Chapter 1

The Impala bombed down the I-5, the radio blaring over the sound of the wind blustering by and through the open windows. It was an ungodly hot August day in Northern California. The sun baked the blacktop and the car's paint job, and sank deep into the leather seats until they were burning hot to the touch.

Sam had his head slumped against the headrest of the passenger seat, a baseball cap pulled low over his face to shade him from the fierce sun. Dean blasted the radio and sipped at a cup of coffee as if it was ambrosia.

They'd been taking turns driving without stopping for more than gas, coffee and 7-11 sandwiches for almost two days now. Not an unheard-of regimen for the two of them, but not much fun all the same.

Once again, the Winchester boys were on the hunt. Their target, Angelica Walker, sometimes went by the name of 'Angel', but she certainly wasn't one. No, this particular bitch and her band of merry minions were as nasty a kiss of vampires as they had ever heard of, much less seen.

Dean and Sam had originally headed up to Seattle a few days before, on another job. They'd just finished it up and started heading back to the car when they heard a scream and wound up surprising a vampire in the act of either kidnapping or preparing to chomp on a young girl.

The vampire spooked when it saw them, but when the boys Winchester caught a scent, they followed it wherever it led. Some local research and a bit of calling around to the Roadhouse produced a name for their mark, and they started looking for the nest.

The only problem then was that before they'd closed in, the damn vamps had skipped town.

So they headed south, hot on their trail. They nearly lost it in Portland, but picked it up again after reports of a mysterious death in Salem, Oregon, just a little ways further south.

The vampires were on the move, but they didn't seem to be troubling to hide their passage very well. In fact, they were leaving a trail of bodies that an idiot could follow, let alone a trained Hunter. By the time they crossed the state line into California, Dean had come to the conclusion that the vampires didn't know they were being tracked, and had just happened to decide it was time to move on.

Well, that was fine. Always better to go in with surprise on your side, especially when you were dealing with half a dozen super-human, vicious killing machines.

The I-5 was hot, boring, and very straight in this area. Dusty fields stretched off in both directions, broken by the occasional rock. Dean watched a vulture circling high in the air and wondered if the vampires were planning on going all the way to San Jose. Or hell, even further. Maybe they were heading for L.A.

Sam muttered and shifted in his seat, then pushed himself to sit up and raised the brim of his baseball cap, glancing around blearily at the surrounding landscape.

"Morning sunshine," Dean greeted him, reaching to twist the dial on the radio and turn the music down to conversational levels.

Sam cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes. He was so damnably adorable when he was sleepy. He jerked as his arm touched a bit of metal on the door. "Ouch," he yelped, rubbing the spot. "Don't talk to me about sunshine. Where are we?"

"Just outside of the bustling metropolis of Williams, California," Dean said, glancing up at a sign warning of the exit coming up in a mile and a half. "I thought I'd stop to fill up and maybe plan our next move. These vamps don't seem like they're stopping, but if they've got a bolt hole out in the middle of nowhere around here, I don't want to drive right by it.

"We probably won't know where they're going until they kill again," Sam said sourly. He poked at a bottle of coke he'd been drinking before he'd fallen asleep, but the soda had heated up. "Maybe we could find a hotel and stay in a bed tonight?" he asked plaintively. "The vampires aren't hiding from us. It'll be easy to catch up once we figure out their destination."

Dean glanced at his little brother over his sunglasses, then sighed and nodded grudgingly. It was that puppy-dog look. He couldn't say no to the puppy-dog look.

Besides, the kid was right.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. Let's hole up here and see if we can figure some things out. No point in just driving without knowing where we're going." He turned the wheel slightly, following the exit ramp and heading around the curve towards the small town. There was a run-down little motel called the Vagabond's House and Vincenzo Ivanova paid for that.

Sam rolled his eyes at Dean after they'd gotten their keys and headed for the room. "I don't think Vincenzo is a Russian name," he remarked.

"What do you mean?" Dean exclaimed, grinning. "Vincenzo is a perfectly fine Russian name. Are you dissing my heritage, dude?"

"Forget it," Sam said, shaking his head.

They keyed into the motel room, which was dingy and decorated like it hadn't been updated since sometime in the 1950's, and dropped off their bags. Sam stretched, looking out of the window. "I'm going to go pick up some food. Want anything in particular?" he asked, glancing at Dean.

