The Mustang pulls up next to an old, junky pickup truck in front of a Washington coastline dock.
"That's his, I think," Lizzy tells her sister as Lou parks the car. "Okay, you stay here."
"Uh, are you fucking joking?" Lou asks, pissed already at the direction given.
"Benny wants you to hang back a minute," Lizzy explains, reaching behind her to grab the little red cooler in the backseat. Once she has it she looks at Lou's angry face. "His request. Not mine."
"Why the hell would he want me to hang back?" Lou asks with annoyance. "I just drove nine fucking hours for his ass… and knocked over a blood bank. For him."
"And he's all busted up," Lizzy spells it out quickly. "He wants a minute to recover. I'll text you when he's good."
"This is stupid," Lou crosses her arms and sits back in the driver's seat while shaking her head. She stays put, honoring the requested wishes, but is really unhappy about it.
"Thanks, Louie," Lizzy sarcastically says and opens the door. She gets out of the car and sprints for the docks. She unsnaps the holder of her machete at her hip just in case and starts searching. "Benny!?"
Nothing. She runs for the dock house a bit down the way, hoping he's holed up there.
"Benny!?" she shouts as she jogs into the broken, abandoned building. No sign of him anywhere.
"Liz?" a weak voice tries calling out.
"Benny!" she calls back, heading for the stairs to the bottom floor that she hopes can support her weight. She reaches the first floor and finds him on the ground, propped up against a wall and looking drained and destroyed. Cuts, bruises, and a total lack of any energy makes him look worse than she's ever seen him. "Well shit, kid. You look like stomped crap."
"Up yours, darlin'," Benny spits right back with a slight grin to see her standing there. "Just in time. What took ya so long?"
"I was in Montana, dick," she fires right back and drops the little red cooler on the nearest table. She pops it open and pulls out a bag of blood. "And I dropped everything to help your sorry ass so a little gratitude would be nice." She tosses him the blood bag and it lands in his lap with a plop.
Benny looks so relieved that his own smart mouth stays shut as he opens the bag and starts to drink in a frenzy. He's messy, getting a dribble down his chin from the corner of his mouth as he slurps it down as quickly as he can manage. His desperation makes her a little uncomfortable.
"Still no manners I see," Lizzy smirks with a joke while leaning back into the edge of the table in the room casually, not all that bothered by his drinking in front of her. She knows what he is. He's proven himself so who is she to judge? She just hates how weak he is right this second.
Benny still doesn't answer as he hungrily gulps down the rest of the bag, tossing the empty to his side and huffing a few breaths when done. "That sure hit the spot."
"You need another?" Lizzy suggests, holding one up with a cocked eyebrow. He nods and she tosses it over. "You wanna explain yourself while you drink this one?"
"After," he mutters and rips open another bag. They stay quiet this time, Lizzy letting him refuel like an animal and mend. She swears she can see color coming back to his skin as he consumes more and more blood. He's healing quickly and it's amazing to watch.
By the time he's done with the second bag she's shocked. "Wow. You, uh... you actually look okay now."
"Getting there," he tells her, tossing the empty bag on the floor with the other before standing up. He walks next to her and leans his hands into the table to help support himself.
"Dude, you looked practically dead," Lizzy reminds him of his rapid recovery.
"Yeah, well, a little rest, a half a cooler full of AB-negative… most wounds short of an amputation will mend up with that... vampirically speaking."
"Vampires, man," Lizzy laughs a little in disbelief.
"I'll be one-hundred percent before you know it," he promises. "Thank you, darlin'."
She stares at him a second before stepping into him, hugging him tightly. "I'm just glad you're okay now."
"I'll live, thanks to you," Benny tells her, ending the hug quickly and backing up a step. He's still hungry and he could hear the blood rushing through her when that close.
"And Lou," Lizzy reminds him that she's not alone. "She's here."
Benny looks away with a half-smile at her name. "I figured."
"She wanted to help. And she wants to see you," Lizzy tells him, pulling out her phone and shooting Lou a text to head in.
"Yeah…" he trails off, clearly nervous. "She's, uh… she back with her man still?"
