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“It’s my husband,” the chick — Daphne Allen — says. Dressed like she stepped right out of a film noir, all Maltese Falcon (AKA Dangerous Woman), she’s prim and pretty, even though at the moment her face is pinched and worried.
She’s gonna be trouble. Dean already knows it. Call it private dick intuition or whatever.
Still, he’s gotta pay his rent this month, so he schools his features. Feigns professionalism. Best customer service face on, Dean responds, “I see.”
“He’s seeing other women. Men too, I think.”
Not all that uncommon. When Dean set up his agency a couple years back, he was disappointed to discover that rarely did people requiring a private detective need one to solve a closed-room murder, or retrieve an oversized and over-valued diamond. No, unfortunately for Dean and his Sam Spade fantasies, the vast majority of people want their spouse followed ‘cause they suspect them of cheating.
“I’m sorry,” Dean tells her, meaning it. People who cheat on their other halves are assholes and Dean is more than willing to pay his utility arrears by exposing them.
“Well,” her shoulders give a quick, nervous hop. The rest of her doesn’t move, just sits rigid in the chair across from Dean’s desk, leaning forward slightly, hands folded in her lap. “It’s not as if...I mean, I knew what I was getting into.”
O-kay.
“What do you mean?” Dean asks. He inches forward in his chair, ‘cause this is gonna be juicy. Better than the latest Doctor Sexy love-quadrangle-involving-triplets storyline, Dean can feel it.
“I knew there would be others. A lot of them. I knew that going in. But…” she catches her lower lip between middle-class-white teeth. Her shoulders jump again. “I thought I could handle it. I thought it wouldn’t matter. But it does.” Her eyes meet Dean’s. They’re green and earnest, perhaps a little sad.
Aw, man. Now Dean feels like an ass. Open marriages ain’t for everybody and for every one that brings people closer together, there are another ten that are trainwrecks.
“I love him,” she says. “I love him, I just can’t cope with the others. But I can’t give him what he needs.”
Jeez, who is this sex-crazed guy? Michael Douglas?
“How do you know about all of it? Has he admitted it?”
Eyes brimming, she says, “It was part of a prenup we signed. I said that he could suck me once a week, but he has needs. I had to agree to them.”
For just a moment, Dean thinks he’s misheard. Either that, or she has a selective lisp.
Leaning forward, he shoves a box of tissues closer to the edge of his desk. Daphne plucks one out and blows her nose. He chances, “Did you say ‘suck’ ?”
“Yes.”
Unhelpful. She might have misheard him. At the risk of being crude in front of a woman who for all intents and purposes seems extraordinarily — perhaps suspiciously — wholesome, he tries again, “Suck or fuck?”
Her pretty face blushes scarlet. “Sssssuck.”
“Oh,” Dean can feel his own face growing hot. “Sorry. So, errr, part of your prenup is that he can suck as many women and men as he wants?”
First time for everything.
Dean’s heard of weirder kinks for sure. Witnessed some too. A couple years ago, he got paid to follow some dude who his wife suspected was fucking someone else. Turns out that he wasn’t fucking someone, but something. Guy had a thing for dog hair. Yeah, that’s right. Dog hair. He’d collect it from a groomers downtown and sit in his car and sniff it, caress it, and masturbate with it.
Yeuch. Heebie fucking jeebies.
“That’s right,” she says, dabbing at her eyes. “He certainly doesn’t do that... other thing with anybody else.”
Uh-huh. Suuuure he doesn’t.
Indignant at the skeptical look on Dean’s face, she stresses, “He’s not a cheater, he’s a vampire.”
A what now?
Dean’s had some pranks played on him — been the pranker instead of the prankee a good few times too — but this? This takes not only the cake, but the whole wedding buffet.
Dean doesn’t miss a beat. “Ah, I see.”
Hopeful, she asks, “Do you?”
Nope. Not even a little bit, lady.
“Sure,” Dean says. He forces himself to keep his eyes on her, rather than looking for a hidden camera which would confirm his suspicion that his asshole brother is pulling some kind of prank. “He’s a vampire. He isn’t having an affair with any of these people, he’s just sucking their blood.”
