fic: Worlds In Collision [2/?]
Series: Parallel Highway
Title: Worlds In Collision
Chapter: Hunger
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: Sam & Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore, Hailey Collins, Ben Collins, Tommy Collins, Castiel; Sam/Jessica, Dean/OFC
Rating: T
Word Count: 13,665
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: In 1996 Jimmy Novak disappears on his way back home from Chicago and Castiel asks a dying man permission to use his body. In 1999 Jessica Moore encounters an angel while burning a man’s remains in a Mississippi town, far from the road to Stanford. In 2005 Sam and Dean Winchester return from Jericho with their father’s journal to an apartment on fire, where Sam learns that his girlfriend is a hunter and Dean is pulled out of the flames by something that burned a handprint into his shoulder.
With nowhere to go but to John for the truth the brothers and Jessica take off, following a trail littered with coordinates, newspaper clippings, rumors, phone calls, and messages from an angel of the Lord. Standing in their way are vengeful spirits and tricksters, poltergeists and werewolves, fallen angels and premonitions, demons and family secrets.
And then there’s Azazel.
Author’s Note: Apparently it's been three months since I last updated this monster AU. Christ, the word count for this chapter alone.
Dean Winchester is an experience and Jessica doesn’t say that about a lot of people. She’s pretty sure that if it weren’t for his stupid - “Heroic,” Dean corrects, and Sam almost shoves his face into the whipped cream on his pancakes - decision to run into a house fire that resulted in Sam’s mother henning he’d be pulling his red-blooded macho act. He has this whiff of an attitude that Jessica would label “asshole” if he didn’t look so shell-shocked and exhausted from his “heroic” moment; he did, however, make a show of kicking Sam out of the driver’s side and forcing a game of musical car seats that landed her in the back.
By the way, how does a guy survive in the twenty-first century with a box of cassette tapes? When she first got into the Impala to get the hell out of Palo Alto her feet kicked at a cardboard box shoved into the footwell. After they hauled Dean back into the Impala from the hospital’s ER she went through it and found cassette after cassette after goddamn cassette.
“Mullet rock,” Sam explained a bit sheepishly, so she handed him Bob Dylan.
Lunch is at a local diner at the edge of Grand Junction because, according to Sam, Dean has a hard-on for diners. Dean elbows him and they wrestle for a bit before Jessica loudly reminds them that Dean’s driving and the last thing she wants to do is die in a sad little car wreck on the side of the freeway in the middle of nowhere.
She grins into her coffee when Dean tells Sam to marry her.
Over a turkey club on rye, a Cobb salad, and a greasy bacon cheeseburger they decide what the hell they’re going to do, or rather Sam and Dean decide what the hell they’re going to do while Jessica steals Dean’s fries and studies the brothers.
“Dad disappearing and this thing showing up again after twenty years, that’s not a coincidence. He’ll have answers; he’ll know what to do.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Sam says, stabbing through several layers of iceberg lettuce. “Why Brady? Why a demon? What does a demon have to do with any of this?”
“That’s why we’re going to Blackwater Ridge,” Dean says. “Stop stealing my fries.”
“Make me,” she says and grabs a handful before he yanks the red plastic basket away. “So what does a demon have to do with what?”
They’re giving each other yet another significant look and Jessica bristles. They spent an entire week combing through the outskirts of San Jose and Jericho and she’d come no closer to finding out what the hell’s going on than when Dean first broke into their apartment. She doesn’t expect Dean to tell her anything but she’s been with Sam for two years now and she almost died because of him, so why isn’t he telling her anything?
She takes the basket of fries back from Dean and when he glares at her she loudly says, “Let me know when you’re done eye fucking each other.”
Sam sighs heavily while Dean gapes at her.
“So.” She scoops up ketchup with a bundle of fries. “Blackwater Ridge.”
Sam pulls a folded map from his pocket and sets it on the table while Dean extracts their father’s leather-bound journal. She hadn’t seen it since the morning after they left Palo Alto; Dean demanded it back almost immediately after she told him where they were going.
“Right,” Sam says, pointing at a black “x” on the map. “The coordinates put us in the middle of the woods. There’s nothing there.” He looks at Dean. “Why would he send us to the middle of nowhere?”
Dean shrugs and flips through a couple pages in the journal before closing it. “That’s why we’re going there.” He leans over when the one waitress on duty swings by with the coffeepot. “More coffee?”
“And the check,” Sam adds. “Want my pickle?”
“No,” Dean says.
“Yes,” Jessica says.
When the waitress comes by with the check Dean thanks her with a cheeky grin and a casually drawled, “Thanks, sweetheart.” Jessica finds it fascinating how he practically glows at the blush she sends his way as she hurries off to tend to another table. She doesn’t realize she’s still staring while he counts the bills until Sam elbows her; she starts and scowls at him.
“What?”
Sam looks at her oddly and then mutters, “Nothing.”
She almost laughs at the petulant look on his face; instead she snakes her hand over his thigh while he’s staring out the window and his knees hit the table. “Holy shit!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says lightly and tucks her hair back behind her ear with her other hand. She notices Dean staring at them, frozen in the act of tucking his wallet back into his pocket.
“Uh…we’re definitely getting two rooms tonight,” he mutters, and ditches them.
* * *
Jessica makes sure to meet Dean’s gaze through the rearview mirror with a knowing smile every chance she gets. Sometimes he looks away and sometimes he stares back, until Sam reminds him to keep his eyes on the road.
Several minutes after they drive by the sign welcoming them to Lost Creek Sam twists around in his seat to look at her and then at Dean. “Okay, stop it. Seriously.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean says.
“Yeah you do. Stop sizing each other up; there’s plenty of me to go around.”
“Yeah, but I doubt he wants any part of you when you’re on your back begging for-”
“Okay, that’s more information than I ever need to know,” Dean interrupts and quickly turns up the radio, drowning her out with Foreigner.
Sam covers his face as he slumps down in his seat.
They still have a ways to go to reach the ranger station; she leans against the window and tries to count the trees as they go up the winding road. It’s a hopeless endeavor, seeing as they’re surrounded by a forest, so she sighs and closes her eyes.
This isn’t exactly how she expected to meet Sam’s family. Then again she hadn’t expected Sam’s family to be this family; she knows of four Winchesters on campus, knows of five Winchesters total, but only one is a hunter and that one Winchester has a father named John.
Word along the grapevine has it that John Winchester’s a hunter born out of revenge but his obsessive nature and stubborn single-minded drive to find his wife’s killer had led to the deaths of several hunters. A group of hunters once banded together to stop him and none of them survived the encounter.
“Nothing good comes about when the Winchesters are in town,” Tamara once told her, during the yearlong road trip Jessica took across the States; Tamara and Isaac had hunted with her father on several occasions and they took her under their wing for several more. “Rule of thumb? Don’t get in their way. Bad omens always follow them.”
Just her luck that she fell in with Sam, who apparently was at Stanford to escape the life Dean just dragged him back into. Just her luck that she got caught in the middle of their father’s infamous hunt. It explains why Sam never talks about his mother, why he sometimes leaves the room when she’s on the phone with hers. She always suspected something terrible happened, but she didn’t think it would be the reason-
“…Jess? Hey, you awake?”
She blinks and stares at Sam’s face. He’s twisted around in his seat, his arm stretching across the distance to rest a warm hand on her shoulder. A second later she realizes she’d fallen asleep and her neck is beginning to complain. She ignores it and smiles, softly says, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he echoes.
There’s something sad about the look he’s giving her, a silent apology for what happened since the Halloween party; she doesn’t want to see it, so she slowly sits up, reaches over to lace her fingers together around the back of his neck, and pulls him half over the frontbench to press a soft kiss to the guilt on his lips.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Tired, and my neck’s going to kill me, but I’m fine. You?”
He presses his forehead against hers, brushing his open mouth over hers. His breath tastes minty - and later she’s going to demand gum from him - and she tilts her head to kiss him, pulling a soft moan out of him with a well-placed stroke of her tongue-
“Hey, lovebirds,” Dean says, rapping the roof of the car. “You can do that later. Right now we got business to take care of.”
“He just doesn’t want stains on his precious car,” she mutters into Sam’s mouth, and he laughs. Dean makes an odd indignant sound and walks away, muttering under his breath. Jessica turns her head to watch him stop in front of the ranger station, hands tucked into his pockets while he stares at the green mountains.
“He’s used to having just me around,” Sam explains as he slides out of her arms. “Has no idea what to do with you. We didn’t…hang around a lot of people growing up.”
“Hunters don’t hang around people in general,” she says. “He’ll just have to get used to me.”
"I'll make sure of it."
“C’mon!” Dean yells at them and hops up the steps to the cabin.
* * * * *
Dean has trouble concentrating on what Ranger Wilkinson has to say about Blackwater Ridge with Sam wandering around the station, leaning over the topographical map on the table and studying the photographs on the walls. Jessica hovers near the door, saying nothing while Wilkinson asks if they’re friends with some girl named Hailey.
Dean flicks his eyes at Sam, who’s rocking back and forth on his feet, as he says, “Actually we are, Ranger…Wilkinson.”
The man sighs and gestures at him with his mug, other hand on his belt. “Then I’ll tell you exactly what I told her - her brother filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn’t be back from the Ridge until the eighteenth, so he’s not exactly a missing person right now, is he?” He looks over Dean’s shoulder, presumably at Jessica. “You tell that girl to quit worrying. I’m sure her brother’s just fine.”
He thinks about making a comment about this Hailey, given the ranger’s apparent annoyance at her persistence, but he hears Sam breathe out through his nose, senses his agitation, and decides to cut it short. “Actually, we were wondering if we could have a copy of the backcountry permit to show her. Maybe if she saw the return date she’ll understand that nothing probably happened to him, unless the weather turned nasty or something.”
Ranger Wilkinson nods and walks behind his desk to the file cabinets stacked up against the wall. “Oh, sure, I can do that.”
Impatience rolls off of Sam in waves while they wait for the older man to wrestle with the old gray copy machine in the back of the building. Dean watches him return to the topographical map and trace a crooked line from one point to another, sees his eyes narrow while the cogs and gears turn in his head.
“I’ll be outside,” Sam mutters.
Dean watches him brush by Jessica on his way out of the station, hears his girlfriend call after him and follow him. The door swings shut as Wilkinson comes back with a photocopy of the backcountry permit.
“Thanks,” Dean says as he skims the details of the permit. “I’ll make sure Hailey sees this.”
“Good,” the ranger says as he picks up his mug and eases down into his chair. “If I didn’t know any better she’d go out there herself, never mind the grizzlies and the weather.”
Dean chuckles as he folds up the permit and shoves it in his pocket. “She’s quite a pistol, isn’t she?”
“That’s putting it mildly. You tell her to come back if he doesn’t show up several days after it expires, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Speaking of the weather it seems that the temperature dropped several degrees. Dean keeps his hands tucked in his jacket pockets as he hops down the steps to join Sam and Jessica by the trees out front. Sam’s bitch-face is on and Dean sighs.
“Are you cruising for a hookup or something?” Sam demands as soon as he joins them. Jessica turns around to stare at him as he marches up to Dean.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know what I mean. What are we waiting for? Why even talk to this girl? We have the coordinates; let’s just go find Dad.”
