Old Rebel Yeller-Chapter 6
Chapter 6 -- in all its full, immitigated glory.
Dscl: Kripke: 4 gazillion; BigPink: 0
Splrs: 0
STF: The Winchester brothers have a ‘lucky bullet’ that a Civil War era ghost wants back. He’s sending his possessed dog to hunt it down. Dean’s figured out that the dog can be killed by a holy-water filled bullet, which he’s going to make. Them’s the bones, here’s the meat:
--
Beau’s garage did little to inspire confidence in the whole bullet-making venture. It had about twenty-five different small firearms in various stages of deconstruction scattered across a central work table, several bundles of dried flowers and herbs hanging from the exposed wooden rafters, vats of evil-smelling dark liquids under one small window, and seven or eight red tins of turpentine positioned uncomfortably close to a blowtorch at rest. Sam was surprised Beau didn’t have them sign a waiver before stepping inside, because the whole thing looked as though it would blow sky-high if you just looked at it funny.
Which Sam was doing, of course. He’d come to a stop just inside the open rolling door, taking in the oily and acrid smells with an open mouth. Dean picked his way through the armory wreckage to the far corner where a two-burner stove and a kiln huddled together. Sam assumed that was the forging area. Beau had left them to explore the wooden garage; mindful of his ‘good’ clothes, the reenactor had run inside the bungalow to change into mysterious ‘bullet-making gear’. Probably not sold at Walmart, whatever it was.
Dean wasn’t heading for the forge after all, Sam noticed with relief - he was opening the beer fridge, which was a banged up Harvest Gold and stocked with beer from this century, some cheap wastewater brand, but blessedly coldish. Dean twisted off the caps, snapped them into the air with thumb and forefinger so that they flew through the drying vegetation, and handed Sam a sweaty bottled benediction. They stood outside the garage to enjoy the early evening breeze, leaned against the peeling clapboard. Sam held the beer to the side of his neck for one blissful minute before swallowing half of it in one long pull.
They said nothing for quite some time, as long as it took to finish the beers. Wordlessly, Sam took Dean’s empty bottle and put it in a cardboard case beside the fridge. He noticed a small cannon resting against the wall under some rusting license plates from Arkansas and Alabama and Mississippi, all dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The calendar nailed above was holding steady at September 1989, and advertised the services of a ‘sutler’ who guaranteed full satisfaction on all dry goods or money back. A framed Confederate bill rested on a horizontal 2x4 above the blowtorching area.
“Go ahead,” Dean said quietly, but he didn’t seem defeated, didn’t seem as though he was bracing himself for a chewing out. Just sounded as though he was...willing to talk. That would be a new one, Sam thought, smiling because his back was to Dean.
“Go ahead, what?” he asked, turning and arranging his expression to innocence.
Dean came a few steps into the garage, reached up and pulled the chain of the overhead light. Nothing happened. It wasn’t quite dusk, but it wasn’t far off - the sunlight came slanting in the window, touched everything in its path gold. “I didn’t tell you about the bullet.”
“No, you didn’t,” Sam verified.
“Beau told me what it was; I thought he was full of shit, until now.” It was close to an apology, which was not comfortable territory for Dean. “C’mon, for crying out loud, the trunk’s full of crap like this. You don’t have a fucking clue about half the stuff that’s in there.”
You know, Sam told himself, he’s right. The trunk is crammed with strange shit I don’t know enough about. But none of those things had caused a crazed golden Lab and a Confederate ghost to come looking for them, had caused five innocent people to be killed. And Dean kept the lucky bullet on his keychain, not in the trunk. It was too hot to argue, so Sam gave Dean a nod, which was returned. Standing next to the rumbling fridge, Sam lifted his shoulders to better move the sweat around, wondered if he should have another beer on an empty stomach.
“We should order a pizza,” he suggested instead, peering into one of the vats. “What the hell is this stuff?”
“Nineteenth century dye,” Beau said, coming into the garage, an aluminum foil wrapped plate in one hand. He looked disturbingly chipper, as though his day was just getting better and better. “Mix ‘em up to color some of the gear.” His nose wrinkled. “Nasty stuff. Wouldn’t breathe too deeply.”
He wore mechanic’s overalls, his hair caught back in a ponytail. In the light, he looked like an overcooked lobster. His nose was peeling. Sunscreen? Obviously only for farbs. “Mira’s sandwiches - think she made ‘em Thursday. Should still be good, right?”
“Depends. Have they seen the inside of a fridge?” Dean asked as they sat at the worktable and Beau shoved a couple of gun barrels and wooden stocks to one side. Sam hoped that the sandwiches weren’t tuna or egg, hoped even more that they wouldn’t add salmonella poisoning to the weekend’s adventures.
But the sandwiches were grilled vegetable and cheese and still reassuringly cold. Beau got a few more beers and cranked up the stove like a sick college prank. Tipping the bottle to his lips, he replaced the burned-out light bulb as Sam tried to think up a joke, but it was too fucking hot to even consider being funny. Making bullets with a beer in one hand and a blowtorch in the other: good times in the Virginia Piedmont. Yee-ha.
There were mosquitoes the size of dragonflies in the darker corners of the garage and they had always liked Sam better than Dean, a weird affliction right from birth. They seemed to prefer Beau as well, for he lit a mosquito coil, adding a new toxic delight to the general hillbilly ambiance.
Dean returned from the Impala with a supply of holy water and an older handgun that Sam had never seen before, not his preferred Glock, something more era-appropriate. Sam’s weapons skills were hardly anything to scoff at, but as he watched Dean melt the chunks of X-ray lab lead, heat the molds against the pot, stir the molten lead to send the slag to the pot’s edge, and widen the sprue hole on the plate with a drill so that bubbles wouldn’t form, Sam despaired at ever being able to do anything as well as Dean seemed to be able to do with one hand tied behind his back.
Dean threw the first bullets cast to one side, declaring them unfit. Beau nodded approvingly, and Sam realized that Dean was making it look easy. Beau examined Dean’s workmanship in the same way a prof would participate in a good student’s thesis defense, encouraging and non-interfering. Letting him shine.
Sweat dripped from Dean’s nose and he wiped his face on his shoulder. Both his hands were encased in thick leather gloves: the lead was heated to 620F and the equipment - tongs and molds and the pouring containers - was all hot and heavy and dangerous.
Sam discovered there was water in the fridge as well as beer, and opened a plastic bottle for each of them before he took a tall stool in the corner, near enough to the mosquito coil that the bugs wouldn’t bite him all that much, far enough that he wouldn’t need to breathe its carcinogenic fumes. Close enough to see exactly what his brother was doing.
Beau sidled up to where Sam sat, guzzling water in a way that made it drip from his beard. Somehow, it wasn’t as disturbing as Sam might have imagined. Dean, bent over the table, was concentrating so hard on the task at hand that Sam could probably have stripped naked and danced the Macarena before he’d look up. Not even then, maybe.
“Kinda scary, ain’t he?” Beau said quietly.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Sam replied, grinning. He glanced at Beau’s profile. “So, how’d you find it?”
