Fic - Detached
Title - Detached
Summary - Season one. There's no such thing as a simple hunt. Unfortunately for Dean, he learns that the hard way. Plenty of hurt boys!
Rating - PG13 (language and a little blood if you're squeamish).
Genre - Gen
Word Count - 9400+
Disclaimer - I don't own Supernatural that privilege belongs to CW, Kripke and Co, I'm simply borrowing them for a while. I'm not making a profit, this is just for fun and all standard disclaimers apply.
A/N - Thank you to the fabulous scullspeare and harrigan who waved their magic beta wands over this. Your time, input and support is priceless and I'm a very lucky girl to have you both in my corner. I've tinkered and tweaked, so any mistakes are mine.
Detached
Dean shivered, the slowing rain tickling his bare arms as he clung tightly to his brother. Sam's arm was hanging loosely over his brother's aching shoulders, rain dripping off his fingers and sliding down Dean's chilled skin.
"Sam?" Dean asked, his fingers winding tighter around the belt loops of Sam's jeans, pulling him closer to his hip. Frowning at the silence, Dean jostled his arm gently and watched as Sam's head bounced loosely, a grunt rolling over a fat and bloodied lip. "Sammy? You in there?"
"Yeah," Sam slurred, sawing out breaths into Dean's ear, his footsteps getting more clumsy and unco-ordinated with each wrong turn Dean took.
"Stay awake, OK?"
Scanning the perimeter, Dean looked for a light, a road, for sounds of life in this tangled network of dark alleyways. Stopping dead in his tracks, Dean stared at the large warehouse door to his left, the security light clicking on, throwing long shadows across Sam's bruised face.
Squinting against the harsh light, Dean fisted his free right hand and pounded on the metal door, the cuts on his knuckles re-opening, bloody rivulets of water streaming down his hand.
"Hello?" Dean yelled, his voice echoing down the bricked walls of the alley.
Dean kept knocking, even when Sam's arm slipped off his shoulders. "Is anyone there?"
The metal cap of Dean's boot collided with the door, once and then twice, the metal shaking and rattling down his eardrum, spiking his already pounding head.
Swiping his palm over the water running down his face, Dean took a shaky breath. "Please."
The answering silence was deafening.
Glancing over his shoulder, Dean looked at Sam. Wet strands of hair were plastered to his forehead and his face was swollen and alarmingly pale in the brightness of the security light. But it was the blood that caught Dean's eye, having saturated through the jacket he was using as a makeshift bandage, Sam's shirt and jeans were now slicked with crimson; Dean's too.
Dean had two choices, turn left or right. Maybe one would lead him to a car he could hotwire or a phone he could use to call for help. Or maybe, they'd end up back where they started, lost in this labyrinth of alleyways.
Taking a deep breath, Dean chose left for no other reason than it was marginally closer. Wincing at his swollen knee, Dean heard Sam groan as they took their first step, his growing weight straining Dean's arms as muscles spasmed and bunched.
"We there?" Sam rasped, his breath hot in Dean's ear.
"Almost," Dean said, his eyes flicking from his brother's face to the empty alley. "Not far now."
24 Hours Earlier
"He killed himself, bullet to the head," she said, tucking an errant strand of dark hair behind her right ear. "Well that's what I heard. He's kind of a local legend. It was a huge deal back then, got on the news and everything."
"Really," Dean replied, grinning as he leaned further over the reception desk, appreciating the view, given how tight her shirt was. "What else might you have heard?"
Looking over her shoulder, she moved closer to Dean, her perfume filling his nostrils. "Well," she whispered, "he was stealing money from the company. Hiding it in fake accounts and pocketing it himself. It went on for years before the company found out what he was doing."
"So, what about the girl? Your co-worker?"
Her smile faded at that, eyes dropping down from his gaze. "Andie? She's okay. Shook up and everything but they released her yesterday. The company took care of everything: hospital bills and time off work."
"And they don't know who attacked her?" Dean asked because screw Sam, this definitely sounded like a case to him.
"No, they're clueless. Cops questioned a few people but no one's been arrested," she said sadly. "The company won't let anyone in that office now. Afraid of a lawsuit I guess. Not that it really matters. It's basically just been used for storage since McMillan…well, you know."
Yeah, Dean did know. Suicide had that kind of effect on people.
Scanning the room, he looked up to his left at the security camera that was peering down at them. "Didn't the cameras get anything?"
The receptionist chewed on her heavily glossed lower lip, her eyes scanning the room as she whispered, "No, they aren't turned on. Budget cuts."
Yahtzee.
"Thank you for your time," Dean said. "It's been a pleasure."
She smiled coyly, her cheeks flushing a hot pink. "You're welcome." She jotted down a few numbers on the back of a company business card, and slid it toward him. "If you need anything else, give me a call."
Dean flashed her a million watt smile as he turned to leave, feeling her eyes on him as he left the building. Walking around the corner he pulled open the Impala's door with a squeak of the hinge.
Seated in the passenger seat, Sam looked up from the laptop. "I'm guessing you got what you came for."
"Yep," Dean replied, waggling his eyebrows suggestively as he twisted the red-inked phone number between his fingers. "That and plenty more."