"Sam? Oh yeah. They're pretty fucking solid these days."
"Right… right," Benny nods, voice far off.
"Why do you ask?" Lizzy wonders, pocketing her phone when done. She's getting a weird vibe about the two of them. She felt it in the car speaking about him on the ride here and she feels it now.
"Just… wanna know she's doin' alright. Is all," Benny excuses as they both hear punching footsteps running their way along the wooden dock.
In just seconds Lou's pounding her way down the stairs, getting to the bottom and freezing in place. She gets one good look at Benny standing there, his easy smile in place, and she actually feels ready to cry. She never cries but this… this would be something that would put her over the edge.
Her Benny really is back in the world.
"Hey there, girl," Benny smiles bashfully, looking at her with a form of adoration that Lizzy's never seen from him before.
In fact, the whole reunion is freaking her right the fuck out at this point. They're acting like long lost lovers or something. What the hell?
"Hey, you stupid asshole," Lou's voice wavers as she runs for him. She slams into him and hugs him hard, her arms around his neck as he squeezes her back in a tight embrace. They stay that way for a long time, just taking in the fact that they're even near each other again.
After a stretched out moment of Lizzy shuffling her feet and waiting awkwardly, Lou kisses Benny's cheek and backs up while wiping her eyes.
"I missed you too, girl," Benny kindly tells her.
Her answer is a strong one, and meaningful for sure.
She slugs him right in the cheek
"Ow!" Benny complains, holding his face. "The hell is that for?"
"I couldn't find you!" Lou shouts heatedly. "What the fuck!?"
"That ain't my fault," Benny excuses. "We got surrounded…."
"And it was your idea to stay there, you dumbass!" she fires out. She shoves him in the chest and he takes a few steps backwards. "I told you that wasn't a safe spot for us to linger!"
"We had the trees all around…."
"That Leviathan got me! I was bleeding everywhere and you ran away!" She pushes him hard again and this time Lizzy jumps in between them when she sees Benny's teeth descend out of reflex. "You left me to die!"
"I would never want that!"
"Alright! Enough!" she shouts over them both and puts an arm out to each being. "Cut the shit!" Lizzy takes one look at her fired up sister and can see how bad her anger is. "If I knew this would be your reaction I'd have come alone!"
"He fucked me over!" Lou accuses and points at him over Lizzy's shoulder.
"I did what I had to get as many in our nest out as I could!" Benny keeps trying. "If we stayed we would have lost a lot of our friends and we were already down so many. I made a snap decision." He lowers his head in shame. "One I regretted every single day since."
"Damn straight, you regretted it," Lou grumbles. She then sighs and walks away a little bit with her arms crossed over her chest.
"Of course I did," Benny tells her, voice soft. "You know what you meant to me."
"Okay, that's it," Lizzy's had it with the mysterious story they're talking about. "Someone start fucking explaining or I start throwing punches of my own. What are you two talking about!?"
Lou and Benny connect sights and he makes it clear that she needs to spill. "She's your sister."
Rolling her eyes, Lou spits it all out fast. "We were in the same nest in Purgatory."
"I know that," Lizzy nods.
"Well, Benny and I… we were close. Really good friends… that may have… become more now and then."
Blinking a few times as the news settles into her brain and she sorts it out, Lizzy just blurts out loudly, "You two were fucking!?"
"When we had the chance, yeah," Benny answers her. "I had quite the eye for your sister."
"And I had quite the eye for someone else that I couldn't be with," Lou keeps going. "I told Benny all about Sam. But… being a vampire locked in Purgatory as I was, I assumed that was it for me. And Benny was… is… he's a good man. And I had… liked him. A lot. I thought that was it for me and I was there for the long haul… Sam just a memory."
"Say no more. Please," Lizzy begs of them. Sighing, she looks to Lou specifically. "Well now we really can't have Sam and Dean in on this."
"God no," Lou agrees wholeheartedly.
Lizzy rubs at her face. "Fuck, you are such a slut."
"Four years!" Lou rebuts.
"Your sister did nothing wrong, darlin'," Benny assures her. "I knew where her heart was. But I just… I couldn't help it. She's a hell of a woman."
