Getting the unicorn monkey off my back
This is all Lyn's fault. Just like the last one. All. Lyn's. Fault.
Seriously. She owes me, like, her soul now or something, I dunno.
A couple of the better lines are hers.
Also, there's no way in hell I could do justice to this idea, but, hey, here you go.
"So it must be a ghost," said Sam. He finished his doughnut and absently licked his fingers clean. "No new reports in the paper. Just a reminder from the police that if anyone knows anything about the disappearance of the little girl, they should tell them."
"Ghosts haunt, they don't kidnap," said Dean, tilting his head back and stretching his neck. He wanted more coffee. They were getting nowhere and it was hard to keep motivated with so little to go on.
"A ghost might lure someone out to get vengeance on them. Or because of some unfinished business."
Dean shook his head. "No, man. The signs aren't here. There's no pattern, no bodies found."
"That doesn't mean anything. It can take years for a body to turn up sometimes, especially tiny ones like these," said Sam. He sighed and stared at the notice in the paper again. "Maybe we don't have enough samples to see the pattern, yet. It could be a relatively new ghost that hasn't had long enough to give us adequate data," he suggested, trying to coat the problem of disappearing toddlers in academic language to distance himself from the unpleasantness.
Again, Dean shook his head, tapping on the laptop to pull up the window with the relevant articles. "Todd Anderson, three years old, disappeared in the middle of the night on a camping trip with his family in mid-April, 1998. Myra Brown, eighteen months, was left briefly unattended when her family was having a picnic and vanished, last week of July in 2000. Then nothing until a couple weeks ago. Two year old Debbie Angelo went missing from her family's house on the edge of the forest. Last seen playing outside in the morning by her mother. All anyone reported was that they saw something 'white' out of the corner of their eye just before or after the kids disappeared. That's all there is, man. Maybe it's nothing."
"It can't be," insisted Sam. "Little kids, all old enough to walk but not in school yet or anything, all disappearing in the same area, all these reports about something white - "
"It doesn't sound like a ghost, though. It'd have to be a living thing. Their patterns are usually more erratic than dead or demonic creatures. Maybe a sasquatch -"
"Sasquatches are shy!" Sam protested. "They don't go around kidnapping people. They do everything to avoid contact with people!"
"Yeah, well, it's not gonna be a polar bear in Vermont, and this doesn't sound like any kind of ghost I've ever dealt with, and you sure as hell aren't convincing me there's an evil cow or something kidnapping children and eating them," said Dean. He shut his laptop, giving up on it for the moment.
"We can't just leave," Sam protested.
"Who said anything about leaving? We'll check the forest for paranormal activity - ghosts or anything else - and we'll take it from there."
A look of relief crossed Sam's face and he quickly, neatly folded the newspaper before finishing his coffee in one fast gulp.
"But if there's nothing in the forest," Dean continued, going to check his bag for supplies, "then we're movin' on and leaving it for the cops to handle."
***
The forest was green and sweet smelling, picture perfect, like something from a travel brochure. The morning sun was glinting through the trees and nothing about that particular patch of woods or anywhere else they had walked suggested that this was the sort of place where ghosts, demons, or wild animals would kill children. There were goddamn birds twittering away in the branches above them. The crunch of branches under their feet. All the general forest noises while Dean's EMF detector remained stubbornly silent, as it had since they had gotten out of the Impala.
"There's nothing here, Sammy. We may be in the most boringly normal forest in the country. Little Red Riding Hood could come skipping through here and the only thing she'd have to worry about would be hay fever," said Dean as they followed a well-travelled path and entered the clearing where the Browns had been happily picnicking before their daughter vanished.
"There's something here. Something odd. Maybe not a ghost, but ..." Sam frowned, tilting his head to one side, then shook it. "Your gadget's probably just broken."
Dean glared and walked from one tree to another, getting no reading. "We could walk over every inch of this damn forest and not find a sign of anything. Those kids just wandered off, got lost, and no one's found the remains yet. This is a bust, Sam. C'mon."
Sam sat down on a log, a mulish expression on his face. "No way. I can sense ... something," he waved an uncertain hand in the air. "Something that's - it's not wrong, but it doesn't fit, either. I don't think it's malevolent, but it has some kind of purpose. It isn't entirely benign, that's for sure."
Dean rolled his eyes and sat down next to Sam. "Yeah, well, whatever your freak senses are sensing, I can't see any sign of it," he said. He took out the EMF metre and began fiddling with it, just in case, by some leap of probability, Sam was right and it was broken.
"Maybe it's invisible. That would fit with the theory that it's some kind of spirit."
"Your theory, maybe," said Dean, tapping the old walkman with his fingers. "Maybe it only comes out if it's hungry. Or at night."
"Some of those kids vanished in the daytime," Sam pointed out, slouching and putting his chin in his hands. He chewed on a finger knuckle, eyes vague as he looked at the forest around them.
"Maybe it only comes out when there's kids around, then. There are some creatures that are only interested in children. If that's what this is, we'd need to come out here with bait. Unless you got a baby hidden somewhere on you."
"Maybe it only comes out when you shut up," suggested Sam.
Dean held up a placating hand. "Look, Sammy -"
"Sam."
"- we don't even know how these powers of yours work, right? So maybe you sense something and it's a spirit or a demon or who knows what. Or maybe what you're sensing is some guy who's on a nature walk and feeling tired, or a guy out here with his girlfriend hoping to get lucky. Maybe there's just a plant around these parts that's like psychic catnip. The point is, we don't know. We can't just follow your senses around all the time, not when we don't even know -"
"There's something moving in the bushes," whispered Sam.
Dean looked up from the EMF metre and followed Sam's gaze. Sure enough, there was something shaking the leaves of one of the trees on the edge of the clearing. Dean pulled out his gun and Sam tensed, although he didn't go for a weapon.
The branches shook again and the thing stepped into the clearing.
The brothers stared. Sam's jaw dropped.
"That's definitely not ghost," said Dean, smug.
"Yeah, well, it's not a sasquatch, either," snapped Sam, called back to reality.
It was white, whiter than anything living in the forest should have been. Whiter than the miraculous falls of snow in corny Christmas specials on television. So white it seemed to glow, a space of impossible soft whiteness the size of a pony and the shape of a delicate horse in the green of the forest, with a spiral of harder, glowing paleness several feet long coming from its forehead.
"It's a fucking unicorn," said Dean, watching it closely as it continued to move forward, the space between them diminishing.
"Yeah," agreed Sam, his voice gone quiet with awe. Then he looked to his side and saw that Dean still had his gun in his hand, the muzzle following the unicorn as it moved. "Dean!"
"What?" asked Dean, not moving his head. He was watching the unicorn with the same intensity that he might watch a gremlin or a werewolf being lured into a trap, not letting his guard down.
"It's a unicorn. I think you can put the gun down, dude. They aren't traditionally characterized as fierce man eaters."
"You think this is what your freak powers were sensing?" asked Dean.
The unicorn was close enough now that Sam could have stretched out and touched it. "Yeah, I think so. It feels weird. Really weird."
"So, this is probably the thing you were sensing. The thing we came out looking for. The thing responsible for those kids disappearing," said Dean, eyes locked on the unicorn.
Sam faltered. "I don't think I was sensing anything else."
"There you go, then," said Dean coolly. "Besides, look at the horn on that thing. It can be as pretty princess as it likes, man, but I bet you anything it could have that thing right through your torso faster'n you can blink."
"It doesn't seem dangerous," said Sam. "I think we'd know if it was gonna impale us or something."
"Maybe," said Dean. "And maybe not." And then the animal was close enough that Sam could have touched it without doing much beyond moving his arm, standing above them both, and it calmly sniffed the air before bending its head and lipping softly at Dean's hair.