“You really do understand?”
“Sure,” Dean repeats. “Dracula, Salem’s Lot, Buffy, Lugosi, and Christopher Lee, Edward fuc—” he cuts himself off before he stumbles ass over head into unprofessional territory. Though, sparkling vampires, fucking really? He clears his throat. “You’d have to be culturally illiterate not to know a thing or two about vampires. And you married one, huh? What’s your husband’s name by the way?”
“Castiel.”
Dean pulls his lower lip between his teeth, fighting against the laugh that bubbles up in his throat. However batshit crazy this situation is, he still needs the paycheck. “ Castiel the vampire?”
Despite Dean’s Herculean effort, Daphne looks betrayed. “You think this is all one big joke.”
Well, yeah.
“No, no I really don’t. Whatever’s going on, it’s obvious that you’re…”
“I told you what’s going on.”
Dean makes an ‘eh, kinda’ gesture with his hand. “Not exactly.”
She sighs huffily. Like there might have been a private detective out there who wouldn’t laugh her outta their office, and she’s just had the misfortune to stumble into the one who is about to. “Every night, he leaves me alone and goes off stalking his victims. He drinks their blood. Then he comes home to me, smelling like them. I hate that he’s seeing these other people, it makes me feel so inadequate. Like I’m not enough for him.”
The solution seems obvious to Dean. “Well, couldn't you amend the prenup? Rewrite it so that he can suck you more days of the week?”
She looks at him like he’s stupid. “I don’t like it.”
Oh.
“Yet, you’re jealous of the people he sucks to live?”
“Of course I am.”
Dean has so many questions, and all of them are ‘what the fuck?’
Still. He’s trying here, so he asks, “And you still let him suck you once a week? Because you have to?”
She sweeps her brown hair over her shoulder, then dips her fingers under the collar of her blouse and pulls it aside. Her top button pops open. The side of her neck has a pair of wounds exactly where you’d expect to find them in a Dracula movie. Healed though. Scar tissue that looks like small, pink craters.
Real or make-up?
Only one way to find out. Dean knocks his chair back on its rollers, steps around the desk, and crouches in front of Daphne.
Close up, the scars look pretty authentic.
“Do they hurt?” Dean asks.
“A little,” she says. “It doesn’t hurt at all while he’s doing it, but he can be a bit rough afterward.”
“Afterward?”
“When we… y’know.” Pink sweeps across her cheeks again. “Do the other thing .”
Oh. Ohhhhh.
It sounds to Dean like this Castiel dude has a bit of a vampire fetish. Gets all turned on by the sexual undercurrents of vampirism. Dean gets it, it’s kinda hot; the penetration, the exchanging of bodily fluids… So yeah, he doesn’t blame the guy for wanting to get off that way, but it’s hard to feel sorry for him for marrying a woman who so blatantly isn’t into it.
Dean raises his index finger, “Do you mind if I...?”
Shaking her head, she moves her hand out of the way. Dean gently probes both of the scars. They feel real. “Castiel actually made these with his teeth? He actually sucked the blood out of your neck?”
“Yes.”
Well, fuck.
Whilst Daphne straightens her collar again, Dean pushes to his feet, and sits on the front edge of his desk. She doesn’t bother to fasten the top button.
“And you’re here because you don’t like him doing it to other people? Even though you don’t like letting him do it to you once per week, and he needs to do it to survive?”
“That’s right.”
Dean pinches the bridge of his nose.
Jesus H. Christ.
When he started his detective agency, he thought he’d get to solve important, complex cases, like Phillip Marlowe or Jessica Jones. Hell, he woulda settled for Nicky Belane. He never imagined he’d be sitting here with a woman dissatisfied with her vampire fetishist husband.
“Has Castiel killed any of these people?”
She looks scandalized. “Oh, no. He would never! He respects life.”
Why is it always the pretty ones who are crazy? “Wouldn’t harm a fly, huh?”
“Oh, sometimes he eats them. But he would never kill a person .”
Riiiiight.