Dean is so taken back that he finds himself scrambling for words. The Sam he remembers is never this impatient, this eager to go straight into unknown territory. That’s not what John trained them to do. That’s not what smart hunters do. This is what stubborn one-track minded people do.
“Oh I don’t know,” Dean says as he sidesteps his brother and heads to the parking lot. “Maybe we should know what we’re walking into before we actually walk into it?”
“What is there to know?” Sam asks, following him to the middle of the lane. “It’s wilderness. There are grizzlies. It’s early November. Guy’s not due back for a week. There’s nothing here.”
Dean turns around. “Dad doesn’t just hand out coordinates unless there’s something to investigate. You know that. We’re talking to the Hailey girl and if nothing turns up, fine, we go right in and find Dad. If something does come up, we’re going to investigate, you got that?”
Dean does want to find John. It doesn’t sit right with him to be left in the dark with only a few words of warning and the prized journal to go by. At the same time he knows that John does everything with purpose; he doesn’t leave coordinates for a rendezvous in the heart of the mountains just because. Something else is going on in these woods.
He waits for Sam to nod, to say yes. He sees Jessica hover on the outskirts, her face blank as she flicks her eyes between them. There’s more Dean wants to say but he can’t do it while she’s within earshot; he doesn’t know her and he’s learned long ago not to talk about the family business while strangers are around. He wishes she wasn't here but with Sam convinced that she’ll forever be in danger just by being his girlfriend he can’t leave her in Palo Alto.
He wonders what John will say about dragging somebody else into their mess.
“Fine,” Sam finally says. “We’ll talk to her, see if anything comes up. If not we’re going back there-” He points at the mountain backdrop. “-and finding Dad. That's it.”
“Promise,” Dean says, and turns back around to walk to the Impala. “And since when were you all shoot first, ask questions later?”
He looks over his shoulder as he fishes out his key and sees Sam reaching for Jessica’s hand and lacing their fingers together. There’s a sudden lump in his throat and Dean swallows hard as he jambs the key into the door.
Things aren’t going back to normal even though they’re finally back on the road together.
* * *
Hailey Collins lives all the way back in Grand Junction so they lose two hours to the winding road. The radio doesn’t work this deep in the mountains but Dean doesn’t feel like asking Sam to push a mixtape into the cassette player. He doesn’t really feel like talking at all.
When he looks at the rearview mirror Jessica isn’t staring back; she’s watching the forest go by.
They’re driving slowly through the neighborhood the address says she’s at, looking for the street name and house number, when Sam finally breaks the long silence.
“I want Jess to go up to the house with me,” he says quietly, warily.
Dean glances at him. Sam stares back, jaw set and eyes watching, calculating his reaction. At a stop sign Dean does a quick check over his shoulder and sees Jessica frowning at the back of Sam’s head like she didn’t expect this. Neither did Dean, especially because Sam knows how he feels about trusting strangers to do the job.
“You wanna give me a good reason why?” he asks.
“Because I’ve never done this with her,” Sam says. “This is…I just want to know what it’ll be like.”
“What’s going to be like what?”
“Hunting with her.” Sam twists around in his seat to look at Jessica. “Want to know what it’s like doing this with you.”
“Well no offense to your girlfriend,” he says, glancing up at the rearview mirror, “but right now I don’t trust her to get the job done.”
He feels the weight of Sam’s glare on him but he’s not taking back his word. Getting the job done right is a matter of life and death; ask the wrong questions, give the wrong impression, and there’ll be another dead body they have to deal with, another death they could’ve prevented. He’s not willing to risk it, even if she’s a hunter and knows how it's done.
At the same time he has no idea how long Jessica is going to be with them and how soon they’re going to find John. If he establishes early on his distrust in her capabilities and they end up traveling together for much longer than a week then there are going to be problems, and he doesn't do well with these kinds of problems. Other people complicate things. This is why if Sam's not with him he'd rather hunt alone.
“You don’t even know how I go about it,” Jessica says.
She’s remarkably calm and he’s impressed. The point still stands, however. “I don’t know how you ask questions or pick up cues. Sam and I’ve been doing this together for years-”
“So when he wasn’t around what did you do? Work by yourself? Do you trust anyone?”
“In this line of work it’s real hard to have faith in anything, sweetheart,” he says as he spots the right street and turns left onto it.
“Don’t call me that. Sam, we don’t have to do this now-”
“No.” Sam is glaring at him again. “No. She’s coming with me and you’re staying in the car. If you can’t trust her, at least trust me.”
Dean clenches his jaw but he can’t argue that; if there’s one person he can trust with anything it’s Sam. He can ask the questions Jessica might miss, evaluate her competence, and let him know how good a liar she is. Then again she’s been lying to Sam for years and Sam's bullshit meter almost never fails.
They're heading for a stalemate which they don't have time for, so Dean relents. “Fine. Hailey might be more comfortable with Jessica around anyway.”
He spots the house, a plain two-story building that’s hard to pick out from the rest of the neighborhood. He pulls to the curb and shifts gears, then leans over to yank open the glove compartment and grab a small box of fake IDs.
“Been saving these in case you decided to come back,” he says, dropping them in Sam’s lap. “Hey, Jessica, you have-”
“Not as many as you,” she says, her voice right next to his ear. He jerks back and away from it; she’s leaning over the back of the frontbench, watching Sam rummage through the box of plastic and laminated paper for the right badge. “Never got a chance to take mine out of my bag, thank god.”
She left Palo Alto with a shotgun and a duffel bag of essentials. She’s zipping it open now, fishing inside for something. In the meantime Sam finds the ID he needs and sticks it in his wallet. He looks up at Dean and his expression says everything.
Let me do this, or we’re going to have problems.
Dean hands him the backcountry permit and gestures at the house. The chassis dips as Sam and Jessica get out of the car. He sits back against the door, arm on the top of the frontbench, watching them talk briefly before walking up to the door.
His throat itches and Dean holds his breath, trying to push the urge back down; he ends up coughing hard into the crook of his arm, body shaking with each convulsion. It hurts like a bitch, rubbing his throat raw, and it almost feels like he cracked a rib. Eventually they stop and he presses the side of his face to the cool glass window, catches his breath and ignores the rattling sound in his chest.
“Fuck,” he mutters, and wipes the tears out of his eyes. He glances sideways at the front of the house; Sam and Jessica are nowhere in sight.
He clamps down on the urge to get out of the car and check up on them, and instead turns the ignition; music crackles out of the radio and swells in the empty silence. He crosses his arms as he sits back, shifts to find a more comfortable position, and closes his eyes. Fire roars in his ears, scorching wind snapping at him as he stumbles through the living room. It hurts to breathe; every mouthful burns his throat and blisters his lungs. Dean feels himself crouch down, trying to avoid the worst of the heat and smoke, and looks around in vain for escape. Beyond the ring of flames he sees nothing.
“No! Sam!” he shouts and whirls around too fast; his head spins and he hits the floor, lands on his tailbone so hard the pain almost distracts him from the fire.
Dean stares at the ceiling, at the agony on his mother’s face as she burns above him. He cries out and scrambles backwards, banging his head on the window, and quickly sits up.
Sam taps on the glass again; Dean stares at him, wondering what the hell he’s doing out there. Then he sees the blonde woman standing behind Sam, looking over her shoulder at some house he’s parked in front of, and then Dean remembers that Sam and his girlfriend are-were interviewing Hailey Collins about her brother.
Dean wipes the cooling sweat off his face and unlocks the doors. The Impala groans when Sam sits down. Jessica gets into the back and tosses the backcountry permit up front.
“Tommy has a satellite phone,” Jessica says. “Or he had one until he stopped contacting Hailey and Ben.”
“Whoa, wait, hold up. Who’s Ben?”
“Hailey and Tommy’s younger brother,” Sam says. He sighs heavily. “I need to go somewhere with Wi-Fi.”
Dean can’t make himself start the car; he stares at Sam, thinking, See, this is exactly why I need to go with you. What the hell are you talking about?” “Why do you need the Internet?”
“I asked Hailey to forward me the photos and videos he sends her.” Sam shrugs. “Maybe we’ll notice something.”
“So you think there's something in the woods,” Dean says as the Impala rumbles to life. He glances over his shoulder before pulling out of the curb.
“I don’t know,” Sam says. “Maybe.”
* * *
Dean stares at the mounted bear’s head as he leaves the bar with three chilled bottles of local brew and almost collides with a shorter man in an unfashionable trench coat.
“Sorry,” he mutters as he adjusts his grip on the slick glass, moves towards the table Sam and Jessica are sitting at, and almost runs over a waitress with a tray of lowball tumblers. “Christ.”
After he catches himself he glances behind him at the bar, hoping the two bartenders didn’t see. Judging the huge grins on their faces they probably did. He shrugs it off and weaves around the pool tables, smirks at the knowledge that he has one of their phone numbers in his back pocket.
And here I am, surrounded by nerds, he thinks as he takes in the pile of photocopied newspaper clippings, an open notebook, and Sam’s laptop. He sits down and pushes two bottles towards Sam while taking a swig from his own. He lets the smooth and bitter brew slide down his throat before leaning in on Sam’s left and asking, “Find anything?”
Jessica promptly hands him a piece of paper; it’s the front page of the Lost Creek Gazette, the large bold print screaming “Grizzly Bear Attacks!”
“Find anything unusual?” he clarifies as he scoops up a few salted peanuts from a small bowl in front of him.
“Well, Blackwater Ridge doesn’t get a lot of traffic,” Sam says. “Local campers, mostly. But this past April two hikers went missing out there. They were never found. Here.”
He reaches over and takes a few more pages from the stack in front of Jessica, hands them to Dean. They’re all photocopies of the front page of the local paper, each featuring bear attacks. As he skims the print he asks, “Aren’t those mountains crawling with bears?”
Jessica sets her bottle of beer down hard. “Yeah. But that’s not the point. In 1982 eight people disappeared; authorities claimed it was a grizzly attack and shot up a few bears to prove it. But it turns out that the same thing happened in 1959 and in 1936. Every twenty-three years a bunch of people disappear up there, like clockwork. Bears don’t have a set pattern of attack.”
Sam angles the laptop screen towards Dean.
“Okay, watch this,” he says. “This is the last one Tommy sent Hailey before he stopped calling.”
Dean narrows his eyes as Tommy talks to the video camera; the video suddenly slows down, making it hard to miss the shadow flitting across the screen behind the young man. He taps on the screen and Sam bats his hand away.
“Bitch. Play it again.”
Sam rewinds and slows the video down even more. The shadow is definitely not natural.
“That’s three frames,” Sam explains as he taps on a key; it takes three taps for the silhouette to move across the side of Tommy’s tent. “That’s a fraction of a second. Whatever it is, it can move.”
Sam shuts his laptop and lifts the bottle to his lips. He chokes when Dean shoulders him and says, “Told you something weird was going on.”
Sam glares at him.
“One more thing,” Jessica suddenly says. “Someone survived an attack in 1959. Barely crawled out of the woods alive.”
“Oh yeah? Is this person still around?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “He was just a kid when it happened. Lost both of his parents.”
Dean frowns as he stares down the bottleneck at the last mouthfuls of beer. “Well that sucks.”