Sam began to grin. "Oh yeah, that there looks like a real killer, Dean. Fearsome monster. Better do something before it rips out your throat."
Dean grimaced and swatted at it. "Piss off!"
"Maybe it thinks you're food," suggested Sam. He put a hand over his mouth to hide a grin that he couldn't repress.
"Maybe it's the only mentally retarded unicorn in human history," Dean snapped in return, and lifted a hand to shove at the unicorn's nose. "Get lost."
"It's almost like its domesticated," said Sam, his voice a blend of wonder and amusement as the unicorn huffed softly and made another go for Dean's hair.
"Great observation, really useful, I'm sure it'll go a long ways to explaining what the hell is going on here," Dean said and gave the unicorn's head another shove as he got to his feet.
"It could belong to whatever took the kids," said Sam, unconsciously following Dean's example.
"So we're looking for, what, a demon with a pet unicorn? You get hit on the head or something, man?" asked Dean, putting his gun away.
The unicorn rubbed its nose against Dean's shoulder.
"I don't know! It was just an idea. Just thinking out loud, trying to figure out some explanation for - It's trying to eat your jacket, Dean."
Dean made an impatient noise and pulled himself away from the unicorn, who released the jacket with some reluctance. "What the fuck?"
"Maybe it does think you're food!" Sam laughed.
"Very funny," said Dean as the unicorn latched on to the jacket again. "Oh, c'mon!"
"I suppose you could have always rolled or gotten sprayed with something that smells like unicorn food," said Sam. "That could be why it came out."
"Or it came out because it sensed there was a paranormal freak besides itself hanging out here," muttered Dean, shucking his jacket and tossing it to Sam. Willingly, Sam waved his brother's jacket like a flag for a bull. The unicorn didn't seem to care, and calmly began nibbling at Dean's T-shirt.
"I don't think unicorns go crazy for the crappy soap they gave us in the last motel," said Sam thoughtfully.
"I think it's drooling on my shirt."
"Unicorns don't drool," Sam said in an absent voice that suggested his thoughts were somewhere else.
"Sammy?"
"It just seems weird. I mean, unicorns. Dad never talked about stuff like that." Sam stared at it.
"Why would he? I mean, you've got a job where you're hunting down evil and stuff, unicorns aren't exactly going to be a big concern," said Dean. He tugged at his shirt and eventually got the unicorn to let it go, only to have the animal settle its chin on his shoulder and heave a huge, happy horse sigh.
"Ghosts and demons and all kinds of crazy crap, and he never even let on that things like this existed. Good things," said Sam.
"Yeah, well, there's good stuff everywhere, right, but why would Dad care? You gotta focus on the dark stuff because that's what people need protecting from. They don't need people to keep them safe from unicorns," said Dean. He glared at the unicorn, trying to shrug its head off. "Although they are a friggin' nuisance."
"I dunno, it seems nice," said Sam. "It smells like lavender."
Dean made a face. "Dude, don't sniff the unicorn. That's weird, even for you."
"I didn't sniff it. The smell just kind of wafted over. Couldn't help smelling it," said Sam, moving to stand closer to his brother and look at the unicorn, which twitched an ear at him.
"How do you even know what lavender smells like?" asked Dean. He smirked.
Sam coughed and looked more intently at the unicorn. "So, what do you think it's doing around here? If it really is just wandering around like any other animal ..."
"I dunno, man. Probably wishing the girls in town weren't so slutty. Must be pretty boring to be a unicorn in this day and age."
"Mm," agreed Sam. The corner of his mouth twitched. "It seems awful fond of you, though."
Dean rolled his eyes. "I think there's something wrong with its head. Or its drunk."
Sam couldn't help it. He laughed. "Dean, unicorns don't drink!"
"And we know this how? There's clearly something screwing with it - gimme back my jacket," Dean demanded abruptly and quickly put it on, disrupting the content unicorn resting against his shoulder. "Especially if it does have something to do with those kids disappearing. Maybe it ate some chemicals or something someone put in their orchard or on the grass."
"Unicorn horns are supposed to have the power to purify poisons and things. The animals themselves are probably immune to herbicides. Nice try, though."
"If it isn't under the influence of some kind of weird crap, I dunno what we're left with to explain it," said Dean. He glared as the unicorn began nuzzling his chest.
"Dean, is there something you should tell me?" asked Sam. He tried to keep the laughter from his voice, he tried to sound cool, academic, with just a touch of brotherly concern thrown in.
"Get real, Sammy," said Dean. Feeling his brother's eyes on him, he gave the unicorn another shove. It pulled back for a minute, stared at Dean with big, dark eyes that, for all they were horse-like, managed to look deeply wounded, and then pressed its nose into his chest again.
"You know how it works, right? When a man and a woman -"
"Shut up, Sammy," said Dean. He eyed the unicorn with distaste, the horn a bit closer to him than he was comfortable with. "Maybe its got brain damage."
"A brain damaged unicorn is even less likely than a middle-aged virgin demon hunter," said Sam. He was grinning like an idiot, now. He couldn't help it.
"There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I can't even begin to correct you," said Dean. "I have had sex with a woman, you know. Lots of women."
"Uh huh," said Sam. "I think it wants you to pet it."
"Not a chance," said Dean.
"How can you say no to that face?" asked Sam as the unicorn blinked its big eyes at Dean.
"Hey, I know. Since you're so concerned about it and have all those touchy-feely-yuppie powers, how about you pet it?"
Sam shrugged and, in the spirit of inquiry, reached out to gently scratch behind one of the unicorn's ears. "It's really soft," he said after a moment, amazed. "Softer than anything."
"Fascinating," said Dean. "It's not getting lost, though."
"Still wants you to pet it," explained Sam. "Look at it."
Dean groaned. "Why? You did! That should be enough!"
"Well, yeah, but I've had sex with a woman, so it's obviously not the same as far as it's concerned."
"I swear, if you don't shut up," threatened Dean and gave Sam a warning punch in the arm.
Sam rubbed his arm, still grinning with a brightness that Dean hadn't seen since Sammy was little, and even then had been rare. But then Sam went and opened his mouth again. "Is it equipment failure?"
Dean rounded and punched Sam in the nose.
Even through the blood, Sam was grinning as he used the sleeve of his jacket to stop the bleeding.
"Let's check the forest a bit more," Dean said, his voice dragging everything back to business as he dug out the EMF metre again, "and see if there's anything weird hanging about besides this stupid thing."
Sam grinned, but he nodded and followed Dean back into the trees.
The unicorn followed them, smelling like flowers.
***
An hour later, it was just as obvious as it had been before they found the unicorn that there was nothing in the forest. No spirits, no ghosts, no demons, nothing but the unicorn, that appeared to have wandered off.
"Wonder where it went," said Sam as they began trudging back to the car.
"You sayin' you can't use your super powers to detect how far away it is or something?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "No more than I could before, retard."
"It's probably lost interest in us."
"Could have," agreed Sam, pushing a tree branch out of the way. "Of course, I understand if you're worried about it. Or upset that it abandoned us. It was awful pretty, after all."
Dean punched Sam again, harder than necessary. "I told you to shut up about that!"
Sam winced. "Careful, man, you don't want to injure something."
"Don't be such a wuss, Sam!" said Dean. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket and walked a bit faster to pull ahead of Sam. "So. We got nothin'."
"Nothing but the unicorn," said Sam. He rubbed his arm and rolled his shoulder, grimacing.
"What the hell are we supposed to make of that?" Dean said, the words nearly exploding from him as he threw up his hands to glare at the ceiling of trees above them.
"Dunno. Guess the next stop is the library."