"You're like a cat in heat," Sam huffed. "So, what did she say?"
"Some guy, McMillan, ate a bullet in his office after getting caught embezzling a ton of money. The exact same office that girl was attacked in." Dean slipped the key into the ignition. "And I forgive you."
Sam scoffed. "For what?"
"For doubting me. I told you this was our kind of gig. You need to have a little more faith, Sammy boy. Big brothers are always right."
"Always?"
"Always," Dean said, a smile curling his lips as he started the engine. "What did you and your geek brain come up with?"
"Four cases of violent and unprovoked attacks over the last ten years. All of them in the storage room."
"AKA McMillan's old office," Dean said, frowning. "So… an angry spirit protecting his territory?"
"Sure looks like it," Sam said, closing the lid of the laptop and shoving it back into his bag.
Dean spun the wheel as they sped around a corner. "Any clues where this McMillan guy is buried?"
"Dude, you just now told me his name."
"So." Dean shrugged. "Look it up."
Sam grinned and Dean knew immediately that he wasn't going to like what was coming. "Most of the older newspapers are on archive in the library, death records too. Library closed twenty minutes ago."
"Of course it did," Dean said flatly as he searched for a vacancy sign, noting how the streets seems quieter, the buildings older, the bars seedier. Wrong side of the tracks or not, a motel here was in their price range.
"I got a better idea. You up for a little office recon, Sammy?" Dean said as he steered off the road, following the neon flashing sign that read Rest Easy.
"It's Sam."
"Sure it is."
Sam's brow creased, the furrows deepening with each word. "Office recon? Why don't I like the sound of that."
XoXoX
"This is a stupid idea," Sam muttered as he waggled his Bowie knife under the latch of the wooden window sash.
"Dude, chill. Who twisted your panties this morning?" Dean shone the flashlights beam into Sam's face, smirking as Sam shied away from the glare.
"Nice, Dean. Real nice." The latch slid open and Sam yanked out the knife. "There's at least two security cameras looking at us right now, y'know."
"Relax, I've got us covered," Dean said, the receptionist's words from earlier in the day fuelling a grin. Choosing not to share his intel with his brother, he shoved Sam aside and pulled open the window, going head first into the first floor office.
"Tell me you at least have a plan."
"Don't I always?" Dean straightened up, knocking dust and dirt from his jeans.
Sam's sigh of disapproval was ignored as Dean surveyed the room.
The place was a dump. Literally. From his first glance Dean counted half a dozen ancient and bulky computer monitors, not to mention the mound of dead printers and toner cartridges. The wide beam of the flashlight highlighted mountains of boxes of old paperwork, stacked from floor to ceiling and old chairs and desks that had been dumped. The whole room was covered in what looked like a good inch of dust and grime.
They were going to be stuck here for hours, maybe even days.
And just like that, all the fun had been sucked dry from this hunt.
Behind him Dean heard Sam flick on the EMF meter, his footsteps nearly silent to the untrained ear as he scanned the room. Sighing heavily, Dean wandered through the room, the flashlight's beam highlighting yet more boxes. "Here ghosty ghosty. Come out, come out wherever you are."
The high-pitched screech of the EMF meter startled Dean, his shotgun raised and ready to fire as he whipped his head around in search of a threat. "Damn, that ghost call hardly ever works."
Shining the flashlight around the room, the beam fell on Sam at the back of office, crouched down on his haunches, the EMF clutched firmly in this right hand as he scanned a stack of boxes. "I got something."
Dean crossed the room, holding the shot-gun steady as Sam turned around, his eyes catching Dean's as they each nodded. Sam stood on his tip toes, long arms stretched high above his head as he started to un-stack the pile of boxes.
Having a beanpole for a brother did have its perks.
As soon as Sam's fingers grazed along the second to last box, Dean's ears were blasted with the shrill scream of the EMF meter lying at Sam's feet.
"Cover me!" Dean elbowed Sam aside, flipping off the cardboard lid.
Immediately, Dean felt the temperature in the office take a serious nose-dive, as it pulled a full-body shiver down the centre of his spine. He didn't need to see the lights flare on the EMF, nor hear the shriek to know that they had company.
"Dean…"
"Yeah, I got the message." Dean eyed the contents of the box suspiciously. Files, oh joy. But there was something else, a glimpse of black amongst all the once white and now faded yellow papers.
"Dean…"
He felt Sam step closer, a hand on his shoulder as he was guided to something just below the cardboard storage box, his brother's voice a concerned whisper in his ear. "Is that what I think it is?"
It took Dean a second to see it, for his eyes to adjust from the harshness of the light to the dense shadows that surrounded the flashlight's beam. A thick stream of black sludge seeped out from the bottom of the box as it crawled a lazy path down towards the floor. Reaching out his index finger, Dean poked at the sticky substance, taking a wary sniff.
"Ectoplasm?" Sam asked, his breath tickling the hairs on Dean's neck as he shuffled closer.
"Yeah." Dean wiped the goo off his finger and onto his jeans. "We've got ourselves one seriously pissed off spirit."
This wasn't what Dean had hoped for. He'd wanted a nice straightforward haunting, something that included a lot of lighter fluid and plenty of grave digging for Sam. Not some juiced up spirit who leaked ectoplasm all over the joint.
