I took over driving about two hours in, Sam was fading and fading fast. He, unlike me, hadn't taken a nap so was still functioning on whatever sleep he'd gotten the night before. We were pushing sixteen hours since we'd left the Bunker and had about two more hours to go. He passed out as soon as he got into the passenger seat. We'd stopped at a rest stop and dosed the vamps again. They were barely moving which I was just fine with. We may have to let them sober up a bit before we set blood next to them, I doubt they'd even notice it was there with they way they were now.

I texted Coyote we'd be back with her gift wrapped vamps in about two hours and that Sam was sleeping so I'd talk to her when we got back. Kate's face and what she said kept coming back to me, the more I thought about it the more what she said about whoever it was behind all this had something personal going on, which would make sense if it was a monster. It doesn't get much more personal than getting killed by hunters. But I didn't really know of a monster that would be powerful enough to rally them all together. Crowley had knocked out most of the bigwigs when he was trying to find Purgatory, sure, someone will always rise up to fill a power vaccuum but stilll. I chased my mental tail for another hour then gave up and started thinking about home, which should have put me in a good mood, but it didn't. Paranoia was putting a damper on everything, a lot of hunters know where I live and anyone can be made to talk. Did I want to bring the monsters down on the heads of my friends out there? I know Coyote wouldn't want to move and I sure as hell didn't want to either. Maybe it was time to check into all of Magnus's wards and see if there was something that could be used to trap monsters. He'd had a bunch of them in a zoo after all, he had to know how something about how that all worked, short of getting rid of all the doors and windows. More things I never wanted to have to worry about again.

We pulled up and I shook Sam awake, "Hey we're here."

"Huh? Uh, oh." It took him a second or two to get functioning then he opened the door, "Let's make sure Jacob isn't awake. No need for him to see us lugging bodies around."

"Good point." I told him. "Open the garage too, let's move all the cars in there. No one followed us but..."

He nodded, "Yeah, I get it."

A few minutes later the garage door opened, I pulled in, parked then went inside. I didn't make it much past the door into the Bunker before Coyote's arms went around me and her lips pressed into mine. All that stress from what we'd found out just melted away. I held her as close as I could and enjoyed every second of how it felt to have her body melding with mine, that indescribable sense of love that always coursed through me when she touched me. Her lips left mine for a second, "Welcome back." Then she kissed me again and stepped back.

I ran my hand down her back and let go, even though letting go was the last thing I wanted to do, "I almost want to leave and come back again to get another hug like that."

"Not allowed," she said with a smile, "I've officially decided that missing you sucks ass, even more than it used to. No more road trips for you."

"I have absolutely no problem with that at all.

I returned her smile but hers started to fade the longer she looked at me, "What happened?"

"Later, let's get the vamps locked up then we'll fill you guys in."

"All right, I'll help."

Her and I walked into the garage, Sam showed up a few seconds later. Her and Sam grabbed lanky guy out of the back seat, I threw the chick over my shoulder and we hustled into the dungeon. We grabbed some bowls, trussed them up by their legs, sliced their wrists and set the bowls underneath their arms to catch the blood. I stepped back and had to fight not to react as the blood started running along their skin and into the bowls. Sure, it'd been almost a decade since I'd tortured souls in Hell but some things never leave you, never dull in your mind and never seem like they're in your past. The memories are always right there, waiting for something to spike them and they come rushing back, feeling like it was just yesterday that you were gutting souls for fun. I turned away, Coyote was right behind me, she didn't say anything but she knew. I'd told her more about what I'd done in Hell than I ever told Sam. It never felt right telling him, things you don't want your little brother to know about you. I was too ashamed of breaking to want to open up about it back then, I still had to be the strong one plus there'd been too much going on to dwell into all of that. I didn't have to be that with Coyote, so after one of my many nightmares when I'd woken up in a cold sweat and couldn't get back to sleep she stayed up with me, she didn't ask questions, I just started talking. I could have gone and gotten a drink or ten but I'd promised myself I wouldn't do that when I moved in with her. I spent the rest of that night and most of the rest of the next day talking. That was the beginning of the decrease in nightmares. It'd worked so well that for most of that first month or two we'd spent whole days talking about all the shit I'd been through. One of the best decisions I'd ever made.