"Like we're going to find anything remotely useful about a unicorn at the damn public library. Can you imagine the amount of crap we're gonna have to sort through?"
Sam whistled as he thought about that one.
"We probably won't even find anything. I mean, c'mon, it's a friggin' unicorn. At best we're going to find a bunch of folktales telling us stuff we already know. They're solitary, they have purifying powers, people used to take any damn thing that looked like it might be a unicorn's horn and sell it as a cure-all -"
"They like maidens," Sam reminded, grinning behind Dean's back.
"You've seen me pick up women, Sam! Would you drop it?!" yelled Dean. He shoved with particular violence at a tree branch.
"Well, sure, but you could always be -" Sam blinked as spot of whiteness moved in the corner of his eye. "Hey, it's back."
"Great! Just what we need!" Dean groaned as the unicorn slipped out from between two trees and headed straight for him. Dean ignored it and kept walking, keeping his eyes forward.
Sam was only able to look at it for a minute before bursting into laughing. "Dude! It brought you a present!"
Dean looked, reluctantly, at the unicorn which was keeping patient pace with him. It instantly pressed its nose to his face and he spluttered, shoving it away. "Fuck!"
"It brought you flowers," said Sam with a glee that was positively unnatural.
The unicorn nuzzled Dean's shoulder. It had a mouth full of soft pink flowers and it fixed big, hopeful eyes on Dean whenever he had the misfortune to look in its direction.
"It wants you to braid posies into its mane, Dean," said Sam in a serious voice that sounded slightly choked from his attempt not to burst out laughing again. He wasn't sure if it would be possible to stop once he got started.
"Oh God," groaned Dean. He put a hand over his eyes and walked through the forest in awkward blindness for a minute. "No! Just no! Why couldn't it have stayed gone?"
"We went over that one," said Sam, grinning and patting the unicorn's back gently. "Besides, we don't really want this guy disappearing. He's our only lead."
Dean sighed. "Crap," was all he said.
There was silence as they trudged through the forest with the unicorn sticking loyally to Dean's side and Dean walked with his shoulder's hunched up protectively, occasionally turning his head to glare sullenly at the animal who responded to every look with nothing but absurd affection.
"You've named it, haven't you," said Sam after a minute as he watched the unicorn rub its nose against Dean's ear, breaking what Dean had considered blessed, blessed silence.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up," Dean said, turning what would normally be an order into a frustrated, protesting chant.
"You've named it Fluffy in your head," Sam continued, unrepentant.
"Your powers must be broken, Miss Cleo," said Dean. He elbowed the unicorn away, which just caused it to press against him with more force, radiating devotion.
"It's okay, Dean. I remember back when I was seven, we found a puppy. But Dad wouldn't let us keep it. Didn't see any point in it. Said it would just be a distraction and who wanted to spend all that time stuck in a car with a dog. It would slow us down, he said, and if we had a pet while we were actually stable for longer than a month, well, we'd just go and get attached to it, and the place, and how would he drag us to the next ghost infested town then if we went and actually began to care about something like normal kids. We were so pissed, man."
"He had a good point," Dean said coldly. "We were just dumb kids, but he was right. Guys with our job, we can't afford things like that in our lives."
The unicorn huffed sympathetically into Dean's hair.
Sam snickered. "It's okay, Dean, you don't have to pull all that dutiful, mindlessly loyal son crap on this one. I get how it is. Feel the same way, completely. But, dude, a unicorn is not a dog. It's not gonna fit in the Impala. This isn't the way to get back at Dad for not letting us keep Hunter."
"The dog was for you, anyway! I didn't give a damn about it," Dean snapped.
Sam made mockingly sympathetic, understanding noises and Dean resolved not to talk to him until they were in the car.
By the time they reached the edge of the forest, near where they had parked the Impala, the unicorn was attached to Dean's side like it had been glued there. "It's still following us," said Dean in disgust.
"That's one way of putting it. I'd personally go with its following you so closely that it probably can't bear to be away from you for more than a minute unless absolutely necessary, but, hey, I'm a college boy, I get all unnecessarily eloquent, right?"
Dean glared at Sam over his shoulder. "Shut up. We can't have it following us back into town. It's sort of hard to go unobserved when you're waltzin' into the library with a damn unicorn."
Somehow, Sam couldn't feel overly concerned about this problem. It was a unicorn. "That's true, but I can't see it willingly staying behind. I mean, you're its new boyfriend and everything."
"Shut up," Dean repeated, stopping by a tree and looking at the Impala just visible through the trees. "How fast do you think it can move?"
"Hard to tell. Probably pretty damn fast when it wants to. And I think it's pretty clear that it wants -"
"Shut it." The unicorn tried to shove its head under Dean's arm. "We gotta keep it from following us, then. I guess."
"We could always tie it up -"
Dean made a face. "That seems kinda cruel -"
Sam grinned like an idiot.
"Plus," continued Dean, "and more importantly, we don't know if it would stay if we tied it up. Might just piss it off and we really don't need that."
"Dean, I think you could shoot it in the leg and it would still be crazy about you," said Sam, his voice surprisingly sincere when contrasted with the huge, shit-eating grin on his face.
"Very funny," said Dean. He let his breath out in a frustrated sigh. "I guess you better stay with it then."
"Oh no. That's not gonna work."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not in love with me, obviously. It'd just ignore me and follow you. I'll go to the library, check some stuff out, and you can keep it company in that camping spot we passed a while back."
Dean protested. Loudly. "No way! You need my experience -"
"It's the local public library, Dean! I think I can handle it. You stay here and play with your new friend."
"I hate you. Both of you. Very, very much," said Dean. "This job sucks sometimes, you know that?"
"Yeah," Sam said, "but I usually have those kinda revelations when I'm bleeding or tied up in a sewer or having something drip ectoplasm on me. Not so much when it comes to unicorns. You two have fun," he said with a wave, heading toward the car. "I'll call if anything comes up!"
Dean made a rude gesture at Sam's back, shoved the unicorn, and headed back to the last camping spot they'd passed, swearing under his breath.
***
The sun was starting to set when Sam finally returned.
"Took you long enough, geek boy," called Dean as his brother approached.
"Yeah, well, it's not exactly easy to find information on possibly evil unicorns, and there was some other stuff to look in to which were kind of a pain and -" Sam's words broke off and he stared at Dean for a minute before doubling over with laughter.
Dean rolled his eyes. He was sitting in the grass with his back to a tree. In front of him, some cards he had produced from the recesses of his jacket were laid out in a half-completed game of solitaire. The unicorn was lying down in the grass and its head was resting on Dean's lap, effectively immobilizing him. Around the unicorn's neck was a bright splash of colour provided by an honest-to-God, if half-assed, wreath of flowers.
Impatiently, Dean drummed his fingers on the ground, waiting for Sam to finish laughing.
"Oh man," gasped Sam after a minute.
"There was a lot of time to kill!"
"I bet!" said Sam and tried to get control of himself. "Oh man. Oh man. I think this may be the happiest day of my life."
"Then you're fucked up," said Dean bluntly. "What did you find? Or do you want to wait until you've gotten control on your urge to giggle like an idiot?"
"I'm good," said Sam, his voice still a bit shaky. He made his way to where Dean and the unicorn were and sat down heavily on the ground. "Didn't find all that much. There's pretty much nothing out there beyond what you'd expect."
"Damn."
"But I did find one reference," said Sam, scratching the back of his neck. "It's not much to go on, but there are some medieval texts that talk about unicorns kidnapping children, or luring them away from their families. Generally because the parents were sinful, in some way, although it didn't go into details, and were being punished by God. Something like that, anyway. The kids were always okay in the end. They'd grow up somewhere else and if the parents realized the error of their ways, they'd eventually be reunited. I don't even know how reliable that stuff is. I mean, it's all pretty hazy and dates back to the 13th, 14th centuries and then there's ... nothing. That part of the mythology just vanishes and you're back to purifying poisons and being attracted to maidens." His lips twitched and he ducked his head.