"Nah...just bring me back something. Burgers, or Chinese, something like that," Dean replied, kicking off his shoes and stretching out on the bed. The sun was almost down, casting a red glow over the room through the open curtains.

"Got it," Sam said, snagging the Impala's keys and heading out of the room.

Sam was feeling pretty good as he sauntered out to the Impala, which they'd been forced to park a few spots down from the motel room door because of a double-parked pickup truck and an inconveniently located mini-van.

They were on a good hunt, the kind where there was no moral ambiguity. He lost some sleep because of the people they'd been unable to save, but they were catching up, and when they did there would be no question of whether it was right to take out the monsters.

It was a good hunt, not a yellow-eyed demon hunt, unfortunately, not one that would bring him any closer to finding out what was happening to him and the other psychics. But that had its positive side, too. For one thing, Dean was engaged with it in a way he hadn't been since their father's death. He wasn't being scary, nor was he trying to blow it off.

Overall, it was putting Sam in a rare cheerful mood, and he hummed to himself as he walked, tossing the Impala keys up into the air and catching them.

Perhaps it was that humming that drowned out the approach of someone sneaking up behind him. Whatever it was, Sam's spidey senses hadn't even tingled. He had no warning that anything was wrong before pain exploded at the back of his head and he dimly realized he was falling. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

Sam awoke with a jerk, as if he'd been hit in the face with a blast of cold water. Coming around after having been knocked out was very different from waking up from regular sleep. There was less of a transition period, no drifting in and out of dreamland and then rolling over in that warm cocoon of blankets and deciding maybe to sleep a little more.

Of course, that could be exacerbated by the fact that he was bound tightly in an upright position, his wrists tight together with scratchy rope and his back pressing uncomfortably against some kind of rounded post.

The slight movement of his body as he awoke sent pain shooting through his shoulders and back and he let out a soft groan without meaning to.

"He's coming to!" he heard a voice hiss.

Good one, Sam, he could practically hear his father say. You just ruined a prime opportunity to gather intel, assess the situation from a position of surprise.

Whatever else John Winchester might have had to say was short-circuited as someone seized Sam by the hair and wrenched his head back.

"Let's get a few things straight right off the bat," a new voice said. Sam opened his eyes and a slender blond figure swam reluctantly into view. The man holding his hair grinned and sharp teeth descended.

"Oh good, you're paying attention," the vampire said smugly.

Yay, Sam thought without much enthusiasm. I found the vampire nest.

"I'm paying attention," he said with a bit of difficulty. The angle his head was being forced into made it hard to breathe.

"Shut up!" the blond snapped, following up the order with an open-handed blow to Sam's face that rocked his head to the side and caused him to rip out a few hairs from his scalp. "You don't speak unless spoken to, human."

"Nick!" came another male voice, the tone shocked. "Don't hurt his face!"

"Oh shut up, Mike," 'Nick' said impatiently, but he released Sam and backed away as another man - this 'Mike', presumably - approached and grasped Sam by the chin. Mike turned Sam's head from side to side, inspecting him with a concerned look on his face.

For a moment, Sam's hopes rose a notch. Maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed. They'd met vampires who didn't kill before. Maybe they'd been wrong again.

Then his heart sank again as Mike opened his mouth.

"There's a bit of redness, but maybe she won't notice." Mike let Sam go, then thumped the blond Nick on the back of the head, eliciting a snarl from the more volatile man. "You idiot. You know she likes them flawless. Why did we bait him for two days if you were just going to ruin the goods?"

"Bait?" Sam echoed under his breath. There was no way, right? This whole hunt couldn't have been a set up...right?

Quickly, he looked around. If Dean had been captured too, they were so screwed...but if the older Winchester was also a prisoner, he wasn't nearby. He dared to hope his brother would be able to rescue him.

Otherwise, it looked like he was going to be the main course in someone's next midnight snack.

He appeared to be confined in the main living area of a pretty standard lakeside cabin. He could see the glitter of the lake through the front window as it reflected the moon. There weren't that many lakes in the area, but he was unfamiliar with the geography, and there were three or four within an hour's drive of Williams. Enough that he really had no clue where he was.

