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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: NC-17. Mention of incest.
Pairing: Dean/Luther, implied Sam/Luther and Sam/Dean.
Feedback: Good lines, bad ones, etc.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the WB, not me.
Notes: AU after ‘Shadows.’ Sequel to The Kindest Cut. Borrows names from (but is not a crossover of) Priest.
Summary: Dean’s plan of feeding as little as possible backfires.
***
The place where the man had been discovered was sheltered from the road by a lot of foliage, but even from the road, the trail to it was so wide and obvious that not even the dumbest, most citified cop could’ve missed it. No wonder the report had hit the Internet so quick.
Dean drove past it and parked the car about a hundred yards from where the yellow tape started, then cranked down his window.
“There’s no one there,” Luther said. He’d been pretty quiet ever since they’d left the motel except for rolling half-down the window on his side without asking. But ever since they’d stopped, he’d gotten a little more restless. “But—”
“Your girlfriend was earlier, yeah, yeah.” Same smell as the strongest one in Elkins’ house, though she’d been reeking anger and fear. It was mixed in with the faintly acrid scent that had been all over the barn, plus something herbal that Dean knew he should recognize, but didn’t quite. He poked his brain harder; he really didn’t need any more sources of frustration at this point.
Luther hadn’t even been able to walk to the car without some grudging help from Dean, and since then he’d sensibly kept his movements to a minimum. But now he compressed his lips and lifted one arm to prop it on the side of the window. He started to lean out and Dean eased one hand towards his gun, but Luther got some hint of that and moved back. “She’s not just my girlfriend.”
“No, you had a whole undead Romeo and Juliet deal going,” Dean muttered. He squinted at the woods bounded by the police tape, but couldn’t make out anything really useful. They’d have to get out, he thought as he closed his window. “Roll up your side.”
“You don’t think we can care about others?” Luther asked. He did what Dean said with sloppy, fumbling motions.
Dean rolled his eyes and judged the area again. On the one hand, it’d be pretty easy for someone to lose pursuers in that kind of brush, even with an enhanced sense of smell. On the other…Luther really, truly didn’t seem to be in good enough condition to try that. “Look, if I gave a damn about that, I’d never get anything done. Now out of the car. Let’s go see if your girlfriend got herself a good meal—which would put her one up on you.”
“It does make it easier to hunt if you think of it that way.” The words rolled out of Luther’s mouth with that ironic, knowing edge that shredded the ends of Dean’s nerves. “I hope she did. Kate’s still young—she wouldn’t be able to take much.”
After unlocking the doors, Dean grabbed the machete before he hauled himself out of the car. He leaned against the side and tapped his fingers impatiently on the roof, watching Luther get out, which was a multi-step process. First getting the door open, then hooking one arm over the roof, then pulling himself out. Brief breather while his skin went gray in the dim light before he rolled over and shoved the door shut. He rolled back, resting his head on his arms, and his arms on the top of the car, to stare exhaustedly at Dean. Nice sympathy ploy, there.
His eyes glowed—more than Dean’s did. He looked like a clip from a nature special about midnight predators of the savannah, whereas the few times Dean had glimpsed a night reflection of himself, it’d been more like seeing a pair of white dots.
“Dude, the only reason I’d want to hear something about your girlfriend is if it’s somebody telling me another bloodsucking, murdering creep of the night bit it.” Dean locked up, then swung the machete to rest on his shoulder. He smiled humorlessly at the pissed-off look Luther didn’t exactly hide and generously waved for him to go first. “Fall in love, have a moonlit wedding, celebrate your golden anniversaries. It’s still not going to get me on your side because you know what? To do all that, you have to kill people. And if you’ve got a right to live, then why don’t they?”
If Luther had been able to help it, he probably would’ve started walking right away. But he needed a few moments after pushing away from the car, so he had to put up with it. Eventually he started moving—slow, slightly weaving, grabbing onto supports whenever he could. “Aren’t you being a little hypocritical?”
“I haven’t killed anyone for blood yet. And I don’t plan to,” Dean said, barely keeping from snarling. Or from grabbing his phone. He already wanted to call Sam and make sure his brother actually had done as he’d been told…except if that were the case, then calling would wake him up. Damn it.
Luther paused to lean over the guardline, then glanced up. “What if it’s you or them?”
“Then I’m a dead bloodsucking son of a bitch, and Sam’s—” That didn’t bear thinking on. At least, not now. It’d been less than a month since that had almost happened and Dean had gotten a glimpse of Sam gone over the edge, and that was not happening. Not even in Dean’s thoughts.
