CHAPTER TWENTY

Nyx sits down at their table in the diner they're stopped at, and Dean looks at her. "Elena still isn't talking​ to me." She tells him.

"Me either." Jeremy says, and his sister shakes her head.

She sighs as she then looks over at Sam. "What do you got?"

"A local man in Colorado by the name of Daniel Elkins was found mauled in his home." He says as he looks at his laptop in front of him.

"Elkins. I know that name." Dean says and Nycole looks at him. He's right.

"Doesn't ring a bell." Sam says. "Looks like the cops don't know what to think. At first they said it was some kind of bear attack, and now they found signs of robbery."

Nyx reaches into Dean's bag and she pulls out his dad's journal. He leans over toward her and the two start looking through it.

"Here." She points at the name — D. Elkins — and Dean hands the journal to Sam.

"You think it's the same Elkins?" Sam asks.

"We've found weirder crap than that in the journal." She says.

"It's a Colorado area code." Dean says, referring to the number after the name.

After finishing their breakfast, the hunters make the long drive to Colorado, and they get to the house of Daniel Elkins long after dark. They search the place, hoping to find anything to tell them what killed Elkins, or if he really does have any connection to John Winchester.

"Looks like the maid didn't come today." Dean says as he shines his flashlight around the destroyed living area.

"Hey, there's salt over here, right inside the door." Sam says.

"You mean, like, protection-against-demon salt? Or oops, I spilled the popcorn salt?"

"It's clearly​ a ring."

"You think this guy Elkins was a player?" Dean asks.

"We did find his name in your dad's journal." Nyx reminds him.

"Yeah, definitely." Sam agrees.

"What are you looking at?" She asks as she walks over to her boyfriend. He's been in the same spot for their entire conversation.

"That looks a hell of a lot like Dad's." Sam says as he looks at the journal over his brother's shoulder.

"Except this one dates back to the sixties." Dean tells them.

"Do all hunters keep journals?" Jeremy asks.

"A lot of them do, yeah. It's where they write all the information they find on the monsters they hunt." The oldest says.

Nyx keeps walking through the house, and the boys follow after her. The place is completely trashed so they have to be careful where they walk.

"Look." She points her flashlight toward the ceiling. There's a window for a skylight, and it's been shattered.

"Whatever attacked him, looks like there was more than one." Sam says.

"Looks like he put up a hell of a fight too." Dean says.

"If he was a hunter, I wouldn't expect anything less." Nyx says as she walks a little farther into the new room they're entering.

Dean kneels down, and she walks over to him. "Got something?" Sam asks as he looks at them.

"I don't know. Some scratches in the floor." Dean says.

"Death throes maybe."

"Maybe."

"What'd you do with my phone?" Nyx asks as she looks at the oldest.

"I took it from you." Dean says.

"Yeah, I know that much. Where'd you put it, jackass?"

"Why do you want it?" He asks as he looks at her.

"So I can use it to kill you. Where the hell is it?"

"In the car. Driver's side door." He says, and she leaves the cabin. Jeremy stays with them. He likes learning all of this more than he wants his sister to know.

She gets her phone from Dean's door and checks it. Nothing.

Nyx suddenly has this feeling like she's being watched, so she slides her phone into her back pocket. Her hand moves over the gun that she has tucked in the back of her waistband and she pulls it out. She then closes the car door, and slowly makes her way to the trunk.

Once it's open, she pulls out a flashlight to look around. Nyx then raises her gun and the flashlight, holding them next to each other with her wrists crossed as she scans the tree line. She doesn't see anything, but she's vigilant as she checks both sides around her.

"What are you doing?" Dean asks as the boys make their way toward her.

"I just felt like someone was watching me." She tells him, glancing at the guys.

"It was probably just Dean." Jeremy chuckles.

"Yeah, I think he gets separation anxiety when you wander off too far from him." Sam adds, and his brother punches him, making the other two boys laugh even harder.

"Oh, I can tell when it's Dean watching me, he's usually staring at my ass." Nyx says, and he looks at her.

"You can't tell!" He protests, and she smirks as she lowers the gun and flashlight. "Come on, baby, it's probably just an animal."

"Yeah, he has a point." Sam agrees. "We are surrounded by woods."

"Yeah, alright." Nyx puts the flashlight back into the trunk and closes it.

"I think pregnancy's making you paranoid." Dean says, wrapping his arms around her as they walk to the driver's side of the car.

"If anything's making me paranoid, it's the looming threat of a certain immortal hybrid." She mutters.

"Klaus isn't gonna—"

"I really don't wanna talk about him right now." She cuts him off. "What'd you guys find inside?" She asks as they each climb into the car.