“Tell me about it,” Sam says as he stuffs his laptop in the backpack sitting at his feet.
They sit in silence for a few minutes, finishing off the beer and the bowl of peanuts while soaking in the bar’s bustling warm atmosphere, listening to people laugh while clinking glass on hard surfaces and smacking pool balls across the table with cue sticks.
Something comes to mind. “Please tell me this guy lives in the area.”
Sam picks it up immediately. “Don’t tell me you already picked up someone-”
“Aw come on, Sammy,” Dean says, slapping him on the back and smirking when he winces. “Live a little.” He then nods to an amused Jessica. “Or at least let me live a little. Haven’t gotten laid since…you know.”
The glower on Sam’s face softens considerably. “Fine. Who?”
Dean tilts his head towards the bar. Sam and Jessica look over their shoulders at the two bartenders.
“Both of them?” Jessica asks.
“The chick,” Dean says quickly, although he’s pretty sure the young man is just as interested. The lingering fingers on that shot glass of quality whiskey he said was on the house were as telling as the quick kiss the woman gave Dean as she handed him the beer and her number.
“Right,” Sam says as he stacks the papers and shoves them inside his notebook. “Lucky for you, Mr. Shaw lives several minutes from here, so let’s go.”
Dean winks at the bartenders while following Sam and Jessica out the door and grins when they both flush and nod back.
* * *
It takes a bit of coaxing for Mr. Shaw to part with his memories of that awful night in 1959.
“You wouldn’t believe me,” the old man says as he sits down in an old armchair. “Nobody ever did.”
“Mr. Shaw.” Jessica crouches down in front of him, balancing on the balls of her feet. Her voice is brimming with care as she asks, “What did you see?”
Dean keeps an ear on Mr. Shaw’s words while leaning forward and tilting his head to peer out the window at the sidewalk down below, where Sam is leaning against the Impala, arms folded and bitch-face glued on.
“…moved too fast, hid too well. I heard it though. A roar like…no man or animal I ever heard.”
“And it came at night?”
Mr. Shaw nods and looks at the still-smoking cigarette in the ash tray on the small coffee table. He blinks hard and grimaces, like he’s fighting back the memories.
“And it got inside your tent?” Jessica presses on.
“It got inside our cabin,” Mr. Shaw corrects. “I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in.” He hesitates before adding, “Didn’t smash a window or the door, though; it unlocked it. Do you know of a bear that can do something like that?”
Sam looks at them expectantly when they exit the apartment complex. He looks antsy, fairly bursting with questions about the interview. “Well?”
“Definitely not a bear,” Dean tells him as he gets into the Impala.
“What else?”
“It can unlock doors,” Jessica says as she shuts the car door. “It moved too fast for Mr. Shaw to see, plus he said it didn’t sound like a bear. Or a human.”
“Also left Mr. Shaw a parting gift,” Dean says, shuddering at the image of the deep claw marks gouged deep into the old man’s shoulder and down his chest. “Could be a skin walker, maybe a black dog. It’s definitely something we can kill.”
He adjusts the rearview mirror and starts the Impala.
“We can’t let Hailey go out there,” Sam says.
“What are you going to tell her? She can’t go into the woods because of a big scary monster?”
“Yeah.”
“Her brother’s out there, Sam,” Jessica says. “You saw the look on her face. She’s not gonna sit this out while he’s out there. If Dean went missing wouldn’t you go out looking for him, too?”
Sam doesn’t say anything for most of the drive to the cheapest motel in the area. It’s getting dark and the temperature’s dropping; Dean can feel the chill settling in and considers turning on the heater. Instead he turns up the volume and drowns out the silence for several long minutes.
At a red light Sam finally says, “Fine. We’ll go out there with Hailey tomorrow. We’ll keep her safe, find her brother, and kill this monster. Then we’re going after Dad.”
He directs this last statement at Dean, almost seems to challenge him with it as well as remind him. It’s not like Dean forgot why they came here in the first place. Finding John is still high on his list of priorities but right now this family needs help. If he can do something about it he will.
“Don’t worry,” Dean says as he spots the neon motel sign. “I didn’t forget.”
After getting two room keys and tossing one to Sam and Jessica he drives back to the bar. With night comes a larger crowd and Dean has to shoulder his way to the bar to ask for a finger of whiskey. The bartender he’s keen on, Susanne, is still there but her coworker is nowhere in sight; someone else is working the counter with her, and Dean gives her a nod before turning his attention to Susanne.
“Busy night?” he asks, watching her twist off the cap on the whiskey bottle.
“The usual,” she says. “What about your friends? Are they here?”
Dean shakes his head, smirks. “Nope. Just me.”
She flashes him a smile and slides him the shot glass.
Susanne gets off work in about forty-five minutes but by a stroke of luck people stop ordering drinks from her as soon as Dean comes in, leaving her to idle about and make small talk. So he spends the next half hour bullshitting his life story to her. It rolls off his tongue easily but towards the end he finds himself working to hold her interest. It’s frustrating trying to pick up where he abruptly left off a few weeks back and he ends up ordering two more shots of whiskey before Susanne’s shift ends.
“So,” she says, sidling up next to him. “My place or yours?”
Dean smirks and sets the empty shot glass down. “Mine’s closer.”
At the motel she’s all business, slamming him up against the door and tugging the layers off while he cups her face and licks off her watermelon lip gloss. She laughs throatily and leaves sticky kisses along his jaw and down his neck while her hands grab the ends of his shirt and tugs it up. His left shoulder twinges when he raises his arms to shed his shirt and then he remembers the bandages covering up the hand-shaped burn.
She stares at the patchwork of gauze while he unbuttons her shirt. After a moment he glances at his shoulder as well.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “Just a burn.”
It’s apparently the right thing to say because her eyes fairly shine and she presses her mouth to his, tongue sweeping the tang of whiskey off the roof of his mouth; she presses up against him, hips rolling forward, and he groans.
“You lead a very dangerous lifestyle,” she murmurs and presses a kiss to the gauze, leaving behind a shimmering imprint of her lips. “For luck.”
She has no idea how much he’s going to need it tomorrow, so Dean takes what he can.
The bedside clock reads 2:43:78 AM when Susanne slides off him and curls up around one of the pillows. Dean stares at the clock and then up at the ceiling where bluish moonlight clashes with the motel’s neon lights. His eyelids are heavy and he’s drifting along in a blissfully warm and drowsy state, but he doesn’t want to sleep yet.
The flash of fire is brief but searing and Dean sits up with a hoarse gasp. It’s only been five minutes and Susanne’s asleep next to him, all curves and soft skin. He watches her smile and murmur something into the pillow, then lifts his head to stare at the light glowing through the window while his hand slides under his pillow, looking for his hunting knife.
His instincts prickle, feeling the pressure of another presence in the motel room. He slowly slides his eyes around the room. Nothing's been disturbed; there’s the small round table and two chairs, a TV on a dresser, clothes strewn all over the floor, his duffel bag, the darkened corner where the door should be, and the bathroom.
His hand doesn’t find his knife and something shifts in the shadows. His body tenses, tightened muscles stretching the tender burns under the gauze, and he grimaces as he slowly maneuvers himself between whatever’s hiding there and Susanne.
“Don’t worry. She won’t wake up.”
Dean freezes at the low growl. He doesn’t dare look over his shoulder at her, keeps his eyes fixed on that dark entryway while thinking of the best way to protect her. He hears more shuffling in that direction and thinks about distracting whatever's hiding there, taking the fight outside so that Sam and Jessica can hear and come running to help.
“That’s the last thing I’m worried about,” he says carefully as he narrows his eyes and tries to see the offending presence's shape. The light just doesn’t reach that far into the room; he can’t make out anything.
“There’s nothing to fear,” the voice says. Despite the monotonous tone every syllable is laced with power, each word supercharged. As if whatever’s hiding there isn’t human. “We need to talk.”
“I don’t even know who you are,” Dean says. “How’d you get in here?”
Something’s off about the situation but he can’t put his finger on it.
“I wasn’t sure how to best present myself to you so I chose a dream-”
“What? You can’t just-I’m dreaming? The hell?”
Cold fear washes over him. He’s dreaming, and something just walked into his head. He swallows hard as his eyes dart to the duffel bag on the floor. he doesn’t know if his weapons are in there or if they’ll have any effect on the voice’s owner, but there’s no way he’s going to sit here, naked under scratchy bed sheets, weaponless. He’s heard stories about dream walkers.
“Who are you?” he demands, but he chokes on his words and they come out a hoarse whisper.
Something moves out of the corner of the motel room and into the clash of blue and neon orange-red lights. Dean raises an eyebrow.
“Seriously?”
The man frowns as he looks down at himself, touches the collar of his trench coat and unsuccessfully straightens his askew tie. “What did you expect?”
Dean has no idea, other than the fleeting memory of a drawing made of black and red crayons. He narrows his eyes - his dream eyes, what the fuck, this is so weird - and tries to catalog as many details as he can in a few seconds. The man - the dream walker's chosen image - has dark hair and eyes that seem very bright in the filtered moonlight. His jaw is blunt and unshaven, his nose sharp, and his mouth is…distracting. Dean quickly drops his eyes to the slump of his shoulders, the ill-fitting flasher coat and the crooked tie, the trousers and wingtips, and decides rather blithely that in a fist fight he’ll be easy to overpower. This soothes his mind somewhat and Dean sits back, the small of his back resting against Susanne's while his eyes slowly rise back up to the man’s piercing eyes.
“So what are you, a tax accountant?”
The man bristles; he straightens up, jutting his jaw out in defiance. “I am no such thing.”
Dean snorts at the overreaction. For a guy who’s good enough to walk into his head he sure is green about it. “Right. So, who the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing in my head?”
“I…” The man drops his head as he ponders his words. Dean frowns as he waits, flexes his hands and wonders if the pain of punching that face will wake him out of this dream. “You could say…I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.”
Dean laughs. “Very funny, dude. Perdition? Yeah, right. No, really, who are you?”
The way the man tilts his head, like he doesn’t get what Dean’s asking, prompts Dean to add, “What are you?”
The man tilts his head back so he’s looking straight at him; a slow smile forms like he's been waiting for Dean to get it.
“I’m an angel of the Lord.”
Dean stares at him in disbelief for maybe one second and then he’s laughing harshly, shaking his head and saying, “Bullshit.”
Behind him Susanne stirs and then sighs, relaxes under the covers.
The man steps towards the bed and Dean freezes up. Something changes in the air; the crackle of energy makes the hairs on the back of his hands and neck stand on end while the air starts reeking of ozone. His heart pounds and he’s suddenly short on breath. Dean almost expects fire to erupt behind the man in the room but nothing happens; he just stands several inches closer, his eyes pinning Dean to the bed.
“No such thing,” he whispers.
He doesn’t believe in the Bible, in God, in Heaven and Hell. Demons exist but no one can explain why, not that he cares. And angels aren’t real. Despite conflicting lore and fairy tales about them, both within and without the Biblical context, nothing factual has ever been recorded about them. The only man who ever talked about angels was Pastor Jim, but that’s a given. Dean never found a reason to pray, never believed what he couldn’t see, what couldn't save his mother twenty-one years ago.