“Is he taking their blood by force?”
Confused, she answers, “Well, he’s sucking it out.”
Dean barely resists banging his head off the desk. “I mean, does he have the permission of the people he’s sucking on? Are they willing?”
She twists the tissue between her fingers. “Oh, yes. Who wouldn’t be? Castiel is extremely handsome. And so smart and witty too. I think almost anybody would find him irresistible. But he also has his powers.”
All aboard the crazy train. Choo-choo motherfuckers.
“Powers?”
“He can pretty much zap the mind of anyone he meets. He has this hypnotic thing he can do, puts them under.”
Is she talking about glamouring? Like in True Blood?
HBO has a lot to answer for.
Daphne snaps her fingers. “Just like that, they’re zombies. Not literally zombies, of course.”
No, ‘cause that would be ridiculous.
“Like a trance?” Dean tries in earnest, because he’s already on his landlord’s shitlist for paying late last month. “They comply with whatever he wants?”
Sounds kinda rapey.
“Right. But the main thing is that they can’t remember anything afterward.”
Ah, shit. Rohypnol. This dude is fucking drugging and date-raping people, Dean guarantees it. Rent or no rent, Dean’s gonna have to turn this one over to the cops.
Treading carefully, Dean asks, “Does he ever do it to you? The trance thing?”
“I’m his wife, of course not.”
Duh.
“Alright.” Dean inhales deeply, braces his weight against the desk, ready to impart some truth that this egg-shell fragile woman probably isn’t gonna like. “Here’s the thing, Daphne. If your husband is putting these women under — by hypnosis or whatever — he’s compromising their ability to consent. In other words, he legally doesn’t have their permission. If he was having sex with them—”
“—he’s not.”
Sure.
“But if he was having sex with them, then it’d be rape. So, I’m pretty sure that he’s violating some sort of law by taking their blood without permission. That would make it a police matter. I’m just a private investigator, and I don’t have the authority to—”
“I don’t want Castiel arrested!” Daphne blurts, shaking her head. “That’s not why I came to you.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I want him to stop. I want him all to myself. I want him to quit using all the others!”
Up until now, hybristophilia is only something Dean has read about. This lady clearly has problems beyond Dean’s capabilities and remit as a private detective.
She stares up at Dean with imploring eyes, and whilst Dean’s always been a sucker for a damsel in distress, even he can’t circumvent the law. Not this time anyways. “Will you help me?”
“I’d love to help you,” Dean says, imagining the check in his account, “but maybe what you need is a shrink or—”
“—a shrink? Are you saying I’m crazy?”
“No?” Dean says, meaning YES. Then, because Sammy’s warned him about being a dick, Dean adds, “I mean, you obviously didn’t put those bite marks on your own neck.” A heartbeat after he says it though, he starts to wonder.
Self-inflicted wounds are a fairly common trick. Daphne might’ve made the punctures herself to back up her insane story. Dean’s witnessed weirder (see: dog hair dude).
Either she’s a major-league schemer or she’s telling the truth — the truth as she sees it anyways.
“The thing is,” Dean explains, “a therapist might be better equipped to help you with your problem. ‘Cause you come to my office and tell me that your husband is a vampire. Now, we all know about vampires, right? They sleep in coffins during the day, turn into bats and feed at night. They’re immortal for the most part, they have powers, they don’t like garlic, mirrors, crosses, or daylight. But most importantly, they don’t exist .”
“That’s what you think.”
“It’s what I know. It’s what everyone knows. I’m not saying there ain’t whackjobs out there who think they’re vampires and act like they are. But they don’t exist. Your husband is not a vampire, even if he’s convinced you that he is.”
“So you are saying that I’m crazy.”
Dean wants to deny it, but he can’t quite bring himself to step in that great big pile of whackado, so he simply sidesteps. “What I am saying is that I believe Castiel has convinced you that he is a vampire.”
“He is a vampire.”
“It’s called gaslighting, sweetheart.”
She frowns. “No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t lie to me.”
“He's bitten your neck and sucked your blood.”
“Many times.”
