SPN fic: The Open Invitation
Chapter One
futurefic, spoilers thru 3.16, particularly for "The Kids Are Alright"
Katie and Annette Doolittle, Ben and Lisa Braeden, Sam, Dean, OFCs
Rated R for language
Disclaimer: They're all Kripke's, and I'm not profiting.
Note: This is unbeta'd, and I would be very grateful for a fresh pair of eyes on the next few chapters.
Chapter One
December 2021
Ben wasn’t home for Christmas.
Mom and I didn’t expect differently. It had been months since we’d gotten more than a quick email or a two-minute phone call. “Don’t worry about me, Ms. Doolittle. Work’s fine, I’m settling in. Yeah, Kate, I like St. Louis. No, I haven’t met anybody special, Ms. Doolittle. You two take care.”
But seventeen years ago, my mother and Ms. Braeden met at a pottery class and claimed each other as sisters in the way women sometimes will. Since then Ben had become a fixture at the Doolittle family Christmas Eve. At first, he ate all the brownies, made fun of my Barbies, and invented complicated games of hide and seek for my cousins. By the time we hit high school, he was bringing girlfriends to the party and getting my uncles to pour him mixed drinks.
Even last year, when he and Soulmate Number Five had just broken things off and the shitstorm hadn't yet settled, Ben let himself in our back door after everyone else had gone. He came and stood next to me at the sink, rolled up his sleeves, and started drying dishes as I washed them.
“She found the rosary and the holy water and the knives, didn’t she?” I said conversationally, scraping at a fringe of burnt cheese in the corner of a casserole dish.
“Yep,” Ben said, lifting the dish out of my hands and setting it aside to soak.
“How bad was it?” I asked, trying for gentleness.
“Bad.”
“Were there cops?”
“There was a shoe aimed at my face.”
“That’s… an improvement over the punch you took last time.”
“It’s weird, really,” Ben said offhand, “how you can sound like such an optimist while actually kicking me in the teeth.”
I shook my head and fished around in the murky water for the gravy boat somewhere down there. “I didn’t make her leave you, okay? In fact, I think I remember telling you that your little hobby was-”
“Your exact words were: ‘Ben, your freaky obsession is stupid, unhealthy, and downright psychotic.’”
“Quixotic, actually. But you were close.”
“Whatever.” He kept on polishing snowman-patterned china with total nonchalance, because obviously Kathleen Doolittle’s opinion of him was number 9,867,543 on his list of things he cared about. Right behind gee, I wonder whether Zac Efron is single.
And yet I still felt like I should say something nice to him. “I don’t mean to say I told you so, I just-”
"I know you think I'm an idiot, Kate," Ben said without sounding particularly bothered. “And you’re probably right. But there’s honest-to-God, ain’t-shittin’-you evil out there, and I can’t act like it doesn’t exist.”
I finally stopped pretending to care whether the cranberry sauce ever came unstuck from its serving spoon, and I looked Ben full in the face. "You don't have to go looking for it, either.”
"Maybe not,” he said, half-smiling down at me. “But if a couple of guys hadn't gone looking for it back in '07, we'd both be dead. A lot of other people, too. Hell, your dad might not have--"
"Don't talk about my dad,” I said quietly.
Ben ducked his head and sighed in a way that had always meant: I can't win with you, can I? "I'm just saying. There’s some people alive because of me. And that’s… That’s not nothin’."
I wasn’t his mother, and I certainly wasn’t Soulmate Number Five. But if we squinted, I could playact his sister on the strength of long years, a lot of memory, and the identical round scars on the napes of our necks. He didn’t need my permission to be an idiot any more than I needed his permission to call him one. Yet here he was on Christmas Eve, asking me to understand.
I turned off the faucet and tugged the dishtowel from his unresisting grip. I should have said, Promise you’ll take care of yourself. I should have said, Yell for help if you need it.
“What do you think it’ll do to your mom, Ben, if you get your dumb ass killed?”
The next two seconds were like the silence following a slap. For an elated moment, I thought he would yell or rant or throw something. I would yell back, and we would squabble like the fifth-graders we used to be, and between us something would give.
But Ben just shrugged, one-shouldered as always, and yanked the dishtowel back. In strange civility, we stacked plates in their cabinets and sorted silverware into drawers. When the counters stood empty, Ben pulled on his A-2 jacket-the one he practically lived in during the winter-and looked me in the eye.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
He kissed my cheek and slipped out into the moonlit snow.
