I let it drop, it wasn't any of my business anyway. Sam had a lot more downtime now and I wasn't hovering over him so if he was out exploring possibilities and living a little I wasn't going to give him shit about it. I'd always told him to lighten up, maybe he was. Hell, with the Mustang he'd probably have even more chicks falling all over him. I kind of hoped he'd use it to it's fullest extent, he basically had his own place and his own wheels now. Not that I'd expected him to take chicks to the Bunker, he knew better, but it changed how you looked at the world when you had a home and your own things. I'd found that out over the last year.

"Got the vids of the houses?" He asked Gerald.

"Yup, right here." Gerald opened his laptop up and pulled up a vid and hit play. They were all outside shots of the houses, one looked to be in an abandoned housing complex that someone had probably started on and lost funding for. The other two were the usual ramshackle houses out in the middle of nowhere. Oklahoma was full of those.

"The one in the housing complex," I said, "How many vamps hanging out there?"

"The majority of them, which is weird. It's not exactly out of the way. It's hard to get a good count, they're in and out of there a lot. I hiked up there and hung out in a house across the street one day. It's a weird set up Dean, if I didn't know better I'd say they're organizing more than being a nest. Lots of them walking out, looking all serious and on their phones. There's a couple that seem to be in charge that hang out there most of the time. And the kills I found, not enough to support that many vamps. Maybe they're doing bagged blood to try to keep a low profile, or hiding bodies a lot better than they usually do."

He had caught a few of them walking in and out on the vid and I saw what he meant. They weren't casually moving around, they had a purpose and some of them didn't seem to stay all that long. "What about the other two houses? Less in and out going on there?"

"Yeah, those seem to be more their sleeping quarters."

This wasn't going to be a quick job. I was hoping to get back to the Bunker that night but I didn't like what I saw and Sam didn't either. "The headquarters first," I told him.

"Yeah. Well at least none of them will recognize the car."

"True. Park a few streets over, we'll hang out in one of the other houses for an hour or two like Gerald did. Leave a window open see what we can hear."

"Sounds good."

The rest of them nodded. "We'll get you guys a room," Sherm offered.

"Thanks. Sorry, was hoping this would be a quick thing with this many hunters."

"No worries Dean," Joey said. "Didn't really want to hit the road again today anyway, better safe than vampire chow."

"Got a point there. Back in a bit." Sam and I walked out. "Could just be a nest," I said. "A nest that seems to like sending it's members out on errands a lot."

"During the day? Sure, the sun doesn't kill them but they still avoid it at all costs. Something's up."

"Of course it is, I only get the completely screwed up hunts. I'm seriously starting to think it's me. You've been on your own for a year and it seems like nothing really strange has happened to you. I'm back less than a day and we have some sort of vampire mob going on. You did notice they seemed a bit more professionally dressed than most vamps usually are." The ones Gerald had got shots of all looked like yuppies, no bikers types or lost souls. If you didn't know they were vamps you'd think they were on their way to work.

"I did."

He was mulling something over and I had a feeling it was the same thing I was, "You said earlier that you guys have been taking out more monsters, more efficiently with fewer casualties. Think the monsters are taking notice of that?"

"God I hope not."

"Yeah, me too." Our advantage had always been that monsters usually don't like other monsters, they didn't work together or think past their own needs. Even when dealing with a vampire nest or a wolf pack they'd always focused more on surviving and getting the hell away from hunters than actually doing anything to stop us. If that ever changed things would get a lot bloodier for everyone involved.

We got to the old development, there were about fifty houses in it. We broke into a garage two streets over from where the vamps were, parked the car, grabbed machetes and a few other goodies, shut the door and walked between the houses so we wouldn't be seen from the street. Once we got to the house Gerald had used for his stake out we popped open the sliding glass door, walked in, found the upstairs bedroom that faced the vampire house, pulled open the window, opened the blinds just enough so we could see out and settled in. Sam handed me a set of binoculars, put his set up to his eyes and we scoped out Vamp HQ.

"Blinds all closed up tight," he said. "No surprise there."

"Someone's coming out," I told him. Two, what I assumed were vamps, one in white, one in gray business suits came out. They were both woman, a blonde and a brunette and they weren't all that bad looking either. They had on heavy sunglasses and hats on to keep the sun off them. They headed to the Toyota Camry in the driveway, the brunette in gray opened the door for the blonde in white who got in the passenger seat. Then one in gray then went to the driver's side and pulled out. "Top dog there I'm guessing."

