Louder Than Words

Dean barely noticed when Reagan rolled out of bed. He did, however, decide to get up when he heard the front door squeal open and three pairs of boots tramp in. He reluctantly picked himself up off of the softest bed he had slept in in months and dressed. When he got out, Foster was shuffling around in the kitchen, Hayden was spread out on the La-Z-Boy, and Sam sat with his head in his hands on the couch. Reagan was trying to help Foster, but he just blew past her. 

As the middle child and youngest of the boys, he looked nothing like his olive-skinned brunette siblings. Foster was short, with a height of just over 5'8". He had light copper hair and pale green eyes framed with dark eyebrows. This combination of features resulted in a rather sinister look when he made certain facial expressions, yet he was often the life of the party. 

Meanwhile, Hayden was wirey and lean. He stood at about the same height as Sam, perhaps even a bit taller. His complexion was that of someone accustomed to hard work and his dark hair was cut short. Unlike his brother, Hayden was the deep and brooding one. Sam found himself disliking him due to his emotional similarity to Bayleigh. 

Dean wandered into the kitchen and was met with a wide grin and loud greeting from Foster. Reagan smiled at him from the corner she had been chased into. He turned to the living room section of the room and clapped his brother on the shoulder, taking a seat next to him. Sam looked up, eyes red and in obvious pain. 

"You drank the last of the beer, didn't you?" he asked. 

Whatever Sam was about to say was interrupted by Fozzy announcing that breakfast was ready. 

They gathered at the tiny table over a haphazard meal of eggs, ham, and potato/yam hash. The meal started out quietly, but as appetites died down and tummies became full, a conversation started. 

"I figure if we head out at about midday, we can get there by two," Fozzy said. "Right in the middle if their REM cycle."

"Where are they?" Sam asked. 

"Over the pass a ways," Reagan said. "We should probably take two cars." She always seemed to be worried about stuff like that. 

"Do we have enough blood?" Dean asked. Foster looked at him oddly, but Hayden understood. 

"I have a buddy at a morgue in Quincy. He stocks it for me as best he can. I stopped there on my way down. It's in the back of the Tahoe."

"How much?" Sam asked. 

"Maybe a gallon, gallon and a half." San nodded and finished the last bite on his plate. 

"Me n Hayden did some scouting up there a couple days ago," Fozzy continued. "We got a general idea of where they're hiding out, down to the road they're on. It's a really long gravel driveway. Dunno what's at the end. Google maps was no help, either. I figure we arm ourselves as heavily as we can and park the cars only a little ways up the driveway. That way we can make a quiet entrance."

"Sounds easy enough," Dean said with a smile, knowing full well that with their luck they would be walking into the biggest nest known to mankind with just five hunters, one out of practice and another emotionally unstable. 

<><><><><>

Bayleigh stretched, standing from the seat of the waiting room. She entered the pristine white tiled room with a sigh, but stopped. A girl was lying in her side, back to the door, on an exam table. A dark African American man in a white coat, who she could only assume was the doctor stood facing a cabinet in a corner, shuffling around in it. 

Bayleigh opened her mouth to apologize for intruding but couldn't as the girl moaned loudly. Her shoulders started shaking with suppressed sobs and she sat up suddenly, facing Bayleigh, whose mouth fell open as she looked at the girl. 

One of the girl's electric blue eyes was missing. A bloody gaping hole was all that was left. 

The man turned around as the girl started screaming. He held up a pair if tongs with a hand, starkly white against his ebony flesh, and said, "I like to keep a piece of my victims with me."

But Bayleigh barely even noticed what he said; she was too busy staring at his eyes. One of them was a soft coffee and cream brown. The other one was strikingly blue and sort of askew, thin muscle fibers and cauterized veins dangled across his cheek. 

She resisted the urge to hurl. Bayleigh could look a full-fledged monster in the eye, but the sight of this kind of human savagery made her knees weak. 

The next thing Bayleigh knew, she was heaving the broken and sobbing girl down a grey hallway. The ceiling and walls were decorated with water damage  and mold spots and the ancient Persian hall runner was frayed and torn. She tugged the girl by the arm around a corner and into a doorway. Sam was waiting for her. She sat the girl down on the bed and turned to face Sam. 

