(Justified/SPN) Ghostlight, Part 1 for cajun_chick411
Title: Ghostlight
Author: norgbelulah
Fandoms: Justified/Supernatural
Characters Raylan Givens, Loretta McCready, Boyd Crowder, Art Mullen; Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Pairings: None.
Rating: R
Word count: 17,500
Spoilers: Spoilers through season 2 of Justified; set shortly after season 2. No specific spoilers after season 5 of Supernatural; set sometime after episode 6.12.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Justifed belongs to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost and Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke.
A/N: Thanks to betas rillalicious, write_light, and abraxas
Summary: A weekend hike goes horribly wrong for Raylan and Loretta, because nothing in Harlan County can be simple, can it? Now, their only way off the mountain is two shady characters from Boyd’s past, three shovels, two shotguns, and an antique iron poker.
Raylan asked Loretta a few weeks before the date of his transfer whether her daddy ever took her on any hikes through the mountains and hollers in Harlan.
“Not really,” she’d said, dragging her straw in a slow circle through her strawberry milkshake. “Only to the crop and back, then when Mama was sick, and after, I went by myself.”
“But that’s, what, a ten, twenty minute walk?” Raylan had drunk his own shake a while ago, but they still had a basket of fries between them to finish off.
“There about,” Loretta shrugged. “It’s pretty though, in the summer time.”
“You wanna take a hike with me, maybe next week? There’re some nice views ‘round here we can get to with almost no trouble at all.”
Loretta looked up at him like he was proposing she join the cheerleading squad or hand over her cell phone or something equally tragic.
“We could take a lunch with us too,” he caught the plea in his voice and tried to rein it in a bit.
Really, he just wanted to do this with Loretta so she didn’t lose her roots entirely to Lexington and her new foster home. He was glad they were treating the girl well. But he thought about how having Harlan as home inside his head, the good and the bad, defined him and he couldn’t help but want that same hardscrabble backbone to come in useful for her in the future.
He wondered where she learned that long stare she fixed him with as she replied, “Sure, Raylan. If you want.”
The next weekend, with Winona’s grudging permission-- not that he needed it--Raylan took Loretta out past Harlan towards Wallins Creek, parking at the nature preserve’s trailhead. When he was a kid, things hadn’t been so official, but he remembered that out this way a small trail wound around Watts Creek and a longer one a little ways up to a pretty outcrop.
Fall was settling in a little early and the late September day was chilly enough for heavier coats even in the middle of the afternoon. Raylan didn’t like how late they were starting, but things had apparently been a little chaotic at the home that morning and he’d been told by Jenny, Loretta’s warm but put-upon foster mother, not to come until after lunch. They’d brought the picnic anyway.
Loretta seemed considerably more excited about the hike than she had the previous week, but Raylan thought it might just be about getting out of the house for a while.
He liked spending time with the girl, despite their visits being the social worker’s idea to give her some stability after all the shit that went down and all the moving she’d had to do over the past year. Loretta was smarter than he’d been as a teenager and wiser, too. But she was prone to sulking, though he really couldn’t fault her. He liked to think his stupid jokes and quiet presence made things a little easier for her. He even let her wear the hat sometimes.
As they walked from the parking area, Raylan glanced back at a familiar-looking truck, but shook his head, dismissing the idea that he’d know anyone hiking this stretch on this particular day. It was too great a coincidence.
They’d walked about half the trail before he spotted Boyd. Well, he should say Loretta spotted him.
“Hey,” she said quietly, “ain’t that a friend of yours? I remember seein’ him an’ you talking at Mags’ that one time, before he disappeared in the house with her and the mine lady.”
Raylan stopped dead in his tracks, clamping a hand down hard on the girl’s shoulder. He looked through the trees to see Boyd ahead of them on the trail, walking with slow purpose. He watched him veer suddenly off the path, away from the creek and down into the holler.
Raylan wanted to put his hand on his sidearm, but he also really didn’t want to scare Loretta. “All right, honey,” he said, just as quiet. “I know these woods pretty well, so don’t worry. That’s Boyd Crowder and we’re gonna follow him a ways. Not for long, just ‘til I see what he’s doin’ out here.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised that she looked intrigued instead of frightened or worried. They put the bag of food down at the edge of the trail, took two water bottles out, one for each of them, and set off after Boyd. Raylan made sure Loretta was walking behind him and tried not to think about how potentially stupid this decision was.
They made it maybe another half mile before Boyd got wind of them, which Raylan thought was fairly impressive.
“Now, if I didn’t know better, I’d think that was Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens following me through these woods with a waif watching his back. Or has your shadow shrunk since I last saw you, Raylan?” Boyd turned and called out to them through the trees.
“Boyd,” Raylan called back and raised his hand to the brim of his hat. Sometimes he liked being a cliché. His other hand held Loretta securely behind him. “What are you doing out here in these woods?”
“I could ask you that very same question, my friend. Come a little closer and perhaps we can converse like reasonable people.”
Raylan had long since stopped trying to convince Boyd that they weren’t anything like friends, but since they’d already been discovered, he saw no reason not to lessen the distance between them. He walked forward, until they were about twenty feet apart. He let Loretta stand next to him, but he had his hand on his sidearm for sure now.
“You don’t like the path, Boyd?” Raylan asked, keeping his tone very neutral.
Boyd smiled--it was his I’m-smarter-than-you-but-I-like-you-anyway-smile. “I like it fine. I’ve got some business out this way, is all. Would you like to come, Raylan?”
Raylan hoped that the grinding of his teeth wasn’t visible, or audible. “If you don’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I did,” Boyd responded quickly and cordially. “Don’t be concerned about your young friend either. My business is purely social in nature.”
“Social, huh,” Raylan mused as they began to walk.
He saw Loretta shooting glances between the two of them, landing longer and more focused on Boyd. Raylan caught her eye and gave her a little glare, to his amusement, she glared right back. “So were you two married in a previous life, or what?” she asked with a little barb to her voice.
Boyd laughed. It was immediate and loud, but only for a moment and not harsh, something like a thunderclap and a wide grin followed it like the rain. Raylan was struck by how long it had been since he’d heard that sound, untainted by irony or sorrow. He shook off that feeling of being taken back in time and glared at Loretta again, but she was smirking at Boyd who’d turned around to appraise her.
“You’re McCready’s girl. The one Mags was grooming up,” he said flatly and Raylan knew if Loretta had ever doubted that was what had been going on, she wouldn’t any longer. “What’re you doing traipsing around these hollers with a U.S. Marshal? You been deputized like my friend Dewey?” Boyd turned his smile on Raylan and it was ironic once again.
“It’s Loretta,” the girl replied, as she stepped carefully over a fallen branch. “And we’re hiking. Raylan and I just… hang out, sometimes. He’s cool, I guess.” She said the last with a smile just for him. His coolness was something he tried unsuccessfully to defend every so often.
Boyd laughed again, this time more quietly, but his grin stayed just the same. “He was a lot cooler in high school when he was hitting home runs and running moonshine through my daddy’s backwoods.”
“Oh yeah?” Loretta asked, turning to Raylan.
“And I think we’re done talkin’ about the past now, Boyd.”
“Maybe you are, Raylan,” Boyd replied, but said nothing else.
They walked for maybe another half hour and Raylan was beginning to regret his decision to bring them out here after Boyd. It had already been late when they spotted him and the darkness came early to these hollers. But finally, even as Raylan had the inkling to stop this charade in its tracks, Boyd slowed as they came to where the trees thinned and opened out into a firebreak, presumably for telephone and electric wires.
Down the hill from where they stood was an old dirt road. Raylan knew there used to be a small mine out this way and the road was the route the coal trucks and some of the workers took to come in and out. The rest had lived in the holler and up on the mountain and walked to work through the very trails they’d been hiking.
On the road someone had parked a car. It was a big black classic model, though Raylan couldn’t tell which one specifically from so far away. He saw Boyd smile, just softly, when he looked down on it. The people the man was meeting were already there.
Raylan put his hand on Loretta’s should again and held on when she tried to shake him off. He was glad she had the good sense not to say anything about it.
Two men emerged from the woods on the opposite side of the firebreak. They were both tall and broad shouldered, though one stood like a mountain beside the other. They had shot guns in their hands and wore dark outdoor clothing. They looked like hard men, like outlaws.
“If you knowingly brought this girl into danger, Boyd, I will put you down and I will put both your friends down before they can load two in those barrels, I swear to God,” Raylan spoke softly into Boyd’s ear from behind.
“I did not,” Boyd said, not turning to face him. “It was you put her on this path. But I too swear on my life, Raylan, I am only here to deliver some news.”
“Then why do they have guns?”
“They always have guns.”
The men walked forward and so did Boyd, Raylan and Loretta following and a good pace behind, but not so far he couldn’t hear what they said.
“Who are your friends, Boyd?” The shorter one spoke first, his voice was gruff, his hands tight on his weapon.
Boyd smiled, easy and calm. “I had company on the trail, boys, what can I say?” He spread his hands helplessly.
The shorter one raised his eyebrows and suggested, “Maybe… ‘No, you can’t come with me?’” Loretta stifled a chuckle.
Boyd just smiled a little wider, as if humoring the man that he would ever do such an impolite thing. “Even if I hadn’t invited them, I don’t think my friends would have taken no for an answer. What do you think, Raylan?”
“Unfortunately, no, I don’t think I would have,” Raylan kept his voice just as light and his hand above his holster. He saw the men register his badge as well.
“I didn’t think you ran with that crowd, Boyd,” the shorter one groused but the taller one nudged him like they ought to get on with things.
“Where’s your dad? Or Bowman? We didn’t think you were working with them anymore.” The taller one spoke like he knew exactly who it was Boyd had been working with instead.
Raylan realized just what news it was Boyd had to give. He almost felt sorry until he wondered how these boys were going to react to hearing whatever illegal dealings they thought they were going to have would probably be postponed if not cancelled altogether. He pulled Loretta closer behind him and felt her peeking around his jacket.
