A Skill Hell Hath Trained | Part 1
Title: A Skill Hell Hath Trained
By: revenant_scribe
Rating: R
Word Count: 8,863
Pairing: Sam/Dean
[ Part One ]
The bar wasn’t anything remarkable- it loomed over the street, shadowed and dingy and unassuming. Weathered enough to ward off the better half of the population of Red Lodge, but not so unkempt as to cross the line into attracting the truly undesirables. It leaked nondescript country music out into the street. The stale stench of cigarettes hung in the air, though Sam couldn’t see anyone actually smoking. It was the perfect place for a hunter to go and unwind without having to bother with social niceties; everyone inside was just shy of downright rude and didn’t take too well to questions, no matter who they came from, unless those questions were accompanied by particular compensation.
There was a time where Sam might have shied away from that sort of place, but that was long ago, mostly lost in memory. Back when he had thought his English classes and geography lessons might have been building toward something, some future that didn’t involve guns and knives and salt circles and Latin incantations.
He had a pocket full of bills folded and held together by a silver clip, but he was certain he wouldn’t need to use them for anything outside a beer or two. Ellen had already given him all the information he needed.
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, his chin tipped upward just a bit in a way that told Sam the man was more than willing to step over the bar and pound him into the dust if he gave any indication that it was required. The unassuming, laid-back college kid look Sam sported as a way of putting people at ease and encouraging them to discount him as a threat was sending the wrong sort of signals in a room of men with two weeks of grizzled facial hair and flannel shirts, where ‘different’ was more often than not a basis for a fight.
“Just a beer.” He dropped the money on the counter and kept his head down, trying to look awkward and uncomfortable and entirely wrapped-up in himself. The bartender uncapped a beer and slid it across to him with one hand while the other slipped the money off the counter, putting the change into the till and the rest into a pocket in his apron, the motion smooth and well-practiced.
By the window, a man rose from his table, pulling a jacket the color of dried clay over top of a red and white flannel button-down. He blended flawlessly with the rest of the patrons in the bar with a disinterested and aloof expression on his face, but his movements were controlled and precise, not a single wasted gesture. Sam watched as the man turned for the door, confident that he had found what he was looking for.
Casually grabbing his beer, Sam stepped away from the bar and called, “Hey, Gordon, man. It’s good to see you!”
The suddenness with which the man stopped was enough indication that Sam had the right individual. Standing halfway between the table and the door, the guy kept his posture carefully casual, but at his side his hands clenched once and then released.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” Sam continued. “Have a seat, I’ll buy you a beer.”
His voice had been just loud enough to catch some attention, and if Gordon walked out he’d be remembered. It was a gamble, and maybe a bit of a mean one, but as Sam settled himself at the table that had just been vacated, he didn’t feel any remorse.
The waitress who had been wiping down the table was only too happy to bring over a beer for Sam and his friend as Gordon came and settled into the opposite chair, his eyes slightly narrowed as he gazed across the table. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” Gordon said, the dark look he was giving stating eloquently to Sam just what the other man thought about being at a disadvantage.
“I’m Sam Winchester.” Sam wasn’t certain what to expect in response to his introduction. For all that he’d been raised in a hunter’s world, he hadn’t had the opportunity to interact with many. Generally it was him and his dad, and every so often there would be a gruff voice on the other end of a phone line giving advice or coordinates or asking for help. Sam could count the number of hunters he knew by name on two hands, and have plenty of fingers to spare.
So it was some surprise to him when Gordon Walker, who certainly hadn’t been represented among Sam’s fingers before two hours ago, slumped back in his chair and grinned like they were the old-friends Sam had been making them out to be. “Son of a bitch,” Gordon said, grinning widely. “Sam Winchester. Your old man was one hell of a hunter, I was sorry to hear he passed.”
Sam struggled to keep his expression neutral and his eyes focused on the beer in his hand; he hadn’t expected Gordon to know of him “Thanks.”
Gordon’s sympathetic expression lasted a moment before it was swallowed-up with a wide smile that bared a set of brilliant white teeth as the man continued, “From what I hear, you more than fill his shoes, though. Good tracker, great in a tight spot.” Gordon nodded to himself, like he approved of Sam, like he was pleased they had bumped into each other. He took a lazy sip of his beer before letting his arm fall back to brace lightly on the armrest. “ So. What brings you over to Red Lodge?”
“The murders,” Sam answered bluntly. “Paired with the cattle mutilations. Those two vampires were yours, I take it?”
Gordon glanced over as he took another pull of his beer. “Yup, I’ve been here two weeks.”
“You haven’t found the nest? What about the Barker farm?”
“It’s a bust,” Gordon said, jerking his right shoulder up in a casual shrug. “Just a bunch of hippies, though they could kill you with that patchouli shit alone.” He grinned again and shook his head, and then his expression flattened and he looked back at Sam with a casual expression belied by fierce eyes. “I’ve been tracking this nest since I killed a fang in Austin over a year ago, and I intend to finish every last one of them off.”
Sam raised his eyebrows and lifted his hands a little, placating. “I don’t mean to step on your turf,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Just offering to help.”
“Thanks, but I’m a ‘go-it alone’ type of guy.” The corner of Gordon’s mouth quirked upward in a sardonic smirk as he said, “But hey, I hear there’s a chupacabra two states over. Knock yourself out.” He tipped his beer back and this time finished off the bottle, dropping it down onto the table with a clank, and still grinning in a self-satisfied, smug way that made Sam’s skin crawl. He stood up from his chair and dropped a hand on Sam’s shoulder as he said, “It was real good to meet you though. Maybe I’ll buy you a drink on the flip side.”
Sam watched as the man paced out of the bar, the door creaking closed behind him.
Vampires weren’t all that difficult when it came down to it. Their particular vulnerabilities meant there were restrictions on their living situation, but for the most part they didn’t like to stray too far from everything they once were. The bigger the city, the greater the anonymity and the better the nightlife, the more vampires there were; Sam had yet to come across a vampire in a small town. Red Lodge wasn’t exactly booming, but it was big enough that there were a selection of possible haunts in town, and a nice range of prospective living spaces ranging from abandoned farms on the rural edges of town, to vacant industrial buildings.
It wasn’t like Sam was starting from scratch. He crosschecked the two victims that had brought him to Montana in the first place, and managed to put together a rough map of places they had frequently been seen in and around town. This particular vampire nest seemed to favor gainful employment which put them apart from any nest Sam had encountered before, not that he’d gone after a lot of vampires. Then again, their apparent commitment to blending in had been why Sam had initially mistaken the vampires for victims; the newspapers had described the ghastly beheadings in conjunction with the simple lives the victims had been living, and Sam had made an assumption.
Around six thirty in the afternoon, just as Sam had been coming out of the diner where he had stopped for dinner, Gordon’s red El Camino buzzed by. It was a particularly flashy vehicle, though Sam supposed that he wasn’t exactly flying under the radar in the Impala but at least his car was black. He followed Gordon down to the wharf with a certain amount of satisfaction: the wharf had been one of the places he had projected he would find at least one of the vampires.
Sam was sure Ellen would have had a few choice things to say to him about it; she had made herself more than clear when she had run down the list of people who might have been in Montana hunting vampires and leaving a trail of decapitated bodies in their wake. When he had called her back to confirm that he had indeed crossed paths with Gordon Walker, she had more or less ordered him to leave Red Lodge, “Just let him handle it, Sam. If he’s on a hunt you just pack-up and get back on your way.”
“But you said he was a good hunter!”
“And Hannibal Lecter is a good psychiatrist.”
According to Ellen, Gordon Walker was very good at getting anyone who worked with him killed. Still, Sam couldn’t just let that chupacabra comment slide. He’d been hunting since he was a kid. He’d learned to fire a gun before he had mastered reading, and he’d been a precocious kid so that was saying something. There was no way he was going to stand for some asshole he didn’t even know patting him on the head and telling him to run along off to some hunt that any idiot could do. He’d taken down a chupacabra when he was twelve years old. He’d been alone and he hadn’t even had a gun; it had been easy.
The wharf was a dim stretch of squat wooden buildings capped with rusted tin roofs, interspersed with wide sections of dock. Sam pulled the Impala into a space close to waterfront, the rest of the lot empty except for the presence of Gordon’s El Camino and one white van, which, given the late hour, was unsurprising.
Cutting the engine, Sam slid out of the car and out into the crisp night air, inhaling the smell of salt and fish and wet wood that never quite managed to dry. He pulled his machete from the trunk and tucked his gun in his waistband mostly out of habit before he closed the trunk of the car, walking with measured steps onto the dock toward a ramshackle hut clinging to a corner of the wharf. The lights that were interspersed along the expanse of dock were accompanied by lights clinging to the side of the building and, as Sam walked closer, there was a soft glow spilling out from inside the building as well.
There was a stack of barrels against the far side of the building, and after a cursory check around Sam used them to climb up and through the little rectangular window at the peak of the roof, which conveniently opened up quite close to the rafters.
The inside of the building was shadowed and cluttered, crates stacked at varying heights and containing god knew what obscuring most of the floor below. Sam dragged himself, carefully balanced, along the beam he was clinging to, toward the source of what little light the building contained.
In the far corner, sitting at a small square table with a single black plastic lamp clamped to the side of it, sat the night guard. Why the building required a night guard was beyond Sam, but he was there just the same, wearing light blue coveralls, a baton set on the table by his right arm as he sat hunched over what looked like that day’s crossword. On his coveralls, in a bright red script big enough that Sam could squint and make it out even given the distance, was a badge that read, ‘Conrad’.
Sam stayed, perched awkwardly on the rafters and watching Conrad complete his crossword, and had just begun to wonder where Gordon was when the sound of rocks being thrown into the water just outside jolted Conrad from his single-minded focus. He looked up and, without grabbing his baton, ventured outside. Sam rolled his eyes, but figured that maybe if he were a vampire, he’d be a little overconfident as well.
Sam scrambled down from the rafters, but the sound of a scuffle already obscured the quiet creaking as the water rocked against the side of the wharf by the time he hit the ground. Gordon’s grunts were interspersed by meaty thuds and the crash-splash of things falling over, some of it into the water and over the dock, and Sam wasted no time pulling his machete from the sheath on his belt and racing for the door, his heart already pounding in anticipation of the fight. He opened the door just in time to pull Conrad away from where he had Gordon pinned against the rippled metal siding of the building.
