Smoke on the Water (3/3)

[ratherastory]

Previous Parts

Part V

Normally I avoid my mother's house as much as humanly possible while still living in the same city as she does and having her call me at all hours of the day and night with mostly-imagined and sometimes-real emergencies. Today, though, I made an exception and went over, because it wasn't every day that she played hostess to two men who had faked their own death (twice, in one case) and were wanted in more states than I could count on the fingers of one hand. Again, I was working under the adage of 'better safe than sorry.'

To my surprise, I found her in my old bedroom, sitting next to Sam Winchester's sickbed. My mother has many qualities, but she's never been especially domestic, and so I was a little startled to see that she was carefully dabbing at the kid's face with a damp washcloth, holding her cigarette out to the side so the smoke wouldn't blow back in his direction.

“Oh, Michael, you're back,” she said, surprising me yet again by keeping her voice to a whisper. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, Mom, everything's fine. I was just checking in on you. You okay?”

“I'm fine, but your friend isn't doing too well. Poor boy's been in and out all evening,” she gave him a look that was almost tender. “I used to do this for you and Nate when you were kids.”

I nodded. “I remember. We both had the flu over Christmas one year. Dad was out in the garage the whole time.” It was one of my favourite Christmas memories, not that I'd ever tell Mom that.

“Are you going to stay a while? I could use a nap,” she said. She was matter-of-fact about it, but I could see how tired she looked. It had been a long day, after all.

I kissed the top of her head. “Sure, Mom. Thank you for helping with this. I couldn't do it without you.”

She patted my arm. “You're a good boy, Michael. Always have been. I think he is, too. You take care of him, all right?”

“I will, Mom.”

I took her place next to the bed and gave the patient a critical once-over. He wasn't looking good, if I was honest with myself: he was sweating, face flushed with fever, lips moving soundlessly. I picked up the wash cloth that my mother had left to soak in a bowl of water, wrung it out and used it to wipe his face. He sighed quietly and shifted under my touch, eyes fluttering. For a moment I thought he would simply lapse back into unconsciousness, but he managed to rouse himself and blinked fuzzily at me. I took the opportunity to unceremoniously stick a thermometer under his tongue.

“No talking,” I admonished. “Not until I know how high your fever is.” I checked the reading once the thermometer beeped. “Well, it's high enough that we'll have to call Jim back if we can't get you cooled off.”

Sam pushed himself up with his good arm, wincing as the movement jostled his injury. “It's okay,” he said, his voice rough. “It's just an infection ―it's not like the conditions here are anaerobic. We've got antibiotics in the first aid kit. Cephalexin. It's usually enough.”

“This happen a lot?” I was still having trouble wrapping my mind around their supposed profession. I didn't bother pointing out that the first aid kit was gone, along with his brother and the car.

“More'n I'd like,” he mumbled, eyes closing again. “I hate this place.”

I snorted in amusement. “Funny, I hate Miami too.”

That got a faint grin. “Hate Florida. Shitty things always happen in Florida. 's not normal. The hell's wrong with this state?”

“What isn't wrong with it?” I countered. The kid was bordering on delirium, and while it wasn't really fair of me, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity that presented itself. “Okay, Sam. I need you to level with me. What'd you do with the kids?” If there was any time that I'd get a proper confession ―if confession there was to be had― it was now. I wasn't so lucky, though. Instead of a confession I got a look that wouldn't have looked out of place on a kicked puppy.

“Didn't do anything. Tryin' to help. I didn' even wanna come,” he said petulantly, the fever making him slur his words. “But I can' tell Dean that, no. He doesn' wanna do anything, even though the deal's comin' due. Seventy-four days. He doesn' count the days, but I do. Runnin' out of time, an' it's like he doesn' even care. He wasn' there in Broward County,” he pushed himself up onto his good elbow, fixing fever-bright eyes on me. “He doesn' wanna be saved, but I can' do it without 'im. You get it, right?”

I nudged him gently back onto the bed. “Not really. I think I'm lacking in context. I do get that you're on a timetable. You want to tell me what that's about? What's happening in seventy-four days?”

He struggled to keep his eyes open. “In seventy-four days Dean's going to die.”

*

Interrogating a delirious witness isn't something I do often, and it has some pretty obvious drawbacks. The main drawback in this case was that I couldn't get Sam to explain himself coherently to me. Whatever it was that was on his mind, he was either too confused or else the matter was far outside my realm of experience. What I was able to decipher was that the kid was terrified of losing his brother, that something similar had already happened in Broward County a few months before―that part was even more incoherent, but I figured it was just the fever making Sam conflate near-death with actual death.

I mixed up more of the electrolyte solution and made him wash down a few aspirin with it, hoping to get his fever down a bit. He wasn't especially cooperative, and his brother's name kept coming back like a mantra, even when nothing else that came out of him made sense. I've been out in the field for a long time, and usually when things get bad, men end up calling for their mothers in their delirium. I don't know exactly what it said about Sam Winchester that he was calling for his brother instead, but it gave me a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. Eventually I got him to finish the entire bottle of solution, and he settled down some once the aspirin started taking effect. When it seemed like he was out for the count, I pulled out my phone and retreated to just outside the doorway to call my Sam and get an update on how things were unfolding.

“So what did Carla want?” Sam wanted to know.

“She wanted to demonstrate just how much she owns me. Willie's dead.”

“Ouch,” Sam hissed through his teeth. “Poor little cowardly bastard.”

“So what's going on over there?” I didn't want to think about poor dead Willie and all the information he was now never going to give me.

“I gotta hand it to the kid,” Sam said, referring to Dean, “he knows how to work a room. He and Fi have been at it all night. They've checked in a couple of times, sounds like they've come up with some promising leads. They think they've caught wind of a woman who looks good for our little kidnapping and killing spree. Looks to me like a team, like you said, except one of them's a woman. Dean's been going on about spirits, but Fi says she's as human as they come. You going to come out? We may have to move fast on this, if the time comes and she lures out another victim.”