Two days later, Ms. Braeden waved from the curb as Ben pulled away in his well-loved pickup truck. Troubled but dry-eyed, she watched him out of sight. She didn't want to make a scene, and she didn't want any hugs or reassurances from me or Mom. "He'll be fine, Annette," she told Mom. "And if he's not, I know who I'm going after first."
We had no idea what she meant by that, but we trusted the steel in her spine.
A year later, Ms. Braeden stood on our front step with gift bags hanging from both arms and a covered plate in her hands. When I opened the door she smiled radiantly, bumped her cheek against mine, and asked where she should put the pound cake. It wasn't until she caught me looking past her, hoping for messy hair and a popped collar, that her smile turned sad and knowing.
"It's just me this year, sweetie," she said.
Then Mom saw her, and all of a sudden the holiday cheer was effusive and catching. "Lisa! You look frozen. Here, let me put that on a cake plate. Kate, why don't you take those packages for her?"
The house was warm with people, brightly lit, and filled with chatter and the smell of cinnamon. Mom had hung so many evergreens you'd think a pine forest had exploded in the living room. I scooted past three of my uncles and half of Mom's gossiping aunts to get to the tree so I could tuck Ms. Braeden's packages in with the rest. Snoop that I was, I checked the labels. "For Katie. Merry Christmas, sweetheart!" "For Annette. In love and friendship."
A shadow flitted at the edge of my vision, and I looked up sharply. A woman peeked around the side of the tree, her face moon-white next to the strings of lights. She smiled down at me, sweet and harmless as Splenda. One of Mom’s awkward co-workers, I guessed, here on a pity invite. Doubtless she’d ask me what my major was, how did I like school, and oh, didn’t I look just like Annette-
“Kate! Oh, my God, it’s been forever!”
I knew that voice. Grinning, I turned my back on the stranger. “Dakota, I can’t believe you came.”
Five feet of enthusiasm slammed straight into me. The hug made my ribs creak. “Oof!”
“Of course I came, dummy. I heard a rumor Ms. Braeden was making pound cake.”
We held each other at arm’s length, smiling like lunatics. She’d pinned her hair up, just like me. And just like me, she wore a turtleneck to cover the strange scar.
We were a loose confederation of friends and acquaintances-the families That Thing preyed on fourteen years ago. Ms. Braeden kept tabs on everyone with varying degrees of success, and she and Mom formed the core of an offbeat support group. “No therapist will ever believe us,” Ms. Braeden said that first summer when the terror of cages and needle teeth was still fresh. “So we’ll have to look after each other.”
Dakota and I headed off to far distant colleges three years ago, but we kept in touch better than most.
“Can we go up to your room?” Dakota said, eyes sparkling. “I have goodies to show you.”
“Please tell me it’s not more naked pictures for your girlfriend.”
“Nope. These are Winchester goodies,” she whispered in my ear, patting the tote bag at her hip.
I shivered with the thrill of it. “Then what are we waiting for?”
We scrambled up to my room, loud and clumsy as children on the stairs, and we locked the door behind us and bounced on the bed. “Here we go,” Dakota said dramatically, pulling a thick manila envelope from her bag. “I can’t believe none of us thought of this before, but,” she waved the envelope at a jaunty angle, “in the case of deceased persons, FBI files become available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.”
I gaped. “You’ve got the Winchesters’ FBI files?”
“Parts of them. Some of it’s censored because of civil rights or whatever. But, Kate-Katie-Kay…” Dakota grinned at me, hoop earrings swinging with her shaking head. “I haven’t opened it yet. I was saving it for tonight.”
“Oh, my God,” I hissed. “Best Christmas present ever.”
“I know. I rock.”
We tore into the envelope, marveled at the twin blue covers and their official FBI seals, and slowly cracked open the top file like it was the first chapter of Genesis.
Dean Michael Winchester grinned up at us, smug and good-looking even in the black and white of his mug shot. Born 24 January 1979. Deceased 22 February 2008.
Height: 6’1”. Weight: 175 lbs. Hair: Brown. Eyes: Green.
We flipped open the second file to its corresponding page.
Samuel Jude Winchester brooded superbly in front of the height markers. Born 2 May 1983. Deceased 22 February 2008. 6’4”, 185 lbs, brown hair and brown eyes.
It was nothing we didn’t know from pestering Ms. Braeden and Googling old news coverage. We’d done our homework-the better to sit up late with coffee or alcohol, trading ridiculous theories about what went down in Monument, Colorado more than a decade ago.