Something similar to a smile, but not nearly as nice, passed over Luther’s face. He turned away and started walking again before Dean could make out the whole thing. “Heard that before. Never lasts for long.”
“Well, you don’t exactly know me, do you?” Dean muttered. The bastard probably had never tried to find a way to reverse the vampirism anyway. There was at least one—the problem just was making it work without also flipping Sam onto the Dark Side of the Force.
God. Even Dean’s sense of humor was going down the drain.
Luther stopped again once they’d reached where the grass and dirt had been scuffled up at the edge of the road. He started to bend down, then glanced at Dean. Once he guessed that Dean wasn’t going to slice ‘n dice him, he continued till he was squatting on the pavement. He started to prod and pull at the grass till he came up with something.
“What is that?” Dean said. “Let me see.”
An impulse to refuse went over Luther’s face, which was a little out of character for him. He looked at whatever it was, swallowing hard a couple times, then finally held it up: a fang. The base was whole and had some drying gummy strands clinging to it, so it’d been wrenched out instead of broken.
“Do you mind if I hold onto it? If you want to see it again, I can just take it out,” Luther said. He made it sound like they were parodying the standard torture scene from an old POW-camp flick.
“Go ahead. I sure as hell don’t want it.” Dean wondered if he could just tell Sam the son of a bitch had tried to take off.
It was a nice thought, but it wouldn’t work. Being undead didn’t make Dean any better of a liar, and Sam’s new tendency to cut long slack only went so far.
The leaves and branches of the underbrush had been smashed around, like Luther’s girlfriend—or the poor guy that’d ended up feeding her—had put up a good fight. It led them through an irritating tangle of yellow tape that ringed a slight hollow about fifty yards from the road; the depression was around five feet across and surrounded by tall trees, which created an effective screen.
The tree that’d gotten used as the slaughtering rack still had rope knotted around one of its branches, with the dangling end looking so frayed that it resembled one of those tasseled curtain pulls in fancy places. On the bark, at a spot about level with Dean’s head, was a strong patch of urine reek. He blew out his nose and stepped back, grimacing.
Luther had completely ignored the tree in favor of scuffling around in the dirt with his foot. He suddenly stooped and picked up an unusually straight stick, then sniffed at it. “Kate…and dead blood.”
“Dead blood?” The stick had been smoothed and polished so it gleamed: part of a crossbow dart, maybe. Crossbows. It’d be too damned cute if all the demon-y underlings got a standard weapons kit.
“Corpse blood. It’s like a poison to us. Slows you down, makes things hazy,” Luther muttered. “I don’t know this one—the one that has her.”
Neither did Dean, though it definitely was the same person that’d hit the barn. It did remind him a lot of Meg, but it also reminded him of the smell Sam put off when he was doing some spell, so most of it might just be occupational. The rest, the part that should’ve told him who it was…didn’t. So they were up against someone new, apparently. Great. “Dead man’s blood, huh? I’ll make a note of that.”
“I’m sure you are.” Luther flashed Dean another one of his little ironic looks before stepping—slowly and awkwardly—out of the clearing. He rustled around the branches a little before coming back, shaking his head. “No trail away from here. It goes here—”
“—then doubles back to town.” So they’d ended up learning nothing new. “Well, this was a load of wasted time. Come on, back to the car.”
* * *
In the end, Dean saved his call to Sam till they’d driven into town and parked outside a bar—only place open at this hour. Calling while driving would’ve meant one hand on the phone, the other on the wheel, and no hands free to deal with Luther should he try something. “Bust, more or less. All it did was confirm that the thing’s dragging vampy’s girl around and that it U-turned back to town.”
*Well, it kept us from heading out of town,* Sam said with a touch of annoyance. And a touch of a yawn; he’d said Dean hadn’t woken him up, but clearly that had been a line of bullshit. *Any ideas where they went? Ancient Indian burial grounds…legendary bad places…anything with the kind of vibe a demon would like?*
“Was I supposed to be doing background research while I chauffeured Luther around?” Dean switched phone-hands and propped his elbow up on the window.
Luther leaned his forehead against his window and let out a tiny, irritable sigh. His eyes narrowed to slits, making the heavy bags beneath them even deeper. “There are plenty. This was a violent area well into this century.”