I checked my watch. “Yeah, I'll come down. Shouldn't take too long.”

“How's the kid?”

“Sick. Feverish. He's pretty strong, though, he'll pull through. Aspirin's helping.”

“Okay. I'll get there as soon as I can. Keep me posted, and none of you take any unnecessary risks, you got it?”

“Got it, Mike. I'll keep the kid from going off half-cocked.”

“Fiona too.”

“Fiona too,” he agreed. Fiona isn't exactly well-known

When I looked back in the room, I found Sam sitting up, one leg hanging over the side of the bed. He was reaching for his laptop, but gravity wasn't exactly cooperating. With one arm strapped to his chest and the other busy holding him up by gripping the side of the bed, there wasn't much he could do to actually bring the laptop closer to him.

“You're supposed to be sleeping,” I told him, but he ignored my attempts to get him to lie back.

“I'm okay,” he said, but the tremor in his voice belied his words. “I have to look at the autopsy reports again.”

I handed him his laptop. Sometimes you have to make a judgement call about these things, and while I figured both Winchesters were the type to keep going until they dropped, something told me that there was a reason that Sam there was suddenly obsessing about autopsy reports. He let me prop him up with some extra pillows, managing pretty well with just one arm. I pulled out the few paper copies they'd brought with them.

“What are we looking for?”

He wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, bangs sticking to his skin with sweat. “There was something wrong about it, but I didn't have time to look over the autopsy reports properly. I was going to do that after we talked to your Mom ―we were just hedging our bets with her, you know,” he added, looking up at me. “Making sure you weren't a threat.”

I didn't answer, and he went back to scrolling through pages and pages of medical reports at a rate that normal humans just shouldn't be able to do without going blind. Finally he tapped a finger against the screen. “There.”

I slid onto the bed to look over his shoulder. “What?”

“Look at the cause of death. Remember how all the bodies were found in water?”

“Drowned, I remember.”

He shook his head. “Not drowned. Asphyxiated. There wasn't any water in the lungs, on any of them. I think I know what we're dealing with, now. Where's Dean?”

“Out with Fi and Sam, remember?”

He rubbed his forehead again, scrunching up his eyes. “Right. Right, I forgot. Okay, we have to go. Feeding cycle's going to start tonight, if I'm right.”

“Feeding cycle?”

He pushed the laptop aside, struggled to his feet, good hand on the bed for balance, and gave me another of those looks. “I can do it myself, but it'll go faster if you help me.”

“You're serious about this? You realize you'll be a liability out there.”

He shook his head. “Been out there with worse. You need me to back you up, at least until can fill Dean in on what's going on. You're going in blind otherwise. Please.”

“Okay, but you're explaining on the way there.”

*

It took longer than I would have liked to get Sam up, dressed and to the car. It wasn't his fault, of course, but the fact that he was six foot four and outweighed me by a good forty pounds or so didn't help in the slightest. In the end I had to free his arm from where the medic had strapped it so his hand would rest against his shoulder, and outfitted him with a more conventional sling so that he could move more easily. He didn't argue when I handed him another dose of Percocet, but he was able to keep his footing and make it to the car under his own power, which went a long way toward reassuring me that this whole thing wasn't a terrible idea.

What didn't reassure me was the lack of response I was getting from my Sam's cell phone. Attempting to reach Fiona had the same frustrating lack of results, and when the other Sam tried his brother's cell and got no answer, I put the car into third and floored it.

“Which club were they at?” Sam asked me, spreading a map of Miami awkwardly on his lap and using the dim light of the car to make X's on it with a red felt-tipped pen.

“New place called Flavour,” I gave him the location, and he marked it down again. I decided against complaining about his scribbling on my map. Maps are cheap.

Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “You know the area better than I do. There's no pattern here telling me the nest is in town, so it's got to be a large body of fresh water not too far away. Somewhere with lots of ground cover, lots of waterways.”

I sped up. “There's the Everglades. Why don't you tell me what you're thinking?”

“What?” he jerked a bit, startled out of his concentration. “Oh, sorry. Uh... I think it's an undine. Two undines, actually, maybe more. But most likely two, which is surprising. Usually they're loners, really territorial, but sometimes they'll pair up for hunting.”

“An undine?”

He nodded, as though he hadn't just said something completely crazy. “Water spirits. A water wraith, if you want to get specific. They feed off, uh... life energy, I guess you could say. Steal the breath from their victims. It's where the myth comes from.”

“Myth?” I was beginning to feel like a really uninformed parrot, but he took my questions in stride, as though he was used to having to explain the unexplainable.

“German legend, actually. Water spirit by the name of Ondine falls in love with a mortal and marries him when he promises to be faithful to her with every waking breath. The usual. She bears his child, and that's her undoing: she loses her immortality, starts to age, and he loses interest, because apparently he's a shallow asshole,” he snorted, as though taking issue with the story. “She catches him in bed with another woman, and curses him. He swore fidelity with every waking breath, so as long as he stays awake, he stays alive. When he falls asleep, he stops breathing and dies.”

“Hell hath no fury?” I ventured, and he laughed.

“Yeah, something like that. So that's what they're doing: they've holed up in a nest somewhere, and are keeping the kids alive and awake to feed off them. When there's no life left in them, they dump the bodies.”

“Why put them in hotels and so many different places? It attracts far too much attention,” I pointed out, but I only got a shrug.

“They're not human. They don't play by the same rules. You can't look for logic there, you won't find it.”

“So how do we deal with them?” I couldn't believe the words were leaving my mouth, but then, weirder things were already happening. Most likely we were looking for humans, and then we'd be deal with them the regular way. But on the off-chance they weren't...

