Second update today!
This is the longest one yet! I'm pretty proud of myself for cranking two chapters out in one day! R&R!
-Christianne
Nikki POV
I whipped my head over to the door when it slammed open.
"Dad!" Sam said, sounding both appalled, concerned and angry all at the same time. He quickly walked over to me, past his father to squat down next to me in the chair, his eyes (which I swear where more beautiful then I remembered) quickly scanning over me, analyzing my arm before pulling me up.
"Nikki?" Dean asked, grabbing my bag from outside, as well as the three or four bags that had been dropped in front of the door, before locking it. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I swear I'll tell you all everything as soon as your dad puts his gun away." I said all in one breath, stumbling one step back, trying discreetly to hide behind Sam's large frame.
"Dad, put the gun down," Sam said lowly, clearly not happy with his father.
"She's a witch Sam." John growled, keeping the gun aimed at my head.
"Yeah, we know," Dean said from the other side of the motel room.
"You know?" John said. Going by his tone alone, you would have thought Dean had said 'We boil puppies for fun.'
"You knew she's a witch and you didn't kill her?" Neither Winchester son said anything.
"Dean, what the hell were you thinking?" John asked, turning around to face his older son.
Dean shrugged, at a loss for words. "She wasn't hurting anyone. Nikki's...not…like, other witches." He vaguely explained.
"All the more reason to put a bullet in her heart." John said lowly, turning back to me while checking to see if there was a round in the chamber. "Sam. Move." He ordered, holding his gun up again.
"No." Sam said defiantly, moving more in front of me. I was trying to be brave and all, but I couldn't stop myself from gripping the back of Sam's sleeve in a white knuckle grip. He sent me a quick look, reassuring me.
"Sam..." John said, like he was about to start lecturing his son.
"She hasn't done anything!" Sam suddenly burst out, practically yelling at his father. "If you kill her, you're killing an innocent girl!" Normally, I would've said something about him calling me a 'girl,' but he was making my case, so I stayed quiet.
"She's a witch, none of them are innocent." John spat, like that statement made him holding a gun to me.
"I know where they are." I said suddenly, grasping at straws to stay alive. "The-The vampires," I added after I got three confused looks.
"Probably working with them," John snapped.
"You guys are looking for a gun, right?" I asked. "The Colt, or-or something?"
"How do you know about the Colt?" Dean asked, confused.
"I accidentally inhaled a mildly hallucinogenic plant dust that gives my kind premonitions." I said truthfully, not really caring about what I said anymore. I already dug my hole, may as well try to dig to China.
John skeptically raised an eyebrow at me, still holding the gun towards me. I gave him an exasperated look. "What do I have to do to get you to put that gun down?" I asked weakly.
"Get the hell out of Manning." John snapped. "And leave my sons alone."
"Sorry, can't do either of those things." I said honestly. "I leave, you all get slaughtered by Dracula's minions, and as to the leaving Sam and Dean alone thing, they are the only ones who have a stranger life than I do, and, it's nice to have a conversation about demons without having someone think you need to be committed." I said it all in one breath, mildly out of breath when I was done.
"I'm here to help." I said firmly, looking past Sam (who looking like he just wanted me to stop talking) at John. It almost made me shiver seeing how cold and hard his eyes were.
When no one spoke for about a minute, I turned to look at Dean. "Can-Can you look in my backpack? There should be a wrapped box in there, red paper black twine."
Wordlessly, Dean grabbed my backpack. Instead of looking through it, he grabbed the bottom and dumped it all out on the bed. He pushed aside the books, then held up the small, wrapped box. "This?" he asked.
I nodded. "Be a lamb and open it up." I said, glancing nervously at John, whose gaze was trained on me, but slipping to look at Dean every few seconds as he grumbled about my choice of words and tore off the paper, carelessly dropping it on the floor. He opened the small hinged wooden box.
"Thanks, but we have enough of these," he said, walking over and dropping the open box on the table, letting Sam and John see the gold bullets resting on a dusty velvet rag.
"Not like these. Not with dead man's blood in them." I said, happy I decided to bring them. Maybe this would earn me some points.
"You can't put dead man's blood in a bullet," John snapped. "Doesn't stay in when you shoot it. Even if it did, it'd burn up before it left the barrel."
"Yeah, if someone like you tried to make them. Someone like me tried to do it, works better than an arrow." I said, smirking slightly.
"Bullshit." John snapped.
"I'm here to help," I said again.
After narrowing his eyes at me, John put down his gun, making me sigh a deep breath of relief. He put the gun on the table and motioned to talk to Dean on the other side of the motel room. Dean ripped his gaze away from the bullets and followed his father. As they spoke in hushed tones, I fell back into the chair, my heart still hammering.
"Nikki...What the hell were you thinking?" Sam asked me, sitting next to me at the table. "If you...If you saw, something, you should have called us, not come down here."