Dean then drives them to the address where there's a safety deposit box that this Elkins guy left behind. They open it up and find a letter inside.

"J.W." Nyx reads what's on the envelope.

The four of them go back out to the car, and Sam looks at his brother, who still has the envelope in his hand. "You think? John Winchester?" He asks.

"I don't know. Should we open it?" His brother asks, and Nyx sees a tall dark figure walk up beside Dean's door.

Her eyebrows furrow as she tries to get a better look at him. "John?" She questions, and the boys all look at her.

"What?"

He knocks on Dean's window, and the three boys jump. John then leans down and looks at his sons.

"Dad?"

John opens Nyx's door, and she slides over closer to her brother so that he can sit next to her in the back. His sons and both Gilberts turn to face him then.

"Dad, what are you doing here?" Sam asks.

"Are you alright?" Dean asks.

"Yeah, I'm okay." John says as he looks at his sons. "Look, I read the news about Daniel. I got here as fast as I could. I saw you four up at his place."

"It was you watching us?" Nyx asks, and he smirks as he looks at her.

"I saw you looking." He nods. "You have good instincts, kid." He tells her, and she glares at his sons.

"Tell me I'm paranoid." She mutters, and her brother chuckles.

"Why didn't you come in, Dad?" Sam asks, ignoring Nyx's comment, and she looks back at John.

"You know why. Because I had to make sure you weren't followed. By anyone or anything." He tells them.

"And were we?" Dean asks​ him.

"No." He shakes his head. "Nice job of covering your tracks, by the way."

"Yeah, well, we learned from the best."

"Wait, so, you came all the way out here for this Elkins guy?" Sam asks.

"Yeah." John nods. "He was— He was a good man. He taught me a hell of a lot about hunting."

"You never mentioned him to us."

"We had a— We had kind of a falling out." He says. "I hadn't​ seen him in years. I should look at that." Dean hands his dad the letter they got, and he opens it. "If you're reading this, I'm already dead." He says and then continues to skim through it. "That son of a bitch." John mutters.

"What is it?" Dean asks.

"He had it the whole time."

"Dad, what?" Sam questions.

"When you searched the place, did you see a gun, an antique, a colt revolver? Did you see it?" John looks between Nyx and his sons.

"Uh, there was an old case, but it was empty." Dean tells him.

"They have it."

"You mean whatever killed Elkins?"

"We got to pick up their trail." John says as he climbs out of the car.

"Wait. You want us to come with you?" Sam asks, surprised.

"If Elkins is telling the truth, we've got to find this gun." John says as he leans down and looks in through Dean's window.

"The gun? Why?"

"Because it's important, that's​ why."

"Dad, we don't even know what these things are yet." Sam argues.

"They were what Danny Elkins killed best... Vampires." John says, and Nyx scoffs.

"Of course." She shakes her head, and her brother looks at her.

"I thought this species was extinct. I thought Elkins and others had wiped them out." He tells them. "I was wrong."

"Hold on. I'm sorry, did you just say this species?" She questions as she and Jeremy both look back at him. "As in there's more than one species of vampire?"

John looks at her. "These are different from the ones in Virginia, yes." He says, and Dean looks at her. "Yeah, I know about them. I've left them alone because I trust you and my boys to take care of the problem if it gets out of hand. Is that faith misplaced?"

"I helped kill twenty some-odd vampires back in February. You tell me." She says, growing irritated, and Jeremy tenses up next to his sister, his mind immediately going to when Anna died.

John looks back at the boys. "Most vampire lore about this specific species is crap. A cross won't repel them. Sunlight won't kill them and neither will a stake to the heart. But the bloodlust, that part's true. They need fresh human blood to survive. They were once people, so you won't know it's a vampire until it's too late." He tells them.

—

"Sam, Dean, Nycole, Jeremy. Let's go." John wakes them up, and Nyx looks around.

They're in a motel, and the four younger hunters were getting some sleep, but John hasn't been at all. He was sitting at the table.

"Hey." She shakes Dean's shoulder, and he sits up as they look at his dad.

"Picked up a police call." John tells them.

"What happened?" Sam asks.

"A couple called 9-1-1. They found a body in the street. Cops got there, everyone was missing." He quickly explains. "It's the vampires."

"How do you know?"

"Just follow me, okay?" He says as they get up and he walks out the door.

Nyx grabs her sweater and they all go outside. They follow John and end up on the stretch of road that the couple went missing on. He tells them to wait for him as he goes to talk to the cops.