The backdoor of the bar opened up and a laughing couple drunkenly stumbled out. The man had one arm slung around the woman and was trying hard to get his other one around her, but one, his eye-hand coordination wasn’t in peak condition. Two, she was trying to get back inside. Then another woman came out and helped haul her back in, much to the man’s loud dismay. But he went back in as well.
The first woman and the man hadn’t seemed to interest Luther much, but when the second woman came out, he opened his eyes and straightened up a little. There was something about her…not her looks, but some rich, sweet smell that drifted from her across the parking lot. She’d glanced over too, and maybe had seen them.
*…have to go,* Sam said.
“What?” Dean sat up himself.
In the background on the other end of the line, someone was knocking on the door. *I need to go answer that,* Sam said. *I woke up hungry and ordered food—I’ll call back when I’ve gotten rid of them.*
“Save me some,” Dean replied. He hung up, then glared at Luther. “Knock that off.”
“She’s got her period. Heavy—plenty of blood in it. You can smell it, can’t you?” Luther obviously could. He was awkwardly clipping off the ends of some of his words, and when he turned his head around like he was working out a cramp, the light glinted off elongated teeth. Then he slid down so his knees crammed up against the dashboard; his teeth were back to normal, and Dean could see that because the lips were pulled back in a tight grimace. “I’m hungry. I can’t help that.”
Dean slowly, deliberately twisted his hands around the wheel, working up some smell from the leather covering. “Stop talking about that.”
His cell buzzed him and he took it out again. It was from Sam, but it was a text and not a phone call: Stay out hours. Which made Dean’s eyebrows go up a bit, since Sam generally was about as anal about his grammar as he was about everything else. He shimmied his hand lower so his thumb could reach all of the keypad and started to send a reply.
Maybe Luther wasn’t talking anymore, but he was proving he didn’t need to do that in order to get at Dean. He’d turned over on his side so he was facing the window and it would’ve sounded like he’d stopped breathing, except every so often he sucked in air in a long, ragged, hiss. Yeah, he was hungry, and it was getting to Dean, who’d eaten, for God’s sake.
The cell went off again. Another text message: Cops. Stalling..
Shit. What the hell had happened? Had Sam dropped his wallet at Elkins’ place or something?
“Are we going?” Luther asked, low and raspy. He had his fingers up on the window and was scratching at the edge. The smell rolling off him was sharp and sick, like the stink of vomit that was nearly all beer.
It was itchy, digging beneath Dean’s skin even after he rolled his window down for some fresh air. He laid his hand on the edge of the glass, wishing it was a little bit sharper so he could use it to focus his thoughts. Whatever the police were there for, Sam could handle himself. And if he did end up in jail, then Dean had better be on the outside. Man, Sam had better have hid all the weapons.
“How old are you?” Luther suddenly said, turning around. He’d gotten a lot paler and behind their glow, his eyes had a feverish glitter to them. “How long do you think you can go on half-rations? You keep yourself like that and you’re going to snap, and then it doesn’t matter how you feel about your brother.”
“Shut. Up.” Right, so they weren’t going back right away. That would’ve been fine with Dean if he had somewhere to drop off Luther, because he didn’t like how Luther eyed Sam. It was too much like that odd possessive look Meg had gotten. But on the other hand, Dean seriously did not enjoy spending time with Luther that didn’t involve a chance to kill him. “We aren’t going back yet. Sam’s heading off the police.”
Luther frowned questioningly. Then he stiffened. Behind him, the window framed a woman swaying out of the bar doorway—that one. She leaned back in to shout something about there being nothing she liked inside, then stumbled out and fell against the wall. “Hey. Hey. You in the car—were you looking at me and Anita earlier?”
“I won’t kill her. I won’t even bite her. But I need something—I need to feed, or else I’m going to die—” The seat back groaned as Luther ground his hand into it. He glanced over his shoulder, then back at Dean. Then his eyes flicked down to the knife that Dean was using to hold up his chin.
“Aw, you’re scared of dying. I’m—so—sympathetic.” Dean prayed that that damned girl would just pass out, but he got enough glimpses past Luther to see that she was still mobile and coming closer and closer. “We shouldn’t be alive anyway. We’re fucking—”
That surprised Luther. Then he surprised Dean by slightly jerking his head down so the metallic smell of blood suddenly filled the car. A few hot drops stung Dean’s hand. “If you want help from me, you have to keep me alive.”