“Fire,” Sam said decisively. “Consecrated bullet to the heart, then torch the bodies and the nest. Oh, and we're going to need ear plugs.”

Just when I thought things couldn't get more surreal. “Ear plugs?”

“You should stop repeating everything I say as if I've just started speaking Urdu. Hurts a guy's feelings.”

“Actually, I speak Urdu.”

He snorted. “Should've known.”

I almost dropped my cell phone in my haste to answer it as it rang. “Sam? What the hell is happening? You okay? Where are you?”

Sam's voice was groggy on the other end of the line. “Got the drop on us,” he groaned. “I may never be the same again. Kid's in better shape than me, but they slipped him something, looks like.”

“How bad?”

“We'll live, but we have a problem.” I felt my heart sink at the hesitation in his voice. “Mike... they got Fi.”

*

I told Sam to rendezvous with us back at my loft, ignored the other Sam's frantic pleas to be told what was happening and whether his brother was okay. I burned through as many traffic lights as I could manage without getting us caught on any of the traffic cameras that are posted all over the city these days. The Winchesters' Impala was parked under my staircase when we arrived, the older brother in the process of popping the trunk. I barely had time to throw my own car into park before the younger brother was stumbling out of the front seat and making his way unsteadily toward him.

“Dean!”

Startled, Dean caught his brother by the arm as he reached him. “Sammy, what the hell?”

I jogged up behind them, and caught sight of my Sam on the far side of the car where I hadn't been able to spot him before. He was sporting a bruise on one cheekbone, which promised to turn into a hell of a shiner in time. He gave me a small wave. The other Sam was checking Dean over, talking a mile a minute.

“I figured out what it is, but we couldn't reach you. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” came the exasperated reply. “Feel kind of stupid, actually. Rookie mistake.”

“It's an undine,” the kid said. “The victims were all asphyxiated, not drowned.”

“I kind of figured that when it whammied me,” Dean grimaced, and threw a look toward my Sam. “And the girl too, by the looks of it. Sorry, man.”

At my look, my Sam explained, probing gingerly at the bruise . “Our perps slipped him something, but whatever it was it can't have been a full dose. He cold-cocked me, and that's when they got Fi.”

“Ear plugs,” I said, making my Sam look at me as though I'd lost my mind, but the other Sam and Dean both nodded.

“I think you guys are safe enough,” Dean said. “I think it needs to actually come into physical contact first before it can whammy you. Explains why it had to use me against Axe there.”

“Axe?” I looked at Sam. He's never really been one to go by his last name.

“Easier than calling him the same thing as my brother,” Dean shrugged.

“How long since it got the girl?” his brother asked, bringing us back on topic.

“A couple of hours, tops. We need to haul ass, but if we can find the nest, we've still got time. Might even get some of the others out too. You think you can manage a Glock?” Dean jerked his head at his brother's injured shoulder.

“I'll be fine. We got the right ammo for that?”

Dean just grinned, and that's when I caught sight of the contents of the trunk. There was a false bottom propped up with a sawed-off shotgun, revealing a spacious trunk separated into compartments. It wasn't a trunk so much as a small arsenal ―one which even Fiona would be proud to have. Besides an assortment of handguns and shotguns and rifles and their respective ammunition, though, I spotted a number of far more unusual items: various canisters, a bag of rock salt, crucifixes, a battered leather journal, and more knives than most people ever saw in their lives. Dean's grin widened when he saw me examining the contents of the trunk.

“Tools of the trade,” he said simply, handing over a box on which the word 'consecrated' had been nearly printed with a black Sharpie. “We've got flare guns,” he said to his brother, “but we might have to improvise for torching the nest.”

“That won't be necessary,” I broke in. One advantage of having an ex-girlfriend who's also ex-IRA is that you pretty much always have an arsenal of things that either explode or burn or both at your disposal. “Sam and I can provide that, if it turns out we need it. You realize that it's going to attract a lot of attention, right?”

Dean shrugged. “Why do you think we're wanted for arson? Setting fire to stuff ain't exactly subtle. Mostly we try not to do it in urban areas. Sammy? How you holding up?”

His brother was leaning against the car, cradling his injured arm carefully, shivering a bit even though the night was warm. “Pretty good, considering.”

“You sure you don't want to sit this one out? I can practically feel the fever from here.”

Sam shook his head. “I won't take point, that's for sure, but it's not bad. You're going to need the back-up out there. Two undines, and civilians in the mix? You can use all the help you can get. We've still got the Cephalexin from last time, that'll help.”

“Okay. You take anything else? Still got some Vicodin from last time too.”

“I'm good for now. I'll take the bottle with me in case.”

“You get a lead on where we're going?” Just like that, the conversation about whether or not the youngest Winchester was fit for duty was done. I wasn't sure whether to be reassured by the speed with which this verbal triage was done, or really really worried.

“Michael there says the Everglades is our best bet.”

“How would he know?” Dean threw me a sceptical glance, and I bit my tongue, since I'd said no such thing.

“Well, he doesn't. But we're looking for fresh water with lots of cover and isolated from people, and since he knows the area, I'm going with his suggestion.”

Dean looked at me. “There're houses out there? Isolated ones?”

“A few.”

My Sam took me aside. “Mike, are we seriously going to do this? Doing recon with these guys is one thing, but a rescue op?”

I shared his misgivings, but I didn't like the idea of leaving Fiona out there any longer than necessary.

“I know what you mean, but at this point, we don't have much choice.”

*

The key to a successful mission is proper preparation. When you're pressed for time, sitting down to prepare your weapons and research the terrain can feel like an incredible waste of time. We were all feeling the pull, I could tell, but the Winchesters were obviously used to this aspect of going into hostile territory too. Neither one of them tried to hurry things along, or insisted on sprinting out of there, for which I was grateful. There's nothing like having one of your allies go off half-cocked to seriously mess up a well-laid plan.