“I ain’t working with them,” Boyd replied. “I’m sorry to have to tell you boys this, but they’re both dead since you last came through. And Daddy’s contacts are mostly gone, at least for what you’re looking for. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
“You came all the way out here to tell us that?” It was the tall one speaking again and it looked as though there was honest grief in his expression, though Raylan really had no idea why. “Why didn’t you just not come? If you were a no show we would have just moved on.”
“I couldn’t know that, Sam. Last time your old man blew through Harlan, he knocked down doors looking for my daddy until Bowman told him that Bo was in jail,” Boyd said defensively. “I got people to look after and my own interests as well. I can’t have that shit.”
“We’re not our dad,” the other one said, like all he ever did was tell people that.
Boyd crossed his arms. “Well, neither am I and I can’t help you. Now, I said I’m sorry and that really is my final word on the matter.”
“Can’t help or don’t want to?”
“Dean,” the taller one, Sam, warned.
“What is it you boys are after?” Raylan finally jumped in with the question, taking a step closer to the conversation.
“Raylan,” Boyd said, as it was apparently now his turn for warnings. “That’s not a question you want answered. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of reason to haul me in sometime real soon, but these boys aren’t actually committing any wrongdoing today, so why don’t you let them off the hook?”
Raylan ignored Boyd’s question and looked carefully at the two men in front of him. He raised his hand from his sidearm and pointed, first at the tall brother then at the shorter one, identifying them. “Sam… and Dean. Your last name wouldn’t happen to be Winchester, now would it?”
Dean’s eyes flashed angry, Sam’s worried, and neither of them answered. Though, the way Boyd shifted on his feet made Raylan certain he was right. They were still armed, so he decided not to pull out his gun immediately, but he rested his hand on the weapon regardless. “I’m sorry boys, but I’m gonna have to bring you in.”
“What?” Boyd cried.
“On whose authority?” Sam asked at the same moment, his voice harsh, while Dean’s hands tightened around his shotgun.
Raylan, regretfully forced to take his hand off Loretta’s shoulder, indicated the badge on his hip. “On the authority of the United States Marshal Service. I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and you, Sam and Dean Winchester, are wanted by the Federal Government on multiple counts of felony murder and for questioning in the disappearance and suspected homicide of Special Agent Vicktor Henricksen of the FBI.”
He heard Dean curse under his breath, “Freaking Henricksen, Jesus,” as Loretta’s voice rang across the valley. “They’re murderers?” Raylan wasn’t certain it was fear he heard in it.
“No,” Dean replied emphatically, “we’re not.”
Raylan cocked his weapon in its holster and both men turned right back to him. “The City of St. Louis and the State of Missouri have brought those charges against you and you’re suspected of the same by the FBI. So, I’m real sorry, but I’m going to have to bring you in.”
“Like hell you will.” Dean began to raise his weapon, but Sam brought his arm down hard on the barrel, his eyes shooting over to Loretta.
Sam’s tone was full of hurt and anger when he said to Boyd, “I can’t believe you brought a Fed here.”
Boyd’s answer was cool and measured. “Raylan is good people. I didn’t see the harm if I was only delivering a message. And I was unaware that you two had been charged with anything lately, let alone murder.”
“You know we’d never do anything like that, Boyd.” There was a plea in Sam’s voice, one that made the muscle in Raylan’s jaw twitch.
The sound and the expression that went with it rolled right off Boyd’s back. “Had I known, I would never have let this man anywhere near you boys. And of course, I know you wouldn’t. Raylan has no reason to believe such a thing.”
“Other than your word?” This was Dean’s question, and it came out rough again, demanding.
Raylan snorted contemptuously and Boyd grimaced, saying, “Even you know better than to take my word at face value. Raylan’s got at least fifteen years more experience. I won’t tell him what to believe, he’d never listen even if he did trust me. It’s just not in his nature.”
“Well now,” Raylan interrupted, “I don’t think it really matters what’s in my nature or what Boyd does or does not believe. I’m taking you in, assholes, now drop your weapons.”
“You gonna make us?” Dean growled. “We got two guns on your one. Mine already has two in the barrel.”
“I’ll put down one of you before you can get off a shot,” Raylan said. It was much darker now, but he wouldn’t need perfect aim across that distance. It was all about speed anyway, reflexes. “Should I pick you or your brother?”
Loretta finally shifted nervously behind him. He wished to God he had told her to turn right around and go back to the car when they saw Boyd.
Boyd raised a hand and took a step forward, though not directly in the line of fire. “That’s one thing you can believe, boys. Raylan here is fast as shit. He shot me once with his pistol on the table and mine in my hand. He’s not messing around, Dean. You want a bullet in your head? You want your brother to die tonight?”
“Raylan,” Loretta called from behind him, her tone tentative but insistent.
“Yes, Loretta?” he replied patiently. Dean’s barrel was lowered, but it wasn’t on the ground. Their eyes were locked across the empty field. Raylan knew Loretta wouldn’t say anything right then unless she had a real good reason.
“There’s a light comin’ from the path behind us. Someone’s walking the trail.”
Raylan almost didn’t hear her and realized she must be looking behind them. “Boyd, I want you to look,” Raylan said. He didn’t bother to think about whether or not the man would listen to him, he just knew he’d trust his observations over whatever the Winchester boys would say to get him to turn his back.
“The girl ain’t lyin’,” Dean said, hefting his gun again.
“Shit. Put that thing back down, asshole,” Raylan shouted. “Boyd, what do you see?”
There was a hesitation, but finally Boyd replied, “A light, Raylan. A dim one, but it does look like someone on the trail. You expecting anybody, boys?”
The brothers glanced at each other. In the rapidly decreasing sunlight, Raylan couldn’t see what their expressions conveyed.
“You didn’t take that trail here,” Sam said. “You cut through the trees, straight from the nature reserve path. So, where’s the light coming from?”
“From up the mountain,” Loretta answered. “That’s what it looks like anyway. But I can’t hear no footsteps. We should’ve heard ‘em by now.”
“Can’t see anybody either,” Boyd said in a hushed tone. It was almost full dark.
Raylan’s jaw twitched again. He remembered his daddy once telling him a drunken tale about ghost lights on this mountain. His flashlight was in the trunk of the Lincoln.
Dean’s eyes were on him when the man said bluntly, “Look, Deputy, I’m not going to shoot you, but there is no way in hell that I am putting down this shotgun. Do you understand me?”
“We need to get out of here,” Sam said, his eyes cast past Raylan, presumably on the light.
“They do, you mean,” Dean replied.
“The Impala’s the fastest way back to civilization, Dean. I don’t think this is necessarily our problem.” They’d fallen into a pattern of argument that Raylan knew only came from knowing someone very well and fighting more than a fair share.
He took the chance and let his hand slip from his holster, turning to see what Boyd and Loretta were still staring at. When the strange, hazy yellow light came into his view Raylan felt something lurch within him. He thought maybe his feet were slipping out from under his knees, but he was still upright, and he felt cold, all over.
“Why would it be your problem?” he croaked to the boys, not quite willing to take his eyes off the light yet.
They didn’t answer and their argument only grew more hushed. He thought maybe they took a few steps away. But he still didn’t want to turn his back on that light.
Loretta backed slowly up into him and he put his right hand securely back on her shoulder. Her own hand crept slowly into his left. “You’re freezing,” she murmured, peering up at him. The light was much closer than it had been.
“I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth. Though in the back of his mind he knew something was wrong. “Loretta, go on over there next to Boyd,” he ordered, finally freeing his weapon from the holster. He didn’t think the light was so much moving towards them as it was moving towards him, though he’d be hard pressed to say exactly why.
Loretta saw the gun in his hand and let herself be pushed away from him. Now he saw fear in her eyes as she said, “What’s happening?”
“Raylan,” Boyd said in an uncertain tone. The light was at the edge of the firebreak, hovering, and Raylan could just make out a hazy dark figure immediately behind it, yet somehow barely illuminated. It looked like the shadow of a man.
“Shit,” one of the Winchesters cursed. “What’s it doing, Sam?”
“How should I know?” Sam said, closer now, and Raylan realized both brothers were on either side of him.
“It’s gonna come at us,” Raylan found himself saying and he felt his hand, his trigger finger, actually begin to shake. “It’s coming.”
“Raylan,” Boyd said again, and Boyd knowing something was wrong with him didn’t make him feel any goddamn better.
The light seemed to suddenly expand, growing bright and closer and coming fast towards them. Raylan heard the Winchesters cursing and Loretta’s scream of fright. He couldn’t do anything because the light, sickeningly yellow and hazy but so so bright, enveloped his vision and he felt a cold hand reach around his throat, squeezing icy fingers around his neck until he couldn’t draw any air into his lungs. It seemed like a long time before he passed out.
Raylan woke to the sound of Loretta crying his name. Her hands were pulling at his jacket and her voice cracked in distress, not far away from honest-to-God sobs. The ground was cold and hard beneath his back.
“Shit,” he cursed, and slowly sat up, pulling the girl close to him. They hadn’t been real touchy-feely before, and until that moment Raylan hadn’t been sure how much their time together meant to her. “It’s okay, honey,” he said, coughing over her shoulder as she clung to him. “It’s okay. I’m all right.”
He caught Boyd’s eye and knew the man was wondering how much of a lie it was, and truth be told, Raylan wasn’t sure himself.
The Winchesters were looking at him with nearly identical expressions that looked like some mixture of puzzlement and suspicion. Dean stood with his arms crossed in front of him like a bouncer and Sam still had his fingers wrapped around the trigger of one of those shotguns.
“What?” Raylan asked them, still holding on tight to Loretta.
“Why did you say that?” Dean’s frown grew deeper, like he anticipated any answer to be more disturbing that what he’d already imagined.
Loretta pulled back and looked at Raylan, like she expected an answer too. There were tears, he was glad to see not too many, drying on her cheeks.
