Fool for Lesser Things (4/5)
4:Sasquatch
Dean spent the first several hours of the drive to Idaho staring at Sam, his fingers running up and down the curl of his goatee. It would have been disconcerting even if Dean's eyes hadn't gone all freaky. Just outside Rapid City, Sam had enough.
"What?" Sam didn't turn his eyes from the road. He didn't need to. He could feel Dean's stare like it was stabbing him in the cheek.
Dean didn't answer for several moments, and when Sam chanced a glance, his brother was still staring at him. Another mile went by under the tires before Dean spoke.
"You feeling okay?"
Sam sighed. The question still raised an instinctive bolt of rage and fear in him, left over from the days that the brothers had been distant, that Sam had tried to keep everything he was doing -- everything he had to do to save Dean, kill the demons, save the world -- under wraps. It was easier now to squash that rage, keep it from bubbling out his throat at his brother, but the fear, that lingered. "I'm fine. Why?"
He felt more than saw Dean turn his eyes back towards the windshield and relaxed. Then Dean looked back, and Sam's cheek spasmed. "You sure?" Dean asked. "Not aching or itching or anything?"
Sam frowned, unable to grasp where Dean was going with his questioning. "I'm sure." He took a breath, remembering the promise of full disclosure and honesty he'd made to himself after they'd managed to stop the apocalypse. Dean might still like to hide things until they got to big -- like, say, growing hooves -- but Sam wanted to be past that. "I'm freaked about what's happening, but that's it."
Dean sighed. He hadn't started gnawing on the seat belt or anything else in the car, yet, hadn't had anything to eat in fact since they'd left Bobby's. Sam thought four stomachs and braced himself.
"I'm turning into a satyr," Dean said, startling in both his bluntness and his use of the proper name for his new form. "Hell, pretty sure it isn't even 'turning into' anymore. That guy in Maine went all billdad and sank to the bottom of a lake. Bobby's becoming the crazy hermit king of his own damned enchanted forest." Dean tilted his head, bringing the curving tip of his ever growing horns into Sam's peripheral vision. "So why the hell aren't you turning into a literal sasquatch or something?"
Sam blinked.
He hadn't thought of that.
No, seriously. It hadn't even occurred to him that he should watching for a transformation of his own. Not into a sasquatch, maybe -- Sam didn't think he was all that tall, not anything like a sasquatch at all, not like Dean was sort of satyr-like even before his legs went furry, or how Bobby had always been kind of crazed-hermit-king-ish deep down. He had a sudden mental image of himself turning into a red rubber playground ball, like he'd imagined all those years before, and shuddered. "I don't know. Maybe it's something you and Bobby and that other guy have done that I haven't."
"Or maybe," Dean said, and Sam could hear the way his smirk altered the shape of his words. "You're just already too much of a freak."
As far as tension breakers went, it was a pretty lame one. But Sam had learned to take the breaks where they came from, lame or not, and let out a short laugh. "Takes one to know one, man."
Dean shifted in the passenger seat, rearranging his legs in a way he never had to, before. Sam sympathized. For all that she was larger than some of the more contemporary sedans, the Impala just wasn't built to hold a guy Sam's height -- or one with Dean's unique anatomy. "Yeah," Dean said. "Guess it does."
* * *
By silent, mutual agreement, they stopped only for gas, getting in their bathroom and coffee breaks at the stations, and those as quickly as they could manage. Both of them were tired of the mystery hounding them, were anxious to get to Jo and maybe get some answers. The late hour meant that most of the places they stopped were virtually deserted, and most of the people they ran into at those stops were older men and women, exhausted and worn down by long hours on the road or boring graveyard shifts behind the counter. They'd made it most of the way to Gillette before they ran into a young woman, dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tight tank-top, out alone in the middle of the night for reasons known only to herself. Sam might not have noticed her at all, leaning against a dark minivan smoking a cigarette, if Dean hadn't jerked upright in his seat, eyes wide and eager. If his ears had transformed as much as the rest of him had, Sam would swear they'd be pricked forward.
"Dean?"
Dean sighed, his whole body listing in the girl's direction, his hand groping blindly for the door handle that he'd known the exact location of for years. "Sammy," he said, his voice soft and awed. "Sammy, I'm in love."
And then he was out the door, legs flexing and stretching in ways that made it obvious he wasn't entirely human even through the jeans Sam had insisted he wear. His hooves struck against the ground sharply enough to raise faint sparks as he made his way towards the girl, and Sam set out behind him after only a brief, shocked pause, certain he'd have to physically restrain his brother from doing something unspeakable that he'd regret to the end of his days, once he was back to normal.
He skidded to a stop a good five feet back from the minivan when, instead of latching himself onto the girl to have his way with her, Dean instead dropped into a crouch at her feet, his head turned upward to gaze at her.
The girl had frozen mid-drag and was staring back in mute shock. Sam knew how she felt.
"I love you," Dean breathed, his hands braced by the toes of her sandals, fingers splayed wide across the asphalt. The girl blinked and let out a cloud of smoke in Dean's face. He closed his eyes and breathed it in like it was the steam rising from a well-cooked steak.
"Um," said the girl. "What?"
At least she wasn't screaming in terror.
Sam jerked into motion, grabbing the back of Dean's shirt and yanking, pulling his brother off balance and away from the girl. Dean stumbled to his feet, pulling just a little against Sam's hold, but allowed himself to be dragged away.
"We could make beautiful music together!" Dean called, just before Sam pushed him back into the car, locking the door behind him. The girl's eyes flicked between the two brothers and her cigarette, the whites around her irises clearly visible in the bright light of the gas station. Sam flashed her a weak grin.
"Sorry," he said. "He's, uh." He couldn't come up with a decent excuse in the face of her confusion, so he just said "Sorry" again, and thanked whomever might be listening to a Winchester's silent prayers that Dean hadn't spotted the woman until after they'd filled the Impala's gas tank. He got into the car and threw it into gear, peeling away from the gas station as fast as was even remotely safe, leaving the girl behind to ponder if someone had managed to sneak a hallucinogen into her smoke.
* * *
Dean fell in love four more times by the time they reached Idaho, with women tall and short, lean and curvy, scantily-clad and fully covered. One of them even appeared to have braces. After the second one, Sam managed to keep Dean from running at them, but all of them left Dean moaning, pining, and breathless for as long as it took to get the gas stations they were at out of sight.
At which point, Dean seemed to forget the incident ever even happened.
As they drove, Sam tried to picture each of the women in his head, tried to figure out what they might have had in common to garner such a reaction from his brother the satyr. Dean had always had a thing for beautiful women, of course, and the women he was professing his undying devotion to when they stopped to fill up were all beautiful in their own way, maybe not supermodel quality, but enough to be distinct, to turn a guy's head. They were all young, too, early- to mid-twenties, the oldest being maybe 27. Despite the late -- well, more like early, now, with the sun starting to edge its way over the horizon -- hour, all of them had looked wide-awake and full of energy.
Sam thought of the fact that they were on this drive to try and meet up with a young, pretty, bouncy blond girl, and started making plans on how to keep Dean's burgeoning surprisingly platonic girl-worship in check.
As it turned out, he didn't need to. He ought to have known. Jo was more than capable of handling Dean by herself.
All it took was one look at Dean's new look, the way he seemed to prance as he loped towards her over the rough, woodsy lawn of the cabin Jo had taken residence in, and Jo had doubled over laughing. Dean was so affronted by the reaction that his righteous indignation completely over-powered his puppy-love, and he grimaced, biting out a command for her to "laugh it up, Blondie," and everything was back to as normal as it could be, given the circumstances.
There was another advantage to Dean's behavior and Jo's reaction to it: Sam hadn't seen Jo since he was possessed by Meg, but three years of distance and Jo's continuing mirth dispelled any awkwardness they might have had between them better than any stammered apology from Sam could have.
Not that that meant he didn't stammer an apology. Jo waved it off with an easy gesture of her hand. She'd matured over the years, looking less like a goofy college girl and more like a young woman. Her hair was held back in a loose ponytail, her body neatly muscled, her arms tanned, buff, and flecked with light scratches. Her eyes zeroed in on the axe Sam held to his chest.
"How did you know?" She grinned at him, holding her hand out, palm up. "Did Mom tell you? That's so thoughtful!"
Sam blinked. He glanced at Dean. Dean, still pouting over Jo's laughter, looked back and shrugged. Sam looked down at the axe, then at Jo's hand, then finally held the axe out for her to take. She weighed it in her hands, nodded, then turned her head to look over her shoulder towards the back of the cabin and whistled sharply.
"Rex! Snack!"
Sam opened his mouth, but before he could ask, a tall, strangely shaped dog came trotting out from behind the cabin, tongue dangling and tail wagging. Jo hefted the axe again, then, before Dean or Sam could protest, gave it a light underhanded toss to the dog, who popped up on its hind legs and caught it in its mouth before dropping to the ground to attack the handle like it was a bone.
Sam tried to think of something to say. Dean made an injured noise in the back of his throat. Jo grinned from ear to ear. "Rex says thanks."
"Rex" was the weirdest dog Sam had ever seen -- and in his line of work, that was saying something. He was whip-thin, almost literally, his torso only about an inch thicker in diameter than the axe handle itself, his hips and shoulders jutting out from his body at exaggerated angles. His tail was short and pointed, and his ears flopped along his narrow face.
And that face. . . . It was almost too bizarre to look at. Depending on the angle -- and Sam got to witness several, thanks to the way Rex turned his head this way and that as he gnawed on the axe -- the dog's head was long and skinny or broad and wide. The line from his nose to his chin was exaggerated and pointed, spanning several inches, much longer than the back of his skull. The top of his head was knobby and a little bony looking under his short brown fur, and the sides of his face were almost completely flat, even where Sam was certain he should be able to see the curve of the animal's jaw bone.
In fact, all told, Rex looked like an axe with legs.
"Dude," Dean said at length. "That is the freakiest looking dog I've ever seen." He frowned, jaw tightening. "Well. Other than hell hounds."
Jo backhanded him in the arm. "Don't talk about Rex like that! He's a sweetheart!"
"He's an axe with legs," Sam said. It was the only thing he could think of.
Jo nodded. "I know. Almost a perfect example of his breed. His tail is a little short."
"Ah," Sam said. "And, uh. What breed is that?"
Jo raised an eyebrow. She might look looser, more casual than she ever had back at the Roadhouse or in Duluth, when she was trying so hard to prove to the world that she was grown up and capable, but that practiced, scathing look was as pointed as ever. "He's an axe-handle hound."