There were six vampires in the room, including Nick and Mike. One of them, sprawled on the sofa behind him, he recognized from the attack they'd foiled in Seattle. All were male, and they weren't the usual leather-wearing punk types Sam was used to seeing.

They were all tall, lanky, athletic, and young. They were...preppy, sort of. Their clothes weren't exactly right out of a fashion magazine, but they were pretty clean cut, if tending more toward flannel shirts and t-shirts than button-downs.

Wait a minute, preppy vampires?

Sam's heart dropped firmly into his stomach as he realized something. They were all like him.

This had been a trap. He was Angel's type, enough so that they had lured him all the way from Seattle to California, just so she could have a really good, satisfying meal.

Oh shit, he thought. I am so very screwed. Dean, you better damn well find me before she gets here.

He was startled out of his thoughts as his friend Nick spoke up again. "Anyway," he said in a disgruntled tone, stalking toward Sam in what was probably meant to be a menacing manner. The young Hunter was seated on a stool rather than the floor, but he still had to look way up to meet the vampire's gaze. Probably to a regular person it would have been very scary.

Nick was continuing. "Scream all you like, little morsel," he said with obvious pleasure. "We're in the middle of nowhere, here, and no one will hear you."

"Look," Sam said, a little desperately. "Can't we talk about this?"

That idea was met with general laughter.

"Oh," Nick said, leaning closer. His breath smelled fetid, like old blood. "You'll talk to Mistress Angel as much or as little as she wants, by the time she's done with you."

"Listen to me," Sam replied urgently. "You're making a big mistake. I'm telling you--"

At that moment, everyone stopped listening completely and looked toward the front door as it opened and a woman entered the cabin. Angel was home.

The woman was tall and leggy, though Sam was certain she wasn't any taller than any of the males in her coterie. She had straight red hair that fell in a perfect wave to mid back, but blood red that colour didn't come from anything but a bottle.

It looked good, though.

"Welcome home, Mistress."

"Welcome home."

The greetings came from all sides as the other vampires clustered around her. Ignored for the moment, Sam watched as she spent several minutes greeting each of the men in turn. The worshipful looks each of them gave her as she touched them or embraced them, or gave them a kiss both intrigued Sam and repelled him. They were almost like dogs, begging for scraps and pathetically happy when given a pat on the head.

No wonder they all call her Mistress, he thought sourly. Is this normal? He certainly hadn't seen any evidence of this kind of subservience the last time he'd been captured by vampires. Deference, yes, but nothing like this.

Despite his seeming helplessness and careful attention to his surroundings, Sam had not been idle. Even when the vampire Nick had been terrorizing him, he'd been testing his bonds. His hands were tied together behind the pole and his legs secured to a metal ring set into the floor.

The bonds were some kind of twine. It was tight, and someone knew that they were doing - there was no way he was going to be able to just slip his hands free without a lot of work.

But ultimately twine was just rope, and rope could stretch. As he watched Angelica greeting her men, his hands worked furiously, rubbing and straining at the bonds, searching for a bit of looseness he could exploit to make the whole thing unravel.

He didn't know what he was going to do once he got free - he didn't have so much as a bottle of holy water on him - but it'd be a whole lot easier to fight seven vampires without his hands tied behind his back. He couldn't just sit here and wait to get chomped.

But before he'd made any noticeable progress, Angel dismissed her coterie with a wave. Her eyes went directly to Sam for the first time and his heart rate doubled when he saw the hunger in them.

"Give us some time alone, boys," she said, and all six retreated. Four headed outside and the other two went through a door that probably led down to the basement. In moments, Sam was alone with the female vampire.

Sam's heart dropped a little further. Dean was not going to have an easy time getting past four guards without alerting the ones inside. But he didn't allow his despair to show in his face as he glared up at the woman-shaped monster.

"Sam Winchester," she said, rolling his name around her tongue like a fine piece of chocolate.

"You know who I am?" Sam asked, his eyes widening for a moment in surprise. Then he narrowed them again. "Then you should know this was a really stupid move. My brother--"

"Oh yes," she purred, cutting him off. She crossed the room towards Sam, her hips swaying arrogantly. "Your brother, Dean. He's a formidable foe, and you'd be right to think he's got a good chance of rescuing you, given your track record."