Dean turned his attention back to the storage box and its contents. Just as his fingers grazed the tip of black leather, the EMF screeched and Sam barreled into his back, his bony elbows and knees striking Dean in all sorts of uncomfortable places as they hit a stack of boxes before tumbling to the floor.
"What the hell, Sam?" Dean shouted as he untangled himself from his brother's gangly limbs. Sam was all wide eyed, looking at something over Dean's shoulder as his hands blindly searched for the shotgun.
Turning his head Dean caught a glimpse of a suited businessman, pinstriped tie and polished shoes. His right eye was missing, the hole in his head gaping, flesh and bone visible through the river of blood that ran down his face and suit. He felt Sam shift next to him before a storage box flew towards them clipping the side of Dean's head as a flood of papers and files rained down into his lap.
The shotgun blast was like music to his ears. Then Sam's concerned face filled his vision, lips speaking muffled words that he couldn't quite hear but got the gist of. Large hands encircled his arms, gently pulling him to his feet as the world around him spun.
Lying among the paper debris, a black book caught Dean's eye. As Sam helped him up, Dean snagged it and shoved it in his pocket.
Once upright, his vision still a little whacked, Dean watched a blurry Sam shoot the suited ghost full of rock-salt before it even had a chance to fully materialize.
Then Sam was shoving him out the window and back to the Impala. Once the fresh air smacked into his face, Dean shoved Sam's helping hands out of the way before reaching for the car keys.
Sam snatched them right back. "No way you're driving."
"I'm fine," Dean said, gingerly prodding the dent in his skull.
"Sure you are," Sam replied sarcastically as he opened the driver's door and slid in. "I'm sure that spaced out look is just for show."
Dean would've argued but in all honesty he was tired and bruised. And when his head felt this bad, it was usually because he'd had a night of pool, beer and body shots.
"You okay?" Sam asked, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to look across his shoulder. He raised his right hand, frowning. "How many fingers?"
"No idea. But I can see at least four hands," Dean said as he poked his head again.
"Quit touching it," Sam huffed as he pulled into the motel's parking lot, killing the engine and pulling the keys from the ignition.
Dean pushed his door open, gripping the frame as the world around him wheeled out of control. He could sense more than see Sam's hovering presence over his shoulder.
"I'm fine," Dean snapped as he pushed himself from the door's support, a dense cloud of white smearing across his vision as his ears rang shrilly, the noise getting steadily sharper like it was echoing down a never ending tunnel.
He felt a hand wrap around his bicep, another around his waist as he waited for his brain to figure out which way was up and which was down.
He heard Sam mutter something about taking it easy but Dean didn't really pay much attention after that. It was taking nearly everything he had to just stay on his feet and not hurl all over his shirt.
Finally, he felt the edge of the bed smack the back of his calves, his legs folding as he sank into the mattress. Blinking the haze away, he saw Sam leave the room, heard him open and close the trunk before slamming the motel door closed and dumping the first aid kit on the bed.
Dean was a bad patient at the best of times but, as usual, he let Sam play doctor. He suffered through the litany of questions and co-ordination and balance checks, only protesting when Sam prodded his head and shone that damn light in his eyes.
Thankfully, he escaped stitches but even the handful of pills he was fed didn't take the edge off his headache. It felt like someone had cracked his skull open with a crow bar.
Realistically he knew it wasn't that bad because the last time that had happened, he'd been in hospital for a week. But still, Sam must be pretty freaked because he didn't turn on the lights, just cracked open the bathroom door. And he didn't bitch once when he had to make an ice pack out of a pillowcase because Dean had used the last one from the first aid kit to cool his beer the week before.
He dozed as Sam fiddled with the thermostat, feeling him hover over his bed before a glass of water was set down on the nightstand.
"Get some sleep, Dean."
He did.
XoXoX
"Really? More Tylenol?" Sam asked as he dumped a pile of dusty library books onto the motel's wobbly dining table. His brow furrowed. "You okay?"
Dean looked up at his brother, more than a little shocked to see him. He hadn't even heard the key turn in the lock. "Peachy," he said, plastering on a fake grin as he tossed the pills onto his tongue, chasing them down with a generous slurp of his now lukewarm coffee. "You find anything?"
"Yeah, and that's the problem," Sam said as he flicked through a stack of photocopies. "There's too much. Practically every newspaper article ever written has something on McMillan."
"That receptionist said he was a bit of local legend."
Sam sighed, unpacking yet more papers, spreading them out onto the chipped tabletop. "You want the bad news or the really bad news?"
"How about neither," Dean replied, picking up a handful of photocopied newspaper articles. Some sections were highlighted, others had scribbled notes in the margins.
"McMillan was cremated," Sam said as he sank down heavily onto the chair. "There's no bones to burn and he had at least two properties from what I've dug up so far and that excludes his office space. I have no clue what's keeping him here and no idea where to look for it."
"You getting a little rusty there, college boy?" Dean skimmed over an article that estimated the amount of money that McMillan had embezzled. No one knew for sure as no definitive proof had ever been found.
The idea went through the fog in his brain like an electroshock. "You seen my jacket?" Dean asked, pushing himself to his feet, eyes scanning the room.