“I exist, Dean Winchester." The man speaks softly but his voice still manages to fill the room, humming with bridled power. He takes another step towards the bed and the lights outside start flickering; massive shadows grow from his back, cast themselves on the walls and devour the light. The wings flex, spreading its pinions. “I am an angel of the Lord. I am the one who breathed life back into you, who pulled you out of the fire and healed the scars in the lungs, who made your heart beat again-”
Dean latches onto the first sensible thing to come out of the man’s mouth. “I died?”
“Your heart had almost given out when I arrived.”
The fire. He remembers being pushed onto his back, remembers something sealing around his mouth and forcing air down his throat. He remembers something broiling his left shoulder, remembers damp grass and cold air and Sam hovering over him, calling his name.
“That was you.”
“Yes.”
Dean was saved by an angel? Is this a joke? Has he finally snapped? “But why?”
The angel hesitates, like he-it-thing didn’t expect that question. “Because we have work for you.”
“We? You mean there’s more of you?”
“Yes,” the angel says. Eyebrows furrow with irritation. “There is a Heaven, just like there’s a Hell, but I’m not here to discuss this.”
“Then what are you here for?” Dean asks. “Do you even have a name?”
For some reason this last question brings out a smile on the angel’s face. It’s awkward on the somewhat handsome face, like the angel doesn’t know how to work his-it’s mouth.
“My name is Castiel,” the angel says. “As for why I’m here…what you and Sam are doing is of great importance to us.”
Dean is dumbfounded. Never mind that he’s talking to a freaking angel of the Lord who tells him that Heaven is as real as Hell; what the hell do they want with him and Sam? “Uh, we’re just looking for our dad.”
“I know.”
No surprise there. He may have dozed off more times than not while Pastor Jim gave his Sunday sermons but he still knows a thing or two about how "omniscient" God and his angels are supposed to be.
“Okay,” Dean says, shifting positions while strategically keeping half his body hidden by the sheets. He doesn’t mind getting naked around other people, but this angel isn’t other people. “So why do you care that we’re looking for Dad? What, you know where he is?”
The angel-Castiel shakes his head. “No, we don’t.”
Omniscient, my ass. “Then what the hell do you want?”
“We want you to stop your search for John.”
Dean stares at him. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” The air starts humming again, charging as the angel repeats himself slowly and carefully. “Stop your search for John. Or at least put it off as long as you can. We can’t afford having you stumble in on him when it’s not yet time.”
“Are you serious? What the fuck, man? You can’t just waltz into my head and tell me to stop looking for my own damn father-”
Castiel is suddenly crouching down on the bed in front of him, his face just inches from Dean’s. Dean's heart jumps up his throat and he chokes on the rest of his words.
“Goodbye, Dean Winchester. You have a long day ahead of you.”
“What the-”
Castiel presses two fingers to his forehead and Dean opens his eyes to the cool sunlight streaming into the room. He quickly sits up and looks around; other than the occupied bathroom and the vacancy next to him on the bed nothing’s been disturbed. His clothes are still all over the floor, the duffel bag is still next to the TV stand, and none of the chairs have moved. Dean flicks his eyes at the entryway and finds nothing. There’s absolutely nothing to suggest that sometime in the night he had a conversation with a strange man who claimed to be an angel named Castiel.
“The fuck,” he mutters and falls back down on the bed. He blocks out the sun with the back of his hand and tries to sleep but he can’t; his mind is scrambling to cling onto the details of the conversation but like most dreams they slip away like sand between his fingers.
“Stop your search for John. Or at least put it off as long as you can.”
A minute later his phone rings and he knocks it to the floor trying to turn it off; it’s Sam.
“Get your ass out of bed; we have to catch Hailey before she goes to Blackwater Ridge.”
* * * * *
While they’re out in the sun hiking isn’t all that bad, although Dean keeps making a lot of dick moves that threaten to give them away. Sam clenches his hands more than once like he wants to punch his brother, but that won’t help them protect Hailey and Ben.
“Is he normally like this?” Jessica asks quietly while watching Dean have another verbal sparring match with the guide Hailey hired to help her find her brother’s camp.
“Usually,” Sam says. “But he’s never been this bad. Probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“Or he didn’t have as good a night as we did.”
The forest starts reaching for the sky all around them and suddenly November makes its presence more obvious; in the shade the temperature seems to drop ten degrees and Jessica shoves her hands into her jacket pockets, looking for warmth. She also gravitates towards Sam while up ahead Roy, the guide Hailey hired, stops and takes a look around.
“This is it,” he says. “Blackwater Ridge.”
“What’s our coordinates?” Sam asks while Dean walks past him to peer into the dense underbrush.
“35-111.”
“You hear that?” Dean asks, cocking his head to the side.
Jessica frowns. She hadn’t even noticed, probably because of the noise they made hiking through the woods, but now that they’re standing still she does.
The woods are silent.
“Not even crickets,” Sam breathes out.
Something’s definitely out there and they’re the only living things stupid enough to walk right into its territory.
“How worried should we be?” Jessica asks as Roy strides by them.
“Everything’s fine,” he says as he grips his rifle in both hands. “I’m going to take a look around.”
“You shouldn’t go off by yourself,” Sam says.
“That’s sweet. Don’t worry about me.”
“He’s a goner,” Jessica says, watching him disappear into the woods while Dean orders the others to stick together.
“Not if we do this right,” Sam says.
Not surprisingly they do everything wrong. Hailey starts screaming for Tommy as soon as they locate the shredded remains of his camp and when a voice deep in the woods wails for help they abandon their belongings to chase after it, hoping it’s Hailey’s brother.
“It seemed like it was coming from around here,” Hailey says slowly while they scan the trees and leafy undergrowth. “Didn’t it?”
Dean mutters under his breath while Sam says, “Everybody back to camp.”
Sure enough all their supplies are gone. Jessica walks around the perimeter of the camp but there are no tracks or trail left behind.
“What the hell's going on?” Hailey demands as she runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s smart,” Sam says. “It wants to cut us off so we can’t call for help.”
Jessica looks at him sharply. He knows what it is? Dean’s looking over his shoulder at Sam, too; after a moment he walks several feet away from the campsite and waits.
“You mean some nutjob out there just stole all our gear,” Roy mutters. He crouches down and starts scanning the ground for the signs that aren't there.
“Jess,” Sam says quietly and gestures towards the trees, where Dean is waiting.
Oh. Duh. She glances over her shoulder at Hailey and Ben as she follows Sam around thick bushes and several trees. They distractedly pick through the remnants of the campsite while Roy continues tracking the "nutjob" who stole their supplies.
“Okay, college boy,” Dean says as soon as she joins them some distance away from the site. “You think you know what it is?”
“Yeah, let me see Dad’s journal.”
Dean pulls the leather-bound journal out of his jacket pocket and hands it over; Sam starts flipping through the pages.
“Okay, check this out.” He holds out the pages to Jessica and Dean. On one page are a set of protective sigils, the other a drawing of a long-limbed humanoid.
Her stomach drops. “No way.”
“What she said,” Dean says. “Come on, Wendigos are in Minnesota and northern Michigan. What the hell would one be doing all the way out here?”
“There must be tons of abandoned mines up here,” Sam says, gesturing in the general direction of the mountains. “And tons of ways for miners to get trapped in them.”
“That doesn’t mean-”
“Think about it. The victims, the claws, the way it can mimic a human voice. It all fits.”
“Yeah, but-” Dean pulls a face as Sam shuts the journal. “Great. Just great.” He pulls out the handgun tucked under his jacket. “Well then this is fucking useless.”
“What the hell are we going to do?” Jessica asks. She points at the sky, which is now tinged orange and pink. She’s already imagining the scenario - a cold November night in the forest, stalked by a lightning fast monster hungry for human flesh. “It’s getting dark and you know how they are at night.”
“What we’re going to do is get these people out of here,” Sam says and starts back to camp.
“Roy’s not gonna believe us and Hailey’s not leaving until we find Tommy. Let’s see you try talking them out of it.”
“Unless someone’s carrying a flamethrower in his pocket we’re screwed,” Dean says.
What she’d give to have one right now. Wendigos are some of the fastest, cleverest, most powerful hunters in the world. Great daytime hunters; unstoppable at night. Bullets and knives can’t bring them down, and there’s no way they can get close to one in order to set it on fire without getting ripped to shreds.
She hates hunting Wendigos.
The symbols Dean traced in the dirt that night did shit all to keep Roy from disappearing into the woods. Thankfully Hailey and Ben had more sense and stayed close to the fire while Dean and Sam went after the guide.
“What the hell is going on?” Hailey repeats herself while the brothers’ voices echo loudly in the woods.
Jessica sighs and scratches out another symbol in the dirt with a stick. “You’re not going to believe us.”
“Why?”
She looks up at Hailey. “That thing out there? It’s not human. It’s not an animal. It’s a monster, and one of the best hunters in the world.”
Hailey is utterly confused, keeps opening and closing her mouth like she doesn’t know what to say. Jessica expected as much and draws more protection sigils with the stick.
“But what is it?” Ben asks.
“A Wendigo,” Sam says breathlessly as he jogs back to camp, carefully avoiding the symbols on the ground. A thin red line marks his cheek, probably a scratch from a low-hanging tree branch. “It’s a-it’s a Native American word for ‘evil spirit’ or ‘cannibal’, which is what it is.”
“They’re hundreds of years old,” Dean adds as he crouches down by the symbols, checking for errors. “They used to be human. An Indian, a frontiersman, a miner, a hunter. During some harsh winter they get cut off from supplies or help, so they eat other members of their tribe or camp to survive.”
“Like the Donner Party,” Ben says.
“Cultures all over the world have different beliefs about eating human flesh,” Jessica says. “For some it’s obviously taboo. For others, it’s like taking on the powers of the person they’re eating. It gives them special abilities, like speed, strength, immortality. The more you eat, though, the less human you become. And you’re always hungry.”
She tosses the twig into the fire and the flames devour it.
“Okay.” Hailey presses the heels of her hands over her eyes. “Okay. Say this is true-”
“Oh it is, sweetheart,” Dean says immediately and she glares at him.
“Fine.” She takes a deep breath, looks at Ben, and then asks, “Then is it possible for Tommy to still be alive?”
Ben stiffens next to her. Dean licks his lip and glances at Sam, who shakes his head and looks away. Jessica sighs. Now that they know a Wendigo has been behind these cyclical attacks the odds of Tommy being alive are terrible to none.
“Tell me,” Hailey says in a wavering voice. “I need to know.”
“Wendigos…know how to last long winters without food,” Sam says slowly while Dean rises to his feet and goes to the pile of blood splattered supplies in front of a tent. “They hibernate for years at a time but while they’re awake they keep their victims alive, stores them somewhere so they can feed whenever they want. If, if Tommy’s alive it’s keeping him somewhere dark, hidden and safe. Only way to find out is to track it back to its lair.”
“Say he’s alive,” Hailey says, “and we find him. How do we stop the Wendigo?”
“Well,” Jessica says, picking up another branch and sticking its end into the fire. “Most hunters don’t walk into a Wendigo’s lair while it’s active.”
“But we’re not most hunters,” Dean adds somewhere behind her. She looks over her shoulder to see him standing by the pile of camping equipment Hailey and Ben salvaged, holding up a can of lighter fluid and a lighter. “So, we're gonna torch the sucker.”