She dropped to one knee and took Sam's chin in a grip that, while it wasn't painful, felt like iron. She smiled up at him. "That's why we killed him after we'd knocked you out."

Sam felt his heart stop. "What?" he gasped. He felt like he'd been punched in the chest, like there wasn't enough air in the world to breathe. Dean was dead? That couldn't be.

"I'm sorry, baby," she said softly, sounding for all the world like she really sympathized. She stroked his cheek and Sam was still just too stunned to recoil. "I was going to save him for later, maybe let my boys play with him a little after I was done with you. But he surprised us as we were loading you into our truck, and there was a fight, of course."

Try as he might, Sam couldn't sense a lie from the woman. He struggled to contain himself, to focus on the necessity to fight, to escape. But black grief washed over him and he felt his breathing stutter.

"You bitch," he whispered through a throat closed with tears. "You're lying."

"I'm not," she murmured. She leaned closer and brushed her lips against his earlobe. "Humans are so fragile. They can be so resilient, but in the end they die so easily. You'll learn that soon."

"Shut up," Sam growled, clenching his jaw so tightly it creaked. "I'm going to kill you. All of you." He strained at his bonds, seeing himself wrap his hands around her delicate, long neck so vividly it was a wonder she didn't just drop dead right there.

"I know you're mad," she purred, then bit his earlobe. He felt her sharp teeth slice into the tender flesh and hissed with more anger than pain, jerking his head away. She grabbed his chin again and held him in place with a cruel grip.

"Mmm," she whispered. He felt her tongue lapping delicately at the wound she'd made. "You taste good, Sam. I'm going to enjoy this."

He closed his eyes, trying to think through crushing despair, terror and rage. He had to get out of here. Now. But how?

"Please," he whispered, the wind going out of his sails. "Just let me go. If Dean's dead, I'm no danger to you. I'll just...go. I'll disappear. You'll never hear from me again." It was a bald-faced lie, but one that might be believable to someone that knew him, but not well enough. He knew he wouldn't rest until he'd destroyed everyone in this house who had had a hand in his brother's death, but he was betting Angel didn't know much more than the fact that Sam had gotten out of hunting for a good two years, and then been dragged back in reluctantly only a year and a half ago.

"Oh baby," she purred, dropping down further until she was kneeling fully on the floor with her arms around Sam's neck. "I want you. I've been hungry for you for days, and I'm not giving you up now. Especially since you beg so prettily."

She smiled, revealing very white, very sharp teeth, and her French manicured fingernails scraped up Sam's thighs. "I'm going to hurt you a great deal tonight, Sammy," she purred, a seductive, terrible promise. "I'm not just going to bite you. I'm going to make you like it. I'm going to break you and make you beg me for it, before I drain all the blood out of your body."

Oh Jesus, Sam thought as his stomach churned. "Don't do this," he said, his breathing coming faster.

"But I want to, Sammy," she replied, her hands tugging at the bottom of his shirt, lifting the fabric to reveal his stomach. "Mmm...you work out," she purred, caressing his abs and making the skin jump.

Gritting his teeth, Sam redoubled his efforts on his bonds, trying to work one of the looped strands over the heel of his thumb.

"I'm not S-Sammy," he growled at her, cursing himself for the stutter that had slipped out at her touch.

"Don't worry, Sammy," she murmured, leaning forward and tracing one muscle with her tongue. "I won't bite. Yet." She smirked up at him, her vampire teeth withdrawing to uncover equally perfect flat human teeth, then lowered her head again.

Dean didn't think much of it when Sam was gone for half an hour. Maybe the take-out place was just a bit slow.

At the hour mark, he was pacing, cursing Sam's name and simultaneously worried that his brother had done something stupid, like busted up his car.

At two hours, he'd already left three messages on Sam's phone and his mood had ratcheted up to frantic.

Desperate to do something to distract himself - or if he was really lucky - to find some hint of what had happened to his brother, Dean headed outside and walked down to an old, dented vending machine situated at the end of the wing.

He dug around in his pocket for some change and fed the coins into the machine one at a time, racking his brain. As he pressed the button for his soda, he happened to glance to one side and spotted his baby parked at the side of the motel, right up against the side of the building. There was no way he could have seen it if he hadn't walked down here.