Sam looked at Rex again, surprised to see that the dog had managed to almost completely decimate the handle of the axe already. The blade was still untouched.
Dean tilted his head. "Pardon?"
Jo rolled her eyes. "An axe-handle hound. Don't tell me you came all the way out here -- with an axe -- and didn't know about axe-handle hounds?"
Sam glanced at Dean in time to catch his sidelong look in return. "Okay," Dean said. "We won't tell you that."
Sam shrugged. "I think at this point, it's kind of implied."
Jo shook her head. "You two are hopeless." She turned, whistling to Rex again, and started for the door of the cabin. "Come on inside. Looks like we've got some catching up to do."
* * *
Jo, it seemed, had come to an agreement with her mother regarding hunting because she wasn't hunting. She wasn't even "not technically hunting", as Dean tried to put it, she was actually actively not hunting. Which, of course, begged the question: what the hell was she doing in Idaho?
"Got something up in these woods," she told them as she poured some water into an ancient coffee maker. The cabin's interior was made up of two rooms: the bathroom, which was tucked into the corner and looked like it might not be much more than a glorified out-house, and the main room, which included a kitchen area, a living room, and a small loft just big enough for a full-sized mattress. Jo was renting the place -- "All totally above the table," as she put it -- from a yuppie-hippie couple who had decided to spend their summer traveling cross-country instead of getting down and dirty in their little castle-in-the-woods, thanks, it seemed, to reports of a bear problem in the area. "Thought it might be a wendigo too far west, like you guys found in Colorado. Now I'm thinking it's probably a hide-behind, or maybe even Bigfoot."
"First off," Dean said, leaning his elbows on the small, round table that separated the kitchen from the living room, "there's no such thing as Bigfoot. Secondly, how is that not hunting?"
Jo rolled her eyes, rubbing the back of Rex's head with the side of her foot as she leaned against the kitchen counter, a can of cheap coffee in her hand. "I'm not going to kill it. That's how."
"Why the hell not?!"
Jo's lips pursed, and she spent a long moment looking Dean up and down without saying a word. Sam frowned, following her gaze, and tried to make out what she was getting at. His eyes widened.
"You think that this," he stabbed a finger in Dean's direction. "Is the result of hunting?"
Jo smiled. "Well, what do you know, Sam? You really are the smart one."
Dean grunted indignantly and Sam shook his head. "How does that even work?"
Jo shrugged. "I don't know the whole story, just the general gist, and even that's mostly theory. But, well, I don't know if you guys know this, but I used to be a college girl."
Dean grunted again, wrinkling his nose like Rex had done something nasty on the floor. Sam elbowed him in the arm. Jo just smiled and shook her head.
"I know, I know. But Mom insisted. Now, I only went for a year, but my school had a huge environmental studies program, and my roommate was all into it. Wanted to be just like Julie of the Wolves or something."
"That's great," Dean said, expression blank. "What's your point?"
"If you stopped interrupting me, dumb ass, you might find that out." Jo turned her back to the brothers, taking a few moments to rattle things around in and around the coffeemaker before turning back. "I'm saying I learned a thing or two about environmental theory while I was there. Which is how I recognized what's been going on in the world." She paused, looking at Sam and Dean. Sam looked back. Dean scratched at the base of his left horn.
After a few moments, the silence started to get awkward, and Jo's mouth tightened to a narrow line. "Well?"
Dean coughed. Sam shrugged. "Well what?"
"I figured you guys were gonna interrupt me again."
Sam looked at Dean. Dean looked back. "I wasn't going to interrupt her. Were you gonna interrupt her, Sam?"
"Nope, I wasn't going to interrupt her either. It would be rude."
"Completely."
Jo groaned. "I have no idea how Bobby hasn't shot either of you, yet." She hopped up onto the counter next to the coffee machine.
"It's because we're awesome," Dean said with a smirk. "So, environmental theory?"
Jo nodded. "Like endangered species and ecosystems and things." She raised her hands. "Now, I don't know all the technical terms, I only took the 101 class, and that was years ago. But still. When a species is endangered or extinct, it changes things. Like the deer population exploding. A lot of their natural predators have been eliminated, more deer are surviving, leading to less room and food for the deer in their natural habitats. They start moving territory, invading people's spaces, eating crops, all that. Same thing happens when you introduce a non-native species to the wild, like the snakehead fish in the Chesapeake Bay, or the cane toads in Australia. Everything gets whacked out of balance, and if it goes on long enough, strange things start to happen."
She paused again, and rather than let it get awkward, Sam filled in the gap. "Exploding deer populations made Dean go all satyr?"
Jo shook her head. "No, but that would be hilarious." She grinned and shot Dean a wink. Dean scowled. "The natural world exists in a balance, predators and prey. When you eliminate or overpopulate one, it messes up the whole system, sending things into chaos. But the natural world also has a way of trying to patch up things on its own, though a lot of times, it can't work fast enough to make up for the damage that humans are doing to it. Think about the frogs that can spontaneously change sexes if there's too many of one type around for proper breeding."
"Like Jurassic Park," Dean said. "Man, I'd love to hunt down a raptor."
Sam pressed his lips together. "And get eaten. Yeah, that'd be great, Dean."
"I'm just saying."
"Yeah," Jo said, hopping on the tail end of Dean's statement, apparently no more eager to hear all about how Dean would go about hunting a raptor than Sam was. "Like that. So the natural world has a balance and tricks to maintain it. What if the supernatural world works the same way?"
Sam jerked upright as the logical path Jo was following appeared in his mind's eye. Dean looked nonplussed.
"Well, yeah," he said. "Demonic dicks show up to try to end the world, so angelic dicks show up to stop them. We already know that."
Jo nodded, though a brief flash of confusion and surprise crossed her face at the mention of angels. Sam realized that, in the course of the last year, he and Dean might have been remiss in getting the word out about what exactly had gone down. Or about angels at all.
Or maybe they hadn't been remiss. There had to have been a reason why the angels had been kept on such a down-low in the hunting community as a real thing all of those years. Perhaps there was more to it than simply a long absence and hard-earned cynicism. Sam leaned back in his chair, his mind going a mile a minute, as Jo continued to explain her theory.
"Right, like that, I guess. But I mean more on a, I don't know, ecological level? Think about it: we haven't even heard from any demons in the last year. Everyone in the hunting community has turned to hunting different things, the more physical and wild creatures, like werewolves and vampires and wendigoes and stuff. What if all that hunting is shifting the balance? What if we're killing off creatures that are actually vital to the supernatural ecosystem?"
Dean leaned forward, looking angry. "Oh, so, what, now we're just supposed to let evil shit kill people? This stuff isn't natural, Jo, it's not supposed to be here."
Jo crossed her arms over her chest and opened her mouth, but Sam got there first.
"I'm part demon," he pointed out, pitching his voice low. "Do I need to be killed?"
Dean's mouth snapped shut, even as Jo swiveled her head from staring at Dean to stare at Sam, her mouth dropping further open as her eyes widened.
Right, that was the part of everything that had gone down that Sam didn't regret not getting out to the hunting community at large.
"That's different."
Sam shook his head. "Uriel was an angel. And he did need to be killed."
"Uriel was a jackass. These things aren't natural," Dean said again, stressing his point by slapping his palms down on the table. "They're killing people!"
"All of them?" That was Jo. She uncrossed one of her arms to point down to where Rex was on the floor, finishing off the last of his axe handle. "Rex isn't natural. He feeds on axe handles. Not sticks, not wood, axe handles. He's not killing people. Does he deserve to be killed?"
Dean opened his mouth, one hand coming up to point. Then he closed it and looked down at the dog.
"Or Lenore and her group," Sam added. "You let them live. Beat the hell out of Gordon for wanting to do anything different."
Dean closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead, and Jo tossed in one last argument.
"You're not exactly natural yourself any more, Dean. Can't even pretend to be, with those horns. You saying we should be putting you down, too?"
Dean's shoulders came up, his head dropping low, his jaw clenched hard. "Fine. I get it. But some things still need to be killed."
Jo shrugged. "If a bear attacks people, it gets put down. But if it's just being a bear. . . ."
Sam shook his head. "That kind of makes sense, Jo, but hunting a bear doesn't turn you into a moose."
"Bears and moose are part of the natural world, though. We're talking about the supernatural world. The natural world has ways of fixing the balance. What if the supernatural one does, too? Only the supernatural one works a lot faster?"
Dean leaned forward, pressing his palms into his eyes. "That's insane."
Jo didn't seem to take offense. "You're half-goat."
She had a point. Still. "We've been hunting our whole lives. You've been around hunters for your whole life. Why would we just be noticing this now?"
Jo pushed herself down from the counter and rummaged through the cabinets for a some mugs. "Maybe thing are only getting unbalanced this way now. Like I said, without any demons around, hunters have been going after the corporeal stuff." She pulled out the now full coffee pot and started pouring. "The way I see it, and again, I'm not exactly a professional with this ecology stuff, or the magic stuff, for that matter, there's probably a certain amount of magical energy or what-have-you floating around in the world. When magical creatures get killed, that energy has to go somewhere. A couple things here or there, and the energy could just kinda . . . disperse or something. But with the number of creatures that are getting killed these days, more energy is building up." She handed Sam and Dean their mugs and went to pull a carton of half and half from the small refrigerator. "My guess is, you guys killed something big right before this all started, right?"
Dean perked up at the sight of the coffee, but paused before taking his first sip. "The Snallygaster."
"Ew, that snake thing in Florida?"
"Dragon thing in Maryland."
"Something that size must have released a shitload of energy. And you got hit with most of it. And I'm betting you didn't exactly slow down, either."
Sam thought back over the last couple of weeks and shook his head. "There was a hodag, too. And a couple other things." He looked at Dean. "Come to think of it, it was after the hodag that this really sped up." He looked back at Jo. "But I was there, too. Why haven't I been changing?"
"How the hell should I know?" Jo shrugged. "Who did the actual killing? Was it Dean?"
Dean nodded. "On the Snallygaster and hodag, yeah. But Sam got some of the other stuff."
"Huh." Jo spent a few moments stirring her coffee. "I dunno, then. But maybe it's the whole 'half-demon' thing." She gave Sam a pointed look. "You're already full up on magical weirdness, so it skipped you."
Well now. Wasn't Sam just lucky.
"Right," Dean said, setting his mug down on the table. "So how do we fix it?"
Jo bit her lip and looked askance. Sam watched the color drain from Dean's face.
