CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Okay, this is lame." Nyx says as she looks back at Dean.

"What? I thought you liked coming to bars with me." He looks at her; they're sitting together at a table with a couple of beers in front of them.

"It's the same thing every time. The bar just has a different name." She tells him.

"You could've stayed with Sam at the motel."

"And help Grandpa look for yet another case?" She shakes her head. "We just finished one — where we were almost human sacrifices, I might add." She says, and he nods.

"I know. I was there."

"Oh. Was that you?" She asks sarcastically.

"Do you have something​ else in mind?"

She smiles as she looks at him. "I saw a place on the way here."

"I'm gonna regret this, aren't I?" He asks, and she nods.

"Uh-huh. Come on." She grabs his hand and drags him to the car outside.

He can tell that she's being secretive as she gives him directions to tell him how to get back to the place she saw on the way over. She refuses to tell him the name of the bar, she won't describe what it looks like. She won't tell him a single detail about it.

And then he pulls into a parking lot and parks outside as she smiles at him.

"No." Dean says as he looks at the club.

"Alright, well, then you can go back to the motel and help Gramps. I'll just take a cab when I'm ready to leave." She says as she turns and climbs out of the car.

Dean reluctantly climbs out after her and follows the brunette inside. She's not carded at the door, and he makes a comment about this, as he always does.

"Tell me, how exactly do you do it?" He asks as they sit down at the bar, and she looks over at him.

"It's easy. You just gotta flash the right smile." She tells him. "Men seem to have a one track mind."

"Is that right?" He asks, eyebrows raised, and she nods.

"Definitely." She tucks her hair behind her ear.

He chuckles to himself and then looks away from her. "I think you're wrong."

"Do you?" She challenges, and he meets her gaze again.

"Yeah, I do."

She leans toward him and rests her hand on his knee. He watches her closely as she slowly moves to close the distance between the two of them. She sees his eyes dart from her hand, to her lips, and then back to her eyes. She smiles, and his gaze travels down her face again.

"What are you thinking about right now?" She asks, her voice as low as it can be with music around them; their faces are only inches apart now.

"That I was right when I said you're a cheater." He says, and she chuckles as she leans back on her stool, removing her hand from his knee. He clears his throat and calls the bartender over.

"And what can I get for you?" He asks Nyx after Dean tells him what he wants.

"Just a coke." She tells him, and he nods as he walks away from them.

"That's all you want?" Dean asks, eyebrows furrowed, and she looks back at him.

"Contrary to your beliefs, you don't have to have alcohol to have fun." She tells him, and he nods.

"I need it if I'm gonna stay here."

"Suit yourself." She shrugs as the bartender sets their drinks in front of them.

They sit there for a couple minutes with their drinks before Nyx slides off the barstool and looks at Dean. "Come dance with me." She says, and he shakes his head.

"I definitely have not consumed enough alcohol for that." He tells her, and she shrugs.

"Okay. Well, if you won't dance with me, I'm sure someone will." She then walks out onto the dance floor.

Her hands are in the air as she moves her hips to the music. She's still in perfect view of Dean, and he's taking advantage of that fact as he watches her dance. It doesn't take long before he stands up, and a small smile spreads across Nyx's face when she sees him walking over to her.

"I can't believe you've gotten me to do this twice now." He calls over the music, and her smile widens as she turns away from him.

His hands find their way to her hips, and he pulls her back until she's flush against his chest. His body moves with hers as she continues​ to move her hips to the rhythm of the music, and he follows her lead. He eventually gets her to turn so that she's facing him, and she places her hands on his chest as they continue dancing, neither of them missing a beat.

Their faces are only inches apart now, and his grip on her waist tightens. One of his hands moves to her lower back and she can tell that he's enjoying their closeness as much as she is in this moment. Her hand travels up his chest and her fingers gently comb through his hair.

—

Dean and Nyx are now in a diner to get some food, and they're on the same side of the table, sitting in a booth. Her back's against the wall and her legs are across his lap. She convinced him to come so that they could get dessert, he really only agreed because she mentioned that there would be pie involved.

"Admit it, you had fun tonight." Nyx says as she looks at him.

He hesitates for a second. "It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." He says, and she smiles at him.

"You had fun." She repeats, and he smiles as he looks at her.

He suddenly takes a more serious expression as his eyes scan her face. "Are you ever gonna tell me what Missouri told you?" He asks, and she sighs as she looks down.

"Man, you sure know how to ruin a good night."

"Nyx, it's been bugging you for weeks now. I can see it. Whatever it is that you think you can't tell me, you can." He insists, and she hesitates for a few seconds.