Swearing a blue streak, Dean abandoned the soda and headed for his car. "No keys, of course," he growled to himself after a cursory check. Opening the ignition box to reveal the tangle of wires, he quickly hotwired the Impala and peeled out of the parking lot to look for Sam, dialling his number once again.

Dean was well-aware even as he set out that the search was basically futile, but he had a pretty good idea of where to start looking at least. And he couldn't not look. He would find Sam, no matter how long it took, and he would be in time to save the day. Damnit.

When one of them was kidnapped in the past - an uncomfortably frequent occurrence - they were never taken to a cheerful subdivision or hotel. It was always an isolated cabin, like a hunting cabin or lakeside cottage. While there were probably hunting cabins scattered all over the mountainous region, Dean knew he would probably pass a hundred of them in the dark before he actually saw one. Lakes were the logical place to check first, since they were easier to see.

There were a couple of small lakes in the area, and he started with the closest one, Sabin Lake, which was less than an hour's drive away.

He drove around for hours, his heart sinking further and further into his shoes as he scanned driveways on the way by and sometimes even hopped out of the car and peered in through windows.

The little hand on Dean's watch was just ticking closer to the '3' when he drove up to a well-lit property and something twigged. He slowed just a little and looked harder as he passed the end of the driveway. Why did that big monster of a black pickup truck look so familiar?

And then it hit him like a lightning bolt. It was the one that had been double-parked in front of their room, forcing them to park the Impala a little ways down.

How the vampires had known what room they'd gotten with enough time to position the truck, Dean didn't know, and didn't care. He drove past the cottage without slowing down any further or attracting attention to himself and parked at the next door down. The lots were large, and isolated by screens of thick woods and foliage. It seemed like the neighbours weren't at the cottage that day, either, so it was a good spot to stop without attracting attention.

Two minutes later, armed to the teeth, Dean was creeping through the thick hedges separating the two cabins on his belly. He paused when he saw movement and watched for a moment, assessing the situation he was up against.

The whole first floor of the cabin was lit up, but otherwise the area was dark. Lucky for Dean, the lights silhouetted the sentries outside. He counted three, and they were cocky, too, wandering or standing around without much in the way of discipline. They obviously weren't expecting the cavalry, and Dean was well aware that there had been as much luck as deductive reasoning involved in him getting here at all.

He retreated through the underbrush and moved to a new location nearer the rear of the house. Then he crawled through again and took careful aim at one of the monsters he could see in the front yard.

The gun chuffed faintly as the bullet left the barrel, and even the silenced round might have attracted the attention of a vampire's hearing.

Except that Dean's target was struck in the shoulder an instant later and immediately let out a shriek at the top of his lungs. The other sentries reacted predictably, running towards their stricken companion. Dean was just about to break from cover when a fourth vampire he hadn't seen ran past him.

His heart beating triple time from the close call, Dean waited for another five seconds before emerging and sprinting for the back deck of the house.

The bullet he'd used was a special one. Not only was it silver, but its hollow point was filled with dead man's blood, mixed with something they used in hospitals to keep the blood from coagulating. The dead man's blood certainly wouldn't kill a vampire, but it would hurt like a bitch. The victim had already dropped to the ground as the weakening properties of the dead man's blood took hold. He was pleased to see that it was faster-acting than a blood-soaked crossbow bolt, and a gun was so much less bulky to carry around.

Another success for the Winchester boys, he thought. So long as I can pull the rest of this off.

Dean opened the back door and darted into the cottage, taking in the scene.

Sam was bound to a post in the middle of the room, his neck bleeding and his clothes mussed and spotted with blood. His head was cradled against the pert breasts of a gorgeous woman with blood on her lips. She was stroking his hair, looking over her shoulder toward the front door in a worried manner. Said front door was open and it sounded from the shouting like at least five or six people were out there. Everyone else had fallen for his bait.

When Angelica heard Dean enter, she whipped her head around and saw him. She held Sam closer against her and opened her mouth angrily, but Dean pulled the trigger once, slicing a neat line across her cheek.

Not the most accurate shot he'd ever fired. He'd been hoping to blow her head off, but it sure shut the bitch up. And he hesitated over taking a second shot, not wanting to risk hitting Sam.