“Say what?” he replied.
Loretta’s face grew more concerned and the brothers’ only more suspicious. Sam seemed to be the more patient of the two because after a quick exchange of glances, it was he who spoke in a somewhat sympathetic voice. “You said, ‘I’m sorry,’ before you fell. You also said you knew it was coming at us.”
“It was,” Raylan said defensively.
“Why did you say, ‘I’m sorry’?” Dean demanded.
Raylan raised his hand to his head and realized he’d lost his hat. He looked around and saw it in Boyd’s hands, raising his gaze to meet the man’s, knowing Boyd remembered the story of this mountain probably better than he did. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said. “Why do you care? Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
“That’s what I said,” Sam threw his hands up in the air at his brother. “If we had gone, we wouldn’t be in this position now. It hasn’t killed anybody, Dean. I don’t think--”
“No,” Dean interrupted, anger and frustration in his voice, too. “But now it’s attacked this dick, you really want to leave that to chance? Have to come back to this crappy town in this screwed up county and deal with it later, when we’ll have who-the-hell-knows what else on our plate?”
“What are you assholes talking about?” Raylan grumbled, letting Loretta slide off him and climbing to his feet. She kept her hand gripped tight around his fingers.
“You tell him,” Dean barked at Boyd. “We’ve got to get some stuff out of the car.” The two turned and began a fast hike down the mountain, bickering at each other the whole way.
When Raylan made to follow them, his limbs still feeling stiff and cold, Boyd grabbed at his shoulder, saying, “Save yourself a trip, Raylan, they’re gonna be coming back up.”
“How do you know that for sure?”
“They got business up here.”
“What business?” It was Loretta who asked. She’d dropped Raylan’s hand when Boyd came near and was busy scrabbling the tears off her face. She sniffled twice but the look on her face was fierce. “Why can’t we just get the hell off the mountain?”
“Fastest way off is with those boys. We can’t walk back through the woods, not safely at this hour, regardless of what else is going on. So we have to wait for the Winchesters to take care of it, drive on out with them.” Boyd spoke evenly, matter of fact, like always, and Raylan hated it.
He drew his hand across his brow, still feeling cold and not like himself. “What do you mean, take care of it?”
“They’re hunters, Raylan. Like old Snappy Jones was a hunter,” Boyd explained, handing Raylan his hat and gun back. “Daddy used to ship supplies up from New Orleans and Florida for him way back when, with the coke and later all the oxy. Sam and Dean’s daddy got wind of it somehow and came knocking on Bo’s door about twenty years ago. I met those boys when Sam was barely out of diapers. They’d come through maybe once every two years, looking for some rare artifact or weapon. Daddy would never say much about it and I always kept my nose out. Bowman did some courier work in that business when he was trying not to work for the mine, but I never did. This shit scares the hell out of me.”
Finally, with those words, Raylan did see the fear in Boyd’s eyes, maybe that had been buried all along their walk on the trail and their talk with the brothers. Boyd liked them, but he didn’t like what they did, what they had to deal with. He’d only come here to deliver a message.
“I can’t believe this,” Raylan said heavily and rubbed his palms across his face.
Raylan had never seen a ghost before, but he knew enough people who claimed they had to figure there was more behind the tales than bullshit and too much bourbon. There were enough ghost stories in and around Harlan to make anybody a grudging believer. And with what Boyd knew about those boys and their father, there must never have been a question of fact or fiction.
No, ghosts were real and Raylan knew the truth of that, what he couldn’t believe was that the damn ghost was after him specifically.
He looked up at Boyd and quirked an ironic smile, “And you wonder why I never wanted to come back here.”
“I did no such thing, Raylan. I just didn’t agree with you.” Every once in a while, when Boyd would smile back like he was doing right then, Raylan would think maybe the last twenty years hadn’t happened. Then he would blame the thought on something else. Today, he blamed the goddamn ghost.
“So we can’t leave because these idiots want to kill the thing that attacked Raylan?” Loretta asked incredulously. “That’s insane.”
“Yeah, well, welcome to our world, sweetheart,” Dean called from just a few yards down the hill. The brothers were returning each with a large duffel bag strapped across their chests and large flashlights in their hands. Sam pulled another shotgun from his bag and tossed it to Raylan, who caught it easily.
“You got an arsenal in that vehicle of yours?” he asked. “You got licenses for these weapons?”
Dean shrugged. “It’s none of your damn business.”
Raylan’s jaw twitched again. He examined the shotgun in the new found light: it looked old, but well cared for. He cracked open the barrel. “What are these cartridges?”
“Loaded with rock salt,” Sam answered.
“Rock salt,” Raylan repeated. “Boyd, you’d tell me if these boys weren’t legit, wouldn’t you?”
“My daddy used to say the one and only place you’d want one of the Winchester boys is at your back on a hunt. Is that legitimate enough for you?”
Raylan loaded one in each barrel. “I do hate you sometimes, Boyd.”
“Rock salt,” Sam said, rolling his eyes, “will disperse a ghost before it can get at you. Iron will do the same thing. In order to get rid of the spirit for good, though, we’ll have to salt and burn the bones.”
Raylan leaned the shotgun in the crook of his arm and put his hat back on his head, settling it low on his brow. “Boyd, today I really do hate you.”
“You say that like this is my fault,” Boyd returned with another smile, or so Raylan assumed from the tone of his voice. Both of the Winchesters flashlights were pointed inside their duffels.
“So, when’s the wedding?” Dean grumbled and Raylan heard Loretta laugh behind her hand. When no one answered, he just kept on asking questions, pulling an iron poker out of his bag as well and tossing it to Boyd. “Tell us what the deal is with this mountain. What are the stories?”
“It’s just one story,” Raylan replied heavily. “And I’m not telling it.”
“Well, let’s all take a seat then,” Boyd said. “We’re not going anywhere ‘til I get the whole thing out and Raylan looks like he’s about to fall over.”
“Shut up,” he grumbled and crossed his legs to sit down. Loretta planted herself as close to him as possible, so he pulled an arm around her skinny shoulders, worrying about the thinness of her coat in the night air.
The Winchesters sat as well and Boyd began to spin the tale. Raylan knew it was a short one, so he didn’t let himself get too comfortable.
“Well now, everyone knows in these parts they’ve been shoveling the coal out of every mountain since they figured out how to keep a shaft open long enough for a few men to die in it.” Boyd’s voice was soft, but it carried strength in each word, a force which made it seem like a story worth listening to, instead of the drunken tall tale Raylan had heard his daddy cackle over on a summer night as a boy. “This mountain we sit on was mined out in the late forties, after they carried off every last nugget for the war machine. The story I’m telling though, dates back to the days of Bloody Harlan in the thirties, when picket lines, company thugs, and murder were as much a part of life as they were when Raylan and I were boys, more so even.
“The men who worked this mine lived on the mountain and in the hollers, where the creek winds through, and they would walk to work on the very paths we crossed to get here. It was a small mine, so maybe five or six families lived up here, and the bosses and some others would come in on trucks from the company shanty towns in Loyall or the stucco houses there that they rented to the foremen. In one of the hollers close to the creek--sadly my father never mentioned which one specifically--a man lived with his young wife and baby. The man’s name was Jeffries-- Bucky or Buck Jeffries.”
Here, Raylan interjected, “My daddy always said his name was Jacobs, Hank or something like that.”
“I hardly think it matters at this point, Raylan,” Boyd replied with a smile. The flashlights had long been extinguished but the moon was now high and bright enough to see by.
“I just thought it would be the interest of full disclosure, that there may be some uncertainty or room for debate about the man’s name. You know, for the hunting of his ghost,” Raylan said. “But, go on. You’re doing a real good job.”
“Thank you, Raylan,” Boyd said graciously and continued. “Now, this man Jeffries, his wife had sort of a reputation, before they were married, but he’d knocked her up and he did right by her, or so the story goes. They’d been married not much more than a year when a collapse sent the man back to his home an hour or so early. He was surprised to see a lamp burning inside the house and even more surprised to see his wife in the arms of another man, in their very bed with his own child sleeping nearby.”
“Didn’t see that one coming,” Dean muttered and Sam glared at him. Still, he went on, “Not that this isn’t a great story, Boyd, but I’m just going to go ahead and guess that this Jeffries guy was pretty pissed, there was some kind of fight and he ended up dead. Am I right?”
Boyd’s lips thinned and Raylan wiped a hand across his eyes. He just wanted to get through the night. He decided to have the rest out so Boyd couldn’t drag it along with big words and more gore than Loretta needed to hear.
“Way my daddy tells it, the man was Jeffries’ boss from the mine who was sneaking off early to screw his wife. They had angry words and a hunting rifle was pulled off the wall. There was a struggle and Jeffries was shot in the face. The neighbors were woken by the shot and the baby screaming. They never found the shooter; he disappeared that night. Weeks later, people said the woman went out of her mind and drowned the babe in the bath then hung herself in their little shack. Now, every once in a while someone up here says they saw a ghost light walking the trail after dark. It’s supposed to be Jeffries walking back to his shack from the mine that night, doing it over and over again for all eternity, or something like that.”
He looked over to Boyd with an apologetic expression for finishing off the tale. Boyd just nodded once and fiddled with the iron poker in his hands. Raylan wondered how they’d got there and couldn’t come up with anything but bad karma or God’s ineffable sense of humor.
Loretta shivered next to him and said in a low voice, “That… is a terrible story.”
“They’re all pretty much like that in this business,” Sam replied, just as low.
“My daddy always told it to teach me why a man should keep control of his woman.” Raylan didn’t know exactly why he said that, but Loretta pulled closer to him and Boyd made some unidentifiable noise in response before pulling himself off the ground.
The brothers got up as well and Dean began rechecking their gear as Sam said, “Well, I guess it would be safe to say Jeffries isn’t a fan of… what, adulterers?”
All eyes fell to Raylan immediately.
