My unconsciousness was haunted by more horror movie scenes, and I woke up after realizing they had stopped looking like they were behind a screen and had started feeling real.
The steady hum of an old car engine thrummed in front of me, and I saw that I was sprawled across a backseat, my head on someone's lap. Whoever it was wiped a cold cloth across my neck, and I flinched and then groaned when it hurt.
"She's awake," a voice said above me, and I looked up at its source, seeing the huge guy from earlier at my house looking forward. He glanced back down at me and turned my head to the side so I was facing the back of the front seat, and then I felt stinging pressure where I had been bleeding on my neck.
"Stop!" I swatted away they guy's hands, trying to sit up. "Where's Jeremy? And my parents?"
"They're gone." The guy messing with my neck looked grave as he spoke, and I glared at him, clenching my jaw and trying to sit up. The fact that the upper part of my left leg was numb didn't help me much, and I collapsed before I'd moved two inches.
"Quit saying that. They're gunna be fine."
The car was quiet. Warm fingers tipped my head to the side again, and I couldn't find the strength to struggle, letting him do whatever he was doing. I tried to see my leg out of the corner of my eye, but failed. Whatever was numbing it remained a mystery.
"You can sit up." The tall guy held my shoulders, lifting me up slowly so I didn't get a head rush. Neither of us was buckled in, so it was simple enough to let him slide me over to the side. I leaned against the window, taking deep breaths.
"What's going on?" I looked at the one in the backseat with me accusingly, trying for a glare but only getting a grimace. "Where are we?"
"The highway. We're going to the hospital. You need a transfusion, and it's not like either of us know your type."
"What?!" I sat up straight, my neck searing at the sudden movement. "Hospital? For me? No freaking way. I hate hospitals." I closed my eyes and tried to slow my heightened breathing, but my lungs weren't having it. They'd endured enough today and felt they deserved a moment of panic. "I--hate--hospitals."
"Calm down." The tall one's voice took on an aura of authority. "You're going to hyperventilate. Slow your breathing."
How could I make it any clearer? "I--can't--go--to--a--hospital--"
"Calm down!" The tall one leaned over to me, reaching for my arm. I yanked it away.
"Sammy!" the driver shouted angrily.
"I'm trying, Dean." "Sammy" took my arm without me protesting this time, his eyes worried. "Just, um...find your happy place, or something."
I closed my eyes, but all I could see was the bloody, pale bodies of my family members, and I quickly opened them again. "I--can't."
"Are you kidding me, Sam?"
"Dean, shut up!" Sam closed his eyes, opening them again with a newly tranquil expression on his face. "No hospitals, then. Pull over." He glared up towards Dean, meeting his expression in the rearview mirror.
Dean seemed to contemplate and then complied with a huff, turning to the shoulder of the road and turning off the engine. He faced us, looking like he wanted to say something but didn't want me to hear it.
My breathing began to slow as I forced the image of vampire doctors with needles the length of my arm out of my head, gripping the edge of my seat with numb fingers. "No...hospitals."
"Right." Sam looked tired, leaning back against his seat. His hair was really long, I realized, longer than the normal guy's. Almost to his shoulders, and very well kept, too.
Rather than question him about his hair-care products, I tried to look intimidating, clenching my fists. "Why am I here? Where's my family?"
"They're dead. They were killed by the same people who did that." Sam pointed hesitantly at my neck and then my leg, and I glanced down for the first time, seeing a foot-long tear in the side of my jeans that exposed almost the whole side of my thigh. Stitches criss-crossed over a jagged pair of crescents at the top of my leg, dangerously close to my underwear. I blushed as I pictured Sam stitching it up and seeing things I'd rather he didn't.
The blush faded as his words sunk in. My family was dead. I was all alone.
Well, not at the moment.
"We tried to save them, but when we got there, it was already too late," Sam explained. How cliche. Couldn't they have just been a couple minutes earlier? That might not have made a difference, though. My mind had done a good job of blocking out the attack I had apparently suffered, so who was to say that I hadn't been out for hours before these two had gotten to us?
They were silent, waiting to see if I was going to say anything. I fought the urge to start sobbing and managed another question. "What happened?"