“He goes off by himself every night, and tells you that he’s out biting people.”
“Yes.”
“And you believe him?” Dean raises an eyebrow. “Have you ever followed him during one of his nightly prowls?”
“No, but he wouldn’t lie.”
“Are you sure about that?”
For a long moment, she looks lost. “I don’t know,” she finally admits.
Seeing an in, and wiggling himself right into it, Dean says, “Hire me and I’ll find out for you. I’ll follow him, find out what he’s really up to. We can take the rest from there.”
The rest being the cops once Dean’s suspicions are confirmed.
“You think he’s made all this up just to cover up an affair?”
Being tactful — Sammy’d be proud — Dean responds, “I hope not — it might just be something as innocent as going out with his friends or whatever — but don’t you wanna know for definite?”
“...I guess so.”
Alright. Here goes. Dean retakes his seat behind the desk, retrieves his notebook and pen. “Does Castiel have a job?”
“He doesn’t need one, he’s very rich.”
Because of course he is.
“What does he do all day, then?”
“He sleeps. In his coffin. In the basement.”
It shouldn’t surprise Dean, but it does. There are kinks and then there are kinks.
Recovering quickly, Dean clears his throat, and pen poised over paper, asks, “Does he stay there all day?”
“As far as I’m aware. I do missionary work with the church, so I can’t say for certain. Why?”
Dean ignores the question as he scribbles down ‘ client has no idea where husband is all day’. Just to reassure her that he’s taking her case seriously, he says, “Have you ever seen him turn into a bat?”
“He knows I hate bats.”
Dean sighs. This dude is a terrible (supposed) vampire. “Alright. What about mirrors? You ever seen him in a mirror?”
“All the time.”
Aha!
“Well, then he’s not a vampire, is he?”
“I asked him about it. He said that mirrors aren’t the same as they were in the olden days. A lot of them used to be backed with silver. They’re not now. That’s why he shows up.”
“Convenient,” Dean mutters.
Impatient with Dean’s rationality, Daphne huffs, “Look, I’ve never felt the need to prove my husband’s vampirism. I know he is, so are you going to help me or not?”
“How?” Dean asks, tossing his pen away in frustration. It hits the silver-plated frame with a photo of him and Sammy outside this office the day Dean opened. His younger self is so full of hope and excitement for the future. Dumbass. “If you’re so sure that he’s a vampire and is going out to drink from other people, then you don’t need me to follow him, do you?”
Daphne bends at the waist to retrieve her large leather handbag. She lifts it into her lap and slips her hand inside the unzipped section. She pulls out a wooden stake. It appears to be a whittled down broom handle, tapering into a point. She hands it to Dean, who looks it over, thumbing the pretty sharp point.
“I don’t need you to follow him, I need you to kill him.”
Fucking what?
Dean shoves the stake back at her. “No way, I don’t do murder.”
“Please,” she begs, like she’s asking for an extension on her credit card payment rather than mariticide. “I’ll pay you whatever you want. Ten thousand, twenty thousand. How about fifty?”
Fuck. That’s a lotta money. He could pay off the rest of Sammy’s college debt and still have enough left over to cover his own rent for a year.
“I don’t get it,” Dean says honestly, ‘cause he really doesn’t. “I thought you loved him? And now you want him dead? Are you that jealous of the other people?”
“Yes!” Her eyes flash, the green becoming brighter and if Dean didn’t know any better, he’d think that the phrase ‘green-eyed monster’ was coined exclusively for her. “If I can’t have him, I don’t want anyone else to.”
Dean shudders. He completely believes her.
Graveyards are full of people who died because somebody loved them — loved them too much, would rather see them dead than lose them to another person.
“I’m not a killer,” Dean says. Even though for fifty thousand, he might be.
“It’s not like you’d be killing a person. He’s a vampire.”
“You may think he’s a vampire, but he’s flesh and blood. If I took your money and slammed that stake through his heart, I’d be on the hook for murder one. Not me, sweetheart. I’m too pretty for prison.”
“But what if I could prove he’s a vampire?”
“You can’t.”