“You screwed another man’s wife?” Dean asked and there was a challenge in his voice, but no emotion in his eyes.
Boyd stepped forward suddenly, thrusting the poker in his friend’s face. To Dean’s credit, he didn’t back up much, practically daring Boyd to push forward. But Boyd’s words held that soft and dangerous tone that Raylan had learned to be wary of as he said, “You watch your language in front of this child, Dean Winchester, and you refrain from judging this man. You don’t know him and you don’t know his circumstances. Raylan would not even be on this mountain to be condemned by you if he was less than fully committed to his duties as a lawman and as protector of this county and the great goddamn State of Kentucky. So you just hold your tongue on what you think of his personal choices and tell us how we can get rid of this spirit and out of these woods so I never have to see you or any other member of your bad luck family again.”
Raylan and Loretta had pulled themselves to their feet as Boyd finished speaking and everyone was now standing in the light of the moon eyeing each other carefully.
“Damn, Boyd,” Dean said, his gravelly voice hushed, “tell me how you really feel.”
Loretta snorted contemptuously and raised her eyebrows at Sam. “Your brother doesn’t know when to quit.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, a put upon look on his face and a warning in his tone, “he’s in top freaking form today, that’s for sure.”
Raylan stepped forward and pushed the poker down, away from Dean’s face. “To be fair,” he said, looking at the hunter, “She was my wife first, all right?” He cast a sideways glance at Boyd, who backed off immediately, but did not look chastised at all.
“I’m not sure this guy cares too much about that, Marshal,” Dean replied, still injecting every word with irony.
“I don’t care what he thinks,” Raylan returned with a significant “screw you” look.
“All right, then,” Sam said with a note of finality. “Where would they have buried the bones?”
“Next to the shack,” Boyd answered. “People ‘round here like to keep their kin close, even the ones who have passed on.”
Raylan nodded in mute agreement then looked over to the trail where they’d seen the light. He felt the world narrow around him. He thought he saw a flash of light off in the distance, but it disappeared quickly and he blinked rapidly, trying to catch it again. “We’ll have to walk it to get there.” He didn’t recognize the tone in his voice and he was cold again. Real cold.
“Raylan,” Boyd said quietly, moving up next to him. “How about you let me take that?” He cast his eyes down at the gun in Raylan’s hands and held out the iron. “Trade you?”
Raylan thought about his fingers shaking on the trigger of his service weapon and spat, “Shit,” then handed the shotgun over to Boyd. He felt a shiver pass through him, up and down his spine. “Fine, it’s fine,” he said and was sure they all knew he was talking to himself. “Let’s just get to burning the son of a bitch.”
They set off in a line towards the path the light had travelled down, Dean first, then Raylan and Loretta, followed by Boyd with Sam bringing up the rear. The path was illuminated only by their flashlights, as the moon had retreated behind the thick canopy above them. It seemed as though they were walking through a dark tunnel, with nothing but black on either side. The only reason Raylan wasn’t taken back to working in the mine was the fresh air and the side of the path.
He was actually reminded of his armed hike through the jungle in Nicaragua, except for the extreme cold instead of heat. Then he felt really weird about the thought and tried to dismiss it almost immediately, except he couldn’t shake it and every other second he thought he saw that goddamn ghost light in the trees ahead. He knew at least Boyd saw how twitchy he was becoming and how hard he was straining to keep it reined in.
But it was Loretta who pushed herself ahead, coming up next to him and looping her arms through one of his. He looked down and into her shadowed brown eyes. “I’m sorry about this, honey.”
“Shut up, Raylan,” she said and her lips quirked bravely. “It’s gonna be fine, okay?”
He smiled. “Yeah, until I have to explain this to Jenny, and Winona for that matter. Shit.”
She laughed. “We’ll think of something.”
Raylan was about to say something else, but suddenly the air around him turned cold, so cold that he felt all his muscles grow stiff. He dropped the iron poker and heard it clang to the ground and the light didn’t just suddenly appear in front of him, it advanced at him rapidly, within a second, pushing him back and down to the ground with a great force. He felt that same icy grip at his throat.
He heard Loretta shout his name again, but he was lost to everything except the ghostly figure of a man in mining coveralls, bending over him. Jeffries’ face was half gone, bloody and oozing, but his eyes were as yellow and ghostly as the light he carried, suffusing Raylan’s vision, seeming to be in the very air. He breathed it in short gasps into his lungs and it smelled of sulfur and coal dust.
There was a roaring in Raylan’s ears, but it seemed to come from behind him, and underneath the sound, he swore, he could hear Jeffries speaking to him, lowly threatening pain and death upon him and all his family for what he had done.
Something shifted in Raylan, settled in and he found himself answering back in a rush of anger and hatred that he couldn’t stop himself from embracing, “Screw you, asshole, and hell no, I am not sorry.” He seized the strength, from God knew where, to push back against that force and turn the tables on him, pinning a body to the ground, seeing that horrific face draw back in surprise. He smiled then, cruelly, and pulled up high to choke the bastard. “She was good,” Raylan heard himself spit, “she was real goddamn good with her sweet little mouth on my--”
He broke off because someone pulled him backward by the goddamn collar, he fought it, cursing again and straining against it, but then the iron was shoved into his hands and his vision cleared, his head cleared, too. Shit.
Boyd was looking at him from across the path, lying prone with angry red marks in stripes like fingers across his neck, wheezing and eyes more than terrified. . “Raylan,” he said, voice rough, “are you with us?”
Dean was directing his flashlight hard at Raylan’s face and Boyd’s had fallen to the ground, pointing down at his legs and only dimly illuminating his expression. Next to Boyd, Loretta had pushed herself back up against a tree trunk and her arms were wrapped around her knees. He didn’t see tears, but her eyes were wide and frightened. Sam had a hand on her shoulder. It must have been Dean who pulled him away.
“Oh, God,” Raylan choked. He felt cold again, but clammy with fear sweat and horror, his heart was pounding, his hands shaking again. Something had been inside him, in his head, and eyes, putting those filthy words in his mouth. He turned and retched what little was in his stomach out into the dirt and the leaves off the path, still clutching hard at the iron.
“Raylan,” Loretta said, worry threading the tremor of fear in her voice.
He didn’t say he was okay. He wasn’t going to voice such a bald-faced lie. “I’m here,” was all he could think to give her as he tried to pull himself back together, spitting out the remaining bile and wiping at his mouth. He stayed on the ground though; the prospect of standing at that point was an entirely different story.
“What kind of God--” Boyd began, his eyes now distant and still fearful, but Raylan shifted forward suddenly, snapping everyone’s attention back to him.
“No,” he said to Boyd, raising a finger and pointing it at him. “We are not starting in with your messed up views on God and religion, Boyd. Whatever they happen to be lately, I don’t really care. You can think about it later. Tonight, I think we got another body to burn.”
“Shit,” Loretta swore and Raylan didn’t even think to stop her.
Sam stepped away and Dean came around to face Raylan. “So that was a possession, right? Because to me, it looked like a textbook possession. It was the other guy who jumped your bones. The one who ‘disappeared’,” Dean said, complete with air quotes.
“Dean,” Sam warned again, “come on, you don’t have to be a dick about it.”
Raylan decided to make his legs work so he didn’t have to look at Dean Winchester standing over him with that smug-as-hell expression on his face. He got up a little unsteadily, but glared at Sam until the boy put his hand, raised in some misguided attempt to help, down at his side. He walked slowly over to where Boyd and Loretta were still sitting. He kept the poker in his hand, and bent to scoop his hat off the ground, but did not put it back on right away.
Boyd eyed him not too warily and Raylan was reminded of the night they became friends, though lately he’d tried hard not to think of those times. They’d accidentally started an argument, just about some random fact or other, at the puddle in Cumberland. The disagreement ended up spreading to the entire clientele and concluded in a bar brawl, spilling out into the warm summer night. Raylan had looked at Boyd over the pile of miners and outlaws climbing all over each other, shouting and throwing punches, and he said, “You wanna get out of here?”
When he squatted down to meet Boyd’s eyes now and asked that same question, a grin identical to the one Raylan had witnessed over twenty years before, spread across his friend’s face as he replied, “You got any place in particular in mind, Raylan?”
“Anywhere but here still seems pretty appropriate,” Raylan said and extended his hand, grasping Boyd’s and pulling him to his feet.
“That it does,” Boyd said, brushing the leaves from his pants.
Loretta pushed herself to her feet as well, hurtling at Raylan and wrapping her arms around his waist. Boyd looked at him with a curious expression, perhaps asking something along the lines of since-when-do-things-like-this-happen-to you? Raylan didn’t bother to try and form an answer as he drew his fingers through the girl’s hair in an effort to soothe her. How should he know how it happened?
“Okay,” Dean said, drawing out the word and pointing his flashlight down the path. “We’re gonna get going, then? I mean, we do want to kill these two bastards before the sun comes up, right?” He looked at them expectantly and it was all Raylan could do not to hit him in his stupid face.
“You,” Raylan said, pointing a finger at the boy, “don’t get to talk to me anymore. Unless it’s life and death important.” He switched his gaze over to Sam, who was busy picking up his bag and looking sheepish. “You’re in charge of that.”
He gripped the iron poker extra hard and wished for the shotgun. Then he froze, reaching for his sidearm, still stuck fast in its holster. If he had thought before, with Boyd... he shook his head not wanting to think about it.
Raylan pulled the weapon out and turned to Loretta, holding it out to her by the barrel. “I know someone has taught you how to use one of these,” he said and she nodded slowly, her eyes still real big. “I’m gonna give this to you, because I don’t want it on me, all right? But you don’t use it unless one of them,” he indicated Boyd, Sam, and Dean, who all looked significantly disturbed, “says you should. I’m not to be trusted. You got that?”
“Okay, Raylan,” she answered in a small voice, but still tough, still her. She took the gun, checked the mag, slid the safety off and back on and slipped it into her pocket.
He smiled and put his hat back on. “Good girl,” he said and they walked on.