With my permission ―though I suspected that was more of a formality than anything else― Dean settled his brother on my bed with their laptop, a lot of water, a dose of antibiotics from their first aid kit and some more pain pills. Then he set about double-checking their weapons, sitting cross-legged on the floor by the bed, ostensibly minding his own business, but it was pretty obvious he didn't want to let his brother out of his sight. Sam and I set ourselves up at the trestle table, putting together the supplies we'd need once we got out there. No one spoke much at first, since there wasn't much to do before the other Sam narrowed down the search to a manageable grid.

In my line of work, you need to put practical concerns above the rest a lot of the time. Survival first, other human lives second, collateral damage coming in a very distant third. Bearing that in mind, I wasn't sure whether to try to wrap my mind around the possibility that the Winchesters weren't, in fact, deluded about what was out there, or whether to just leave the whole thing be until we were in place. So far, apart from the whole “water spirit” thing, their reasoning was just fine: the markings on the map, along with a few other clues gleaned from the police and autopsy reports, all pointed to a person or small group of people working out of the Everglades. It made sense, therefore, to look for isolated buildings, abandoned structures that could be used to conceal prisoners without attracting unwanted attention from the neighbours. Even so, we were looking at hundreds of potential locations, not all of which we'd be able to locate with the cursory research we were doing.

“So just how much 'physical contact' was there?” Sam-the-younger broke the silence, looking at his brother.

“What?” Dean glanced up.

“Just brushing up against an undine shouldn't have that sort of effect. I'm guessing it was a really pretty girl?”

“Dude, we are not having this discussion.”

“Look, Dean, we need to know just how much control she's going to exert over you once we're there. How much contact was there?”

Sam and I looked over at the two brothers. Dean was making a show of cleaning his gun, while his brother looked on with an expression that hovered between exasperation and amusement. I shrugged at Sam-the-older, who looked as though he understood about as much of this conversation as I did.

“Dean. Did you sleep with her?”

“What? No!” Dean looked shocked, but his brother just rolled his eyes. “Even if there was time ―which there wasn't― I don't do that. Totally a professional.”

“The waitress in Tampa?”

Dean shuddered, and I had the impression there was a story there I was never going to get. “Dude, don't even. Look, they were doing shots, and there was this thing she was doing with her―”

“God, no details. What sort of contact?”

Dean rubbed the back of his neck, flushing a bit. “Uh, if you want to get technical... saliva. I think that's how they got Fiona, too. I saw her with a guy earlier on, and I'm guessing they were working together on it. He was gone by the time the girl put the whammy on me and booked.”

“Fiona kissed him?” the words left my mouth unbidden, and Dean shrugged.

“Sorry, dude. She must have, because she didn't even try to kick him in the junk this time. She has pointy knees, is all I'm sayin'.”

His brother had turned his attention back to the computer, but was apparently more than capable of multitasking. “Okay, so in your case it looks like we might have caught a break. You got dosed with venom, but if you, umm, didn't go at it too hot and heavy, it wears off after a couple of hours if contact isn't renewed.”

“I can't believe we're discussing this,” Dean muttered, hand over his eyes.

“Fiona's probably good and ensorcelled, though. Give me a hand with this? I need Michael to take a look,” he shoved the laptop at Dean, then carefully stood, testing his balance, before making his way over and perching on a stool next to me. Once the laptop was open to where he wanted it, he motioned at the screen. “Okay, I ran some searches, did a bunch of cross-referencing, and I've got it narrowed down to about three areas where the nest could be. Problem is, they're pretty big, so we have to pick one. That's where local knowledge would come in handy. They all look the same to me. The way the undines have been working, they need easy access by water. What do you think?”

I glanced over at the screen, but the truth is that I haven't lived in Florida for a really long time, and my knowledge of the area is pretty much limited to Miami. Sam, on the other hand, was an ex-Navy SEAL and had lived around here for years. He leaned over my shoulder and tapped a finger on the screen.

“That's where they'll be. Give me a minute to make a call. I've got a buddy who can lend us a boat. There's no way we're going to make it all the way without one.”

Part VI

“Uh, aren't there, you know, alligators in here?”

I looked up from where I was trying to get the small spotlight on the prow of the boat to work. Sam's buddy may have had a boat, but it was tiny, rickety, had an outboard motor that threatened to catch in the seagrass (there's a reason that the Rangers are considering outlawing power boats in the Everglades, after all), and had sprung a very small leak that, while not dangerous, made for a pretty wet ride. There were also half a dozen empty beer bottles rattling around the bottom, adding to the nuisance factor.

The night was clear, and though the moon wasn't full by any stretch of the imagination, there was plenty of ambient light by which we could survey the water. Soon we'd left the vestiges of civilisation behind, and I was developing a whole new appreciation for the way moonlight plays off the weeds and water in the Everglades. Dean was staring dubiously at the murky water churning just beneath the boat, fingering the hilt of his Bowie knife speculatively, and I couldn't help but smile grimly at his question.

“There are, but they're not likely to give us trouble. They're supposed to be pretty shy as a rule. Just don't go jumping overboard and testing out the theory.”

He snorted. “Right.”

Both Sams were sitting in the stern, Sam Winchester doing a pretty creditable job of steering the crappy little boat, bad arm held close to his chest, while my Sam was playing navigator with a lot more skill than I would have thought. To say that I had misgivings about this expedition would have been putting it mildly, but Fiona was out there, and the longer we waited the more likely it was that I would never see her again. So, not for the first time and probably not for the last, I was throwing my lot in with virtual strangers with questionable backgrounds, whom I had little reason to trust but, ultimately, no choice.