Lou smiles slightly and looks away.
"One day we got surrounded by Leviathan," Benny keeps explaining. "It was an ambush. Lou got cornered and… I fled with whoever else in the nest managed to get away. We got separated. Never could find her again after that."
"They never came back to look for me," Lou tells her sister in correction.
"We did," Benny swears. "But you wisely moved on. Someone smart once told me that spot wasn't safe to loiter 'round."
Lou huffs, the corner of her mouth lifting a touch with the admission.
"Well shit, did you two get enough of your crap out? Could we please focus here?" Lizzy asks of them both. When neither respond Lizzy takes that as her cue. "Moving past the Springer moment… Benny, what's going on here? Why am I finding you beat to shit and all alone like this?"
"Oh, your work here is done, Liz," he assures her, pulling a third blood bag out of the cooler and opening it up. "You already saved the day. You know, I got my, uh, deal to handle. And you got a family to get back to."
"Uh-uh," she denies him right away. "Start talking. Why are you getting into machete fights with your own kind?"
"You don't need to get mixed up in this, darlin'," Benny promises.
"Dude, speak up," Lou gets angry with his attempts to hide what's happening. "We can't just drop everything every time you get your ass beat and we have to save the damsel."
"Damsel? I recall a few times it wasn't me that was the damsel, girl. Best remember that," he winks at her and takes a long pull from the tubing of the blood bag.
"Fuck off and start talking," Lou gets pissed off with the jab.
"Alright, alright," Benny gives in and leans back into the table in the room. "Quentin, the one I came here for… we were in the same nest. I tracked him here."
"Shit, Benny," Lou gets it already. "You're hunting the vampire who turned you, aren't you?"
"I have to," Benny explains quickly.
"Why?" Lizzy wonders aloud, eyes narrowed on him suspiciously.
"Kill him before he kills me... again," Benny smirks, trying to lighten the situation if he can. "Quentin and I went way back… one of the old man's favorites, next to me, it turns out."
"This his stuff?" Lizzy wonders, seeing some bloodied items on the table behind Benny.
"Yes, ma'am," Benny answers and lets her pick through it all.
"Benny, I don't get this," Lou says to him. "You could've just headed east and avoided all this shit. What the hell are you doing looking for this kinda trouble?"
He stares at her a moment. "I have my reasons. Don't you go worryin' about that."
"Of course I'm gonna worry about that, you jackass," Lou snips. "I know you're out there now. I don't want…." Crossing her arms, she looks away from him and doesn't finish her sentence.
"Aw, I think you're still a little sweet on me, girl," Benny says with much delight.
"Fuck off," Lou fires back gruffly.
"Hey, listen to this," Lizzy cuts in, turning around with a small bound notebook she's opened. "Age of Aquarius II, 0800, Port Washington. And then there's some other pretty interesting names and numbers all crossed out. The Big Mermaid, Solitaire, Boaty McBoatface… it's all crossed out, except one. The Lucky Myra."
"Yachts. Names of yachts. Lucky Myra..." Benny pauses to take the notebook from Lizzy. "Age of Aquarius II. Look at this one… Sea You Later, spelled s-e-a. I mean, come on." He gives her a disappointed look.
"I don't come from sea farers," she caustically returns and steals the small book back. "So, these are launch times. And… destinations?"
"Mm-hmm. Except none of them ever get there." He points to the last on the list that's not crossed off. "The Lucky Myra left yesterday afternoon. I guarantee you it's already been hit."
"Hit?" Lizzy wonders.
"Boarded, burned, and buried at sea," Benny spells it out. "My nest, that's how we fed, how we always fed. We kept a tight little fleet, maybe a half-dozen boats. Nothing ostentatious, just pleasure craft. I must have circled the Americas ten times during my tour. A few of us would act as stringers and patrol the harbors, looking for the right-size target. Fat, rich yachts going to far-off ports. Take down the boat's name and destination, radio it to the crew in the water. And then we just, uh... let the ocean swallow up all our sins."
"You guys were pirates?" Lou figures out.
"Pretty much," Benny nods.