On to Part 2...
Author: norgbelulah
Fandoms: Justified/Supernatural
Characters Raylan Givens, Loretta McCready, Boyd Crowder, Art Mullen; Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Pairings: None.
Rating: R
Word count: 17,500
Spoilers: Spoilers through season 2 of Justified; set shortly after season 2. No specific spoilers after season 5 of Supernatural; set sometime after episode 6.12.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Justifed belongs to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost and Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke.
A/N: Thanks to betas rillalicious, write_light, and abraxas
Summary: A weekend hike goes horribly wrong for Raylan and Loretta, because nothing in Harlan County can be simple, can it? Now, their only way off the mountain is two shady characters from Boyd’s past, three shovels, two shotguns, and an antique iron poker.
Raylan asked Loretta a few weeks before the date of his transfer whether her daddy ever took her on any hikes through the mountains and hollers in Harlan.
“Not really,” she’d said, dragging her straw in a slow circle through her strawberry milkshake. “Only to the crop and back, then when Mama was sick, and after, I went by myself.”
“But that’s, what, a ten, twenty minute walk?” Raylan had drunk his own shake a while ago, but they still had a basket of fries between them to finish off.
“There about,” Loretta shrugged. “It’s pretty though, in the summer time.”
“You wanna take a hike with me, maybe next week? There’re some nice views ‘round here we can get to with almost no trouble at all.”
Loretta looked up at him like he was proposing she join the cheerleading squad or hand over her cell phone or something equally tragic.
“We could take a lunch with us too,” he caught the plea in his voice and tried to rein it in a bit.
Really, he just wanted to do this with Loretta so she didn’t lose her roots entirely to Lexington and her new foster home. He was glad they were treating the girl well. But he thought about how having Harlan as home inside his head, the good and the bad, defined him and he couldn’t help but want that same hardscrabble backbone to come in useful for her in the future.
He wondered where she learned that long stare she fixed him with as she replied, “Sure, Raylan. If you want.”
The next weekend, with Winona’s grudging permission-- not that he needed it--Raylan took Loretta out past Harlan towards Wallins Creek, parking at the nature preserve’s trailhead. When he was a kid, things hadn’t been so official, but he remembered that out this way a small trail wound around Watts Creek and a longer one a little ways up to a pretty outcrop.
Fall was settling in a little early and the late September day was chilly enough for heavier coats even in the middle of the afternoon. Raylan didn’t like how late they were starting, but things had apparently been a little chaotic at the home that morning and he’d been told by Jenny, Loretta’s warm but put-upon foster mother, not to come until after lunch. They’d brought the picnic anyway.
Loretta seemed considerably more excited about the hike than she had the previous week, but Raylan thought it might just be about getting out of the house for a while.
He liked spending time with the girl, despite their visits being the social worker’s idea to give her some stability after all the shit that went down and all the moving she’d had to do over the past year. Loretta was smarter than he’d been as a teenager and wiser, too. But she was prone to sulking, though he really couldn’t fault her. He liked to think his stupid jokes and quiet presence made things a little easier for her. He even let her wear the hat sometimes.
As they walked from the parking area, Raylan glanced back at a familiar-looking truck, but shook his head, dismissing the idea that he’d know anyone hiking this stretch on this particular day. It was too great a coincidence.
They’d walked about half the trail before he spotted Boyd. Well, he should say Loretta spotted him.
“Hey,” she said quietly, “ain’t that a friend of yours? I remember seein’ him an’ you talking at Mags’ that one time, before he disappeared in the house with her and the mine lady.”
Raylan stopped dead in his tracks, clamping a hand down hard on the girl’s shoulder. He looked through the trees to see Boyd ahead of them on the trail, walking with slow purpose. He watched him veer suddenly off the path, away from the creek and down into the holler.
Raylan wanted to put his hand on his sidearm, but he also really didn’t want to scare Loretta. “All right, honey,” he said, just as quiet. “I know these woods pretty well, so don’t worry. That’s Boyd Crowder and we’re gonna follow him a ways. Not for long, just ‘til I see what he’s doin’ out here.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised that she looked intrigued instead of frightened or worried. They put the bag of food down at the edge of the trail, took two water bottles out, one for each of them, and set off after Boyd. Raylan made sure Loretta was walking behind him and tried not to think about how potentially stupid this decision was.
They made it maybe another half mile before Boyd got wind of them, which Raylan thought was fairly impressive.
“Now, if I didn’t know better, I’d think that was Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens following me through these woods with a waif watching his back. Or has your shadow shrunk since I last saw you, Raylan?” Boyd turned and called out to them through the trees.
“Boyd,” Raylan called back and raised his hand to the brim of his hat. Sometimes he liked being a cliché. His other hand held Loretta securely behind him. “What are you doing out here in these woods?”
“I could ask you that very same question, my friend. Come a little closer and perhaps we can converse like reasonable people.”
Raylan had long since stopped trying to convince Boyd that they weren’t anything like friends, but since they’d already been discovered, he saw no reason not to lessen the distance between them. He walked forward, until they were about twenty feet apart. He let Loretta stand next to him, but he had his hand on his sidearm for sure now.
“You don’t like the path, Boyd?” Raylan asked, keeping his tone very neutral.
Boyd smiled--it was his I’m-smarter-than-you-but-I-like-you-anyway-smile. “I like it fine. I’ve got some business out this way, is all. Would you like to come, Raylan?”
Raylan hoped that the grinding of his teeth wasn’t visible, or audible. “If you don’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I did,” Boyd responded quickly and cordially. “Don’t be concerned about your young friend either. My business is purely social in nature.”
“Social, huh,” Raylan mused as they began to walk.
He saw Loretta shooting glances between the two of them, landing longer and more focused on Boyd. Raylan caught her eye and gave her a little glare, to his amusement, she glared right back. “So were you two married in a previous life, or what?” she asked with a little barb to her voice.
Boyd laughed. It was immediate and loud, but only for a moment and not harsh, something like a thunderclap and a wide grin followed it like the rain. Raylan was struck by how long it had been since he’d heard that sound, untainted by irony or sorrow. He shook off that feeling of being taken back in time and glared at Loretta again, but she was smirking at Boyd who’d turned around to appraise her.
“You’re McCready’s girl. The one Mags was grooming up,” he said flatly and Raylan knew if Loretta had ever doubted that was what had been going on, she wouldn’t any longer. “What’re you doing traipsing around these hollers with a U.S. Marshal? You been deputized like my friend Dewey?” Boyd turned his smile on Raylan and it was ironic once again.
“It’s Loretta,” the girl replied, as she stepped carefully over a fallen branch. “And we’re hiking. Raylan and I just… hang out, sometimes. He’s cool, I guess.” She said the last with a smile just for him. His coolness was something he tried unsuccessfully to defend every so often.
Boyd laughed again, this time more quietly, but his grin stayed just the same. “He was a lot cooler in high school when he was hitting home runs and running moonshine through my daddy’s backwoods.”
“Oh yeah?” Loretta asked, turning to Raylan.
“And I think we’re done talkin’ about the past now, Boyd.”
“Maybe you are, Raylan,” Boyd replied, but said nothing else.
They walked for maybe another half hour and Raylan was beginning to regret his decision to bring them out here after Boyd. It had already been late when they spotted him and the darkness came early to these hollers. But finally, even as Raylan had the inkling to stop this charade in its tracks, Boyd slowed as they came to where the trees thinned and opened out into a firebreak, presumably for telephone and electric wires.
Down the hill from where they stood was an old dirt road. Raylan knew there used to be a small mine out this way and the road was the route the coal trucks and some of the workers took to come in and out. The rest had lived in the holler and up on the mountain and walked to work through the very trails they’d been hiking.
On the road someone had parked a car. It was a big black classic model, though Raylan couldn’t tell which one specifically from so far away. He saw Boyd smile, just softly, when he looked down on it. The people the man was meeting were already there.
Raylan put his hand on Loretta’s should again and held on when she tried to shake him off. He was glad she had the good sense not to say anything about it.
Two men emerged from the woods on the opposite side of the firebreak. They were both tall and broad shouldered, though one stood like a mountain beside the other. They had shot guns in their hands and wore dark outdoor clothing. They looked like hard men, like outlaws.
“If you knowingly brought this girl into danger, Boyd, I will put you down and I will put both your friends down before they can load two in those barrels, I swear to God,” Raylan spoke softly into Boyd’s ear from behind.
“I did not,” Boyd said, not turning to face him. “It was you put her on this path. But I too swear on my life, Raylan, I am only here to deliver some news.”
“Then why do they have guns?”
“They always have guns.”
The men walked forward and so did Boyd, Raylan and Loretta following and a good pace behind, but not so far he couldn’t hear what they said.
“Who are your friends, Boyd?” The shorter one spoke first, his voice was gruff, his hands tight on his weapon.
Boyd smiled, easy and calm. “I had company on the trail, boys, what can I say?” He spread his hands helplessly.
The shorter one raised his eyebrows and suggested, “Maybe… ‘No, you can’t come with me?’” Loretta stifled a chuckle.
Boyd just smiled a little wider, as if humoring the man that he would ever do such an impolite thing. “Even if I hadn’t invited them, I don’t think my friends would have taken no for an answer. What do you think, Raylan?”
“Unfortunately, no, I don’t think I would have,” Raylan kept his voice just as light and his hand above his holster. He saw the men register his badge as well.
“I didn’t think you ran with that crowd, Boyd,” the shorter one groused but the taller one nudged him like they ought to get on with things.
“Where’s your dad? Or Bowman? We didn’t think you were working with them anymore.” The taller one spoke like he knew exactly who it was Boyd had been working with instead.
Raylan realized just what news it was Boyd had to give. He almost felt sorry until he wondered how these boys were going to react to hearing whatever illegal dealings they thought they were going to have would probably be postponed if not cancelled altogether. He pulled Loretta closer behind him and felt her peeking around his jacket.