"It's here." Sam unhooked the jacket from behind the back of his chair. "What's going on?"
"I swiped a book from McMillan's office," Dean said, grabbing the coat. "From that storage box with all the ectoplasm."
"And you didn't think to tell me that before?"
Dean shrugged as he dove into the pocket and pulled out the book. "Guess I forgot. Sue me."
The black leather cover was scuffed in places, the pages curled and yellowed with age. Flicking through, Dean saw neatly written series of numbers, lines and columns, all of which spoke of confidence, of someone who knew exactly what they doing: Breaking the law.
"We got ourselves the smoking gun," Dean said. "It was never about his office. It was about anyone getting close to the ledger. The only proof of how much McMillan stole."
Tossing the ledger onto the table so Sam could examine its contents, Dean felt a shiver bolt down his spine, electrifying the hairs at the base of his neck.
He opened his mouth to warn Sam that they had company but the air was suddenly sucked out of his lungs. Rocking back on his heels, Dean felt a pushing sensation and then something with the force of a sledgehammer slammed into him and a wave of darkness rolled across his vision.
If his brother screamed his name he didn't hear it. Nor did he feel a large hand try to stop his descent. In fact he didn't feel himself hit the ground at all. All there was was falling. A sinking feeling, as the world around him collapsed in on itself and a torrent of ice spread from his chest to the tips of his fingernails.
"Give it to me."
The words were spoken through fuzzy static, broken and hard to identify. But the tone that floated through the velvet surrounding him was familiar.
"I don't have it."
Sam's voice, that much Dean did know. That and Sam sounded pissed and worried. Potentially a lethal combination when your surname was Winchester.
Something was going down and Sam needed backup. The problem was Dean wasn't feeling too hot. He felt… wrong, like something important was missing. It was then that Dean noticed that he couldn't feel his body. He couldn't flex a muscle, not even a small one. He felt a distant tingling sensation and as panic set in, he wrestled against the feeling and pushed harder against the inky blackness…
…only to see his tightly fisted right hand strike his brother squarely in the jaw. Sam's neck snapped to the left, his head cracking against the wall, chunks of plaster raining down onto the faded carpet tiles.
Dean didn't feel himself take a step forward, but he watched himself do it. He saw Sam struggling to regain his footing, his hands clinging into the holes in the plaster as he tried to haul himself up onto unsteady legs.
"I don't want to hurt you," Sam grunted as he straightened to his full height, swiping a sleeve across his bloody lips.
"Give it to me. It's mine." This time, Dean recognized the voice: it was his own. If Dean hadn't been freaked out before, he sure as hell was now. It was his voice, but he wasn't the one saying those words.
The next thing he knew he was charging at his brother. His clenched fists struck Sam once and then twice, blood and spittle running down his brother's chin and soaking into the collar of his shirt.
He plowed a vicious punch into Sam's stomach and Dean heard his brother gasp as air rushed out of his lungs with a pained whistle before Sam raised his left arm to deflect a right hook.
But no matter how hard the hits came or how dirty some of the moves were, Sam refused to fight back. And as his blows rained down again and again onto his brother, Dean's anger at Sam grew. Fight back, damn you! Stop me!
But Sam just kept trying to back away.
Dean hurled himself towards his brother, their midsection's colliding as Sam was thrown back-first through the yellow Formica table even as Dean struggled to regain control over his body, his actions.
"I'll burn it," Sam gasped, his left arm cradling his ribs as he rolled over and sat up, his bloodied lips pinched.
Dean barely had time to blink before he was standing, his eyes sighting down the barrel of his .45, shooting arm outstretched and pointing at Sam. A streak of blood slid down Sam's eyebrow, his right hand rummaging through the debris of the broken table, shoving papers and pieces of porcelain aside.
He saw Sam's hand wrap around a black leather ledger, his left hand digging out what looked like a book of matches from his pocket, his expression changing from trying to reason with him to a look of fierce determination.
And then Dean heard his own voice scream as his finger pulled the trigger, the bullet tearing through the air towards his brother.
Sam tried to throw his body to the left, wanting to remove himself from the bullet's path. But as fast as Sam was, it wasn't enough and he'd barely moved when the bullet hit him in the stomach.
As Dean's shooting arm lowered, Sam's leg struck out, catching Dean behind his knees. Losing his balance Dean crashed to the floor, not feeling the hit or even the fall as the gun skittered across the carpet.
Dean wanted to see Sam, to see how much damage the bullet had done. But all he got was a face full of dirty carpet and a close up of a thick black substance that his hand swept away from under his nose.
No matter what he did, he couldn't seem to claw his way to the surface. The sense of detachment, the missing chunks of time and Sam's reluctance to fight back. Oh yeah. Spirit possessions were a bitch.
"DEAN!"
Dean watched numbly as his hand curled around the butt of the gun as he whipped around, firing another shot. This one skimmed past Sam's head just as he tossed a lit match onto the ledger, the flames blossoming as they licked the leather cover.
The pain was instantaneous, spiking and jabbing at his grey matter and all he could feel was an overwhelming urge to flee, to escape from it all. But his awareness was slipping, tumbling into the encroaching blackness as his body staggered out of the motel room and into the pouring rain.
