Kings of the Night (Part Four)

[dualityforce]

part four

“So remind me again how that thing actually works?” Dean asked, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching his father curiously. John was hunched over a motel room table, the laptop-like creation that Ash had given him whirring away in front of him; it was a noisy piece of technology, emitting a high pitched buzz that irritated Dean’s ears to no end.

“For the third time,” John sighed. “It tracks all of the early warning signs that the demon has - electrical storms, crop failures… suspicious house fires. It will let us know where the demon’s going to turn up next, before he actually gets there.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “And you’re sure it’ll work?”

“From what he explained, I don’t see any reason that it shouldn’t.” John shrugged. “And at this moment in time, it’s the best resource we have to find the thing.”

From his position perched on one of the counter tops, Sam snorted slightly.

“And when we do find it, how exactly are we supposed to kill it?” He demanded. “We’re talking a high-level demon. That means our usual tricks aren’t going to work - holy water, consecrated ground… hell, even our exorcisms probably aren’t strong enough.”

John hesitated. “Singer has a theory. Some kind of gun made by Samuel Colt - apparently, it has the power to kill anything on earth. Azazel included.”

“Right.” Dean snorted. “You don’t look too convinced about that.”

“He has no idea where it is,” The older werewolf admitted. “Some hunter called Elkins claimed that he’d found it, but he was taken out by vampires a few months ago. Singer’s been through his property since then, and he couldn’t find it.”

Sam nodded. “So that means that either it was never there to begin with, or the vamps took it home as a souvenir. Fantastic. So I’m guessing that means that our next line of business is a vamp hunt, hey?”

John nodded, and the young werewolf sighed, letting his head fall back and bounce off the overhead kitchen cabinet with a dull thud. Vampires, in Sam’s opinion, were pretty much the worse possible things to hunt.

Not only could they recognize a werewolf by both sight and scent, making them incredibly hard to ambush, but they were also one of few creatures on the planet that could match them for both speed and pure brutality. Not to mention the fact that, most likely due to modern culture, they tended to have a real bee in their bonnets about the werewolf race as a whole.

The predator in Sam liked having advantage over the things that they hunted. Liked looking at an incubus or a wendigo or black dog and knowing without doubt that he would be walking away from the situation unharmed; liked the knowledge that, by the end of the night, he would be leaving triumphant. His father and brother, on the other hand, were blood-born alphas, and they sought out and actively enjoyed the challenge of taking on something that could kill them just as easily as they could kill it.

The youngest werewolf didn’t think that would ever make sense to him.

“Come on, Sammy,” Dean grinned, planting his hands on the younger man’s thighs and leaning into the gap between his legs. “It’ll be fun. Track them down, have a little play and then tear their heads right off their necks. Easy as pie.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help but admit to himself that Dean’s enthusiasm was frustratingly catchy.

“They’re just as strong as we are,” He pointed out. “And we’ll be outnumbered.”

Dean grinned wider, leaning forwards until their lips were almost touching. “Come on, baby. I’ll protect you. Won’t let any of them hurt my pretty little omega.”

“Asshole.” Sam scowled, shoving his laughing brother away. “I’m more than capable of defending myself. Don’t get all protective alpha on me, or else I’ll be forced to kick your ass on principle alone, and I’d hate to damage your pride before a big fight.”

“Come on then,” Dean goaded, eyes dark. “Prove it.”

John tucked his chair a little closer to the table, glancing briefly at his youngest son over his shoulder. “Watch the furniture.”

Sam was already moving; launching himself off the counter and using the momentum to send him crashing straight into his brother. Dean’s arms came around instinctively, cushioning their fall as they slammed onto the unyielding motel carpet; he twisted as soon as his back hit the floor, grabbing for Sam’s wrists as he pinned the younger man underneath him.

Sam didn’t hesitate in ducking under one of the flailing arms and driving an elbow into the tender flesh a few inches below Dean’s armpit, hitting the gap between two ribs with uncanny aim. Dean rolled away from the blow, shooting out a leg to catch Sam in the knee and send him off balance as the kid rolled on top of him.

The younger man yelped, more surprise than pain, and Dean flipped him straight back over onto his back. He scowled, bucking his hips up impatiently, grinning widely when it brought their crotches into contact. His eyes darkened with lust, staring up into his brother’s, and Dean frowned.