"Weird," said Dean, shaking his head.
"There aren't a lot of records going that far back. Who knows what else people back then thought or knew about these things that we don't have," Sam said with a shrug. "It's something, anyway."
"That all? I mean, it's good to know, but it's not a whole lot to go on, you know?"
"Yeah, well, that's all on the unicorn front. But I did some research into the families of the kids who disappeared. Looking for a connection, right?"
"And?" asked Dean expectantly.
"Todd Anderson's father was charged with fraud and embezzlement just six months after his son disappeared. Only just got released from prison this year. Myra Brown's father was arrested in January of 2001 on charges of manslaughter after his wife was killed in a domestic 'argument'," said Sam, his amusement disappearing for a minute. "Their older daughter later told the police that they fought constantly."
Dean raised his eyebrows. "Not exactly the Bradys, huh."
"Greed and wrath," said Sam. "Two of the seven deadly sins."
"Wrath," echoed Dean with a snort. "Also called as being an abusive ass."
"Bit too specific for a deadly sin, Dean." Sam patted the unicorn on the head, carefully, but it didn't wake up. "Your friend -"
Dean made a face. "Shut up about it, already."
"- senses people doing some extreme sinning when they're in the area and, if they have kids, lures them away and does," Sam floundered for a minute, "something with them."
"Doesn't hurt them, though."
"Doesn't sound like it. There was no reference to them hurting anyone, and the kids always came back in the end, if the parents reformed."
"Sounds like we should be paying a visit to the Angelos, then. See if there's any sinning going on."
"Yeah," agreed Sam, yawning. "But after some food and sleep, okay? You may have spent the day bonding with your pretty magical friend, but I was actually working."
Dean punched him. "Gonna get some permanent damage in that spot if you don't learn to shut your damn mouth, Sammy."
"Whatever, man," said Sam, scrambling to his feet. "Let's just get back to town. Assuming you can ditch Fluffy here."
"You're enjoying this way too much, Sam," said Dean. He gathered his cards up and with a care that had Sam biting his fist to keep from laughing, he managed to get out from under the unicorn without waking it up. "Let's get out of here," he said, heading quickly in the direction Sam had come from.
When they reached the Impala, Dean got behind the wheel and Sam fell into the passenger seat, head lolling back for a minute as he shut his eyes. It was dark out, now, and the drive back to the motel wouldn't take long, so Dean didn't bother putting a tape in. There was complete silence as Dean drove, until something caught Sam's attention and he straightened.
"What?" asked Dean. "You think of something?"
Sam shook his head and sniffed, then grinned. "Dude, you smell like lavender."
Dean took a hand from the steering wheel and smacked Sam in the back of the head.
***
By some unspoken agreement, they ended up at the Angelos early the next morning. But not early enough. Mrs Angelo told Special Agents Scrub and Clarence, nervously, that her husband had gone out for a walk in the forest after an early breakfast. They had thanked her for being so cooperative and, once she had shut the door, nearly ran to the path that was visible from the Angelos' doorstep.
"Maybe Mr Angelo goes for a walk after breakfast on a regular basis!" Sam suggested as they ran.
"Sam, did you see the way the woman looked at us? She was scared, man, and nervous. If that isn't suspicious -"
A shot rang out and they began running faster, until they abruptly stumbled to a halt as they found Mr Angelo.
Falling to the ground as the unicorn pulled its horn from his stomach. The creature stepped carefully over Angelo's corpse, wiped the blood off its horn and on to the grass, and came to press its nose into Dean's chest in ecstatic greeting.
"So much for them not hurting people," said Sam. He reached for his gun.
"We can't shoot it, Sam!"
"Oh God, you did name it Fluffy, didn't you?" Sam said. "Dean, it just impaled a man!"
Dean shook his head and jerked his chin in the direction of Angelo's body. A rifle was half-visible from beneath the corpse. Then he tapped the unicorn's side. There was a smear of blood where a bullet had grazed it. "Self defence," he said. "You heard the shot. Guy came out here looking for the thing that took his kid -"
"How did he even know about it?"
"Well, uh," said Dean, his voice rough, "it wasn't exactly being stealthy yesterday -"
"Because it came out to play with you," Sam interjected.
"- so maybe Mr Angelo here was out searching for the kid and got a look at it at some point. Connected the two and decided to come out here early in the morning and get some revenge. Guy musta been a crappy shot, though."
"Or Fluffy here's real fast and then decided to impale the guy. Which, I think, is kinda the point here."
"Hey, if the stuff you dug up is true, then this guy was probably some kind of crazy rapist or something, and -"
Sam exploded. "I can't believe this! You're defending it! What would Dad say? He wouldn't care about the whys or wherefores, he'd just say it killed a guy and we can't let it kill someone else!"
"And when did you become the great disciple of Dad, huh? Dad's not here. I'm in charge. Therefore, we do this my way, and I say we don't even know how to kill a unicorn! So," Dean said, taking a deep breath and exhaling heavily, "I say we just forget this. We just forget all of this, hop in the car, go check out of the motel, and forget any of this ever happened. We be as far away as possible from this place when they find the body."
Sam rolled his eyes. "This is so stupid."
"Yeah, well, we don't know how to kill it - do we? You find something about how to kill magical agent of God unicorns in your research yesterday?"
Sam shook his head.
"Then you wanna go in to the police station, say, Hey, I was just out in the forest and I saw a unicorn impale this guy, and then spend the rest of your life as either suspect numero uno or in a nuthouse?"
Again, Sam shook his head.
"Right, then. Let's get outta here. We move fast enough, we'll be out of here before they even start looking for suspects."
With an uncomfortable look back at Angelo's corpse, Sam followed Dean back to the car.
"There's nothing we could have done," said Dean abruptly as they approached the car. "Not our fault. Something bad would have happened to the guy eventually, you saw the pattern yourself."
"There's a difference between jail and being dead, though."
Dean shrugged. "These things happen, man. You get used to them. Learn to move on."
"That's cold, Dean."
"Maybe. But it's necessary, too." Dean unlocked the car and eyed the unicorn. "You wanna tell it to piss off or something?"
"I have dreams and I sense things, sometimes. I don't talk to the damn animals. Especially not the crazy murderous ones," Sam said in exasperation, leaning on the car. "Tell it yourself if you're so worried about your magical murderous pal."
Dean socked him in the arm yet again and walked to the edge of the forest. He nodded his head toward the trees. "Go on. Get lost, ya dumb animal." The unicorn rubbed its nose in Dean's chest again, rather sadly, and Dean heaved an sigh. He lifted up a hand and scratched behind the animal's ear. "Now get. Go on. Shoo. Fuck off," he said after a few minutes of that.
With great reluctance the unicorn moved away, disappearing into the trees.
The brothers got into the Impala in silence, Dean focussing on starting the car and then the road in front of them.
"You know," said Sam, "after we get our stuff from the motel, we should go by Wal-mart or something."
Dean grunted.
"We could pick you up a Lisa Frank notebook to remember your friend by," Sam said, watching Dean's face out of the corner of his eye.
Dean twitched. "You know what I'd rather do, Sammy?"
"Mm?"
"Drive and drive and drive, until I find some kind of travelling carnival I can sell your dumb, freaky psychic ass to."
Sam grinned, searched in the glove compartment until he found Dean's sunglasses, put them on, and leaned back to sleep until it was his turn to drive.