Part Two
Summary - Season one. There's no such thing as a simple hunt. Unfortunately for Dean, he learns that the hard way. Plenty of hurt boys!
Rating - PG13 (language and a little blood if you're squeamish).
Genre - Gen
Word Count - 9400+
Disclaimer - I don't own Supernatural that privilege belongs to CW, Kripke and Co, I'm simply borrowing them for a while. I'm not making a profit, this is just for fun and all standard disclaimers apply.
A/N - Thank you to the fabulous scullspeare and harrigan who waved their magic beta wands over this. Your time, input and support is priceless and I'm a very lucky girl to have you both in my corner. I've tinkered and tweaked, so any mistakes are mine.
Detached
Dean shivered, the slowing rain tickling his bare arms as he clung tightly to his brother. Sam's arm was hanging loosely over his brother's aching shoulders, rain dripping off his fingers and sliding down Dean's chilled skin.
"Sam?" Dean asked, his fingers winding tighter around the belt loops of Sam's jeans, pulling him closer to his hip. Frowning at the silence, Dean jostled his arm gently and watched as Sam's head bounced loosely, a grunt rolling over a fat and bloodied lip. "Sammy? You in there?"
"Yeah," Sam slurred, sawing out breaths into Dean's ear, his footsteps getting more clumsy and unco-ordinated with each wrong turn Dean took.
"Stay awake, OK?"
Scanning the perimeter, Dean looked for a light, a road, for sounds of life in this tangled network of dark alleyways. Stopping dead in his tracks, Dean stared at the large warehouse door to his left, the security light clicking on, throwing long shadows across Sam's bruised face.
Squinting against the harsh light, Dean fisted his free right hand and pounded on the metal door, the cuts on his knuckles re-opening, bloody rivulets of water streaming down his hand.
"Hello?" Dean yelled, his voice echoing down the bricked walls of the alley.
Dean kept knocking, even when Sam's arm slipped off his shoulders. "Is anyone there?"
The metal cap of Dean's boot collided with the door, once and then twice, the metal shaking and rattling down his eardrum, spiking his already pounding head.
Swiping his palm over the water running down his face, Dean took a shaky breath. "Please."
The answering silence was deafening.
Glancing over his shoulder, Dean looked at Sam. Wet strands of hair were plastered to his forehead and his face was swollen and alarmingly pale in the brightness of the security light. But it was the blood that caught Dean's eye, having saturated through the jacket he was using as a makeshift bandage, Sam's shirt and jeans were now slicked with crimson; Dean's too.
Dean had two choices, turn left or right. Maybe one would lead him to a car he could hotwire or a phone he could use to call for help. Or maybe, they'd end up back where they started, lost in this labyrinth of alleyways.
Taking a deep breath, Dean chose left for no other reason than it was marginally closer. Wincing at his swollen knee, Dean heard Sam groan as they took their first step, his growing weight straining Dean's arms as muscles spasmed and bunched.
"We there?" Sam rasped, his breath hot in Dean's ear.
"Almost," Dean said, his eyes flicking from his brother's face to the empty alley. "Not far now."
24 Hours Earlier
"He killed himself, bullet to the head," she said, tucking an errant strand of dark hair behind her right ear. "Well that's what I heard. He's kind of a local legend. It was a huge deal back then, got on the news and everything."
"Really," Dean replied, grinning as he leaned further over the reception desk, appreciating the view, given how tight her shirt was. "What else might you have heard?"
Looking over her shoulder, she moved closer to Dean, her perfume filling his nostrils. "Well," she whispered, "he was stealing money from the company. Hiding it in fake accounts and pocketing it himself. It went on for years before the company found out what he was doing."
"So, what about the girl? Your co-worker?"
Her smile faded at that, eyes dropping down from his gaze. "Andie? She's okay. Shook up and everything but they released her yesterday. The company took care of everything: hospital bills and time off work."
"And they don't know who attacked her?" Dean asked because screw Sam, this definitely sounded like a case to him.
"No, they're clueless. Cops questioned a few people but no one's been arrested," she said sadly. "The company won't let anyone in that office now. Afraid of a lawsuit I guess. Not that it really matters. It's basically just been used for storage since McMillan…well, you know."
Yeah, Dean did know. Suicide had that kind of effect on people.
Scanning the room, he looked up to his left at the security camera that was peering down at them. "Didn't the cameras get anything?"
The receptionist chewed on her heavily glossed lower lip, her eyes scanning the room as she whispered, "No, they aren't turned on. Budget cuts."
Yahtzee.
"Thank you for your time," Dean said. "It's been a pleasure."
She smiled coyly, her cheeks flushing a hot pink. "You're welcome." She jotted down a few numbers on the back of a company business card, and slid it toward him. "If you need anything else, give me a call."
Dean flashed her a million watt smile as he turned to leave, feeling her eyes on him as he left the building. Walking around the corner he pulled open the Impala's door with a squeak of the hinge.
Seated in the passenger seat, Sam looked up from the laptop. "I'm guessing you got what you came for."
"Yep," Dean replied, waggling his eyebrows suggestively as he twisted the red-inked phone number between his fingers. "That and plenty more."
"You're like a cat in heat," Sam huffed. "So, what did she say?"