Conrad turned, his fangs long and sharp, snapping and snarling as Sam struggled to keep the vampire at bay, while at the same time trying to lead it away from Gordon, to give him time to pick up his weapon.
Conrad didn’t seem to notice or care that he was being drawn away; he just kept throwing himself at Sam wholeheartedly. His breath was hot on Sam’s face, and his fingers dug bruises into Sam’s biceps where they grabbed him, but Sam managed to throw Conrad off him as they neared a sharp bend in the dock. The vampire staggered backward, his arms wheeling like a flustered chicken as he tried to prevent himself from falling. His momentary distraction was enough for Sam to heft his machete and start a clean swing. Across from him, equally armed, Gordon wielded his own blade in a smooth arch.
Sam swung high as Gordon went low, but where the vampire should have been cut-through twice over the machetes whistled through empty air as the vampire instead pitched his stocky form sideways, cleanly avoiding Sam’s swing as his right knee came up and clipped Gordon in the solar plexus, using the man’s own forward momentum against him.
Sam stumbled, and his blade lodged into the side of a wooden crate. “Shit!” He struggled to pull it loose, keeping an eye on Gordon who was attempting to pick himself up off the ground as the vampire stepped forward, looming.
With one hard yank, Sam freed his blade and wasted no time rejoining the fray, but the sweep of his blade was disrupted as Gordon kicked up and sent Conrad reeling back. The machete drew a clean swipe across the vampire’s chest, ripping the blue fabric of his coveralls open and cutting into his flesh. Sam could smell blood, metallic and sharp, but the resulting injury was in no way life-threatening. Nothing short of a headshot was going to drop the guy, and the wound only served to make him angrier.
He turned on Sam, his thick arms swinging, heavy fists striking stinging blows to Sam’s chest and his face even as Sam struggled and failed to get a clean shot in with the blade. He felt the familiar burning ache of tenderized flesh, bruised and bleeding beneath the vampire’s fists. Conrad got a good hit into his jaw and Sam staggered backward, dropping his blade on the ground as he gripped the vampire’s arms and tried to hold him off.
Apparently satisfied that Sam had been subdued, Conrad backed off. Sam collapsed against the wall, taking a moment to catch his breath and shake the low constant buzz from his head. A moment later, the buzz in his head suddenly switched into surround sound, ratcheting up a notch until it was a piercing shriek of a hum, persistent and disorienting, making him squint, like that would hold-off the hurt it was causing to his aching head.
He blinked desperately, and saw that while Sam had been attempting to get his bearings, Gordon had landed on a platform staring up at an electric saw that was screeching happily. The vampire had the handle of the saw gripped in a tight fist and was pressing it down toward Gordon’s exposed throat, the hunter apparently too dazed to get away.
Sam jerked forward on unsteady legs, wrapping his hands round Gordon’s boots and yanking, but his clumsy rescue was cut short as the vampire released the blade long enough to clip Sam across the temple with a closed fist. The blow landed hard enough that Sam’s vision blacked out and he collapsed to the dock.
There was the steady whine filling up the night and Gordon’s kicking legs and wheezing breath, and Sam knew all he had to do was stand up and get hold of the other hunter, but he couldn’t make any part of his body work, and he was going to be lying there and watching uselessly as another hunter died in front of him.
Something obstructed his view. A gust of warmth and fur brushed over Sam’s body before launching at the unsuspecting vampire.
Conrad staggered under the weight of the furred beast, the persistent screech of the electric saw almost drowned by the snarling and growling of vampire and beast. Sam took advantage of the distraction to force his body to move, dragging himself back toward his machete.
On unsteady feet, Sam turned and for a moment, was forced to watch, the dog’s body effectively preventing any effort to decapitate the vampire, but then the dog pushed away from Conrad, dropping with unnatural grace back to the dock and bolting away. The vampire turned just as Sam swung his blade.
Conrad’s head dropped to the dock before his body, rolling across the slatted wood of the dock as Sam turned away, landed with a splash into the water as Sam watched the dog grab a mouthful of Gordon’s pant leg and pull him down and away from the whirring blade.
“Damn,” the hunter said, his tone more amused than the situation warranted as Sam switched off the electric saw. He wondered how much of the other man’s reaction was owing to adrenaline. “Guess I owe you that drink, now.”
Sam tipped his head to the side, unable to resist respecting the way Gordon could so easily brush-off such a close encounter with certain death. His own mind was still reeling from what should, by rights, have been his and Gordon’s last moments. If it had not been for the dog, there was a very good chance they would not have made it. In some part of his mind, still numb and clinical from the fighting, he thought it was the best argument for getting a dog he’d seen, and idly wished he could have made it to his dad when he’d been a teen, aching for pet of his own.
Sam shook the thought off sharply and managed a wry smile in answer to Gordon’s question. “Wouldn’t hurt.”
The dog at Gordon’s side growled, deep and menacing, too low and loud. The sound drew Sam’s attention and he realized with a sharp jittering shock as unpleasant as a bucket of frigid water, that it hadn’t been a dog that had leapt to their defense, but a wolf. The blade of his machete was up at the ready before he even had a conscious thought to defend himself, but the wolf’s attention was focused on something Sam couldn’t see.
“Wow, relax there Chachi,” Gordon said, though amusement still laced his tone. At the sound of the man’s voice, the wolf turned its attention away from the darkness and looked, nonplussed, at the sharp blade Sam was holding up defensively. “It’s fine.”
Sam jerked his head toward the rather large wolf sitting opposite him as he pointed out, “That’s a wolf.”
“Obviously.” Gordon’s smirk wasn’t putting Sam at ease, the other man’s amusement serving only to agitate him further. “He’s my werewolf, and if you’re gonna kill him, you should know that I’d expect full compensation, and he cost me a fair bit of change.”
Understanding came slowly, and it didn’t ease Sam’s mind at all.
Gordon leaned forward and pulled up the thick brown leather collar around the wolf’s throat. “It’s tagged, trust me.”
A little round silver medallion hung from the wolf’s collar. Sam could just make out the stylized etchings of a howling wolf surrounded with runic designs. Beside the medallion hung a small aged bronze elongated face with two bowed horns. Sam wasn’t certain which item Gordon was referring to when he claimed the animal was ‘tagged’; he made a point of avoiding the trade in werewolves.
Sam sheathed his machete, Gordon’s eyes following the movement, his easy smile still on his face. “So, about that drink?”
“So,” Sam asked. “Is that how you can track a nest of vampires clear across the country?” They were seated in the back of the bar, left alone for the most part, undoubtedly because of the animal that was lying disinterestedly beside their table. Gordon had told the waiter that the thing was a mutt, and whether it was the bill the hunter had slipped him, or the particularly sharp look, the waiter had been happy to leave it at that.
Gordon glanced down at the animal and huffed a little. “I’m not gonna lie, it certainly helped.” He finished his drink and gestured for another round, turning back to Sam with a knowing look in his eyes. “They have their uses.” Sam raised his eyebrows, which Gordon took as encouragement. “For a hunter, I mean. They’re exceptionally good at sniffing out the supernatural, to say nothing of their tracking skills. A well-trained, tagged wolf can be a hunter’s best friend.”
Sam’s gaze drifted over to the sleeping animal, its head resting on its crossed front paws. “He’s never tried to kill you? Or escape?”
Gordon laughed. “That’s where the training comes in. I got him off one of the best in the trade. Steve Wandell specializes in weres’ and he’s never had one turn on a man before. There’s a first time for anything, I suppose, but if you’re smart, and you take all the right precautions.” He shrugged.
The corner of Sam’s mouth quirked upward as he said, “I thought you said you worked alone.”
Gordon laughed outright, tipped his head back and let his low chuckle spill out like Sam had made a joke. “A werewolf is barely even human,” he said. “Let alone company.”
The wolf’s ear twitched but it didn’t move or acknowledge Gordon’s words. Sam frowned. “It’s not a full moon, why does he still look like that?”
Gordon glanced back at the wolf, and there was a strange glint of pride on his face. “A bit of spell work,” he said. “You work the spell when the wolf is shifted and it traps them. It’s common misconception to think that a were’ in wolf form loses its human mind, well,” he corrected himself, “if you can call what they have a human mind. He spun the fresh bottle of beer that had been deposited at their table.
“Some hunters,” he continued, “don’t add the spell to the tag; even when they’re human their senses are still heightened, but most consider it too much bother. This way it’s no different from having a dog.” Gordon flashed a devilish smirk at Sam, raising the bottle to his lips as he asked, “It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
Sam tried to appear nonchalant as he took a swig of his beer and shrugged. “Werewolves are dangerous. I wouldn’t keep something that I hunt as a pet. But,” he forced himself to add with a tight smile, “to each their own. He did save our butts tonight.”
Gordon tipped his beer bottle toward Sam in silent salute. “When it comes to vampires, I’ve found sometimes it pays to bend the rules. There’s a natural tension between werewolves and vamps, though I can’t figure why.” He smirked. “Maybe it’s a territorial thing. They don’t like other creatures munching on their food supply. Still, I can’t help thinking, if there’d been a were’ in my city when I was a kid, maybe things would have been different.”
At Sam’s puzzled expression, Gordon told a story about a little boy at home alone with his sister, late at night, on a summer’s eve, and the sound of a window breaking. It had been vampires that had killed her, but no one believed Gordon when he’d tried to explain. Sam wondered if that might have been because even as a kid, without knowing about the things that waited in the dark, Gordon had still had those sharp edges, still showed that excited pleasure when it came to violence and pain.
Gordon set his bottle down onto the table, empty once more as he said, “Werewolves might be a point of contention when it comes to the question of lore against fact, but one thing’s for sure, they’re territorial beasts, and they would have run those vamps off.”
Sam shrugged, dismissing the other hunter’s suddenly somber mood with a simple truth, “Of course, then it might have been a full moon on a summer’s night, and a werewolf instead of a vampire.”
“Too true.” Gordon shook his head and Sam could almost see him pushing his dark recollections away. “Still, that was a long time ago.” His eyes flickered over to Sam and there was something shadowed and knowing. “I mean, your dad, that’s rough.”
Sam swallowed thickly. “You know about that?”
Gordon nodded. “I heard, you know how word travels with hunters.”
In fact, Sam had no idea how word traveled amongst hunters. His dad had always done his best to keep them more or less on their own.