Someone knocked on the window. “Hey, guys.” A long-fingered, pretty hand with some kind of gold ring on it dragged across the window on Luther’s side. “Oh, God, don’t tell me you’re fags like the bastards in there.”
Sometimes Dean just didn’t get people, and this was one of those times so strongly that he was almost choking on it. He looked at Luther, then outside, then back. Luther cocked his head, raising his eyebrows. Then he lifted his chin off the knife and slowly turned around, rubbing at the underside of his jaw. He rolled down his window. “Hello, honey. Sorry—my friend here was just trying to tell me not to get in trouble tonight.”
No chopping in front of witnesses. At least, conscious ones. Dean gritted his teeth and waited for Luther to twist and fumble his way out of the car—he did a decent job of making his weakness look like drunkenness, not that it mattered to the girl. Then, when Luther was half-out and couldn’t look behind him, Dean reached beneath the seat and got the machete. The knife went up his sleeve, the blood on it drying so it stuck to his arm.
He quietly opened the door on his side and got out to the accompaniment of faked shrieks of embarrassment and a lot of alcohol-fueled, nonsensical “sex talk.” Luther and the girl started out tonguing, but by the time Dean had gotten halfway around the car, Luther had dropped out of sight. The girl jerked up against the side of the car, gasping and wide-eyed, and Dean nearly lunged the last few feet.
“Oh, oh…God.” Her head went back, then lazily lolled so she smiled slackly at Dean. She dropped her hands to run through Luther’s hair and cup his head, which was half-hidden by her rucked-up skirt. Her knees bowed, then snapped together as one of her three-inch heels slid on the pavement.
Blood rolling off her. Blood and heat and sweet life, so thick Dean could open his mouth and taste it from where he was standing a few feet away. He belatedly remembered to stick the machete behind his back so she didn’t see it. He did that and found himself six inches closer than where he should have been, and smacked himself against the car so that the side-mirror was between them and would warn him the next time.
“Still against trouble?” The girl timed her laugh wrong, letting it coincide with a moment where she was gasping, so she choked. Her hips were moving, sliding up and down the side of the car, and the air around Dean was moving in the same rhythm, teasing from her to him. A couple more inches and he could lean over and suck some of that delicious thrumming straight from her mouth. “Oh, man, your friend…nice…man doesn’t mind that time of the month…”
No, he didn’t, and the moment he got away from the girl, he was getting two feet of steel in his neck.
The side-view mirror hit Dean in the stomach hard enough to knock out some of his breath. He coughed, then grabbed onto it. But the steel started to bend, and loud enough for the girl to notice, so he forced himself to move back. He dragged his hand onto the hood and flattened it out against the cool metal. His skin felt like it was burning up, shrinking—over his stomach it was pulling too tight so it was like his middle was caving in on itself, wrapping up around his backbone.
Whatever her name was had stopped talking, and was just riding Luther’s mouth, her fingers digging so hard into his scalp that the knuckles were whitened. She tossed her head back and forth, probably thinking that was sexy. It wasn’t, really—Dean’s eyes were fixed on her throat and on the rapid pulse he could see in it, on the low incessant drumming inside his skull that ran up and down his nerves. When he opened his mouth to breathe, he could feel the stickiness of her sweat against his lips, the shivering roughness of callused fingers rubbing her thighs.
He heaved himself around and stared at the neon sign above the bar. The soft green and blue swam, looped in crazy spirals and snaked back to dance like flames over coals. Dean ran his tongue over his teeth and the tiny bit of coppery blood that brought up shocked him as if he’d been sucker-punched.
“Oh…man.” Giggle. The girl was still sprawled against the car, shakily pushing her skirt down. She paused once to poke at the faint red smears that streaked Luther’s cheeks. “You went so far up I think I’m gonna make it all the way inside without having to worry about my panties.”
If Dean had been in any shape to even process that, he would’ve gagged. But it was background noise. It was all…background noise, and his gut was killing him. His head was killing him. His jaw hurt from keeping his teeth pressed together tightly enough to keep them of even length. “See you.”
“But your friend—he needs to loosen up,” she added, glancing at Dean. Then down at his crotch.
It pained him, and part of it wasn’t because she didn’t have a single damn particle of self-preservation in her pretty head, but he waved her off. “Thanks, but no thanks.” He glanced at Luther. “We. Need. To. Get. Going.”
The way Dean was right now, he needed things to go either of two ways. The heavy blade still hanging between him and the car was one option; Luther took the other, sliding back into the car.