"Some guy, McMillan, ate a bullet in his office after getting caught embezzling a ton of money. The exact same office that girl was attacked in." Dean slipped the key into the ignition. "And I forgive you."
Sam scoffed. "For what?"
"For doubting me. I told you this was our kind of gig. You need to have a little more faith, Sammy boy. Big brothers are always right."
"Always?"
"Always," Dean said, a smile curling his lips as he started the engine. "What did you and your geek brain come up with?"
"Four cases of violent and unprovoked attacks over the last ten years. All of them in the storage room."
"AKA McMillan's old office," Dean said, frowning. "So… an angry spirit protecting his territory?"
"Sure looks like it," Sam said, closing the lid of the laptop and shoving it back into his bag.
Dean spun the wheel as they sped around a corner. "Any clues where this McMillan guy is buried?"
"Dude, you just now told me his name."
"So." Dean shrugged. "Look it up."
Sam grinned and Dean knew immediately that he wasn't going to like what was coming. "Most of the older newspapers are on archive in the library, death records too. Library closed twenty minutes ago."
"Of course it did," Dean said flatly as he searched for a vacancy sign, noting how the streets seems quieter, the buildings older, the bars seedier. Wrong side of the tracks or not, a motel here was in their price range.
"I got a better idea. You up for a little office recon, Sammy?" Dean said as he steered off the road, following the neon flashing sign that read Rest Easy.
"It's Sam."
"Sure it is."
Sam's brow creased, the furrows deepening with each word. "Office recon? Why don't I like the sound of that."
XoXoX
"This is a stupid idea," Sam muttered as he waggled his Bowie knife under the latch of the wooden window sash.
"Dude, chill. Who twisted your panties this morning?" Dean shone the flashlights beam into Sam's face, smirking as Sam shied away from the glare.
"Nice, Dean. Real nice." The latch slid open and Sam yanked out the knife. "There's at least two security cameras looking at us right now, y'know."
"Relax, I've got us covered," Dean said, the receptionist's words from earlier in the day fuelling a grin. Choosing not to share his intel with his brother, he shoved Sam aside and pulled open the window, going head first into the first floor office.
"Tell me you at least have a plan."
"Don't I always?" Dean straightened up, knocking dust and dirt from his jeans.
Sam's sigh of disapproval was ignored as Dean surveyed the room.
The place was a dump. Literally. From his first glance Dean counted half a dozen ancient and bulky computer monitors, not to mention the mound of dead printers and toner cartridges. The wide beam of the flashlight highlighted mountains of boxes of old paperwork, stacked from floor to ceiling and old chairs and desks that had been dumped. The whole room was covered in what looked like a good inch of dust and grime.
They were going to be stuck here for hours, maybe even days.
And just like that, all the fun had been sucked dry from this hunt.
Behind him Dean heard Sam flick on the EMF meter, his footsteps nearly silent to the untrained ear as he scanned the room. Sighing heavily, Dean wandered through the room, the flashlight's beam highlighting yet more boxes. "Here ghosty ghosty. Come out, come out wherever you are."
The high-pitched screech of the EMF meter startled Dean, his shotgun raised and ready to fire as he whipped his head around in search of a threat. "Damn, that ghost call hardly ever works."
Shining the flashlight around the room, the beam fell on Sam at the back of office, crouched down on his haunches, the EMF clutched firmly in this right hand as he scanned a stack of boxes. "I got something."
Dean crossed the room, holding the shot-gun steady as Sam turned around, his eyes catching Dean's as they each nodded. Sam stood on his tip toes, long arms stretched high above his head as he started to un-stack the pile of boxes.
Having a beanpole for a brother did have its perks.
As soon as Sam's fingers grazed along the second to last box, Dean's ears were blasted with the shrill scream of the EMF meter lying at Sam's feet.
"Cover me!" Dean elbowed Sam aside, flipping off the cardboard lid.
Immediately, Dean felt the temperature in the office take a serious nose-dive, as it pulled a full-body shiver down the centre of his spine. He didn't need to see the lights flare on the EMF, nor hear the shriek to know that they had company.
"Dean…"
"Yeah, I got the message." Dean eyed the contents of the box suspiciously. Files, oh joy. But there was something else, a glimpse of black amongst all the once white and now faded yellow papers.
"Dean…"
He felt Sam step closer, a hand on his shoulder as he was guided to something just below the cardboard storage box, his brother's voice a concerned whisper in his ear. "Is that what I think it is?"
It took Dean a second to see it, for his eyes to adjust from the harshness of the light to the dense shadows that surrounded the flashlight's beam. A thick stream of black sludge seeped out from the bottom of the box as it crawled a lazy path down towards the floor. Reaching out his index finger, Dean poked at the sticky substance, taking a wary sniff.
"Ectoplasm?" Sam asked, his breath tickling the hairs on Dean's neck as he shuffled closer.
"Yeah." Dean wiped the goo off his finger and onto his jeans. "We've got ourselves one seriously pissed off spirit."
This wasn't what Dean had hoped for. He'd wanted a nice straightforward haunting, something that included a lot of lighter fluid and plenty of grave digging for Sam. Not some juiced up spirit who leaked ectoplasm all over the joint.