“Don’t try that seduction crap on me,” he groused irritably, tightening his hold against his brother’s wrists. “It ain’t gonna work, Sammy.”

Sam grinned, grinding up again, feeling his brother’s already half-heard cock begin to respond as he let his eyelids fall shut a little more.

“Who said I was trying anything?”

“Bitch.” Dean snapped, but he bent down even as he said it, pressing their mouths together in a hard and dirty kiss. Sam’s hands tangled in the back of his shirt, hips bucking up again, and Dean was just starting to get into it when the room shifted around him and he suddenly found himself on his back.

Sam was straddling his hips, legs tangled around Dean’s to keep him down and hands gripping his forearms. Dean wriggled, realizing that he was well and truly screwed, and swore under his breath.

“I honestly don’t know how you fall for that every time,” Sam teased, keeping him pinned for a few seconds longer just to prove that he could, before he finally rose to his feet and reached out a hand to help his brother up after him. “You’re getting far too predictable.”

Dean scowled again, and across the room John laughed.

“It’s not like he’s wrong,” He announced. “Seriously. He’s the seventeen-year old… he should be the one that’s thinking with his dick whilst you’re wrestling. You’ll never be able to beat him if you slacken your grip every time he flutters his eyelashes at you.”

“Shut up,” He refuted irritably, stalking across the room to flop onto his bed, throwing his forearm over his face. It was only a few seconds that he felt the bed dip with his brother’s weight as Sam settled onto the bed next to him, curling into his older brother’s side. His shoulders were still shaking with silent laughter, but Dean didn’t hold it against him, the arm that was pillowing his younger brother’s head coming up to wrap around him.

“Little tease,” he muttered affectionately, arm still over his face.

Sam didn’t deny it, just wriggled a little closer and pressed a sweet kiss to his brother’s pulse point. “You love it.”

**

Daniel Elkins had lived in a cabin in Manning, Colorado.

After his death, two of his hunting buddies by the names of James Earle and Christian West had claimed it as their own, as was often the case in the hunting community. From what Bobby had gathered, the two of them had seen this as the perfect opportunity to retire from the business, and had never tracked down the vampire nest that had killed their friend.

For once in their lives, that meant that the hunt was actually going to be easier than they’d anticipated. Bobby had collected Elkins’ research on the nest when he’d gone to build the other hunter’s pyre, and had passed on what he thought might help the Winchesters track the vampires down.

Quite honestly, what little Elkins had managed to gather really wasn’t that useful. It was no wonder that the vampires had gotten to him before he’d had a chance to off them - he hadn’t even mapped out the locations of their kills, or begun looking for abandoned buildings that they might have claimed as their own.

What was useful, however, were the few polaroid pictures that he’d manage to gather of a few members of the nest. Two girls - one brunette and one long-legged blonde, and three guys of varying different statures. Judging by the sheer number of attacks in the local area, it seemed to make sense that they weren’t alone. As much as Sam disliked vampires, even he had to reluctantly admit that they usually only killed as much as they could consume.

Thankfully, the three Winchester’s were no strangers to research. Just three hours, and a rather tedious trip to the library, after they’d first rolled into town and they’d managed to narrow down the search to three potential locations - two abandoned warehouses and an abandoned farm, all three of them sitting just inside the western borders of the small town.

From there, it was simply a matter of figuring out how to stage a recon mission without the vampires catching onto them being there. Their usual tactic of using the cover of darkness to their advantage wouldn’t be much good against vampires - they might possibly have been the only creature even more well-adapted to the night than a werewolf was, and they really didn’t want to offer them an even greater advantage before the fight had even begun.

There was no way that the vampires would see them coming, not in the middle of the day, but they were still left with the irritating conundrum of their scent.

In the end, John resorted to buying a strong-smelling deodorant from the local supermarket and dousing the three of them in enough of the stuff that it left the three of them sneezing for what felt like hours.

“I am never going to get the smell of this stuff out of my car,” Dean groused, flicking irritably at his leather jacket as if it might help get rid of the smell. “Or my goddamn clothes.”

Sam shifted in his seat, wrinkling his nose when the movement caused a fresh wave of the sickly-strong smell to wash over him. “How do humans cope with this shit?”

