Dean and Sam found them in the basement.
The real kids.
Weak, scared, but alive.
They moved fast, breaking them out and getting them above ground before anything else could go wrong. By the time they stepped outside, the fire had already taken hold of the mother changeling.
The creature's death hit the others instantly—wherever they were, whatever houses they were hiding in, the copies started to burn out, the false forms collapsing as the link snapped.
Lisa saw it happen.
She stood frozen, watching the thing that looked like her son twist and burn, the illusion breaking apart into something inhuman. Panic hit her hard, confusion right behind it—
And then Dean stepped in, holding the real Ben as he brought him back to her.
She looked from one to the other, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
"Lisa, listen to me," Dean said, keeping his voice steady. "That wasn't your kid. Something took him… replaced him. This is the real Ben."
She didn't understand everything. But she understood enough.
She pulled Ben close and didn't let go.
Dean stepped back, giving them space.
***
Not long after, they regrouped.
Sam and Henry were already moving, tired, the weight of the day catching up now that it was over. They got the kids back where they needed to be.
Henry exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. "We should go. Before cops start asking questions we don't feel like answering."
Sam nodded. "This is going to get messy fast."
Dean took one last look toward Lisa's house, then turned away.
"Let's move."
They didn't wait around.
The next day,
They stopped at a gas station somewhere along the highway, the kind that hadn't changed in twenty years. Dean pulled up to the pump while Sam stepped out to fill the tank.
Henry headed inside, still carrying the tail end of last night's exhaustion. His body had healed, but everything felt just a little slower than usual.
He pushed into the restroom, splashed water on his face, and stayed there a moment longer than needed.
When he was done, he reached for the door.
The moment his hand touched the handle—
something burned.
Not heat. Sharper than that. Like something cutting through him rather than on him.
Henry yanked his hand back.
"What the—"
He looked down.
A black marking spread across the metal handle, like something scorching it from the inside out. It flickered—
Then white.
Blinding white.
It swallowed everything.
When Henry opened his eyes, he wasn't in the gas station anymore.
He was standing in a large underground space, air cold and still. Metal structures lined the walls—pipes, frames, things bolted together in ways that didn't look random. Not abandoned, but not right either.
It felt wrong.
Henry turned slowly, senses sharpening despite the confusion.
"Okay," he muttered. "Where the hell am I?"
No answer.
But there was a sound behind him. A shift. Subtle.
He turned.
A man stood there—or something that looked like one. It didn't move at first, just watched him. Then slowly its mouth opened.
Too wide.
Rows of sharp, uneven teeth, packed close together like a piranha's.
Henry's stance shifted immediately.
"Yeah," he said quietly, eyes locked on it. "Definitely not a gas station."
The thing moved first.
It lunged straight at him, fast and animalistic, jaws opening wider as it closed the distance.
Henry stepped aside at the last second, one hand snapping up to catch its head mid-motion. His grip locked in, and with a sharp twist, he turned—
The neck snapped. Violent. Not clean.
The body dropped.
Henry didn't look down.
Because he heard it. More movement. More than one. A low chorus of hisses and shifting footsteps echoed through the space, rising from deeper inside.
His expression tightened. "Great," he muttered. "Vampire nest."
Figures emerged from the shadows.
Not one. Not two. Dozens. Eyes catching the dim light, teeth flashing as they closed in.
Henry ran.
Too many to take head-on, not in this condition. Footsteps pounded behind him, fast and relentless. One lunged from the side—
He grabbed a metal rod off the wall without slowing, pivoted sharply, and swung. It crashed into the first vampire's face and sent it flying back into the others.
He didn't stop.
Another came in from the front. He drove the rod forward, the impact cracking hard against bone as Ether Mode flickered through his movements, just enough to stagger it.
Space. That's all he needed.
He pushed forward, weaving through the structure, buying seconds wherever he could as the sound of pursuit closed in behind him.
After a while, the noise died down.
Henry sat on one of the bodies, using it more like a chair than anything else. The concrete around him was littered with broken forms—faces smashed in, skulls caved, limbs bent wrong.
The hammer was still in his hand, coated in thick, dark blood that wasn't his. He wiped some off his cheek with the back of his wrist and exhaled slowly.
"This wasn't random," he muttered, looking around the space.
He leaned forward, resting the hammer across his knees.
"Someone dropped me straight into a vampire nest." He said it quietly, working through it. "That doesn't just happen."
His jaw tightened.
"Trap."
Because the way it happened—the moment his hand touched that handle, the pull, the shift—it wasn't luck.
Magic.
Henry frowned, running through possibilities. "Witch, maybe. They're the only ones who mess with space like that."
He paused. Then shook his head.
"No. I haven't pissed off any witch. Not enough for this."
*****
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