Now to not do this again for another two years,
Almighty Ingrid, Signing Off
Seriously. She owes me, like, her soul now or something, I dunno.
A couple of the better lines are hers.
Also, there's no way in hell I could do justice to this idea, but, hey, here you go.
"So it must be a ghost," said Sam. He finished his doughnut and absently licked his fingers clean. "No new reports in the paper. Just a reminder from the police that if anyone knows anything about the disappearance of the little girl, they should tell them."
"Ghosts haunt, they don't kidnap," said Dean, tilting his head back and stretching his neck. He wanted more coffee. They were getting nowhere and it was hard to keep motivated with so little to go on.
"A ghost might lure someone out to get vengeance on them. Or because of some unfinished business."
Dean shook his head. "No, man. The signs aren't here. There's no pattern, no bodies found."
"That doesn't mean anything. It can take years for a body to turn up sometimes, especially tiny ones like these," said Sam. He sighed and stared at the notice in the paper again. "Maybe we don't have enough samples to see the pattern, yet. It could be a relatively new ghost that hasn't had long enough to give us adequate data," he suggested, trying to coat the problem of disappearing toddlers in academic language to distance himself from the unpleasantness.
Again, Dean shook his head, tapping on the laptop to pull up the window with the relevant articles. "Todd Anderson, three years old, disappeared in the middle of the night on a camping trip with his family in mid-April, 1998. Myra Brown, eighteen months, was left briefly unattended when her family was having a picnic and vanished, last week of July in 2000. Then nothing until a couple weeks ago. Two year old Debbie Angelo went missing from her family's house on the edge of the forest. Last seen playing outside in the morning by her mother. All anyone reported was that they saw something 'white' out of the corner of their eye just before or after the kids disappeared. That's all there is, man. Maybe it's nothing."
"It can't be," insisted Sam. "Little kids, all old enough to walk but not in school yet or anything, all disappearing in the same area, all these reports about something white - "
"It doesn't sound like a ghost, though. It'd have to be a living thing. Their patterns are usually more erratic than dead or demonic creatures. Maybe a sasquatch -"
"Sasquatches are shy!" Sam protested. "They don't go around kidnapping people. They do everything to avoid contact with people!"
"Yeah, well, it's not gonna be a polar bear in Vermont, and this doesn't sound like any kind of ghost I've ever dealt with, and you sure as hell aren't convincing me there's an evil cow or something kidnapping children and eating them," said Dean. He shut his laptop, giving up on it for the moment.
"We can't just leave," Sam protested.
"Who said anything about leaving? We'll check the forest for paranormal activity - ghosts or anything else - and we'll take it from there."
A look of relief crossed Sam's face and he quickly, neatly folded the newspaper before finishing his coffee in one fast gulp.
"But if there's nothing in the forest," Dean continued, going to check his bag for supplies, "then we're movin' on and leaving it for the cops to handle."
***
The forest was green and sweet smelling, picture perfect, like something from a travel brochure. The morning sun was glinting through the trees and nothing about that particular patch of woods or anywhere else they had walked suggested that this was the sort of place where ghosts, demons, or wild animals would kill children. There were goddamn birds twittering away in the branches above them. The crunch of branches under their feet. All the general forest noises while Dean's EMF detector remained stubbornly silent, as it had since they had gotten out of the Impala.
"There's nothing here, Sammy. We may be in the most boringly normal forest in the country. Little Red Riding Hood could come skipping through here and the only thing she'd have to worry about would be hay fever," said Dean as they followed a well-travelled path and entered the clearing where the Browns had been happily picnicking before their daughter vanished.
"There's something here. Something odd. Maybe not a ghost, but ..." Sam frowned, tilting his head to one side, then shook it. "Your gadget's probably just broken."
Dean glared and walked from one tree to another, getting no reading. "We could walk over every inch of this damn forest and not find a sign of anything. Those kids just wandered off, got lost, and no one's found the remains yet. This is a bust, Sam. C'mon."
Sam sat down on a log, a mulish expression on his face. "No way. I can sense ... something," he waved an uncertain hand in the air. "Something that's - it's not wrong, but it doesn't fit, either. I don't think it's malevolent, but it has some kind of purpose. It isn't entirely benign, that's for sure."
Dean rolled his eyes and sat down next to Sam. "Yeah, well, whatever your freak senses are sensing, I can't see any sign of it," he said. He took out the EMF metre and began fiddling with it, just in case, by some leap of probability, Sam was right and it was broken.
"Maybe it's invisible. That would fit with the theory that it's some kind of spirit."
"Your theory, maybe," said Dean, tapping the old walkman with his fingers. "Maybe it only comes out if it's hungry. Or at night."
"Some of those kids vanished in the daytime," Sam pointed out, slouching and putting his chin in his hands. He chewed on a finger knuckle, eyes vague as he looked at the forest around them.
"Maybe it only comes out when there's kids around, then. There are some creatures that are only interested in children. If that's what this is, we'd need to come out here with bait. Unless you got a baby hidden somewhere on you."
"Maybe it only comes out when you shut up," suggested Sam.
Dean held up a placating hand. "Look, Sammy -"
"Sam."
"- we don't even know how these powers of yours work, right? So maybe you sense something and it's a spirit or a demon or who knows what. Or maybe what you're sensing is some guy who's on a nature walk and feeling tired, or a guy out here with his girlfriend hoping to get lucky. Maybe there's just a plant around these parts that's like psychic catnip. The point is, we don't know. We can't just follow your senses around all the time, not when we don't even know -"
"There's something moving in the bushes," whispered Sam.
Dean looked up from the EMF metre and followed Sam's gaze. Sure enough, there was something shaking the leaves of one of the trees on the edge of the clearing. Dean pulled out his gun and Sam tensed, although he didn't go for a weapon.
The branches shook again and the thing stepped into the clearing.
The brothers stared. Sam's jaw dropped.
"That's definitely not ghost," said Dean, smug.
"Yeah, well, it's not a sasquatch, either," snapped Sam, called back to reality.
It was white, whiter than anything living in the forest should have been. Whiter than the miraculous falls of snow in corny Christmas specials on television. So white it seemed to glow, a space of impossible soft whiteness the size of a pony and the shape of a delicate horse in the green of the forest, with a spiral of harder, glowing paleness several feet long coming from its forehead.
"It's a fucking unicorn," said Dean, watching it closely as it continued to move forward, the space between them diminishing.
"Yeah," agreed Sam, his voice gone quiet with awe. Then he looked to his side and saw that Dean still had his gun in his hand, the muzzle following the unicorn as it moved. "Dean!"
"What?" asked Dean, not moving his head. He was watching the unicorn with the same intensity that he might watch a gremlin or a werewolf being lured into a trap, not letting his guard down.
"It's a unicorn. I think you can put the gun down, dude. They aren't traditionally characterized as fierce man eaters."
"You think this is what your freak powers were sensing?" asked Dean.
The unicorn was close enough now that Sam could have stretched out and touched it. "Yeah, I think so. It feels weird. Really weird."
"So, this is probably the thing you were sensing. The thing we came out looking for. The thing responsible for those kids disappearing," said Dean, eyes locked on the unicorn.
Sam faltered. "I don't think I was sensing anything else."
"There you go, then," said Dean coolly. "Besides, look at the horn on that thing. It can be as pretty princess as it likes, man, but I bet you anything it could have that thing right through your torso faster'n you can blink."
"It doesn't seem dangerous," said Sam. "I think we'd know if it was gonna impale us or something."
"Maybe," said Dean. "And maybe not." And then the animal was close enough that Sam could have touched it without doing much beyond moving his arm, standing above them both, and it calmly sniffed the air before bending its head and lipping softly at Dean's hair.