Dean shrugged his shoulders irritably, face set into a dark expression. He’d been more than ready to kick some vampire ass and win them some kind of magical gun even before they’d gotten to this stage in the plan. Now he was just feeling blood thirsty, couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into flesh and tear it free.

There was no doubt in his mind that they’d shift to fight. In their human forms, the only real weapons that they had were the kind made by humans, and Dean always took it as a hit to his pride when they had to resort to such means. They were natural born killers, after all. They had claws and teeth and there was a satisfaction garnered from using them that he’d never felt in the recoil of a gun or the slick sensation of a blade piercing flesh.

He didn’t even care if that made him the monster that most hunters seemed to think he was. At the end of the day, every time he sunk teeth into flesh, he was helping them out just a little bit more - leaving them with one less supernatural sonofabitch to track down and hunt themselves. Humans were fragile. They broke far too easily, and it seemed almost ungrateful that so many of them were against having the Winchester’s on their side.

“This fight better not be a fucking anticlimax,” Dean snarled. “I swear to God, if I don’t get to tear at least a few heads from necks, then I’m going to lose my mind. There’s only so much that running through the woods in the middle of the night is going to do for my restraint. I hate acting like a freaking house pet.”

Sam rolled his eyes, shooting his brother an appropriately bored look. “Seriously? Next time can you choose to work your frustrations out on a wendigo? Or a black dog or something? You’re not gonna get very far in a vamp fight when the bloodlust is riding you that hard. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“It’s under control, Sam. Stop being such a whiny little bitch, alright? We’ll win this fight, and then I’ll take you back to the motel room and remind you what it’s like to be a real wolf, hey? See if we can’t bring a little of that bloodlust out in you.”

It irritated him, sometimes, how blasé his brother was about everything. Sam was a sneaky little thing, all fluttering eyelashes and an uncanny ability to seduce anything built to walk on two legs, and when he put his mind to it he was a much more deadly force than either John or Dean could ever hope to be. Instead, the kid mostly played things down - backed down where Dean would be throwing punches, looked for a get-out clause where Dean saw the perfect set up to start a fight.

Part of it was that the younger man was their pack omega, and neither of the Winchester men had exactly made a secret of the way that they coddled the youngest pack member. Dean remembered their father being like that with their mother, too, soft-eyed when he looked at her and always so careful, as if she might break if he pushed too hard. They were different with Sam than they were with each other; he was something to be cherished and protected, and sometimes Dean couldn’t help but spitefully think that it had all gone to his head.

Sometimes he saw a collared dog in the place of a wolf, a calmness about him that was a complete contradiction to everything he knew to be true.

In a lot of ways, Sam was more wolf than either of them. He had that same restless energy, the intelligence behind his eyes and the raw power of an animal - in a fight, he was fast and unforgiving and deadly. Dean didn’t think he’d ever understand his brother. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to.

Sam grinned at him, razorblade sharp. “We both know that I’m wolf enough.”

**

In the end, they discovered the nest of nearly twenty-five vampires holed away in an abandoned farm building. The windows were all boarded up with thick wooden boards, lined up meticulously to prevent any light from seeping through, and the acrid stench of dead and rotting flesh hung sinisterly in the air.

The boarded up windows meant that there was no way to know for sure what the layout of the property was on the inside. Sam was reluctant to go in blind, pacing restlessly along the invisible line that marked the edge of the property; his hands were stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, and his eyes were calculating as they locked onto the building.

“Farmhouse means it’s probably an open floorplan,” He mused out loud. “Living area, kitchen, dining room and probably a bathroom, judging from the size. Two stories, so there’ll probably be some upstairs just waiting to jump in whenever they get a chance, and more than likely a basement.”

“Right,” Dean nodded slowly, eyes flitting towards his father. “And where the hell are they going to be keeping a magical, all-killing gun in the middle of a farmhouse?”

John raised his eyebrow. “Guess we’re about to find out.”

He shifted his weight forwards, already starting to shift as he dropped to all fours, and Dean allowed himself one last moment of grinning widely to himself before he followed suit. In wolf form, their father was a brute of an animal; dark fur and dark eyes, he was like something out of a horror movie, a direct contrast to the light golden fur that had colored their mother’s coat.

