little from weakness, or maybe from dizziness. He looked down at Gordon's head; his brows shot up in surprise.

Sam shrugged sheepishly and we began walking out of the factory. Slowly. None of us were at our best.

"You just charged a super-vamped-out Gordon with no weapon. That's a little reckless, don't you think?"

Sam and I shared a look and rolled our eyes. Dean calling someone reckless was like the pot calling the kettle black, but he was probably only doing it because we'd called him out on it earlier.

"Give me your hands, Sam." I grabbed them before he had time to protest. "You have to drive. Dean and I aren't in any condition to."

So I healed his hands and he wiped them off on his jeans.

We went to a different motel - one that wasn't abandoned - and planned on staying there for a few days. We needed to nurse our wounds or at least replenish the blood in our systems. We'd all lost a lot.

I was still getting my own room; that wasn't going to change. Dean came with me, made sure I took all the precautions, made sure I was okay. I was good, needed vitamins and some sleep and maybe some Excedrin, but other than that I was fine. I could move around without holding onto anything so I figured it couldn't be that bad.

Then I was alone. Only this time it was different. I was sort of reveling in the aloneness; I needed peace and quiet after everything that had happened.

For the first time in a long time…I didn't feel lonely.

Okay, so...I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, it kind of kicked my butt when I was trying to write it. It feels off, maybe a little mechanical to me, but that's just me. I'm my worst critic when it comes to my writing. Hope you enjoyed.