The girl went inside—at least, she was heading in that direction. Dean didn’t give a shit and didn’t look to see if she got to the door. He stalked around the side of the car, threw himself in, and started up the engine.
At least the town was small. It took three minutes to get to a stretch of road where he couldn’t see any lights or buildings of any kind. He pulled over to the side and lifted his hands to rest them on top of the wheel, only his right hand was full. He’d forgotten to put down the machete—the tip probably had gouged a hell of a hole out of the flooring. After a moment of blind staring, Dean blinked hard as the machete was knocked out of his hand and into the backseat.
Then he’d been slammed up against the door and was struggling to keep Luther’s hand from crushing his windpipe. He couldn’t see anything but dark hair, but he could hear Luther, slick and amused, whispering in his ear. “Like it or not, you depend on blood. You feel better, you run faster, you get stronger when you’re well-fed.”
Luther was shoved up against him, scent of the girl all over him, rubbing wet traces of her against Dean’s cheek, and he was warm with the girl’s blood and—“I know,” Dean hissed back, dropping his hands.
He slid them around and hooked his fingers into Luther’s sides just as he twisted around to smash his mouth into Luther’s. Wrong angle, not matched up, all teeth, but Jesus Christ, it was enough for Dean to start feeding and he went so high he didn’t care. He ripped open Luther’s lower lip with his teeth and the blood was good, but pushing his tongue into Luther’s mouth and having that extra pulse come into him, having Luther just goddamn shove it at him with a sharp buck—that was better. Much better.
That’d been what Sam’s failed spell had done. Blood was necessary, but this was faster and gave more and was so much easier to take too far. But Dean didn’t care about Luther, so he didn’t worry about it. He knuckled under his fingers, made ridges of them that he rolled over Luther’s back and down to his hips, getting drunk on the rising waves of lust and shock and confusion.
He could feel when Luther got hold of himself enough to start figuring it out. Felt the stiffening in the muscles, drank the disbelief. Licked up the startled gasp and the surge of fear as his head spun, savored the aftertaste of the bloody sticky sweet he scraped off Luther’s cheeks with his teeth.
“What the hell—” Now Luther tried to back it off. He pushed at Dean, then tried to get his arm back to punch, but the space was too cramped. “What are you?”
And Dean wasn’t nearly full yet. He came after Luther as the vamp jerked back, went over and hit the door. Wrenched Luther’s hand off the door handle and dropped down to grind his mouth up the side of Luther’s neck. “Funny question.”
A deep moan came raggedly out of Luther and he twisted hard so his knee slid past Dean. He looked like he hated himself for that, like he hadn’t been able to help it. Well, welcome to the fucking club, the tiny sane part of Dean snarled. The rest of Dean was sucking up the frustration, burrowing at Luther’s neck and chest because God, it was so rich it was like it was coming out of his skin. Tasted like it.
Dean’s hands were down between them, pressing and molding Luther’s dick through his jeans. The warmth came up through the denim and flowed straight into Dean’s veins, making it feel like he had sparks coming out of his fingertips. He ground down with the heel of his hand and opened his mouth so it was ready to take the curve of Luther’s neck. He bit on that—not hard enough to break the skin, because then he could do it again and again and each time he’d get another wonderful wave of sensation pouring into him, filling him out, pressing his skin away from his bones so pain couldn’t get to him.
Luther had stopped shoving at Dean—had dropped his hands from Dean, period. One of them dangled over the side of the seat; the other one, Dean had pinned up against the door. He leaned back to move and his weight fell more heavily on it and it was cold. The fingers were cold. And the eyes staring wildly up at him were draining of color.
Something about that stuck at Dean, made him pause. And when he did, Luther abruptly twisted up at him and an explosive burst of feeling flooded Dean. He put up a fight, but only for a second before everything went black.
* * *
Dean clawed back to consciousness with a vengeance, terrified that he’d wake up just in time to see Luther kill him on the way to getting at Sam. But when he opened his eyes, Luther was still lying beneath him on the seat—it looked like not more than a couple seconds had passed.
“Try anything—” Dean’s mouth was dry and he had to pause to wet his lips “—try anything and you’ll see what I’m like when I’m well-fed.”
“You—you can feed that way?” Luther gaped. He was…well, he didn’t look as badly off as before, but he’d definitely lost most of his earlier boost. He didn’t smell like the girl now.