The search took longer than any of us wanted. It wasn't one of their own on the line, but I could tell that the wait was taking its toll on the Winchesters: they were just as anxious as Sam and I to find the place and get this done. We got snagged twice and had to stop to untangle the motor, and once we almost grounded ourselves on an unexpected sandbar, but for the most part we chugged along quietly, the silence broken only by the sound of the outboard motor and Sam's directions, and the other Sam's even more infrequent interjections. I swept the banks with the search light, looking for abandoned huts and shacks, anything that could be used to keep a couple of adult humans alive for a few days. About an hour and ten minutes after we'd started looking, Dean reached over and tapped my arm.

“There. Don't point the light right at it. I think that's our nest,” he pointed at something that was barely a blur near the water's edge.

“Kill the motor,” I motioned to Sam-the-younger, and immediately the night fell eerily silent, the only audible sound that of water slopping insistently against the hull of the boat. “Dean, Sam, grab a paddle.”

Sam groaned. It was obvious I was talking to him, since Sam-the-younger wasn't exactly in any shape to be paddling. After a moment of splashing on Sam's part, we had the boat moving again, this time almost completely silently, until we were drifting right up to a rickety platform that might once have served as a dock for a small boat, and was now mostly a pile of rotting wood and rope. With a nod to me Dean climbed out of the boat, careful not to capsize us, and Sam dropped his paddle with a bit too much eagerness in order to toss him a mooring line. He was next out of the boat, with Dean pulling and me giving a helpful shove, then the other Sam, who, I was almost embarrassed for my friend, managed a lot more gracefully even with his dominant arm in a sling. Dean checked him over anyway.

“You still good, Sammy?” he kept his voice low.

His brother nodded. He didn't look great, pale and sweating, but he was steady on his feet and his eyes were alert. “I'm good.” He looked at me. “Give us about three minutes to get into position?”

I reached into my belt to reassure myself that my gun was there. The weapon was unfamiliar ―the Winchesters had insisted that both Sam and I use their guns, which supposedly had special ammunition, and I hadn't argued― but I figured one nine-millimetre is as good as another. I've been trained to use pretty much any handgun that comes my way and so has Sam, so it wasn't likely to throw us off our game any more than everything else that had already happened in the past fort-eight hours or so.

Sam and I laid low, and watched as the two brothers made their way forward. In less than thirty seconds they'd blended in with the shadows, and crept around to the back of the ramshackle little house ―barely more than a shack, if I had to give it a name. Our plan hinged on a lot of ifs and maybes, but it was the best we had. After a couple of minutes I felt Sam stir beside me, and confirmed with a glance that it was now or never. I got to my feet.
“Okay, let's do this.”

*

The element of surprise is always your best advantage when going into a battle. I had very little idea what to expect from this situation ―Sam and Dean were remarkably vague on the defensive capabilities of undine nests, which didn't really surprise me all that much― so I went with what I judged to be the most likely scenario to throw the enemy off-balance, keep them guessing long enough for us to pull the metaphorical equivalent of a sucker-punch. That's how my Sam and I ended up leaning on each other, each holding an empty beer bottle from the boat in one hand, with Sam belting out a sea shanty with filthy lyrics. I let my bottle rap loudly against the door, as if I'd struck it there accidentally.

“You’ve been a lovely audience, but enough is enough!” Sam bellowed, once again surprising me with his ability to stay on-key. “We’d take a drink kindly if you’d all just bugger off! So bugger off, you bastards bugger off...” as he took a deep breath to keep going, the door I'd just knocked on was yanked open, almost off its hinges.

“This isn't the place!” I said in my loudest, drunkest drawl. “I told you we shoulda taken that guide with us tonight!”

The guy who'd opened the door was a lot younger-looking than I'd expected, somehow, and handsome in a metrosexual way, as Sam would put it. Tall, slim, clean-shaven, with very bright eyes and olive-toned skin highlighted with sparkly make-up. He was in his bare feet, and wore a mesh top and form-fitting leather pants. He stuck out a full lower lip in a pretty good imitation of displeasure.

“This is private property,” he said. “You will have to leave.”

Sam lurched forward and slapped a meaty palm against the guy's chest, forcing him a couple of paces backward. “Aww, c'mon, don't be like that! Help a guy out, wouldja? My buddy, here, he thinks we're lost, but we're looking for Terry's party. You know Terry?”

While Sam was providing the necessary distraction, I took the opportunity to steal a glance into the structure behind our reluctant host. No electricity, just a couple of battery-operated lanterns, and not a stick of furniture. There was a door in the opposite wall, obviously leading to a separate room. So far, so good. If we could keep the subjects busy, the Winchesters would be able to go in through the back ―hopefully without being detected. There was no sign of anyone else in the front room, which meant the female partner was in the back room, presumably with the victims. Supposing we even had the right place. Judging by Sam's expression, though, he'd recognized the guy from the club, and even if Sam's word wasn't enough, the guy's get-up was out of place enough in the Everglades that I was confident we were in the right place.

“I bet the party's here! Terry, you bastard, where are you hiding?” Sam bulled his way forward, and for a moment it worked, and we were standing inside the shack, the low-slung ceiling almost brushing against the top of my head. The door swung shut behind us.

The place reeked. I've been in all sorts of nasty places in my career, around bodies that have been dead for a long time, around human waste and all sorts of other waste that smells pretty damned rank. This, though? I'd never smelled anything quite like it. The air was damper inside than out, and smelled of mould and mildew, rotten straw and offal, mixed in with sweat and human waste and that indescribable odour of abject terror that only the truly hopeless have. The smell of prison camps and kidnapping victims who have despaired of ever getting out alive. I almost retched, and I could see Sam turning pale in the dim light.

“You can't be here!” the young man yelled, recovering from his initial surprise, looking nervously over his shoulder at the half-open door leading to the back room.

