Near Dayton, Ohio
Saturday, February 10, 2007
So cold. Bitter, freezing cold. For the life of him, Sam had no idea why anybody would want to be out and about in this kind of frigid weather when there were so many warm places to go. Houses, libraries, even hotel rooms with temperature controls. A brisk breeze and some snow could be fun, but a cold front and the weatherman encouraging people this far north to stay indoors? Not a good night to be out. He put his hand up to the glass, and it felt like a sheet of ice. 10:50 PM.
"Sometimes the best way to hide is not to hide," he said. Even with the heater in the Impala on, he fought to keep his teeth from chattering.
"What are you talking about?" Dean glanced over at Sam.
"This isn't a good time for vampires. People don't go out and plan on being gone for long times, long enough that they could disappear for a night and not make others suspicious. In the summer, it's easy enough for a vampire to catch somebody who isn't paying attention, somebody walking alone, and drag them off for a meal. Now? A smart vampire would binge on as much blood as possible, and try to do it in a way that won't attract too much attention. Not for a few hours, at least, so he'd have time to cover his tracks before somebody notices that there are dead bodies."
"Well, then, we're not dealing with a smart vampire. The doors open in ten minutes for one of the most heavily advertised parties of the winter. There are probably going to be at least two hundred kids in that warehouse and they're looking for vampires and blood and the rest of that goth shit."
"Right. So a real one is probably not going to be noticed until it's too late."
"You'd better have a better reason than that for us being here. We have a warm room, a warm bed, some privacy, and dinner waiting for us in Cincinnati. We could be there by midnight."
"You're never in bed this early," Sam said.
"We've been running for weeks, and the weather takes a lot out of a person. Up here it’ll even wear us out. We have to be a hundred percent or something is going to catch up with us."
"All right. But there have been deaths almost every week in the area for the last two months and now for three weeks, nothing. There's going to be a feeding frenzy soon and it's going to be right here."
"Okay, Buffy." Dean ruffled Sam’s hair, then reached into the floor space behind the driver's seat and pulled out a box of chocolate chip granola bars. "Want one?"
"No, thanks. Not hungry right now."
Dean shrugged and grabbed three bars out of the box.
"Hey. I might want one later," Sam protested. "We don't have a lot of money right now and that box is supposed to be all our snacks for the next two days."
"There's one left. Take it easy."
“You know, you’ve been acting weird all week. Ever since that poltergeist threw you into into Mr. Delaney’s hutch on Sunday. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”
“I hit my head, yeah, but I’m fine. No concussion. And... the doors are opening. I think we’d better go get in line if we're going to find this vampire.”
Sam was dreading facing the Ohio night air, but he wrapped his coat around himself and opened the door. A gust of freezing air hit him in the face and he covered it with mittened hands. The glass flask of holy water was in a pocket on the inside of his coat, and he was sure that it would freeze and shatter the glass if he exposed it to the sub-zero temperatures.
They moved quickly towards the doors of the abandoned warehouse. Two older teenagers, a boy and a girl, stood near the entryway, shivering although dressed head-to-toe in layers of black leather and velvet. “Ten dollars,” the boy said, and held out his gloved hand.
Sam pressed a twenty-dollar bill into it, making a mental note to make sure to grab the last granola bar and let Dean be the one without dinner, and they made their way through to the warmer air inside. He finally took a breath, when he was sure that it wasn’t going to make him gasp and wheeze.
“Hey,” somebody said behind him. He turned around and saw a malicious-looking girl with pale pink hair. She was about half his size, but she had spikes on her wristbands and choker, and was doing her best to look threatening. “What are you doing here?”
“Do I know you?”
“I think you need to leave.”
Sam slipped his hand into his jeans pocket and closed it around the small silver crucifix he was keeping there. “Hey, I’m just here for the music. I don’t want to start anything.”
“Well, don’t,” she said, and brushed angrily past him. He pulled out his hand and let the crucifix dangle, and it touched the exposed part of her arm. She turned around slightly and stuck up her middle finger at him, but he noted that the crucifix didn’t actually do anything.
Dean came up behind him. “See anyone who looks suspicious?”
“Yeah, about two hundred and fifty people. I think we should split up and work through the crowd.”
“I’ll handle the snack bar. You go and check out the dance floor.”
“You spend any more money, and you’ll be eating your shirt tomorrow,” Sam warned. All they had left was another forty dollars, and that was probably going to be gone by morning, if they were lucky enough to even find a hotel room for that little.
“Dude, calm down. If you don’t find the vamp, meet me back near the front in twenty minutes.”
The music was loud and hypnotizing in a headache-producing way, and Sam resisted the urge to cover his ears. The dancers seemed to like it, though, and he watched the sometimes sinuous and sometimes jerking motions of several dozen teenagers and college kids lost in the sounds. He smelled tobacco smoke, cloves, a little bit of pot here and there.
He carried the bottle of holy water like a flask, and pretending to take a drink from it every now and then. Once, someone tried to take the bottle from him, but he pushed the hand away and let a few drops spray out. No fizzing.
A twanging guitar sound twisted into something that could only be described as country from the pit of hell, melding with the electronic screech of an synthesized organ. It was overlaid with a woman’s voice, gravelly and guttural, with only the vaguest hint of a southern drawl:
Darkness coming up around the curve of the road
Drowning out the light and I’m drowning in this dream
Darkness in my soul and everywhere around me
Drowning out the light and I’m drowning in my scream
He would have given anything for a huge boombox and one of Dean’s Metallica tapes.