Beau smiled slowly, though it didn’t quite touch those freaky eyes, took some more water in his mouth and swished it around before swallowing. He continued to concentrate on what Dean was doing. “Did some research. They got that memorial in the wrong place; Jackson was shot a few hundred yards from the cenotaph. Lots of first hand accounts of Stonewall getting shot, diaries and so forth, lots of inventories of what was on his person when he was brought to the doctor. Bullet had to be somewhere in the bush, I reckoned. I got it down to ten square yards. That’s good enough for a metal detector.” Then he did glance over to Sam and his smile was wolfish. “Don’t tell Mira.” He shrugged, leaned against the wall. “Your brother didn’t believe me, thought it was just a souvenir. I made a loop for his keychain so he wouldn’t lose it.”
Sam shook his head, finished the water, tossed the empty bottle into an incongruous blue box. “He doesn’t lose shit like that.” Something shifted in Beau’s clear eyes. “Why’d you give it to him?”
And Beau looked quickly away, which told Sam something. The reenactor smiled slightly, but it was bitter. “Had us a bit of an argument.”
“You gave him something you thought was unlucky?” Jesus, Sam thought. “Something that you thought killed Stonewall Jackson?” He kept his voice down, barely.
“No,” Beau whispered, shocked. “I’d never do that. The opposite: it seemed like it would be lucky for Dean. And unlucky for me. That fucking thing has shifty luck.” That softly, like admitting a superstition vaguely like walking under a ladder or throwing salt. “When I saw that ghost, saw that dog, I knew we needed it back here. So I phoned.”
Sam let out a long breath, felt anger sizzle through his veins like a circuit had been completed and powered up. Beau had played with fire, and used Dean as his firewall. Still, Dean wouldn’t thank Sam for pointing it out, not when he’d been carrying that bullet for three years without incident - well, if you didn’t count the usual weird shit that happened to them - and not when Sam hadn’t been around at the time to help with any decisions about whether to accept the loaded gift or not.
Beau was back to watching Dean. And what he was doing was compelling enough that Sam watched too.
Dean squeezed the handles of the hot mold in his left hand and gave the mold a sharp smack with a wooden mallet before opening it up. Finally, he cast a few balls that seemed to satisfy him. Dropping them to tin basin, he let them cool while he grabbed an empty pot from the stack on the shelf. Beau, who had gone back to making more bullets for his own gun, looked up quickly. Sam watched Dean pull out his keychain from his front pocket and slide off the lucky bullet. He placed it into the small heavy pot, where it landed with a dull clank.
Beau’s face was impassive, but flushed. Might have been sunburn, but Sam thought Beau’s naturally lazy voice sounded unusually tight; not surprising. “You sure, pard?” he asked.
Dean nodded once, determined, put the pot onto the hot surface of the stove. “More useful this way. Just in case,” he said, slid a look to Sam, who shrugged. If Dean thought it best to melt that sucker down, who was he to argue?
While Jackson’s lucky bullet was melting, Dean picked up the hollow bullets he’d just cast and turned them over in his fingers. He examined them for rough edges, then took his handgun and a Enfield rifle that Beau had said Sam could use and laid them on the table. He made sure the bullets slid cleanly down the bore of the rifle and fit into the breech of the pistol. After sizing, he removed them from the weapons, and set them on some putty Beau had, hollow end up. He asked Sam to pass him the holy water and he filled the cooled bullets with a dropper, a miniscule amount. Sam was unaware of the correct possessed animal to holy water ratio; he hoped the few drops would be enough. Dean capped them off with a tiny bit of lead solder that looked like the sort used to join stained glass. Then he weighed them on the electronic scales that Beau had next to a ‘Daughters of the Confederacy’ tea towel tacked to the wall.
Beau peered over Dean’s shoulder, mouth set in a serious line. “Pretty damn light,” he said.
Dean sighed, and Sam could tell he was worried. Sam wished he knew more about this.
“Range’ll be shit with those,” Beau continued.
“I know,” Dean agreed, a little bit of testiness creeping into his voice. “We never see the fucking dog until she’s on top of us anyway.”
“You’ll get one shot, then,” Beau sighed with some finality. “Best make it count.”
“I’ve made a few extra bullets. One of us’ll plug that damn dog.” He gestured to a small box on the worktable beside Sam; it was overflowing with papers and an old coffee canister with a piece of peeling masking tape, the word ‘blackpowder’ written on it black marker. “Sam, you know how to wrap a paper cartridge?”
Sam didn’t and was willing to admit it. So Dean showed him how to fold the paper, funnel in the right proportion of powder, drop in the holy-water filled bullet and twist the end. Sam got pretty good at it by the twentieth one.
Dean watched him for a few minutes, then reached across, took a paper and put a penciled X on it. He took that to his side of the table as Beau looked at the small pot that Dean had set on the burner. He gave the pot a little stir. “This looks ready. Same mold?”
Dean nodded, then cast Jackson’s lucky bullet from a keychain ornament back into something that would kill. Wrapped that one himself.
--
Beau dropped the duffle bag onto the middle of the living room parquet; it contained dark blue woolen trousers, a cotton pearl-buttoned shirt that had once been white, and a jacket that might have fit a dieting Kentucky jockey. The sleeves came halfway up Sam’s forearms, and it wouldn’t meet across his chest, which lucky on two fronts: half the buttons were missing, and it was a woolen jacket on a steamy summer evening in Virginia. Sam kept staring at Dean, imploring him to call a halt to whatever practical joke he was perpetrating.
“I don’t really have to...” he petitioned one last time, hoping he’d make them see reason. He stood in Beau’s living room, which also seemed to serve as a bedroom, dining room and kitchen, feeling like an organ grinder’s monkey.
“Dog goes for the Feds, especially if Jubal’s there,” Beau muttered, moving a button on the side of the itchy trousers so that they didn’t cut Sam in two. “So if you’re wanting young Sammy here to be the bait, this is the best I can do.” He looked up at Sam, eyes glittering. “You look good in blue.”
“It’s Sam,” he muttered under his breath, the full ramifications of the word ‘futile’ becoming painfully clear.
Dean leaned against the television set - a vintage cabinet floor model from the mid-1960s - with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He was nursing another sweating beer, this one from the more efficient fridge in Beau’s bungalow. The pistol, loaded up with a holy water bullet, was jammed in his waistband.
“Sorry, Sam,” he said, and Sam heard just enough in those two words to understand that Dean wasn’t sorry in the least, “but we need to distract Jubal and we need to bait Buttercup. Jackson’s bullet,” and he tapped his front pocket where the bullet was nestled in a paper cartridge, “will do for Buttercup, but we want to confuse Jubal enough that he’s not going to addle the rest of us into blasting each other to smithereens.”
“So both Jubal and the dog are going to go for me?” Sam asked. “And I get a holy water bullet as well, don’t I?”
Dean smiled at this, handing him Beau’s Enfield. “Of course. Wouldn’t leave you defenseless.”
Sam took the gun, but wasn’t convinced. “If you want me to be bait, I have to have the bullet, Dean. Jackson’s bullet.” Before Buttercup had got trapped in the Impala, they’d already had one shoving match over it; Sam wasn’t anxious for another one, but he if he was bait, might as go all the way.
“Technically, Jubal Garrett’s bullet,” Beau corrected, cutting the button’s thread with his teeth and motioning Sam to turn around so he could look at his handiwork. “You think burning it with Jubal’s bones will do the trick?”
“Won’t be able to find out till tomorrow,” Dean replied, draining the beer. “Might just shoot him with it tonight if push comes to shove.”