Sam usually preferred not to speak about his father, didn’t want to hear any of the platitudes or sympathy from people who didn’t understand; couldn’t possibly. Maybe the liquor had smoothed the way, or maybe Gordon’s sharp edges appealed to Sam’s own, because he found himself saying, “We butted heads all the time. Most of the times, I don’t even think we knew why, I think it was mostly just because we were too alike.”
They’d argued right before John died, as well. Sam could look back and realize that his dad had been keeping him away in an effort to protect him, but that didn’t put Sam at ease. If anything it pissed him off all the more. Maybe if his dad had realized Sam could take care of himself, then John wouldn’t have been killed.
“He always seemed indestructible, I think because he was so bullheaded that it didn’t matter how hard he was hit, he’d always keep getting back up; he just kept going. When the…” Sam had to pause to clear his throat, washed the anger and the screaming loss back down with a swig of beer before he tried again. “When the demon struck out, I didn’t even think it had hit him at all. He barely stumbled. Then it was over and he just … he just fell down.” He shrugged. “That was it.”
“And now there’s a hole inside you,” Gordon said, when Sam trailed off. “And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and darker and darker, am I right?” Sam stared at the bottle in his hand. Gordon huffed quietly. “It’s good, you know. You can use that. It keeps you hungry.” Gordon leaned forward, tipped his head, pulling Sam’s eyes up from the bottle. “There’s plenty out there that needs killing and this will help you do it.”
Sam dropped his keys onto the little plastic cactus in his motel room, before unbuttoning his shirt and pitching that and the T-shirt he had on beneath onto his bed. For all that he had been hunting on his own since he’d been eighteen, the silence felt empty and unnatural. All it had taken was three months of mad dashes across states with his dad to fall right back into old habits. There wasn’t even the possibility of a phone call any more, to pull him back onto the road, or direct him, however unwillingly, to a new hunt.
It was difficult to relate sometimes to the naïve and rebellious kid he had been, even if he was that kid only five years ago. Hardheaded and stubborn just like his dad, he’d always imagined a different life for himself, away from hunting and out from under his dad’s thumb.
That rebellious thought had been quickly quelled when a lucky swipe from a rawhead had sent John to hospital with injuries severe enough that Bobby had called Sam’s cell, told him to get his butt down there but to ‘be prepared’ just in case John hadn’t managed to pull-through.
Bobby hadn’t known that Sam had left his dad alone knowing the man was set on a hunt. Instead, Sam had snuck out from their shared motel room without a word and hopped in the car his dad had passed on to him as a birthday gift. He had already crossed state lines and was well on his way to Stanford when his cell had rung. Somehow the decision to turn the car around and head back to his dad had become permanent, even though Sam could have easily delayed his acceptance a year. Sam wasn’t sure he could handle the endless monotony of classes and people’s inconsequential problems, knowing what bigger ones lurked in the darkness if he wasn’t out there killing them.
Sam stepped into the shower and tipped his head forward, turned the heat up until it burned. He barely felt anything these days. Barely cared any more. What Gordon had said back in the bar made sense: there wasn’t a point, not really. All that had ever mattered had been the hunt, so why not embrace it?
There wasn’t a world beyond the hunt for him anymore. The people he counted as close were all hunters, Ellen, even Jo, and he couldn’t ever bring himself to speak with them about his dad, about how empty he felt. Their concern for him, their compassion, felt too thick, cloying to the point of suffocating.
There was Bobby, more of a father sometimes than Sam’s own father had been, but Bobby’s view of what family was differed from how Sam had been raised, and even if the man would try to understand for Sam’s sake, Sam knew he wouldn’t ever be able to. It was easier, for them, to fall into their established routine, and that almost always included a hunt.
As for relationships, the best he had were one-night stands and casual acquaintances, and if no one was going to get close enough to be cut, why bother trying to smooth the edges he’d been shattered into?
His phone chirped. Sam rinsed off the soap and slung a towel around his hips as he reached for it where it was resting beside the sink.
“Hey, kid,” Bobby greeted. “You didn’t call. I thought I’d check-in.”
Somehow the man always knew. “Yeah, it’s fine. I’m in Red Lodge after a nest of vampires.”
“Vampires, huh?”
“Haven’t found the nest yet,” Sam said, glancing over at the map that was still stretched across the sheets.
“Well, make sure you’re smart about it,” Bobby said. “Remember you can call if you need.”
“Sure thing, Bobby. Thanks.” He tossed his phone onto the nightstand and dried off, pulling on fresh clothes, making a mental note to stop and do laundry.
He missed Bobby. The gruff old hunter was one of the few contacts that Sam remembered from when he was a kid that had survived the little murder spree the demon Sam and his dad had been hunting went on when it realized they were closing in. So many people had died, people who had babysat him, taught him various tricks of the trade.
It was true that when it came to hunts he was essentially on his own, but as usual, one brief phone call with that familiar rough voice on the other end of the line was enough to remind him that family didn’t end with blood. He resolved to stop by Singer Salvage when he was done in Red Lodge, maybe some time there would help him forget how detached he felt from the world.
It was late, but he wasn’t tired. Sam flipped through the television and huffed a laugh as he stumbled on a late-night showing of Ghostbusters. At a commercial break, he grabbed some loose change and stepped out into the cool night air, letting the chill wake him up, pull him from the dark thoughts that had been circling like carrion birds.
He made his way to the machine that promised ‘cool refreshing drinks’, and paid $1.75 for a drink that was neither cool nor particularly refreshing. He drank it anyway.
It didn’t pay to be distracted, but that was precisely what Sam was as he locked the door to his motel room behind him. There weren’t many ways to protect a room from vampires, and him turning around to lock the door didn’t do much but expose his back to the blur in the corner.
He barely had time to spin around before a meaty fist connected with his already bruised temple. He got in a few solid punches himself, but in the end, the last thing he remembered was the sight of the beige rotary phone swinging through the air toward his head.
Sam came-to tied to a very uncomfortable wooden chair. He felt the creak in the wood beneath him and the tautness of the bindings before he even opened his eyes. Wherever he had been taken to smelled of dust and mildew.
Still feigning unconsciousness, he discretely tried the ropes and, straining his ears, estimated that there were two other occupants in the room with him.
“I know you’re awake,” a woman’s voice whispered next to his ear. Sighing, Sam blinked open his eyes.
The woman was pale, with large piercing eyes and long hair. “My name’s Lenore, and I will not hurt you. I only want to talk.”
“Yeah, sure,” Sam said, more than a little sarcastic, turning his attention from the woman to the other figure in the room. Sam’s other captor was a man, tall and broad, with sharp shining fangs on full display as he glowered. “I might have some trouble paying attention to much besides that guy’s teeth.”
“He won’t hurt you either,” Lenore assured him, then glanced over to the man and gave him an expectant look. “Eli.” The man, Eli, transferred his glare to her and, after a moment of tense silence, retracted his fangs. “There,” she said, turning back to Sam. “You have my word, you’ll be alright.”
“Thanks a lot,” Sam huffed. “But you’re not the first vampire I’ve met, so forgive me if your word isn’t worth a whole lot to me.”
“We’re not like the others.”
“Right, sure. Of course you’re not.” He twisted his arms again and wished not for the first time, that he could reach the blade he always carried hidden in his boot.
“Notice,” Lenore said, still infinitely cool and calm as she stood before him, “that you’re still alive.” Which was true, but that was something that could be so easily corrected that Sam barely paused. “We don’t kill humans, and we don’t drink human blood.”
The statement was strange enough that it made Sam hesitate. He turned his full attention to her. “If that were true, why aren’t you all starving?”
“There are other ways.” Lenore wrinkled her nose slightly.
Her grimace made something slot into place, and Sam realized, “The cattle mutilations.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “It’s not ideal. In fact, it’s disgusting. But if it allows us to survive...”
Sam frowned, sensing the emphasis she had placed on the last word. “Survive?”
“No deaths, no missing locals.” She shrugged, her curly brown hair sliding over her shoulder as she raised it in a loose shrug. “No reason for people like you to come looking for people like us.”
The other vampire jerked forward away from the fireplace, snarling, “Why are we explaining ourselves to him, Lenore? We choke-down cow’s blood so none of them suffer, and yet tonight when they murdered Conrad they celebrated!”
“Eli,” Lenore cautioned, not raising her voice at all but somehow there was iron in her tone. “What’s done is done.” She turned back to Sam. “We’re leaving this town tonight.”
“Why bother telling me?” Sam wondered. “Why talk to me at all?”
“I’d really rather not,” she conceded. “But I know your kind. You’ll hunt us wherever we go.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose a little. “You’re asking me not to follow you?”
“We have a right to live, we’re not hurting anyone.” She jerked her chin up as she spoke, defiant and determined.
“Yeah,” Sam huffed. “So you keep saying, but you seem to be a bit short on proof.”
Her eyebrows twitched upwards and then she stepped forward, leaned down so her mouth was by Sam’s ear, just close enough that it forced Sam to tilt his head to avoid touching. The unconscious reaction to her nearness meant he had to expose his neck.
“You know what I’m going to do?” she whispered. Sam’s entire body tensed at the quiet purr. “I am going to let you go, without even a scratch on you. How’s that for proof?” She stood up and stepped back, jerking her head once at Eli before retreating to a corner of the room, her gaze steady and unblinking as Sam was untied.
As far as proof went, it was certainly worth consideration.
“Vampires are killers,” Gordon said.
“Obviously,” Sam agreed, trying to keep his tone light. He hadn’t mentioned Lenore or his trip to what must have been the very nest he and Gordon were still ostensibly looking for. “But are there ever any exceptions?”
“Exceptions?” Gordon snorted. He leaned forward across the little circular table where he was sitting. “You know what I like about hunting? It’s black and white. We’re the good guys, the knights in shining armor, and they’re the dragons we have to slay.” He shrugged. “Dragons burn villages and eat maidens and little children. All they have in them is death and destruction. It’s simple.”
“Right.” It didn’t seem simple any longer, though. If what Lenore had said were true, if it were even possible, then Sam would never pursue that nest. There would be no reason to. Just as she said: they had a right to live. For Sam, the idea wasn’t to hunt things that were different; it was to hunt things that were dangerous.
“So where was the nest, then?” Gordon asked.
Sam frowned, tried to cover his flash of surprise and anxiety. “What?”