At the sound of his voice, a young woman with the same colouring appeared in the doorway. Like him, she was dressed to go out clubbing, in a tight-fitting black dress with sequins. She was barefoot, like her boyfriend or partner or whatever he was, and for a split-second I was really, but really tempted to just chuck the whole operation and do whatever she asked of me, possibly with the addition of whipped cream. I shook myself, saw Sam do the same, and she came forward with a very attractive undulation of hips.

“Henri,” she said, using the French pronunciation of the name. Her voice was low, sultry. “You are not being very welcoming. Is it not customary to offer hospitality to unexpected guests?” She moved toward me, large brown eyes fixed on mine, and I found myself taking a half-step back, off-balance for the first time in years.

“Maryse, we cannot,” Henri said, although I sensed regret in his voice, as though whatever she was proposing, he was dying to get in on the action as well. I couldn't exactly blame him. My pants felt about three sizes too small, for one thing.

'Maryse' was inches away ―something I'd normally have never let happen― so close I could feel her breath on the skin of my neck. She reached up with one slender hand to touch my face, and that's when all hell broke loose.

*

The next thing I knew, my feet had lost contact with the ground, and I landed hard against the far wall of the shack. Two of the boards gave way under the impact with a sickening crack, and I felt the butt of my borrowed gun dig sharply into my spine. Sam was shouting, and I could hear raised voices from the back room, a garbled mix of alarmed shouts and murmurs. I sat there, dazed, just as the girl, Maryse, threw herself at me, snarling. Gone was the pretty girl from before, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I'd missed that she had jagged teeth that protruded from her mouth like the fangs of some horrific deep-sea monster, her eyes milky-white, as though some third eyelid had slid across the brown irises. The pretty black dress was in tatters, the olive-toned skin replaced with bluish-white flesh mottled with something that looked like mildew, her dark hair tangled and snarled, seaweed woven into the coarse tresses.

For the first time since I'd met them, I contemplated the theory that maybe the Winchesters weren't completely insane or deluded. There wasn't time to do anything except scramble away along the wall, reaching for my pistol. Across the room I could see Sam foundering under a fierce onslaught from the man Maryse had called Henri, who by the looks of it had undergone a similar transformation. I managed to pull my gun, only to have it knocked out of my hand a split-second later. She lifted me clean off the ground, holding me up by my collar with one hand, and I learned first-hand that you don't really see your life flash before your eyes right before you die ―or maybe you do, and I just wasn't close enough.

“Hey!” the front door crashed open under the impact of a well-placed kick, and suddenly Sam Winchester was taking up all the available space in the cramped quarters.

Maryse turned, then tossed me aside one-handed as though I weighed not much more than a tennis ball. I landed hard on my shoulder against another wall, and scrambled to recover my bearings and get a grip on the situation again. The undine launched herself at Sam with a snarl of rage just as her partner turned his attention from my Sam and came at him from the other side. I barely had time to shout a warning, reaching for my gun where it had skidded across the floor, thankfully not too far from where I'd landed the second time. The kid barely had time to whip around, gun raised in his left hand, and shot Henri point-blank in the chest. With a look of surprise that would have been comical had it not been painted on the face of a monster, the undine stopped in his tracks, knees buckling.

“No!”

It was a shriek of grief as much as rage, and in the next minute Sam Winchester had been slammed into the nearest wall. He let out a grunt of pain as his injured shoulder took the brunt of the blow, and while he didn't lose his grip on his pistol, I could tell that his recovery would be too slow to prevent the remaining undine from tearing out his throat, or whatever it is undines do when they're really pissed off at you. My Sam picked himself up from the floor, and both our guns barked at the same time. It's hard to aim properly at a moving target, especially one which has only vaguely human anatomy: one bullet caught her high in the shoulder, the other in the small of her back, and she shrieked again, writhing from the pain. Blackish ichor oozed from the wounds, and she twisted aside, leaving her prey to crumple to the floor. In a blur of movement she had raced past me and hurled herself through the newly-formed hole in the wall, intent on making her escape while she could. My Sam was helping the other to his feet, staggering a bit under the boy's weight.

“Go!” Sam Winchester said, obviously struggling to stay conscious. “Dean's got the others, they're safe. We have to make sure she's dead and torch the nest. Get her before she gets to the water!”

Nodding to my Sam, I took off through the hole in the wall, running as fast as I could through the tall weeds. I could see the retreating form of the undine about twenty yards away from the water's edge. There was no way I was going to catch up with her, not at the speed at which she moved, and in another few seconds she would hit the water and I'd lose her permanently. There's an art to precision shooting as well as a science, and I had time to apply neither except in the most rudimentary fashion. I'm not as good a shot as Fiona, but there are Olympic athletes who aren't as good shots as Fiona, and I do know how to make my shots count when the chips are down. I planted both feet as firmly as I could on the spongy ground, brought up my pistol, aimed (both eyes open ―only amateurs close one eye), and fired.

The bullet caught her between the shoulder blades, and she collapsed into the tall grass. I sprinted after her, to make sure that she hadn't just pulled a disappearing act, and found the body sprawled on its side, eyes sightless, though it was a little hard to tell, given that it wasn't human. I wasn't especially keen on checking for a pulse, so I put another bullet in her heart and one more in her head, just to be on the safe side.

That was when Sam chose to detonate the C4 that the Winchesters had carefully planted all along the walls of the shack before we'd gone in.

*

The explosion knocked me off-balance, and I went to one knee, ears ringing from the blast. The building was mostly levelled, what was left of it flaming and smouldering in the night. Smoke billowed into the sky, and I stared, mesmerized by the swirling patterns, the stars glittering in the gaps left by the smoke, until I felt a hand on my arm. I looked up, startled, to find Dean Winchester grinning down at me, hand extended.