Sam snorted. “Yeah, but if that didn’t work, we’d never find the bullet again - unless we shot him against a tree or something and dug out the bullet again afterwards.” He glanced at Dean, who grinned suddenly. Jesus, Dean was winding him up: How many Confederate ghosts does it take to change a light bulb, Sam? Get back to me on that one.
“I don’t see you in uniform, Dean.”
“I’m not the bait, Sam.”
“Jubal seems to get a little freaked out when he sees civilians,” Beau piped up, the overalls unzipped to his waist, hanging down, only a white cotton undershirt on, his arms ropey and tattooed. Rebel flags, Tasmanian Devil. A couple of scars. Been fighting the same sort of battles the Winchesters had, and Sam ought not to forget that. “You might reconsider, Dean. This is the only Yankee outfit I have, but there’s plenty of gray gear, nice butternut field jacket with...”
Dean sighed. “I’m not wearing those colors,” he said, voice soft. He glanced at Sam, who couldn’t tell what was going on behind the shuttered gaze.
“It’d be authentic as all hell,” Beau persisted.
Dean said nothing, but that look had come into his eyes, and Sam recognized it, however infrequently it surfaced. A stick of dynamite wasn’t going to budge him. A flicker of contact, and Dean’s eye caught Sam’s, only for a second, but it was enough: no gray while Sam had blue on his back, not on this side of hell.
A long, uncomfortable moment passed.
“Do I have to wear the hat?” Sam asked, breaking the suddenly charged atmosphere of the fetid room. The Union kepi was tiny, meant for a pinheaded drummer boy.
“You always did have a freakishly large skull,” his brother muttered. “C’mon, Beau, get your gear on and let’s go. I gotta dog to kill.”
Sam held out his hand, and Dean stared at him. That look was also painfully known: Sam was causing him worry and Dean was trying to hide that fact. Dean grabbed his sleeve and jammed the paper cartridge containing Jackson’s bullet into Sam’s open hand. He told Sam not to use it if he didn’t have to - even if Jubal Garrett was standing in front of a tree -- that just having it would be enough.
Thankful for the trust, Sam nodded to Dean, but his brother wasn’t looking at him, was already out the door into the marginally cooler night, bugs and all. The boots fit, at least, Sam thought, but he left the hat sitting on the chair.
__
The bushes rattled in front of them, but it was only the wind.
It was fully dark now, and a breeze had picked up, blowing the warm air around in a way that Dean appreciated. He made sure his canvas side bag was filled with water bottles; Sam would probably underestimate how hot it got on Virginia evening even at night, especially when you were wearing wool. Because no one in their right fucking minds wore wool at this time of year. Only Beau and his hardcores. Full-blown nutcases, all of them.
The NPS battlefield had been locked up when they got back with the bullets, but that served as no matter to the brothers and Beau, who had jumped the fence and covered the distance between empty parking lot and visitor center without seeing anyone. Beau guessed aloud that his boys would be bivouacked in the location they’d scouted earlier in the day. Beau was familiar as all hell with this battlefield; it was his favorite, the location of the losing of the beloved ‘Lost Cause’, more so than even Gettysburg, Dean knew. Chancellorsville proved how superior the intellect and strategy of the South was, how it was only numbers that gave the Union its edge. All bullshit, Dean reasoned, following the dark forms of Beau and his tall brother, eyes constantly moving to the bushes.
Dean wasn’t about to burden Sam with all that. And he certainly wasn’t about to let him carry the bullet that would draw that fucking dog right to him. He’d given Sam a holy-water bullet, not Jackson’s one; that was still in his pocket. Dean was planning to shoot Buttercup himself, didn’t want Sam to have to do it. He knew himself to be capable of killing a kid’s dog, just the same as he knew a little bit of Sam would die if the younger man had to do it. That bit of Dean had been gone for so long he barely remembered it.
All in all, better if he did it.
The 22nd Virginians were exactly where Beau said they’d be, tucked into a narrow fold between two hills, a small fire going, the scent of woodsmoke and slightly rancid bacon reaching them before the sound of voices. Beau let out a low whistle, and Riddicker stood up, musket to his shoulder.
“Evening, pards,” Beau said, coming forward into the firelight. “Got us a Yankee prisoner.”
Dean hadn’t bothered telling Sam that part of the plan.
“Well, maybe we’ll take an oath from you, son, regarding your good conduct. Otherwise we might have to take your rifle and tie you up.” Riddicker was at least as tall as Sam, got right up into his face which, given the general hygiene of the troops, wasn’t likely all that pleasant. Think of swimming, Sammy, Dean thought.
“Uh,” Sam grunted. “I promise not to shoot you?”
Riddicker didn’t move an inch. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I’ll use this weapon to protect you and your men,” and that was getting nods, “and I won’t run off at the first sign of the Union coming to kick your ass.”
Loud friendly whoops. Dean grinned, surprised.
“Had something to eat, soldiers?” one of the others asked, poking the bacon with a bayonet.
Oh yeah, Beau, tell them about the roasted eggplant and zucchini sandwich. As a civilian in full farb gear, Dean was ignored, though Riddicker met his eyes once and nodded slightly. Sam sat on an overturned stump, asked aloud where their tent was. The men all laughed and Sam shut up.
Dean quietly slipped into the shadows, throwing a nod to Beau, who also drew away from the fire, but on the opposite side. Before he left, Dean glanced at the slightly cheerier Sam, noting that at least his brother had his rifle by his side - these idiots wouldn’t actually try to take it from him, would they? - and walked a few feet into the woods. He wouldn’t go far - shit, he’d seen what the dog had done to Tim - but he didn’t want to be blinded by the fire, either. He could hear the fire chat behind him, heard Sam’s voice join in. Slowly, his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Sam’s low voice rumbled something Dean didn’t catch, and was followed by a burst of quick laughter all around.
That reminded him of something. He took out his cell phone and punched the speed dial. Not too far away, he heard the familiar refrain of the Battle Hymn of the Republic beeping out in dulcet ringtone. He started to laugh silently, imagining Sam’s face.
He was about to hang up when he saw the glowing eyes in the underbrush across a short clearing, and the night turned cold. Maybe he shouldn’t have walked quite this far. The connection on the other phone was made and Dean hissed a heartfelt, “Shit!” before dropping the phone and bringing up his pistol.
--
Oh, he seems so happy, and Buttercup paused for a moment. It was the happy that stopped her, it was so unfamiliar. Hand on head, hunger. And happy. It’s right there, girl. Just you go get it. Have yourself a good -
And she was fast now, gone was all the weight that had slowed her down before. She’d caught a squirrel just this morning and it had tasted as good as she’d always known it would. Fast enough that when the wiggly one finally looked up, she was already moving.
One leap, two, and he was under her, not so soft as all that, and strong, and so very mobile, but she was a squirrel-killer now, don’t forget that, buster. So she twisted out of the way as the shot sailed past her right ear, close enough that she felt heat. Ah ha! Not so fucking quick now, are we? And found what she was looking for, in the damn pocket again, that would take some getting at. But like the squirrel, the catching of it was half the fun.
She went right for it, took a long deep bite, felt the blood oozing around her mouth, so warm and so alive, so full of possibility. Life all around her, nothing but wild, nothing but hunger and need and blood. Again it was right there, for goodness sake, in some kind of little wrapper now, but she was distracted by the blood and the fucking wiggling.
A hand came between her mouth and what her master asked her to get, and that was a very, very bad place for that hand to be. She knew what to do with a human hand, after all. She knew what to do with that shit.