Gordon grinned and tipped his head toward where his wolf was sitting. “He’s been sniffing at you since we walked in here, and growling at you for the past five minutes. Now I know my wolf, Sam. You want to tell me where those vampires are holed-up?” He smirked a little. Sam had felt safer tied to a chair in the middle of Lenore’s nest than he did with Gordon grinning that way. “Maybe you’re not the hunter I thought you were.”
“I hunt evil,” Sam said. “If they’re not killing people, then they’re not evil.”
“If it’s supernatural, we kill it,” Gordon countered.
Sam let out a sharp laugh as he shook his head. “Right, unless it’s useful, because then you just enslave it.”
“Is this about my wolf or the vampires? Or do you just not like me?” Sam glared, which only made Gordon chuckle. “It doesn’t matter, either way.” He snapped his fingers and the wolf leapt to its feet, trotting to the door.
“Gordon!” But the man and his wolf were gone before Sam was even on his feet. A second more and the sound of an engine purring into life echoed from the parking lot.
“Shit,” Sam muttered, stepping over to the little plastic cactus. Why had he felt the need to run anything by Gordon, anyway? Why had he bothered to even speak to the man? “Double shit.” The cactus held no keys, the hunter must have swiped them before he’d left with his damned wolf, which had the vampires’ scent and was probably going to lead Gordon straight to the nest.
Sam had been blindfolded on the drive to and from the nest, but that hadn’t stopped him from counting, or from using basic reasoning. They’d crossed a bridge, four minutes after that there had been a turn, and they’d been going uphill. Sam laid it all out with the map for references and then headed out to the farm that was the most likely candidate.
Determined, Sam jogged out of his motel room and down the steps, hotwiring the Impala and cursing Gordon Walker every minute it took to get out onto the road.
The sight of Gordon’s candy apple red El Camino confirmed Sam’s guess and he grabbed his machete from the front seat and his gun from the glove compartment before racing up to the house, taking the steps two at a time.
There was a part of him that was braced to discover that he’d arrived too late, that Gordon and his werewolf had slaughtered the peaceful nest and only blood and gore remained for Sam to find.
That wasn’t what he encountered when he stopped just inside the main room to the right of the front entrance. With some sense of shock, Sam realized that it might have been the less disturbing of the two options.
Inside the room, the wolf was standing on a large wooden table, his fur ruffled up making him look savage and feral. He was crouching low, snarling and growling quietly but constantly, not sparing even a moment’s notice for Sam as he came to a stop by the edge of the table.
Gordon had tied Lenore to one of the wooden dining room chairs and was in the process of cutting thin slashes into her skin, pausing periodically to dip his blade into a glass jar filled with a darkly red liquid that had the consistency of motor oil. “Heya, Sam,” Gordon greeted, his tone light and breezy.
Sam held his gun in his hand and wondered where he should point it: at hunter or wolf. “Gordon.” He stepped forward, tried to get a better look at Lenore as he asked, “What are you doing?”
“Poisoning our friend here with dead man’s blood,” Gordon explained, like he was commenting on the weather. “Most of the nest has already cleared out, but I’m hoping she’ll decide to be helpful.”
“Gordon,” Sam said. “Put the knife down and step away from her.”
“Yeah, y’know I guess you’re right.” Gordon dropped the knife onto the table with a careless flick of his wrist. “This bitch isn’t ever going to talk.” He picked up another knife almost three times the size of the one he had discarded and said, “Better to just kill her.”
From its position on the table the wolf snarled and, astonished, Sam realized that it was not, as he had originally assumed, snarling at Lenore. The wolf’s attention was entirely fixed on Gordon.
Sam held up his hands and stopped his slow progression forward. “I get it, okay? The vampire that killed your sister deserved to die but…”
“Killed my sister?” Gordon asked, confusion drawing his eyebrows together. Then suddenly his expression smoothed out once more and he laughed, shook his head like Sam had said something cute. “The vampire didn’t kill her, it turned her. I killed her, when I saw what she’d become.” He spread his arms wide as he said, “There are no shades of grey, Sam.”
It all fell into place then and Sam felt like a fool that it had taken so long for him to realize it all. “You knew these vampires weren’t hurting anyone. You knew about the cattle.”
“Of course I knew,” Gordon said. “What difference does it make? If they kill today or three weeks from now or a year, it’s still killing and it’s what they do. Trust me, none of it changes what they are.”
Sam couldn’t contain his derisive snort. “Trust you?”
Gordon sneered and then hefted his knife. The wolf took a menacing step closer to where he stood, but Gordon ignored it. Instead, the other hunter pressed the tip of his blade to his own forearm and sliced just deep enough for a thick drop to well up from his torn skin. With his gaze fixed on Sam, Gordon held his injured arm above Lenore’s upturned face and let the blood drop down to her mouth.
In an instant her fangs descended and she hissed.
Gordon’s triumphant grin fell quickly as, a moment later, Lenore turned her head away, her eyes closing as her teeth retracted. “No,” she moaned. “No.”
“You hear her, Gordon? It’s over. Let her go.” The other hunter let his wounded arm drop to his side, but after a second of stillness, he jerked the knife up, one hand grasping Lenore by the hair and yanking her head back as the other prepared to slide her neck in half.
Sam raised his gun, already knowing he’d be too late to save the vampire, but in the same instant the wolf lunged over Lenore’s seated form, his front paws slamming against Gordon’s chest and pushing the man back. Hunter and wolf toppled to the ground, and Sam, eyes wide, jogged forward still prepared to shoot.
The wolf was crouched over top of Gordon’s prone body, the hunter’s neck held delicately between its jaws, teeth pressing enough to pucker Gordon’s skin, but not enough to draw blood. “Kill it,” Gordon whispered, the whites of his eyes glinting in the dark as he stared at Sam’s upraised gun, begged him to shoot the creature that held him down.
The wolf growled low and did not release its hold, but made no move to rip Gordon apart. Sam’s gaze flickered from the plain fear etched on the other hunter’s face, down to sharp pointed teeth applying just the perfect amount of pressure, the skin intact though the threat was clear.
Slowly, he lowered his gun, though he kept the tableau in his peripheral vision as he untied Lenore. “Kill it,” Gordon whispered again, holding his body stiff and still as his eyes followed Sam’s movement.
“You okay?” Sam asked as Lenore rose to her feet. She nodded her head, glancing over to Gordon briefly before turning away again. “How much time do you need to get clear of this place?”
“Not long,” she said, her voice rough and croaky as she forced the words out. “Most of the nest has already gone.”
“I can give you until dawn, guaranteed.” She nodded, a small thankful smile flashing over her face. She stepped away from the chair where she had been bound and then paused again, turning back to look at Gordon and then focusing on the furred beast that held him captive. “Good dog,” she said, amusement in her eyes. The wolf huffed, sending a puff of heated air across Gordon’s skin, making the man flinch.
Sam waited until he heard the sound of the front door shutting and, a moment later, of the old pick-up that had been parked outside rumbling to life. He pulled over one of the dining room chairs and straddled it, his arms hanging over the back and the gun, cocked and ready, dangling from his right hand. “So, Gordon,” he said, his tone light. “We’ve got a few hours to kill, better get comfortable.”
Sam had meant it more or less as a joke. He hadn’t expected the wolf to drop itself down, sitting on Gordon’s midsection as it pulled its head back from the man’s neck. In lieu of its teeth, the wolf pressed its paw just below Gordon’s throat, its sharp nails resting carefully against the vulnerable skin.
Sam watched Gordon quickly re-assess the situation, calculating the odds of overpowering the wolf before it took a bite or clawed at him and decide they weren’t in his favor. Sam readjusted the gun so it was propped on his elbow and aimed, finger on the trigger, at the man sprawled out on his back. “Hope you don’t have to pee,” he said, and settled in to wait.
By the time the sun was creeping over the horizon and spilling cautious light through the grimy windows, Sam had secured Gordon to the same chair where he’d tortured Lenore. He was confident the knots would hold, but every hunter had a few tricks up their sleeve.
Patting the other man’s shoulder after checking the ropes, Sam said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call someone to come and get you after,” he paused and considered. “Maybe two or three days. Now,” he scratched the back of his head as he glanced at the wolf sitting in the front hallway. “Normally I wouldn’t consider this, but I think I’m pretty familiar with your philosophy, not to mention your techniques when it comes to anger management, so I’m gonna take your werewolf.” The wolf cocked its head and so Sam directed the last to it, “unless you feel differently about that?”
In an instant the wolf was on its feet but not, as Sam fleetingly considered, in an effort to launch an attack. It glanced between Sam and the door and then back again; Sam shrugged. “Well, alright then. You hang tight, Gordon.” He shoved Gordon’s weapons together and set them on the old china cabinet, far enough and high enough that the man wouldn’t be able to shift the chair over and make a grab at the knife. He wanted to give Lenore and her nest as much of a head start as possible and with Gordon tied up, and without the animal he had used to track them; Sam figured they’d have a fair shot.
Sam had been raised to believe that anything supernatural was inherently evil. Ghosts and ghouls and anything in between, intentionally or no, bred chaos and caused pain and misery and death wherever they went. His dad had believed, just like Gordon, that when it came to hunting there were no shades of grey. Sam should have listened to Ellen and just walked away, but if he had then Lenore and an entire nest of peaceful vampires would have been slaughtered.
He should have known better. There were thousands of shades of grey in the world and there was no reason why hunting shouldn’t be affected by the same color scheme. He held open the front door and watched as the wolf loped out into the night. It wasn’t over. Gordon would be nursing a vendetta and he didn’t seem like the type of man who could forgive and forget.
It might have blown-over easier if Sam left the werewolf behind, but like Lenore, there had been no indication that the wolf was dangerous. Even when it had tackled Gordon it had been careful and the man hadn’t even been scratched. If Sam just turned and left, Gordon would undoubtedly kill the beast, and that would have been just as wrong as killing the nest.
“I want you to know,” Sam said, coming to a stop by the driver’s side door with the keys to his car in one hand and a gun in the other. “If you try to kill me or anyone I know, or anyone at all, I’m going to shoot you and I won’t even hesitate.” The wolf stared up at him, unblinking, its tongue lolling out just slightly as it panted. It seemed entirely unphased by Sam’s promise.
When Sam opened the car door and stood aside, it loped over and then bounded inside, settling onto the front bench on the passenger’s side and looking entirely pleased to be there. “So long as we’re clear,” Sam said as he slid behind the wheel, pulling the car door closed and starting the engine.