As he did in many things, Dean took after his father - darker shades flowing along his back and his head, jutting across the top half of his face in a way that only made his eyes stand out more. His underbelly and legs were lighter, and there was the faintest gleam of gold in the fur of his tail, a small glimpse of his mother’s likeness. Sam was much lighter, not much bigger than their mother had been before she’d died, and his fur was the color of burnished gold. Two dark markings underneath his eye highlighted the constantly-shifting hazel, and gave him the impression of something almost haunting.

Their mother had speculated, in the years before the fire, that there was something about Sam that was even more supernatural than his werewolf status. She hadn’t said much about it to Dean or his father, but the few comments that she’d made about the way he could so easily manipulate the people around him left little doubt as to what her thinking on the matter was.

Sometimes, watching his brother stand underneath the moonlight in the middle of the mountains, Dean wondered in perhaps she had been right.

In his wolf form, Sam seemed to lose the hesitance from before, nipping sharply at his father’s heels as he bounced between the two of them like a puppy. He was lighter on his feet than he had any right to be, moving over the ground as if he was weightless, and Dean could feel his own excitement building in anticipation of the fight that was about to come.

Their father took the lead, pausing for a long moment just outside of the front door, gathering as much power in his muscles as he could, and then he launched himself straight for the wooden obstacle. The door gave way with a sharp splintering sound, collapsing in on itself and propelling John straight inside the house.

Sam and Dean were only seconds behind, and Dean had just enough time to register that Sam had been right about the open floor plan before the first of the vampires leapt for him, and he let his instincts take over.

They were smarter than he’d anticipated, tag-teaming him from different directions, but he didn’t let it deter him. It was easy enough to deflect the blows until one of them slipped up, and he leapt forwards as one of them stepped wrong, left the vulnerable flesh of their ankle open and exposed. His teeth hit bone with a sharp crunching noise, and the vamp’s head was detached within seconds of its body hitting the floor.

Something yowled sharply from beside him - the vamp’s mate, he assumed - and he turned his head just in time to catch a male by the throat and send him crashing down to fall beside the first.

A sharp flare of pain shot through his shoulder, a sudden pressure against his back, gone as soon as it had arrived. A glance over his shoulder found the vampire that had attacked him pinned on its back by Sam, his blood-stained maw descending for the creature’s neck. The blow was swift and clean, and the vamp’s head was barely free of his neck before Sam was leaping back into the fray to take out another.

On the other side of the room, John had already racked up an impressive kill count, tearing through the vamps with a voracity that surprised even Dean. He felt a surge of competitiveness work its way through him, the desire to be the strongest alpha around, and he picked up his own pace with a snarl.

It was almost like he fell into a rhythm; single out a vampire, remove its head. Repeat the process. Anything that happened between objectives one and two was dismissed as soon as it had happened, brain processing the wounds that the vamps managed to inflict on him even as his body dismissed the pain.

And then he heard the familiar sound of his brother, yelping in pain.

He and his father moved at once, Dean turning so quickly that he wondered briefly if he’d somehow managed to turn within his own skin, their eyes locked on the silver knife protruding from the youngest Winchester’s side. It wasn’t a deadly blow, not if they got the knife out quickly enough, but Dean had no disillusions about the fact that his brother was officially out of the fight.

He didn’t even attempt to go for the cowardly vampire wielding the weapon, but aimed his jaws for the knife instead, tugging it free as smoothly as he could. It was longer than he’d anticipated, curved slightly inwards and if Sam had been a human he’d have been as good as dead from the moment that it had pierced his flesh.

His body jerked weakly at the sensation, a fresh pulse of blood leaking free and matting his fur. Dean resisted the urge to bend his head and lick in clean, to turn his attention from the fight and to his injured mate, but they were still outnumbered and their father couldn’t win on his own.

He settled for standing over his brother, forepaws on one side and hind on the other, and faced down every vamp that headed for them with a snarl and the blow of his teeth, unwavering in his position over his brother’s fallen form.

Underneath him, Sam panted harshly, but he refused to stay down. Just seconds after Dean had tugged the knife free, and the young werewolf was forcing his feet underneath him and unsteadily rising. Dean shifted to the right, attention momentarily diverted from his brother as he separated yet another creatures head from his body, and by the time that he had a chance to seek him out again, Sam was standing with all four paws firmly on the ground and facing down an attacker of his own.