"She's bleeding," he said. Bayleigh frowned. She hadn't been a moment ago. 

Sam reached around and pulled the back of the girl's shirt up, newly soaked in blood. The flesh had been sliced off like one would skin an animal. But it was much deeper, clear to the bone. White vertebrae stuck up jaggedly through the knots of muscle like eery teeth. Bayleigh looked up, hoping to find reassurance in the soft greenish eyes of Sam, but looked into dark empty space. 

She straightened and turned around running almost headlong into the chest of the doctor. 

<><><><><>

Bayleigh woke up sweating and panting, heart racing. She pushed the dog out of her arms, peeled the sheets off of her body and stumbled to the bathroom. It was still dark outside. She looked around at the warm, familiar green room, shrouded in early-morning shadow, and frowned. She stood for a while like that, eventually rolling down to the floor next to the tub and resting her head on the cool porcelain. 

She took deep shaky breaths, trying to figure out where that came from. Maybe it was her deep-seated dislike and distrust of most humans coming to light. But what did Sam have to do with it?

She groaned and squeezed her eyes closed, forcing logical and sensible thoughts into her head. They ultimately lead her to decide that the reason for the nightmare was a result of all of the Dexter she had been watching with Syd. 

She rolled up off the floor and crept down the hallway, meeting Syd on the way. He greeted her with a warm hand on her arm and slipped past her into the bathroom. She picked up the puppy off of her bed and took it outside to go potty, then settled on the couch under a blanket with the 5am news on quietly and the puppy warm against her side. 

<><><><><>

"Bay, hey wake up," Syd's voice was soft in her ear. 

She squinted up at him and said, "Don't call me that."

"Me and Ally are heading into town. Weather channel has alerts for a huge storm coming in. Thought we'd start stocking up on canned food and pick up your truck. Wanna come?"

She shifted underneath the puppy. "Do I have time to get dressed?"

He chuckled. "Are you kidding? Ally has just started the process of putting on the war paint. We won't be out of here for another two hours."

Ally shouted something along the lines of a more grotesque version of, "Bite me," from the bathroom. 

Bayleigh sat up, sliding Zeke into her lap. "Here I go."

<><><><><>

"Come, Bayleigh, Dear!" Ally said, tugging her along the slick sidewalk. Syd followed, carrying Zeke in his leather jacket. 

Ally led the way into the local grocery store, navigating easily to the non-perishable food. Syd and Bayleigh hung back, holding the puppy and pushing the cart. Bayleigh was having issues looking Syd in the eye as he flawlessly kept his relatively one-sided conversation working. As they neared the end of the trip through the store, Syd decided to ask her about it. 

"What's wrong?" he asked. 

She frowned, but didn't look at him. "What do you mean?"

He looked at her. "C'mon Bayleigh. What're you thinking?"

"I'm thinking about my truck."

"Oh." He looked up when Ally dumped some pancake mix in the cart. Bayleigh shifted the puppy in her arms. 

"I think I'm going to leave before the storm rolls in."

Syd's mouth opened slightly. "But..."

"I'll be back." He cocked his head to the side. "I can't let her date a monster without supervision," she said quietly.  "Even a clean monster."

A smile graced his features momentarily. "So you aren't going to be gone forever."

"Not until I know you're safe."

"I may have to become rather reckless," he grinned, but it faded when she looked at him. 

"I'm going to leave you with everything you need if he relapses."

"Okay," he replied solemnly. "When are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow morning. Early."

"And when will you be back?"

"I don't know... Will you tell Ally?" Bayleigh asked quietly. 

He frowned as the girl in question started unloading the cart onto the checkout stand. Then he looked into Bayleigh's green-grey eyes and nodded slowly. 

<><><><><>

The Impala idled on the side of the road for a moment before turning off. The passengers got out and met the three siblings climbing out of the dark Tahoe. They had pulled into the cover of trees across the highway from the stretch of gravel road that they assumed led to the vampire nest. 

They armed themselves and camouflaged the cars, Dean murmuring apologies to his baby. Then they crossed the road and crept along the side of the drive. 

Ten minutes later a huge house, at least three stories, with a windowless black van parked out front appeared in front of them. Fozzy grinned and Reagan and Dean exchanged glances. Hayden and Sam prepared their machetes.