“Like hell it was a gas line rupture,” I would say too loudly, waving a beer bottle. “I bet they went down fighting a whole coven of vampires or something.”
“Yeah, exploding vampires,” Dakota would scoff. “Maybe it was like, a big damn dragon. Torched the place.”
Ben never joined in. He just stared into his drink and listened to us ramble.
“Are we even sure they’re dead?” I said when we ran out of guesses. “The cops thought Dean died once before in St. Louis.”
“He took more killing than your average badass,” Dakota said with tipsy solemnity. “After all, he was Dean.”
“The Dean,” I said, waggling my eyebrows.
Dakota grinned wickedly. “Best night of Ms. Braeden’s life Dean.”
Ben choked on his Budweiser and glared at us both for that one.
“Sorry,” I lied. “That’s how the mommy gossip ring refers to him.”
“What-“ But Ben stopped himself. “I don’t want to know.”
We never could stomach the notion that anything less than a two-ton, fire-breathing lizard had the stones to kill our knights in scruffy denim.
But here was the real story, or at least the feds’ version of it, laid out on my bed in a stark Courier font with pictures and eyewitness’ statements. Half of it was blacked out, and what was left was riddled with professional profiling of Dean Winchester’s sociopathic tendencies.
I’d never liked the FBI.
“This is…” Dakota said, thumbing through a section about a prison break in Green River. “This is cooler than pound cake.” In her hands, Sam’s file fell open to a spread of fifteen-year-old photos capturing a sleek classic car at every angle. “You remember this?” she said, nudging me. “Riding home in this thing?”
I would never forget the towering stranger (Sam, I learned later) handing me into that rumbling black beast. I squished in next to Ms. Aniday the realtor, who held the smallest boy, Alexander, on her lap. The five of us on the backseat sat shocky and shivering, and Ben and Dakota glanced back from the front every now and then to meet our eyes.
The car emptied slowly, with tears and explanations at every stop, and our rescuers kept up a refrain for us: “Everybody’s fine. The changelings are taken care of. We’re gonna get you all home.”
Half of us came home to find our fathers dead and the changelings living on in our nightmares. I didn’t feel fine for a long time after. Not even in Mommy’s arms.
“Of course I remember the car ride,” I said, knocking my shoulder against Dakota’s. “You crawled in back with me as soon as there was room.”
“It was crowded up front,” she said airily. “And you smelled better than Ben.”
“Kate?” my mother called from the foot of the stairwell. “Can you give me a hand down here?”
Dakota and I tucked the files away in my closet for safekeeping, both humming with satisfaction. There would be time to peruse them later, to piece together our own history of the mysterious Winchester brothers.
“On my way,” I called to my mother.
I went down the stairs with Dakota on my heels. At the bottom Mom was sweeping up a shattered tree ornament.
“There you are,” she said distractedly. “Can you empty the trash can in the kitchen?”
“Sure, Mom.”
I waded through people, muttering sorries and ‘scuse mes. A trailing shawl tripped me up, and its owner caught me firmly by the elbow. It was the Awkward Co-Worker. She gave me a shy, waxen smile from behind her curtains of dark hair.
“You okay, honey?”
My lips twitched reflexively. “I’m fine, ma’am.” And I slipped away to the kitchen.
The party wore on until my little cousins fell asleep in the armchairs and my mom’s brothers crossed the line from dirty jokes to grabby hands. Mom spent an hour in the foyer saying goodbyes and kissing cheeks.
Dakota left with the last few stragglers. “Call me sometime before New Year’s,” she said as she hugged me. “We’ll finish catching up.”
Only Ms. Braeden stayed the night, so she could wake up for breakfast and presents with us in the morning. Mom wouldn’t hear of her going home to an empty house on Christmas.
“Go up to bed, Annette,” Ms. Braeden said, shooing Mom away from the ravaged turkey and half-eaten pies. “Kate and I will put the food away, and we can finish cleaning tomorrow when we get back from your mother’s.”
Mom didn’t even argue, she was so tired.
In the strange and sudden quiet, Ms. Braeden helped me foil-wrap and Ziploc the mountains of leftovers, never needing to ask where anything belonged.
“So where is Ben?” I asked as we worked.
“Lima, Ohio,” she said with a fretful shake of her head. “Chasing after a succubus, of all things.”
“He’s been checking in?”
“Right on time, every day for a week.” Ms. Braeden sighed heavily, leaning against the refrigerator. “I told him to call you and explain.”
I tried to shrug it off. “It’s not like he owes me anything.”