Part 2
Title: Worlds In Collision
Chapter: Hunger
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: Sam & Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore, Hailey Collins, Ben Collins, Tommy Collins, Castiel; Sam/Jessica, Dean/OFC
Rating: T
Word Count: 13,665
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: In 1996 Jimmy Novak disappears on his way back home from Chicago and Castiel asks a dying man permission to use his body. In 1999 Jessica Moore encounters an angel while burning a man’s remains in a Mississippi town, far from the road to Stanford. In 2005 Sam and Dean Winchester return from Jericho with their father’s journal to an apartment on fire, where Sam learns that his girlfriend is a hunter and Dean is pulled out of the flames by something that burned a handprint into his shoulder.
With nowhere to go but to John for the truth the brothers and Jessica take off, following a trail littered with coordinates, newspaper clippings, rumors, phone calls, and messages from an angel of the Lord. Standing in their way are vengeful spirits and tricksters, poltergeists and werewolves, fallen angels and premonitions, demons and family secrets.
And then there’s Azazel.
Author’s Note: Apparently it's been three months since I last updated this monster AU. Christ, the word count for this chapter alone.
Dean Winchester is an experience and Jessica doesn’t say that about a lot of people. She’s pretty sure that if it weren’t for his stupid - “Heroic,” Dean corrects, and Sam almost shoves his face into the whipped cream on his pancakes - decision to run into a house fire that resulted in Sam’s mother henning he’d be pulling his red-blooded macho act. He has this whiff of an attitude that Jessica would label “asshole” if he didn’t look so shell-shocked and exhausted from his “heroic” moment; he did, however, make a show of kicking Sam out of the driver’s side and forcing a game of musical car seats that landed her in the back.
By the way, how does a guy survive in the twenty-first century with a box of cassette tapes? When she first got into the Impala to get the hell out of Palo Alto her feet kicked at a cardboard box shoved into the footwell. After they hauled Dean back into the Impala from the hospital’s ER she went through it and found cassette after cassette after goddamn cassette.
“Mullet rock,” Sam explained a bit sheepishly, so she handed him Bob Dylan.
Lunch is at a local diner at the edge of Grand Junction because, according to Sam, Dean has a hard-on for diners. Dean elbows him and they wrestle for a bit before Jessica loudly reminds them that Dean’s driving and the last thing she wants to do is die in a sad little car wreck on the side of the freeway in the middle of nowhere.
She grins into her coffee when Dean tells Sam to marry her.
Over a turkey club on rye, a Cobb salad, and a greasy bacon cheeseburger they decide what the hell they’re going to do, or rather Sam and Dean decide what the hell they’re going to do while Jessica steals Dean’s fries and studies the brothers.
“Dad disappearing and this thing showing up again after twenty years, that’s not a coincidence. He’ll have answers; he’ll know what to do.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Sam says, stabbing through several layers of iceberg lettuce. “Why Brady? Why a demon? What does a demon have to do with any of this?”
“That’s why we’re going to Blackwater Ridge,” Dean says. “Stop stealing my fries.”
“Make me,” she says and grabs a handful before he yanks the red plastic basket away. “So what does a demon have to do with what?”
They’re giving each other yet another significant look and Jessica bristles. They spent an entire week combing through the outskirts of San Jose and Jericho and she’d come no closer to finding out what the hell’s going on than when Dean first broke into their apartment. She doesn’t expect Dean to tell her anything but she’s been with Sam for two years now and she almost died because of him, so why isn’t he telling her anything?
She takes the basket of fries back from Dean and when he glares at her she loudly says, “Let me know when you’re done eye fucking each other.”
Sam sighs heavily while Dean gapes at her.
“So.” She scoops up ketchup with a bundle of fries. “Blackwater Ridge.”
Sam pulls a folded map from his pocket and sets it on the table while Dean extracts their father’s leather-bound journal. She hadn’t seen it since the morning after they left Palo Alto; Dean demanded it back almost immediately after she told him where they were going.
“Right,” Sam says, pointing at a black “x” on the map. “The coordinates put us in the middle of the woods. There’s nothing there.” He looks at Dean. “Why would he send us to the middle of nowhere?”
Dean shrugs and flips through a couple pages in the journal before closing it. “That’s why we’re going there.” He leans over when the one waitress on duty swings by with the coffeepot. “More coffee?”
“And the check,” Sam adds. “Want my pickle?”
“No,” Dean says.
“Yes,” Jessica says.
When the waitress comes by with the check Dean thanks her with a cheeky grin and a casually drawled, “Thanks, sweetheart.” Jessica finds it fascinating how he practically glows at the blush she sends his way as she hurries off to tend to another table. She doesn’t realize she’s still staring while he counts the bills until Sam elbows her; she starts and scowls at him.
“What?”
Sam looks at her oddly and then mutters, “Nothing.”
She almost laughs at the petulant look on his face; instead she snakes her hand over his thigh while he’s staring out the window and his knees hit the table. “Holy shit!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says lightly and tucks her hair back behind her ear with her other hand. She notices Dean staring at them, frozen in the act of tucking his wallet back into his pocket.
“Uh…we’re definitely getting two rooms tonight,” he mutters, and ditches them.
* * *
Jessica makes sure to meet Dean’s gaze through the rearview mirror with a knowing smile every chance she gets. Sometimes he looks away and sometimes he stares back, until Sam reminds him to keep his eyes on the road.
Several minutes after they drive by the sign welcoming them to Lost Creek Sam twists around in his seat to look at her and then at Dean. “Okay, stop it. Seriously.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean says.
“Yeah you do. Stop sizing each other up; there’s plenty of me to go around.”
“Yeah, but I doubt he wants any part of you when you’re on your back begging for-”
“Okay, that’s more information than I ever need to know,” Dean interrupts and quickly turns up the radio, drowning her out with Foreigner.
Sam covers his face as he slumps down in his seat.
They still have a ways to go to reach the ranger station; she leans against the window and tries to count the trees as they go up the winding road. It’s a hopeless endeavor, seeing as they’re surrounded by a forest, so she sighs and closes her eyes.
This isn’t exactly how she expected to meet Sam’s family. Then again she hadn’t expected Sam’s family to be this family; she knows of four Winchesters on campus, knows of five Winchesters total, but only one is a hunter and that one Winchester has a father named John.
Word along the grapevine has it that John Winchester’s a hunter born out of revenge but his obsessive nature and stubborn single-minded drive to find his wife’s killer had led to the deaths of several hunters. A group of hunters once banded together to stop him and none of them survived the encounter.
“Nothing good comes about when the Winchesters are in town,” Tamara once told her, during the yearlong road trip Jessica took across the States; Tamara and Isaac had hunted with her father on several occasions and they took her under their wing for several more. “Rule of thumb? Don’t get in their way. Bad omens always follow them.”
Just her luck that she fell in with Sam, who apparently was at Stanford to escape the life Dean just dragged him back into. Just her luck that she got caught in the middle of their father’s infamous hunt. It explains why Sam never talks about his mother, why he sometimes leaves the room when she’s on the phone with hers. She always suspected something terrible happened, but she didn’t think it would be the reason-
“…Jess? Hey, you awake?”
She blinks and stares at Sam’s face. He’s twisted around in his seat, his arm stretching across the distance to rest a warm hand on her shoulder. A second later she realizes she’d fallen asleep and her neck is beginning to complain. She ignores it and smiles, softly says, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he echoes.
There’s something sad about the look he’s giving her, a silent apology for what happened since the Halloween party; she doesn’t want to see it, so she slowly sits up, reaches over to lace her fingers together around the back of his neck, and pulls him half over the frontbench to press a soft kiss to the guilt on his lips.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Tired, and my neck’s going to kill me, but I’m fine. You?”
He presses his forehead against hers, brushing his open mouth over hers. His breath tastes minty - and later she’s going to demand gum from him - and she tilts her head to kiss him, pulling a soft moan out of him with a well-placed stroke of her tongue-
“Hey, lovebirds,” Dean says, rapping the roof of the car. “You can do that later. Right now we got business to take care of.”
“He just doesn’t want stains on his precious car,” she mutters into Sam’s mouth, and he laughs. Dean makes an odd indignant sound and walks away, muttering under his breath. Jessica turns her head to watch him stop in front of the ranger station, hands tucked into his pockets while he stares at the green mountains.
“He’s used to having just me around,” Sam explains as he slides out of her arms. “Has no idea what to do with you. We didn’t…hang around a lot of people growing up.”
“Hunters don’t hang around people in general,” she says. “He’ll just have to get used to me.”
"I'll make sure of it."
“C’mon!” Dean yells at them and hops up the steps to the cabin.
* * * * *
Dean has trouble concentrating on what Ranger Wilkinson has to say about Blackwater Ridge with Sam wandering around the station, leaning over the topographical map on the table and studying the photographs on the walls. Jessica hovers near the door, saying nothing while Wilkinson asks if they’re friends with some girl named Hailey.
Dean flicks his eyes at Sam, who’s rocking back and forth on his feet, as he says, “Actually we are, Ranger…Wilkinson.”
The man sighs and gestures at him with his mug, other hand on his belt. “Then I’ll tell you exactly what I told her - her brother filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn’t be back from the Ridge until the eighteenth, so he’s not exactly a missing person right now, is he?” He looks over Dean’s shoulder, presumably at Jessica. “You tell that girl to quit worrying. I’m sure her brother’s just fine.”
He thinks about making a comment about this Hailey, given the ranger’s apparent annoyance at her persistence, but he hears Sam breathe out through his nose, senses his agitation, and decides to cut it short. “Actually, we were wondering if we could have a copy of the backcountry permit to show her. Maybe if she saw the return date she’ll understand that nothing probably happened to him, unless the weather turned nasty or something.”
Ranger Wilkinson nods and walks behind his desk to the file cabinets stacked up against the wall. “Oh, sure, I can do that.”
Impatience rolls off of Sam in waves while they wait for the older man to wrestle with the old gray copy machine in the back of the building. Dean watches him return to the topographical map and trace a crooked line from one point to another, sees his eyes narrow while the cogs and gears turn in his head.
“I’ll be outside,” Sam mutters.
Dean watches him brush by Jessica on his way out of the station, hears his girlfriend call after him and follow him. The door swings shut as Wilkinson comes back with a photocopy of the backcountry permit.
“Thanks,” Dean says as he skims the details of the permit. “I’ll make sure Hailey sees this.”
“Good,” the ranger says as he picks up his mug and eases down into his chair. “If I didn’t know any better she’d go out there herself, never mind the grizzlies and the weather.”
Dean chuckles as he folds up the permit and shoves it in his pocket. “She’s quite a pistol, isn’t she?”
“That’s putting it mildly. You tell her to come back if he doesn’t show up several days after it expires, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Speaking of the weather it seems that the temperature dropped several degrees. Dean keeps his hands tucked in his jacket pockets as he hops down the steps to join Sam and Jessica by the trees out front. Sam’s bitch-face is on and Dean sighs.
“Are you cruising for a hookup or something?” Sam demands as soon as he joins them. Jessica turns around to stare at him as he marches up to Dean.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know what I mean. What are we waiting for? Why even talk to this girl? We have the coordinates; let’s just go find Dad.”