Goddamn it. Dean shoved himself back into the driver’s seat, then remembered that the tissues were in the glove compartment. He hauled himself back, trying to lean over Luther as little as possible, and banged it open. There weren’t many enough, so he’d have to remember to fill up once they were back at the motel.
He grabbed a couple and pushed back, turning away so he could get his jeans open and clean himself off without making the situation even worse. The seat creaked as Luther reached for a couple as well.
“So…does your brother help out with this, too?” Luther asked.
He was lucky Dean happened to have his hands full doing up his fly at that point. “Now you’re really sounding like you want me to kill you.”
“You don’t sound as enthusiastic about that as you did before.” Luther looked up to meet Dean’s eyes. He didn’t exactly flinch, but he did make a backward movement. “No, I’m asking because I don’t understand this—what you are. Though I do now see why you’d hate this more than any other vampire I’ve ever met.”
“Thanks. That really makes me feel better.” Actually, the reason Luther was lucky had more to do with how amazingly clear-headed and able Dean now felt, and how incredibly shitty he felt about that. Maybe it wasn’t his brother this time, but he’d still liked the feeding while he’d been doing it. And he hated that—it made him wonder if there’d ever be a time where he’d start to like feeding even when he wasn’t starved into it. “I’d find a guillotine and chop myself if it were an option.”
Fuck, the tissues. Dean wasn’t going to pitch them onto the side of the road, but he wasn’t going to stuff them into the goddamn trash drawer, either. He stared at them, then almost banged his head against the wheel for sheer slowness. Instead of doing that, he dug out his lighter and stuck his fistful of crumpled tissues out the window to light them up.
“Why not?” Well, didn’t sex make Luther curious.
Didn’t it make Dean feel like hell these days, and that was just…fucked up. “Because I’m not leaving Sam. I’m not leaving him to get fucked up by monsters like you or that son of a bitch demon we’re hunting.”
“He doesn’t seem all that spineless to me,” Luther said. He coughed slightly. When Dean turned around, Luther held out his handful. “Want to torch these too, or should I hold onto them?”
Dean thought about making the bastard hold them, since his needling side was obviously coming back, but if he did that, he’d be smelling it all the way back. Well, he would anyway, but it’d be even worse. “Here, give them over. And Sam’s not, but…look, he’s not your brother, and you don’t know jack shit about what we’ve been through. You don’t know what that demon can do to people. It gets in—”
“—and the person you know just kind of…fades out.” Luther hauled himself all the way into a sitting position, then slumped against the door. He looked steadily at Dean. “Look, that legend? It’s not a legend. If we’re talking about the same demon—it pops up every so often. It was around in the eighteen-thirties, and the hunter who went after it then was Ivan Isaacs.”
“You sound like you knew the guy,” Dean said under his breath. After flicking the last bits of ash from his fingers, he pulled himself back inside the car and rolled up the window. Then he started the engine.
“I did know the guy. He was a friend of mine. The demon got him, I figure…I wasn’t there. Mail was less than fast back then, so I heard about five months later. Got sloppy afterward, and that’s why I am, to put it in your words, a ‘bloodsucking, murdering creep of the night.’” It was all delivered in that very calm, very emotionless tone that seemed to be Luther’s specialty.
Dean had a first impulse, but suppressed it in favor of thinking. He slung his arm over the seat and felt around. Just then they had to take a turn and the momentum sent something clattering across the back to cut the side of Dean’s hand. He suppressed his wince and grabbed the machete, then swung it over to lean between him and Luther. “That’s so very, very interesting—not. The only part I care about—no, that’s not right. The part that’s keeping me from killing you still is the stuff about the demon. As for the rest…you made the wrong decision, in my opinion. You were a hunter and then you’re okay with suddenly playing for the other side?”
“I love how you wave off almost two hundred years like that. Maybe I had family around to see to, and then maybe I got used to liking the idea of living,” Luther snapped.
“What about this demon? You were never tempted to go after it before?” Dean retorted.
Luther started to spit out something nasty, but stopped himself. He pressed the side of his hand to his mouth for a second, then took it away to stare out the window. “I’ll help you get to this demon. But my interest ends in getting Kate and me out of firing range. Believe me, I won’t ever stop going in the opposite direction.”
“That depends on whether I feel like living with knowing that any monster got away. And believe me, the list of things I have to live with is pretty full already.” Dean pulled onto the turn-off and sped through a red light, since no one was out at this hour but the nasty things in the dark. Another five minutes and they’d be back at the motel.
***