The Other Side Of Purgatory

Chapter Six

"I remember the night I was turned." It rolled unexpected from my tongue and it wasn't actually a lie. The memory had been working it's way from the dredges in my mind for the past few miles. Slowly, I'd been piecing together fragments until I had most of it. Klaus. Just thinking of him caused flares of hate and bitterness inside me. He was the oldest vampire I'd met and powerful, so powerful. But that was before...

"Turned? Like...?" and he used two fingers to point to his mouth then pulled them down in a fangs fashion, his eye brows arched.

"Yeah."

He shifted weight, then looked up and breathed deep. "Do you..." He purposefully stilled and his eyes found mine. "Do you need to talk about it?"

His offer hit me. He was obviously uncomfortable but he spent the last hundred miles telling me parts of his life story and it calmed me to see his effort. This man, he was trying to care about me. A vampire. Wasn't this interesting? I weighed for a moment, should I share this or not? But his expression softened and his eyes relaxed like he was actually open and I couldn't see brushing that off. This man was full of surprises and seemed to hit on my every soft spot because now I felt like I had to tell him just so it wouldn't hurt his feelings and somewhere in the back of my mind I wonered what kind of monster I'd become.

"I was a hunter." The complete surprise I'd expected was clear on his face and I felt a small satisfaction of causing that expression on him for once.

"Seriously?" He asked, eyebrows raised. When I nodded he asked "so this happened on a job."

I snorted. "Not exactly." My job had been to go to Mystic Falls and avenge my wife's death. Instead, I became friends with an alcoholic vampire, took on two teenagers - one of whom was a doppleganger - and got pulled into a whole world of weird. "The... She..." I started in earnest and I was trying but the words wouldn't string together and I was choking on them building up in my throat. He put his hand on my shoulder, that comforting burn, and said "It's okay. You don't have to. I'm here when you're ready."

I shook my head because no matter what this was something that he couldn't handle. "You wouldn't understand."

"You'd be surprised."

"No. This is something that you'd just have to experience to get it."

"I know," and he weighted the words. He let go of my shoulder, his hand reaching to toy with his blade.

"You know? What does that mean?"

"It means," he said, and I could see him turning into the annoyed older brother before my eyes, "That I've experienced it!"

Silence.

"I don't think I heard you right."

"Yeah," Dean chuckled, strained. "That wasn't awesome."

I could feel my jaw hanging slack and he was fidgeting. "That's not something you just come back from."

"We were hunting this nest and I got turned," he said, "So I got back to Sam and... I haven't told you about these guys yet but... Oh never mind that's not important. What matters is that we found an antidote. Like a cure. Only, it had to be taken before the first taste of blood. But we needed to get into this nest so... I didn't take the antidote. I let myself turn so we could get in. Then I destroyed the entire nest. I killed them all before anyone else could even come in to back me up. Then I took the antidote and let it clean me out."

He was messing with his blade, running his fingers along the broad side.

"There's a cure?" This man before me cured. Like a real life fucking fairy tale. There was no reason for me not to believe him, but I didn't want to.