"We can fix it, right?"
Jo seemed to find her coffee fascinating.
"Jo." Dean's voice was hard, dangerous. Sam winced. So did Jo.
"If it's like I think, with the ecology and everything. . . ." She trailed off with a helpless shrug. "I'm not sure we can fix it. We can't bring dodos back to life or fix the hole in the ozone layer, either."
"So I'm stuck like this?!" Dean gestured to his horns, face wide open and vulnerable in a way that Sam almost never saw around other people. He looked between Jo, who was still staring into her coffee looking miserable, and Sam, who couldn't think of anything to do other than shrug. "What the hell am I supposed to do?"
* * *
Jo didn't have the answers. She couldn't prove her theory -- though Sam was pretty sure she was right, what with Chuck sending him and Dean out her way and everything -- and she couldn't tell Dean there was some sort of magical cure. All she had was Rex, a remote cabin, a head full of environmentalist propaganda and ideas, and a non-hunt for Bigfoot.
Bigfoot, which wasn't supposed to exist. Though who knew, now? Maybe some hunter had taken out something that really was lurking in the woods, and found himself giant, hairy, and seriously pissed off as a result.
If that was the case, there was a possibility that the creature could be reasoned with, that they could get it to back off the killings without having to put it down. That was what Jo was there for, she said, that and to try and warn off the handful of hunters that had shown up to try and take it out the old fashioned way.
So after spending the morning resting up in the cabin, Jo, Sam, Dean and Rex all set out into the woods of Idaho on the trail of a possible sasquatch. Dean had stripped off his jeans again, complaining that he didn't want to deal with sweaty fur, though the Idaho summer wasn't what Sam would call hot, exactly. He'd taken off his shorts, too, saying that they were squashing his tail, leaving him dressed only in a gray t-shirt and his green button down. Jo raised an eyebrow at the sight of Dean pantless, but didn't say anything. Sam decided against arguing -- it wasn't like Dean was exposing himself or anything. The fur on his lower half had grown thick enough that nothing was left swinging in the breeze. In fact, Dean and Rex almost matched.
Dean's hooves were also, it seemed, well suited to the forest environment, and he soon outpaced both Sam and Jo, despite Sam's long legs and Jo's experience with these particular woods. After walking several yards with his gun in hand, though, Dean paused to take off his over shirt, wrapping it instead around his waist so he had something to tuck the weapon into. The shirt was soon catching on branches left and right, leaving bits of shredded fabric dangling off the hem around Dean's hips, and setting off little warning bells in Sam's head, though he couldn't quite place why.
Sam was armed as well, and though Jo had said that this was pretty much just a recon mission, she still had her own rifle with her. She might not be actively hunting, she said, but she also sure as hell wasn't stupid. There was something in the woods attacking people, and if she couldn't talk it down, she wasn't going to let fear of turning out like Dean stop her from protecting herself.
Sam wondered if Jo had told her mother all about her plan to "reason with Bigfoot". And if she had, how she'd convinced Ellen not to lock her in the basement until someone could talk some sense into her. Sure, he understood Jo's reasoning, and even kind of thought he might agree with it. But he also had the word of a guy he knew for a fact was a true prophet that Jo would have the answers to the weird stuff that had been going on in his and Dean's lives of late. He wondered how Bobby would react when he heard that his wild man look and new magic tree farm were because he'd been hunting. Well, at least Bobby's basement had a nice panic room, assuming the magic tree roots hadn't managed to take over that, as well.
They'd been hiking for several hours, and Sam was starting to feel the burn of the unaccustomed exercise, when Dean, still looking fresh thanks to the ease with which his goat legs handled the terrain, paused and dropped into a crouch. Jo jogged forward, Rex at her heels, and Sam readjusted the pack on his shoulder and took up the rear.
"Did you find a print?"
Dean nodded, tracing over the ground with one finger. "Not Biggie's though. These size tens are definitely not his style." Sam got close enough to see the impression Dean was examining. Sure enough, he could make out the faint pattern of a boot sole in the dirt.
"Hunters," he guessed. "Or hikers."
"If they're hikers, they're total idiots." Jo shook her head. "The park service has this whole area on alert thanks to the killings. Not enough to close anything down, yet, but enough that they're 'strongly recommending' that people find another place to hang out."
"So most likely hunters."
Dean shifted a couple feet to his left without straightening up. "Definitely hunters," he said. He reached into a tangle of grass and pulled out a shell casing, holding it up to the light. After a moment, he brought it up to about an inch from his nose. "Specialized rounds, too. I'm guessing they're not out here for big game."
Sam frowned. "You can smell that?"
Dean gave him a look and tossed the shell casing at him. "It's inscribed, dumbass."
Sam held the casing up, bringing it close to his own face to get a good look. ". . . Oh."
Jo moved a couple paces beyond Dean, scanning the area. "Any idea how long ago they were here?"
"What do I look like, a professional tracker?" Dean shook his head. "I'm good, but I'm not that good." He looked at Rex. "How 'bout axe-face there earns his keep? Since he might be eating some of our weapons."
"Don't call my dog 'axe-face'," Jo scolded, then raised a hand toward Rex. "Hey, boy, can you get a scent?"
Rex looked up at her and wagged his tail.
A hunting dog he was not.
Sam tucked the shell casing into his pocket and turned in place, scanning the trees, looking for some sign of where the other hunters had gone. Jo and Rex started down the path. He heard Dean shift behind him, then curse, and turned back. Dean had caught his shirt on another branch, tugging it loose as he stood and dropping his pistol to the ground. He glowered at the shirt, then lifted his chin in Sam's direction. "Dude, bag."
Sam handed him the equipment bag. "I didn't bring any holsters."
"I know." Dean opened the bag, digging through it for a moment before pulling out a sheathed knife. He made quick work of shredding the rest of his shirt, then twisting the shreds into ugly but workable ropes. He wove a couple lengths around his gun, then looped it around his shoulders.
Sam's eyes widened and he sucked in a breath as Dean used the last of his shirt to tie the sheath of the knife to his arm. Dean was still wearing his t-shirt, sure, but the thickness of the fur on his legs, the length of his horns, and most damning of all, that twisted shirt-harness. . . . It was just like in his dream.
The dream where Dean was hunted down like an animal and shot. In the woods. By hunters.
He reached out to grab Dean's arm. "Dude, we gotta go."
Dean shrugged out of his grip, giving him a measuring look. "Are you kidding? It's, like, a four hour hike back to the car."
"Yeah, I know, and if we leave now, we might make it back before sundown --"
Dean was shaking his head. "Dude, I know you don't like camping, but this is a bit much. We've got a job to do, here. Chuck said we needed to work on our karma, right? Well, this is me getting good karma."
"If we stay out here you're going to get killed, Dean!"
"By Biggie? Are you kidding? I could gore him open with one swipe of these horns --" Dean's protest was cut short by the sharp sound of a shotgun going off, causing both him and Sam to duck low. Jo screamed somewhere ahead of them, and Dean didn't even blink, just broke into a run.
A low, loping sort of run, that looked almost more like leaping.
Sam tried to shake the image of Dean's terrified flight through the woods from his head and set off after Dean's fleeting tail. It only took a few moments before they could see Jo, crouched down on the ground next to the still, bloody form of Rex.
They'd found the hunters. Or, rather, the hunters had found them.
Sam put on a burst of speed, stretching his long legs to the limits of his stride to catch up to Dean, grabbing his arm and yanking to bring him down to the ground, just as another shot went off. Dean grunted, thumping to the ground, and Jo whipped around at the sound, searching the trees. Sam pushed at the back of Dean's head, stretching out low across his back as his brother struggled. He noticed with a shock of terror that about four inches of the left horn were missing, the now blunted tip ragged and bleeding sluggishly. Dean groaned low in his throat, and Sam moved to push his head down further, trying to get the horns as out of sight from the hunters as possible.
"Get off me." Dean was barely audible, his face ground into the dirt. "Sam, get --"
"Shut up." Sam ducked around the new end of Dean's horn, wondering if he should try putting pressure on it to stop the bleeding. "They're not shooting at me."
He knew the moment Dean got his point by how still his brother became.
"Fuck."
"Yeah."
Jo jumped up, rifle in hand, and started through the trees towards the direction the shots had come from, her expression pissed beyond measure. "You sons of bitches!" Her voice was shrill and carried well through the woods, though Sam soon lost sight of her. "That was my god damned dog --" She cut off with a sharp cry and Sam closed his eyes, swallowing. Most hunters would settle for restraining her, thinking she was just a hysterical victim, but some, like Gordon, might take her association with a weird ass dog and a goatman the wrong way. He barely let himself breathe again until he heard her demand to be let go, and the crack of a rifle butt striking human flesh. A man's voice cried out this time, and Sam smiled.
Atta girl.
Dean shifted beneath Sam, who struggled to hold him still. He'd never been that good at keeping Dean pinned, though, too many sparring sessions leading to Dean being very familiar with Sam's weight and how to get around it. Dean managed to wriggle an arm free and pressed at Sam's chest. "Go help her."
"Like hell. Jo can handle herself."
"Not arguing." Dean closed his free hand into a fist and thumped it on Sam's chest. He could feel a faint tremble through Dean's arm -- the injury to his horn was that painful. "Go help her. Distract them. I can make a break for it."
"Dean, no."
"I can outrun them, Sam." Sam felt Dean's legs tense, coiling in, ready to spring up at a moment's notice. "I'm practically built for this, right now."
Sam pressed his head to Dean's shoulder and shook it to make sure Dean was aware of the gesture. "There's traps, Dean. You're no good at spotting bear traps."
"You don't know that."
"Yes," Sam said, emphasizing the word by pressing his weight harder into Dean's back. "I do."
Dean froze. "Vision."
Sam nodded, his head still against Dean's shoulder. In the silence that followed the admission, he could hear Jo and the men arguing, maybe twenty or thirty yards off. A good gunman would have no trouble making that shot, even through the trees. If Sam got up, Dean would run. And then Dean would die.
He wasn't going to let that happen.
Trouble was, the voices were getting closer. Not quickly, Jo was doing a decent enough job of delaying them, but quickly enough. If Sam didn't do something soon, Dean would die anyway, without even a chance to run.
If they both ran, Sam would be in as much danger as Dean. And Dean wouldn't allow that. By the way Dean was tensing up beneath him again, Sam had a feeling he was thinking the same things.
"Details," Dean muttered.
"What?"
"Details. I could avoid the trap."