"I did call you!" I defended myself. "I called you, Dean, Dean's other phone, his other phone, nothing!" I got up and grabbed my herb bag, falling back onto the chair and grabbing the gauze and tape already on the cluttered top.
"For all I knew you guys were going in blind!" I snapped again, my voice starting to tremble again as I rolled out a short length of gauze, using a small knife to cut it before I unclasped my bag, laying it flat on the table as I looked for wintergreen.
"I-I saw you guys get slaughtered...You two saved my life, I couldn't just sit back at wait to hear third hand from Jeremy that two of the best hunters were killed like fish in a barrel!" My voice was almost trembling uncontrollably as I took a pinch of the wintergreen leaves, crushing them into tiny flakes onto the gauze.
I tried to cut the gauze, but my hand was shaking so much I couldn't get the knife to stay still enough. Sam wordlessly put a hand on my wrist, taking the knife from me. I let him cut the gauze, pressing my free hand to the gash in my arm.
"Technically, we didn't save your life. Jane wasn't going to kill you." Sam mumbled, deep in thought going by the look on his face. "She just needed to bind your souls before the demons ripped it in half." He added, gesturing for me to put my arm on the table. I did, my cheeks threating to blush as he peeled the red soaked rag off my arm gently.
I sent him an annoyed look through the fluttering haze growing in my stomach. "Not really what I need to hear right now." I said quickly, making him look down, his cheeks red in embarrassment.
I moved to start wrapping my own arm, but Sam gently swatted it away, reaching for the wintergreen-sprinkled gauze. I started to reach for the gauze again, but this time Sam held my injured arm down on the table, and grabbed the other one, dropping it in my lap. I narrowed my eyes at him, annoyed, as he wrapped the wintergreen gauze around my cut. He didn't look up, but I saw his cheeks where still dusted that embarrassed pink.
I looked over my shoulder when Dean spoke loudly. "Well maybe we were wrong!" I heard him sit walked over to the table and angrily pull out a chair before sitting across from me.
I looked down quickly when he saw me looking at him, and saw Sam still wrapping my arm, red soaking through the bandage. "Shit...Did you have to cut me so damn deep?" I asked, looking at John.
He shrugged. "I didn't like your attitude." He reasoned sarcastically. I held in the urge to roll my eyes at him. That wouldn't help me.
"You know where the nest is?" Dean asked randomly.
"Yeah, fourth turn off from the highway going south, three miles down, fifth left after the dead deer, red barn. Lots of beat up cars in front of it." I said, sending Sam a grateful smile as he kept wrapping my arm.
"And how do you know this?" John asked.
"I saw it," I said simply, wincing slightly as Sam pressed tape to my cut to keep the gauze together. "Wanna go and see?" I asked, raising a challenging eyebrow at John's doubtful expression. I didn't care if he hated me and what I did, but don't underestimate what I can do. Even before I found out what I could do I didn't like that.
"Let's go." John said, grabbing his jacket, putting his gun in his waistband again. Sam and Dean did the same. I threw the bloody rag in the trash and grabbed my own jacket, which I'd taken off to clean my wound. I carefully pulled my sleeve over the cut, and buckled my herb bag up, tossing it over my shoulder, the dead man's blood bullets in it.
"Nikki," Sam said, stopping me as I was walking out the door, following Dean and John. "You're really stupid, you know that?"
"Excuse me?" I asked, raising an eyebrow and cocking my hip at his words. I'd never heard him say anything like that before.
"You came here, to fight vampires, and you keep pushing my dad's buttons-He will kill you, you know that, right?" He asked, walking closer to me. I nodded. "So leave, let us take care of the vamps."
"Nope. Not happening Sam-Not-Sammy," I said, remembering when I'd called him that at the diner almost a month ago. Seemed like years ago. "This is what I'm born to do…stupid."
He rolled his eyes and chuckled once as I used his own insult against him. "Just-Just tread carefully, ok?"
"Ok," I promised, then was surprised when he grabbed me in a quick hug. His long arms looped under my own, one hand in the middle of my back, the other right under it. He gave me one tight, quick squeeze before letting go, just as Dean sharply honked the Impala's horn twice.
"C'mon! Kiss and makeup later!" He yelled from the driver's seat.
Sam rolled his eyes as he walked out the door. "It's good to see you, you know." He told me as we walked across the parking lot towards Dean's Impala and John's black pick-up.
"You look..." He trailed off. I felt my heart flutter in anticipation for his next words.
"...Better, like you've been getting more sleep or something." He finished. I nodded, feeling a little let down.
"Yeah, I have," I mumbled, opening the back door of the Impala behind Sam.
"You, uh, what's your name, witch?" John asked gruffly from the cab of his truck. I, again, held in an eye roll.
"Nikki, my name's Nikki." I said flatly.
"You're riding with me." John said. It wasn't a request, it was more like a statement; an order.
"Sir yes sir," I muttered sarcastically under my breath.