Right?
“But just say I could. Would you kill a vampire for fifty thousand dollars?”
There’s nothing to think about. “Well, yeah, sure.” After all, Buffy did it for free.
Daphne smiles. She glances past Dean at the office window, then checks her wristwatch. “Sunset isn’t until six-twenty-five. That gives us almost an hour and a half.”
Uh oh.
“You wanna do this today?”
She nods. “Before Castiel wakes up.”
***
Dean lets Daphne drive them there in her car. Normally, Dean would drive his own, but there’s nothing normal about this trip, and there’s no telling what Dean’s about to get himself into. If this gets messy — and the odds ain’t in his favor for a laughed-off misunderstanding — then Dean can’t have someone — a neighbor or passer-by — giving the cops a description of his very distinctive ‘67 Impala.
Luckily, it allows Dean some time to think about the situation he’s found himself in. Mostly that the vampire thing is clearly a huge turn on for Castiel, but not so much his poor, crazy, homicidal wife. If the guy is as attractive as his wife thinks he is, then it’s probably some fucked up game to him. A means of drawing people in with his good looks and then drugging and hurting them.
It’s not just the pretty women who are certifiable.
Dean wishes he didn’t know from personal experience, but as far as he’s concerned, attractiveness is directly inverse to sanity. There are some notable exceptions, but as a rule, if you’re anything to look at, you’re also bugfuck nuts.
His theory is already proven by virtue of his own long lashes and blow job lips paired with the fact that he’s sitting in the passenger seat of a Prius, genuinely considering if there’s even a sliver of a chance that vampires could be real.
There’s not much traffic, so they make good time. Leaving the city behind, Daphne drives them through the woods on narrow roads shrouded with shadows.
Not ominous at all.
It takes almost an hour to reach the nicely-kept, two-story colonial. Nothing creepy or vampire-y about it at all, and Dean’s kinda disappointed. He was hoping for at least a gothic mansion with bats in the belfry or some shit. As Daphne steers the car up the half-mile of unpaved road, something occurs to Dean, “Where does Castiel find all these people he sucks?”
“In the city, mostly,” she answers, stopping the car.
“Ah. A commuter vampire.”
Ignoring him and climbing out, Daphne says, “Come on, we’d better hurry.”
Jeez.
As Dean follows her to the door, he pulls his cell out of his pocket to check the time. Five-fifty. If Daphne is right, Castiel will be rousing himself in thirty-five minutes.
Not much time.
Dean instantly feels like an idiot for letting himself worry about when the goddamn sun is going down. Who cares? This dude ain’t really a friggin’ vampire.
Daphne enters the house first, and Dean steps in behind her, heart pounding hard against the cage of his ribs.
Even though the sun hasn’t gone down yet, it’s still pretty gloomy inside. Which is not helped by the fact that Daphne doesn’t bother to turn on any lights.
At least not until they get to the top of the basement stairs. The basement is pitch-black, and something uneasy roils Dean’s stomach. She flips a switch near the doorframe, and some lights come on. They make the darkness a little brighter, but not by much.
“He’s down there?” Dean whispers.
Daphne nods. She removes the stake from her handbag and offers it to Dean.
Dean shakes his head. Reaching into his jacket, he pulls out his .45. It’s a big, heavy Colt 1911. Probably a little out of style, but Dean loves it. It was his mom’s. He jacks a round into the chamber.
“That won’t do you any good against Castiel,” Daphne warns.
“Let’s go.” Dean doesn’t bother explaining to her that non-existent vamps are the least of his worries, oh no. For all Dean knows this might be a trap that Daphne and Castiel have laid for him. Maybe Castiel is a dude that Dean’s pissed off on another one of his cases and Daphne is his little helper.
Daphne keeps ahold of the stake and starts down. Dean lets her get a few steps below him and then follows. The stairs are wood with open spaces between the treads, spaces that somebody could reach through and grab your ankle.
Dean tries to brace himself for something like that.