And still, this fucker’s trying to get her off. Can’t blame him, really. There. Right there. Go for it, girl, a whisper in her ear and everything was going to be okay.
--
Oh god, Sam thought, patting his clothing for wherever his brother - his fucking juvenile, asinine, miscreant, absent brother - had hidden his cell phone. He found it in Dean’s bag among the water bottles. He couldn’t even look at the other men, felt his face flush crimson. By all that was holy, he was going to kill Dean -
He snapped open the phone. “Shit!” was all that Sam heard before the sound of single gunshot rang out from the woods and the ghost of Jubal Garrett appeared next to the fire as solid as the hardtack Riddicker spat out as he came to his feet.
Jubal’s eyes were on Sam and his blood ran cold; he could feel it as though his heart was suddenly pumping icewater. The Confederates by the fire all joined Riddicker, all brought their weapons up, even as Sam’s fingers lingered on the barrel of his loaned Enfield. All pointed their fucking primed rifles at him. Oh god, Sam thought. They’re going to kill me.
Above his thudding heart, he could hear the sounds of the dog, and one abbreviated human scream of pain. He had but one bullet, his brother, and he had used it and that dog wasn’t stopping.
Beau’s troops and the ghost beside them ceased to matter for Sam. Picking up his holy water-loaded rifle, he looked for Beau, couldn’t find him. “Beau,” he whispered harshly.
At the same moment, Beau burst into the circle around the fire and knocked Riddicker’s gun barrel so it was pointing to the ground. Jubal disappeared in the instant between one blink and the next.
“To me!” Beau shouted, turning to the sound of the dog’s snarls, and running towards them, long hair flying gold in the firelight. Sam was just behind him, ran fire-blinded into the woods, saw the edge of the ghost for a moment, wondered why the fucking dog hadn’t come for him first.
And knew, of course. Fuck Dean, oh god, if he wasn’t dead already, Sam was going to -
They converged at the same spot, he and Beau, to see Dean on the ground, his hands around the dog’s neck, teeth snapping dangerously close to his face. The light was terrible, a cloudy night hazy with heat, and the dog was moving, twisting like it was being electrocuted. The sound of it was incredible.
Beau was fast, was a hunter like them, and was accustomed to running and shooting antique guns, did it every weekend. He lifted his rifle as though it were an extension of his arm, like an Olympic athlete pulling back a javelin, only he brought it up under his chin and fired.
Did not miss.
--
Between my teeth for just a second, hard, bitter with gunpowder, but that did not matter, for it was also slick with blood. Fuck, but this guy’s strong. They usually stopped wiggling if you ripped open their throat. Best try that, because there were benefits in terms of the blood. Hold fucking still, asshole. Just THERE. Fuck you, squirmy --
She never heard the shot that killed her.
--
The adrenaline in his system was so extreme he actually sat up to push Buttercup off him, then got to his feet. He didn’t feel a thing, only a ringing in his ears, and a strange electric current that buzzed along his nerve endings, like he’d been running for a long time, long enough to see spots and smash through the proverbial wall.
He stared down at the dog, lying on her side, nothing but skin and bones. Her muzzle was covered in foam and blood. Shit. He felt around for the bullet, tried to go for his pocket, but his hand wasn’t working quite the way it ought to, and his pocket seemed torn to shreds. Oh, it wasn’t just the pocket torn to shreds, great.
And promptly passed out.
--
Sam caught him before he hit the ground. Between Beau and Riddicker, they carried Dean to the fireside, where he became alert enough to swear at them.
“For fuck’s sake, put me down! It was a dog, not a damn werewolf.” It was an indication of his diminished mental capacities that he was raving about werewolves in front of non-hunters, Sam noted.
“What? Just a flesh wound?” Sam said calmly. “Lie down, let me have a look.”
“Uh, actually,” Riddicker said at Sam’s shoulder, somewhat sheepishly, “I’m a doctor.”
“What?” Sam asked, head snapping up. “What, like a horse-surgeon? You do trepanning or something?” And an indication of how worried he was that he was sniping at someone who was a comrade, more or less. Less, if he counted the fact that Riddicker had pulled bead on him not five minutes ago.
“Nah, Yankee Doodle, an honest-to-god emergency room doctor. How the hell d’ya think I got into this in the first place?” Grinned through the animal beard. Sam shifted himself so he was by Dean’s head. Which was, all things considered, actually placing himself directly in the line of fire.
Still, he had something to say to Dean and wanted to get to it before Dean could start cracking wise.
“You kept the fucking bullet, didn’t you?” He watched the myriad signs that Dean was holding back a shrug: twitch of the shoulders, licked lips, quick blink. Instead of giving in to the shrug, Dean winced as Riddicker used his bacon-greased bayonet to slice open the jeans from ankle to fly.
“Bullet cartridge still there, Riddicker?” Dean asked. “Should be in my right pocket.”
Riddicker tossed a soggy paper cartridge, red with blood, onto Dean’s chest. “Today’s your lucky day, Winchester,” he replied. “A couple more inches and that mutt woulda had your femoral artery and we wouldn’t be having us this pleasant conversation.” He sighed. “You’ll need some stitches. I’m usually pretty hardcore about everything, but not this. God alone knows where that dog’s mouth’s been. And if it’s really rabid I have some particularly bad news about a series of inoculations you’re going to become acquainted with. Your hand’s been used as a chew toy, too. Wiggle your fingers for me?”
Dean waved at Riddicker, who grinned back.
“Super hardcore, pard.” Riddicker turned to Beau. “Sam’s got a phone in his bag there. Give 911 a call, would you? You gotta GPS on that thing as well as a pretty ringtone?” The century-switch was dizzying. Sam nodded, and heard Beau chatting calmly to an operator.
Riddicker asked one of the other men to bring some light over and a lantern was lit. The bearded man raised his eyebrows to Dean, who was laughing. “Permission to use 21st century medicine?”
“Hell, yes,” Sam answered for him, staring hard at Dean’s sliver grin, wishing he could find something to wipe it away with.
“Lucky me,” Dean said, shifting his gaze to the cartridge. Riddicker mixed the contents of an envelope from the first aid kit into a bottle of purified water. As the field surgeon irrigated the deep slashes in Dean’s thigh, the grin faded and Sam felt a twinge of guilt. Dean swallowed audibly. “Hey, is thigh white meat or dark?”
Sam shook his head, didn’t know whether he was angry or in awe. “Unsure. It all tastes like chicken though.” And that made Dean laugh again, as was intended. “Want me to hold on to that?” Sam suggested lamely, pointing to the cartridge in his brother’s hand.
“What? You’re not the one who single-handedly fought off the rabid beast.”
“Okay, why is it a family dog when I have to deal with it, but when you...”
Dean’s mouth twisted in pain as Riddicker packed the wound with gauze, and Sam shut up. “My lucky bullet now,” Dean whispered. “I’d like to see Jubal fuck-face Garrett try to take it away.”
Oh just perfect. Dean now had a blood feud going with a ghost.
--
TBC
a/n: This story wouldn’t see the light of day without Lemmypie and jmm0001 (over at Fanfic land). Or, it would, but it would read like this: “One day, Dean thot about tring to maek some bullits. Dint work awl that well. The End.” And it wouldn’t be funny. So you should all be as thankful as I am. One day, I’m going to publish the email correspondence we had about ‘lucky pullets’. And Lemmypie? Saving the white meat for you.