"You were… vampirates." Lou can see Lizzy rolling her eyes next to Benny.
"You know, all the years we ran together, I can't believe nobody ever thought of that," Benny smiles at Lou's sense of humor on it all.
"What? It's like the most obvious thing you say."
Benny stares at her a beat. "No, it isn't."
"Alright, so, your maker is set up to work with his crew around here, right?" Lizzy questions and looks at Benny. "What are we looking for?"
"Well, he likes to live in style. He usually rents legitimately. Always remote, always coastal."
Lizzy picks up the money clip from the items stolen off of the killed vampire. She unclips and unfolds the piece of paper in the wad. "So… an island, maybe? This is a cable bill. With address." She smirks at Benny. "Hmm. Quentin's got the NFL package… ooh, and Penthouse on Demand. We should stay a few days, take a vacation."
"We?" Benny questions her use of the word.
"You think we're letting you do this on your own?" Lizzy laughs at his assumption. "Thought you knew us better. So, Prentiss Island. Heard of it?"
"Oh, yeah," Benny sighs, knowing he's not shaking either of the woman he's with now.
"So, let's go," Lizzy tells him. "Bring your juice boxes and we'll head that way. And I call shot gun."
She scoops up the items on the table and starts for the stairs taking them two at a time.
"Well damn, if I didn't know any better I'd say she's happy to head out on a hunt," Benny mentions to Lou as they watch Lizzy go.
"No kidding," Lou says with concern, bounding up the stairs after her. "Come on, Benny. Move."
"Yes, ma'am," Benny fake salutes to her and picks up the cooler to bring it with.
"Lizard!" Lou runs after her and catches up on the docks. "Dude, stop."
"What? We gotta get this done before Dean gets pissed," Lizzy tells her, still walking for the Mustang. "I'm on a time crunch."
"So, you want to hunt down a nest of powerful, been working together for years vampires?" Lou challenges with pure concern, having to double time her steps to keep up with her longer legged sister.
"Benny needs our help… and these guys sound like fucking dicks. Someone needs to stop them."
"Hold on," Lou stops her completely, pulling her shoulder and making her stand still and face her. "All you ever wanted once you had a family was to get out of hunting… and now you want to go make heads roll. I don't get it."
"Yes you do," Lizzy denies and tries to walk away but Lou stops her again.
"No I don't," Lou repeats. "So explain this shit to me."
Lizzy stares at her sister a moment. "When you got back… what was the only thing you wanted to do?"
"Cut throats."
"There you go," Lizzy says, thinking she's fully explained herself now.
"But I'm not you… and you're not me," Lou tries again. "What the hell?"
Sighing with frustration, Lizzy tells her, "All I did was fight and kill back there. And I haven't for two weeks. I need… something. I can't just sit still anymore. I need a better transition than this."
Lou just looks at her sister, thinking. She knows it's a bad idea, that Lizzy and Dean need to both stay out of hunting for good for Sammy's sake… but she can completely relate either way.
It's then that Benny catches up with them. "We going or not? Because I can surely do this on my own…."
"No fucking way," Lizzy points at him. "We're coming. Everyone in the car."
She walks on again and the other two just follow, knowing they have no choice.
"Dude, eat the vegetables or you're sitting there all night," Dean warns yet again as he starts to clean up after dinner. He made a real meal, cooked chicken and veggies as he's learned pretty quickly early on that his eating habits weren't very good for a child. They eat healthier… but his son is far too much like his dad to want to.
"They yucky, daddy," Sammy tells him from his seat at the table, his cheek smashed into his fist as he leans an elbow into the table surface. He pokes at the cooked vegetable mix with his fork while sulking.
"Of course they're yucky," Dean says with obviousness. "They're vegetables. They're meant to be yucky. But big guys eat the healthy stuff that'll make them bigger so get going." Dean points to Sammy's plate and uses his business face.
"Don't wanna," Sammy tells him with a groan.
"Too bad, kid," Dean denies the complaint and looks at the clock on the wall. "It's after six o'clock. I told her to call by five."