“Sweetie,” she said earnestly. “If he insists on risking his neck every few weeks, he should at least let you know he’s in one piece. God, if he were still sixteen, I’d take away his car keys or-“
“It’s okay, Ms. Braeden,” I said quietly. Ben’s half-smirk came to mind, and I could almost hear him tell me about honest-to-God, ain’t-shittin’-you evil. But his mom had spent the last year in agonies of worry, so I told the easy half-truth instead: “I get why he’s doing it.”
She ran her hand through her hair in a nervous, frazzled gesture. “Do you? Because I sure as hell…” She left the sentence unfinished and somehow dredged up a smile. “He’s twenty-two years old. Mom can’t take away his car keys anymore.”
“You could try,” I said, coming over to lean against the fridge next to her. “But he’s a sneaky bastard, and he’s crazy good at keep-away.”
She hugged me sideways, in love and friendship. Half an hour later, she slipped upstairs to bed with a whispered “Merry Christmas.” I passed out on the living room sofa, and my dreams were filled with silk-lined leather and growling engines.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
“Hey, Kate.”
I sat up sharply on the sofa, squinting into the darkness. The TV clock said 2:53. “Who’s there?” I demanded.
Ben ambled in from the living room, looking pleased with himself. He’d finally gotten over that beat-up bomber jacket, and his hands were stuffed in the pockets of a sensible coat.
“It’s just me,” he said smugly. He’d always liked to make an entrance.
“Your mom’s asleep upstairs,” I said, feeling one of those full-body smiles wash over me. “She said you weren’t coming.”
Ben’s shoulders hunched and fell, and the shrug looked awkward on him. “I wanted to see the family. Nothing more important, right?”
“I’m glad you could make it.” Cold seeped through my turtleneck when I opened my arms to hug him, but I couldn’t care. It was only a few steps to his broad, sturdy warmth.
Right then the back door crashed open and hit the wall with a blast like a shotgun. I damn near jumped out of my skin.
“Katie, run!”
That was Ben in the laundry room, bellowing harsh and panicked. But he was right next to me, strong hands were closing around my wrist, he was yanking me to him on reflex-
No. He couldn’t be twisting my arm behind my back.
“You’re not him,” I gasped. “You’re not him.”
“Shut up,” an eldritch voice said, all illusions gone. An arm too thin and steely to be human clamped around my chest. I screamed, and long-nailed fingers vised my throat. “Stay still, little girl.”
It was too fast. The world had skewed slantwise, and I’d lost the simple power of breathing.
Ben-the real Ben-stood a few paces away, dirty and bruised and panting. A handgun gleamed in his grip, trained on our melded shapes. “Let her go, or I swear to God I will-”
“You started the war, hunter,” the strange thing barked hoarsely, wrenching a whimper out of me with its grip on my arm. “I told you I’d bring it to your doorstep.”
“And I’m telling you,” Ben said, the words so low they guttered and shook. “Put a scratch on her and I’ll take your face off.”
“Please,” I choked, stupid with terror. My jackhammer pulse was loud in my ears.
“You won’t fire,” the thing wrapped around me hissed. It let go of my throat, only to drag its knifelike finger in a bloody path down my chest. “You’ll hit your precious china doll.”
“Stop,” I whispered between gasps. “Please stop.”
Mom and Ms. Braeden were just upstairs. How did no one hear? Why did no one come?
“Let her go,” Ben repeated, slipping his finger from trigger to trigger guard. “Just let her go.”
My elbow’s extreme angle eased, and the arm across my chest loosened. Bone and gristle stiffened around me, and I felt humid breath on my neck. “Don’t. Follow me,” the creature spat.
Then it plunged its hooked talons into my thigh.
I’d never felt such pyrotechnic pain in my life. It ripped up my leg and shrieked down my nerves like fire and voltage and holy hell. I was blind and nauseated, and if I was screaming, it was raw and wordless.
The world above my head was muted and miles away. Gunshots and yelling echoed in a thickening black fog, and though someone was saying my name, I didn’t care what they wanted from me.
“Kate. Stay with me, Katie, please. Gotta breathe, babe, come on. Kate. Katie!”
I knew that voice, but when I opened my eyes, the face didn’t fit. She was fair and blue-eyed as a fabled snow queen, with night-black hair that shrouded us both. There was comfort in her saccharine smile and numbness where her elegant hands traced my body.
She promised oblivion, thank God. I nodded yes please take me.
Her deadening weight pressed down on my chest, and the scorching pain was snuffed to darkness.