“I ain’t working with them,” Boyd replied. “I’m sorry to have to tell you boys this, but they’re both dead since you last came through. And Daddy’s contacts are mostly gone, at least for what you’re looking for. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
“You came all the way out here to tell us that?” It was the tall one speaking again and it looked as though there was honest grief in his expression, though Raylan really had no idea why. “Why didn’t you just not come? If you were a no show we would have just moved on.”
“I couldn’t know that, Sam. Last time your old man blew through Harlan, he knocked down doors looking for my daddy until Bowman told him that Bo was in jail,” Boyd said defensively. “I got people to look after and my own interests as well. I can’t have that shit.”
“We’re not our dad,” the other one said, like all he ever did was tell people that.
Boyd crossed his arms. “Well, neither am I and I can’t help you. Now, I said I’m sorry and that really is my final word on the matter.”
“Can’t help or don’t want to?”
“Dean,” the taller one, Sam, warned.
“What is it you boys are after?” Raylan finally jumped in with the question, taking a step closer to the conversation.
“Raylan,” Boyd said, as it was apparently now his turn for warnings. “That’s not a question you want answered. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of reason to haul me in sometime real soon, but these boys aren’t actually committing any wrongdoing today, so why don’t you let them off the hook?”
Raylan ignored Boyd’s question and looked carefully at the two men in front of him. He raised his hand from his sidearm and pointed, first at the tall brother then at the shorter one, identifying them. “Sam… and Dean. Your last name wouldn’t happen to be Winchester, now would it?”
Dean’s eyes flashed angry, Sam’s worried, and neither of them answered. Though, the way Boyd shifted on his feet made Raylan certain he was right. They were still armed, so he decided not to pull out his gun immediately, but he rested his hand on the weapon regardless. “I’m sorry boys, but I’m gonna have to bring you in.”
“What?” Boyd cried.
“On whose authority?” Sam asked at the same moment, his voice harsh, while Dean’s hands tightened around his shotgun.
Raylan, regretfully forced to take his hand off Loretta’s shoulder, indicated the badge on his hip. “On the authority of the United States Marshal Service. I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and you, Sam and Dean Winchester, are wanted by the Federal Government on multiple counts of felony murder and for questioning in the disappearance and suspected homicide of Special Agent Vicktor Henricksen of the FBI.”
He heard Dean curse under his breath, “Freaking Henricksen, Jesus,” as Loretta’s voice rang across the valley. “They’re murderers?” Raylan wasn’t certain it was fear he heard in it.
“No,” Dean replied emphatically, “we’re not.”
Raylan cocked his weapon in its holster and both men turned right back to him. “The City of St. Louis and the State of Missouri have brought those charges against you and you’re suspected of the same by the FBI. So, I’m real sorry, but I’m going to have to bring you in.”
“Like hell you will.” Dean began to raise his weapon, but Sam brought his arm down hard on the barrel, his eyes shooting over to Loretta.
Sam’s tone was full of hurt and anger when he said to Boyd, “I can’t believe you brought a Fed here.”
Boyd’s answer was cool and measured. “Raylan is good people. I didn’t see the harm if I was only delivering a message. And I was unaware that you two had been charged with anything lately, let alone murder.”
“You know we’d never do anything like that, Boyd.” There was a plea in Sam’s voice, one that made the muscle in Raylan’s jaw twitch.
The sound and the expression that went with it rolled right off Boyd’s back. “Had I known, I would never have let this man anywhere near you boys. And of course, I know you wouldn’t. Raylan has no reason to believe such a thing.”
“Other than your word?” This was Dean’s question, and it came out rough again, demanding.
Raylan snorted contemptuously and Boyd grimaced, saying, “Even you know better than to take my word at face value. Raylan’s got at least fifteen years more experience. I won’t tell him what to believe, he’d never listen even if he did trust me. It’s just not in his nature.”
“Well now,” Raylan interrupted, “I don’t think it really matters what’s in my nature or what Boyd does or does not believe. I’m taking you in, assholes, now drop your weapons.”
“You gonna make us?” Dean growled. “We got two guns on your one. Mine already has two in the barrel.”
“I’ll put down one of you before you can get off a shot,” Raylan said. It was much darker now, but he wouldn’t need perfect aim across that distance. It was all about speed anyway, reflexes. “Should I pick you or your brother?”
Loretta finally shifted nervously behind him. He wished to God he had told her to turn right around and go back to the car when they saw Boyd.
Boyd raised a hand and took a step forward, though not directly in the line of fire. “That’s one thing you can believe, boys. Raylan here is fast as shit. He shot me once with his pistol on the table and mine in my hand. He’s not messing around, Dean. You want a bullet in your head? You want your brother to die tonight?”
“Raylan,” Loretta called from behind him, her tone tentative but insistent.
“Yes, Loretta?” he replied patiently. Dean’s barrel was lowered, but it wasn’t on the ground. Their eyes were locked across the empty field. Raylan knew Loretta wouldn’t say anything right then unless she had a real good reason.
“There’s a light comin’ from the path behind us. Someone’s walking the trail.”
Raylan almost didn’t hear her and realized she must be looking behind them. “Boyd, I want you to look,” Raylan said. He didn’t bother to think about whether or not the man would listen to him, he just knew he’d trust his observations over whatever the Winchester boys would say to get him to turn his back.
“The girl ain’t lyin’,” Dean said, hefting his gun again.
“Shit. Put that thing back down, asshole,” Raylan shouted. “Boyd, what do you see?”
There was a hesitation, but finally Boyd replied, “A light, Raylan. A dim one, but it does look like someone on the trail. You expecting anybody, boys?”
The brothers glanced at each other. In the rapidly decreasing sunlight, Raylan couldn’t see what their expressions conveyed.
“You didn’t take that trail here,” Sam said. “You cut through the trees, straight from the nature reserve path. So, where’s the light coming from?”
“From up the mountain,” Loretta answered. “That’s what it looks like anyway. But I can’t hear no footsteps. We should’ve heard ‘em by now.”
“Can’t see anybody either,” Boyd said in a hushed tone. It was almost full dark.
Raylan’s jaw twitched again. He remembered his daddy once telling him a drunken tale about ghost lights on this mountain. His flashlight was in the trunk of the Lincoln.
Dean’s eyes were on him when the man said bluntly, “Look, Deputy, I’m not going to shoot you, but there is no way in hell that I am putting down this shotgun. Do you understand me?”
“We need to get out of here,” Sam said, his eyes cast past Raylan, presumably on the light.
“They do, you mean,” Dean replied.
“The Impala’s the fastest way back to civilization, Dean. I don’t think this is necessarily our problem.” They’d fallen into a pattern of argument that Raylan knew only came from knowing someone very well and fighting more than a fair share.
He took the chance and let his hand slip from his holster, turning to see what Boyd and Loretta were still staring at. When the strange, hazy yellow light came into his view Raylan felt something lurch within him. He thought maybe his feet were slipping out from under his knees, but he was still upright, and he felt cold, all over.
“Why would it be your problem?” he croaked to the boys, not quite willing to take his eyes off the light yet.
They didn’t answer and their argument only grew more hushed. He thought maybe they took a few steps away. But he still didn’t want to turn his back on that light.
Loretta backed slowly up into him and he put his right hand securely back on her shoulder. Her own hand crept slowly into his left. “You’re freezing,” she murmured, peering up at him. The light was much closer than it had been.
“I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth. Though in the back of his mind he knew something was wrong. “Loretta, go on over there next to Boyd,” he ordered, finally freeing his weapon from the holster. He didn’t think the light was so much moving towards them as it was moving towards him, though he’d be hard pressed to say exactly why.
Loretta saw the gun in his hand and let herself be pushed away from him. Now he saw fear in her eyes as she said, “What’s happening?”
“Raylan,” Boyd said in an uncertain tone. The light was at the edge of the firebreak, hovering, and Raylan could just make out a hazy dark figure immediately behind it, yet somehow barely illuminated. It looked like the shadow of a man.
“Shit,” one of the Winchesters cursed. “What’s it doing, Sam?”
“How should I know?” Sam said, closer now, and Raylan realized both brothers were on either side of him.
“It’s gonna come at us,” Raylan found himself saying and he felt his hand, his trigger finger, actually begin to shake. “It’s coming.”
“Raylan,” Boyd said again, and Boyd knowing something was wrong with him didn’t make him feel any goddamn better.
The light seemed to suddenly expand, growing bright and closer and coming fast towards them. Raylan heard the Winchesters cursing and Loretta’s scream of fright. He couldn’t do anything because the light, sickeningly yellow and hazy but so so bright, enveloped his vision and he felt a cold hand reach around his throat, squeezing icy fingers around his neck until he couldn’t draw any air into his lungs. It seemed like a long time before he passed out.
Raylan woke to the sound of Loretta crying his name. Her hands were pulling at his jacket and her voice cracked in distress, not far away from honest-to-God sobs. The ground was cold and hard beneath his back.
“Shit,” he cursed, and slowly sat up, pulling the girl close to him. They hadn’t been real touchy-feely before, and until that moment Raylan hadn’t been sure how much their time together meant to her. “It’s okay, honey,” he said, coughing over her shoulder as she clung to him. “It’s okay. I’m all right.”
He caught Boyd’s eye and knew the man was wondering how much of a lie it was, and truth be told, Raylan wasn’t sure himself.
The Winchesters were looking at him with nearly identical expressions that looked like some mixture of puzzlement and suspicion. Dean stood with his arms crossed in front of him like a bouncer and Sam still had his fingers wrapped around the trigger of one of those shotguns.
“What?” Raylan asked them, still holding on tight to Loretta.
“Why did you say that?” Dean’s frown grew deeper, like he anticipated any answer to be more disturbing that what he’d already imagined.
Loretta pulled back and looked at Raylan, like she expected an answer too. There were tears, he was glad to see not too many, drying on her cheeks.
“Say what?” he replied.