Dean and Nyx are both leaning against the side of the Impala, and he wraps his arm around the brunette. She turns her body so that she's facing him, and her arms then wind around his torso so that her fingers can interlace on his other side. Her head rests against his shoulder and she closes her eyes. She's exhausted because it's so early, and sometimes she has a hard time sleeping because of the twins.

John's talking to the cops, and he looks back over at his boys and the two teenagers. He sighs when he sees the way that Nyx is tucked into Dean's side as he rubs her arm. His head is ducked down as he talks to his girlfriend, making her laugh; her eyes still closed.

"I don't see why we couldn't have gone over there with him." Sam says suddenly, and his brother looks at him.

"Oh, don't tell me it's already starting."

"What's starting?"

"Neither one of you better start." Nyx grumbles, and they both look at her for a second before their dad walks back over to them.

"What do you got?" Dean asks him, and Nyx opens her eyes to look at him.

"It was them alright." John says. "It looks like they're heading west. We have to double back to get around that detour."

"How can you be so sure?" Sam questions.

"Sam." Dean looks at his brother.

"I just want to know we're going in the right direction." He tells him.

"We are." John says.

"How do you know?"

"I found this." He pulls something out of his pocket, and Dean takes it to look at it.

"Please tell me that that's not what I think it is." Nyx says as she looks from it to John.

"A vampire fang?" Dean asks.

"No fangs — teeth. The second set descends when they attack." John explains.

"These things are definitely worse than Stefan and Damon." Nyx says, disgusted.

"Any more questions?" John asks Sam, but he doesn't say anything​. "Let's get out of here. We're losing daylight."

"Come on." Dean says as he makes Nyx stand up straight, and she pouts.

"And, Dean, why don't you touch up your car before you get rust?" His dad says as he walks back over to his black truck. "I wouldn't​ have given you the damn thing if I thought you were going to ruin it."

Nyx raises her eyebrows as she looks from John to Dean. Sam looks at her, expecting her to say something, but she simply shakes her head as she then climbs into the backseat of the Impala with Jeremy. Sam drives the car, following behind John's truck.

"Vampires nest in groups of eight to ten." Dean reads as Nyx looks over his shoulder at what he's reading. "Smaller packs are sent out to hunt for food. Victims are taken to the nest, where the pack keeps them alive, bleeding them for days or weeks."

"I wonder if that's what happened to that 9-1-1 couple." Jeremy says​.

"That's probably what our dad's thinking." Sam tells him. "Of course, it would be nice if he just told us what he thinks."

"So, it is starting." Dean says.

"What?" He asks as Nyx sits back in her seat.

"Sam, we've been looking for Dad all year. Now we're not with him for more than a couple hours, and there's static already."

"No. Look, I'm happy he's okay, alright, and I'm happy that we're all working together."

"Good." Dean says.

"It's just the way he treats us like we're children." Sam continues, and Dean immediately gets annoyed. "He barks orders at us, Dean. He expects us to follow him without question. He keeps us on some crap need-to-know deal."

"He does what he does for a reason."

"What reason?"

"Our job." He says. "There's no time to argue. There's no margin for error. It's just the way the old man runs things."

"Yeah, well, maybe that worked when we were kids, but not anymore, alright? Not after everything the three of us have been through." Sam says, and Dean looks back at him. "Are you telling me you're cool with just falling into line and letting him run the whole show?"

"If that's what it takes." He says. "Tell him, Nyx."

"Well, I, um..." She sighs.

"Nycole?"

"I mean, I kinda agree with Sam." She tells him, and he looks at her. "We've been doing this on our own for months now, and then he shows up and... The way he talks​ to you guys, Dean — that comment about the car."

Dean turns away from her and goes back to what he was doing before. She sighs and looks out the window

"So much for that talk in Indiana." She mumbles, and Jeremy looks at her.

"What?" Dean lifts his head, looking out the front window.

"You heard me."

—

"Pull off the next exit." Dean says as he gets off the phone with his dad. It's long after dark now.

"Why?" Sam asks.

"'Cause Dad thinks we got the vampires' trail."

"How?"

"I don't know. He didn't say."

Sam speeds up and then cuts his dad off, forcing him to stop driving.

"Oh, crap. Here we go." Dean says, and Nyx sighs as they all get out of the car.

"What the hell was that?" John questions as he walks over to them.

"We need to talk." Sam tells him.

"About what?"

"About everything." He says. "Where we going, Dad? What's the big deal about this gun?"

"Sam, come on. We can Q and A after we kill the vampires." Dean says.

"Your brother's right. We don't have time for this." John says.

"Last we saw you, you said it was too dangerous to be together. Now, out of the blue, you need our help. Obviously something big's going down, and we want to know what!" Sam snaps.

"Get back in the car." John orders.