Chapter Two
futurefic, spoilers thru 3.16, particularly for "The Kids Are Alright"
Katie and Annette Doolittle, Ben and Lisa Braeden, Sam, Dean, OFCs
Rated R for language
Disclaimer: They're all Kripke's, and I'm not profiting.
Note: This is unbeta'd, and I would be very grateful for a fresh pair of eyes on the next few chapters.
Chapter One
December 2021
Ben wasn’t home for Christmas.
Mom and I didn’t expect differently. It had been months since we’d gotten more than a quick email or a two-minute phone call. “Don’t worry about me, Ms. Doolittle. Work’s fine, I’m settling in. Yeah, Kate, I like St. Louis. No, I haven’t met anybody special, Ms. Doolittle. You two take care.”
But seventeen years ago, my mother and Ms. Braeden met at a pottery class and claimed each other as sisters in the way women sometimes will. Since then Ben had become a fixture at the Doolittle family Christmas Eve. At first, he ate all the brownies, made fun of my Barbies, and invented complicated games of hide and seek for my cousins. By the time we hit high school, he was bringing girlfriends to the party and getting my uncles to pour him mixed drinks.
Even last year, when he and Soulmate Number Five had just broken things off and the shitstorm hadn't yet settled, Ben let himself in our back door after everyone else had gone. He came and stood next to me at the sink, rolled up his sleeves, and started drying dishes as I washed them.
“She found the rosary and the holy water and the knives, didn’t she?” I said conversationally, scraping at a fringe of burnt cheese in the corner of a casserole dish.
“Yep,” Ben said, lifting the dish out of my hands and setting it aside to soak.
“How bad was it?” I asked, trying for gentleness.
“Bad.”
“Were there cops?”
“There was a shoe aimed at my face.”
“That’s… an improvement over the punch you took last time.”
“It’s weird, really,” Ben said offhand, “how you can sound like such an optimist while actually kicking me in the teeth.”
I shook my head and fished around in the murky water for the gravy boat somewhere down there. “I didn’t make her leave you, okay? In fact, I think I remember telling you that your little hobby was-”
“Your exact words were: ‘Ben, your freaky obsession is stupid, unhealthy, and downright psychotic.’”
“Quixotic, actually. But you were close.”
“Whatever.” He kept on polishing snowman-patterned china with total nonchalance, because obviously Kathleen Doolittle’s opinion of him was number 9,867,543 on his list of things he cared about. Right behind gee, I wonder whether Zac Efron is single.
And yet I still felt like I should say something nice to him. “I don’t mean to say I told you so, I just-”
"I know you think I'm an idiot, Kate," Ben said without sounding particularly bothered. “And you’re probably right. But there’s honest-to-God, ain’t-shittin’-you evil out there, and I can’t act like it doesn’t exist.”
I finally stopped pretending to care whether the cranberry sauce ever came unstuck from its serving spoon, and I looked Ben full in the face. "You don't have to go looking for it, either.”
"Maybe not,” he said, half-smiling down at me. “But if a couple of guys hadn't gone looking for it back in '07, we'd both be dead. A lot of other people, too. Hell, your dad might not have--"
"Don't talk about my dad,” I said quietly.
Ben ducked his head and sighed in a way that had always meant: I can't win with you, can I? "I'm just saying. There’s some people alive because of me. And that’s… That’s not nothin’."
I wasn’t his mother, and I certainly wasn’t Soulmate Number Five. But if we squinted, I could playact his sister on the strength of long years, a lot of memory, and the identical round scars on the napes of our necks. He didn’t need my permission to be an idiot any more than I needed his permission to call him one. Yet here he was on Christmas Eve, asking me to understand.
I turned off the faucet and tugged the dishtowel from his unresisting grip. I should have said, Promise you’ll take care of yourself. I should have said, Yell for help if you need it.
“What do you think it’ll do to your mom, Ben, if you get your dumb ass killed?”
The next two seconds were like the silence following a slap. For an elated moment, I thought he would yell or rant or throw something. I would yell back, and we would squabble like the fifth-graders we used to be, and between us something would give.
But Ben just shrugged, one-shouldered as always, and yanked the dishtowel back. In strange civility, we stacked plates in their cabinets and sorted silverware into drawers. When the counters stood empty, Ben pulled on his A-2 jacket-the one he practically lived in during the winter-and looked me in the eye.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
He kissed my cheek and slipped out into the moonlit snow.