He nodded and we kept watching. A few more showed up, stayed fifteen or so minutes then left but we couldn't really hear any of the conversations. "We need to trail these guys, see where they're going."

"Well, there'll be enough of us to to do a pretty thorough job of that. Check out the other two places?"

"Yeah. My guess, this place is where the head of the nest is hanging, the other two houses are the bottom feeders. We could probably wipe those two out and not miss much, this one on the other hand. This one we need intel from."

He leaned against the wall and put his set of binoculars back in his jacket, "We are taking two back to the Bunker. plenty of time to pump whichever one survives for info."

My phone buzzed, "Oh crap, forget to tell her we made it." I pulled it out of my pocket, sure enough it was a text from Coyote. Jacob had had a few more panic attacks and she was getting worried. I sent back that we'd made it and things had gotten complicated but I'd call her later and tell her more. Jacob, shit. "Sam, we need to prioritize here. Coyote says Jacob has had a few more freak outs. I don't want to spend a week here trailing vamps and sorting all this out."

He looked out the window and stared off into space. I knew he felt like he was somehow overseeing hunters as a group now but I didn't want to get pulled farther in than I had to. I came for two vamps to help a kid, that was it. After a minute or two he focused his gaze back on me, "You're right. Jacob's the job, not this. Not for you. Let's check out the other two houses first. Whichever one we pick we'll go in solo, Gerald and the rest can watch this place and see what happens after we bail. We'll tell Gerald and the rest to trail these guys and see if they can get some intel. Then I can come back after we deal with Jacob and help coordinate things."

Even though that had been the answer I wanted, once he'd said it, it felt wrong. I was out. Coyote was back at the Bunker with a screwed up kid. That was what mattered, not monsters organizing into something more, if they even were. "Sounds good."

We made it back to his car and hit the other two houses in pretty quick succession. There weren't any cars at one, we peeked in the windows and saw a few lumps of what we hoped were sleeping vamps not bodies but we chose to check the other one out just to be safe. That one had two cars in front, a red Camry and a white Civic and a lot more tire tracks in the dirt around the place. We pulled off the road a way up from the driveway and worked our way back. Fortunately the back had a crap ton of shrubs that made it easy to get close to a window without being out in the open that much, there were about five people in that one, stretched out and sleeping on beaten up furniture. They had more of the usual down at the heels, biker, lost soul vampire look about them.

I jerked my head back towards the woods to let Sam know we needed to talk, he nodded and followed me away from the house. "We need to clear that other house, see if it's vamps or corpses."

"Agreed," he said. "I know a way to do it that won't put us in too much danger."

"Really? Not busting into houses anymore?"

He smiled, "Not trying to do that right off, broadening my approach to things."

"Cool." I was more than up for not fending off fangs if I didn't have to.

We got back to the other house, Sam idled in front of it, got out, popped the trunk and pulled out a flare gun. He aimed it at the window, fired, got back in the car, drove about two hundred feet down, flipped a u-turn and pulled off the road. We both looked back at the house through the binoculars and waited. A few seconds later three people came running out, they didn't use the door, they just busted through a wall. Definitely not human or corpses. Hunters don't tend to use flare guns so more than likely they'd think it was some punk kids. "Nice," I said.

"Yeah. Funny how vamps still freak when they see fire. It won't kill them."

"Guess some things are just ingrained." The three vamps hadn't bolted too far, it was two girls and a guy, all young looking and their backs were to us. "Let's do this now. We'll kill one, put the other two on ice, stick them in the car, call Gerald on the way out of town and tell him what's up with the other two houses." I just wanted to get this done and over with.

Sam shook his head, "I want them on those other two houses. They're not that far away and if these guys call for backup we could be screwed trying to get out of here if the fight gets dicey. They can block the other houses while we take out these ones. Maybe even knock out the other crappy house and then watch the HQ one and see what they do."

"These guys might call someone now since we spooked them, we're missing an opportunity here."

His face got that look, he wasn't going to budge on this. "I told them we'd help with the hunt, not grab two vamps and bail."

I took a second to look at things from his side, he works with these guys, I don't. "So what? We sit here and wait for them to get in place and then go in?" Before he got a chance to reply a car came towards us then turned into the dirt in front of the house and four vamps got out. "Well there went that easy kill."

