Chapter Text
The heavy click of a cocking gun interrupts your careful work. The food begins bleating at something behind you. Realizing you let dinner distract you from your surroundings, a short breath betrays your irritation. The bleating begins to grate, so you grab its chin, forcing it to look down and into your eyes. Your will pushes outward as you insist, “Quiet.”
The pleas stop.
“Neat trick. But I’m not getting the impression there’s a safe word involved.”
Hmph. The cockiness of the words and man voicing them reminds you too much of your older brother. You glance over your shoulder. Two men inch across the warehouse floor, the large guns in their steady hands raised and pointing your way.
They know enough to approach cautiously but threaten you with a couple of handguns? They don’t seem bothered by the sight of a man chained and hanging from the ceiling, IVs dangling from both arms and filling several bags full of blood. Perhaps they’re used to suppressing their reactions to such a sight. Their clothes, all denim and flannel, tell you they’re not federal agents. Local detectives?
Either way, your meals been interrupted. Turning around, you lay the scalpel on the end of an abandoned conveyer belt where you’ve carefully lined up the rest of your antique surgical kit. A bit of blood drips from the blade to the metal top, marring its recently wiped surface. The sight pulls the corners of your lips down.
You lift your attention from the newly made mess to eye the guns. “Those won’t help you.”
The one approaching from your right answers with an easy, “Wanna bet, sweetheart?”
Oh, yes. Just like Damon.
The crack thunders through the factory’s empty shell, echoing all the way to the exposed steel rafters. The noise sparks your instinct to move, and you manage to do so fast enough that the bullet smashes into your shoulder instead of your chest. At first, it’s just a punch that knocks you aside. Then the nerves seem to catch up and start burning.
Bullets shouldn’t hurt like this.
The pain sizzles into your brain and makes it hard to see or think of anything but your shoulder. Trying to realign, the broken bones grind around the bullet. Gritting your teeth, you flash a far darker, narrow-eyed glare at the man who’d fired the gun and push your fingers into the ragged tear of flesh. A low hiss escapes as your fingertips dig into the meat around your clavicle, nails scraping along its cracked edges. Finally, you feel the smooth curve of something small and round and waste no time yanking it free. Panting as shallowly as you can so they don’t notice, your gaze flickers down to your bloody fingertips, a darkened bullet pinched between your fingers.
Wood.
Your mind whirls as you quickly recalculate the two men staring at you without a hint of alarm. You can hear their calm, steady hearts beating. They’re alive.
With deliberate movements, you lay the bullet onto the belt, ignoring the new drops of blood clinging to the rubber. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Dean.” He’s confident but controlled. Not so much like Damon, then.
“Dean,” you echo, tasting the name. It fills your mouth well. “You know what I am.”
“We know you’re some kind of freak, sure.”
Rude. It’s sad you never learned how to throw knives. A scalpel through the eye would serve him right. Crossing your arms, you fix your driest look—boredom with a hint of cocked eyebrow—at the smarmy one.
The larger of the pair has yet to say anything. His eyes remain alert, brows wrinkled together as he tracks you with his gun. He’s moving left, maybe for your meal. You’d be interested in how he plans to free it. You bent the links around its arms, no key involved.
The meal will bleed to death long before they manage to file or melt through the steel. “Why are you here?”
Dean’s head tilts ever so slightly. “To kill you.” The obviously went unsaid.
“Who sent you?” Thanks to Damon and Stefan you have enemies aplenty. Considering the mess your brothers regularly leave behind them, it could be any number of people.
But Dean continues to do the unexpected. “Nobody sent us. We hunt things like you.”
Hunters. The revelation shouldn’t surprise you as much as it does. They’re not the first you’ve encountered. You were born to this life because of such humans, after all.
It was safe to assume they knew all your weaknesses then. Still. “Brave of you to show yourselves.” Your sights slip towards the long haired one. “I hope your plan isn’t to save this one.” You nod your head backwards ever-so-slightly to indicate the meal behind you. “He isn’t worth your lives.” Or yours.
“Nobody deserves this,” long hair replies.
