Chapter Text
“A frat house, really?” Sam asked incredulously, peering through the windows of the home from a distance with mini binoculars. It was still fairly light out, and the glare made it difficult to see inside. He could make out several guys wearing university letter jackets who appeared to be harmlessly drinking some beer from their red solo cups and chatting amongst themselves. Upon closer inspection, Sam spotted a girl tied up in the corner and shuddered when he realized what they were really drinking.
“This is the address Peter gave us,” Dean said, rechecking the text they had received. “Goddamn vampire frat boys,” he muttered under his breath.
“You brought the machetes, right?” Sam asked. He put down his binoculars and looked at his brother.
“No, actually I figured we could just waltz in there and karate chop their heads off with our bare hands. Of course I brought the machetes,” Dean said with exasperation.
“Just checking, is all. You know last time you forgot the-”
“Oh, for the love of god, can’t you get over that? I forget the holy water one time…”
“Sorry,” Sam said before pulling his binoculars back up. “Look, I think they’re about to drain that girl again, we gotta get in there.”
Dean nodded as they both emerged from their hiding spot and gathered their weapons. Both brothers took a machete and a syringe of dead man’s blood. Dean took the Colt and Sam the demon-killing blade, just in case things got messy.
They made it all but three feet towards the house when Dean put a hand out for Sam to stop. “I thought I saw something around the side of the house,” he whispered.
Sam paused, barely breathing, eyes scanning the property. His gaze locked onto a shadowy figure creeping through the side yard. He signaled for Dean to look and the two began padding softly towards the figure, making sure they couldn’t be seen.
Once they got closer, he could see it was a man carrying a satchel and taking pictures of some trash in the dumpster. He glanced over at Dean who appeared to share his confusion.
“Vampire?” Dean mouthed silently.
He shook his head cautiously, figuring it could just be a civilian in the wrong place and time. After watching the man pick up some moss with tweezers and carefully place it in a ziploc bag, it became obvious that this guy had no idea what monsters mingled just a couple walls away.
When the man started moving toward the front of the house, Sam slid away from Dean and ignored the grumbled protests from behind him.
“Excuse me, my name is Agent Watts. Me and my partner need to clear this area for an investigation,” Sam said, pulling out his fake FBI ID.
Dean was now standing some feet away and gave an official looking wave when Sam turned back.
The man looked between them, blonde strands falling in his blue-green eyes. “I’m a doctor, I just need a few minutes to collect some samples from a patient’s residence. There could be a dangerous toxin in the area,” he said with a striking Australian accent.
“Your patient… lives here?” Sam gestured to the house currently full of vampires.
“Yeah, unfortunately I doubt these guys are too worried about mold growing under their sinks. Place could be crawling with bacteria.”
If only you knew , Sam thought. “If I may, what symptoms is the patient showing?”
“Sorry mate, you may not. Confidentiality and all. It’s a strange case, but I can’t tell you much more than that,” he said, fishing out his ID, “Really, it shouldn’t take too long and my boss isn’t going to be happy if I come back empty handed.”
Sam glanced at his name, Dr. Robert Chase, noted he worked at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, and handed it back. “We can’t let you go in, these people could be dangerous.”
“To themselves, maybe,” Dr. Chase scoffed. He looked into Sam’s puppy dog eyes for a moment and sighed. “Whatever, I understand. Have a good one.”
Before he could go, Sam handed him a business card and told him to call if anything happened. Dr. Chase looked confused as to why he would be needing the FBI to cure a patient, but pocketed the card and walked away nonetheless.
“What’d you tell him?” Dean’s voice suddenly next to him made Sam recoil a fraction.
“That we’re clearing the area for an investigation and that a bunch of dumb college kids could be a hazard. Apparently he’s a doctor and his patient is someone from this house. Could be a vampire.”
“Well, one step at a time. That girl is still in there with those freaks,” he reminded his brother.
The plan was simple: stealthily divide and conquer, taking them out one-by-one and saving the girl. Sam would take the back, Dean the second story window. There were roughly seven vampires and two of them. They’d faced much worse odds before.
***
A scream drew Chase’s attention away from the pigeon dropping he was scraping off of a pipe close to the patient’s home. He froze when he heard what sounded like another yell, coming from that house. It must be a dangerous area after all. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the FBI, but the whole thing had stunk. Did they even have a warrant or a court order? A bit hypocritical, he mused, coming from him. Still, he had wanted something he could bring back to PPTH so the trip wasn’t a total waste. Now he was wondering if that was really a good idea.
The FBI’s presence was making him uneasy, especially when he recalled the state of the patient when he left earlier. Richard Spengler was only declining, and nothing they gave him was helping. What was bugging Chase the most was the patient’s total apathetic disregard. He had a certain look in his eye, almost as if he knew what the problem was and wanted to watch the doctors scamper around the hospital working it out. Not to mention the abnormalities the MRI showed, his gums shaped almost as if to support another row of teeth.
He was about to evacuate the area–pigeon poop acquired and bagged–when he heard a familiar sounding cry for help. It was Agent Watts. One part of Chase figured he was calling for backup and somebody would be there to help any minute. The doctor in him knew if the problem was a medical emergency, he may be someone’s only hope of living.
After weighing both options, he decided to compromise by taking a quick peek at the situation from a safe distance to get more information. Chase jogged back to the house and crouched behind a bush on the side of the house, the same place he had been collecting samples before all of this had started.
He slowly stood up until his back was against the wall. Carefully, he turned his head and glanced through a window.
The blood was the first thing he saw. It was pooled on the floor, dripping down the walls, seeping into the couch. Then he saw the source, two bodies laying on the carpet. Minus their heads. It took him a moment, but he spotted one of the missing heads a few feet away. Actually, it had spotted him. Its face was pointed at Chase, dead eyes staring into his.