She took hold of my hand, squeezed it tight for a second and looked up at Sam, "How long should we leave them here?"

"An hour tops. I want to make sure they're good and starving so they react fast. I'll come back in, drop them, chain up one of their arms, grab the bowls, dump the blood and give them some that's fresh along with setting the curse box down. Hopefully this does it. Where's Krissy?"

"She's in a room with Jacob, they're watching movies on her tablet. First time he's wanted to do that in a few weeks too. I've been tweaking what I've done to his room every couple of hours since you guys left. After Dean told me to pull back from trying to block his energy spikes I tried to do something more along the line of wards, sort of. It seemed to quiet the spikes. I've been burrowing into your books too, would love to spend three months here just studying. The amount of knowledge that they collected, I still can't get over it."

"I've been here for years," Sam replied, "And I'm still blown away some times. Let's get out of here, I need some food."

"Yeah. Good idea." We shut the room behind us and went to the kitchen.

Once he and I got food in our mouths and had a chance to unwind she asked, "So, details? Neither of you look all that happy."

"There's a good reason for that," I told her what had happened and she reacted a bit differently than the other hunters did. She wasn't as surprised as they were for some reason, she just went straight to worry and looked at me. "I'm going home after this. Not staying here. They don't need me."

"You sure?"

I stood up, took my plate to the sink and set it down a little harder than I intended, both of them jumped when it hit the sink, "Yes. I'll check on the vamps, make sure they're still draining."

I went back to the dungeon and pulled open the bookcases just enough to see into the room. The flow of blood had slowed, their fangs were bared and their skin was all shriveled up and papery thin. That went faster than we'd thought. Either they hadn't eaten their fill for awhile or the blood we shot them up with affected them a lot more than we knew. This wasn't exactly how we'd usually treated vamps. I pulled out my phone and shot a text to Sam, "They're starving I think we should do this now." I sent him a pic of how they looked.

"Agree." He sent back, "I'll grab the blade. Coyote is going to have Krissy bring Jacob to the hallway outside of the dungeon so we can keep an eye on him when this goes down."

"Good."

A few minutes later Sam walked in along with Coyote. "I'll stand by the door," she said, "That way I can see both he and you guys. Oh, I made better verions of that amulet Sam found to keep the blade's influence from hitting us so hard. Here." She pinned pieces of paper that had a bunch of sigils written on them to our shirts, I pinned one to hers and then she gave one to Krissy when she showed up with Jacob in tow.

"Thanks," Sam said. "Ready?" He asked us. We all nodded. He and I walked into the dungeon, and closed the bookshelves behind us. The vamps hissed and tried to lunge at us while they were still upside down but were too weak to be much of a threat. We lowered them to the ground, shackled their arms to the wall on a long chain that gave them enough reach to get to the blade and each other but not the doors. Sam picked up the blood filled bowls and carried them out of the room, grabbed another empty bowl and the curse box and walked back in.

He set the curse box down within reach of the vamps, took a few steps back set the bowl down and held his hand over the bowl. "Hungry? Only enough for one of you, there's a blade in the box. Feel free to use it." He sliced along his forearm and the smell of iron rich blood filled the air. The vamps howled and lunged towards us, the Hunger driving them. They were mindless monsters who's sole purpose was to feed. They jerked back as soon as they hit the end of the chains and growled and whimpered, Sam let his blood dribble into the bowl and kicked it towards them.

Their eyes tracked it, the girl moved first and dove for the curse box. The lanky guy saw her move and that seemed to knock him out of his frenzy enough to use his longer reach to snag the box before she got it.

"Here we go," Sam shouted back towards the bookshelves. Lanky guy wrenched the lid open and grabbed the blade.