The basement air is cool and carries the scent of dank concrete and mustiness. The space itself is windowless and resembles a mostly-bare apocalypse bunker rather than a bedroom. It doesn’t seem like somewhere a blood-sucking creature of the night would willingly spend their time, but Dean’s a no-frills kinda guy himself, so he can appreciate the lack of theater.
Castiel’s coffin is on the floor, just beyond the foot of the stairs, right beneath a glaring, bare lightbulb.
Castiel is inside. Stretched out on a lining that looks like red satin. Eyes shut. Hands folded on his stomach. Sadly not dressed in full Universal Studios Dracula wardrobe; instead, he’s in jeans and… is that an AC/DC shirt?
Dude’s handsome, Dean’ll give him that. Like, really handsome. His dark hair is artfully tousled, his jaw sharp with a 5 o’clock (AM rather than PM, obviously, owing to the supposed vampirism) shadow, and his mouth is plush and pink. He’s built, but lithe — like he runs — and he’s a lot younger than Lugosi’d been back in the day.
Dean stops beside Daphne. They both stand over the coffin, staring down at Castiel.
“Now do you believe me?” She asks, speaking in a normal tone, and her voice resounds through the basement, damn near echoing off the concrete walls.
Dean winces, “Shhh.”
“It’s all right,” she says. “We won’t disturb him. He’s totally out of it until the sun goes down.”
Dead to the world.
Or not, ‘cause five minutes ago the guy probably had his face pressed to the living-room window, waiting for Daphne to bring home another schmuck. He saw them coming and high-tailed it to the basement and jumped into his coffin.
If that is how it went though, dude isn’t winded.
In fact, from where Dean stands, he can’t tell whether he’s breathing at all.
“Will you do it now?” Daphne asks, holding out the stake again.
“No such things as vampires,” Dean answers, giving the side of the coffin a good, rough kick. The box jolts, shaking Castiel, but not waking him up. He doesn’t even flinch.
“Just take it,” Daphne says, pressing the stake into Dean’s free hand. Then, she hurries across the basement, heels clacking. She snatches something off a workbench near the west wall. When she turns around, Dean sees that it’s a claw hammer.
She gives it a little shake. “You’ll need this.”
Nope. Nu-uh.
Dean’s made some questionable decisions in his life; he once took on the Big Texan Steak Ranch 72-ounce Steak Challenge, failed, and spent the next seventy-two hours on his bathroom floor. Once, he trusted his brother when he said: “It’s like the prequel to Alien. You’ll really enjoy this movie. It’s gonna be great.”
(Spoiler alert: he didn’t and it wasn’t).
Still, taking a hammer from a crazy lady ain’t gonna get added to his list of regrets. That is a bridge too far.
Daphne crosses the basement, coming back toward Dean with the hammer held out. “Please. Take it.”
“My hands are full.”
“The gun won’t do you any good, anyway. Here.”
Dean’ll be the judge of that.
“No.”
“You said you’d do it.”
“Yeah, if he was a vampire. Which he ain’t.”
She inclines her head toward Castiel. “Just look at him.”
“That’s no proof. It’s just a guy in a coffin.”
She huffs, exasperated. “I mean, look at him. He’s not alive.”
He’s not alive.
Holy fuck!
Dean suddenly knows the score.
He jams the muzzle of his .45 into her sternum. Her mouth springs open. “Lose the hammer, sweetheart.”
She drops it. The steel head strikes the concrete with a clank.
“Put your hands on top of your head and interlace your fingers.”
She blinks at him. “What—”
“Do it.”
She does it.
“Stay put.”
“I don’t understand,” she whimpers. “What’s wrong? Why are you doing this?”
Dean doesn’t answer. He lets go of the stake, shifts the Colt to his left hand, and drops down onto his haunches beside the coffin. Keeping the gun aimed at Daphne, Dean reaches into the coffin with his right hand and feels Castiel’s neck for a pulse. From the cool temperature of the skin though, Dean knows he ain’t gonna find one.
And surprise, sur-fucking-prise, he doesn’t.
“He’s dead alright,” Dean says gravely.
Fucking hell.