___________________________________________________
|| END PART ONE >>|
MASTERPOST
By: revenant_scribe
Rating: R
Word Count: 8,863
Pairing: Sam/Dean
[ Part One ]
The bar wasn’t anything remarkable- it loomed over the street, shadowed and dingy and unassuming. Weathered enough to ward off the better half of the population of Red Lodge, but not so unkempt as to cross the line into attracting the truly undesirables. It leaked nondescript country music out into the street. The stale stench of cigarettes hung in the air, though Sam couldn’t see anyone actually smoking. It was the perfect place for a hunter to go and unwind without having to bother with social niceties; everyone inside was just shy of downright rude and didn’t take too well to questions, no matter who they came from, unless those questions were accompanied by particular compensation.
There was a time where Sam might have shied away from that sort of place, but that was long ago, mostly lost in memory. Back when he had thought his English classes and geography lessons might have been building toward something, some future that didn’t involve guns and knives and salt circles and Latin incantations.
He had a pocket full of bills folded and held together by a silver clip, but he was certain he wouldn’t need to use them for anything outside a beer or two. Ellen had already given him all the information he needed.
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, his chin tipped upward just a bit in a way that told Sam the man was more than willing to step over the bar and pound him into the dust if he gave any indication that it was required. The unassuming, laid-back college kid look Sam sported as a way of putting people at ease and encouraging them to discount him as a threat was sending the wrong sort of signals in a room of men with two weeks of grizzled facial hair and flannel shirts, where ‘different’ was more often than not a basis for a fight.
“Just a beer.” He dropped the money on the counter and kept his head down, trying to look awkward and uncomfortable and entirely wrapped-up in himself. The bartender uncapped a beer and slid it across to him with one hand while the other slipped the money off the counter, putting the change into the till and the rest into a pocket in his apron, the motion smooth and well-practiced.
By the window, a man rose from his table, pulling a jacket the color of dried clay over top of a red and white flannel button-down. He blended flawlessly with the rest of the patrons in the bar with a disinterested and aloof expression on his face, but his movements were controlled and precise, not a single wasted gesture. Sam watched as the man turned for the door, confident that he had found what he was looking for.
Casually grabbing his beer, Sam stepped away from the bar and called, “Hey, Gordon, man. It’s good to see you!”
The suddenness with which the man stopped was enough indication that Sam had the right individual. Standing halfway between the table and the door, the guy kept his posture carefully casual, but at his side his hands clenched once and then released.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” Sam continued. “Have a seat, I’ll buy you a beer.”
His voice had been just loud enough to catch some attention, and if Gordon walked out he’d be remembered. It was a gamble, and maybe a bit of a mean one, but as Sam settled himself at the table that had just been vacated, he didn’t feel any remorse.
The waitress who had been wiping down the table was only too happy to bring over a beer for Sam and his friend as Gordon came and settled into the opposite chair, his eyes slightly narrowed as he gazed across the table. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” Gordon said, the dark look he was giving stating eloquently to Sam just what the other man thought about being at a disadvantage.
“I’m Sam Winchester.” Sam wasn’t certain what to expect in response to his introduction. For all that he’d been raised in a hunter’s world, he hadn’t had the opportunity to interact with many. Generally it was him and his dad, and every so often there would be a gruff voice on the other end of a phone line giving advice or coordinates or asking for help. Sam could count the number of hunters he knew by name on two hands, and have plenty of fingers to spare.
So it was some surprise to him when Gordon Walker, who certainly hadn’t been represented among Sam’s fingers before two hours ago, slumped back in his chair and grinned like they were the old-friends Sam had been making them out to be. “Son of a bitch,” Gordon said, grinning widely. “Sam Winchester. Your old man was one hell of a hunter, I was sorry to hear he passed.”
Sam struggled to keep his expression neutral and his eyes focused on the beer in his hand; he hadn’t expected Gordon to know of him “Thanks.”
Gordon’s sympathetic expression lasted a moment before it was swallowed-up with a wide smile that bared a set of brilliant white teeth as the man continued, “From what I hear, you more than fill his shoes, though. Good tracker, great in a tight spot.” Gordon nodded to himself, like he approved of Sam, like he was pleased they had bumped into each other. He took a lazy sip of his beer before letting his arm fall back to brace lightly on the armrest. “ So. What brings you over to Red Lodge?”
“The murders,” Sam answered bluntly. “Paired with the cattle mutilations. Those two vampires were yours, I take it?”
Gordon glanced over as he took another pull of his beer. “Yup, I’ve been here two weeks.”
“You haven’t found the nest? What about the Barker farm?”
“It’s a bust,” Gordon said, jerking his right shoulder up in a casual shrug. “Just a bunch of hippies, though they could kill you with that patchouli shit alone.” He grinned again and shook his head, and then his expression flattened and he looked back at Sam with a casual expression belied by fierce eyes. “I’ve been tracking this nest since I killed a fang in Austin over a year ago, and I intend to finish every last one of them off.”
Sam raised his eyebrows and lifted his hands a little, placating. “I don’t mean to step on your turf,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Just offering to help.”
“Thanks, but I’m a ‘go-it alone’ type of guy.” The corner of Gordon’s mouth quirked upward in a sardonic smirk as he said, “But hey, I hear there’s a chupacabra two states over. Knock yourself out.” He tipped his beer back and this time finished off the bottle, dropping it down onto the table with a clank, and still grinning in a self-satisfied, smug way that made Sam’s skin crawl. He stood up from his chair and dropped a hand on Sam’s shoulder as he said, “It was real good to meet you though. Maybe I’ll buy you a drink on the flip side.”
Sam watched as the man paced out of the bar, the door creaking closed behind him.
Vampires weren’t all that difficult when it came down to it. Their particular vulnerabilities meant there were restrictions on their living situation, but for the most part they didn’t like to stray too far from everything they once were. The bigger the city, the greater the anonymity and the better the nightlife, the more vampires there were; Sam had yet to come across a vampire in a small town. Red Lodge wasn’t exactly booming, but it was big enough that there were a selection of possible haunts in town, and a nice range of prospective living spaces ranging from abandoned farms on the rural edges of town, to vacant industrial buildings.
It wasn’t like Sam was starting from scratch. He crosschecked the two victims that had brought him to Montana in the first place, and managed to put together a rough map of places they had frequently been seen in and around town. This particular vampire nest seemed to favor gainful employment which put them apart from any nest Sam had encountered before, not that he’d gone after a lot of vampires. Then again, their apparent commitment to blending in had been why Sam had initially mistaken the vampires for victims; the newspapers had described the ghastly beheadings in conjunction with the simple lives the victims had been living, and Sam had made an assumption.
Around six thirty in the afternoon, just as Sam had been coming out of the diner where he had stopped for dinner, Gordon’s red El Camino buzzed by. It was a particularly flashy vehicle, though Sam supposed that he wasn’t exactly flying under the radar in the Impala but at least his car was black. He followed Gordon down to the wharf with a certain amount of satisfaction: the wharf had been one of the places he had projected he would find at least one of the vampires.
Sam was sure Ellen would have had a few choice things to say to him about it; she had made herself more than clear when she had run down the list of people who might have been in Montana hunting vampires and leaving a trail of decapitated bodies in their wake. When he had called her back to confirm that he had indeed crossed paths with Gordon Walker, she had more or less ordered him to leave Red Lodge, “Just let him handle it, Sam. If he’s on a hunt you just pack-up and get back on your way.”
“But you said he was a good hunter!”
“And Hannibal Lecter is a good psychiatrist.”
According to Ellen, Gordon Walker was very good at getting anyone who worked with him killed. Still, Sam couldn’t just let that chupacabra comment slide. He’d been hunting since he was a kid. He’d learned to fire a gun before he had mastered reading, and he’d been a precocious kid so that was saying something. There was no way he was going to stand for some asshole he didn’t even know patting him on the head and telling him to run along off to some hunt that any idiot could do. He’d taken down a chupacabra when he was twelve years old. He’d been alone and he hadn’t even had a gun; it had been easy.
The wharf was a dim stretch of squat wooden buildings capped with rusted tin roofs, interspersed with wide sections of dock. Sam pulled the Impala into a space close to waterfront, the rest of the lot empty except for the presence of Gordon’s El Camino and one white van, which, given the late hour, was unsurprising.
Cutting the engine, Sam slid out of the car and out into the crisp night air, inhaling the smell of salt and fish and wet wood that never quite managed to dry. He pulled his machete from the trunk and tucked his gun in his waistband mostly out of habit before he closed the trunk of the car, walking with measured steps onto the dock toward a ramshackle hut clinging to a corner of the wharf. The lights that were interspersed along the expanse of dock were accompanied by lights clinging to the side of the building and, as Sam walked closer, there was a soft glow spilling out from inside the building as well.
There was a stack of barrels against the far side of the building, and after a cursory check around Sam used them to climb up and through the little rectangular window at the peak of the roof, which conveniently opened up quite close to the rafters.
The inside of the building was shadowed and cluttered, crates stacked at varying heights and containing god knew what obscuring most of the floor below. Sam dragged himself, carefully balanced, along the beam he was clinging to, toward the source of what little light the building contained.
In the far corner, sitting at a small square table with a single black plastic lamp clamped to the side of it, sat the night guard. Why the building required a night guard was beyond Sam, but he was there just the same, wearing light blue coveralls, a baton set on the table by his right arm as he sat hunched over what looked like that day’s crossword. On his coveralls, in a bright red script big enough that Sam could squint and make it out even given the distance, was a badge that read, ‘Conrad’.
Sam stayed, perched awkwardly on the rafters and watching Conrad complete his crossword, and had just begun to wonder where Gordon was when the sound of rocks being thrown into the water just outside jolted Conrad from his single-minded focus. He looked up and, without grabbing his baton, ventured outside. Sam rolled his eyes, but figured that maybe if he were a vampire, he’d be a little overconfident as well.
Sam scrambled down from the rafters, but the sound of a scuffle already obscured the quiet creaking as the water rocked against the side of the wharf by the time he hit the ground. Gordon’s grunts were interspersed by meaty thuds and the crash-splash of things falling over, some of it into the water and over the dock, and Sam wasted no time pulling his machete from the sheath on his belt and racing for the door, his heart already pounding in anticipation of the fight. He opened the door just in time to pull Conrad away from where he had Gordon pinned against the rippled metal siding of the building.