Loretta’s face grew more concerned and the brothers’ only more suspicious. Sam seemed to be the more patient of the two because after a quick exchange of glances, it was he who spoke in a somewhat sympathetic voice. “You said, ‘I’m sorry,’ before you fell. You also said you knew it was coming at us.”
“It was,” Raylan said defensively.
“Why did you say, ‘I’m sorry’?” Dean demanded.
Raylan raised his hand to his head and realized he’d lost his hat. He looked around and saw it in Boyd’s hands, raising his gaze to meet the man’s, knowing Boyd remembered the story of this mountain probably better than he did. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said. “Why do you care? Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
“That’s what I said,” Sam threw his hands up in the air at his brother. “If we had gone, we wouldn’t be in this position now. It hasn’t killed anybody, Dean. I don’t think--”
“No,” Dean interrupted, anger and frustration in his voice, too. “But now it’s attacked this dick, you really want to leave that to chance? Have to come back to this crappy town in this screwed up county and deal with it later, when we’ll have who-the-hell-knows what else on our plate?”
“What are you assholes talking about?” Raylan grumbled, letting Loretta slide off him and climbing to his feet. She kept her hand gripped tight around his fingers.
“You tell him,” Dean barked at Boyd. “We’ve got to get some stuff out of the car.” The two turned and began a fast hike down the mountain, bickering at each other the whole way.
When Raylan made to follow them, his limbs still feeling stiff and cold, Boyd grabbed at his shoulder, saying, “Save yourself a trip, Raylan, they’re gonna be coming back up.”
“How do you know that for sure?”
“They got business up here.”
“What business?” It was Loretta who asked. She’d dropped Raylan’s hand when Boyd came near and was busy scrabbling the tears off her face. She sniffled twice but the look on her face was fierce. “Why can’t we just get the hell off the mountain?”
“Fastest way off is with those boys. We can’t walk back through the woods, not safely at this hour, regardless of what else is going on. So we have to wait for the Winchesters to take care of it, drive on out with them.” Boyd spoke evenly, matter of fact, like always, and Raylan hated it.
He drew his hand across his brow, still feeling cold and not like himself. “What do you mean, take care of it?”
“They’re hunters, Raylan. Like old Snappy Jones was a hunter,” Boyd explained, handing Raylan his hat and gun back. “Daddy used to ship supplies up from New Orleans and Florida for him way back when, with the coke and later all the oxy. Sam and Dean’s daddy got wind of it somehow and came knocking on Bo’s door about twenty years ago. I met those boys when Sam was barely out of diapers. They’d come through maybe once every two years, looking for some rare artifact or weapon. Daddy would never say much about it and I always kept my nose out. Bowman did some courier work in that business when he was trying not to work for the mine, but I never did. This shit scares the hell out of me.”
Finally, with those words, Raylan did see the fear in Boyd’s eyes, maybe that had been buried all along their walk on the trail and their talk with the brothers. Boyd liked them, but he didn’t like what they did, what they had to deal with. He’d only come here to deliver a message.
“I can’t believe this,” Raylan said heavily and rubbed his palms across his face.
Raylan had never seen a ghost before, but he knew enough people who claimed they had to figure there was more behind the tales than bullshit and too much bourbon. There were enough ghost stories in and around Harlan to make anybody a grudging believer. And with what Boyd knew about those boys and their father, there must never have been a question of fact or fiction.
No, ghosts were real and Raylan knew the truth of that, what he couldn’t believe was that the damn ghost was after him specifically.
He looked up at Boyd and quirked an ironic smile, “And you wonder why I never wanted to come back here.”
“I did no such thing, Raylan. I just didn’t agree with you.” Every once in a while, when Boyd would smile back like he was doing right then, Raylan would think maybe the last twenty years hadn’t happened. Then he would blame the thought on something else. Today, he blamed the goddamn ghost.
“So we can’t leave because these idiots want to kill the thing that attacked Raylan?” Loretta asked incredulously. “That’s insane.”
“Yeah, well, welcome to our world, sweetheart,” Dean called from just a few yards down the hill. The brothers were returning each with a large duffel bag strapped across their chests and large flashlights in their hands. Sam pulled another shotgun from his bag and tossed it to Raylan, who caught it easily.
“You got an arsenal in that vehicle of yours?” he asked. “You got licenses for these weapons?”
Dean shrugged. “It’s none of your damn business.”
Raylan’s jaw twitched again. He examined the shotgun in the new found light: it looked old, but well cared for. He cracked open the barrel. “What are these cartridges?”
“Loaded with rock salt,” Sam answered.
“Rock salt,” Raylan repeated. “Boyd, you’d tell me if these boys weren’t legit, wouldn’t you?”
“My daddy used to say the one and only place you’d want one of the Winchester boys is at your back on a hunt. Is that legitimate enough for you?”
Raylan loaded one in each barrel. “I do hate you sometimes, Boyd.”
“Rock salt,” Sam said, rolling his eyes, “will disperse a ghost before it can get at you. Iron will do the same thing. In order to get rid of the spirit for good, though, we’ll have to salt and burn the bones.”
Raylan leaned the shotgun in the crook of his arm and put his hat back on his head, settling it low on his brow. “Boyd, today I really do hate you.”
“You say that like this is my fault,” Boyd returned with another smile, or so Raylan assumed from the tone of his voice. Both of the Winchesters flashlights were pointed inside their duffels.
“So, when’s the wedding?” Dean grumbled and Raylan heard Loretta laugh behind her hand. When no one answered, he just kept on asking questions, pulling an iron poker out of his bag as well and tossing it to Boyd. “Tell us what the deal is with this mountain. What are the stories?”
“It’s just one story,” Raylan replied heavily. “And I’m not telling it.”
“Well, let’s all take a seat then,” Boyd said. “We’re not going anywhere ‘til I get the whole thing out and Raylan looks like he’s about to fall over.”
“Shut up,” he grumbled and crossed his legs to sit down. Loretta planted herself as close to him as possible, so he pulled an arm around her skinny shoulders, worrying about the thinness of her coat in the night air.
The Winchesters sat as well and Boyd began to spin the tale. Raylan knew it was a short one, so he didn’t let himself get too comfortable.
“Well now, everyone knows in these parts they’ve been shoveling the coal out of every mountain since they figured out how to keep a shaft open long enough for a few men to die in it.” Boyd’s voice was soft, but it carried strength in each word, a force which made it seem like a story worth listening to, instead of the drunken tall tale Raylan had heard his daddy cackle over on a summer night as a boy. “This mountain we sit on was mined out in the late forties, after they carried off every last nugget for the war machine. The story I’m telling though, dates back to the days of Bloody Harlan in the thirties, when picket lines, company thugs, and murder were as much a part of life as they were when Raylan and I were boys, more so even.
“The men who worked this mine lived on the mountain and in the hollers, where the creek winds through, and they would walk to work on the very paths we crossed to get here. It was a small mine, so maybe five or six families lived up here, and the bosses and some others would come in on trucks from the company shanty towns in Loyall or the stucco houses there that they rented to the foremen. In one of the hollers close to the creek--sadly my father never mentioned which one specifically--a man lived with his young wife and baby. The man’s name was Jeffries-- Bucky or Buck Jeffries.”
Here, Raylan interjected, “My daddy always said his name was Jacobs, Hank or something like that.”
“I hardly think it matters at this point, Raylan,” Boyd replied with a smile. The flashlights had long been extinguished but the moon was now high and bright enough to see by.
“I just thought it would be the interest of full disclosure, that there may be some uncertainty or room for debate about the man’s name. You know, for the hunting of his ghost,” Raylan said. “But, go on. You’re doing a real good job.”
“Thank you, Raylan,” Boyd said graciously and continued. “Now, this man Jeffries, his wife had sort of a reputation, before they were married, but he’d knocked her up and he did right by her, or so the story goes. They’d been married not much more than a year when a collapse sent the man back to his home an hour or so early. He was surprised to see a lamp burning inside the house and even more surprised to see his wife in the arms of another man, in their very bed with his own child sleeping nearby.”
“Didn’t see that one coming,” Dean muttered and Sam glared at him. Still, he went on, “Not that this isn’t a great story, Boyd, but I’m just going to go ahead and guess that this Jeffries guy was pretty pissed, there was some kind of fight and he ended up dead. Am I right?”
Boyd’s lips thinned and Raylan wiped a hand across his eyes. He just wanted to get through the night. He decided to have the rest out so Boyd couldn’t drag it along with big words and more gore than Loretta needed to hear.
“Way my daddy tells it, the man was Jeffries’ boss from the mine who was sneaking off early to screw his wife. They had angry words and a hunting rifle was pulled off the wall. There was a struggle and Jeffries was shot in the face. The neighbors were woken by the shot and the baby screaming. They never found the shooter; he disappeared that night. Weeks later, people said the woman went out of her mind and drowned the babe in the bath then hung herself in their little shack. Now, every once in a while someone up here says they saw a ghost light walking the trail after dark. It’s supposed to be Jeffries walking back to his shack from the mine that night, doing it over and over again for all eternity, or something like that.”
He looked over to Boyd with an apologetic expression for finishing off the tale. Boyd just nodded once and fiddled with the iron poker in his hands. Raylan wondered how they’d got there and couldn’t come up with anything but bad karma or God’s ineffable sense of humor.
Loretta shivered next to him and said in a low voice, “That… is a terrible story.”
“They’re all pretty much like that in this business,” Sam replied, just as low.
“My daddy always told it to teach me why a man should keep control of his woman.” Raylan didn’t know exactly why he said that, but Loretta pulled closer to him and Boyd made some unidentifiable noise in response before pulling himself off the ground.
The brothers got up as well and Dean began rechecking their gear as Sam said, “Well, I guess it would be safe to say Jeffries isn’t a fan of… what, adulterers?”
All eyes fell to Raylan immediately.
“You screwed another man’s wife?” Dean asked and there was a challenge in his voice, but no emotion in his eyes.