"I can't -- I don't know the exact location. And there could be others."
"Fine. Then I'm going to have to fight."
"Dean --"
"If I don't run or fight, we both die lying here in the dirt."
"Maybe you could talk to them?" Sam offered, though he knew it was a lame attempt. The hunters had shot Jo's dog while it was doing nothing more than traveling with her in a typically dog-like fashion. They probably wouldn't wait long enough for Dean to prove he was intelligent before they shot him.
They were maybe ten yards off, now. Sam could see the white of Jo's tank top through the trees. They were running out of time.
"Sam," Dean said, his voice breathy with realization. "Dude, use your mojo."
"What?"
"Your mind-whammy, Sam, disarm them!"
"I don't know if it even still works, Dean! I haven't exactly been snacking on the demon blood."
"Do you have any other ideas?!"
He didn't. He pressed himself up on his elbows, his body weight still keeping Dean flat, trying to keep him from getting up even as he ducked his head low to the ground and stretched out one hand, palm towards the shape of the hunters, fingers raised to the sky. He tried to make out the hunters' weapons, to visualize the shape and weight of them in space, then wrapped his mind around that shape and yanked.
One of the guns went off, the shot going wild, and the men shouted as their weapons flew from their hands, knocking into trees well out of easy grabbing range. Jo let out a startled noise, then flew into action, kicking and punching at the disarmed men to keep them from scrabbling for the guns. Sam pushed himself to his feet, muttering a quick "Okay, now run," to Dean even as he sprinted towards the fighting figures. He heard Dean get up behind him, pausing for a moment once he was on his feet, and prayed he made a break for it back towards the cabin and the car. They were way too far away for even Dean to run all the way back, but at least that way, they knew there weren't any traps.
Sam recognized the men from his dream as he plowed into them, fists flying. He punched the one who fired the kill shot in his vision and watched the man stagger. The one he figured was the leader got a hand around Sam's arm, tugging him off balance.
He heard a rapid thumping approaching from behind him and prayed it wasn't what he thought it was.
It was. Dean barreled into the lead hunter, his head lowered, nostrils flaring. His broken horn started bleeding in earnest again, but the hunter was no match for the full weight of pissed off satyr and went over backwards with a startled shout. Dean's momentum carried him a few stumbling steps past the man, before he came to a halt, still half bent over, one hand reaching towards his broken horn, a string of curses tripping off his tongue. Sam aimed his open palm at the man who'd fired the kill-shot in his dream, knocking him out with a good, hard mental tap. Dean, still cursing, set his hoof on the leader's chest, just below the hollow of his throat, and stared down at him. Sam stepped up beside him, clenching and flexing his fingers. "What the hell do you think you guys are doing?"
Sam heard Jo whisper a curse, but didn't take his eyes off the hunter under Dean's hoof to look at her. He could feel the power of the demon blood flowing through him along with the adrenaline, and could guess what he looked like.
Why hadn't the wild magic turned him into a wild thing?
He already was one. Hell, the wild magic probably just made him stronger.
The third remaining hunter stood a few feet away, his eyes wide as he stared at Sam and Dean. It was him who answered, since the leader seemed to be having a little bit of trouble getting his brain around words.
"H-he's a goatman," he said. Dean glared. Sam snarled.
"He's my brother, you bastard."
The man's eyes went wider still. "You -- you're Sam and Dean Winchester."
Sam nodded. The man looked like he was about to wet himself.
"Walker was right about you, wasn't he. You're on their side, you're both monsters --" He cut off when Jo kicked him in the crotch.
"Gordon Walker was insane," she said, looming over him as he dropped to the ground. "They're good men. Why don't you try thinking for yourself?"
Sam had always liked and respected Jo, had looked on her as something of a little sister before Duluth and Meg. As much as he'd known, since meeting up with her at the cabin, that she'd forgiven him for his part in what had happened to her, for what he'd told her about their fathers, what Meg had told her and done to her using his body and mouth, he couldn't help the swell of hope, pride, and relief that filled his chest at her words.
And when she spat on the guy? Well, that was just a bonus.
Sam turned his gaze back to the leader, whose face was starting to go red at the pressure of Dean's hoof. "You have no idea what you're messing with out here. You're hunting the sasquatch?"
The man grabbed at Dean's leg, and Dean pressed down harder, making him gag and let go. He coughed out "Wendigo," as his fingers scrabbled at the ground.
Sam wished for a moment that it was his foot on the man's throat. "You know that for sure?"
The man didn't answer for a moment, then shook his head, his hand groping for Dean's leg again, but flopping to the ground when Dean leaned a bit on his hoof.
Sam leaned forward, staring into the man's flushed, purpling face. "You don't mess with what you don't understand. You don't understand what's out here. You didn't understand Jo's dog. You don't understand my brother. You and your buddies are going to leave Idaho. You're going to go find some vengeful spirit or killer vampire gang, and you're not going to go after any more cryptids or creatures unless you know for sure what they are and that they're killing people. You're going to do this not just because I will hunt you down personally and kill you if you don't. You're going to do it because if you don't, you might be the next furry thing some hunter tries to track down and kill."
The man stared at him, confusion and fear in his eyes, then flicked his gaze to Dean. His eyes widened as he grasped what that last part meant.
"Do. You. Understand?"
The man gave a small nod. Sam glanced at Dean, who gave the man's chest a final hard tap with his hoof, then stepped back, allowing the man to curl up on the ground, hands rubbing at his sternum.
"Jo, grab their guns."
Jo stepped back a couple paces from the men, looking from Sam to them and back again before nodding and jogging off to comply. Sam stepped forward, pulling his gun to knock the two conscious hunters out. Dean pulled back one leg as though to kick them, then dropped it back to the ground with a grimace.
"We gonna leave them here?"
There were three men, possibly even good men, on the ground at his feet. Because he had put them there.
He pictured Dean lying dead and broken on the forest floor, a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.
"Yes," he said. He didn't look at Dean as he turned to walk away.
* * *
Dean's knife and gun had been knocked loose when Sam tackled him. Jo was the one who found them, after using Sam's jacket to wrap Rex's body and lifting it up. Dean picked them up off the ground, wiped the dirt off on his t-shirt, then tucked them back into his improvised harness. Sam went for the equipment bag, digging through it for a few moments before pulling out the jar of cayenne pepper he'd added at the last minute. Dean watched him through narrowed eyes, his forehead creased.
"What's that for?"
Sam gestured to Dean's broken horn. "To stop the bleeding. I read about it at Bobby's."
Dean nodded carefully, ducking his head to give Sam access to his horn. "This is gonna suck, isn't it."
Sam shrugged. "I didn't find anything about that. But, yeah. Probably." He hesitated. "Does it hurt?"
Dean grimaced. "Like a son of a bitch. I can feel it down to my sinuses."
Sam remembered the pages upon pages talking about how goat horns ran all the way down into the animal's sinuses, how dangerous breaking a fully developed horn near the base could be. "Sorry man. I didn't pack any pills."
Dean nodded, then held his head very still. "Just do it."
Sam braced one hand on Dean's shoulder, then poured the pepper over the broken tip of the horn. Dean jerked under his grip, but the bleeding quickly stopped. He stepped back, tucking the jar away. "You need a moment?"
Dean pushed past him, aiming down the trail back towards the cabin.
Sam took that as a no. He glanced to Jo, opening his mouth to offer to carry Rex, but she met his eyes with a hard look and he let his jaw snap shut and gestured down the path for her to lead the way.
Dean stopped about two miles down, moving to a fallen tree and leaning over it, looking off into a small clearing. As Sam moved to join him, he turned his head, raising his finger to his mouth to indicate silence. Sam nodded back and stepped quietly up next to him, Jo flanking him on the other side. Dean gestured with his head, though it was unnecessary. Sam immediately saw what had drawn his attention.
A large, hairy shape lay curled up on the grass maybe ten feet away. Its eyes were closed, its face slack in sleep. Sam was surprised Dean had spotted it, though he'd read that the unusual shape of a goat's pupils gave it superior peripheral vision. The hair covering the shape marked it as inhuman, but there was something about the creature's features, barely visible in the fading light of the day, that Sam recognized.
"Is that --"
Dean nodded. "Joshua. Looks like more evidence for your theory, Jo."
Sam swallowed. He didn't know Joshua well, just that he was one of their father's contacts in the hunting community, that he lived alone and reclusive near the Idaho-Canada border, but kept up with the hunting news and provided good information. He was the one who'd told Sam about the faith healer in Nebraska. And if he was anything like Dean, he was still the same man underneath all that fur, and most likely seriously freaked out.
Dean hopped over the log, walking slowly and carefully toward the sleeping figure. He stopped about half way there, hands held loose and open at his sides, horns stretching out in silhouette against the setting sun. In that moment, stripped of humanity by the dying of the light, he presented a dark, terrifying figure, one Sam could see being mistaken for a demon, for something evil. Then he tilted his head, the gesture so inquisitive and innocent that the illusion of evil vanished.
"Hey," he said. "Josh."
The form on the ground twitched, then jumped up, immediately defensive and impossibly tall. Sam's hand twitched towards his gun, but Jo's free hand shooting out to restrain his was unnecessary. He wasn't going to shoot. Not unless Joshua tried to do something to his brother.
Dean held still, save for the tilt of his head as he tracked Joshua's movement. The two men -- two beasts -- stood at a stalemate for a long moment, one giant, looming, and tense, the other relaxed and peaceful.
"Joshua," Dean said again.
The sasquatch tilted his head, looking Dean up and down. "Winchester?" The name was barely recognizable through the growl his voice had become, and it struck Sam that Dean was actually lucky, Bobby even more so. They had both retained some physical measure of their humanity, obvious signs to the world around them that the mind looking out of their altered features was still the same. Sam didn't want to assume that just because Joshua had changed so much on the outside that he wasn't the same on the inside, but with that growling voice and the tense and aggressive nature of his stance, it wasn't easy.
"Yeah, man," Dean said. "'S freaking weird, right?"
The sound that came from Joshua's mouth might have been an angry growl, but the way he sank back on his heels made Sam think it was more of a laugh.
"You're confused," Dean said. "I get that. Oh man, do I ever get that. But we might have some answers for you. Jo's got some theories, and they seem to be adding up."
Joshua's head turned, looking past Dean towards the log where Sam and Jo stood. "Harvelle," he said. Jo raised her hand, shifting the burden of Rex on her shoulder. Joshua nodded, then met Sam's eyes and nodded again.