Conrad turned, his fangs long and sharp, snapping and snarling as Sam struggled to keep the vampire at bay, while at the same time trying to lead it away from Gordon, to give him time to pick up his weapon.
Conrad didn’t seem to notice or care that he was being drawn away; he just kept throwing himself at Sam wholeheartedly. His breath was hot on Sam’s face, and his fingers dug bruises into Sam’s biceps where they grabbed him, but Sam managed to throw Conrad off him as they neared a sharp bend in the dock. The vampire staggered backward, his arms wheeling like a flustered chicken as he tried to prevent himself from falling. His momentary distraction was enough for Sam to heft his machete and start a clean swing. Across from him, equally armed, Gordon wielded his own blade in a smooth arch.
Sam swung high as Gordon went low, but where the vampire should have been cut-through twice over the machetes whistled through empty air as the vampire instead pitched his stocky form sideways, cleanly avoiding Sam’s swing as his right knee came up and clipped Gordon in the solar plexus, using the man’s own forward momentum against him.
Sam stumbled, and his blade lodged into the side of a wooden crate. “Shit!” He struggled to pull it loose, keeping an eye on Gordon who was attempting to pick himself up off the ground as the vampire stepped forward, looming.
With one hard yank, Sam freed his blade and wasted no time rejoining the fray, but the sweep of his blade was disrupted as Gordon kicked up and sent Conrad reeling back. The machete drew a clean swipe across the vampire’s chest, ripping the blue fabric of his coveralls open and cutting into his flesh. Sam could smell blood, metallic and sharp, but the resulting injury was in no way life-threatening. Nothing short of a headshot was going to drop the guy, and the wound only served to make him angrier.
He turned on Sam, his thick arms swinging, heavy fists striking stinging blows to Sam’s chest and his face even as Sam struggled and failed to get a clean shot in with the blade. He felt the familiar burning ache of tenderized flesh, bruised and bleeding beneath the vampire’s fists. Conrad got a good hit into his jaw and Sam staggered backward, dropping his blade on the ground as he gripped the vampire’s arms and tried to hold him off.
Apparently satisfied that Sam had been subdued, Conrad backed off. Sam collapsed against the wall, taking a moment to catch his breath and shake the low constant buzz from his head. A moment later, the buzz in his head suddenly switched into surround sound, ratcheting up a notch until it was a piercing shriek of a hum, persistent and disorienting, making him squint, like that would hold-off the hurt it was causing to his aching head.
He blinked desperately, and saw that while Sam had been attempting to get his bearings, Gordon had landed on a platform staring up at an electric saw that was screeching happily. The vampire had the handle of the saw gripped in a tight fist and was pressing it down toward Gordon’s exposed throat, the hunter apparently too dazed to get away.
Sam jerked forward on unsteady legs, wrapping his hands round Gordon’s boots and yanking, but his clumsy rescue was cut short as the vampire released the blade long enough to clip Sam across the temple with a closed fist. The blow landed hard enough that Sam’s vision blacked out and he collapsed to the dock.
There was the steady whine filling up the night and Gordon’s kicking legs and wheezing breath, and Sam knew all he had to do was stand up and get hold of the other hunter, but he couldn’t make any part of his body work, and he was going to be lying there and watching uselessly as another hunter died in front of him.
Something obstructed his view. A gust of warmth and fur brushed over Sam’s body before launching at the unsuspecting vampire.
Conrad staggered under the weight of the furred beast, the persistent screech of the electric saw almost drowned by the snarling and growling of vampire and beast. Sam took advantage of the distraction to force his body to move, dragging himself back toward his machete.
On unsteady feet, Sam turned and for a moment, was forced to watch, the dog’s body effectively preventing any effort to decapitate the vampire, but then the dog pushed away from Conrad, dropping with unnatural grace back to the dock and bolting away. The vampire turned just as Sam swung his blade.
Conrad’s head dropped to the dock before his body, rolling across the slatted wood of the dock as Sam turned away, landed with a splash into the water as Sam watched the dog grab a mouthful of Gordon’s pant leg and pull him down and away from the whirring blade.
“Damn,” the hunter said, his tone more amused than the situation warranted as Sam switched off the electric saw. He wondered how much of the other man’s reaction was owing to adrenaline. “Guess I owe you that drink, now.”
Sam tipped his head to the side, unable to resist respecting the way Gordon could so easily brush-off such a close encounter with certain death. His own mind was still reeling from what should, by rights, have been his and Gordon’s last moments. If it had not been for the dog, there was a very good chance they would not have made it. In some part of his mind, still numb and clinical from the fighting, he thought it was the best argument for getting a dog he’d seen, and idly wished he could have made it to his dad when he’d been a teen, aching for pet of his own.
Sam shook the thought off sharply and managed a wry smile in answer to Gordon’s question. “Wouldn’t hurt.”
The dog at Gordon’s side growled, deep and menacing, too low and loud. The sound drew Sam’s attention and he realized with a sharp jittering shock as unpleasant as a bucket of frigid water, that it hadn’t been a dog that had leapt to their defense, but a wolf. The blade of his machete was up at the ready before he even had a conscious thought to defend himself, but the wolf’s attention was focused on something Sam couldn’t see.
“Wow, relax there Chachi,” Gordon said, though amusement still laced his tone. At the sound of the man’s voice, the wolf turned its attention away from the darkness and looked, nonplussed, at the sharp blade Sam was holding up defensively. “It’s fine.”
Sam jerked his head toward the rather large wolf sitting opposite him as he pointed out, “That’s a wolf.”
“Obviously.” Gordon’s smirk wasn’t putting Sam at ease, the other man’s amusement serving only to agitate him further. “He’s my werewolf, and if you’re gonna kill him, you should know that I’d expect full compensation, and he cost me a fair bit of change.”
Understanding came slowly, and it didn’t ease Sam’s mind at all.
Gordon leaned forward and pulled up the thick brown leather collar around the wolf’s throat. “It’s tagged, trust me.”
A little round silver medallion hung from the wolf’s collar. Sam could just make out the stylized etchings of a howling wolf surrounded with runic designs. Beside the medallion hung a small aged bronze elongated face with two bowed horns. Sam wasn’t certain which item Gordon was referring to when he claimed the animal was ‘tagged’; he made a point of avoiding the trade in werewolves.
Sam sheathed his machete, Gordon’s eyes following the movement, his easy smile still on his face. “So, about that drink?”
“So,” Sam asked. “Is that how you can track a nest of vampires clear across the country?” They were seated in the back of the bar, left alone for the most part, undoubtedly because of the animal that was lying disinterestedly beside their table. Gordon had told the waiter that the thing was a mutt, and whether it was the bill the hunter had slipped him, or the particularly sharp look, the waiter had been happy to leave it at that.
Gordon glanced down at the animal and huffed a little. “I’m not gonna lie, it certainly helped.” He finished his drink and gestured for another round, turning back to Sam with a knowing look in his eyes. “They have their uses.” Sam raised his eyebrows, which Gordon took as encouragement. “For a hunter, I mean. They’re exceptionally good at sniffing out the supernatural, to say nothing of their tracking skills. A well-trained, tagged wolf can be a hunter’s best friend.”
Sam’s gaze drifted over to the sleeping animal, its head resting on its crossed front paws. “He’s never tried to kill you? Or escape?”
Gordon laughed. “That’s where the training comes in. I got him off one of the best in the trade. Steve Wandell specializes in weres’ and he’s never had one turn on a man before. There’s a first time for anything, I suppose, but if you’re smart, and you take all the right precautions.” He shrugged.
The corner of Sam’s mouth quirked upward as he said, “I thought you said you worked alone.”
Gordon laughed outright, tipped his head back and let his low chuckle spill out like Sam had made a joke. “A werewolf is barely even human,” he said. “Let alone company.”
The wolf’s ear twitched but it didn’t move or acknowledge Gordon’s words. Sam frowned. “It’s not a full moon, why does he still look like that?”
Gordon glanced back at the wolf, and there was a strange glint of pride on his face. “A bit of spell work,” he said. “You work the spell when the wolf is shifted and it traps them. It’s common misconception to think that a were’ in wolf form loses its human mind, well,” he corrected himself, “if you can call what they have a human mind. He spun the fresh bottle of beer that had been deposited at their table.
“Some hunters,” he continued, “don’t add the spell to the tag; even when they’re human their senses are still heightened, but most consider it too much bother. This way it’s no different from having a dog.” Gordon flashed a devilish smirk at Sam, raising the bottle to his lips as he asked, “It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
Sam tried to appear nonchalant as he took a swig of his beer and shrugged. “Werewolves are dangerous. I wouldn’t keep something that I hunt as a pet. But,” he forced himself to add with a tight smile, “to each their own. He did save our butts tonight.”
Gordon tipped his beer bottle toward Sam in silent salute. “When it comes to vampires, I’ve found sometimes it pays to bend the rules. There’s a natural tension between werewolves and vamps, though I can’t figure why.” He smirked. “Maybe it’s a territorial thing. They don’t like other creatures munching on their food supply. Still, I can’t help thinking, if there’d been a were’ in my city when I was a kid, maybe things would have been different.”
At Sam’s puzzled expression, Gordon told a story about a little boy at home alone with his sister, late at night, on a summer’s eve, and the sound of a window breaking. It had been vampires that had killed her, but no one believed Gordon when he’d tried to explain. Sam wondered if that might have been because even as a kid, without knowing about the things that waited in the dark, Gordon had still had those sharp edges, still showed that excited pleasure when it came to violence and pain.
Gordon set his bottle down onto the table, empty once more as he said, “Werewolves might be a point of contention when it comes to the question of lore against fact, but one thing’s for sure, they’re territorial beasts, and they would have run those vamps off.”
Sam shrugged, dismissing the other hunter’s suddenly somber mood with a simple truth, “Of course, then it might have been a full moon on a summer’s night, and a werewolf instead of a vampire.”
“Too true.” Gordon shook his head and Sam could almost see him pushing his dark recollections away. “Still, that was a long time ago.” His eyes flickered over to Sam and there was something shadowed and knowing. “I mean, your dad, that’s rough.”
Sam swallowed thickly. “You know about that?”
Gordon nodded. “I heard, you know how word travels with hunters.”
In fact, Sam had no idea how word traveled amongst hunters. His dad had always done his best to keep them more or less on their own.