Two days later, Ms. Braeden waved from the curb as Ben pulled away in his well-loved pickup truck. Troubled but dry-eyed, she watched him out of sight. She didn't want to make a scene, and she didn't want any hugs or reassurances from me or Mom. "He'll be fine, Annette," she told Mom. "And if he's not, I know who I'm going after first."
We had no idea what she meant by that, but we trusted the steel in her spine.
A year later, Ms. Braeden stood on our front step with gift bags hanging from both arms and a covered plate in her hands. When I opened the door she smiled radiantly, bumped her cheek against mine, and asked where she should put the pound cake. It wasn't until she caught me looking past her, hoping for messy hair and a popped collar, that her smile turned sad and knowing.
"It's just me this year, sweetie," she said.
Then Mom saw her, and all of a sudden the holiday cheer was effusive and catching. "Lisa! You look frozen. Here, let me put that on a cake plate. Kate, why don't you take those packages for her?"
The house was warm with people, brightly lit, and filled with chatter and the smell of cinnamon. Mom had hung so many evergreens you'd think a pine forest had exploded in the living room. I scooted past three of my uncles and half of Mom's gossiping aunts to get to the tree so I could tuck Ms. Braeden's packages in with the rest. Snoop that I was, I checked the labels. "For Katie. Merry Christmas, sweetheart!" "For Annette. In love and friendship."
A shadow flitted at the edge of my vision, and I looked up sharply. A woman peeked around the side of the tree, her face moon-white next to the strings of lights. She smiled down at me, sweet and harmless as Splenda. One of Mom’s awkward co-workers, I guessed, here on a pity invite. Doubtless she’d ask me what my major was, how did I like school, and oh, didn’t I look just like Annette-
“Kate! Oh, my God, it’s been forever!”
I knew that voice. Grinning, I turned my back on the stranger. “Dakota, I can’t believe you came.”
Five feet of enthusiasm slammed straight into me. The hug made my ribs creak. “Oof!”
“Of course I came, dummy. I heard a rumor Ms. Braeden was making pound cake.”
We held each other at arm’s length, smiling like lunatics. She’d pinned her hair up, just like me. And just like me, she wore a turtleneck to cover the strange scar.
We were a loose confederation of friends and acquaintances-the families That Thing preyed on fourteen years ago. Ms. Braeden kept tabs on everyone with varying degrees of success, and she and Mom formed the core of an offbeat support group. “No therapist will ever believe us,” Ms. Braeden said that first summer when the terror of cages and needle teeth was still fresh. “So we’ll have to look after each other.”
Dakota and I headed off to far distant colleges three years ago, but we kept in touch better than most.
“Can we go up to your room?” Dakota said, eyes sparkling. “I have goodies to show you.”
“Please tell me it’s not more naked pictures for your girlfriend.”
“Nope. These are Winchester goodies,” she whispered in my ear, patting the tote bag at her hip.
I shivered with the thrill of it. “Then what are we waiting for?”
We scrambled up to my room, loud and clumsy as children on the stairs, and we locked the door behind us and bounced on the bed. “Here we go,” Dakota said dramatically, pulling a thick manila envelope from her bag. “I can’t believe none of us thought of this before, but,” she waved the envelope at a jaunty angle, “in the case of deceased persons, FBI files become available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.”
I gaped. “You’ve got the Winchesters’ FBI files?”
“Parts of them. Some of it’s censored because of civil rights or whatever. But, Kate-Katie-Kay…” Dakota grinned at me, hoop earrings swinging with her shaking head. “I haven’t opened it yet. I was saving it for tonight.”
“Oh, my God,” I hissed. “Best Christmas present ever.”
“I know. I rock.”
We tore into the envelope, marveled at the twin blue covers and their official FBI seals, and slowly cracked open the top file like it was the first chapter of Genesis.
Dean Michael Winchester grinned up at us, smug and good-looking even in the black and white of his mug shot. Born 24 January 1979. Deceased 22 February 2008.
Height: 6’1”. Weight: 175 lbs. Hair: Brown. Eyes: Green.
We flipped open the second file to its corresponding page.
Samuel Jude Winchester brooded superbly in front of the height markers. Born 2 May 1983. Deceased 22 February 2008. 6’4”, 185 lbs, brown hair and brown eyes.
It was nothing we didn’t know from pestering Ms. Braeden and Googling old news coverage. We’d done our homework-the better to sit up late with coffee or alcohol, trading ridiculous theories about what went down in Monument, Colorado more than a decade ago.
