I grinned, sliding onto a stool and letting Dean order me the Jack and Coke I'd promised him I would drink. As we waited, someone came up to the side of me that Dean wasn't on, running his hand down my back and settling his hand around my waist. I tensed up. I was pretty good at dealing with guys when they were monsters I had to kill, but human guys were different.
"Hey sweetie, how about you ditch the Ken doll and come dance with a guy who actually appreciates how good you look tonight?" he whispered in my ear, and I shivered out of fear, leaning instinctually towards Dean. I should have known he already would have had it covered.
Dean reached around behind me and took the guy's wrist, twisting it around so his arm was away from me and then getting off of his seat. He walked so he was a couple feet from the guy and let go of his wrist, glaring down at him. "I suggest you keep your hands off of her and leave her alone. Now."
The guy smiled smugly, one brow rising. "And if I don't?"
Dean smiled back at him. "Then I will gladly kick your teeth in."
The guy grinned with teeth, his canines elongating as his eyes turned black and veins spidered out over his cheekbones. I was guessing he'd meant to scare us, but it actually made him even less of a threat, and I couldn't help but half-smile. This guy thought he was tough and scary all because he was sporting a couple fangs. What sucked for him was that we were sporting a couple weapons.
"These teeth?" the guy asked, not noticing our complete lack of fear right away. The veins faded and his eyes turned back to normal in a millisecond, his fangs the last things to disappear. "Now, if you would, I'd like to dance with your girl." His pupils grew and shrunk rapidly, and I feared for the worst. Vampires could compel; there was nothing we could do to stop it except try to expect it and look away in time. Though looking away from a vampire was never a good thing.
Surprisingly, to both Dean and me, he remained unaffected and his grin widened. "Sorry, buddy, guess your vampire batteries are running low. You should get that compulsion checked out." Reaching inside his jacket for the stake I knew was there, Dean gave the guy a look that I would definitely have cringed under had it been directed at me. That was my queue, and I jumped off the stool, wedging myself between the two of them with my hands on Dean's chest.
"Dean, don't," I whispered in his ear, pushing his stake back into his jacket. "Not here. Calm down."
He looked at me like I was crazy. Was I seriously going to let a vampire just run away? Well, Dean, it wouldn't be the first one that happened to today. Sorry.
"I'm serious," I murmured. "Outside is a different story, but we can't make a scene. I'm fine, it's not like he hurt me. Don't get ahead of yourself."
He glanced over me at the guy. "You probably heard her, I guess we're taking this outside. Should I give you a head start?"
Judging by the confusion and then fear that spiked in the guy's eyes, I guessed he'd realized what Dean was, knowing that if he wanted to live he probably should have run away yesterday. He bolted, but the crowds were too thick. Dean was right behind him with me on his heels.
Outside was a different story, but Dean and I had tactics for chasing after monsters with superhuman speed, most of them involving the car, which we didn't have. I let him chase the guy out the front door and then ran to the back, praying it wasn't an emergency exit as I pushed it open.
I was in an alley behind the club, and I tried to close the door as quietly as possible behind me, picking up a broken beer bottle off the ground. I didn't have my sickle and a knife big enough to do more damage than my hands could would have stuck out of my boots, so I was unfortunately unarmed, but this wasn't supposed to be a hunt anyway. This was just supposed to be drinking and laughing and fun.
Moving around trash bags and broken bottles, I made it around the building just as the guy was turning. We would have collided had his reflexes not been way faster than mine, but not quite fast enough. Just as I moved to swing my bottle, Dean was behind him, and the tip of the stake burst out through his chest.
I sighed. That'd been easy.
Dean seemed to think the same thing, catching the guy as he started to fall. "If we hide him in the alley, the sun should get him before anyone finds him." I nodded, getting the guy's legs even though Dean was more than capable of carrying him himself. We put him in between stacks of moldy boxes and the Dumpster. "And I thought tonight wasn't going to be fun," I muttered, rubbing dirt from my hands off on the guy's pants. "Boy, was I wrong."
"That'll show any guy who hits on you and insults me in the same sentence," he joked, and I laughed. "I gotta say, though, I told you so."
"Yeah, yeah. You were right. Don't let it get to your already huge ego."
"Way too late for that."
I laughed and rolled my eyes, seeing the front door of the club and starting to jog towards it. Just as I was about to go in, Dean grabbed my arm, giving me a serious look.
"Let's get something straight before we go back in there. You're sticking with me, because all of this"--he waved toward the alley we'd just come out of--"isn't happening again."
I nodded. "Dean, you make me feel all tingly inside when you take control like that."
He started walking through the door, shaking his head. "Yeah, don't say that while you're wearing that."
The next hour was spent seeing who could down the most purple nurples in a minute, which ended up being about twenty minutes and then some. Dean won, obviously. I felt like puking after the first couple but made it through ten before almost falling off my chair.
The rest of the night was a blur of dancing and drinking and falling over, most of which I had a hard time remembering even a couple minutes after it happened, and I ran into people a bunch of times. I felt like Dean was laughing at me the whole time, but I didn't care. It felt like I'd never had this much fun, either with him or at all, and I wanted it to last. Dean decided at three in the morning, though, that the fact I wasn't really able to walk anymore wasn't a good thing, and he called Sammy. He was laughing through the whole phone call and while he walked me outside.