Dean turned his attention back to the storage box and its contents. Just as his fingers grazed the tip of black leather, the EMF screeched and Sam barreled into his back, his bony elbows and knees striking Dean in all sorts of uncomfortable places as they hit a stack of boxes before tumbling to the floor.
"What the hell, Sam?" Dean shouted as he untangled himself from his brother's gangly limbs. Sam was all wide eyed, looking at something over Dean's shoulder as his hands blindly searched for the shotgun.
Turning his head Dean caught a glimpse of a suited businessman, pinstriped tie and polished shoes. His right eye was missing, the hole in his head gaping, flesh and bone visible through the river of blood that ran down his face and suit. He felt Sam shift next to him before a storage box flew towards them clipping the side of Dean's head as a flood of papers and files rained down into his lap.
The shotgun blast was like music to his ears. Then Sam's concerned face filled his vision, lips speaking muffled words that he couldn't quite hear but got the gist of. Large hands encircled his arms, gently pulling him to his feet as the world around him spun.
Lying among the paper debris, a black book caught Dean's eye. As Sam helped him up, Dean snagged it and shoved it in his pocket.
Once upright, his vision still a little whacked, Dean watched a blurry Sam shoot the suited ghost full of rock-salt before it even had a chance to fully materialize.
Then Sam was shoving him out the window and back to the Impala. Once the fresh air smacked into his face, Dean shoved Sam's helping hands out of the way before reaching for the car keys.
Sam snatched them right back. "No way you're driving."
"I'm fine," Dean said, gingerly prodding the dent in his skull.
"Sure you are," Sam replied sarcastically as he opened the driver's door and slid in. "I'm sure that spaced out look is just for show."
Dean would've argued but in all honesty he was tired and bruised. And when his head felt this bad, it was usually because he'd had a night of pool, beer and body shots.
"You okay?" Sam asked, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to look across his shoulder. He raised his right hand, frowning. "How many fingers?"
"No idea. But I can see at least four hands," Dean said as he poked his head again.
"Quit touching it," Sam huffed as he pulled into the motel's parking lot, killing the engine and pulling the keys from the ignition.
Dean pushed his door open, gripping the frame as the world around him wheeled out of control. He could sense more than see Sam's hovering presence over his shoulder.
"I'm fine," Dean snapped as he pushed himself from the door's support, a dense cloud of white smearing across his vision as his ears rang shrilly, the noise getting steadily sharper like it was echoing down a never ending tunnel.
He felt a hand wrap around his bicep, another around his waist as he waited for his brain to figure out which way was up and which was down.
He heard Sam mutter something about taking it easy but Dean didn't really pay much attention after that. It was taking nearly everything he had to just stay on his feet and not hurl all over his shirt.
Finally, he felt the edge of the bed smack the back of his calves, his legs folding as he sank into the mattress. Blinking the haze away, he saw Sam leave the room, heard him open and close the trunk before slamming the motel door closed and dumping the first aid kit on the bed.
Dean was a bad patient at the best of times but, as usual, he let Sam play doctor. He suffered through the litany of questions and co-ordination and balance checks, only protesting when Sam prodded his head and shone that damn light in his eyes.
Thankfully, he escaped stitches but even the handful of pills he was fed didn't take the edge off his headache. It felt like someone had cracked his skull open with a crow bar.
Realistically he knew it wasn't that bad because the last time that had happened, he'd been in hospital for a week. But still, Sam must be pretty freaked because he didn't turn on the lights, just cracked open the bathroom door. And he didn't bitch once when he had to make an ice pack out of a pillowcase because Dean had used the last one from the first aid kit to cool his beer the week before.
He dozed as Sam fiddled with the thermostat, feeling him hover over his bed before a glass of water was set down on the nightstand.
"Get some sleep, Dean."
He did.
XoXoX
"Really? More Tylenol?" Sam asked as he dumped a pile of dusty library books onto the motel's wobbly dining table. His brow furrowed. "You okay?"
Dean looked up at his brother, more than a little shocked to see him. He hadn't even heard the key turn in the lock. "Peachy," he said, plastering on a fake grin as he tossed the pills onto his tongue, chasing them down with a generous slurp of his now lukewarm coffee. "You find anything?"
"Yeah, and that's the problem," Sam said as he flicked through a stack of photocopies. "There's too much. Practically every newspaper article ever written has something on McMillan."
"That receptionist said he was a bit of local legend."
Sam sighed, unpacking yet more papers, spreading them out onto the chipped tabletop. "You want the bad news or the really bad news?"
"How about neither," Dean replied, picking up a handful of photocopied newspaper articles. Some sections were highlighted, others had scribbled notes in the margins.
"McMillan was cremated," Sam said as he sank down heavily onto the chair. "There's no bones to burn and he had at least two properties from what I've dug up so far and that excludes his office space. I have no clue what's keeping him here and no idea where to look for it."
"You getting a little rusty there, college boy?" Dean skimmed over an article that estimated the amount of money that McMillan had embezzled. No one knew for sure as no definitive proof had ever been found.
The idea went through the fog in his brain like an electroshock. "You seen my jacket?" Dean asked, pushing himself to his feet, eyes scanning the room.