“Like hell it was a gas line rupture,” I would say too loudly, waving a beer bottle. “I bet they went down fighting a whole coven of vampires or something.”
“Yeah, exploding vampires,” Dakota would scoff. “Maybe it was like, a big damn dragon. Torched the place.”
Ben never joined in. He just stared into his drink and listened to us ramble.
“Are we even sure they’re dead?” I said when we ran out of guesses. “The cops thought Dean died once before in St. Louis.”
“He took more killing than your average badass,” Dakota said with tipsy solemnity. “After all, he was Dean.”
“The Dean,” I said, waggling my eyebrows.
Dakota grinned wickedly. “Best night of Ms. Braeden’s life Dean.”
Ben choked on his Budweiser and glared at us both for that one.
“Sorry,” I lied. “That’s how the mommy gossip ring refers to him.”
“What-“ But Ben stopped himself. “I don’t want to know.”
We never could stomach the notion that anything less than a two-ton, fire-breathing lizard had the stones to kill our knights in scruffy denim.
But here was the real story, or at least the feds’ version of it, laid out on my bed in a stark Courier font with pictures and eyewitness’ statements. Half of it was blacked out, and what was left was riddled with professional profiling of Dean Winchester’s sociopathic tendencies.
I’d never liked the FBI.
“This is…” Dakota said, thumbing through a section about a prison break in Green River. “This is cooler than pound cake.” In her hands, Sam’s file fell open to a spread of fifteen-year-old photos capturing a sleek classic car at every angle. “You remember this?” she said, nudging me. “Riding home in this thing?”
I would never forget the towering stranger (Sam, I learned later) handing me into that rumbling black beast. I squished in next to Ms. Aniday the realtor, who held the smallest boy, Alexander, on her lap. The five of us on the backseat sat shocky and shivering, and Ben and Dakota glanced back from the front every now and then to meet our eyes.
The car emptied slowly, with tears and explanations at every stop, and our rescuers kept up a refrain for us: “Everybody’s fine. The changelings are taken care of. We’re gonna get you all home.”
Half of us came home to find our fathers dead and the changelings living on in our nightmares. I didn’t feel fine for a long time after. Not even in Mommy’s arms.
“Of course I remember the car ride,” I said, knocking my shoulder against Dakota’s. “You crawled in back with me as soon as there was room.”
“It was crowded up front,” she said airily. “And you smelled better than Ben.”
“Kate?” my mother called from the foot of the stairwell. “Can you give me a hand down here?”
Dakota and I tucked the files away in my closet for safekeeping, both humming with satisfaction. There would be time to peruse them later, to piece together our own history of the mysterious Winchester brothers.
“On my way,” I called to my mother.
I went down the stairs with Dakota on my heels. At the bottom Mom was sweeping up a shattered tree ornament.
“There you are,” she said distractedly. “Can you empty the trash can in the kitchen?”
“Sure, Mom.”
I waded through people, muttering sorries and ‘scuse mes. A trailing shawl tripped me up, and its owner caught me firmly by the elbow. It was the Awkward Co-Worker. She gave me a shy, waxen smile from behind her curtains of dark hair.
“You okay, honey?”
My lips twitched reflexively. “I’m fine, ma’am.” And I slipped away to the kitchen.
The party wore on until my little cousins fell asleep in the armchairs and my mom’s brothers crossed the line from dirty jokes to grabby hands. Mom spent an hour in the foyer saying goodbyes and kissing cheeks.
Dakota left with the last few stragglers. “Call me sometime before New Year’s,” she said as she hugged me. “We’ll finish catching up.”
Only Ms. Braeden stayed the night, so she could wake up for breakfast and presents with us in the morning. Mom wouldn’t hear of her going home to an empty house on Christmas.
“Go up to bed, Annette,” Ms. Braeden said, shooing Mom away from the ravaged turkey and half-eaten pies. “Kate and I will put the food away, and we can finish cleaning tomorrow when we get back from your mother’s.”
Mom didn’t even argue, she was so tired.
In the strange and sudden quiet, Ms. Braeden helped me foil-wrap and Ziploc the mountains of leftovers, never needing to ask where anything belonged.
“So where is Ben?” I asked as we worked.
“Lima, Ohio,” she said with a fretful shake of her head. “Chasing after a succubus, of all things.”
“He’s been checking in?”
“Right on time, every day for a week.” Ms. Braeden sighed heavily, leaning against the refrigerator. “I told him to call you and explain.”
I tried to shrug it off. “It’s not like he owes me anything.”