Boyd stepped forward suddenly, thrusting the poker in his friend’s face. To Dean’s credit, he didn’t back up much, practically daring Boyd to push forward. But Boyd’s words held that soft and dangerous tone that Raylan had learned to be wary of as he said, “You watch your language in front of this child, Dean Winchester, and you refrain from judging this man. You don’t know him and you don’t know his circumstances. Raylan would not even be on this mountain to be condemned by you if he was less than fully committed to his duties as a lawman and as protector of this county and the great goddamn State of Kentucky. So you just hold your tongue on what you think of his personal choices and tell us how we can get rid of this spirit and out of these woods so I never have to see you or any other member of your bad luck family again.”
Raylan and Loretta had pulled themselves to their feet as Boyd finished speaking and everyone was now standing in the light of the moon eyeing each other carefully.
“Damn, Boyd,” Dean said, his gravelly voice hushed, “tell me how you really feel.”
Loretta snorted contemptuously and raised her eyebrows at Sam. “Your brother doesn’t know when to quit.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, a put upon look on his face and a warning in his tone, “he’s in top freaking form today, that’s for sure.”
Raylan stepped forward and pushed the poker down, away from Dean’s face. “To be fair,” he said, looking at the hunter, “She was my wife first, all right?” He cast a sideways glance at Boyd, who backed off immediately, but did not look chastised at all.
“I’m not sure this guy cares too much about that, Marshal,” Dean replied, still injecting every word with irony.
“I don’t care what he thinks,” Raylan returned with a significant “screw you” look.
“All right, then,” Sam said with a note of finality. “Where would they have buried the bones?”
“Next to the shack,” Boyd answered. “People ‘round here like to keep their kin close, even the ones who have passed on.”
Raylan nodded in mute agreement then looked over to the trail where they’d seen the light. He felt the world narrow around him. He thought he saw a flash of light off in the distance, but it disappeared quickly and he blinked rapidly, trying to catch it again. “We’ll have to walk it to get there.” He didn’t recognize the tone in his voice and he was cold again. Real cold.
“Raylan,” Boyd said quietly, moving up next to him. “How about you let me take that?” He cast his eyes down at the gun in Raylan’s hands and held out the iron. “Trade you?”
Raylan thought about his fingers shaking on the trigger of his service weapon and spat, “Shit,” then handed the shotgun over to Boyd. He felt a shiver pass through him, up and down his spine. “Fine, it’s fine,” he said and was sure they all knew he was talking to himself. “Let’s just get to burning the son of a bitch.”
They set off in a line towards the path the light had travelled down, Dean first, then Raylan and Loretta, followed by Boyd with Sam bringing up the rear. The path was illuminated only by their flashlights, as the moon had retreated behind the thick canopy above them. It seemed as though they were walking through a dark tunnel, with nothing but black on either side. The only reason Raylan wasn’t taken back to working in the mine was the fresh air and the side of the path.
He was actually reminded of his armed hike through the jungle in Nicaragua, except for the extreme cold instead of heat. Then he felt really weird about the thought and tried to dismiss it almost immediately, except he couldn’t shake it and every other second he thought he saw that goddamn ghost light in the trees ahead. He knew at least Boyd saw how twitchy he was becoming and how hard he was straining to keep it reined in.
But it was Loretta who pushed herself ahead, coming up next to him and looping her arms through one of his. He looked down and into her shadowed brown eyes. “I’m sorry about this, honey.”
“Shut up, Raylan,” she said and her lips quirked bravely. “It’s gonna be fine, okay?”
He smiled. “Yeah, until I have to explain this to Jenny, and Winona for that matter. Shit.”
She laughed. “We’ll think of something.”
Raylan was about to say something else, but suddenly the air around him turned cold, so cold that he felt all his muscles grow stiff. He dropped the iron poker and heard it clang to the ground and the light didn’t just suddenly appear in front of him, it advanced at him rapidly, within a second, pushing him back and down to the ground with a great force. He felt that same icy grip at his throat.
He heard Loretta shout his name again, but he was lost to everything except the ghostly figure of a man in mining coveralls, bending over him. Jeffries’ face was half gone, bloody and oozing, but his eyes were as yellow and ghostly as the light he carried, suffusing Raylan’s vision, seeming to be in the very air. He breathed it in short gasps into his lungs and it smelled of sulfur and coal dust.
There was a roaring in Raylan’s ears, but it seemed to come from behind him, and underneath the sound, he swore, he could hear Jeffries speaking to him, lowly threatening pain and death upon him and all his family for what he had done.
Something shifted in Raylan, settled in and he found himself answering back in a rush of anger and hatred that he couldn’t stop himself from embracing, “Screw you, asshole, and hell no, I am not sorry.” He seized the strength, from God knew where, to push back against that force and turn the tables on him, pinning a body to the ground, seeing that horrific face draw back in surprise. He smiled then, cruelly, and pulled up high to choke the bastard. “She was good,” Raylan heard himself spit, “she was real goddamn good with her sweet little mouth on my--”
He broke off because someone pulled him backward by the goddamn collar, he fought it, cursing again and straining against it, but then the iron was shoved into his hands and his vision cleared, his head cleared, too. Shit.
Boyd was looking at him from across the path, lying prone with angry red marks in stripes like fingers across his neck, wheezing and eyes more than terrified. . “Raylan,” he said, voice rough, “are you with us?”
Dean was directing his flashlight hard at Raylan’s face and Boyd’s had fallen to the ground, pointing down at his legs and only dimly illuminating his expression. Next to Boyd, Loretta had pushed herself back up against a tree trunk and her arms were wrapped around her knees. He didn’t see tears, but her eyes were wide and frightened. Sam had a hand on her shoulder. It must have been Dean who pulled him away.
“Oh, God,” Raylan choked. He felt cold again, but clammy with fear sweat and horror, his heart was pounding, his hands shaking again. Something had been inside him, in his head, and eyes, putting those filthy words in his mouth. He turned and retched what little was in his stomach out into the dirt and the leaves off the path, still clutching hard at the iron.
“Raylan,” Loretta said, worry threading the tremor of fear in her voice.
He didn’t say he was okay. He wasn’t going to voice such a bald-faced lie. “I’m here,” was all he could think to give her as he tried to pull himself back together, spitting out the remaining bile and wiping at his mouth. He stayed on the ground though; the prospect of standing at that point was an entirely different story.
“What kind of God--” Boyd began, his eyes now distant and still fearful, but Raylan shifted forward suddenly, snapping everyone’s attention back to him.
“No,” he said to Boyd, raising a finger and pointing it at him. “We are not starting in with your messed up views on God and religion, Boyd. Whatever they happen to be lately, I don’t really care. You can think about it later. Tonight, I think we got another body to burn.”
“Shit,” Loretta swore and Raylan didn’t even think to stop her.
Sam stepped away and Dean came around to face Raylan. “So that was a possession, right? Because to me, it looked like a textbook possession. It was the other guy who jumped your bones. The one who ‘disappeared’,” Dean said, complete with air quotes.
“Dean,” Sam warned again, “come on, you don’t have to be a dick about it.”
Raylan decided to make his legs work so he didn’t have to look at Dean Winchester standing over him with that smug-as-hell expression on his face. He got up a little unsteadily, but glared at Sam until the boy put his hand, raised in some misguided attempt to help, down at his side. He walked slowly over to where Boyd and Loretta were still sitting. He kept the poker in his hand, and bent to scoop his hat off the ground, but did not put it back on right away.
Boyd eyed him not too warily and Raylan was reminded of the night they became friends, though lately he’d tried hard not to think of those times. They’d accidentally started an argument, just about some random fact or other, at the puddle in Cumberland. The disagreement ended up spreading to the entire clientele and concluded in a bar brawl, spilling out into the warm summer night. Raylan had looked at Boyd over the pile of miners and outlaws climbing all over each other, shouting and throwing punches, and he said, “You wanna get out of here?”
When he squatted down to meet Boyd’s eyes now and asked that same question, a grin identical to the one Raylan had witnessed over twenty years before, spread across his friend’s face as he replied, “You got any place in particular in mind, Raylan?”
“Anywhere but here still seems pretty appropriate,” Raylan said and extended his hand, grasping Boyd’s and pulling him to his feet.
“That it does,” Boyd said, brushing the leaves from his pants.
Loretta pushed herself to her feet as well, hurtling at Raylan and wrapping her arms around his waist. Boyd looked at him with a curious expression, perhaps asking something along the lines of since-when-do-things-like-this-happen-to you? Raylan didn’t bother to try and form an answer as he drew his fingers through the girl’s hair in an effort to soothe her. How should he know how it happened?
“Okay,” Dean said, drawing out the word and pointing his flashlight down the path. “We’re gonna get going, then? I mean, we do want to kill these two bastards before the sun comes up, right?” He looked at them expectantly and it was all Raylan could do not to hit him in his stupid face.
“You,” Raylan said, pointing a finger at the boy, “don’t get to talk to me anymore. Unless it’s life and death important.” He switched his gaze over to Sam, who was busy picking up his bag and looking sheepish. “You’re in charge of that.”
He gripped the iron poker extra hard and wished for the shotgun. Then he froze, reaching for his sidearm, still stuck fast in its holster. If he had thought before, with Boyd... he shook his head not wanting to think about it.
Raylan pulled the weapon out and turned to Loretta, holding it out to her by the barrel. “I know someone has taught you how to use one of these,” he said and she nodded slowly, her eyes still real big. “I’m gonna give this to you, because I don’t want it on me, all right? But you don’t use it unless one of them,” he indicated Boyd, Sam, and Dean, who all looked significantly disturbed, “says you should. I’m not to be trusted. You got that?”
“Okay, Raylan,” she answered in a small voice, but still tough, still her. She took the gun, checked the mag, slid the safety off and back on and slipped it into her pocket.
He smiled and put his hat back on. “Good girl,” he said and they walked on.
On to Part 2...