His mind spun, making him so dizzy his vision started to black out. He leaned over to grab the wall and close his eyes, before a wave of nausea hit him and he hunched over to throw up in the bush. He was a doctor, sure, but this was something else entirely. These men had been murdered. Beheaded, at that.
Before he could turn away, movement inside caught his eye. He could see Agent Watts in the next room. A woman was lying supine on the ground, the agent attempting CPR. He was doing it too fast, a common mistake in a stressful situation like this one. Chase’s doctor brain took over and he ran to the door of the house, pausing momentarily when he stepped inside and was hit with the unmistakable scent of blood and death.
It was as though his brain and body had separated, Chase watching himself gently push Watts away and checking the woman for a pulse or breathing. He heard himself tell the agent to call an ambulance and started compressions.
She was back to life on the third cycle. Chase turned her on her side and stayed with her there on the bloody floor. Watts returned soon after, the limp body of his partner in his arms. He laid the man down with shaking hands.
“Can you check him, too? He got knocked out. He’s breathing, but won’t wake up,” the agent said, voice wavering ever so slightly.
Chase nodded and numbly floated to the man on the floor after having the agent replace him supporting the girl. Breathing sounds fine. Pulse steady. “What’s his name?”
“Dean.”
“Hey, Dean. Are you with us, mate? Dean…” He put Dean in the recovery position and kept trying to talk to him.
Dean made a small noise and his eyes fluttered open. Agent Watts let out a relieved sigh. “Thank god,” he whispered.
Thank god, indeed, Chase thought. The girl had started trying to sit up, so Chase and Watts switched back to their original spots. His mind still couldn’t entirely wrap itself around the scene in front of him, but now that the immediate crisis had been averted he found his thoughts whirring back to life. “Who-who killed those men?” Chase asked, not looking into the room again but tilting his head in its direction.
Watts floundered for a second before landing on, “We can’t disclose details of what happened until there has been a full investigation.”
Chase scoffed. Yeah, right. Why couldn’t he just explain? Surely there was some maniac on the loose, shouldn’t Chase be aware of that?
“Am I safe? Is my patient in danger, too?” he asked.
“You’re safe here,” the agent said, guarded.
“And my patient?”
“I think we have to tell him. If there’s one of them at the hospital, they could all be in danger,” Dean’s voice cut in. He was sitting up now, Watts taking a knee next to him.
“If you know something about my patient, you need to tell me,” Chase said. He heard faint sirens in the distance, and the FBI agents looked at each other with some shared understanding. The girl still looked a bit hazy, Chase making sure she stayed down so as to not hurt herself.
“Go ahead, Sam. Give him the talk.”
Sam? His card said Charles… Apparently, Sam was thinking the same as a flash of panic crossed his eyes. He exhaled and nodded.
“This is a lot to take in, but I’m telling the truth. Monsters are real. The guys in this house were all vampires, and we think your patient is one, too. Dean and I are brothers. We hunt monsters and save lives.”
Chase laughed. These guys were insane. Vampires, really?
Then another realization hit him. These guys had murdered everyone in this house. Another wave of fear sank into his bones, and he truly didn’t know how to react or get away. The sirens were getting louder, nearly here. He would be safe soon.
“I’m sorry. It may not make sense now, but your patient is a danger to everyone in that hospital, especially since it’s been without blood for some time. Check for fangs, but don’t let them know you’re doing it. You have my number.”
Sam helped Dean up off the floor and the two quickly stumbled outside. Now Chase was alone with the girl, speechless and unable to form any coherent thoughts.
At some point, the ambulance arrived along with an army of police and investigators. Chase gave some semblance of a statement and the girl was whisked away. She would be fine, physically. The rest of the night was a blur. Chase found his way home by the early hours of the morning, eventually falling into a fitful sleep and dreaming of blood.
***
Sam drove them back to the motel, Dean next to him in the passenger seat nursing his head with a cold drink they grabbed at a gas station. The plan hadn’t necessarily gone wrong, but it certainly wasn’t the cleanest job. The girl hadn’t meant to give away Dean’s attack. There was only one vampire left at that point, and Sam was able to rush in and finish the job after Dean got hit. Not before Tracy–they learned her name was–fell unconscious and stopped breathing. She was lucky the doctor came back, unfortunately at the expense of his blissful ignorance to the monsters in the world.
“Is your head feeling better?” Sam glanced over a few times while driving, trying to determine whether his brother was a little banged up or actually concussed. It was looking like the former, thankfully.
“I’m fine. Do you think that doctor believed us?”
“Probably not, but I think we successfully got ourselves a ticket to Princeton’s most wanted. There could be a warrant out, we should avoid the hospital.”
“Great. How are we going to gank a vampire when we can’t get within a mile of it?”
The question lingered in the car for the rest of the trip. For now, they both needed some rest and recuperation.
Sam didn’t end up sleeping much. He laid on his side, watching Dean’s slow breathing and thought back to the frat house. They were just kids, really. Vampire kids, but it was unlikely that they chose that. It could have been a pledge thing, easy victims.
The horror in Dr. Chase’s face when he realized Sam had murdered those people kept flashing in his mind. His eyes were full of betrayal and hurt, but most predominantly, fear. It made him feel like a monster. Maybe he was a monster; normal people couldn’t slice off someone’s head without hesitation, even if it was a killer’s. At the same time, he didn’t think Dean was a monster, or any of the other hunters they encountered. Sam couldn’t help but think it was different for him. Like there was something rotting inside of him. Something sacrilegious.
He prayed a little harder that night.