Yeah. Still the same man.
| Previous | Next |
| Master Post |
Dean spent the first several hours of the drive to Idaho staring at Sam, his fingers running up and down the curl of his goatee. It would have been disconcerting even if Dean's eyes hadn't gone all freaky. Just outside Rapid City, Sam had enough.
"What?" Sam didn't turn his eyes from the road. He didn't need to. He could feel Dean's stare like it was stabbing him in the cheek.
Dean didn't answer for several moments, and when Sam chanced a glance, his brother was still staring at him. Another mile went by under the tires before Dean spoke.
"You feeling okay?"
Sam sighed. The question still raised an instinctive bolt of rage and fear in him, left over from the days that the brothers had been distant, that Sam had tried to keep everything he was doing -- everything he had to do to save Dean, kill the demons, save the world -- under wraps. It was easier now to squash that rage, keep it from bubbling out his throat at his brother, but the fear, that lingered. "I'm fine. Why?"
He felt more than saw Dean turn his eyes back towards the windshield and relaxed. Then Dean looked back, and Sam's cheek spasmed. "You sure?" Dean asked. "Not aching or itching or anything?"
Sam frowned, unable to grasp where Dean was going with his questioning. "I'm sure." He took a breath, remembering the promise of full disclosure and honesty he'd made to himself after they'd managed to stop the apocalypse. Dean might still like to hide things until they got to big -- like, say, growing hooves -- but Sam wanted to be past that. "I'm freaked about what's happening, but that's it."
Dean sighed. He hadn't started gnawing on the seat belt or anything else in the car, yet, hadn't had anything to eat in fact since they'd left Bobby's. Sam thought four stomachs and braced himself.
"I'm turning into a satyr," Dean said, startling in both his bluntness and his use of the proper name for his new form. "Hell, pretty sure it isn't even 'turning into' anymore. That guy in Maine went all billdad and sank to the bottom of a lake. Bobby's becoming the crazy hermit king of his own damned enchanted forest." Dean tilted his head, bringing the curving tip of his ever growing horns into Sam's peripheral vision. "So why the hell aren't you turning into a literal sasquatch or something?"
Sam blinked.
He hadn't thought of that.
No, seriously. It hadn't even occurred to him that he should watching for a transformation of his own. Not into a sasquatch, maybe -- Sam didn't think he was all that tall, not anything like a sasquatch at all, not like Dean was sort of satyr-like even before his legs went furry, or how Bobby had always been kind of crazed-hermit-king-ish deep down. He had a sudden mental image of himself turning into a red rubber playground ball, like he'd imagined all those years before, and shuddered. "I don't know. Maybe it's something you and Bobby and that other guy have done that I haven't."
"Or maybe," Dean said, and Sam could hear the way his smirk altered the shape of his words. "You're just already too much of a freak."
As far as tension breakers went, it was a pretty lame one. But Sam had learned to take the breaks where they came from, lame or not, and let out a short laugh. "Takes one to know one, man."
Dean shifted in the passenger seat, rearranging his legs in a way he never had to, before. Sam sympathized. For all that she was larger than some of the more contemporary sedans, the Impala just wasn't built to hold a guy Sam's height -- or one with Dean's unique anatomy. "Yeah," Dean said. "Guess it does."
* * *
By silent, mutual agreement, they stopped only for gas, getting in their bathroom and coffee breaks at the stations, and those as quickly as they could manage. Both of them were tired of the mystery hounding them, were anxious to get to Jo and maybe get some answers. The late hour meant that most of the places they stopped were virtually deserted, and most of the people they ran into at those stops were older men and women, exhausted and worn down by long hours on the road or boring graveyard shifts behind the counter. They'd made it most of the way to Gillette before they ran into a young woman, dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tight tank-top, out alone in the middle of the night for reasons known only to herself. Sam might not have noticed her at all, leaning against a dark minivan smoking a cigarette, if Dean hadn't jerked upright in his seat, eyes wide and eager. If his ears had transformed as much as the rest of him had, Sam would swear they'd be pricked forward.
"Dean?"
Dean sighed, his whole body listing in the girl's direction, his hand groping blindly for the door handle that he'd known the exact location of for years. "Sammy," he said, his voice soft and awed. "Sammy, I'm in love."
And then he was out the door, legs flexing and stretching in ways that made it obvious he wasn't entirely human even through the jeans Sam had insisted he wear. His hooves struck against the ground sharply enough to raise faint sparks as he made his way towards the girl, and Sam set out behind him after only a brief, shocked pause, certain he'd have to physically restrain his brother from doing something unspeakable that he'd regret to the end of his days, once he was back to normal.
He skidded to a stop a good five feet back from the minivan when, instead of latching himself onto the girl to have his way with her, Dean instead dropped into a crouch at her feet, his head turned upward to gaze at her.
The girl had frozen mid-drag and was staring back in mute shock. Sam knew how she felt.
"I love you," Dean breathed, his hands braced by the toes of her sandals, fingers splayed wide across the asphalt. The girl blinked and let out a cloud of smoke in Dean's face. He closed his eyes and breathed it in like it was the steam rising from a well-cooked steak.
"Um," said the girl. "What?"
At least she wasn't screaming in terror.
Sam jerked into motion, grabbing the back of Dean's shirt and yanking, pulling his brother off balance and away from the girl. Dean stumbled to his feet, pulling just a little against Sam's hold, but allowed himself to be dragged away.
"We could make beautiful music together!" Dean called, just before Sam pushed him back into the car, locking the door behind him. The girl's eyes flicked between the two brothers and her cigarette, the whites around her irises clearly visible in the bright light of the gas station. Sam flashed her a weak grin.
"Sorry," he said. "He's, uh." He couldn't come up with a decent excuse in the face of her confusion, so he just said "Sorry" again, and thanked whomever might be listening to a Winchester's silent prayers that Dean hadn't spotted the woman until after they'd filled the Impala's gas tank. He got into the car and threw it into gear, peeling away from the gas station as fast as was even remotely safe, leaving the girl behind to ponder if someone had managed to sneak a hallucinogen into her smoke.
* * *
Dean fell in love four more times by the time they reached Idaho, with women tall and short, lean and curvy, scantily-clad and fully covered. One of them even appeared to have braces. After the second one, Sam managed to keep Dean from running at them, but all of them left Dean moaning, pining, and breathless for as long as it took to get the gas stations they were at out of sight.
At which point, Dean seemed to forget the incident ever even happened.
As they drove, Sam tried to picture each of the women in his head, tried to figure out what they might have had in common to garner such a reaction from his brother the satyr. Dean had always had a thing for beautiful women, of course, and the women he was professing his undying devotion to when they stopped to fill up were all beautiful in their own way, maybe not supermodel quality, but enough to be distinct, to turn a guy's head. They were all young, too, early- to mid-twenties, the oldest being maybe 27. Despite the late -- well, more like early, now, with the sun starting to edge its way over the horizon -- hour, all of them had looked wide-awake and full of energy.
Sam thought of the fact that they were on this drive to try and meet up with a young, pretty, bouncy blond girl, and started making plans on how to keep Dean's burgeoning surprisingly platonic girl-worship in check.
As it turned out, he didn't need to. He ought to have known. Jo was more than capable of handling Dean by herself.
All it took was one look at Dean's new look, the way he seemed to prance as he loped towards her over the rough, woodsy lawn of the cabin Jo had taken residence in, and Jo had doubled over laughing. Dean was so affronted by the reaction that his righteous indignation completely over-powered his puppy-love, and he grimaced, biting out a command for her to "laugh it up, Blondie," and everything was back to as normal as it could be, given the circumstances.
There was another advantage to Dean's behavior and Jo's reaction to it: Sam hadn't seen Jo since he was possessed by Meg, but three years of distance and Jo's continuing mirth dispelled any awkwardness they might have had between them better than any stammered apology from Sam could have.
Not that that meant he didn't stammer an apology. Jo waved it off with an easy gesture of her hand. She'd matured over the years, looking less like a goofy college girl and more like a young woman. Her hair was held back in a loose ponytail, her body neatly muscled, her arms tanned, buff, and flecked with light scratches. Her eyes zeroed in on the axe Sam held to his chest.
"How did you know?" She grinned at him, holding her hand out, palm up. "Did Mom tell you? That's so thoughtful!"
Sam blinked. He glanced at Dean. Dean, still pouting over Jo's laughter, looked back and shrugged. Sam looked down at the axe, then at Jo's hand, then finally held the axe out for her to take. She weighed it in her hands, nodded, then turned her head to look over her shoulder towards the back of the cabin and whistled sharply.
"Rex! Snack!"
Sam opened his mouth, but before he could ask, a tall, strangely shaped dog came trotting out from behind the cabin, tongue dangling and tail wagging. Jo hefted the axe again, then, before Dean or Sam could protest, gave it a light underhanded toss to the dog, who popped up on its hind legs and caught it in its mouth before dropping to the ground to attack the handle like it was a bone.
Sam tried to think of something to say. Dean made an injured noise in the back of his throat. Jo grinned from ear to ear. "Rex says thanks."
"Rex" was the weirdest dog Sam had ever seen -- and in his line of work, that was saying something. He was whip-thin, almost literally, his torso only about an inch thicker in diameter than the axe handle itself, his hips and shoulders jutting out from his body at exaggerated angles. His tail was short and pointed, and his ears flopped along his narrow face.
And that face. . . . It was almost too bizarre to look at. Depending on the angle -- and Sam got to witness several, thanks to the way Rex turned his head this way and that as he gnawed on the axe -- the dog's head was long and skinny or broad and wide. The line from his nose to his chin was exaggerated and pointed, spanning several inches, much longer than the back of his skull. The top of his head was knobby and a little bony looking under his short brown fur, and the sides of his face were almost completely flat, even where Sam was certain he should be able to see the curve of the animal's jaw bone.
In fact, all told, Rex looked like an axe with legs.
"Dude," Dean said at length. "That is the freakiest looking dog I've ever seen." He frowned, jaw tightening. "Well. Other than hell hounds."
Jo backhanded him in the arm. "Don't talk about Rex like that! He's a sweetheart!"
"He's an axe with legs," Sam said. It was the only thing he could think of.
Jo nodded. "I know. Almost a perfect example of his breed. His tail is a little short."
"Ah," Sam said. "And, uh. What breed is that?"
Jo raised an eyebrow. She might look looser, more casual than she ever had back at the Roadhouse or in Duluth, when she was trying so hard to prove to the world that she was grown up and capable, but that practiced, scathing look was as pointed as ever. "He's an axe-handle hound."