Some day, this is gonna be a story he and Sam laugh about over jalapeño poppers and too many beers. For now though, Dean just feels like an idiot for being so easily duped.
“He’s undead,” Daphne corrects.
“Riiiight.”
“I don’t understand,” she bleats again.
Dean pushes to his feet and steps toward her. “Keep your hands on your head and turn around.”
She does as she’s told.
Dean moves in close behind her. “Let me lay it out for you.” He starts patting her down. “You murdered him. You put together this vampire story, got him into the coffin, and Googled for a likely patsy—”
“You’re crazy!”
Oh, that’s rich.
“Not nearly crazy enough to fall for your game.” Discovering that she’s clean, Dean holsters his weapon. He brings her arms down behind her back and cuffs them.
Dean rarely goes places without his gun or the handcuffs. Both are turn-ons for his various hookups, and he’s more than happy to pull them out to play private investigator.
Once Daphne’s cuffed, Dean lets go of her. She turns around, eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears.
“You almost had me going there,” Dean tells her. “I’m a pretty open-minded guy, I’m willing to at least give people the benefit of the doubt.” He leans in like he’s sharing a secret. “And trust me, I’ve seen enough wild shit to justify it. You had me about seventy-five percent convinced that Castiel might actually be a vampire. But you fell a little short. Short to the tune of a murder rap.”
Oooh, that was good. Mike Hammer, eat your heart out.
Daphne shakes her head, ringlets falling over her shoulders.
“If you’d just been a tiny bit more convincing, I might’ve actually given poor Cas the stake treatment and as a result, gotten you off the hook and me on.”
“It’s not too late,” she pleads. “There’s ten thousand in cash in my handbag. Just kill him and—”
“And I’ll take the fall for you.” Dean scrubs at his jaw, feeling like he’s finally made it as a hard-boiled detective. “Thought we’d already covered this.”
Cuffed and all, she makes a break for the stairs. Dean grabs for her, but misses, so she gets a short lead on him. He races after her. She’s partway up the stairs before Dean catches up, and he reaches for the nearest thing of hers, his fingers catching the hem of her skirt. He gives it a tug, expecting to yank it down enough to hobble her or trip her.
But the skirt doesn’t pull down. Instead, Dean ends up plucking Daphne backward off the stairs, and she comes falling at him. Dean has time to dodge her, but Black Widow murderer or not, he’s a gentleman, so he stands his ground rather than letting her fall to the concrete floor with her wrists cuffed behind her back.
So Dean braces himself and spreads his arms.
He almost stays on his feet, but not quite.
Her weight hits him. Dean catches her, stumbles backward and falls. She crashes into him with such force that the back of her head smacks his chin, and the impact of that results in Dean’s head bouncing off the concrete.
He’s out like a light.
***
The first thing Dean sees when he comes around is blue. Probably the prettiest shade he’s ever encountered. The hue of forget-me-nots and Dean already knows he never will.
“Are you alright?” a gravel-rough, grave-dirt voice asks, and then the blue zooms out, revealing a familiar handsome face with a bit more color in it now.
Holy fucking shit, it’s the dead guy!
“Holy Christing fuck!” Dean exclaims, getting his hands underneath himself and trying to scrabble backward away from the dead — undead — dude. His head is throbbing and he can practically smell this dude’s skin from here; the baked-in scent of the earth and iron-rich.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Castiel replies dryly, but there’s an amused tilt to his plush mouth. It’s more red than pink now, and Dean doesn’t need to look far to discover the source.
Because behind Castiel is Daphne. Hanging from a ceiling girder, she’s dangling by her tied ankles. Her blouse is open, exposing her pastel yellow bra, and her skin is the color of an overcast morning. Except for where it’s smudged with red handprints and tiny prick marks similar to the ones she showed to Dean in his office. These ones are fresh though; open and raw and trickling blood.
They’re all over her, as if her attacker had been a connoisseur sampling tastes from different regions. Her neck, her breast, her navel, and the undersides of her drooping arms.
She’s still wearing Dean’s cuffs. They’re no longer connected though. With the links between them broken, they encircle her wrists like chunky silver bracelets.