Interesting. You dare to take your eyes off the trigger-happy Dean to study the other. His jaw is locked, nostrils flared out ever so slightly. “You know his crimes.”
“Alleged,” Dean says, drawing your attention back to him. His assertion lacks any conviction.
“He admits it.” Granted, it took the power of compulsion to pull the confession from it. But it was quite clear about its secret activities. “He took pleasure in it.”
“And you’re so much better?” There's derision in the way he looks down the silver barrel of his gun at you.
Your gaze lowers to the abandoned machine, to the eighteenth-century knives and saws spread across its surface. “There’s more to feed than just the bloodlust.” Your eyes lift. “I satiate it the best way I know how.” It’s better than Damon’s random explosions of violence, or Stefan’s uncontrolled frenzies. You’ve bent your monstrous nature towards a purpose.
You don’t bother warning them to leave. Hunters are a stubborn lot. Instead, you do the next best thing. Deny them a victory.
The meal’s neck wrings as easily as the chickens that used to roam the old estate. The long haired one shouts at you. Dean doesn’t bother with that smart mouth of his, he lets his gun do the talking. You’ve already sped behind the not-yet cooling body still chained up. It barely jerks as it shields you from the bullets.
The larger one has almost rounded the corpse, and he’s not happy. You hear a click and the slide of metal. Dean is reloading. You take the chance to run by him, betting the other won’t risk hitting his partner to shoot you. You breathe in a lungful of aftershave, liquor, gunpowder, and human male as you pass. The underlying scent, the one that’s his and his alone, imprints itself in your mind even after a cool blast of midafternoon air blows your hair back as you shove open the door and rush out.
You don’t bother running down the metal staircase that leads up into what had been a machinist factory. You vault over the railing, dropping the dozen or so feet to the ground before it’s done creaking. Pops like firecrackers sound off from the windows. The ground beneath your Jimmy Choos cracks and sprays broken bits of concrete at you. Another pop goes off and a punch to your back steals your breath.
Grimacing, you speed away, past a black Impala, back to your Porsche.
You fling open the door and wince at the series of pings that pit the metal. Lunging into the driver’s seat, you grind your teeth at the pain flaring in your back. You reach for the ignition before remembering you left the keys back with the surgeon’s bag. “Dammit!”
More gunshots as the door to the factory flies open and crashes against the brick wall. Dean sprints like a professional athlete. Ripping open the steering column, you grab a handful of wires and quickly suss out the ignition and battery. They snap apart as you pull, and then spark as you tap their ends together.
The engine roars to life as Dean lifts his gun and points it at your head. You shove into reverse and slam your foot onto the gas as a bullet smashes into the windshield. The glass manages to stop it, but not without scarring. A web of cracks spreads out where your head is.
It won’t stop another shot.
The tires squeal before catching. The smell of burning rubber stings your nostrils as you whip the wheel around almost too fast to catch. You back out of the drive so fast the rear axle slams into the road with an explosion of sparks as you careen into the street. Bouncing in your seat, you duck as another bullet flies into the passenger window. You hold the wheel to the side until you’ve spun all the way into the road, and then jerk it back round.
You risk a look into the rear-view mirror and find Dean out on the road, still running as if he might catch you, gun up and aimed at your car. You duck in time to avoid another round of bullets, then jolt as one hits a wheel, popping the tire. The rim gives a rough ride as you force the car to turn onto a busier street.
You don’t need to go far. You hate to lose your Porsche, but as the car shakes and the rim grinds along the street, you know you can’t stop to change a flat. And you have a feeling that Impala will come roaring around that corner any moment.
Besides, you can run faster than you drive. For a little while, at least.
You pull into the first side street you spy and throw the gear into park. With a final silent farewell to the once unmarred red beauty, you launch yourself out of the driver’s seat and into the open. Ignoring the sudden glances from onlookers, you keep to a human run until you pass behind a building—a laundromat—and then go as fast as you can.
You don’t stop until your over the threshold of the house you’ve ‘borrowed’, panting and eyes half-shut in pain from the inferno in your back.
Dean’s face and scent run through your mind as Alissa, your human friend, digs the bullet out of your back.