"Something's way off here Dean, way off. None of this makes sense. Three houses? Vamps moving around this much during the day? Either these aren't vamps or someone's changed the rules. We can't rush this. I at least want to watch these places for a day before we make a move."

I had to agree, even though I really didn't want to, "Yeah, you're right. So, stake out time I guess."

He got that sneaky smile again, "Not really." He reached into the back seat and pulled out a small, hard, black case. "Felicity tech."

"Oooh, really?"

"Yup, tiny cameras." He popped open the case and there was four small camera nestled in a bunch of foam. "They upload to her server, will run for hours too. All I have to do is log into the site from my phone or laptop. We'll have to stake out tonight, cameras won't see shit in the dark, but as long as there's some sunlight we're good."

"You've become such a lazy hunter, I approve."

He laughed. "I prefer efficient, thank you very much."

"Let's do this then, Mr. Efficient. If I had all this crap years ago the amount of, as you called it, extra curricular activites I could have done would have skyrocketed."

"You'd probably forget to actually hunt."

I thought about it for a second, "It's possible."

Once all the vamps went back inside we pulled up behind some trees, Sam got out and secured a camera to a tree somehow while I watched the house. He got back in the car, pulled up the site on his phone, checked that the camera was working and we left. We dropped back by the other two houses, did the same thing and went back to the hotel. I was liking the blend of old school hunting with high tech tools, it definitely took a lot of the tedium out of things.

I saw one more car that I recognized when we got back to the hotel, Susan was here, which probably meant the other girls were here too. I really wanted to avoid them as much as possible. I hadn't slept all that well the night before, we'd left around three in the morning and it was pushing one in the afternoon. I was getting tired, further proof that I was out of practice hunting. I'd gotten used to real sleep and no long drives over the last year. I needed coffee or a nap. I must be getting old. "Hold up," I told him, "Let me try to avoid more awkardness." I called Gerald.

"Hey, you boys take the long way home?"

"Kind of. Do you have our room key or is it at the desk?"

"I got it, why?" He was playing dumb but I could tell he knew why I'd asked. I heard the laugh he was pushing back.

"Meet us at the room, if any of my fan club is there with you, kindly keep it to yourself where your going."

"They're not but message received. You're in 150. See you there."

I could have hugged him right then. "We're in room 150, Gerald's bringing the key."

"Uh Dean?" Sam said and pointed out the windshield.

I panicked for a moment when I saw Teresa walking out from a room but then remembered we weren't in Baby. "She doesn't know this car." Sure enough she didn't seem to notice us. "Never been so happy to not be in Baby. Whew."

She got into a newer Ford and pulled out, I almost ducked, then realized how lame that would be. "Okay let's go."

We grabbed our stuff and found the room, Gerald was standing in front of the door. As soon as he saw us he started acting all shifty, like in a bad cop comedy. He kept looking down the halls and waved at us to move faster towards the door, "Coast is clear, run Dean! Get in before they see you!"

"Really? Not helping Gerald, seriously."

Talk about sarcastic grins, at least he didn't laugh at me. "Here you go." He tossed me the keys then got serious. "So, things not as cut and dried as you were hoping?"

"No, and thank you so much for finding a jacked up hunt for me to be on." I opened the door.

He looked kind of hurt, "Hey, you said vamps, you didn't say easy."

"Next time I'll clarify," I grumbled as I tossed my bag on a bed. I hate hotel rooms, now more than ever.

Sam took one look at me, nodded, set his bags down and grabbed his laptop. "Gerald, I could use some food, Dean needs to call Coyote and see what's going on. How about you and I go fill everyone in? I got cameras on the houses. Dean can catch up later."

And that's why I love my brother, he was trying his damnedest to keep me as far away from hunting as he could even though we were on a job. He knew how much this was sucking for me, and unlike me, he wasn't being an ass about it. I remembered all my stupid speeches to him when I'd pulled him back in, how he had to suck it up and deal. Sam, on the other hand, was trying to let me have that space I needed.

Gerald didn't say anything, he seemed to understand too, "Sure Sam, makes sense."

"Thanks guys." They knew what I was really thanking them for.

"Sure," Sam replied. He took one of they keys and left with Gerald.

I sat on one of the beds and it hit me, I missed home, missed her. I'd never really been homesick before, now I knew why Sam had been so down for so long after Jess and Amelia. I dug my phone out of my pocket and called her.

"Hey Babe," she said.

"Miss you," I didn't even bother saying hi.

"Miss you too."