"Get the fuck away from my brother, bitch, and I'll consider not sending you right back to the hell you crawled out of," Dean snarled instead.

He was pretty proud of that line, but she was less than impressed. "Put your gun down now and I'll kill you quickly instead of torturing you until you beg for death," she hissed in reply, baring bloodstained sharp teeth.

"Dean?" Sam asked muzzily. "You're alive!" He lifted his head an inch, but she pulled him back down again, holding him possessively in a way that made Dean's stomach roil.

"You think I can't shoot you without hitting Sam?" Dean growled, taking a step forward and taking aim. "I don't know if one of these bullets to the head would kill you, but it sure would mess that pretty face up, and I think it'd probably hurt a lot."

She caught and held his eyes defiantly for a few moments, then eased herself away from Sam. As she moved toward the open basement door, Dean's finger tightened on the trigger, but he was worried that if the shot didn't take her out instantly, her screams would bring all of her buddies back inside. Then he'd really be up shit creek.

Then she reached the door and the decision was made for him as she fled down the steps.

Dean wasted no time getting to Sam and cutting his bonds. Sam was semi-conscious, definitely out of it, and the moment his hands were free he pushed feebly at Dean.

"Go, leave me," he whispered. "Go Dean. It's too dangerous. Please."

"Are you nuts?" Dean replied, dragging Sam to his feet and half-carrying him towards the back door. "We're home free. Just shut up and let me get you out of here."

"You've got to leave me, Dean," Sam insisted.

"Shut up," Dean told him. The Impala's keys were on a table, along with Sam's cellphone, and Dean snatched them up as he hustled his brother towards the back door.

Shouldering the door open again, Dean hustled them away from the cabin, fighting Sam every step of the way. If Sam's insistence on being left behind stemmed from fears that he would slow Dean down, he was certainly doing his best to make sure it was true. He had to be hallucinating from the blood loss or something, and Dean dragged him along stubbornly.

His little brother's strength seemed to give out by the time he'd gotten him through the fence, though, and Dean headed for the Impala as quickly as he could. He could hear the vampires beginning to regroup and starting a search, but it wasn't far now.

"She told me you were dead," Sam murmured suddenly.

"Yeah well," Dean said. "She's a vampire. That's French for 'lying cunt', didn't you know that?" Dean opened the passenger door and shoved Sam inside. "We Winchesters don't die that easily," he added, as much reassurance for himself at Sam's state as commentary on the stupidity of listening to lying vampire bitches.

He quickly jumped into the car and took off in a spray of gravel, intending to get as far away from Williams as he could, as quickly as he could.

And then he was really going to have to stop and assess Sam's condition. He was nervous that Sam would need a blood transfusion right away.

But before he could do that, he had to shake pursuit. Though, as he circled around the lake heading back towards the interstate, he realized that there was no sign of that truck in his rear view mirror.

It really seemed like they'd gotten off scot-free. So long as Sam didn't die on him.

"Mistress! They're getting away. I'll go after them!" Mike hollered, grabbing the keys from just inside the cabin door and turning to sprint for the truck.

Angel emerged from the basement, dabbing at the bullet graze on her cheek. It had better not scar, or Dean Winchester was going to live to regret it.

"Stop, Michael," she called after him. The brunette paused, glancing back at her with confusion in his eyes. She walked up to him unhurriedly and put a calming hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry. He'll be back. Right now we need to tend Carlos' wound and pack everything up." She raised her voice so everyone would hear her. "We leave in an hour."

"But Mistress," Nick replied worriedly. "Dawn's in just a couple of hours."

"That's why we have to be gone in one," she snapped, turning a glare on the blond. He wasn't too bright, that one, and she sometimes regretted turning him.

Lucky for Nick, he was an animal in bed.

"Otherwise," she went on in a calmer tone. "We very well could wake up to find this house burning down around us, with nowhere to go but into the sun. Now snap to it!"

With a chorus of 'Yes Mistress's, her boys hurried to pack up their belongings, while one of them helped Carlos into the back of the truck. His wound wouldn't be fatal, but he would be out of commission for a long while.

For a few moments, Angel looked in the direction the Impala had gone, a faint smile playing about her lips.

Don't worry, Sam, she thought. You'll be able to come back to me, soon.

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