"Have you ever heard of a man named Niklaus Mikaelson?" She asks, and he shakes his head.

"No. Who is he?"

"He's one of the original vampires. I've been doing research on him ever since Katherine let his name slip." She tells him. "He's from the first family of vampires, and he's been obsessed with finding a human Petrova doppelganger for a thousand years. He needs us, or our blood, rather — he needs to sacrifice a vampire, a werewolf, and a doppelganger to break some curse. I don't know what the curse really is exactly, but he needs a witch and the moonstone to do it."

"Sacrifice?" He questions. "He wants​ to kill you and Elena?"

"Me or Elena. This other vampire who's close to Klaus — was close to Klaus — says that he only needs one of us to break the curse." She says. "And my sister plans on that being her. She's all prepared to offer herself up to Klaus. She's being a real martyr about it, and she's making Stefan and Damon angry."

"Why would she do that?"

"Because if Klaus doesn't get what he wants, he'll kill everyone that we love — our family, our friends... Just like he did to Katherine in 1492. He slaughtered her entire family. She went home after turning herself into a vampire to escape him, and she found her parents murdered in their home." She says. "I actually felt sorry for her when Elena told me the story."

"And what did Missouri tell you?" He asks, and she takes a deep breath.

"She said that she senses a darkness around me. That my blood is the key to unleashing​ an evil on this Earth that's like nothing we've ever faced before." She tells him. "Whatever this curse is, I have a feeling it's really bad."

"Neither you or Elena are going to die, okay?" He says. "I won't let that happen."

"You don't get it, Dean. Katherine didn't come back to Mystic Falls to watch it happen, she came so that she could be the one to hand us all over to Klaus. This was her trying to make amends for running from him over five hundred years ago." She says. "She's been hiding from Klaus for her entire vampiric existence. He's cruel and he's relentless. If neither of us do this, everyone that we love dies."

"Nyx—"

"If neither one of us does what Klaus wants, you will die." She cuts him. "You, Sam, my brother, Jenna, my uncle, Caroline, Tyler, Matt, Bonnie, Stefan, Damon, Alaric. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he hunted down your dad just because I met him last year and he was helping me."

He shakes his head. "No. No, there has to be another way."

"There's not." She tells him. "Katherine took the only other way and look how that turned out for her. She's an evil, manipulative, bitch who cares about nobody besides herself. Nobody loves her and she loves no one. I don't want that. And I won't be the reason that you—" She shakes her head and looks away from him, choking back the tears that rose up suddenly.

He reaches over and takes her hand in his, they rest in her lap and his free hand is on her shin. Her legs are still across his lap, and she sighs as she looks back at him.

"That's why I didn't tell you before. I knew that you'd want to find a way to save us both, but you can't." She tells him. "Either I let Elena die, or she lets me die. There is no third door, Dean."

He lets go of her hand and grabs her legs, then he pulls her closer to him and makes her look at him. He cups her face in one of his hands as he looks into her dark eyes. "We will figure something else out, Nycole. We have to." He says, but she doesn't say anything else about it.

She closes her eyes and leans her head on his shoulder. He wraps his arm around her and rests his hand on the small of her back. She takes his other hand in hers, and he squeezes it gently.

"Come on, we should probably get back to the motel." He says, and she nods.

She moves and he gets up and then walks over to the cashier at the front to pay for what they ordered. Nyx grabs her phone from the table and stands up from the booth.

—

"You're back." Sam says as Nyx and his brother walk through the motel room door.

"And I brought you some pie." She says as she sets the container down in front of him at the table.

"I thought you were gonna try to get him to take you to a club." Sam says, and she smirks as she scrunches her nose.

"You just happened to see the club on the way to the bar, huh?" Dean asks, and she looks back at his brother.

"Snitch." She says accusingly, and he laughs.

"Sorry." Sam says.

She shrugs. "I would've won anyway. I always win."

"You rarely win." Dean argues.

"That depends on what we're talking about." She says with a smile as she looks over at him.

"Cheater." He grumbles as he walks over to the bed, and she laughs.

"Did I miss something?" Sam asks.

"Never mind." She shakes her head. "Did you find anything?"

"Uh, yeah." He nods as he then turns his laptop toward her. "A possible Rawhead."

"A what now?" She questions as she looks down at his research on the computer. There's a picture and this thing is fugly. "Um, gross."

He just laughs as she pushes the computer away from her.

"We'll head out first thing in the morning." The oldest of the hunters tells them, and they both nod.