“Sweetie,” she said earnestly. “If he insists on risking his neck every few weeks, he should at least let you know he’s in one piece. God, if he were still sixteen, I’d take away his car keys or-“
“It’s okay, Ms. Braeden,” I said quietly. Ben’s half-smirk came to mind, and I could almost hear him tell me about honest-to-God, ain’t-shittin’-you evil. But his mom had spent the last year in agonies of worry, so I told the easy half-truth instead: “I get why he’s doing it.”
She ran her hand through her hair in a nervous, frazzled gesture. “Do you? Because I sure as hell…” She left the sentence unfinished and somehow dredged up a smile. “He’s twenty-two years old. Mom can’t take away his car keys anymore.”
“You could try,” I said, coming over to lean against the fridge next to her. “But he’s a sneaky bastard, and he’s crazy good at keep-away.”
She hugged me sideways, in love and friendship. Half an hour later, she slipped upstairs to bed with a whispered “Merry Christmas.” I passed out on the living room sofa, and my dreams were filled with silk-lined leather and growling engines.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
“Hey, Kate.”
I sat up sharply on the sofa, squinting into the darkness. The TV clock said 2:53. “Who’s there?” I demanded.
Ben ambled in from the living room, looking pleased with himself. He’d finally gotten over that beat-up bomber jacket, and his hands were stuffed in the pockets of a sensible coat.
“It’s just me,” he said smugly. He’d always liked to make an entrance.
“Your mom’s asleep upstairs,” I said, feeling one of those full-body smiles wash over me. “She said you weren’t coming.”
Ben’s shoulders hunched and fell, and the shrug looked awkward on him. “I wanted to see the family. Nothing more important, right?”
“I’m glad you could make it.” Cold seeped through my turtleneck when I opened my arms to hug him, but I couldn’t care. It was only a few steps to his broad, sturdy warmth.
Right then the back door crashed open and hit the wall with a blast like a shotgun. I damn near jumped out of my skin.
“Katie, run!”
That was Ben in the laundry room, bellowing harsh and panicked. But he was right next to me, strong hands were closing around my wrist, he was yanking me to him on reflex-
No. He couldn’t be twisting my arm behind my back.
“You’re not him,” I gasped. “You’re not him.”
“Shut up,” an eldritch voice said, all illusions gone. An arm too thin and steely to be human clamped around my chest. I screamed, and long-nailed fingers vised my throat. “Stay still, little girl.”
It was too fast. The world had skewed slantwise, and I’d lost the simple power of breathing.
Ben-the real Ben-stood a few paces away, dirty and bruised and panting. A handgun gleamed in his grip, trained on our melded shapes. “Let her go, or I swear to God I will-”
“You started the war, hunter,” the strange thing barked hoarsely, wrenching a whimper out of me with its grip on my arm. “I told you I’d bring it to your doorstep.”
“And I’m telling you,” Ben said, the words so low they guttered and shook. “Put a scratch on her and I’ll take your face off.”
“Please,” I choked, stupid with terror. My jackhammer pulse was loud in my ears.
“You won’t fire,” the thing wrapped around me hissed. It let go of my throat, only to drag its knifelike finger in a bloody path down my chest. “You’ll hit your precious china doll.”
“Stop,” I whispered between gasps. “Please stop.”
Mom and Ms. Braeden were just upstairs. How did no one hear? Why did no one come?
“Let her go,” Ben repeated, slipping his finger from trigger to trigger guard. “Just let her go.”
My elbow’s extreme angle eased, and the arm across my chest loosened. Bone and gristle stiffened around me, and I felt humid breath on my neck. “Don’t. Follow me,” the creature spat.
Then it plunged its hooked talons into my thigh.
I’d never felt such pyrotechnic pain in my life. It ripped up my leg and shrieked down my nerves like fire and voltage and holy hell. I was blind and nauseated, and if I was screaming, it was raw and wordless.
The world above my head was muted and miles away. Gunshots and yelling echoed in a thickening black fog, and though someone was saying my name, I didn’t care what they wanted from me.
“Kate. Stay with me, Katie, please. Gotta breathe, babe, come on. Kate. Katie!”
I knew that voice, but when I opened my eyes, the face didn’t fit. She was fair and blue-eyed as a fabled snow queen, with night-black hair that shrouded us both. There was comfort in her saccharine smile and numbness where her elegant hands traced my body.
She promised oblivion, thank God. I nodded yes please take me.
Her deadening weight pressed down on my chest, and the scorching pain was snuffed to darkness.
Chapter Two