Dean is so taken back that he finds himself scrambling for words. The Sam he remembers is never this impatient, this eager to go straight into unknown territory. That’s not what John trained them to do. That’s not what smart hunters do. This is what stubborn one-track minded people do.
“Oh I don’t know,” Dean says as he sidesteps his brother and heads to the parking lot. “Maybe we should know what we’re walking into before we actually walk into it?”
“What is there to know?” Sam asks, following him to the middle of the lane. “It’s wilderness. There are grizzlies. It’s early November. Guy’s not due back for a week. There’s nothing here.”
Dean turns around. “Dad doesn’t just hand out coordinates unless there’s something to investigate. You know that. We’re talking to the Hailey girl and if nothing turns up, fine, we go right in and find Dad. If something does come up, we’re going to investigate, you got that?”
Dean does want to find John. It doesn’t sit right with him to be left in the dark with only a few words of warning and the prized journal to go by. At the same time he knows that John does everything with purpose; he doesn’t leave coordinates for a rendezvous in the heart of the mountains just because. Something else is going on in these woods.
He waits for Sam to nod, to say yes. He sees Jessica hover on the outskirts, her face blank as she flicks her eyes between them. There’s more Dean wants to say but he can’t do it while she’s within earshot; he doesn’t know her and he’s learned long ago not to talk about the family business while strangers are around. He wishes she wasn't here but with Sam convinced that she’ll forever be in danger just by being his girlfriend he can’t leave her in Palo Alto.
He wonders what John will say about dragging somebody else into their mess.
“Fine,” Sam finally says. “We’ll talk to her, see if anything comes up. If not we’re going back there-” He points at the mountain backdrop. “-and finding Dad. That's it.”
“Promise,” Dean says, and turns back around to walk to the Impala. “And since when were you all shoot first, ask questions later?”
He looks over his shoulder as he fishes out his key and sees Sam reaching for Jessica’s hand and lacing their fingers together. There’s a sudden lump in his throat and Dean swallows hard as he jambs the key into the door.
Things aren’t going back to normal even though they’re finally back on the road together.
* * *
Hailey Collins lives all the way back in Grand Junction so they lose two hours to the winding road. The radio doesn’t work this deep in the mountains but Dean doesn’t feel like asking Sam to push a mixtape into the cassette player. He doesn’t really feel like talking at all.
When he looks at the rearview mirror Jessica isn’t staring back; she’s watching the forest go by.
They’re driving slowly through the neighborhood the address says she’s at, looking for the street name and house number, when Sam finally breaks the long silence.
“I want Jess to go up to the house with me,” he says quietly, warily.
Dean glances at him. Sam stares back, jaw set and eyes watching, calculating his reaction. At a stop sign Dean does a quick check over his shoulder and sees Jessica frowning at the back of Sam’s head like she didn’t expect this. Neither did Dean, especially because Sam knows how he feels about trusting strangers to do the job.
“You wanna give me a good reason why?” he asks.
“Because I’ve never done this with her,” Sam says. “This is…I just want to know what it’ll be like.”
“What’s going to be like what?”
“Hunting with her.” Sam twists around in his seat to look at Jessica. “Want to know what it’s like doing this with you.”
“Well no offense to your girlfriend,” he says, glancing up at the rearview mirror, “but right now I don’t trust her to get the job done.”
He feels the weight of Sam’s glare on him but he’s not taking back his word. Getting the job done right is a matter of life and death; ask the wrong questions, give the wrong impression, and there’ll be another dead body they have to deal with, another death they could’ve prevented. He’s not willing to risk it, even if she’s a hunter and knows how it's done.
At the same time he has no idea how long Jessica is going to be with them and how soon they’re going to find John. If he establishes early on his distrust in her capabilities and they end up traveling together for much longer than a week then there are going to be problems, and he doesn't do well with these kinds of problems. Other people complicate things. This is why if Sam's not with him he'd rather hunt alone.
“You don’t even know how I go about it,” Jessica says.
She’s remarkably calm and he’s impressed. The point still stands, however. “I don’t know how you ask questions or pick up cues. Sam and I’ve been doing this together for years-”
“So when he wasn’t around what did you do? Work by yourself? Do you trust anyone?”
“In this line of work it’s real hard to have faith in anything, sweetheart,” he says as he spots the right street and turns left onto it.
“Don’t call me that. Sam, we don’t have to do this now-”
“No.” Sam is glaring at him again. “No. She’s coming with me and you’re staying in the car. If you can’t trust her, at least trust me.”
Dean clenches his jaw but he can’t argue that; if there’s one person he can trust with anything it’s Sam. He can ask the questions Jessica might miss, evaluate her competence, and let him know how good a liar she is. Then again she’s been lying to Sam for years and Sam's bullshit meter almost never fails.
They're heading for a stalemate which they don't have time for, so Dean relents. “Fine. Hailey might be more comfortable with Jessica around anyway.”
He spots the house, a plain two-story building that’s hard to pick out from the rest of the neighborhood. He pulls to the curb and shifts gears, then leans over to yank open the glove compartment and grab a small box of fake IDs.
“Been saving these in case you decided to come back,” he says, dropping them in Sam’s lap. “Hey, Jessica, you have-”
“Not as many as you,” she says, her voice right next to his ear. He jerks back and away from it; she’s leaning over the back of the frontbench, watching Sam rummage through the box of plastic and laminated paper for the right badge. “Never got a chance to take mine out of my bag, thank god.”
She left Palo Alto with a shotgun and a duffel bag of essentials. She’s zipping it open now, fishing inside for something. In the meantime Sam finds the ID he needs and sticks it in his wallet. He looks up at Dean and his expression says everything.
Let me do this, or we’re going to have problems.
Dean hands him the backcountry permit and gestures at the house. The chassis dips as Sam and Jessica get out of the car. He sits back against the door, arm on the top of the frontbench, watching them talk briefly before walking up to the door.
His throat itches and Dean holds his breath, trying to push the urge back down; he ends up coughing hard into the crook of his arm, body shaking with each convulsion. It hurts like a bitch, rubbing his throat raw, and it almost feels like he cracked a rib. Eventually they stop and he presses the side of his face to the cool glass window, catches his breath and ignores the rattling sound in his chest.
“Fuck,” he mutters, and wipes the tears out of his eyes. He glances sideways at the front of the house; Sam and Jessica are nowhere in sight.
He clamps down on the urge to get out of the car and check up on them, and instead turns the ignition; music crackles out of the radio and swells in the empty silence. He crosses his arms as he sits back, shifts to find a more comfortable position, and closes his eyes. Fire roars in his ears, scorching wind snapping at him as he stumbles through the living room. It hurts to breathe; every mouthful burns his throat and blisters his lungs. Dean feels himself crouch down, trying to avoid the worst of the heat and smoke, and looks around in vain for escape. Beyond the ring of flames he sees nothing.
“No! Sam!” he shouts and whirls around too fast; his head spins and he hits the floor, lands on his tailbone so hard the pain almost distracts him from the fire.
Dean stares at the ceiling, at the agony on his mother’s face as she burns above him. He cries out and scrambles backwards, banging his head on the window, and quickly sits up.
Sam taps on the glass again; Dean stares at him, wondering what the hell he’s doing out there. Then he sees the blonde woman standing behind Sam, looking over her shoulder at some house he’s parked in front of, and then Dean remembers that Sam and his girlfriend are-were interviewing Hailey Collins about her brother.
Dean wipes the cooling sweat off his face and unlocks the doors. The Impala groans when Sam sits down. Jessica gets into the back and tosses the backcountry permit up front.
“Tommy has a satellite phone,” Jessica says. “Or he had one until he stopped contacting Hailey and Ben.”
“Whoa, wait, hold up. Who’s Ben?”
“Hailey and Tommy’s younger brother,” Sam says. He sighs heavily. “I need to go somewhere with Wi-Fi.”
Dean can’t make himself start the car; he stares at Sam, thinking, See, this is exactly why I need to go with you. What the hell are you talking about?” “Why do you need the Internet?”
“I asked Hailey to forward me the photos and videos he sends her.” Sam shrugs. “Maybe we’ll notice something.”
“So you think there's something in the woods,” Dean says as the Impala rumbles to life. He glances over his shoulder before pulling out of the curb.
“I don’t know,” Sam says. “Maybe.”
* * *
Dean stares at the mounted bear’s head as he leaves the bar with three chilled bottles of local brew and almost collides with a shorter man in an unfashionable trench coat.
“Sorry,” he mutters as he adjusts his grip on the slick glass, moves towards the table Sam and Jessica are sitting at, and almost runs over a waitress with a tray of lowball tumblers. “Christ.”
After he catches himself he glances behind him at the bar, hoping the two bartenders didn’t see. Judging the huge grins on their faces they probably did. He shrugs it off and weaves around the pool tables, smirks at the knowledge that he has one of their phone numbers in his back pocket.
And here I am, surrounded by nerds, he thinks as he takes in the pile of photocopied newspaper clippings, an open notebook, and Sam’s laptop. He sits down and pushes two bottles towards Sam while taking a swig from his own. He lets the smooth and bitter brew slide down his throat before leaning in on Sam’s left and asking, “Find anything?”
Jessica promptly hands him a piece of paper; it’s the front page of the Lost Creek Gazette, the large bold print screaming “Grizzly Bear Attacks!”
“Find anything unusual?” he clarifies as he scoops up a few salted peanuts from a small bowl in front of him.
“Well, Blackwater Ridge doesn’t get a lot of traffic,” Sam says. “Local campers, mostly. But this past April two hikers went missing out there. They were never found. Here.”
He reaches over and takes a few more pages from the stack in front of Jessica, hands them to Dean. They’re all photocopies of the front page of the local paper, each featuring bear attacks. As he skims the print he asks, “Aren’t those mountains crawling with bears?”
Jessica sets her bottle of beer down hard. “Yeah. But that’s not the point. In 1982 eight people disappeared; authorities claimed it was a grizzly attack and shot up a few bears to prove it. But it turns out that the same thing happened in 1959 and in 1936. Every twenty-three years a bunch of people disappear up there, like clockwork. Bears don’t have a set pattern of attack.”
Sam angles the laptop screen towards Dean.
“Okay, watch this,” he says. “This is the last one Tommy sent Hailey before he stopped calling.”
Dean narrows his eyes as Tommy talks to the video camera; the video suddenly slows down, making it hard to miss the shadow flitting across the screen behind the young man. He taps on the screen and Sam bats his hand away.
“Bitch. Play it again.”
Sam rewinds and slows the video down even more. The shadow is definitely not natural.
“That’s three frames,” Sam explains as he taps on a key; it takes three taps for the silhouette to move across the side of Tommy’s tent. “That’s a fraction of a second. Whatever it is, it can move.”
Sam shuts his laptop and lifts the bottle to his lips. He chokes when Dean shoulders him and says, “Told you something weird was going on.”
Sam glares at him.
“One more thing,” Jessica suddenly says. “Someone survived an attack in 1959. Barely crawled out of the woods alive.”
“Oh yeah? Is this person still around?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “He was just a kid when it happened. Lost both of his parents.”
Dean frowns as he stares down the bottleneck at the last mouthfuls of beer. “Well that sucks.”
“Tell me about it,” Sam says as he stuffs his laptop in the backpack sitting at his feet.