Sam looks over at him from his chair at the table. "Yeah, and they might have gotten caught up in something. They'll call."
Dean gets pissed with how light Sam sounds over this whole situation. "She hasn't hunted in years…."
"That's all she did while in Pur… at work," Sam censors himself for Sammy. "She's in far better hunting shape than the rest of us. If that's even what she's doing."
Dean shakes his head. "I just have a bad feeling."
"You're overreacting," Sam assures him. "Give her a second. She'll call. And if she doesn't, then you call her. She'll be expecting it anyways."
Dean nods, clenching his jaw with worry before turning back to the dishes in the sink. He hates everything about this situation right now. She's a mess and he can't be there to help her. That's not sitting well.
And then he dips his hands into soapy water gets a reality check. He's cooking and cleaning. "Did the girls just ditch us to hunt while we do chores?"
Sam smiles at that. "Was wondering how long it'd take you to see it."
"What the hell, man? Am I a Real Housewife of East Bum, Montana?" Dean grips and listens to Sam laughing behind him.
"We'll have to get you a boob job and a glass of wine to throw in someone's face then."
Dean just shakes his head and peeks at Sammy. Not a single pea gone from his plate. "Dude, you better get eating…."
"I no like it!" Sammy complains.
"And I don't like whining. Because you know who whines? Babies," Dean informs his son, knowing he likes to think of himself as a big guy and not a baby.
"I not baby!" Sammy gets angry right away.
"Then eat up. I'm not dealing with this from you right now. Eat and you can get down from the table."
"Yucky," Sammy mutters to himself as he pokes his vegetables again. Peas and carrots. Gross.
"You know, I used to hate vegetables too," Sam tells his nephew out of nowhere. He tried to stay out of it as he usually does. Sammy isn't his. Dean is his father. But sometimes some help isn't always a bad thing. "But I like them now."
"You like rabbit food," Sammy repeats what his father's told him about Uncle Sam over and over again.
"And you don't, right?"
Sammy nods a yes.
"Well, when I was little, your dad didn't like vegetable either. He didn't eat them," Sam explains as Dean turns around with a suspicious face, not sure he likes where this is going. "But I did. I ate all my vegetables every dinner. And you know what happened?"
"What?" Sammy asks, wide eyes on Sam.
"I grew really tall… and your dad didn't," Sam smiles wide.
"Dude!" Dean complains and his brother ignores him.
"You wanna be tall, big guy?" Sam asks his nephew.
"Yeah!" Sammy gets a little excited about that.
"Okay then, you better eat those vegetables unless you wanna be short like your daddy."
Sammy scoops up a big bite and eats it, chewing fast to avoid the taste.
"I'm over six feet," Dean bitches from the sink.
"So am I," Sam gives him a shit eating grin.
Biting his tongue to avoid language his son shouldn't hear, Dean turns back to the sink. He starts scrubbing, all the while wondering where Lizzy is and why she isn't calling. "My phone better ring soon…."
"So… if you were your maker's favorite, why did he kill you?" Lou asks out of nowhere as they speed through the ocean in a small boat, Lizzy steering the motor at the back of the vessel.
"When you get turned, it's like you're reborn into a vampire nest… but you know that already," Benny winks at her. Lou responds with a surly look. "Your maker… he means everything to you. I mean, you really start believing he's God. Now, if your maker happens to believe the same thing, well..."
"Lou doesn't understand that at all," Lizzy jumps in there. "She never respected her maker all that much."
"Oh no?" Benny asks, knowing that Lou always was very quiet about her turning and former nest on Earth.
"I was only with them for, like, a week before I was beheaded," Lou points out.
"You killed your whole nest, you psycho!" Lizzy laughs a little at the idea and turns to Benny. "Even vamped up, Lou was her own woman. She took over the nest within days."
"Somehow that don't surprise me all that much," Benny tells her, taking out one last blood bag and opening it up, taking a sip. "Anyway...our father? He was a jealous god. He kept the family together but kept us apart from the rest of the world, always at sea. I always did what was best for the nest... till I met her."
"Andrea?" Lou asks, knowing he must mean the woman he's spoken about a million times in Purgatory.