"It's here." Sam unhooked the jacket from behind the back of his chair. "What's going on?"
"I swiped a book from McMillan's office," Dean said, grabbing the coat. "From that storage box with all the ectoplasm."
"And you didn't think to tell me that before?"
Dean shrugged as he dove into the pocket and pulled out the book. "Guess I forgot. Sue me."
The black leather cover was scuffed in places, the pages curled and yellowed with age. Flicking through, Dean saw neatly written series of numbers, lines and columns, all of which spoke of confidence, of someone who knew exactly what they doing: Breaking the law.
"We got ourselves the smoking gun," Dean said. "It was never about his office. It was about anyone getting close to the ledger. The only proof of how much McMillan stole."
Tossing the ledger onto the table so Sam could examine its contents, Dean felt a shiver bolt down his spine, electrifying the hairs at the base of his neck.
He opened his mouth to warn Sam that they had company but the air was suddenly sucked out of his lungs. Rocking back on his heels, Dean felt a pushing sensation and then something with the force of a sledgehammer slammed into him and a wave of darkness rolled across his vision.
If his brother screamed his name he didn't hear it. Nor did he feel a large hand try to stop his descent. In fact he didn't feel himself hit the ground at all. All there was was falling. A sinking feeling, as the world around him collapsed in on itself and a torrent of ice spread from his chest to the tips of his fingernails.
"Give it to me."
The words were spoken through fuzzy static, broken and hard to identify. But the tone that floated through the velvet surrounding him was familiar.
"I don't have it."
Sam's voice, that much Dean did know. That and Sam sounded pissed and worried. Potentially a lethal combination when your surname was Winchester.
Something was going down and Sam needed backup. The problem was Dean wasn't feeling too hot. He felt… wrong, like something important was missing. It was then that Dean noticed that he couldn't feel his body. He couldn't flex a muscle, not even a small one. He felt a distant tingling sensation and as panic set in, he wrestled against the feeling and pushed harder against the inky blackness…
…only to see his tightly fisted right hand strike his brother squarely in the jaw. Sam's neck snapped to the left, his head cracking against the wall, chunks of plaster raining down onto the faded carpet tiles.
Dean didn't feel himself take a step forward, but he watched himself do it. He saw Sam struggling to regain his footing, his hands clinging into the holes in the plaster as he tried to haul himself up onto unsteady legs.
"I don't want to hurt you," Sam grunted as he straightened to his full height, swiping a sleeve across his bloody lips.
"Give it to me. It's mine." This time, Dean recognized the voice: it was his own. If Dean hadn't been freaked out before, he sure as hell was now. It was his voice, but he wasn't the one saying those words.
The next thing he knew he was charging at his brother. His clenched fists struck Sam once and then twice, blood and spittle running down his brother's chin and soaking into the collar of his shirt.
He plowed a vicious punch into Sam's stomach and Dean heard his brother gasp as air rushed out of his lungs with a pained whistle before Sam raised his left arm to deflect a right hook.
But no matter how hard the hits came or how dirty some of the moves were, Sam refused to fight back. And as his blows rained down again and again onto his brother, Dean's anger at Sam grew. Fight back, damn you! Stop me!
But Sam just kept trying to back away.
Dean hurled himself towards his brother, their midsection's colliding as Sam was thrown back-first through the yellow Formica table even as Dean struggled to regain control over his body, his actions.
"I'll burn it," Sam gasped, his left arm cradling his ribs as he rolled over and sat up, his bloodied lips pinched.
Dean barely had time to blink before he was standing, his eyes sighting down the barrel of his .45, shooting arm outstretched and pointing at Sam. A streak of blood slid down Sam's eyebrow, his right hand rummaging through the debris of the broken table, shoving papers and pieces of porcelain aside.
He saw Sam's hand wrap around a black leather ledger, his left hand digging out what looked like a book of matches from his pocket, his expression changing from trying to reason with him to a look of fierce determination.
And then Dean heard his own voice scream as his finger pulled the trigger, the bullet tearing through the air towards his brother.
Sam tried to throw his body to the left, wanting to remove himself from the bullet's path. But as fast as Sam was, it wasn't enough and he'd barely moved when the bullet hit him in the stomach.
As Dean's shooting arm lowered, Sam's leg struck out, catching Dean behind his knees. Losing his balance Dean crashed to the floor, not feeling the hit or even the fall as the gun skittered across the carpet.
Dean wanted to see Sam, to see how much damage the bullet had done. But all he got was a face full of dirty carpet and a close up of a thick black substance that his hand swept away from under his nose.
No matter what he did, he couldn't seem to claw his way to the surface. The sense of detachment, the missing chunks of time and Sam's reluctance to fight back. Oh yeah. Spirit possessions were a bitch.
"DEAN!"
Dean watched numbly as his hand curled around the butt of the gun as he whipped around, firing another shot. This one skimmed past Sam's head just as he tossed a lit match onto the ledger, the flames blossoming as they licked the leather cover.
The pain was instantaneous, spiking and jabbing at his grey matter and all he could feel was an overwhelming urge to flee, to escape from it all. But his awareness was slipping, tumbling into the encroaching blackness as his body staggered out of the motel room and into the pouring rain.
Part Two