Sam looked at Rex again, surprised to see that the dog had managed to almost completely decimate the handle of the axe already. The blade was still untouched.
Dean tilted his head. "Pardon?"
Jo rolled her eyes. "An axe-handle hound. Don't tell me you came all the way out here -- with an axe -- and didn't know about axe-handle hounds?"
Sam glanced at Dean in time to catch his sidelong look in return. "Okay," Dean said. "We won't tell you that."
Sam shrugged. "I think at this point, it's kind of implied."
Jo shook her head. "You two are hopeless." She turned, whistling to Rex again, and started for the door of the cabin. "Come on inside. Looks like we've got some catching up to do."
* * *
Jo, it seemed, had come to an agreement with her mother regarding hunting because she wasn't hunting. She wasn't even "not technically hunting", as Dean tried to put it, she was actually actively not hunting. Which, of course, begged the question: what the hell was she doing in Idaho?
"Got something up in these woods," she told them as she poured some water into an ancient coffee maker. The cabin's interior was made up of two rooms: the bathroom, which was tucked into the corner and looked like it might not be much more than a glorified out-house, and the main room, which included a kitchen area, a living room, and a small loft just big enough for a full-sized mattress. Jo was renting the place -- "All totally above the table," as she put it -- from a yuppie-hippie couple who had decided to spend their summer traveling cross-country instead of getting down and dirty in their little castle-in-the-woods, thanks, it seemed, to reports of a bear problem in the area. "Thought it might be a wendigo too far west, like you guys found in Colorado. Now I'm thinking it's probably a hide-behind, or maybe even Bigfoot."
"First off," Dean said, leaning his elbows on the small, round table that separated the kitchen from the living room, "there's no such thing as Bigfoot. Secondly, how is that not hunting?"
Jo rolled her eyes, rubbing the back of Rex's head with the side of her foot as she leaned against the kitchen counter, a can of cheap coffee in her hand. "I'm not going to kill it. That's how."
"Why the hell not?!"
Jo's lips pursed, and she spent a long moment looking Dean up and down without saying a word. Sam frowned, following her gaze, and tried to make out what she was getting at. His eyes widened.
"You think that this," he stabbed a finger in Dean's direction. "Is the result of hunting?"
Jo smiled. "Well, what do you know, Sam? You really are the smart one."
Dean grunted indignantly and Sam shook his head. "How does that even work?"
Jo shrugged. "I don't know the whole story, just the general gist, and even that's mostly theory. But, well, I don't know if you guys know this, but I used to be a college girl."
Dean grunted again, wrinkling his nose like Rex had done something nasty on the floor. Sam elbowed him in the arm. Jo just smiled and shook her head.
"I know, I know. But Mom insisted. Now, I only went for a year, but my school had a huge environmental studies program, and my roommate was all into it. Wanted to be just like Julie of the Wolves or something."
"That's great," Dean said, expression blank. "What's your point?"
"If you stopped interrupting me, dumb ass, you might find that out." Jo turned her back to the brothers, taking a few moments to rattle things around in and around the coffeemaker before turning back. "I'm saying I learned a thing or two about environmental theory while I was there. Which is how I recognized what's been going on in the world." She paused, looking at Sam and Dean. Sam looked back. Dean scratched at the base of his left horn.
After a few moments, the silence started to get awkward, and Jo's mouth tightened to a narrow line. "Well?"
Dean coughed. Sam shrugged. "Well what?"
"I figured you guys were gonna interrupt me again."
Sam looked at Dean. Dean looked back. "I wasn't going to interrupt her. Were you gonna interrupt her, Sam?"
"Nope, I wasn't going to interrupt her either. It would be rude."
"Completely."
Jo groaned. "I have no idea how Bobby hasn't shot either of you, yet." She hopped up onto the counter next to the coffee machine.
"It's because we're awesome," Dean said with a smirk. "So, environmental theory?"
Jo nodded. "Like endangered species and ecosystems and things." She raised her hands. "Now, I don't know all the technical terms, I only took the 101 class, and that was years ago. But still. When a species is endangered or extinct, it changes things. Like the deer population exploding. A lot of their natural predators have been eliminated, more deer are surviving, leading to less room and food for the deer in their natural habitats. They start moving territory, invading people's spaces, eating crops, all that. Same thing happens when you introduce a non-native species to the wild, like the snakehead fish in the Chesapeake Bay, or the cane toads in Australia. Everything gets whacked out of balance, and if it goes on long enough, strange things start to happen."
She paused again, and rather than let it get awkward, Sam filled in the gap. "Exploding deer populations made Dean go all satyr?"
Jo shook her head. "No, but that would be hilarious." She grinned and shot Dean a wink. Dean scowled. "The natural world exists in a balance, predators and prey. When you eliminate or overpopulate one, it messes up the whole system, sending things into chaos. But the natural world also has a way of trying to patch up things on its own, though a lot of times, it can't work fast enough to make up for the damage that humans are doing to it. Think about the frogs that can spontaneously change sexes if there's too many of one type around for proper breeding."
"Like Jurassic Park," Dean said. "Man, I'd love to hunt down a raptor."
Sam pressed his lips together. "And get eaten. Yeah, that'd be great, Dean."
"I'm just saying."
"Yeah," Jo said, hopping on the tail end of Dean's statement, apparently no more eager to hear all about how Dean would go about hunting a raptor than Sam was. "Like that. So the natural world has a balance and tricks to maintain it. What if the supernatural world works the same way?"
Sam jerked upright as the logical path Jo was following appeared in his mind's eye. Dean looked nonplussed.
"Well, yeah," he said. "Demonic dicks show up to try to end the world, so angelic dicks show up to stop them. We already know that."
Jo nodded, though a brief flash of confusion and surprise crossed her face at the mention of angels. Sam realized that, in the course of the last year, he and Dean might have been remiss in getting the word out about what exactly had gone down. Or about angels at all.
Or maybe they hadn't been remiss. There had to have been a reason why the angels had been kept on such a down-low in the hunting community as a real thing all of those years. Perhaps there was more to it than simply a long absence and hard-earned cynicism. Sam leaned back in his chair, his mind going a mile a minute, as Jo continued to explain her theory.
"Right, like that, I guess. But I mean more on a, I don't know, ecological level? Think about it: we haven't even heard from any demons in the last year. Everyone in the hunting community has turned to hunting different things, the more physical and wild creatures, like werewolves and vampires and wendigoes and stuff. What if all that hunting is shifting the balance? What if we're killing off creatures that are actually vital to the supernatural ecosystem?"
Dean leaned forward, looking angry. "Oh, so, what, now we're just supposed to let evil shit kill people? This stuff isn't natural, Jo, it's not supposed to be here."
Jo crossed her arms over her chest and opened her mouth, but Sam got there first.
"I'm part demon," he pointed out, pitching his voice low. "Do I need to be killed?"
Dean's mouth snapped shut, even as Jo swiveled her head from staring at Dean to stare at Sam, her mouth dropping further open as her eyes widened.
Right, that was the part of everything that had gone down that Sam didn't regret not getting out to the hunting community at large.
"That's different."
Sam shook his head. "Uriel was an angel. And he did need to be killed."
"Uriel was a jackass. These things aren't natural," Dean said again, stressing his point by slapping his palms down on the table. "They're killing people!"
"All of them?" That was Jo. She uncrossed one of her arms to point down to where Rex was on the floor, finishing off the last of his axe handle. "Rex isn't natural. He feeds on axe handles. Not sticks, not wood, axe handles. He's not killing people. Does he deserve to be killed?"
Dean opened his mouth, one hand coming up to point. Then he closed it and looked down at the dog.
"Or Lenore and her group," Sam added. "You let them live. Beat the hell out of Gordon for wanting to do anything different."
Dean closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead, and Jo tossed in one last argument.
"You're not exactly natural yourself any more, Dean. Can't even pretend to be, with those horns. You saying we should be putting you down, too?"
Dean's shoulders came up, his head dropping low, his jaw clenched hard. "Fine. I get it. But some things still need to be killed."
Jo shrugged. "If a bear attacks people, it gets put down. But if it's just being a bear. . . ."
Sam shook his head. "That kind of makes sense, Jo, but hunting a bear doesn't turn you into a moose."
"Bears and moose are part of the natural world, though. We're talking about the supernatural world. The natural world has ways of fixing the balance. What if the supernatural one does, too? Only the supernatural one works a lot faster?"
Dean leaned forward, pressing his palms into his eyes. "That's insane."
Jo didn't seem to take offense. "You're half-goat."
She had a point. Still. "We've been hunting our whole lives. You've been around hunters for your whole life. Why would we just be noticing this now?"
Jo pushed herself down from the counter and rummaged through the cabinets for a some mugs. "Maybe thing are only getting unbalanced this way now. Like I said, without any demons around, hunters have been going after the corporeal stuff." She pulled out the now full coffee pot and started pouring. "The way I see it, and again, I'm not exactly a professional with this ecology stuff, or the magic stuff, for that matter, there's probably a certain amount of magical energy or what-have-you floating around in the world. When magical creatures get killed, that energy has to go somewhere. A couple things here or there, and the energy could just kinda . . . disperse or something. But with the number of creatures that are getting killed these days, more energy is building up." She handed Sam and Dean their mugs and went to pull a carton of half and half from the small refrigerator. "My guess is, you guys killed something big right before this all started, right?"
Dean perked up at the sight of the coffee, but paused before taking his first sip. "The Snallygaster."
"Ew, that snake thing in Florida?"
"Dragon thing in Maryland."
"Something that size must have released a shitload of energy. And you got hit with most of it. And I'm betting you didn't exactly slow down, either."
Sam thought back over the last couple of weeks and shook his head. "There was a hodag, too. And a couple other things." He looked at Dean. "Come to think of it, it was after the hodag that this really sped up." He looked back at Jo. "But I was there, too. Why haven't I been changing?"
"How the hell should I know?" Jo shrugged. "Who did the actual killing? Was it Dean?"
Dean nodded. "On the Snallygaster and hodag, yeah. But Sam got some of the other stuff."
"Huh." Jo spent a few moments stirring her coffee. "I dunno, then. But maybe it's the whole 'half-demon' thing." She gave Sam a pointed look. "You're already full up on magical weirdness, so it skipped you."
Well now. Wasn't Sam just lucky.
"Right," Dean said, setting his mug down on the table. "So how do we fix it?"
Jo bit her lip and looked askance. Sam watched the color drain from Dean's face.