Dscl: Kripke: 4 gazillion; BigPink: 0
Splrs: 0
STF: The Winchester brothers have a ‘lucky bullet’ that a Civil War era ghost wants back. He’s sending his possessed dog to hunt it down. Dean’s figured out that the dog can be killed by a holy-water filled bullet, which he’s going to make. Them’s the bones, here’s the meat:
--
Beau’s garage did little to inspire confidence in the whole bullet-making venture. It had about twenty-five different small firearms in various stages of deconstruction scattered across a central work table, several bundles of dried flowers and herbs hanging from the exposed wooden rafters, vats of evil-smelling dark liquids under one small window, and seven or eight red tins of turpentine positioned uncomfortably close to a blowtorch at rest. Sam was surprised Beau didn’t have them sign a waiver before stepping inside, because the whole thing looked as though it would blow sky-high if you just looked at it funny.
Which Sam was doing, of course. He’d come to a stop just inside the open rolling door, taking in the oily and acrid smells with an open mouth. Dean picked his way through the armory wreckage to the far corner where a two-burner stove and a kiln huddled together. Sam assumed that was the forging area. Beau had left them to explore the wooden garage; mindful of his ‘good’ clothes, the reenactor had run inside the bungalow to change into mysterious ‘bullet-making gear’. Probably not sold at Walmart, whatever it was.
Dean wasn’t heading for the forge after all, Sam noticed with relief - he was opening the beer fridge, which was a banged up Harvest Gold and stocked with beer from this century, some cheap wastewater brand, but blessedly coldish. Dean twisted off the caps, snapped them into the air with thumb and forefinger so that they flew through the drying vegetation, and handed Sam a sweaty bottled benediction. They stood outside the garage to enjoy the early evening breeze, leaned against the peeling clapboard. Sam held the beer to the side of his neck for one blissful minute before swallowing half of it in one long pull.
They said nothing for quite some time, as long as it took to finish the beers. Wordlessly, Sam took Dean’s empty bottle and put it in a cardboard case beside the fridge. He noticed a small cannon resting against the wall under some rusting license plates from Arkansas and Alabama and Mississippi, all dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The calendar nailed above was holding steady at September 1989, and advertised the services of a ‘sutler’ who guaranteed full satisfaction on all dry goods or money back. A framed Confederate bill rested on a horizontal 2x4 above the blowtorching area.
“Go ahead,” Dean said quietly, but he didn’t seem defeated, didn’t seem as though he was bracing himself for a chewing out. Just sounded as though he was...willing to talk. That would be a new one, Sam thought, smiling because his back was to Dean.
“Go ahead, what?” he asked, turning and arranging his expression to innocence.
Dean came a few steps into the garage, reached up and pulled the chain of the overhead light. Nothing happened. It wasn’t quite dusk, but it wasn’t far off - the sunlight came slanting in the window, touched everything in its path gold. “I didn’t tell you about the bullet.”
“No, you didn’t,” Sam verified.
“Beau told me what it was; I thought he was full of shit, until now.” It was close to an apology, which was not comfortable territory for Dean. “C’mon, for crying out loud, the trunk’s full of crap like this. You don’t have a fucking clue about half the stuff that’s in there.”
You know, Sam told himself, he’s right. The trunk is crammed with strange shit I don’t know enough about. But none of those things had caused a crazed golden Lab and a Confederate ghost to come looking for them, had caused five innocent people to be killed. And Dean kept the lucky bullet on his keychain, not in the trunk. It was too hot to argue, so Sam gave Dean a nod, which was returned. Standing next to the rumbling fridge, Sam lifted his shoulders to better move the sweat around, wondered if he should have another beer on an empty stomach.
“We should order a pizza,” he suggested instead, peering into one of the vats. “What the hell is this stuff?”
“Nineteenth century dye,” Beau said, coming into the garage, an aluminum foil wrapped plate in one hand. He looked disturbingly chipper, as though his day was just getting better and better. “Mix ‘em up to color some of the gear.” His nose wrinkled. “Nasty stuff. Wouldn’t breathe too deeply.”
He wore mechanic’s overalls, his hair caught back in a ponytail. In the light, he looked like an overcooked lobster. His nose was peeling. Sunscreen? Obviously only for farbs. “Mira’s sandwiches - think she made ‘em Thursday. Should still be good, right?”
“Depends. Have they seen the inside of a fridge?” Dean asked as they sat at the worktable and Beau shoved a couple of gun barrels and wooden stocks to one side. Sam hoped that the sandwiches weren’t tuna or egg, hoped even more that they wouldn’t add salmonella poisoning to the weekend’s adventures.
But the sandwiches were grilled vegetable and cheese and still reassuringly cold. Beau got a few more beers and cranked up the stove like a sick college prank. Tipping the bottle to his lips, he replaced the burned-out light bulb as Sam tried to think up a joke, but it was too fucking hot to even consider being funny. Making bullets with a beer in one hand and a blowtorch in the other: good times in the Virginia Piedmont. Yee-ha.
There were mosquitoes the size of dragonflies in the darker corners of the garage and they had always liked Sam better than Dean, a weird affliction right from birth. They seemed to prefer Beau as well, for he lit a mosquito coil, adding a new toxic delight to the general hillbilly ambiance.
Dean returned from the Impala with a supply of holy water and an older handgun that Sam had never seen before, not his preferred Glock, something more era-appropriate. Sam’s weapons skills were hardly anything to scoff at, but as he watched Dean melt the chunks of X-ray lab lead, heat the molds against the pot, stir the molten lead to send the slag to the pot’s edge, and widen the sprue hole on the plate with a drill so that bubbles wouldn’t form, Sam despaired at ever being able to do anything as well as Dean seemed to be able to do with one hand tied behind his back.
Dean threw the first bullets cast to one side, declaring them unfit. Beau nodded approvingly, and Sam realized that Dean was making it look easy. Beau examined Dean’s workmanship in the same way a prof would participate in a good student’s thesis defense, encouraging and non-interfering. Letting him shine.
Sweat dripped from Dean’s nose and he wiped his face on his shoulder. Both his hands were encased in thick leather gloves: the lead was heated to 620F and the equipment - tongs and molds and the pouring containers - was all hot and heavy and dangerous.
Sam discovered there was water in the fridge as well as beer, and opened a plastic bottle for each of them before he took a tall stool in the corner, near enough to the mosquito coil that the bugs wouldn’t bite him all that much, far enough that he wouldn’t need to breathe its carcinogenic fumes. Close enough to see exactly what his brother was doing.
Beau sidled up to where Sam sat, guzzling water in a way that made it drip from his beard. Somehow, it wasn’t as disturbing as Sam might have imagined. Dean, bent over the table, was concentrating so hard on the task at hand that Sam could probably have stripped naked and danced the Macarena before he’d look up. Not even then, maybe.
“Kinda scary, ain’t he?” Beau said quietly.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Sam replied, grinning. He glanced at Beau’s profile. “So, how’d you find it?”