“That was awesome! Sam and I totally need to get our hands on some of that stuff. You okay?”

I accepted his hand and struggled to my feet. “I think so.”

“Let's go, then. I got Fiona and the kid in the boat, Axe and Sam are casting off as we speak. We're just waiting on you, dude. Time's a-wastin'.”

We stumbled over to the boat, which was looking a little crowded for my liking with the addition of two people, even ones as small as Fiona and Greg. Greg was wrapped in a blanket, shivering and barely conscious. He was probably a good-looking kid, when he wasn't looking like he'd spent the last few days having the life drained out of him. Which, to be fair, was exactly what had been happening. Sam Winchester, not looking too hot himself, had his good arm wrapped around the kid in an effort to stave off shock for the both of them. I crouched carefully next to them as my Sam revved the boat's engine, getting us out of the way, and shook Greg by the shoulder.

“Hey, Greg, you with us?” His eyes fluttered, and he moaned, but he didn't appear to register much. “My name is Michael, Greg,” I said, slowly and clearly. “I'm a friend of your aunt's. You're safe now, and we're going to get you to a hospital. Okay?” I still didn't get an answer, and I looked over to where Dean was folding the remaining blanket around Fiona's shoulders. “Fi? How you holding up?”

She looked up, shivering a bit in the cool night air. “I'm all right, Michael,” she said in a small voice.

I shifted to sit beside her, and she leaned against me, head on my shoulder, and Dean considerately relinquished his hold on her so I could have better access. I pulled her closer, trying to get the shivering to ease, smelling her perfume mingled with smoke in her hair, and stroked her head. Fiona's a strong girl, not exactly prone to hysterics, but it wasn't every day she was kidnapped by homicidal water spirits, and I couldn't exactly blame her for succumbing to shock. There was no room to move around in the boat, but I could see Dean throwing worried glances at his brother, slumped against Greg's unconscious form.

“We'll call Jim as soon as we're back,” I promised him. “He took a hit to the shoulder which didn't do him any favours, but he should be okay. How about you? I didn't see what was happening back there. You hurt?” I didn't think so, but it never hurts to check.

He shook his head. “I'm fine. Undines never got near me. I would've let Sam take Greg and your girl back, but the kid there was too out of it to make it out under his own power,” he glanced over at his brother again, guilt written all over his face.

“I'd have made the same call,” I said, not sure why I was trying to offer reassurance. It was easier, I suppose, than trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the world in which I lived had just gotten a lot bigger, a lot more mysterious, and a whole hell of a lot scarier than I had ever suspected. And it had been plenty big, mysterious and scary before. Dean shot me a knowing look.

“So I'm guessing that right now you're freaking out about the fact that you nearly got your heart ripped out by something that looked like it belonged in a horror flick?”

“I'm saving it for when Greg is in the hospital and everyone's safe and back where they belong.”

He nodded. “Good choice. By then you won't even freak out as badly as you think. You didn't freeze out there, which is more than I can say for most civilians. Looks like Sammy was right about you. How about you, Axe?” he turned to look at Sam. “You still with us?”

“Busy navigating,” Sam said shortly. “And while that was weird, it doesn't beat some of the stuff I've seen humans do.”

To my surprise, Dean shook his head, but in agreement. “People, man. Demons and spirits I get: they have rules, they live by them. People are just crazy.”

“Amen, brother.”

After that, there seemed to be very little to say.

*

Sam insisted on staying with Greg when it was time to take him to the hospital.

“Go on, Mike. You get Fi and these two home, and I'll handle the cops. Look, that kid,” he pointed to the other Sam, “is about dead on his feet, and I'm betting Fi wants her own bed by now. I've got a buddy I can call, make sure none of this gets out of hand, and you need to stay out of the way of the officials of our good city anyway.”

There's no arguing with that kind of logic. We'd taken both my car and the Winchesters' Impala to get to the Everglades, so I left my car with Sam and Greg. It was obvious that exactly two people were allowed to drive the Impala, and one of them was out of commission. Since we weren't being chased or shot at, I slid into the back seat with Fiona, who was looking a bit more lively, if still almost entirely under the effect of whatever venom or drug she'd been given. Dean eased his brother into the passenger seat, tucking a blanket from the trunk over him in a futile attempt to stave off shock. The adrenaline of the night's events had long since worn off: Sam had been drifting in and out of consciousness for the better part of thirty minutes, and wasn't making a whole lot of sense when he was awake. It seemed easier just to let him sleep until we got back to my mother's place.

Mom was awake and disapproving when we got back ―we'd left without so much as a note, after all― but she's always been pretty good in a crisis, and contented herself with shooting me a look that promised that I would be explaining myself in detail once the emergency was over, and then busied herself boiling water and making coffee. I tucked Fiona under a blanket on the sofa and called the number Jim had left, while Dean half-carried his brother back into the spare bedroom, muttering under his breath about Sasquatches and putting Sam on a diet of nothing but lettuce when he was better. He peeled away his shirt, revealing a blood-soaked bandage and several popped stitches. As terrible as it might sound, Sam had gotten off relatively lightly: the bleeding didn't appear too severe, and nothing else seemed out of place.

Dean had come off without a scratch on him, although his face was smeared with soot from the explosion, and I was fairly sure that my Sam was all right for the most part. I was bruised and battered, and doubtless I was going to feel it in the morning, but I've had far worse injuries in my life. Even Fiona looked like she'd be fine after a good night's sleep. I had no way of knowing how badly off Greg was until Sam called from the hospital, but we'd pulled him out alive and in one piece, and so I was counting it as a win.

Jim didn't so much as give me even a curt greeting on his way in, simply brushed past me in order to check Fiona's vitals and pronounce her groggy but otherwise fine. “Give her as much water as she'll drink, flush whatever it is out of her system. Judging by her pupils, it's a narcotic of some kind. Maybe an opiate, but she's not overdosing or anything.”