"No."

He takes a step closer​ to him. "I said get back in the car."

"Yeah, and I said no." Sam says.

"Alright, you made your point, tough guy." Dean says as Sam and John are in the middle of a stare down. "Look, we're all tired. We can talk about this later. Sammy, I mean it." He grabs his brother and moves him away from their dad. "Nycole, get back in the car."

Jeremy looks at his sister, and she sighs.

"This is why I left in the first place." Sam says.

"What'd you say?" John questions, and he turns back around.

"You heard me." Sam says.

"Yeah, you left. Your brother and me, we needed you." He says as he walks closer to his son. "You walked away, Sam. You walked away!" He grabs his shirt, and Nyx looks up at Dean.

"Do something." She says, and he glances at her.

"You're the one who said, don't come back, Dad." Sam argues. "You're the one who closed that door, not me! You were just pissed off you couldn't control me anymore!" He's angrier than Nyx has ever seen him before.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Dean gets between them and makes them both back up. "That's enough!" He yells, and Nyx grabs Sam's arm.

"Sam." She gets his attention, and he looks down at her for a second before looking back at John. "Come on, Sam."

"That means you too." Dean tells their dad.

"Sam, get your ass back in the Goddamn car." Nycole says, and he turns around and gets back in the driver's seat. John walks away from them.

"Terrific." Dean mutters as Nyx and Jeremy get into the backseat again.

It's a little while after sunup when the hunters find the barn that the nest is staying in. The five of them see a vampire get out of a car and then head back into the barn, and the door closes when another one goes back inside as well. It's the early morning now, and they're hiding in the bushes a few yards away from the barn.

"Son of a bitch." Dean says. "So, they're really not afraid of the sun?"

"No, direct sunlight hurts like a nasty sunburn. The only way to kill them is by beheading." John tells them. "And, yeah, they sleep during the day. It doesn't mean they won't wake up."

"So, I guess walking right in's not our best option."

"Actually, that's the plan." He says, and they go back to their cars to get their weapons.

"Dad, I've got an extra machete if you need one." Dean tells him as Nyx grabs one out of the trunk.

"I'm okay, thanks." John says.

She steps away from the boys and takes her machete out of the sheath.

"I know you're a good shot, but how are you with a blade?" Sam asks as she swings the machete to get a feel for its balance. Her brother's just watching them, a little amazed by the knowledge and skill that his sister clearly has.

"Not bad." She tells him. "And what do you mean good shot?" She asks, and he chuckles.

"Right, damn near perfect. My bad."

"So..." John starts. "You four really want to know about this colt?" He asks, and they all look at him.

"Yes, sir." Sam says.

"It's just a story... A legend, really." He says. "Well, I thought it was. Never really believed it until I read Daniel's letter. Back in 1835, when Halley's​ comet was overhead, the same night those men died at the Alamo, they say Samuel Colt made a gun... A special gun. He made it for a hunter — a man like us, only on horseback. The story goes, he made thirteen bullets. This hunter used the gun a half a dozen times before he disappeared, the gun along with him. Somehow, Daniel got his hands on it. They say... They say this gun can kill anything."

"Kill anything, like supernatural anything?" Dean asks.

"Like a demon." Sam says.

Like Klaus. Nyx thinks to herself.

"Yeah, the demon. Ever since I picked up its trail, I've been looking for a way to destroy that thing." John says. "Find the gun... We may have it."

"So, let's go get it." Nycole says, and John looks at her.

"You're not going in with us." He says, and she scoffs.

"Like hell I'm not." She argues. "I've been hunting since last October, I can make a decision like that on my own."

"You're staying out here with your brother, Nycole."

"Maybe you tell your sons what to do, but I don't take orders from you." She tells him.

"It's not an order, it's just what's going to happen. We're going to get the gun, you're staying by the cars." He argues.

"Dad, come on, she's a damn good hunter." Sam tells him. "It doesn't make any sense to sideline her. We can use all the help that we can get."

"I'm not asking." John says, and the three younger hunters all look at Dean.

He sighs as he grabs her hand and pulls her away from them. "I'm sure whatever his reason is, is a good one." He says, and she raises her eyebrows.

"You're agreeing with him?" She questions.

He gives her the keys to the Impala. "Be ready in case we need to get out of here fast." He briefly rests his hands on either side of her face and places a quick kiss to her forehead. He then​ walks back over to his dad and Sam.

She scoffs as she looks at him. "That did not just happen." She mumbles to herself.

Sam looks over at her. "Nycole?"

"Go. Keep him alive so that I can kill him myself when this is all over." She tells him, and he quickly follows after Dean and their dad.