Sam began to grin. "Oh yeah, that there looks like a real killer, Dean. Fearsome monster. Better do something before it rips out your throat."
Dean grimaced and swatted at it. "Piss off!"
"Maybe it thinks you're food," suggested Sam. He put a hand over his mouth to hide a grin that he couldn't repress.
"Maybe it's the only mentally retarded unicorn in human history," Dean snapped in return, and lifted a hand to shove at the unicorn's nose. "Get lost."
"It's almost like its domesticated," said Sam, his voice a blend of wonder and amusement as the unicorn huffed softly and made another go for Dean's hair.
"Great observation, really useful, I'm sure it'll go a long ways to explaining what the hell is going on here," Dean said and gave the unicorn's head another shove as he got to his feet.
"It could belong to whatever took the kids," said Sam, unconsciously following Dean's example.
"So we're looking for, what, a demon with a pet unicorn? You get hit on the head or something, man?" asked Dean, putting his gun away.
The unicorn rubbed its nose against Dean's shoulder.
"I don't know! It was just an idea. Just thinking out loud, trying to figure out some explanation for - It's trying to eat your jacket, Dean."
Dean made an impatient noise and pulled himself away from the unicorn, who released the jacket with some reluctance. "What the fuck?"
"Maybe it does think you're food!" Sam laughed.
"Very funny," said Dean as the unicorn latched on to the jacket again. "Oh, c'mon!"
"I suppose you could have always rolled or gotten sprayed with something that smells like unicorn food," said Sam. "That could be why it came out."
"Or it came out because it sensed there was a paranormal freak besides itself hanging out here," muttered Dean, shucking his jacket and tossing it to Sam. Willingly, Sam waved his brother's jacket like a flag for a bull. The unicorn didn't seem to care, and calmly began nibbling at Dean's T-shirt.
"I don't think unicorns go crazy for the crappy soap they gave us in the last motel," said Sam thoughtfully.
"I think it's drooling on my shirt."
"Unicorns don't drool," Sam said in an absent voice that suggested his thoughts were somewhere else.
"Sammy?"
"It just seems weird. I mean, unicorns. Dad never talked about stuff like that." Sam stared at it.
"Why would he? I mean, you've got a job where you're hunting down evil and stuff, unicorns aren't exactly going to be a big concern," said Dean. He tugged at his shirt and eventually got the unicorn to let it go, only to have the animal settle its chin on his shoulder and heave a huge, happy horse sigh.
"Ghosts and demons and all kinds of crazy crap, and he never even let on that things like this existed. Good things," said Sam.
"Yeah, well, there's good stuff everywhere, right, but why would Dad care? You gotta focus on the dark stuff because that's what people need protecting from. They don't need people to keep them safe from unicorns," said Dean. He glared at the unicorn, trying to shrug its head off. "Although they are a friggin' nuisance."
"I dunno, it seems nice," said Sam. "It smells like lavender."
Dean made a face. "Dude, don't sniff the unicorn. That's weird, even for you."
"I didn't sniff it. The smell just kind of wafted over. Couldn't help smelling it," said Sam, moving to stand closer to his brother and look at the unicorn, which twitched an ear at him.
"How do you even know what lavender smells like?" asked Dean. He smirked.
Sam coughed and looked more intently at the unicorn. "So, what do you think it's doing around here? If it really is just wandering around like any other animal ..."
"I dunno, man. Probably wishing the girls in town weren't so slutty. Must be pretty boring to be a unicorn in this day and age."
"Mm," agreed Sam. The corner of his mouth twitched. "It seems awful fond of you, though."
Dean rolled his eyes. "I think there's something wrong with its head. Or its drunk."
Sam couldn't help it. He laughed. "Dean, unicorns don't drink!"
"And we know this how? There's clearly something screwing with it - gimme back my jacket," Dean demanded abruptly and quickly put it on, disrupting the content unicorn resting against his shoulder. "Especially if it does have something to do with those kids disappearing. Maybe it ate some chemicals or something someone put in their orchard or on the grass."
"Unicorn horns are supposed to have the power to purify poisons and things. The animals themselves are probably immune to herbicides. Nice try, though."
"If it isn't under the influence of some kind of weird crap, I dunno what we're left with to explain it," said Dean. He glared as the unicorn began nuzzling his chest.
"Dean, is there something you should tell me?" asked Sam. He tried to keep the laughter from his voice, he tried to sound cool, academic, with just a touch of brotherly concern thrown in.
"Get real, Sammy," said Dean. Feeling his brother's eyes on him, he gave the unicorn another shove. It pulled back for a minute, stared at Dean with big, dark eyes that, for all they were horse-like, managed to look deeply wounded, and then pressed its nose into his chest again.
"You know how it works, right? When a man and a woman -"
"Shut up, Sammy," said Dean. He eyed the unicorn with distaste, the horn a bit closer to him than he was comfortable with. "Maybe its got brain damage."
"A brain damaged unicorn is even less likely than a middle-aged virgin demon hunter," said Sam. He was grinning like an idiot, now. He couldn't help it.
"There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I can't even begin to correct you," said Dean. "I have had sex with a woman, you know. Lots of women."
"Uh huh," said Sam. "I think it wants you to pet it."
"Not a chance," said Dean.
"How can you say no to that face?" asked Sam as the unicorn blinked its big eyes at Dean.
"Hey, I know. Since you're so concerned about it and have all those touchy-feely-yuppie powers, how about you pet it?"
Sam shrugged and, in the spirit of inquiry, reached out to gently scratch behind one of the unicorn's ears. "It's really soft," he said after a moment, amazed. "Softer than anything."
"Fascinating," said Dean. "It's not getting lost, though."
"Still wants you to pet it," explained Sam. "Look at it."
Dean groaned. "Why? You did! That should be enough!"
"Well, yeah, but I've had sex with a woman, so it's obviously not the same as far as it's concerned."
"I swear, if you don't shut up," threatened Dean and gave Sam a warning punch in the arm.
Sam rubbed his arm, still grinning with a brightness that Dean hadn't seen since Sammy was little, and even then had been rare. But then Sam went and opened his mouth again. "Is it equipment failure?"
Dean rounded and punched Sam in the nose.
Even through the blood, Sam was grinning as he used the sleeve of his jacket to stop the bleeding.
"Let's check the forest a bit more," Dean said, his voice dragging everything back to business as he dug out the EMF metre again, "and see if there's anything weird hanging about besides this stupid thing."
Sam grinned, but he nodded and followed Dean back into the trees.
The unicorn followed them, smelling like flowers.
***
An hour later, it was just as obvious as it had been before they found the unicorn that there was nothing in the forest. No spirits, no ghosts, no demons, nothing but the unicorn, that appeared to have wandered off.
"Wonder where it went," said Sam as they began trudging back to the car.
"You sayin' you can't use your super powers to detect how far away it is or something?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "No more than I could before, retard."
"It's probably lost interest in us."
"Could have," agreed Sam, pushing a tree branch out of the way. "Of course, I understand if you're worried about it. Or upset that it abandoned us. It was awful pretty, after all."
Dean punched Sam again, harder than necessary. "I told you to shut up about that!"
Sam winced. "Careful, man, you don't want to injure something."
"Don't be such a wuss, Sam!" said Dean. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket and walked a bit faster to pull ahead of Sam. "So. We got nothin'."
"Nothing but the unicorn," said Sam. He rubbed his arm and rolled his shoulder, grimacing.
"What the hell are we supposed to make of that?" Dean said, the words nearly exploding from him as he threw up his hands to glare at the ceiling of trees above them.
"Dunno. Guess the next stop is the library."