They sit in silence for a few minutes, finishing off the beer and the bowl of peanuts while soaking in the bar’s bustling warm atmosphere, listening to people laugh while clinking glass on hard surfaces and smacking pool balls across the table with cue sticks.
Something comes to mind. “Please tell me this guy lives in the area.”
Sam picks it up immediately. “Don’t tell me you already picked up someone-”
“Aw come on, Sammy,” Dean says, slapping him on the back and smirking when he winces. “Live a little.” He then nods to an amused Jessica. “Or at least let me live a little. Haven’t gotten laid since…you know.”
The glower on Sam’s face softens considerably. “Fine. Who?”
Dean tilts his head towards the bar. Sam and Jessica look over their shoulders at the two bartenders.
“Both of them?” Jessica asks.
“The chick,” Dean says quickly, although he’s pretty sure the young man is just as interested. The lingering fingers on that shot glass of quality whiskey he said was on the house were as telling as the quick kiss the woman gave Dean as she handed him the beer and her number.
“Right,” Sam says as he stacks the papers and shoves them inside his notebook. “Lucky for you, Mr. Shaw lives several minutes from here, so let’s go.”
Dean winks at the bartenders while following Sam and Jessica out the door and grins when they both flush and nod back.
* * *
It takes a bit of coaxing for Mr. Shaw to part with his memories of that awful night in 1959.
“You wouldn’t believe me,” the old man says as he sits down in an old armchair. “Nobody ever did.”
“Mr. Shaw.” Jessica crouches down in front of him, balancing on the balls of her feet. Her voice is brimming with care as she asks, “What did you see?”
Dean keeps an ear on Mr. Shaw’s words while leaning forward and tilting his head to peer out the window at the sidewalk down below, where Sam is leaning against the Impala, arms folded and bitch-face glued on.
“…moved too fast, hid too well. I heard it though. A roar like…no man or animal I ever heard.”
“And it came at night?”
Mr. Shaw nods and looks at the still-smoking cigarette in the ash tray on the small coffee table. He blinks hard and grimaces, like he’s fighting back the memories.
“And it got inside your tent?” Jessica presses on.
“It got inside our cabin,” Mr. Shaw corrects. “I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in.” He hesitates before adding, “Didn’t smash a window or the door, though; it unlocked it. Do you know of a bear that can do something like that?”
Sam looks at them expectantly when they exit the apartment complex. He looks antsy, fairly bursting with questions about the interview. “Well?”
“Definitely not a bear,” Dean tells him as he gets into the Impala.
“What else?”
“It can unlock doors,” Jessica says as she shuts the car door. “It moved too fast for Mr. Shaw to see, plus he said it didn’t sound like a bear. Or a human.”
“Also left Mr. Shaw a parting gift,” Dean says, shuddering at the image of the deep claw marks gouged deep into the old man’s shoulder and down his chest. “Could be a skin walker, maybe a black dog. It’s definitely something we can kill.”
He adjusts the rearview mirror and starts the Impala.
“We can’t let Hailey go out there,” Sam says.
“What are you going to tell her? She can’t go into the woods because of a big scary monster?”
“Yeah.”
“Her brother’s out there, Sam,” Jessica says. “You saw the look on her face. She’s not gonna sit this out while he’s out there. If Dean went missing wouldn’t you go out looking for him, too?”
Sam doesn’t say anything for most of the drive to the cheapest motel in the area. It’s getting dark and the temperature’s dropping; Dean can feel the chill settling in and considers turning on the heater. Instead he turns up the volume and drowns out the silence for several long minutes.
At a red light Sam finally says, “Fine. We’ll go out there with Hailey tomorrow. We’ll keep her safe, find her brother, and kill this monster. Then we’re going after Dad.”
He directs this last statement at Dean, almost seems to challenge him with it as well as remind him. It’s not like Dean forgot why they came here in the first place. Finding John is still high on his list of priorities but right now this family needs help. If he can do something about it he will.
“Don’t worry,” Dean says as he spots the neon motel sign. “I didn’t forget.”
After getting two room keys and tossing one to Sam and Jessica he drives back to the bar. With night comes a larger crowd and Dean has to shoulder his way to the bar to ask for a finger of whiskey. The bartender he’s keen on, Susanne, is still there but her coworker is nowhere in sight; someone else is working the counter with her, and Dean gives her a nod before turning his attention to Susanne.
“Busy night?” he asks, watching her twist off the cap on the whiskey bottle.
“The usual,” she says. “What about your friends? Are they here?”
Dean shakes his head, smirks. “Nope. Just me.”
She flashes him a smile and slides him the shot glass.
Susanne gets off work in about forty-five minutes but by a stroke of luck people stop ordering drinks from her as soon as Dean comes in, leaving her to idle about and make small talk. So he spends the next half hour bullshitting his life story to her. It rolls off his tongue easily but towards the end he finds himself working to hold her interest. It’s frustrating trying to pick up where he abruptly left off a few weeks back and he ends up ordering two more shots of whiskey before Susanne’s shift ends.
“So,” she says, sidling up next to him. “My place or yours?”
Dean smirks and sets the empty shot glass down. “Mine’s closer.”
At the motel she’s all business, slamming him up against the door and tugging the layers off while he cups her face and licks off her watermelon lip gloss. She laughs throatily and leaves sticky kisses along his jaw and down his neck while her hands grab the ends of his shirt and tugs it up. His left shoulder twinges when he raises his arms to shed his shirt and then he remembers the bandages covering up the hand-shaped burn.
She stares at the patchwork of gauze while he unbuttons her shirt. After a moment he glances at his shoulder as well.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “Just a burn.”
It’s apparently the right thing to say because her eyes fairly shine and she presses her mouth to his, tongue sweeping the tang of whiskey off the roof of his mouth; she presses up against him, hips rolling forward, and he groans.
“You lead a very dangerous lifestyle,” she murmurs and presses a kiss to the gauze, leaving behind a shimmering imprint of her lips. “For luck.”
She has no idea how much he’s going to need it tomorrow, so Dean takes what he can.
The bedside clock reads 2:43:78 AM when Susanne slides off him and curls up around one of the pillows. Dean stares at the clock and then up at the ceiling where bluish moonlight clashes with the motel’s neon lights. His eyelids are heavy and he’s drifting along in a blissfully warm and drowsy state, but he doesn’t want to sleep yet.
The flash of fire is brief but searing and Dean sits up with a hoarse gasp. It’s only been five minutes and Susanne’s asleep next to him, all curves and soft skin. He watches her smile and murmur something into the pillow, then lifts his head to stare at the light glowing through the window while his hand slides under his pillow, looking for his hunting knife.
His instincts prickle, feeling the pressure of another presence in the motel room. He slowly slides his eyes around the room. Nothing's been disturbed; there’s the small round table and two chairs, a TV on a dresser, clothes strewn all over the floor, his duffel bag, the darkened corner where the door should be, and the bathroom.
His hand doesn’t find his knife and something shifts in the shadows. His body tenses, tightened muscles stretching the tender burns under the gauze, and he grimaces as he slowly maneuvers himself between whatever’s hiding there and Susanne.
“Don’t worry. She won’t wake up.”
Dean freezes at the low growl. He doesn’t dare look over his shoulder at her, keeps his eyes fixed on that dark entryway while thinking of the best way to protect her. He hears more shuffling in that direction and thinks about distracting whatever's hiding there, taking the fight outside so that Sam and Jessica can hear and come running to help.
“That’s the last thing I’m worried about,” he says carefully as he narrows his eyes and tries to see the offending presence's shape. The light just doesn’t reach that far into the room; he can’t make out anything.
“There’s nothing to fear,” the voice says. Despite the monotonous tone every syllable is laced with power, each word supercharged. As if whatever’s hiding there isn’t human. “We need to talk.”
“I don’t even know who you are,” Dean says. “How’d you get in here?”
Something’s off about the situation but he can’t put his finger on it.
“I wasn’t sure how to best present myself to you so I chose a dream-”
“What? You can’t just-I’m dreaming? The hell?”
Cold fear washes over him. He’s dreaming, and something just walked into his head. He swallows hard as his eyes dart to the duffel bag on the floor. he doesn’t know if his weapons are in there or if they’ll have any effect on the voice’s owner, but there’s no way he’s going to sit here, naked under scratchy bed sheets, weaponless. He’s heard stories about dream walkers.
“Who are you?” he demands, but he chokes on his words and they come out a hoarse whisper.
Something moves out of the corner of the motel room and into the clash of blue and neon orange-red lights. Dean raises an eyebrow.
“Seriously?”
The man frowns as he looks down at himself, touches the collar of his trench coat and unsuccessfully straightens his askew tie. “What did you expect?”
Dean has no idea, other than the fleeting memory of a drawing made of black and red crayons. He narrows his eyes - his dream eyes, what the fuck, this is so weird - and tries to catalog as many details as he can in a few seconds. The man - the dream walker's chosen image - has dark hair and eyes that seem very bright in the filtered moonlight. His jaw is blunt and unshaven, his nose sharp, and his mouth is…distracting. Dean quickly drops his eyes to the slump of his shoulders, the ill-fitting flasher coat and the crooked tie, the trousers and wingtips, and decides rather blithely that in a fist fight he’ll be easy to overpower. This soothes his mind somewhat and Dean sits back, the small of his back resting against Susanne's while his eyes slowly rise back up to the man’s piercing eyes.
“So what are you, a tax accountant?”
The man bristles; he straightens up, jutting his jaw out in defiance. “I am no such thing.”
Dean snorts at the overreaction. For a guy who’s good enough to walk into his head he sure is green about it. “Right. So, who the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing in my head?”
“I…” The man drops his head as he ponders his words. Dean frowns as he waits, flexes his hands and wonders if the pain of punching that face will wake him out of this dream. “You could say…I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.”
Dean laughs. “Very funny, dude. Perdition? Yeah, right. No, really, who are you?”
The way the man tilts his head, like he doesn’t get what Dean’s asking, prompts Dean to add, “What are you?”
The man tilts his head back so he’s looking straight at him; a slow smile forms like he's been waiting for Dean to get it.
“I’m an angel of the Lord.”
Dean stares at him in disbelief for maybe one second and then he’s laughing harshly, shaking his head and saying, “Bullshit.”
Behind him Susanne stirs and then sighs, relaxes under the covers.
The man steps towards the bed and Dean freezes up. Something changes in the air; the crackle of energy makes the hairs on the back of his hands and neck stand on end while the air starts reeking of ozone. His heart pounds and he’s suddenly short on breath. Dean almost expects fire to erupt behind the man in the room but nothing happens; he just stands several inches closer, his eyes pinning Dean to the bed.
“No such thing,” he whispers.
He doesn’t believe in the Bible, in God, in Heaven and Hell. Demons exist but no one can explain why, not that he cares. And angels aren’t real. Despite conflicting lore and fairy tales about them, both within and without the Biblical context, nothing factual has ever been recorded about them. The only man who ever talked about angels was Pastor Jim, but that’s a given. Dean never found a reason to pray, never believed what he couldn’t see, what couldn't save his mother twenty-one years ago.