"Andrea," he nods a yes. "Andrea Kormos. Beautiful. I mean, words don't even cut it, you know? Greek, heiress."
"She was your one," Lizzy says knowingly, can tell just by the look on his face.
"Yes. She really was." He grins a little before the expression falls again. "She was sailing a 42-foot sloop to the Canary Islands. Now, I should have called her boat's destination in to my crew, but instead, I joined her on it. My life changed when she entered it. Everything I had been or done up to that point just... seemed to vanish... into what we had become together. I mean... We found it. Eventually, we settled in Louisiana. And then one night, we were coming home, and the old man… he was just there. Quentin, Sorrento, my oldest nest-mates. It was only that night I understood what a crime it was to him… me leaving my maker. They pinned me down and they beheaded me. The last thing I saw was the old man tearing out Andrea's throat."
"Jesus," Lou laments, knowing how awful that must have been. Even after years together Benny never mentioned this to her, how he lost his beloved and how she got killed.
"Well, that's what payback's all about… am I right?" Benny sadly says.
"Bullshit," Lizzy shakes her head. "All he had to do was turn another dude to take your place. Why so much hate?"
"Our kind… we are meant to stay close. And we don't really account for falling in love with our intended meals." Benny looks ahead and points to the island as it comes into focus. "Docks are up ahead. Should be able to find a dinghy to use."
Lizzy nods and heads that way. She can feel her phone buzzing in her pocket. Pulling it out she sees what she assumed she would.
Dean calling.
She quickly ignores the call and pockets her phone again. Yes, she's about three hours late in calling him back but out on the ocean about to go after a powerful vamp nest is not the time to speak to the other half about how it's going.
"You never called," Lou points out, a chastising look on her face.
"No shit," Lizzy answer back.
"He's gonna freak out."
"He's probably freaking out anyways," Lizzy tries to brush it all off to focus.
"Fuck, Lizard," Lou mutters and takes her own phone out. At least one of them should contact their family.
"Damn it," Dean complains, tossing his phone with anger onto the kitchen table.
"Didn't answer?" Sam asks, sitting on the couch with a laptop and a glass of whiskey.
"Ignored my call," Dean corrects, pissed off too much now. "The hell is she up to…?"
"She said she'd get back to you," Sam reminds him. "You know how hunts go."
"She never said shit about a hunt. She just said she was helping a friend."
"She's got a handful of friends at most, all hunters," Sam makes a point. "You do the math."
"Already assumed," Dean admits. "Shit…."
"Hey," Sam says and picks his phone up off the coffee table. "Got a text from Lou. Says they're fine. Sorry they didn't call. Can't talk where they are."
"Why?"
"Doesn't say."
"Doesn't that seem suspicious?" Dean asks.
"Uh… not really. Not if they're hunting." Sam sighs and puts his phone back for now. "Dean, this is not something to freak out over. Lou says they're fine and she wouldn't lie."
"Yes she would," Dean rebuts.
"Not to me," Sam swears. "Just… grab your laptop, grab some more whiskey, and sit down. We're on prophet duty still."
Dean washes a hand down his face in frustration. "Yeah, in a minute. I'm just gonna go check on Sammy first."
Dean marches off to the back of the cabin to make sure Sammy's sleeping after they put him down just fifteen minutes ago, the child sometimes having the tendency to get out of bed and play with toys instead of sleep. Sam sees the opportunity and grabs his phone. He types out a response.
Dean's freaking out. Have Lizzy text him if she can. It'll go a long way.
In just seconds he gets a response.
Headed into a pretty serious situation. She will if she can. Tell Dean we're both fine.
Sam rolls his eyes as his brother comes back out to grab some booze and settle with his computer again.
Taking the open spot on the other end of the couch, Dean props his feet on the coffee table and fires up his laptop settled on his legs.
"They're calling when they wrap up their night," Sam promises, not sure if that's the truth or not. "For now, focus on the little advanced-placement shit that's been ditching us."
"What choice do I got?" Dean comments bitterly, pulling his phone out and checking the screen again. Nothing. He places it next to him on the couch cushion and gets monitoring.