Sam usually preferred not to speak about his father, didn’t want to hear any of the platitudes or sympathy from people who didn’t understand; couldn’t possibly. Maybe the liquor had smoothed the way, or maybe Gordon’s sharp edges appealed to Sam’s own, because he found himself saying, “We butted heads all the time. Most of the times, I don’t even think we knew why, I think it was mostly just because we were too alike.”
They’d argued right before John died, as well. Sam could look back and realize that his dad had been keeping him away in an effort to protect him, but that didn’t put Sam at ease. If anything it pissed him off all the more. Maybe if his dad had realized Sam could take care of himself, then John wouldn’t have been killed.
“He always seemed indestructible, I think because he was so bullheaded that it didn’t matter how hard he was hit, he’d always keep getting back up; he just kept going. When the…” Sam had to pause to clear his throat, washed the anger and the screaming loss back down with a swig of beer before he tried again. “When the demon struck out, I didn’t even think it had hit him at all. He barely stumbled. Then it was over and he just … he just fell down.” He shrugged. “That was it.”
“And now there’s a hole inside you,” Gordon said, when Sam trailed off. “And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and darker and darker, am I right?” Sam stared at the bottle in his hand. Gordon huffed quietly. “It’s good, you know. You can use that. It keeps you hungry.” Gordon leaned forward, tipped his head, pulling Sam’s eyes up from the bottle. “There’s plenty out there that needs killing and this will help you do it.”
Sam dropped his keys onto the little plastic cactus in his motel room, before unbuttoning his shirt and pitching that and the T-shirt he had on beneath onto his bed. For all that he had been hunting on his own since he’d been eighteen, the silence felt empty and unnatural. All it had taken was three months of mad dashes across states with his dad to fall right back into old habits. There wasn’t even the possibility of a phone call any more, to pull him back onto the road, or direct him, however unwillingly, to a new hunt.
It was difficult to relate sometimes to the naïve and rebellious kid he had been, even if he was that kid only five years ago. Hardheaded and stubborn just like his dad, he’d always imagined a different life for himself, away from hunting and out from under his dad’s thumb.
That rebellious thought had been quickly quelled when a lucky swipe from a rawhead had sent John to hospital with injuries severe enough that Bobby had called Sam’s cell, told him to get his butt down there but to ‘be prepared’ just in case John hadn’t managed to pull-through.
Bobby hadn’t known that Sam had left his dad alone knowing the man was set on a hunt. Instead, Sam had snuck out from their shared motel room without a word and hopped in the car his dad had passed on to him as a birthday gift. He had already crossed state lines and was well on his way to Stanford when his cell had rung. Somehow the decision to turn the car around and head back to his dad had become permanent, even though Sam could have easily delayed his acceptance a year. Sam wasn’t sure he could handle the endless monotony of classes and people’s inconsequential problems, knowing what bigger ones lurked in the darkness if he wasn’t out there killing them.
Sam stepped into the shower and tipped his head forward, turned the heat up until it burned. He barely felt anything these days. Barely cared any more. What Gordon had said back in the bar made sense: there wasn’t a point, not really. All that had ever mattered had been the hunt, so why not embrace it?
There wasn’t a world beyond the hunt for him anymore. The people he counted as close were all hunters, Ellen, even Jo, and he couldn’t ever bring himself to speak with them about his dad, about how empty he felt. Their concern for him, their compassion, felt too thick, cloying to the point of suffocating.
There was Bobby, more of a father sometimes than Sam’s own father had been, but Bobby’s view of what family was differed from how Sam had been raised, and even if the man would try to understand for Sam’s sake, Sam knew he wouldn’t ever be able to. It was easier, for them, to fall into their established routine, and that almost always included a hunt.
As for relationships, the best he had were one-night stands and casual acquaintances, and if no one was going to get close enough to be cut, why bother trying to smooth the edges he’d been shattered into?
His phone chirped. Sam rinsed off the soap and slung a towel around his hips as he reached for it where it was resting beside the sink.
“Hey, kid,” Bobby greeted. “You didn’t call. I thought I’d check-in.”
Somehow the man always knew. “Yeah, it’s fine. I’m in Red Lodge after a nest of vampires.”
“Vampires, huh?”
“Haven’t found the nest yet,” Sam said, glancing over at the map that was still stretched across the sheets.
“Well, make sure you’re smart about it,” Bobby said. “Remember you can call if you need.”
“Sure thing, Bobby. Thanks.” He tossed his phone onto the nightstand and dried off, pulling on fresh clothes, making a mental note to stop and do laundry.
He missed Bobby. The gruff old hunter was one of the few contacts that Sam remembered from when he was a kid that had survived the little murder spree the demon Sam and his dad had been hunting went on when it realized they were closing in. So many people had died, people who had babysat him, taught him various tricks of the trade.
It was true that when it came to hunts he was essentially on his own, but as usual, one brief phone call with that familiar rough voice on the other end of the line was enough to remind him that family didn’t end with blood. He resolved to stop by Singer Salvage when he was done in Red Lodge, maybe some time there would help him forget how detached he felt from the world.
It was late, but he wasn’t tired. Sam flipped through the television and huffed a laugh as he stumbled on a late-night showing of Ghostbusters. At a commercial break, he grabbed some loose change and stepped out into the cool night air, letting the chill wake him up, pull him from the dark thoughts that had been circling like carrion birds.
He made his way to the machine that promised ‘cool refreshing drinks’, and paid $1.75 for a drink that was neither cool nor particularly refreshing. He drank it anyway.
It didn’t pay to be distracted, but that was precisely what Sam was as he locked the door to his motel room behind him. There weren’t many ways to protect a room from vampires, and him turning around to lock the door didn’t do much but expose his back to the blur in the corner.
He barely had time to spin around before a meaty fist connected with his already bruised temple. He got in a few solid punches himself, but in the end, the last thing he remembered was the sight of the beige rotary phone swinging through the air toward his head.
Sam came-to tied to a very uncomfortable wooden chair. He felt the creak in the wood beneath him and the tautness of the bindings before he even opened his eyes. Wherever he had been taken to smelled of dust and mildew.
Still feigning unconsciousness, he discretely tried the ropes and, straining his ears, estimated that there were two other occupants in the room with him.
“I know you’re awake,” a woman’s voice whispered next to his ear. Sighing, Sam blinked open his eyes.
The woman was pale, with large piercing eyes and long hair. “My name’s Lenore, and I will not hurt you. I only want to talk.”
“Yeah, sure,” Sam said, more than a little sarcastic, turning his attention from the woman to the other figure in the room. Sam’s other captor was a man, tall and broad, with sharp shining fangs on full display as he glowered. “I might have some trouble paying attention to much besides that guy’s teeth.”
“He won’t hurt you either,” Lenore assured him, then glanced over to the man and gave him an expectant look. “Eli.” The man, Eli, transferred his glare to her and, after a moment of tense silence, retracted his fangs. “There,” she said, turning back to Sam. “You have my word, you’ll be alright.”
“Thanks a lot,” Sam huffed. “But you’re not the first vampire I’ve met, so forgive me if your word isn’t worth a whole lot to me.”
“We’re not like the others.”
“Right, sure. Of course you’re not.” He twisted his arms again and wished not for the first time, that he could reach the blade he always carried hidden in his boot.
“Notice,” Lenore said, still infinitely cool and calm as she stood before him, “that you’re still alive.” Which was true, but that was something that could be so easily corrected that Sam barely paused. “We don’t kill humans, and we don’t drink human blood.”
The statement was strange enough that it made Sam hesitate. He turned his full attention to her. “If that were true, why aren’t you all starving?”
“There are other ways.” Lenore wrinkled her nose slightly.
Her grimace made something slot into place, and Sam realized, “The cattle mutilations.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “It’s not ideal. In fact, it’s disgusting. But if it allows us to survive...”
Sam frowned, sensing the emphasis she had placed on the last word. “Survive?”
“No deaths, no missing locals.” She shrugged, her curly brown hair sliding over her shoulder as she raised it in a loose shrug. “No reason for people like you to come looking for people like us.”
The other vampire jerked forward away from the fireplace, snarling, “Why are we explaining ourselves to him, Lenore? We choke-down cow’s blood so none of them suffer, and yet tonight when they murdered Conrad they celebrated!”
“Eli,” Lenore cautioned, not raising her voice at all but somehow there was iron in her tone. “What’s done is done.” She turned back to Sam. “We’re leaving this town tonight.”
“Why bother telling me?” Sam wondered. “Why talk to me at all?”
“I’d really rather not,” she conceded. “But I know your kind. You’ll hunt us wherever we go.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose a little. “You’re asking me not to follow you?”
“We have a right to live, we’re not hurting anyone.” She jerked her chin up as she spoke, defiant and determined.
“Yeah,” Sam huffed. “So you keep saying, but you seem to be a bit short on proof.”
Her eyebrows twitched upwards and then she stepped forward, leaned down so her mouth was by Sam’s ear, just close enough that it forced Sam to tilt his head to avoid touching. The unconscious reaction to her nearness meant he had to expose his neck.
“You know what I’m going to do?” she whispered. Sam’s entire body tensed at the quiet purr. “I am going to let you go, without even a scratch on you. How’s that for proof?” She stood up and stepped back, jerking her head once at Eli before retreating to a corner of the room, her gaze steady and unblinking as Sam was untied.
As far as proof went, it was certainly worth consideration.
“Vampires are killers,” Gordon said.
“Obviously,” Sam agreed, trying to keep his tone light. He hadn’t mentioned Lenore or his trip to what must have been the very nest he and Gordon were still ostensibly looking for. “But are there ever any exceptions?”
“Exceptions?” Gordon snorted. He leaned forward across the little circular table where he was sitting. “You know what I like about hunting? It’s black and white. We’re the good guys, the knights in shining armor, and they’re the dragons we have to slay.” He shrugged. “Dragons burn villages and eat maidens and little children. All they have in them is death and destruction. It’s simple.”
“Right.” It didn’t seem simple any longer, though. If what Lenore had said were true, if it were even possible, then Sam would never pursue that nest. There would be no reason to. Just as she said: they had a right to live. For Sam, the idea wasn’t to hunt things that were different; it was to hunt things that were dangerous.
“So where was the nest, then?” Gordon asked.
Sam frowned, tried to cover his flash of surprise and anxiety. “What?”