I went to fill a glass. “Thanks.”

Jim snorted. “Uh-huh. This time I suggest you actually follow my instructions. The kid's in the same room as before?”

I nodded. “Through there. His brother's with him.”

There was another snort. “There's nothing else you can do here. I suggest you make yourself scarce. The fewer people I've got underfoot, the easier it'll be for me to work.” He didn't give me time to answer before striding off in the direction of the guest bedroom.

I considered going after him, checking in on the Winchesters, but Fiona stirred on the sofa, eyelashes fluttering. “Michael?” she murmured, her Irish brogue coming back in force under the influence of the narcotics. I perched next to her, and she curled up against me, almost in my lap. Without thinking, I planted a kiss on the top of her head.

“How you feeling, Fi?”

She moaned quietly. “Sick. He kissed me, and then it all went blurry. I don't remember anything. Is that normal?”

“I don't know,” I answered honestly. “This is a little out of my league. Doctor says you're going to be fine, though.”

“Take me home, please?”

“Fi, I don't think you should be at your place right now. You need someone to watch you, just until whatever this is wears off.”

She shook her head against my shoulder. “No, your home. Don't leave me alone. Not tonight.”

Startled, I gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Sure, Fi,” I murmured. “Whatever you want.”

Epilogue

Clean-up is always the most tedious part of any operation, but it's arguably the most important as well. Sam Winchester was out for the count, prey to the infection that had set in. He was responding well to the antibiotics, which was a relief, but he spent most of the time asleep. I'd checked in on both brothers early the next morning, and found them asleep in the double bed. It was too small too accommodate them, really, but they'd made it work: Sam was curled up on his good side, facing the wall, his back wedged against his brother, who'd wrapped an arm around his waist. Even now, when the danger was over, Dean was ever the protector, just like it said in his file. I should have been disturbed by the image, but after everything that had happened, I couldn't find it in myself to judge anything about those two. There are people who play by different rules because they're sociopaths, and there are those who play by different rules out of necessity.

Fiona, Sam and I set about doing damage control after that. There was a tearful family reunion with Greg's family ―I wasn't there for the first one, but it was impossible to refuse Gladys' invitation to come visit her nephew in the hospital so they could all say thank you. Greg was expected to make a full recovery, with time, proper nutrition and a whole lot of counselling for kidnapping victims. He'd been too out of it from the effects of the undines' venom to remember anything ―much like Fiona― and I thought that was probably a blessing. He would have enough to deal with without bringing supernatural creepy-crawlies that none of us could explain into the mix. I brought Sam and Fi with me to the hospital, but left the Winchesters behind. Dean refused to leave his brother, anyway, as long as he was still feverish. I did mention them, though not by name, and promised to pass along the family's thanks.

Then there were undine corpses to dispose of, which is probably the weirdest thing I've ever had to do in my life. Sam helped in exchange for a free meal and as many mojitos as he could drink in one sitting. It was messy and disgusting, but we eventually weighted down both bodies and dropped them in the middle of the swamp. They shimmered for a moment before disappearing from view. Sam and I exchanged a look, and it occurred to me that his thoughts might be running along the same lines as mine. He said nothing, though, and I was grateful for the silence. There's only so much upheaval of your universe that a person can take at a time.

Dean ruined my standing with my mother for the next ten years by fixing the hole I had inadvertently put in her kitchen wall with my nine-millimetre. He grinned unrepentantly at me when I pointed out what he'd done.

“Consider it payback for your girlfriend trying to knee me in the nuts.”

I nodded, leaning against the table, holding onto a beer. “I noticed you packed up your car.”

He didn't pause where he was sanding the plaster over the erstwhile hole. “Yeah. Sammy's doing better, and we've kind of got...” he hesitated, looking for words.

“A deadline?” I supplied quietly, remembering his brother's words during his delirium. It earned me a sharp look. “Your brother's in bad shape,” I said, and we both knew I wasn't referring to the bullet wound.

“He'll be fine,” Dean said shortly. “I'll make sure of it.”

“Even if you're not around?”

“Especially if I'm not around.” He stood, dusted off his jeans. “Okay, that's about as good as that wall is ever going to look without professional help. A coat of paint, and it'll be like new.” He turned, extended a hand. “Thanks for helping, man. It would have been a lot harder without you, even if you did shoot my brother.”

“If it helps, I was aiming for you,” I shook his hand.

He snorted a laugh. “Actually, it does help. It's the only reason I didn't kill you right off.”

I grinned back. “I can believe that. It's going to be hard to go back to normal after this,” I said, following him as he went to fetch his brother from where he was sitting on a lawn chair in my mother's tiny yard, allowing Mom to ply him with countless glasses of iced tea.

“Well, you have our ―Sam's number, if you ever need help with something like this again. Sammy, you ready to go?”

He put out a hand, and Sam let him pull him to his feet, then turned and enfolded my surprised mother into a one-armed hug. “Thank you for everything, Mrs. Westen.”

She startled, then patted his back with the hand that wasn't holding a cigarette. “Well, you're very welcome, honey. You come back anytime you want, you hear?”

He nodded, and for a moment his eyes shone a little too brightly. Then he shook himself, let Dean lead him to the car, pausing only long enough to shake my hand with an uncertain smile. “It's not always bad,” he said, seemingly irrelevantly, and I gave his good arm a pat.

“Take care. I suggest you avoid Florida for a while.”

That got me a grin. “You don't need to tell me twice. No offense, but I hate this place.”

I stood by the curb as they slid into the car, as easily as if it was a second skin. Dean flashed me one last smile, and I heard the strains of AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' come blaring through the open window as they drove off. After a moment they rounded the corner, and when I could no longer hear the music I turned and made my way back inside the house.

END