Beau smiled slowly, though it didn’t quite touch those freaky eyes, took some more water in his mouth and swished it around before swallowing. He continued to concentrate on what Dean was doing. “Did some research. They got that memorial in the wrong place; Jackson was shot a few hundred yards from the cenotaph. Lots of first hand accounts of Stonewall getting shot, diaries and so forth, lots of inventories of what was on his person when he was brought to the doctor. Bullet had to be somewhere in the bush, I reckoned. I got it down to ten square yards. That’s good enough for a metal detector.” Then he did glance over to Sam and his smile was wolfish. “Don’t tell Mira.” He shrugged, leaned against the wall. “Your brother didn’t believe me, thought it was just a souvenir. I made a loop for his keychain so he wouldn’t lose it.”
Sam shook his head, finished the water, tossed the empty bottle into an incongruous blue box. “He doesn’t lose shit like that.” Something shifted in Beau’s clear eyes. “Why’d you give it to him?”
And Beau looked quickly away, which told Sam something. The reenactor smiled slightly, but it was bitter. “Had us a bit of an argument.”
“You gave him something you thought was unlucky?” Jesus, Sam thought. “Something that you thought killed Stonewall Jackson?” He kept his voice down, barely.
“No,” Beau whispered, shocked. “I’d never do that. The opposite: it seemed like it would be lucky for Dean. And unlucky for me. That fucking thing has shifty luck.” That softly, like admitting a superstition vaguely like walking under a ladder or throwing salt. “When I saw that ghost, saw that dog, I knew we needed it back here. So I phoned.”
Sam let out a long breath, felt anger sizzle through his veins like a circuit had been completed and powered up. Beau had played with fire, and used Dean as his firewall. Still, Dean wouldn’t thank Sam for pointing it out, not when he’d been carrying that bullet for three years without incident - well, if you didn’t count the usual weird shit that happened to them - and not when Sam hadn’t been around at the time to help with any decisions about whether to accept the loaded gift or not.
Beau was back to watching Dean. And what he was doing was compelling enough that Sam watched too.
Dean squeezed the handles of the hot mold in his left hand and gave the mold a sharp smack with a wooden mallet before opening it up. Finally, he cast a few balls that seemed to satisfy him. Dropping them to tin basin, he let them cool while he grabbed an empty pot from the stack on the shelf. Beau, who had gone back to making more bullets for his own gun, looked up quickly. Sam watched Dean pull out his keychain from his front pocket and slide off the lucky bullet. He placed it into the small heavy pot, where it landed with a dull clank.
Beau’s face was impassive, but flushed. Might have been sunburn, but Sam thought Beau’s naturally lazy voice sounded unusually tight; not surprising. “You sure, pard?” he asked.
Dean nodded once, determined, put the pot onto the hot surface of the stove. “More useful this way. Just in case,” he said, slid a look to Sam, who shrugged. If Dean thought it best to melt that sucker down, who was he to argue?
While Jackson’s lucky bullet was melting, Dean picked up the hollow bullets he’d just cast and turned them over in his fingers. He examined them for rough edges, then took his handgun and a Enfield rifle that Beau had said Sam could use and laid them on the table. He made sure the bullets slid cleanly down the bore of the rifle and fit into the breech of the pistol. After sizing, he removed them from the weapons, and set them on some putty Beau had, hollow end up. He asked Sam to pass him the holy water and he filled the cooled bullets with a dropper, a miniscule amount. Sam was unaware of the correct possessed animal to holy water ratio; he hoped the few drops would be enough. Dean capped them off with a tiny bit of lead solder that looked like the sort used to join stained glass. Then he weighed them on the electronic scales that Beau had next to a ‘Daughters of the Confederacy’ tea towel tacked to the wall.
Beau peered over Dean’s shoulder, mouth set in a serious line. “Pretty damn light,” he said.
Dean sighed, and Sam could tell he was worried. Sam wished he knew more about this.
“Range’ll be shit with those,” Beau continued.
“I know,” Dean agreed, a little bit of testiness creeping into his voice. “We never see the fucking dog until she’s on top of us anyway.”
“You’ll get one shot, then,” Beau sighed with some finality. “Best make it count.”
“I’ve made a few extra bullets. One of us’ll plug that damn dog.” He gestured to a small box on the worktable beside Sam; it was overflowing with papers and an old coffee canister with a piece of peeling masking tape, the word ‘blackpowder’ written on it black marker. “Sam, you know how to wrap a paper cartridge?”
Sam didn’t and was willing to admit it. So Dean showed him how to fold the paper, funnel in the right proportion of powder, drop in the holy-water filled bullet and twist the end. Sam got pretty good at it by the twentieth one.
Dean watched him for a few minutes, then reached across, took a paper and put a penciled X on it. He took that to his side of the table as Beau looked at the small pot that Dean had set on the burner. He gave the pot a little stir. “This looks ready. Same mold?”
Dean nodded, then cast Jackson’s lucky bullet from a keychain ornament back into something that would kill. Wrapped that one himself.
--
Beau dropped the duffle bag onto the middle of the living room parquet; it contained dark blue woolen trousers, a cotton pearl-buttoned shirt that had once been white, and a jacket that might have fit a dieting Kentucky jockey. The sleeves came halfway up Sam’s forearms, and it wouldn’t meet across his chest, which lucky on two fronts: half the buttons were missing, and it was a woolen jacket on a steamy summer evening in Virginia. Sam kept staring at Dean, imploring him to call a halt to whatever practical joke he was perpetrating.
“I don’t really have to...” he petitioned one last time, hoping he’d make them see reason. He stood in Beau’s living room, which also seemed to serve as a bedroom, dining room and kitchen, feeling like an organ grinder’s monkey.
“Dog goes for the Feds, especially if Jubal’s there,” Beau muttered, moving a button on the side of the itchy trousers so that they didn’t cut Sam in two. “So if you’re wanting young Sammy here to be the bait, this is the best I can do.” He looked up at Sam, eyes glittering. “You look good in blue.”
“It’s Sam,” he muttered under his breath, the full ramifications of the word ‘futile’ becoming painfully clear.
Dean leaned against the television set - a vintage cabinet floor model from the mid-1960s - with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He was nursing another sweating beer, this one from the more efficient fridge in Beau’s bungalow. The pistol, loaded up with a holy water bullet, was jammed in his waistband.
“Sorry, Sam,” he said, and Sam heard just enough in those two words to understand that Dean wasn’t sorry in the least, “but we need to distract Jubal and we need to bait Buttercup. Jackson’s bullet,” and he tapped his front pocket where the bullet was nestled in a paper cartridge, “will do for Buttercup, but we want to confuse Jubal enough that he’s not going to addle the rest of us into blasting each other to smithereens.”
“So both Jubal and the dog are going to go for me?” Sam asked. “And I get a holy water bullet as well, don’t I?”
Dean smiled at this, handing him Beau’s Enfield. “Of course. Wouldn’t leave you defenseless.”
Sam took the gun, but wasn’t convinced. “If you want me to be bait, I have to have the bullet, Dean. Jackson’s bullet.” Before Buttercup had got trapped in the Impala, they’d already had one shoving match over it; Sam wasn’t anxious for another one, but he if he was bait, might as go all the way.
“Technically, Jubal Garrett’s bullet,” Beau corrected, cutting the button’s thread with his teeth and motioning Sam to turn around so he could look at his handiwork. “You think burning it with Jubal’s bones will do the trick?”
“Won’t be able to find out till tomorrow,” Dean replied, draining the beer. “Might just shoot him with it tonight if push comes to shove.”
Sam snorted. “Yeah, but if that didn’t work, we’d never find the bullet again - unless we shot him against a tree or something and dug out the bullet again afterwards.” He glanced at Dean, who grinned suddenly. Jesus, Dean was winding him up: How many Confederate ghosts does it take to change a light bulb, Sam? Get back to me on that one.