"We can fix it, right?"
Jo seemed to find her coffee fascinating.
"Jo." Dean's voice was hard, dangerous. Sam winced. So did Jo.
"If it's like I think, with the ecology and everything. . . ." She trailed off with a helpless shrug. "I'm not sure we can fix it. We can't bring dodos back to life or fix the hole in the ozone layer, either."
"So I'm stuck like this?!" Dean gestured to his horns, face wide open and vulnerable in a way that Sam almost never saw around other people. He looked between Jo, who was still staring into her coffee looking miserable, and Sam, who couldn't think of anything to do other than shrug. "What the hell am I supposed to do?"
* * *
Jo didn't have the answers. She couldn't prove her theory -- though Sam was pretty sure she was right, what with Chuck sending him and Dean out her way and everything -- and she couldn't tell Dean there was some sort of magical cure. All she had was Rex, a remote cabin, a head full of environmentalist propaganda and ideas, and a non-hunt for Bigfoot.
Bigfoot, which wasn't supposed to exist. Though who knew, now? Maybe some hunter had taken out something that really was lurking in the woods, and found himself giant, hairy, and seriously pissed off as a result.
If that was the case, there was a possibility that the creature could be reasoned with, that they could get it to back off the killings without having to put it down. That was what Jo was there for, she said, that and to try and warn off the handful of hunters that had shown up to try and take it out the old fashioned way.
So after spending the morning resting up in the cabin, Jo, Sam, Dean and Rex all set out into the woods of Idaho on the trail of a possible sasquatch. Dean had stripped off his jeans again, complaining that he didn't want to deal with sweaty fur, though the Idaho summer wasn't what Sam would call hot, exactly. He'd taken off his shorts, too, saying that they were squashing his tail, leaving him dressed only in a gray t-shirt and his green button down. Jo raised an eyebrow at the sight of Dean pantless, but didn't say anything. Sam decided against arguing -- it wasn't like Dean was exposing himself or anything. The fur on his lower half had grown thick enough that nothing was left swinging in the breeze. In fact, Dean and Rex almost matched.
Dean's hooves were also, it seemed, well suited to the forest environment, and he soon outpaced both Sam and Jo, despite Sam's long legs and Jo's experience with these particular woods. After walking several yards with his gun in hand, though, Dean paused to take off his over shirt, wrapping it instead around his waist so he had something to tuck the weapon into. The shirt was soon catching on branches left and right, leaving bits of shredded fabric dangling off the hem around Dean's hips, and setting off little warning bells in Sam's head, though he couldn't quite place why.
Sam was armed as well, and though Jo had said that this was pretty much just a recon mission, she still had her own rifle with her. She might not be actively hunting, she said, but she also sure as hell wasn't stupid. There was something in the woods attacking people, and if she couldn't talk it down, she wasn't going to let fear of turning out like Dean stop her from protecting herself.
Sam wondered if Jo had told her mother all about her plan to "reason with Bigfoot". And if she had, how she'd convinced Ellen not to lock her in the basement until someone could talk some sense into her. Sure, he understood Jo's reasoning, and even kind of thought he might agree with it. But he also had the word of a guy he knew for a fact was a true prophet that Jo would have the answers to the weird stuff that had been going on in his and Dean's lives of late. He wondered how Bobby would react when he heard that his wild man look and new magic tree farm were because he'd been hunting. Well, at least Bobby's basement had a nice panic room, assuming the magic tree roots hadn't managed to take over that, as well.
They'd been hiking for several hours, and Sam was starting to feel the burn of the unaccustomed exercise, when Dean, still looking fresh thanks to the ease with which his goat legs handled the terrain, paused and dropped into a crouch. Jo jogged forward, Rex at her heels, and Sam readjusted the pack on his shoulder and took up the rear.
"Did you find a print?"
Dean nodded, tracing over the ground with one finger. "Not Biggie's though. These size tens are definitely not his style." Sam got close enough to see the impression Dean was examining. Sure enough, he could make out the faint pattern of a boot sole in the dirt.
"Hunters," he guessed. "Or hikers."
"If they're hikers, they're total idiots." Jo shook her head. "The park service has this whole area on alert thanks to the killings. Not enough to close anything down, yet, but enough that they're 'strongly recommending' that people find another place to hang out."
"So most likely hunters."
Dean shifted a couple feet to his left without straightening up. "Definitely hunters," he said. He reached into a tangle of grass and pulled out a shell casing, holding it up to the light. After a moment, he brought it up to about an inch from his nose. "Specialized rounds, too. I'm guessing they're not out here for big game."
Sam frowned. "You can smell that?"
Dean gave him a look and tossed the shell casing at him. "It's inscribed, dumbass."
Sam held the casing up, bringing it close to his own face to get a good look. ". . . Oh."
Jo moved a couple paces beyond Dean, scanning the area. "Any idea how long ago they were here?"
"What do I look like, a professional tracker?" Dean shook his head. "I'm good, but I'm not that good." He looked at Rex. "How 'bout axe-face there earns his keep? Since he might be eating some of our weapons."
"Don't call my dog 'axe-face'," Jo scolded, then raised a hand toward Rex. "Hey, boy, can you get a scent?"
Rex looked up at her and wagged his tail.
A hunting dog he was not.
Sam tucked the shell casing into his pocket and turned in place, scanning the trees, looking for some sign of where the other hunters had gone. Jo and Rex started down the path. He heard Dean shift behind him, then curse, and turned back. Dean had caught his shirt on another branch, tugging it loose as he stood and dropping his pistol to the ground. He glowered at the shirt, then lifted his chin in Sam's direction. "Dude, bag."
Sam handed him the equipment bag. "I didn't bring any holsters."
"I know." Dean opened the bag, digging through it for a moment before pulling out a sheathed knife. He made quick work of shredding the rest of his shirt, then twisting the shreds into ugly but workable ropes. He wove a couple lengths around his gun, then looped it around his shoulders.
Sam's eyes widened and he sucked in a breath as Dean used the last of his shirt to tie the sheath of the knife to his arm. Dean was still wearing his t-shirt, sure, but the thickness of the fur on his legs, the length of his horns, and most damning of all, that twisted shirt-harness. . . . It was just like in his dream.
The dream where Dean was hunted down like an animal and shot. In the woods. By hunters.
He reached out to grab Dean's arm. "Dude, we gotta go."
Dean shrugged out of his grip, giving him a measuring look. "Are you kidding? It's, like, a four hour hike back to the car."
"Yeah, I know, and if we leave now, we might make it back before sundown --"
Dean was shaking his head. "Dude, I know you don't like camping, but this is a bit much. We've got a job to do, here. Chuck said we needed to work on our karma, right? Well, this is me getting good karma."
"If we stay out here you're going to get killed, Dean!"
"By Biggie? Are you kidding? I could gore him open with one swipe of these horns --" Dean's protest was cut short by the sharp sound of a shotgun going off, causing both him and Sam to duck low. Jo screamed somewhere ahead of them, and Dean didn't even blink, just broke into a run.
A low, loping sort of run, that looked almost more like leaping.
Sam tried to shake the image of Dean's terrified flight through the woods from his head and set off after Dean's fleeting tail. It only took a few moments before they could see Jo, crouched down on the ground next to the still, bloody form of Rex.
They'd found the hunters. Or, rather, the hunters had found them.
Sam put on a burst of speed, stretching his long legs to the limits of his stride to catch up to Dean, grabbing his arm and yanking to bring him down to the ground, just as another shot went off. Dean grunted, thumping to the ground, and Jo whipped around at the sound, searching the trees. Sam pushed at the back of Dean's head, stretching out low across his back as his brother struggled. He noticed with a shock of terror that about four inches of the left horn were missing, the now blunted tip ragged and bleeding sluggishly. Dean groaned low in his throat, and Sam moved to push his head down further, trying to get the horns as out of sight from the hunters as possible.
"Get off me." Dean was barely audible, his face ground into the dirt. "Sam, get --"
"Shut up." Sam ducked around the new end of Dean's horn, wondering if he should try putting pressure on it to stop the bleeding. "They're not shooting at me."
He knew the moment Dean got his point by how still his brother became.
"Fuck."
"Yeah."
Jo jumped up, rifle in hand, and started through the trees towards the direction the shots had come from, her expression pissed beyond measure. "You sons of bitches!" Her voice was shrill and carried well through the woods, though Sam soon lost sight of her. "That was my god damned dog --" She cut off with a sharp cry and Sam closed his eyes, swallowing. Most hunters would settle for restraining her, thinking she was just a hysterical victim, but some, like Gordon, might take her association with a weird ass dog and a goatman the wrong way. He barely let himself breathe again until he heard her demand to be let go, and the crack of a rifle butt striking human flesh. A man's voice cried out this time, and Sam smiled.
Atta girl.
Dean shifted beneath Sam, who struggled to hold him still. He'd never been that good at keeping Dean pinned, though, too many sparring sessions leading to Dean being very familiar with Sam's weight and how to get around it. Dean managed to wriggle an arm free and pressed at Sam's chest. "Go help her."
"Like hell. Jo can handle herself."
"Not arguing." Dean closed his free hand into a fist and thumped it on Sam's chest. He could feel a faint tremble through Dean's arm -- the injury to his horn was that painful. "Go help her. Distract them. I can make a break for it."
"Dean, no."
"I can outrun them, Sam." Sam felt Dean's legs tense, coiling in, ready to spring up at a moment's notice. "I'm practically built for this, right now."
Sam pressed his head to Dean's shoulder and shook it to make sure Dean was aware of the gesture. "There's traps, Dean. You're no good at spotting bear traps."
"You don't know that."
"Yes," Sam said, emphasizing the word by pressing his weight harder into Dean's back. "I do."
Dean froze. "Vision."
Sam nodded, his head still against Dean's shoulder. In the silence that followed the admission, he could hear Jo and the men arguing, maybe twenty or thirty yards off. A good gunman would have no trouble making that shot, even through the trees. If Sam got up, Dean would run. And then Dean would die.
He wasn't going to let that happen.
Trouble was, the voices were getting closer. Not quickly, Jo was doing a decent enough job of delaying them, but quickly enough. If Sam didn't do something soon, Dean would die anyway, without even a chance to run.
If they both ran, Sam would be in as much danger as Dean. And Dean wouldn't allow that. By the way Dean was tensing up beneath him again, Sam had a feeling he was thinking the same things.
"Details," Dean muttered.
"What?"
"Details. I could avoid the trap."