Gordon grinned and tipped his head toward where his wolf was sitting. “He’s been sniffing at you since we walked in here, and growling at you for the past five minutes. Now I know my wolf, Sam. You want to tell me where those vampires are holed-up?” He smirked a little. Sam had felt safer tied to a chair in the middle of Lenore’s nest than he did with Gordon grinning that way. “Maybe you’re not the hunter I thought you were.”
“I hunt evil,” Sam said. “If they’re not killing people, then they’re not evil.”
“If it’s supernatural, we kill it,” Gordon countered.
Sam let out a sharp laugh as he shook his head. “Right, unless it’s useful, because then you just enslave it.”
“Is this about my wolf or the vampires? Or do you just not like me?” Sam glared, which only made Gordon chuckle. “It doesn’t matter, either way.” He snapped his fingers and the wolf leapt to its feet, trotting to the door.
“Gordon!” But the man and his wolf were gone before Sam was even on his feet. A second more and the sound of an engine purring into life echoed from the parking lot.
“Shit,” Sam muttered, stepping over to the little plastic cactus. Why had he felt the need to run anything by Gordon, anyway? Why had he bothered to even speak to the man? “Double shit.” The cactus held no keys, the hunter must have swiped them before he’d left with his damned wolf, which had the vampires’ scent and was probably going to lead Gordon straight to the nest.
Sam had been blindfolded on the drive to and from the nest, but that hadn’t stopped him from counting, or from using basic reasoning. They’d crossed a bridge, four minutes after that there had been a turn, and they’d been going uphill. Sam laid it all out with the map for references and then headed out to the farm that was the most likely candidate.
Determined, Sam jogged out of his motel room and down the steps, hotwiring the Impala and cursing Gordon Walker every minute it took to get out onto the road.
The sight of Gordon’s candy apple red El Camino confirmed Sam’s guess and he grabbed his machete from the front seat and his gun from the glove compartment before racing up to the house, taking the steps two at a time.
There was a part of him that was braced to discover that he’d arrived too late, that Gordon and his werewolf had slaughtered the peaceful nest and only blood and gore remained for Sam to find.
That wasn’t what he encountered when he stopped just inside the main room to the right of the front entrance. With some sense of shock, Sam realized that it might have been the less disturbing of the two options.
Inside the room, the wolf was standing on a large wooden table, his fur ruffled up making him look savage and feral. He was crouching low, snarling and growling quietly but constantly, not sparing even a moment’s notice for Sam as he came to a stop by the edge of the table.
Gordon had tied Lenore to one of the wooden dining room chairs and was in the process of cutting thin slashes into her skin, pausing periodically to dip his blade into a glass jar filled with a darkly red liquid that had the consistency of motor oil. “Heya, Sam,” Gordon greeted, his tone light and breezy.
Sam held his gun in his hand and wondered where he should point it: at hunter or wolf. “Gordon.” He stepped forward, tried to get a better look at Lenore as he asked, “What are you doing?”
“Poisoning our friend here with dead man’s blood,” Gordon explained, like he was commenting on the weather. “Most of the nest has already cleared out, but I’m hoping she’ll decide to be helpful.”
“Gordon,” Sam said. “Put the knife down and step away from her.”
“Yeah, y’know I guess you’re right.” Gordon dropped the knife onto the table with a careless flick of his wrist. “This bitch isn’t ever going to talk.” He picked up another knife almost three times the size of the one he had discarded and said, “Better to just kill her.”
From its position on the table the wolf snarled and, astonished, Sam realized that it was not, as he had originally assumed, snarling at Lenore. The wolf’s attention was entirely fixed on Gordon.
Sam held up his hands and stopped his slow progression forward. “I get it, okay? The vampire that killed your sister deserved to die but…”
“Killed my sister?” Gordon asked, confusion drawing his eyebrows together. Then suddenly his expression smoothed out once more and he laughed, shook his head like Sam had said something cute. “The vampire didn’t kill her, it turned her. I killed her, when I saw what she’d become.” He spread his arms wide as he said, “There are no shades of grey, Sam.”
It all fell into place then and Sam felt like a fool that it had taken so long for him to realize it all. “You knew these vampires weren’t hurting anyone. You knew about the cattle.”
“Of course I knew,” Gordon said. “What difference does it make? If they kill today or three weeks from now or a year, it’s still killing and it’s what they do. Trust me, none of it changes what they are.”
Sam couldn’t contain his derisive snort. “Trust you?”
Gordon sneered and then hefted his knife. The wolf took a menacing step closer to where he stood, but Gordon ignored it. Instead, the other hunter pressed the tip of his blade to his own forearm and sliced just deep enough for a thick drop to well up from his torn skin. With his gaze fixed on Sam, Gordon held his injured arm above Lenore’s upturned face and let the blood drop down to her mouth.
In an instant her fangs descended and she hissed.
Gordon’s triumphant grin fell quickly as, a moment later, Lenore turned her head away, her eyes closing as her teeth retracted. “No,” she moaned. “No.”
“You hear her, Gordon? It’s over. Let her go.” The other hunter let his wounded arm drop to his side, but after a second of stillness, he jerked the knife up, one hand grasping Lenore by the hair and yanking her head back as the other prepared to slide her neck in half.
Sam raised his gun, already knowing he’d be too late to save the vampire, but in the same instant the wolf lunged over Lenore’s seated form, his front paws slamming against Gordon’s chest and pushing the man back. Hunter and wolf toppled to the ground, and Sam, eyes wide, jogged forward still prepared to shoot.
The wolf was crouched over top of Gordon’s prone body, the hunter’s neck held delicately between its jaws, teeth pressing enough to pucker Gordon’s skin, but not enough to draw blood. “Kill it,” Gordon whispered, the whites of his eyes glinting in the dark as he stared at Sam’s upraised gun, begged him to shoot the creature that held him down.
The wolf growled low and did not release its hold, but made no move to rip Gordon apart. Sam’s gaze flickered from the plain fear etched on the other hunter’s face, down to sharp pointed teeth applying just the perfect amount of pressure, the skin intact though the threat was clear.
Slowly, he lowered his gun, though he kept the tableau in his peripheral vision as he untied Lenore. “Kill it,” Gordon whispered again, holding his body stiff and still as his eyes followed Sam’s movement.
“You okay?” Sam asked as Lenore rose to her feet. She nodded her head, glancing over to Gordon briefly before turning away again. “How much time do you need to get clear of this place?”
“Not long,” she said, her voice rough and croaky as she forced the words out. “Most of the nest has already gone.”
“I can give you until dawn, guaranteed.” She nodded, a small thankful smile flashing over her face. She stepped away from the chair where she had been bound and then paused again, turning back to look at Gordon and then focusing on the furred beast that held him captive. “Good dog,” she said, amusement in her eyes. The wolf huffed, sending a puff of heated air across Gordon’s skin, making the man flinch.
Sam waited until he heard the sound of the front door shutting and, a moment later, of the old pick-up that had been parked outside rumbling to life. He pulled over one of the dining room chairs and straddled it, his arms hanging over the back and the gun, cocked and ready, dangling from his right hand. “So, Gordon,” he said, his tone light. “We’ve got a few hours to kill, better get comfortable.”
Sam had meant it more or less as a joke. He hadn’t expected the wolf to drop itself down, sitting on Gordon’s midsection as it pulled its head back from the man’s neck. In lieu of its teeth, the wolf pressed its paw just below Gordon’s throat, its sharp nails resting carefully against the vulnerable skin.
Sam watched Gordon quickly re-assess the situation, calculating the odds of overpowering the wolf before it took a bite or clawed at him and decide they weren’t in his favor. Sam readjusted the gun so it was propped on his elbow and aimed, finger on the trigger, at the man sprawled out on his back. “Hope you don’t have to pee,” he said, and settled in to wait.
By the time the sun was creeping over the horizon and spilling cautious light through the grimy windows, Sam had secured Gordon to the same chair where he’d tortured Lenore. He was confident the knots would hold, but every hunter had a few tricks up their sleeve.
Patting the other man’s shoulder after checking the ropes, Sam said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call someone to come and get you after,” he paused and considered. “Maybe two or three days. Now,” he scratched the back of his head as he glanced at the wolf sitting in the front hallway. “Normally I wouldn’t consider this, but I think I’m pretty familiar with your philosophy, not to mention your techniques when it comes to anger management, so I’m gonna take your werewolf.” The wolf cocked its head and so Sam directed the last to it, “unless you feel differently about that?”
In an instant the wolf was on its feet but not, as Sam fleetingly considered, in an effort to launch an attack. It glanced between Sam and the door and then back again; Sam shrugged. “Well, alright then. You hang tight, Gordon.” He shoved Gordon’s weapons together and set them on the old china cabinet, far enough and high enough that the man wouldn’t be able to shift the chair over and make a grab at the knife. He wanted to give Lenore and her nest as much of a head start as possible and with Gordon tied up, and without the animal he had used to track them; Sam figured they’d have a fair shot.
Sam had been raised to believe that anything supernatural was inherently evil. Ghosts and ghouls and anything in between, intentionally or no, bred chaos and caused pain and misery and death wherever they went. His dad had believed, just like Gordon, that when it came to hunting there were no shades of grey. Sam should have listened to Ellen and just walked away, but if he had then Lenore and an entire nest of peaceful vampires would have been slaughtered.
He should have known better. There were thousands of shades of grey in the world and there was no reason why hunting shouldn’t be affected by the same color scheme. He held open the front door and watched as the wolf loped out into the night. It wasn’t over. Gordon would be nursing a vendetta and he didn’t seem like the type of man who could forgive and forget.
It might have blown-over easier if Sam left the werewolf behind, but like Lenore, there had been no indication that the wolf was dangerous. Even when it had tackled Gordon it had been careful and the man hadn’t even been scratched. If Sam just turned and left, Gordon would undoubtedly kill the beast, and that would have been just as wrong as killing the nest.
“I want you to know,” Sam said, coming to a stop by the driver’s side door with the keys to his car in one hand and a gun in the other. “If you try to kill me or anyone I know, or anyone at all, I’m going to shoot you and I won’t even hesitate.” The wolf stared up at him, unblinking, its tongue lolling out just slightly as it panted. It seemed entirely unphased by Sam’s promise.
When Sam opened the car door and stood aside, it loped over and then bounded inside, settling onto the front bench on the passenger’s side and looking entirely pleased to be there. “So long as we’re clear,” Sam said as he slid behind the wheel, pulling the car door closed and starting the engine.
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|| END PART ONE >>|
MASTERPOST