“I don’t see you in uniform, Dean.”
“I’m not the bait, Sam.”
“Jubal seems to get a little freaked out when he sees civilians,” Beau piped up, the overalls unzipped to his waist, hanging down, only a white cotton undershirt on, his arms ropey and tattooed. Rebel flags, Tasmanian Devil. A couple of scars. Been fighting the same sort of battles the Winchesters had, and Sam ought not to forget that. “You might reconsider, Dean. This is the only Yankee outfit I have, but there’s plenty of gray gear, nice butternut field jacket with...”
Dean sighed. “I’m not wearing those colors,” he said, voice soft. He glanced at Sam, who couldn’t tell what was going on behind the shuttered gaze.
“It’d be authentic as all hell,” Beau persisted.
Dean said nothing, but that look had come into his eyes, and Sam recognized it, however infrequently it surfaced. A stick of dynamite wasn’t going to budge him. A flicker of contact, and Dean’s eye caught Sam’s, only for a second, but it was enough: no gray while Sam had blue on his back, not on this side of hell.
A long, uncomfortable moment passed.
“Do I have to wear the hat?” Sam asked, breaking the suddenly charged atmosphere of the fetid room. The Union kepi was tiny, meant for a pinheaded drummer boy.
“You always did have a freakishly large skull,” his brother muttered. “C’mon, Beau, get your gear on and let’s go. I gotta dog to kill.”
Sam held out his hand, and Dean stared at him. That look was also painfully known: Sam was causing him worry and Dean was trying to hide that fact. Dean grabbed his sleeve and jammed the paper cartridge containing Jackson’s bullet into Sam’s open hand. He told Sam not to use it if he didn’t have to - even if Jubal Garrett was standing in front of a tree -- that just having it would be enough.
Thankful for the trust, Sam nodded to Dean, but his brother wasn’t looking at him, was already out the door into the marginally cooler night, bugs and all. The boots fit, at least, Sam thought, but he left the hat sitting on the chair.
__
The bushes rattled in front of them, but it was only the wind.
It was fully dark now, and a breeze had picked up, blowing the warm air around in a way that Dean appreciated. He made sure his canvas side bag was filled with water bottles; Sam would probably underestimate how hot it got on Virginia evening even at night, especially when you were wearing wool. Because no one in their right fucking minds wore wool at this time of year. Only Beau and his hardcores. Full-blown nutcases, all of them.
The NPS battlefield had been locked up when they got back with the bullets, but that served as no matter to the brothers and Beau, who had jumped the fence and covered the distance between empty parking lot and visitor center without seeing anyone. Beau guessed aloud that his boys would be bivouacked in the location they’d scouted earlier in the day. Beau was familiar as all hell with this battlefield; it was his favorite, the location of the losing of the beloved ‘Lost Cause’, more so than even Gettysburg, Dean knew. Chancellorsville proved how superior the intellect and strategy of the South was, how it was only numbers that gave the Union its edge. All bullshit, Dean reasoned, following the dark forms of Beau and his tall brother, eyes constantly moving to the bushes.
Dean wasn’t about to burden Sam with all that. And he certainly wasn’t about to let him carry the bullet that would draw that fucking dog right to him. He’d given Sam a holy-water bullet, not Jackson’s one; that was still in his pocket. Dean was planning to shoot Buttercup himself, didn’t want Sam to have to do it. He knew himself to be capable of killing a kid’s dog, just the same as he knew a little bit of Sam would die if the younger man had to do it. That bit of Dean had been gone for so long he barely remembered it.
All in all, better if he did it.
The 22nd Virginians were exactly where Beau said they’d be, tucked into a narrow fold between two hills, a small fire going, the scent of woodsmoke and slightly rancid bacon reaching them before the sound of voices. Beau let out a low whistle, and Riddicker stood up, musket to his shoulder.
“Evening, pards,” Beau said, coming forward into the firelight. “Got us a Yankee prisoner.”
Dean hadn’t bothered telling Sam that part of the plan.
“Well, maybe we’ll take an oath from you, son, regarding your good conduct. Otherwise we might have to take your rifle and tie you up.” Riddicker was at least as tall as Sam, got right up into his face which, given the general hygiene of the troops, wasn’t likely all that pleasant. Think of swimming, Sammy, Dean thought.
“Uh,” Sam grunted. “I promise not to shoot you?”
Riddicker didn’t move an inch. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I’ll use this weapon to protect you and your men,” and that was getting nods, “and I won’t run off at the first sign of the Union coming to kick your ass.”
Loud friendly whoops. Dean grinned, surprised.
“Had something to eat, soldiers?” one of the others asked, poking the bacon with a bayonet.
Oh yeah, Beau, tell them about the roasted eggplant and zucchini sandwich. As a civilian in full farb gear, Dean was ignored, though Riddicker met his eyes once and nodded slightly. Sam sat on an overturned stump, asked aloud where their tent was. The men all laughed and Sam shut up.
Dean quietly slipped into the shadows, throwing a nod to Beau, who also drew away from the fire, but on the opposite side. Before he left, Dean glanced at the slightly cheerier Sam, noting that at least his brother had his rifle by his side - these idiots wouldn’t actually try to take it from him, would they? - and walked a few feet into the woods. He wouldn’t go far - shit, he’d seen what the dog had done to Tim - but he didn’t want to be blinded by the fire, either. He could hear the fire chat behind him, heard Sam’s voice join in. Slowly, his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Sam’s low voice rumbled something Dean didn’t catch, and was followed by a burst of quick laughter all around.
That reminded him of something. He took out his cell phone and punched the speed dial. Not too far away, he heard the familiar refrain of the Battle Hymn of the Republic beeping out in dulcet ringtone. He started to laugh silently, imagining Sam’s face.
He was about to hang up when he saw the glowing eyes in the underbrush across a short clearing, and the night turned cold. Maybe he shouldn’t have walked quite this far. The connection on the other phone was made and Dean hissed a heartfelt, “Shit!” before dropping the phone and bringing up his pistol.
--
Oh, he seems so happy, and Buttercup paused for a moment. It was the happy that stopped her, it was so unfamiliar. Hand on head, hunger. And happy. It’s right there, girl. Just you go get it. Have yourself a good -
And she was fast now, gone was all the weight that had slowed her down before. She’d caught a squirrel just this morning and it had tasted as good as she’d always known it would. Fast enough that when the wiggly one finally looked up, she was already moving.
One leap, two, and he was under her, not so soft as all that, and strong, and so very mobile, but she was a squirrel-killer now, don’t forget that, buster. So she twisted out of the way as the shot sailed past her right ear, close enough that she felt heat. Ah ha! Not so fucking quick now, are we? And found what she was looking for, in the damn pocket again, that would take some getting at. But like the squirrel, the catching of it was half the fun.
She went right for it, took a long deep bite, felt the blood oozing around her mouth, so warm and so alive, so full of possibility. Life all around her, nothing but wild, nothing but hunger and need and blood. Again it was right there, for goodness sake, in some kind of little wrapper now, but she was distracted by the blood and the fucking wiggling.
A hand came between her mouth and what her master asked her to get, and that was a very, very bad place for that hand to be. She knew what to do with a human hand, after all. She knew what to do with that shit.