He stopped moving and his eyes started to glow with a pulsing yellow-ish green light, then he started laughing and speaking in a language that none of us had ever heard before. It was filled with such power, such violence that both Sam and I dropped to the ground and tried to back away. My brain started feeling like it was on fire. I heard Coyote scream, then somehow start chanting but her voice was filled with pain. What seemed like thousands of terrified voices filled the room and he gripped the blade tight as he lapped up the blood from the bowl. Once he'd finished he dropped it to the ground and focused on the female vamp who was cowering in terror.

He smiled and spoke again, but the violence was gone. I had to stop myself from crawling towards him, Sam started to move but I managed to get my hand on his arm and stop him. She wasn't so lucky. Adoration covered her face, she shuddered and moaned, he leered at her and licked some blood off his fingers, then beckoned her closer. She slowly crawled towards him, her eyes never leaving his face until she reached the end of her chain. Then she knelt there, tilted her head back and closed her eyes. He bent over and traced the blade along her cheek, not drawing blood, not yet. She arched her back and seemed like she was feeling the first orgasm she had since she'd been turned.

"Yes Great One, take me, please." She murmured.

He slid the blade down to her throat, dug the point in deep, severing her head. She toppled over, the head tumbling a few feet farther away and he looked at us. For a second nothing else mattered but going to him, every inch of my body wanted to feel that blade and join with the Goddess. Then everything stopped. His eyes stopped glowing and his whole persona changed.

"What did you do to me?" He shouted as he hurled the blade so hard it stuck into the wall. "Are you experimenting on us now?"

It took everything I had to switch gears. "Krissy? Coyote? What happened?"

"It's gone." I barely heard Coyote say, her voice was so weak. "He convulsed and screamed but now he's just sitting here stunned looking and saying it's gone."

"Really?"

Sam and I got up, shoved the bookcases apart and came face to face with Coyote who had Jacob on her lap her arms holding him tight. His eyes were wide as plates and he kept blinking like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. I slid the bookcases shut as fast as I could, no need to scar him anymore than he already was. Krissy was standing by the door.

"The bad place, the fog, it's gone. I don't feel it anymore." Then a huge smile broke out on his face and he started wiggling on her lap. She let him go and he ran right up to Sam and I and got one of his arms around each one of our legs. "Thank you! Thank you!"

Sam actually blushed a little before he knelt down and gently hugged him back, "You're welcome."

Coyote's eyes met mine, there were tears in her eyes and Krissy was already wiping away the tears from her cheeks. "Thank you so much guys." She crossed the room, picked Jacob up and gave us both huge hugs.

"Just glad it worked," I said as I let her go.

"Hey! Fucking hunters! I'll rip you to shreds!"

Jacob flinched and started shaking. "Who is that?"

"No one you need to worry about." Sam said. "Krissy?"

"Right," She left as fast as she could and we shut the door behind her.

Sam grabbed his machete and split the bookcases back apart. "You just saved a little boy, congratulations. If you want to keep this good streak going you can tell us about your friends and who's organizing your group."

He curled his lips and showed his fangs, "Bite me, or better yet, I'll bite you."

"All right, well think about it for a bit." Sam and I went over to the base of the chain that was attached to the female vamp and dragged her towards us so we stayed out of his range. We unlocked her, Sam handed me his machete and picked up her lifeless body. I kicked the head into the corner and used the machete to pull the curse box towards me, then I dug into my pocket and pulled out a bandanna. I wrapped that around the blade, jerked it out of the wall, dropped it into the box and closed the lid.

"What was that?" The vamp asked.

"Cursed blade, it needed another kill to free a kid. We figured we'd use you to do that. Thanks for the help."

"Bastards!" He yanked his chains but was still too weak to do much.

"Look, here's how this is going to work, you talk we get you food. You don't? You starve."

He growled and sat down, "Give me a break, you're going to kill me one way or another so why should I help you."

"I don't know, quick death versus feeling that hunger eating at you day after day, you decide." I still had the arrows around my wrist and the crossbow. I pulled it out, loaded one and shot him. "In the meantime, feel like shit some more. See ya soon." No way in hell was he getting out of those chains with that much dead man's blood in him and mostly starved. I picked up the curse box and the head and walked out. I pulled the bookcases shut, Coyote stood up and we left.