He was slower than he would normally have been, limbs trembling slightly with the effort of holding himself up, but his movements were deliberate and sure, and Dean knew that the vampire stood no chance.

Around them, the room was growing steadily quieter, and Dean was struck by the realization that only a handful of vampires remained. They were careless, possessed by anger and the need for vengeance, and Dean finally allowed himself to slow down and enjoy the fight a little. He darted backwards and forwards around a female vampire, sinking his teeth into her leg and then her arm, irritating her until she was so angry she couldn’t think, and then he stepped back and watched as his brother launched up on his back legs and effortlessly tore out her throat.

A heavy thud echoed across the room as John disposed of the last remaining creature, and for a moment, Dean was almost disappointed at the sudden realization that the fight was over.

Sam limped awkwardly away from the dead vampire, head hunched low as he painfully began to change back. It took longer than it should have - long enough for Dean to gather his wits and not only start, but complete his own change - and he stayed on all fours for a long moment before rolling carefully onto his side, one arm coming up to protect his injured stomach.

Without the thick layer of fur to hide the wound, it looked even worse than Dean had expected. Still not lethal - the blade hadn’t been in for long enough to cause a serious case of silver poisoning - but an injury that would leave him in pain for weeks. If not longer.

“How was that?” Sam panted, blinking up at his brother. There was a thin sheen of sweat covering the skin of his face and his neck, trailing down beyond the cover of his t-shirt. Despite Dean’s expectations, their clothes had survived the shift fairly well - with anything too loose, their bodies refused to shift it with them, but the shirts and jeans that they’d all worn seemed to have survived with just a few tears here and there. Nothing that couldn’t be patched up. “As anticlimactic as you feared?”

Dean shrugged his shoulders, crouching down and carefully helping the younger wolf manoeuvre himself to his feet, watching the way that he swayed unsteadily for a few moments before catching himself.

“Maybe a seven out of ten,” He allowed. “Mainly because we got to tear a lot of heads off.”

Sam nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Decapitation is very therapeutic. Lots of blood. Can we just find the gun and get the hell out of here? I need a goddamn shower - we’re in a room where we just decapitated nearly thirty vamps, and all I can smell is that stupid deodorant. Next time, can we just let them smell us coming? Please?”

John snorted, shaking his head slightly.

“Sure. Why don’t you sit down?” He kicked a chair away from a small wooden table, inclining his head towards it. Sam scowled.

“Why don’t you take upstairs, and I’ll handle down here?” He offered instead, glaring slightly at the eldest Winchester. John couldn’t bite back his grin as he held his hands up in a mockery of defeat. He turned on his heels, taking the stairs two at a time, and Dean smothered his own grin into the shoulder of his shirt as he headed for the long cabinet on the other side of the room and began to search.

Sam limped a little, finally settling on a pace that didn’t irritate his wound so much as he ducked through an open doorway into a room that seemed to be functioning as some kind of office. There were papers strewn across every available surface, most of them newspaper clippings of local disappearances. It didn’t take Sam long to realize that it was some kind of record of the humans that they’d hunted - they’d even gone as far as to cut out some of the pictures from the articles, sticking them on the walls.

“Fucking vampires.” He muttered to himself, tugging open the first in a long line of drawers and quickly sorting through it before moving onto the next. He settled himself into a rhythm, moving through the room systematically, and it wasn’t until he was tugging on the handle of one of the desk drawers that he finally stumbled across a locked one.

With werewolf strength, it took only a few quick tugs to snap the small lock and send the drawer opening, and Sam grinned at the contents. Inside, there were three guns: a Beretta, a small glock, and an ornate looking Colt. He tucked the first two in the back of his jeans (because even if they didn’t like to use weapons, it didn’t mean that they had no use for them), and delicately ran the fingers of one hand over the Colt as he tugged it from the drawer.

There were delicate carvings outlined into the silver, intricate little patterns with Celtic knot work and old Nordic runes seamlessly incorporated, and if Sam had possessed any doubt that this was the mythical gun that they’d come looking for, he would have dismissed them entirely at the sight of the small pentagram engraved at the bottom of the wooden butt.

“Jackpot!” He called, glancing up and grinning widely as his brother stepped inside of the room. Dean’s eyes instantly fell to the handgun, and his eyes widened visibly.

“Damn. It’s real?”

Sam nodded his head. “As real as you and me.”

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