"Like we're going to find anything remotely useful about a unicorn at the damn public library. Can you imagine the amount of crap we're gonna have to sort through?"
Sam whistled as he thought about that one.
"We probably won't even find anything. I mean, c'mon, it's a friggin' unicorn. At best we're going to find a bunch of folktales telling us stuff we already know. They're solitary, they have purifying powers, people used to take any damn thing that looked like it might be a unicorn's horn and sell it as a cure-all -"
"They like maidens," Sam reminded, grinning behind Dean's back.
"You've seen me pick up women, Sam! Would you drop it?!" yelled Dean. He shoved with particular violence at a tree branch.
"Well, sure, but you could always be -" Sam blinked as spot of whiteness moved in the corner of his eye. "Hey, it's back."
"Great! Just what we need!" Dean groaned as the unicorn slipped out from between two trees and headed straight for him. Dean ignored it and kept walking, keeping his eyes forward.
Sam was only able to look at it for a minute before bursting into laughing. "Dude! It brought you a present!"
Dean looked, reluctantly, at the unicorn which was keeping patient pace with him. It instantly pressed its nose to his face and he spluttered, shoving it away. "Fuck!"
"It brought you flowers," said Sam with a glee that was positively unnatural.
The unicorn nuzzled Dean's shoulder. It had a mouth full of soft pink flowers and it fixed big, hopeful eyes on Dean whenever he had the misfortune to look in its direction.
"It wants you to braid posies into its mane, Dean," said Sam in a serious voice that sounded slightly choked from his attempt not to burst out laughing again. He wasn't sure if it would be possible to stop once he got started.
"Oh God," groaned Dean. He put a hand over his eyes and walked through the forest in awkward blindness for a minute. "No! Just no! Why couldn't it have stayed gone?"
"We went over that one," said Sam, grinning and patting the unicorn's back gently. "Besides, we don't really want this guy disappearing. He's our only lead."
Dean sighed. "Crap," was all he said.
There was silence as they trudged through the forest with the unicorn sticking loyally to Dean's side and Dean walked with his shoulder's hunched up protectively, occasionally turning his head to glare sullenly at the animal who responded to every look with nothing but absurd affection.
"You've named it, haven't you," said Sam after a minute as he watched the unicorn rub its nose against Dean's ear, breaking what Dean had considered blessed, blessed silence.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up," Dean said, turning what would normally be an order into a frustrated, protesting chant.
"You've named it Fluffy in your head," Sam continued, unrepentant.
"Your powers must be broken, Miss Cleo," said Dean. He elbowed the unicorn away, which just caused it to press against him with more force, radiating devotion.
"It's okay, Dean. I remember back when I was seven, we found a puppy. But Dad wouldn't let us keep it. Didn't see any point in it. Said it would just be a distraction and who wanted to spend all that time stuck in a car with a dog. It would slow us down, he said, and if we had a pet while we were actually stable for longer than a month, well, we'd just go and get attached to it, and the place, and how would he drag us to the next ghost infested town then if we went and actually began to care about something like normal kids. We were so pissed, man."
"He had a good point," Dean said coldly. "We were just dumb kids, but he was right. Guys with our job, we can't afford things like that in our lives."
The unicorn huffed sympathetically into Dean's hair.
Sam snickered. "It's okay, Dean, you don't have to pull all that dutiful, mindlessly loyal son crap on this one. I get how it is. Feel the same way, completely. But, dude, a unicorn is not a dog. It's not gonna fit in the Impala. This isn't the way to get back at Dad for not letting us keep Hunter."
"The dog was for you, anyway! I didn't give a damn about it," Dean snapped.
Sam made mockingly sympathetic, understanding noises and Dean resolved not to talk to him until they were in the car.
By the time they reached the edge of the forest, near where they had parked the Impala, the unicorn was attached to Dean's side like it had been glued there. "It's still following us," said Dean in disgust.
"That's one way of putting it. I'd personally go with its following you so closely that it probably can't bear to be away from you for more than a minute unless absolutely necessary, but, hey, I'm a college boy, I get all unnecessarily eloquent, right?"
Dean glared at Sam over his shoulder. "Shut up. We can't have it following us back into town. It's sort of hard to go unobserved when you're waltzin' into the library with a damn unicorn."
Somehow, Sam couldn't feel overly concerned about this problem. It was a unicorn. "That's true, but I can't see it willingly staying behind. I mean, you're its new boyfriend and everything."
"Shut up," Dean repeated, stopping by a tree and looking at the Impala just visible through the trees. "How fast do you think it can move?"
"Hard to tell. Probably pretty damn fast when it wants to. And I think it's pretty clear that it wants -"
"Shut it." The unicorn tried to shove its head under Dean's arm. "We gotta keep it from following us, then. I guess."
"We could always tie it up -"
Dean made a face. "That seems kinda cruel -"
Sam grinned like an idiot.
"Plus," continued Dean, "and more importantly, we don't know if it would stay if we tied it up. Might just piss it off and we really don't need that."
"Dean, I think you could shoot it in the leg and it would still be crazy about you," said Sam, his voice surprisingly sincere when contrasted with the huge, shit-eating grin on his face.
"Very funny," said Dean. He let his breath out in a frustrated sigh. "I guess you better stay with it then."
"Oh no. That's not gonna work."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not in love with me, obviously. It'd just ignore me and follow you. I'll go to the library, check some stuff out, and you can keep it company in that camping spot we passed a while back."
Dean protested. Loudly. "No way! You need my experience -"
"It's the local public library, Dean! I think I can handle it. You stay here and play with your new friend."
"I hate you. Both of you. Very, very much," said Dean. "This job sucks sometimes, you know that?"
"Yeah," Sam said, "but I usually have those kinda revelations when I'm bleeding or tied up in a sewer or having something drip ectoplasm on me. Not so much when it comes to unicorns. You two have fun," he said with a wave, heading toward the car. "I'll call if anything comes up!"
Dean made a rude gesture at Sam's back, shoved the unicorn, and headed back to the last camping spot they'd passed, swearing under his breath.
***
The sun was starting to set when Sam finally returned.
"Took you long enough, geek boy," called Dean as his brother approached.
"Yeah, well, it's not exactly easy to find information on possibly evil unicorns, and there was some other stuff to look in to which were kind of a pain and -" Sam's words broke off and he stared at Dean for a minute before doubling over with laughter.
Dean rolled his eyes. He was sitting in the grass with his back to a tree. In front of him, some cards he had produced from the recesses of his jacket were laid out in a half-completed game of solitaire. The unicorn was lying down in the grass and its head was resting on Dean's lap, effectively immobilizing him. Around the unicorn's neck was a bright splash of colour provided by an honest-to-God, if half-assed, wreath of flowers.
Impatiently, Dean drummed his fingers on the ground, waiting for Sam to finish laughing.
"Oh man," gasped Sam after a minute.
"There was a lot of time to kill!"
"I bet!" said Sam and tried to get control of himself. "Oh man. Oh man. I think this may be the happiest day of my life."
"Then you're fucked up," said Dean bluntly. "What did you find? Or do you want to wait until you've gotten control on your urge to giggle like an idiot?"
"I'm good," said Sam, his voice still a bit shaky. He made his way to where Dean and the unicorn were and sat down heavily on the ground. "Didn't find all that much. There's pretty much nothing out there beyond what you'd expect."
"Damn."
"But I did find one reference," said Sam, scratching the back of his neck. "It's not much to go on, but there are some medieval texts that talk about unicorns kidnapping children, or luring them away from their families. Generally because the parents were sinful, in some way, although it didn't go into details, and were being punished by God. Something like that, anyway. The kids were always okay in the end. They'd grow up somewhere else and if the parents realized the error of their ways, they'd eventually be reunited. I don't even know how reliable that stuff is. I mean, it's all pretty hazy and dates back to the 13th, 14th centuries and then there's ... nothing. That part of the mythology just vanishes and you're back to purifying poisons and being attracted to maidens." His lips twitched and he ducked his head.