"I can't -- I don't know the exact location. And there could be others."
"Fine. Then I'm going to have to fight."
"Dean --"
"If I don't run or fight, we both die lying here in the dirt."
"Maybe you could talk to them?" Sam offered, though he knew it was a lame attempt. The hunters had shot Jo's dog while it was doing nothing more than traveling with her in a typically dog-like fashion. They probably wouldn't wait long enough for Dean to prove he was intelligent before they shot him.
They were maybe ten yards off, now. Sam could see the white of Jo's tank top through the trees. They were running out of time.
"Sam," Dean said, his voice breathy with realization. "Dude, use your mojo."
"What?"
"Your mind-whammy, Sam, disarm them!"
"I don't know if it even still works, Dean! I haven't exactly been snacking on the demon blood."
"Do you have any other ideas?!"
He didn't. He pressed himself up on his elbows, his body weight still keeping Dean flat, trying to keep him from getting up even as he ducked his head low to the ground and stretched out one hand, palm towards the shape of the hunters, fingers raised to the sky. He tried to make out the hunters' weapons, to visualize the shape and weight of them in space, then wrapped his mind around that shape and yanked.
One of the guns went off, the shot going wild, and the men shouted as their weapons flew from their hands, knocking into trees well out of easy grabbing range. Jo let out a startled noise, then flew into action, kicking and punching at the disarmed men to keep them from scrabbling for the guns. Sam pushed himself to his feet, muttering a quick "Okay, now run," to Dean even as he sprinted towards the fighting figures. He heard Dean get up behind him, pausing for a moment once he was on his feet, and prayed he made a break for it back towards the cabin and the car. They were way too far away for even Dean to run all the way back, but at least that way, they knew there weren't any traps.
Sam recognized the men from his dream as he plowed into them, fists flying. He punched the one who fired the kill shot in his vision and watched the man stagger. The one he figured was the leader got a hand around Sam's arm, tugging him off balance.
He heard a rapid thumping approaching from behind him and prayed it wasn't what he thought it was.
It was. Dean barreled into the lead hunter, his head lowered, nostrils flaring. His broken horn started bleeding in earnest again, but the hunter was no match for the full weight of pissed off satyr and went over backwards with a startled shout. Dean's momentum carried him a few stumbling steps past the man, before he came to a halt, still half bent over, one hand reaching towards his broken horn, a string of curses tripping off his tongue. Sam aimed his open palm at the man who'd fired the kill-shot in his dream, knocking him out with a good, hard mental tap. Dean, still cursing, set his hoof on the leader's chest, just below the hollow of his throat, and stared down at him. Sam stepped up beside him, clenching and flexing his fingers. "What the hell do you think you guys are doing?"
Sam heard Jo whisper a curse, but didn't take his eyes off the hunter under Dean's hoof to look at her. He could feel the power of the demon blood flowing through him along with the adrenaline, and could guess what he looked like.
Why hadn't the wild magic turned him into a wild thing?
He already was one. Hell, the wild magic probably just made him stronger.
The third remaining hunter stood a few feet away, his eyes wide as he stared at Sam and Dean. It was him who answered, since the leader seemed to be having a little bit of trouble getting his brain around words.
"H-he's a goatman," he said. Dean glared. Sam snarled.
"He's my brother, you bastard."
The man's eyes went wider still. "You -- you're Sam and Dean Winchester."
Sam nodded. The man looked like he was about to wet himself.
"Walker was right about you, wasn't he. You're on their side, you're both monsters --" He cut off when Jo kicked him in the crotch.
"Gordon Walker was insane," she said, looming over him as he dropped to the ground. "They're good men. Why don't you try thinking for yourself?"
Sam had always liked and respected Jo, had looked on her as something of a little sister before Duluth and Meg. As much as he'd known, since meeting up with her at the cabin, that she'd forgiven him for his part in what had happened to her, for what he'd told her about their fathers, what Meg had told her and done to her using his body and mouth, he couldn't help the swell of hope, pride, and relief that filled his chest at her words.
And when she spat on the guy? Well, that was just a bonus.
Sam turned his gaze back to the leader, whose face was starting to go red at the pressure of Dean's hoof. "You have no idea what you're messing with out here. You're hunting the sasquatch?"
The man grabbed at Dean's leg, and Dean pressed down harder, making him gag and let go. He coughed out "Wendigo," as his fingers scrabbled at the ground.
Sam wished for a moment that it was his foot on the man's throat. "You know that for sure?"
The man didn't answer for a moment, then shook his head, his hand groping for Dean's leg again, but flopping to the ground when Dean leaned a bit on his hoof.
Sam leaned forward, staring into the man's flushed, purpling face. "You don't mess with what you don't understand. You don't understand what's out here. You didn't understand Jo's dog. You don't understand my brother. You and your buddies are going to leave Idaho. You're going to go find some vengeful spirit or killer vampire gang, and you're not going to go after any more cryptids or creatures unless you know for sure what they are and that they're killing people. You're going to do this not just because I will hunt you down personally and kill you if you don't. You're going to do it because if you don't, you might be the next furry thing some hunter tries to track down and kill."
The man stared at him, confusion and fear in his eyes, then flicked his gaze to Dean. His eyes widened as he grasped what that last part meant.
"Do. You. Understand?"
The man gave a small nod. Sam glanced at Dean, who gave the man's chest a final hard tap with his hoof, then stepped back, allowing the man to curl up on the ground, hands rubbing at his sternum.
"Jo, grab their guns."
Jo stepped back a couple paces from the men, looking from Sam to them and back again before nodding and jogging off to comply. Sam stepped forward, pulling his gun to knock the two conscious hunters out. Dean pulled back one leg as though to kick them, then dropped it back to the ground with a grimace.
"We gonna leave them here?"
There were three men, possibly even good men, on the ground at his feet. Because he had put them there.
He pictured Dean lying dead and broken on the forest floor, a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.
"Yes," he said. He didn't look at Dean as he turned to walk away.
* * *
Dean's knife and gun had been knocked loose when Sam tackled him. Jo was the one who found them, after using Sam's jacket to wrap Rex's body and lifting it up. Dean picked them up off the ground, wiped the dirt off on his t-shirt, then tucked them back into his improvised harness. Sam went for the equipment bag, digging through it for a few moments before pulling out the jar of cayenne pepper he'd added at the last minute. Dean watched him through narrowed eyes, his forehead creased.
"What's that for?"
Sam gestured to Dean's broken horn. "To stop the bleeding. I read about it at Bobby's."
Dean nodded carefully, ducking his head to give Sam access to his horn. "This is gonna suck, isn't it."
Sam shrugged. "I didn't find anything about that. But, yeah. Probably." He hesitated. "Does it hurt?"
Dean grimaced. "Like a son of a bitch. I can feel it down to my sinuses."
Sam remembered the pages upon pages talking about how goat horns ran all the way down into the animal's sinuses, how dangerous breaking a fully developed horn near the base could be. "Sorry man. I didn't pack any pills."
Dean nodded, then held his head very still. "Just do it."
Sam braced one hand on Dean's shoulder, then poured the pepper over the broken tip of the horn. Dean jerked under his grip, but the bleeding quickly stopped. He stepped back, tucking the jar away. "You need a moment?"
Dean pushed past him, aiming down the trail back towards the cabin.
Sam took that as a no. He glanced to Jo, opening his mouth to offer to carry Rex, but she met his eyes with a hard look and he let his jaw snap shut and gestured down the path for her to lead the way.
Dean stopped about two miles down, moving to a fallen tree and leaning over it, looking off into a small clearing. As Sam moved to join him, he turned his head, raising his finger to his mouth to indicate silence. Sam nodded back and stepped quietly up next to him, Jo flanking him on the other side. Dean gestured with his head, though it was unnecessary. Sam immediately saw what had drawn his attention.
A large, hairy shape lay curled up on the grass maybe ten feet away. Its eyes were closed, its face slack in sleep. Sam was surprised Dean had spotted it, though he'd read that the unusual shape of a goat's pupils gave it superior peripheral vision. The hair covering the shape marked it as inhuman, but there was something about the creature's features, barely visible in the fading light of the day, that Sam recognized.
"Is that --"
Dean nodded. "Joshua. Looks like more evidence for your theory, Jo."
Sam swallowed. He didn't know Joshua well, just that he was one of their father's contacts in the hunting community, that he lived alone and reclusive near the Idaho-Canada border, but kept up with the hunting news and provided good information. He was the one who'd told Sam about the faith healer in Nebraska. And if he was anything like Dean, he was still the same man underneath all that fur, and most likely seriously freaked out.
Dean hopped over the log, walking slowly and carefully toward the sleeping figure. He stopped about half way there, hands held loose and open at his sides, horns stretching out in silhouette against the setting sun. In that moment, stripped of humanity by the dying of the light, he presented a dark, terrifying figure, one Sam could see being mistaken for a demon, for something evil. Then he tilted his head, the gesture so inquisitive and innocent that the illusion of evil vanished.
"Hey," he said. "Josh."
The form on the ground twitched, then jumped up, immediately defensive and impossibly tall. Sam's hand twitched towards his gun, but Jo's free hand shooting out to restrain his was unnecessary. He wasn't going to shoot. Not unless Joshua tried to do something to his brother.
Dean held still, save for the tilt of his head as he tracked Joshua's movement. The two men -- two beasts -- stood at a stalemate for a long moment, one giant, looming, and tense, the other relaxed and peaceful.
"Joshua," Dean said again.
The sasquatch tilted his head, looking Dean up and down. "Winchester?" The name was barely recognizable through the growl his voice had become, and it struck Sam that Dean was actually lucky, Bobby even more so. They had both retained some physical measure of their humanity, obvious signs to the world around them that the mind looking out of their altered features was still the same. Sam didn't want to assume that just because Joshua had changed so much on the outside that he wasn't the same on the inside, but with that growling voice and the tense and aggressive nature of his stance, it wasn't easy.
"Yeah, man," Dean said. "'S freaking weird, right?"
The sound that came from Joshua's mouth might have been an angry growl, but the way he sank back on his heels made Sam think it was more of a laugh.
"You're confused," Dean said. "I get that. Oh man, do I ever get that. But we might have some answers for you. Jo's got some theories, and they seem to be adding up."
Joshua's head turned, looking past Dean towards the log where Sam and Jo stood. "Harvelle," he said. Jo raised her hand, shifting the burden of Rex on her shoulder. Joshua nodded, then met Sam's eyes and nodded again.
Yeah. Still the same man.
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