“Exquisite, isn’t it?” someone shout-whispered into his ear. “My boyfriend just downloaded it from iTunes yesterday. Can’t even get it in the stores yet!”
“I don’t know about exquisite. Intense, maybe,” Sam replied.
She reached out to take his hand, and then she saw the silver chain dangling from it, and pulled back. Sam spun around in a half-circle, as if sliding past her, and let the necklace fly out a few inches. It caught her across her white throat and left a blistering red line.
He reached for the wooden stake he had strapped to the inside of his coat, but he was too slow; her foot shot out and caught him in the stomach. Sam saw the lights overhead hurtle past him and he slammed into one of the warehouse support poles. Pain exploded through his back, and his legs shook as he tried to stand.
Someone grabbed him by his coat. He looked up into the gnarled face of a vampiress, and briefly wondered how she had gotten so tall, but then he remembered that he had fallen in a heap on the floor. She picked him up with her unnaturally strong arms and hurled him three meters away onto a fold-up table, which broke from the impact and collapsed around him. Half-full glasses spilled over him, and the room flowed and bobbed around him as though he was looking at it through a tank of water.
He pulled himself together just enough to close his hand around his gun. It wouldn’t kill a vampire “ wouldn’t even do any lasting damage “ but it might slow her down a little bit. And that was all he wanted; just a little time, to clear his head and make another strike at staking her. Sam lifted the gun and aimed it unsteadily at the black-clad figure advancing on him with inhuman speed.
He squeezed off two shots before she jumped on one of the raised ends of the broken table. The impact catapulted him into a metal railing at the edge of the dance floor, and he hung over it for a moment, trying desperately to catch his breath.
More shots rang out, and he twisted around, just in time to see Dean drive a broken chair leg through the chest of the vampiress. She stopped and looked down at the wooden spike, reflexively grabbing at it. However, she was weakening, and Sam ran over and doused her with holy water while Dean took out his ten-inch blade and brought it down over her neck.
“Would help if we had an axe,” Sam said.
“Hold her still. Can’t hide an axe under my coat.”
Sam wrestled the dying vampire down while Dean sawed through its neck with quick, sure strokes. Dark blood spurted out from the wound and then flowed freely, leaving a sticky, copper-smelling pool on the floor. Finally, he finished sawing through her vertebrae and yanked her head free from her thrashing body.
Sam stuffed a few garlic cloves into the vampire’s mouth and stood up. He kicked her body, just to make sure that the spirit was gone. “So, what do you think?” he asked. “Should we burn the body?”
“No, we don’t have to. This one was a young vampire,” Dean said. “The older they are, the more powerful they get, and the decapitation is enough.”
“And you think that means she was young?”
“Not more than thirty, thirty-five years. See? The skin is already starting to shrivel on her bones.” Dean made a face. “And the smell. Rotting flesh.” He started to sway.
Sam caught his arm. “Yeah, you’re looking a little green. Let’s get out of here.”
“Oh, my god!” a boy shouted. “Look at that!”
“Quickly,” Sam urged.
“This is the best party ever! They even hired actors!”
Dean rolled his eyes, and Sam followed him towards the exit.
*
“Clothes off,” Dean said, as soon as they got outside.
“What the hell? It’s twenty below! Your balls are going to freeze off!”
“We’re covered in blood, and I don’t want the seats stained. At least throw your coat in the trunk.”
Sam stripped off his coat as instructed, wasting no time in slipping back into the passenger seat and shutting the door behind him. Dean slid in next to him and started up the car. “To Cincinnati?” Dean asked.
“Yeah. We ought to be able to get there before one o’clock.”
They flew down the road at seventy-five miles an hour, slowing to seventy, and then to sixty-five as they reached a bumpier stretch of highway. “We did good,” Sam said, trying to make conversation. “You did, I mean. She was kind of beating me.”
Dean didn’t answer. He only gripped the steering wheel tightly and took a few shuddering breaths.
“You okay, man?”
Dean slammed the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. Sam braced himself with one hand on the dashboard as they rapidly decelerated. Dean threw the car door open and ripped his seat belt off, then leaned over with his head over the asphalt. “What are you doing? It’s freezing!”
Dean threw up on the road, barely missing the Impala as his stomach emptied itself. Sam waited until he was done, four heaves and one shaky rise back into his seat. “Sorry,” Dean said weakly. “Hand me a napkin.”
“Dean? Are you all right?” Sam grabbed a handful of napkins from their mostly empty snack bag and handed them over.
“We’ll have to get the shocks checked when we get to the city,” Dean said, after wiping his mouth and tossing the sour napkins back into the plastic bag.
“Maybe you’re getting the stomach flu,” Sam said worriedly. The last thing they needed was to get sick; they could be laid up for a few days, and they’d have no way to get money except with Dean’s fake credit cards.
“I feel fine now. Maybe the sandwiches we got at the truck stop this afternoon were bad, or something.”
“I ate one, and I’m not sick.”
They pulled over two more times in the next ten miles, and eventually decided that Cincinnati could wait. They rolled slowly into a run-down motel advertising rooms for twenty-nine dollars a night.
Sam nervously stood at the check-in desk while Dean made a run for the men’s room. “He's carsick,” Sam said to the elderly man behind the desk.
The man just nodded and handed Sam the key to room 142.
Sam fished two quarters out of his pocket and got a can of Sprite from the dusty vending machine just outside the lobby, and handed it to Dean when he came out. Dean took it with a tired smile and let Sam lead the way to their room.
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