Fuck.
Vision bright and head fuzzy, Dean already felt miserable, but now he feels guilty too.
Shoulda listened to her.
And now she’s dead.
Shit shit shit fuck.
Without moving, Dean can feel the weight of his gun in its holster. He thinks about going for it, but then Castiel is offering him a hand. “How's your head?"
On automatic, Dean responds, "Haven't had any complaints,” and he receives a huffed laugh in response. One that has warmth slithering from his chest to his gut.
Surprisingly though, he feels okay. A little groggy maybe. But he did nearly have his brains bashed out on a concrete floor, so it seems like a fair trade-off.
Dean takes the hand, lets himself be pulled to his feet by the deceptive strength. Castiel’s palm is cool against Dean’s and Dean doesn’t entirely want to let go.
“Uhh, thanks,” Dean says, eyes darting toward the stairs and his only escape route. “Castiel, yeah?”
Castiel smiles. No fangs. “Yes. I don’t know your name though.”
“It’s Dean.”
“Hello, Dean.”
A polite vampire. Who’d a thunk it?
He glances at Daphne’s lifeless body, just hanging there. Can’t not.
Not that polite, then.
“Did you…” Dean clears his throat, tries to think past the bright light searing his vision. “Did you kill her? Your wife?”
Castiel tilts his head, squints. There’s nothing judgmental in his scrutiny of Dean, but Dean still squirms all the same.
“I did,” Castiel says at last. Adds reasonably, “she tried to kill me.”
There’s no denying that, really.
“I signed the prenup she wanted, I agreed to play by her rules, and this—” he gestures loosely at Dean, “—is how she repays me? She puts out a hit on me?”
Worded in that way, it’s pretty crappy, yeah.
“She was jealous,” Dean tells him, feeling awkward. He rubs hard at his right eye with the heel of his hand. He can hear the humming-bird flutter of his own pulse in his ears.
Is that normal?
Castiel arches an eyebrow. It’s hotter than the Wasabi Dean had in his lunch. The Wasabi he can somehow taste all over again in Smell-O-Vision, 3D surround sound. “She was jealous? Of what? Everyone else I had to feed on because she wouldn’t let me take blood from her? What did she want from me? To starve? Drink animal blood? What?”
Dean doesn’t dare point out that the only person who can answer his questions is dead.
Unless…
“Will she become a vampire now?”
Castiel huffs. “No. She’s staying dead. My brother warned me about marrying humans, but did I listen?”
“No?” Dean hazards.
“I did not,” Castiel confirms, with a weary smile. “Humans are just so…” he trails off, staring Dean down. “...alluring. And tasty.”
Oh, fuck. No. No way.
Dude is hot like burning for sure, and under any other circumstances, Dean would be all over that. But no. Dean’s not up for being the Mina to this dude’s Dracula.
Dean backs away, palms up in defense until he hits a concrete wall. He’ll pull his gun if necessary, but bullets will probably go through Castiel like jelly. “No. I do not consent.”
Castiel has the good grace to look affronted. “I’m not Lucifer. I don’t need your permission.” He crowds in close and Dean’s eyes flutter shut, swaying on his feet, trying real hard not to swoon, ‘cause this guy is something else. “And anyway, it’s too late.”
Dean’s eyes fly open. What?
“You were bleeding out from a head wound,” Castiel explains, tracing the vein in Dean’s neck with the pad of his fingertip. “You’re so pretty, it seemed a shame to waste you.”
Oh no. No no nononono.
Dean swallows hard around nothing, trying to think past the way Castiel’s finger leaves little sparks on his skin in its wake. “You turned me?”
Castiel hums his answer. Then elaborates anyway. “I did. Purely to save your life, of course.”
“Of course,” Dean smarts, mind reeling. He’s always been sort of nocturnal, but that’s through choice. Not being able to go out in the daytime is gonna be a literal pain in the neck.
Castiel’s smile is devious. “And since I’m very recently single, and you’re newly turned—”
Is he... is he coming onto Dean?
“—Would you like to go out for a bite to eat sometime?”