"Weird," said Dean, shaking his head.
"There aren't a lot of records going that far back. Who knows what else people back then thought or knew about these things that we don't have," Sam said with a shrug. "It's something, anyway."
"That all? I mean, it's good to know, but it's not a whole lot to go on, you know?"
"Yeah, well, that's all on the unicorn front. But I did some research into the families of the kids who disappeared. Looking for a connection, right?"
"And?" asked Dean expectantly.
"Todd Anderson's father was charged with fraud and embezzlement just six months after his son disappeared. Only just got released from prison this year. Myra Brown's father was arrested in January of 2001 on charges of manslaughter after his wife was killed in a domestic 'argument'," said Sam, his amusement disappearing for a minute. "Their older daughter later told the police that they fought constantly."
Dean raised his eyebrows. "Not exactly the Bradys, huh."
"Greed and wrath," said Sam. "Two of the seven deadly sins."
"Wrath," echoed Dean with a snort. "Also called as being an abusive ass."
"Bit too specific for a deadly sin, Dean." Sam patted the unicorn on the head, carefully, but it didn't wake up. "Your friend -"
Dean made a face. "Shut up about it, already."
"- senses people doing some extreme sinning when they're in the area and, if they have kids, lures them away and does," Sam floundered for a minute, "something with them."
"Doesn't hurt them, though."
"Doesn't sound like it. There was no reference to them hurting anyone, and the kids always came back in the end, if the parents reformed."
"Sounds like we should be paying a visit to the Angelos, then. See if there's any sinning going on."
"Yeah," agreed Sam, yawning. "But after some food and sleep, okay? You may have spent the day bonding with your pretty magical friend, but I was actually working."
Dean punched him. "Gonna get some permanent damage in that spot if you don't learn to shut your damn mouth, Sammy."
"Whatever, man," said Sam, scrambling to his feet. "Let's just get back to town. Assuming you can ditch Fluffy here."
"You're enjoying this way too much, Sam," said Dean. He gathered his cards up and with a care that had Sam biting his fist to keep from laughing, he managed to get out from under the unicorn without waking it up. "Let's get out of here," he said, heading quickly in the direction Sam had come from.
When they reached the Impala, Dean got behind the wheel and Sam fell into the passenger seat, head lolling back for a minute as he shut his eyes. It was dark out, now, and the drive back to the motel wouldn't take long, so Dean didn't bother putting a tape in. There was complete silence as Dean drove, until something caught Sam's attention and he straightened.
"What?" asked Dean. "You think of something?"
Sam shook his head and sniffed, then grinned. "Dude, you smell like lavender."
Dean took a hand from the steering wheel and smacked Sam in the back of the head.
***
By some unspoken agreement, they ended up at the Angelos early the next morning. But not early enough. Mrs Angelo told Special Agents Scrub and Clarence, nervously, that her husband had gone out for a walk in the forest after an early breakfast. They had thanked her for being so cooperative and, once she had shut the door, nearly ran to the path that was visible from the Angelos' doorstep.
"Maybe Mr Angelo goes for a walk after breakfast on a regular basis!" Sam suggested as they ran.
"Sam, did you see the way the woman looked at us? She was scared, man, and nervous. If that isn't suspicious -"
A shot rang out and they began running faster, until they abruptly stumbled to a halt as they found Mr Angelo.
Falling to the ground as the unicorn pulled its horn from his stomach. The creature stepped carefully over Angelo's corpse, wiped the blood off its horn and on to the grass, and came to press its nose into Dean's chest in ecstatic greeting.
"So much for them not hurting people," said Sam. He reached for his gun.
"We can't shoot it, Sam!"
"Oh God, you did name it Fluffy, didn't you?" Sam said. "Dean, it just impaled a man!"
Dean shook his head and jerked his chin in the direction of Angelo's body. A rifle was half-visible from beneath the corpse. Then he tapped the unicorn's side. There was a smear of blood where a bullet had grazed it. "Self defence," he said. "You heard the shot. Guy came out here looking for the thing that took his kid -"
"How did he even know about it?"
"Well, uh," said Dean, his voice rough, "it wasn't exactly being stealthy yesterday -"
"Because it came out to play with you," Sam interjected.
"- so maybe Mr Angelo here was out searching for the kid and got a look at it at some point. Connected the two and decided to come out here early in the morning and get some revenge. Guy musta been a crappy shot, though."
"Or Fluffy here's real fast and then decided to impale the guy. Which, I think, is kinda the point here."
"Hey, if the stuff you dug up is true, then this guy was probably some kind of crazy rapist or something, and -"
Sam exploded. "I can't believe this! You're defending it! What would Dad say? He wouldn't care about the whys or wherefores, he'd just say it killed a guy and we can't let it kill someone else!"
"And when did you become the great disciple of Dad, huh? Dad's not here. I'm in charge. Therefore, we do this my way, and I say we don't even know how to kill a unicorn! So," Dean said, taking a deep breath and exhaling heavily, "I say we just forget this. We just forget all of this, hop in the car, go check out of the motel, and forget any of this ever happened. We be as far away as possible from this place when they find the body."
Sam rolled his eyes. "This is so stupid."
"Yeah, well, we don't know how to kill it - do we? You find something about how to kill magical agent of God unicorns in your research yesterday?"
Sam shook his head.
"Then you wanna go in to the police station, say, Hey, I was just out in the forest and I saw a unicorn impale this guy, and then spend the rest of your life as either suspect numero uno or in a nuthouse?"
Again, Sam shook his head.
"Right, then. Let's get outta here. We move fast enough, we'll be out of here before they even start looking for suspects."
With an uncomfortable look back at Angelo's corpse, Sam followed Dean back to the car.
"There's nothing we could have done," said Dean abruptly as they approached the car. "Not our fault. Something bad would have happened to the guy eventually, you saw the pattern yourself."
"There's a difference between jail and being dead, though."
Dean shrugged. "These things happen, man. You get used to them. Learn to move on."
"That's cold, Dean."
"Maybe. But it's necessary, too." Dean unlocked the car and eyed the unicorn. "You wanna tell it to piss off or something?"
"I have dreams and I sense things, sometimes. I don't talk to the damn animals. Especially not the crazy murderous ones," Sam said in exasperation, leaning on the car. "Tell it yourself if you're so worried about your magical murderous pal."
Dean socked him in the arm yet again and walked to the edge of the forest. He nodded his head toward the trees. "Go on. Get lost, ya dumb animal." The unicorn rubbed its nose in Dean's chest again, rather sadly, and Dean heaved an sigh. He lifted up a hand and scratched behind the animal's ear. "Now get. Go on. Shoo. Fuck off," he said after a few minutes of that.
With great reluctance the unicorn moved away, disappearing into the trees.
The brothers got into the Impala in silence, Dean focussing on starting the car and then the road in front of them.
"You know," said Sam, "after we get our stuff from the motel, we should go by Wal-mart or something."
Dean grunted.
"We could pick you up a Lisa Frank notebook to remember your friend by," Sam said, watching Dean's face out of the corner of his eye.
Dean twitched. "You know what I'd rather do, Sammy?"
"Mm?"
"Drive and drive and drive, until I find some kind of travelling carnival I can sell your dumb, freaky psychic ass to."
Sam grinned, searched in the glove compartment until he found Dean's sunglasses, put them on, and leaned back to sleep until it was his turn to drive.
Now to not do this again for another two years,
Almighty Ingrid, Signing Off