Notes: Set in Angel Season 1 (sometime between "Somnambulist" and "Prodigal") and Supernatural Season 6 (directly after "Live Free or Twihard")—with some changes to the canon to get them to mesh. For the most part, I'm using Buffyverse monster lore. Thanks for reading! I really appreciate all comments and critiques.

When the Impala passed within city limits, Dean forced a grin. "City of Angels," he said. "Sounds like a bad idea to me."

Sam stared at the road ahead. "It's a case."

"Right." Dean cranked up the stereo volume and listened to Jeffrey Lee Pierce sing about his passion for heroin. He knew it was pointless to make conversation, pretend that things were the same between them. That hadn't kept him from trying every day since Limestone. Better to struggle with the small shit than keep replaying the same few scenes in his head. The werewolf sinking its teeth into his neck. Sam pausing, watching, the hint of a smile on his lips.

Now Sam switched the music off. "We need to discuss strategy."

"What's there to talk about?" Dean's hands clenched on the wheel. "We play FBI, we find this bloodsucker, and we gank it. Aren't you all about simplicity these days?"

Silence stretched out for a minute. The outskirts of Los Angeles lay before them, all fast food signs and hotel chains. Dean had almost expected something different here. A more obvious dark side than they could find in any city across the country. Maybe he'd watched too much noir on hotel TVs as a kid, seen too many trenchcoated detectives crawling through the city's seedy underbelly.

It had its share of evil, sure. Otherwise they wouldn't have driven hundreds of miles to see a corpse with bite marks on its neck. But it looked like the same kind they faced everywhere, monsters crawling out of sewers, spilling blood. Right now, he was more scared of what his brother had become. Or what wore his skin.

"I need to know you're ready for this," Sam finally said. "That's all."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm worried about you, Dean." His tone was flat. "Your head hasn't been in the game lately. Maybe you should let me do the heavy lifting on this one."

A dry laugh burst from Dean's throat. "You're worried about my head. That's rich."

"I just mean—"

"And while you go and take care of our case, what am I supposed to do? Go to Disneyland?" He glanced over at Sam, who stared out the window, no expression on his face. He might've been planning how to betray Dean again. He might've been thinking about lunch. There was no way to tell. At least the Devil had laid all his cards on the table.

Sam shrugged. "Forget I said anything."

"Yeah, sure." Dean swerved across two lanes to make the turn-off. Somewhere out there stretched the Hollywood sign, the unimaginable houses of the rich and famous. They'd finish this case, he told himself. They'd kill the vampire. Then he'd figure out what to do about his brother.

. . .

Detective Kate Lockley was not having a good day. She had a case on her hands that nobody on the force was qualified to understand, much less put to rest. She had a pounding headache and a good idea who the killer was. The last thing she needed was a visit from the Feds.

The two men walked into the station around four in the afternoon. One looked like a hick, and the other had awful hair. "I'm Agent Holden, and this is Agent Beatty," the hair said, holding out his badge. "We're here about the Jane Doe you picked up on Tuesday."

"We're pretty far from D.C., Agents. You think this crosses state lines?" Kate wondered how many other officers across the country had covered up fang marks on bodies. Some of them had to slip through the cracks, end up on the desks of high-level criminal profilers.

The hick's brow wrinkled. "Afraid we're not at liberty to say."

"Well, then, I don't see how I can be of much help."

The hair smiled thinly. There was something cold about him, worse than she'd felt around any Fed before. "We'll just need to see the body."

"It's all yours. But I believe we have this case well in hand." Kate drained her coffee. She couldn't stand to look him in the eye any longer.

"With all due respect, Detective," the hair said, "isn't this the precinct where all the officers got high and opened the jail cells a few months ago?"

"That was an unfortunate accident," she said.

"I'm sure."

Behind his partner's back, the hick flashed her a sympathetic smile. So he was Nice Fed. The pair of them could star in a goddamn buddy cop movie. Kate foisted them off on her least favorite underling and headed into her office. As soon as she sat down, her hand reached for the key in the pocket of her jacket. Instinct now. She opened the drawer and pulled out the files, although she hardly needed to anymore. Whenever she closed her eyes, every sordid detail of Angel's kills scrolled through her head. Angelus's. She used to think there was a difference.

She flipped to the last few pages. They were filled with her own notes, everything she could remember from the times that she and Angel had talked. He had never given her much. Maybe he'd known that one day they'd be enemies. She ran a hand through her hair, greasy to the touch. Since the body had come in two days ago, Angel's little message to her, she hadn't bothered much with hygiene or sleep. It couldn't have been a coincidence that it turned up in her beat.

It was too bad about the Feds. There was a reason she didn't want to remember their names. Nobody who hunted Angelus came out of it alive. She just hoped that she could do some damage first.

. . .

The victim was a blonde woman, junkie thin, with needle scars tracing down her arms. In the morgue, while Sam inspected the body in unnerving detail, Dean leafed through the coroner's report. It looked like a typical vamp kill, apart from the cross on the cheek. Bloodsuckers weren't usually fans of those. He turned the page and found a set of photos of other corpses, earlier ones, each with the same cross cut in the skin. "Says here it's a copycat killer."

"Maybe," Sam said. "Or maybe the LAPD just doesn't know how to put down a vampire."

Dean nodded, then looked up at his brother. There hadn't been any surprise, or even curiosity, in his voice. "You knew about them," he said. "The other four murders."

Sam prodded at the bite mark on the woman's jugular.

"Did you know two months ago? When they were happening?"

"I was busy."

"You were busy." He couldn't keep the disbelief out of his voice. "You were busy. Too busy to send another hunter? To make sure it was taken care of?"

A muscle twitched in Sam's jaw. "Maybe you haven't noticed, but people are dying everywhere. We can't save them all." He tossed the sheet back over the corpse. "Besides, we're here now."

Dean turned away. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't say anything more. He'd made similar excuses himself for all the time he'd spent with Lisa and Ben. A stupid mistake. There was no way it ever could've worked out. The way she'd looked at him at the end—afraid. It stuck with him.

The scents of ammonia and death hung in the air. He tried to force his thoughts back to the case. Fear. There was something in that, something that hadn't registered before. "That lady cop," he said. "She seem kinda off to you?"

"I guess she was pretty uptight."

"She was scared," he said. "Dead scared. And angry. Could see it in her eyes."

"Yeah?" Sam stripped off his gloves and tossed them in the trash. "You work that angle. I'll go check out the place they found her."

Dean nodded. "Sounds like a plan." So Sam wanted him to take the backseat. He'd play along for now. It made his skin crawl just to stand next to him, knowing what he did. Some space between them and a talk with Bobby might be for the best. When they stepped out of the morgue together, he still felt the chill.