“I exist, Dean Winchester." The man speaks softly but his voice still manages to fill the room, humming with bridled power. He takes another step towards the bed and the lights outside start flickering; massive shadows grow from his back, cast themselves on the walls and devour the light. The wings flex, spreading its pinions. “I am an angel of the Lord. I am the one who breathed life back into you, who pulled you out of the fire and healed the scars in the lungs, who made your heart beat again-”
Dean latches onto the first sensible thing to come out of the man’s mouth. “I died?”
“Your heart had almost given out when I arrived.”
The fire. He remembers being pushed onto his back, remembers something sealing around his mouth and forcing air down his throat. He remembers something broiling his left shoulder, remembers damp grass and cold air and Sam hovering over him, calling his name.
“That was you.”
“Yes.”
Dean was saved by an angel? Is this a joke? Has he finally snapped? “But why?”
The angel hesitates, like he-it-thing didn’t expect that question. “Because we have work for you.”
“We? You mean there’s more of you?”
“Yes,” the angel says. Eyebrows furrow with irritation. “There is a Heaven, just like there’s a Hell, but I’m not here to discuss this.”
“Then what are you here for?” Dean asks. “Do you even have a name?”
For some reason this last question brings out a smile on the angel’s face. It’s awkward on the somewhat handsome face, like the angel doesn’t know how to work his-it’s mouth.
“My name is Castiel,” the angel says. “As for why I’m here…what you and Sam are doing is of great importance to us.”
Dean is dumbfounded. Never mind that he’s talking to a freaking angel of the Lord who tells him that Heaven is as real as Hell; what the hell do they want with him and Sam? “Uh, we’re just looking for our dad.”
“I know.”
No surprise there. He may have dozed off more times than not while Pastor Jim gave his Sunday sermons but he still knows a thing or two about how "omniscient" God and his angels are supposed to be.
“Okay,” Dean says, shifting positions while strategically keeping half his body hidden by the sheets. He doesn’t mind getting naked around other people, but this angel isn’t other people. “So why do you care that we’re looking for Dad? What, you know where he is?”
The angel-Castiel shakes his head. “No, we don’t.”
Omniscient, my ass. “Then what the hell do you want?”
“We want you to stop your search for John.”
Dean stares at him. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” The air starts humming again, charging as the angel repeats himself slowly and carefully. “Stop your search for John. Or at least put it off as long as you can. We can’t afford having you stumble in on him when it’s not yet time.”
“Are you serious? What the fuck, man? You can’t just waltz into my head and tell me to stop looking for my own damn father-”
Castiel is suddenly crouching down on the bed in front of him, his face just inches from Dean’s. Dean's heart jumps up his throat and he chokes on the rest of his words.
“Goodbye, Dean Winchester. You have a long day ahead of you.”
“What the-”
Castiel presses two fingers to his forehead and Dean opens his eyes to the cool sunlight streaming into the room. He quickly sits up and looks around; other than the occupied bathroom and the vacancy next to him on the bed nothing’s been disturbed. His clothes are still all over the floor, the duffel bag is still next to the TV stand, and none of the chairs have moved. Dean flicks his eyes at the entryway and finds nothing. There’s absolutely nothing to suggest that sometime in the night he had a conversation with a strange man who claimed to be an angel named Castiel.
“The fuck,” he mutters and falls back down on the bed. He blocks out the sun with the back of his hand and tries to sleep but he can’t; his mind is scrambling to cling onto the details of the conversation but like most dreams they slip away like sand between his fingers.
“Stop your search for John. Or at least put it off as long as you can.”
A minute later his phone rings and he knocks it to the floor trying to turn it off; it’s Sam.
“Get your ass out of bed; we have to catch Hailey before she goes to Blackwater Ridge.”
* * * * *
While they’re out in the sun hiking isn’t all that bad, although Dean keeps making a lot of dick moves that threaten to give them away. Sam clenches his hands more than once like he wants to punch his brother, but that won’t help them protect Hailey and Ben.
“Is he normally like this?” Jessica asks quietly while watching Dean have another verbal sparring match with the guide Hailey hired to help her find her brother’s camp.
“Usually,” Sam says. “But he’s never been this bad. Probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“Or he didn’t have as good a night as we did.”
The forest starts reaching for the sky all around them and suddenly November makes its presence more obvious; in the shade the temperature seems to drop ten degrees and Jessica shoves her hands into her jacket pockets, looking for warmth. She also gravitates towards Sam while up ahead Roy, the guide Hailey hired, stops and takes a look around.
“This is it,” he says. “Blackwater Ridge.”
“What’s our coordinates?” Sam asks while Dean walks past him to peer into the dense underbrush.
“35-111.”
“You hear that?” Dean asks, cocking his head to the side.
Jessica frowns. She hadn’t even noticed, probably because of the noise they made hiking through the woods, but now that they’re standing still she does.
The woods are silent.
“Not even crickets,” Sam breathes out.
Something’s definitely out there and they’re the only living things stupid enough to walk right into its territory.
“How worried should we be?” Jessica asks as Roy strides by them.
“Everything’s fine,” he says as he grips his rifle in both hands. “I’m going to take a look around.”
“You shouldn’t go off by yourself,” Sam says.
“That’s sweet. Don’t worry about me.”
“He’s a goner,” Jessica says, watching him disappear into the woods while Dean orders the others to stick together.
“Not if we do this right,” Sam says.
Not surprisingly they do everything wrong. Hailey starts screaming for Tommy as soon as they locate the shredded remains of his camp and when a voice deep in the woods wails for help they abandon their belongings to chase after it, hoping it’s Hailey’s brother.
“It seemed like it was coming from around here,” Hailey says slowly while they scan the trees and leafy undergrowth. “Didn’t it?”
Dean mutters under his breath while Sam says, “Everybody back to camp.”
Sure enough all their supplies are gone. Jessica walks around the perimeter of the camp but there are no tracks or trail left behind.
“What the hell's going on?” Hailey demands as she runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s smart,” Sam says. “It wants to cut us off so we can’t call for help.”
Jessica looks at him sharply. He knows what it is? Dean’s looking over his shoulder at Sam, too; after a moment he walks several feet away from the campsite and waits.
“You mean some nutjob out there just stole all our gear,” Roy mutters. He crouches down and starts scanning the ground for the signs that aren't there.
“Jess,” Sam says quietly and gestures towards the trees, where Dean is waiting.
Oh. Duh. She glances over her shoulder at Hailey and Ben as she follows Sam around thick bushes and several trees. They distractedly pick through the remnants of the campsite while Roy continues tracking the "nutjob" who stole their supplies.
“Okay, college boy,” Dean says as soon as she joins them some distance away from the site. “You think you know what it is?”
“Yeah, let me see Dad’s journal.”
Dean pulls the leather-bound journal out of his jacket pocket and hands it over; Sam starts flipping through the pages.
“Okay, check this out.” He holds out the pages to Jessica and Dean. On one page are a set of protective sigils, the other a drawing of a long-limbed humanoid.
Her stomach drops. “No way.”
“What she said,” Dean says. “Come on, Wendigos are in Minnesota and northern Michigan. What the hell would one be doing all the way out here?”
“There must be tons of abandoned mines up here,” Sam says, gesturing in the general direction of the mountains. “And tons of ways for miners to get trapped in them.”
“That doesn’t mean-”
“Think about it. The victims, the claws, the way it can mimic a human voice. It all fits.”
“Yeah, but-” Dean pulls a face as Sam shuts the journal. “Great. Just great.” He pulls out the handgun tucked under his jacket. “Well then this is fucking useless.”
“What the hell are we going to do?” Jessica asks. She points at the sky, which is now tinged orange and pink. She’s already imagining the scenario - a cold November night in the forest, stalked by a lightning fast monster hungry for human flesh. “It’s getting dark and you know how they are at night.”
“What we’re going to do is get these people out of here,” Sam says and starts back to camp.
“Roy’s not gonna believe us and Hailey’s not leaving until we find Tommy. Let’s see you try talking them out of it.”
“Unless someone’s carrying a flamethrower in his pocket we’re screwed,” Dean says.
What she’d give to have one right now. Wendigos are some of the fastest, cleverest, most powerful hunters in the world. Great daytime hunters; unstoppable at night. Bullets and knives can’t bring them down, and there’s no way they can get close to one in order to set it on fire without getting ripped to shreds.
She hates hunting Wendigos.
The symbols Dean traced in the dirt that night did shit all to keep Roy from disappearing into the woods. Thankfully Hailey and Ben had more sense and stayed close to the fire while Dean and Sam went after the guide.
“What the hell is going on?” Hailey repeats herself while the brothers’ voices echo loudly in the woods.
Jessica sighs and scratches out another symbol in the dirt with a stick. “You’re not going to believe us.”
“Why?”
She looks up at Hailey. “That thing out there? It’s not human. It’s not an animal. It’s a monster, and one of the best hunters in the world.”
Hailey is utterly confused, keeps opening and closing her mouth like she doesn’t know what to say. Jessica expected as much and draws more protection sigils with the stick.
“But what is it?” Ben asks.
“A Wendigo,” Sam says breathlessly as he jogs back to camp, carefully avoiding the symbols on the ground. A thin red line marks his cheek, probably a scratch from a low-hanging tree branch. “It’s a-it’s a Native American word for ‘evil spirit’ or ‘cannibal’, which is what it is.”
“They’re hundreds of years old,” Dean adds as he crouches down by the symbols, checking for errors. “They used to be human. An Indian, a frontiersman, a miner, a hunter. During some harsh winter they get cut off from supplies or help, so they eat other members of their tribe or camp to survive.”
“Like the Donner Party,” Ben says.
“Cultures all over the world have different beliefs about eating human flesh,” Jessica says. “For some it’s obviously taboo. For others, it’s like taking on the powers of the person they’re eating. It gives them special abilities, like speed, strength, immortality. The more you eat, though, the less human you become. And you’re always hungry.”
She tosses the twig into the fire and the flames devour it.
“Okay.” Hailey presses the heels of her hands over her eyes. “Okay. Say this is true-”
“Oh it is, sweetheart,” Dean says immediately and she glares at him.
“Fine.” She takes a deep breath, looks at Ben, and then asks, “Then is it possible for Tommy to still be alive?”
Ben stiffens next to her. Dean licks his lip and glances at Sam, who shakes his head and looks away. Jessica sighs. Now that they know a Wendigo has been behind these cyclical attacks the odds of Tommy being alive are terrible to none.
“Tell me,” Hailey says in a wavering voice. “I need to know.”
“Wendigos…know how to last long winters without food,” Sam says slowly while Dean rises to his feet and goes to the pile of blood splattered supplies in front of a tent. “They hibernate for years at a time but while they’re awake they keep their victims alive, stores them somewhere so they can feed whenever they want. If, if Tommy’s alive it’s keeping him somewhere dark, hidden and safe. Only way to find out is to track it back to its lair.”
“Say he’s alive,” Hailey says, “and we find him. How do we stop the Wendigo?”
“Well,” Jessica says, picking up another branch and sticking its end into the fire. “Most hunters don’t walk into a Wendigo’s lair while it’s active.”
“But we’re not most hunters,” Dean adds somewhere behind her. She looks over her shoulder to see him standing by the pile of camping equipment Hailey and Ben salvaged, holding up a can of lighter fluid and a lighter. “So, we're gonna torch the sucker.”
Part 2