And still, this fucker’s trying to get her off. Can’t blame him, really. There. Right there. Go for it, girl, a whisper in her ear and everything was going to be okay.
--
Oh god, Sam thought, patting his clothing for wherever his brother - his fucking juvenile, asinine, miscreant, absent brother - had hidden his cell phone. He found it in Dean’s bag among the water bottles. He couldn’t even look at the other men, felt his face flush crimson. By all that was holy, he was going to kill Dean -
He snapped open the phone. “Shit!” was all that Sam heard before the sound of single gunshot rang out from the woods and the ghost of Jubal Garrett appeared next to the fire as solid as the hardtack Riddicker spat out as he came to his feet.
Jubal’s eyes were on Sam and his blood ran cold; he could feel it as though his heart was suddenly pumping icewater. The Confederates by the fire all joined Riddicker, all brought their weapons up, even as Sam’s fingers lingered on the barrel of his loaned Enfield. All pointed their fucking primed rifles at him. Oh god, Sam thought. They’re going to kill me.
Above his thudding heart, he could hear the sounds of the dog, and one abbreviated human scream of pain. He had but one bullet, his brother, and he had used it and that dog wasn’t stopping.
Beau’s troops and the ghost beside them ceased to matter for Sam. Picking up his holy water-loaded rifle, he looked for Beau, couldn’t find him. “Beau,” he whispered harshly.
At the same moment, Beau burst into the circle around the fire and knocked Riddicker’s gun barrel so it was pointing to the ground. Jubal disappeared in the instant between one blink and the next.
“To me!” Beau shouted, turning to the sound of the dog’s snarls, and running towards them, long hair flying gold in the firelight. Sam was just behind him, ran fire-blinded into the woods, saw the edge of the ghost for a moment, wondered why the fucking dog hadn’t come for him first.
And knew, of course. Fuck Dean, oh god, if he wasn’t dead already, Sam was going to -
They converged at the same spot, he and Beau, to see Dean on the ground, his hands around the dog’s neck, teeth snapping dangerously close to his face. The light was terrible, a cloudy night hazy with heat, and the dog was moving, twisting like it was being electrocuted. The sound of it was incredible.
Beau was fast, was a hunter like them, and was accustomed to running and shooting antique guns, did it every weekend. He lifted his rifle as though it were an extension of his arm, like an Olympic athlete pulling back a javelin, only he brought it up under his chin and fired.
Did not miss.
--
Between my teeth for just a second, hard, bitter with gunpowder, but that did not matter, for it was also slick with blood. Fuck, but this guy’s strong. They usually stopped wiggling if you ripped open their throat. Best try that, because there were benefits in terms of the blood. Hold fucking still, asshole. Just THERE. Fuck you, squirmy --
She never heard the shot that killed her.
--
The adrenaline in his system was so extreme he actually sat up to push Buttercup off him, then got to his feet. He didn’t feel a thing, only a ringing in his ears, and a strange electric current that buzzed along his nerve endings, like he’d been running for a long time, long enough to see spots and smash through the proverbial wall.
He stared down at the dog, lying on her side, nothing but skin and bones. Her muzzle was covered in foam and blood. Shit. He felt around for the bullet, tried to go for his pocket, but his hand wasn’t working quite the way it ought to, and his pocket seemed torn to shreds. Oh, it wasn’t just the pocket torn to shreds, great.
And promptly passed out.
--
Sam caught him before he hit the ground. Between Beau and Riddicker, they carried Dean to the fireside, where he became alert enough to swear at them.
“For fuck’s sake, put me down! It was a dog, not a damn werewolf.” It was an indication of his diminished mental capacities that he was raving about werewolves in front of non-hunters, Sam noted.
“What? Just a flesh wound?” Sam said calmly. “Lie down, let me have a look.”
“Uh, actually,” Riddicker said at Sam’s shoulder, somewhat sheepishly, “I’m a doctor.”
“What?” Sam asked, head snapping up. “What, like a horse-surgeon? You do trepanning or something?” And an indication of how worried he was that he was sniping at someone who was a comrade, more or less. Less, if he counted the fact that Riddicker had pulled bead on him not five minutes ago.
“Nah, Yankee Doodle, an honest-to-god emergency room doctor. How the hell d’ya think I got into this in the first place?” Grinned through the animal beard. Sam shifted himself so he was by Dean’s head. Which was, all things considered, actually placing himself directly in the line of fire.
Still, he had something to say to Dean and wanted to get to it before Dean could start cracking wise.
“You kept the fucking bullet, didn’t you?” He watched the myriad signs that Dean was holding back a shrug: twitch of the shoulders, licked lips, quick blink. Instead of giving in to the shrug, Dean winced as Riddicker used his bacon-greased bayonet to slice open the jeans from ankle to fly.
“Bullet cartridge still there, Riddicker?” Dean asked. “Should be in my right pocket.”
Riddicker tossed a soggy paper cartridge, red with blood, onto Dean’s chest. “Today’s your lucky day, Winchester,” he replied. “A couple more inches and that mutt woulda had your femoral artery and we wouldn’t be having us this pleasant conversation.” He sighed. “You’ll need some stitches. I’m usually pretty hardcore about everything, but not this. God alone knows where that dog’s mouth’s been. And if it’s really rabid I have some particularly bad news about a series of inoculations you’re going to become acquainted with. Your hand’s been used as a chew toy, too. Wiggle your fingers for me?”
Dean waved at Riddicker, who grinned back.
“Super hardcore, pard.” Riddicker turned to Beau. “Sam’s got a phone in his bag there. Give 911 a call, would you? You gotta GPS on that thing as well as a pretty ringtone?” The century-switch was dizzying. Sam nodded, and heard Beau chatting calmly to an operator.
Riddicker asked one of the other men to bring some light over and a lantern was lit. The bearded man raised his eyebrows to Dean, who was laughing. “Permission to use 21st century medicine?”
“Hell, yes,” Sam answered for him, staring hard at Dean’s sliver grin, wishing he could find something to wipe it away with.
“Lucky me,” Dean said, shifting his gaze to the cartridge. Riddicker mixed the contents of an envelope from the first aid kit into a bottle of purified water. As the field surgeon irrigated the deep slashes in Dean’s thigh, the grin faded and Sam felt a twinge of guilt. Dean swallowed audibly. “Hey, is thigh white meat or dark?”
Sam shook his head, didn’t know whether he was angry or in awe. “Unsure. It all tastes like chicken though.” And that made Dean laugh again, as was intended. “Want me to hold on to that?” Sam suggested lamely, pointing to the cartridge in his brother’s hand.
“What? You’re not the one who single-handedly fought off the rabid beast.”
“Okay, why is it a family dog when I have to deal with it, but when you...”
Dean’s mouth twisted in pain as Riddicker packed the wound with gauze, and Sam shut up. “My lucky bullet now,” Dean whispered. “I’d like to see Jubal fuck-face Garrett try to take it away.”
Oh just perfect. Dean now had a blood feud going with a ghost.
--
TBC
a/n: This story wouldn’t see the light of day without Lemmypie and jmm0001 (over at Fanfic land). Or, it would, but it would read like this: “One day, Dean thot about tring to maek some bullits. Dint work awl that well. The End.” And it wouldn’t be funny. So you should all be as thankful as I am. One day, I’m going to publish the email correspondence we had about ‘lucky pullets’. And Lemmypie? Saving the white meat for you.