Supernatural: Pancho and Lefty (2/3)
All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: Pancho and Lefty
Part Two
Dean's mood had lightened considerably since they'd left the general store, even though Sam's had been growing steadily darker. While Sam's thoughts were dominated by figuring out how they'd gotten where - and when - they were, how to get back home, and how to avoid Josiah Edwards while they did it, Dean didn't seem to be thinking about anything other than ways to entertain himself.
The atmosphere in the hotel's restaurant should have been charming, or at least interesting, and he knew that. He was as close as he'd ever be to an actual wild west saloon, complete with massive wooden bar and piano music being played by a rather well-endowed young woman in a bright yellow dress, and he couldn't even bring himself to pay attention to what was going on around him. The sounds of booted footfalls on the wood floors mixed with the laughter and conversations of the patrons, and he didn't pay the people around him any more mind than he would have at any other bar.
Dinner had turned out to be a rather large amount of food, a whole lot more than Sam had expected to get for fifty cents each. They'd had plates heaped with ham, fried potatoes, corn on the cob, and custard, with iced tea to drink and a huge chunk of pie for dessert. Dean had eaten every bite, but Sam hadn't done much more than play with his. Their plates had long since been cleared, and they'd switched from tea to beer, but they were still sitting at the same table. Sam had absolutely refused to let him join in for fear of him getting himself shot, so Dean was watching the poker game going on at the back corner table with interest. Every now and then, Sam heard a giggle coming from that direction, and he wondered who Dean was paying more attention to - the card players themselves or the women who stood behind them.
Sam turned the receipt from the general store over in his hand again. He shouldn't have been surprised by the date written on it, but he was still having a hard time processing it all. They'd woken up in a motel on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming on the morning of May 12, 2007, but they'd be going to bed in a room at the original Union Pacific Hotel, the Thornburg House, on October 28, 1882.
"Do you think he's turned yet?"
Dean didn't seem to have heard him, or was ignoring him if he had, so Sam kicked him under the table.
"Ow! What?"
"Do you think he's been turned yet?" Sam asked again. "Edwards?"
Dean reluctantly pulled his attention away from the table in the corner and leaned his elbows on the table. "I don't know," he said. "Nothing about him really screamed 'vamp' to me. You?"
Sam shook his head. "No. But he had to be turned at some point, right? I mean, we saw the census record..."
"From 1880, yeah," Dean interrupted. "How many vampires do you think care about being counted on the census?"
"Probably not many," Sam admitted. "But he's the sheriff. He's got some power here. He's not gonna want to throw that all away."
"People change when they turn, Sam, you know that. You turn into a monster like that, you're not usually capable of rational thought."
"But Lenore..."
"Is one of the very few rational vampires we've run into, I know. But most of them aren't. Most of them are batshit." Dean smirked. "No pun intended." He glanced back at the poker game, which seemed to be really getting going, and sighed. "So what have you got on that other thing?"
"The 'how did we get here?' thing?"
Dean nodded.
"Nothing. It's supposed to be impossible, but it's obviously very possible, because here we are."
"So what could do it?" Dean asked. "And damn, I wish we had Dad's journal right now."
Sam shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "I don't know if it would do any good. I mean, don't you think he'd have told us about it if he knew time travel was possible?"
"Gee, Sam, I don't know." The sarcasm in Dean's voice was almost tangible. "He was always so open and honest about the stuff he knew."
When he thought of all the implications behind Dean's statement, and what their father's secrecy had done to both of them through the years, Sam couldn't do anything other than nod again. "Okay, so what could do it that we know about, then? It would have to be something powerful, more powerful than we've ever seen."
"Demon of some kind?" Dean asked. "But that wouldn't make any sense, because... why? If anything, a demon would've made sure we couldn't get out of that warehouse, not pulled us out."
"Witchcraft?" Sam said. "Spellwork of some kind. Maybe a cursed object?"
"That doesn't make any sense, either. Why curse an object to send people a hundred and twenty-five years back in time?"
"Maybe it was a fluke, an accident or something. We woke up in the same spot we were when we got hit by that wave, though, so maybe... I don't know. Maybe whatever it is was tied to that location."
Dean smiled at that. "Which means we have to go back out there, right?"
Sam nodded slowly, confused at how quickly Dean perked up at that thought. "Yeah. In the morning. Why are you so happy about that?"
"Because." Dean grinned from ear to ear. "It means we get to ride those horses after all."
"Pancho! Lefty!"
Sam and Dean turned toward the door and the voice that had called their names. James and Josiah Edwards were walking toward them.
James - or Jim, as he was insisting they call him now - was definitely the more boisterous of the two brothers, once they'd gotten past the casual indifference he showed toward them at first. Sam had learned that from just the few moments that he and Dean had spent with the Edwards brothers in the general store. Sam did have to wonder how much of his sudden friendliness was due to the knife they'd given him, and how much of it was just him. He guessed it was probably a combination of both - their willingness to trade away something so valuable made him more willing to show them a little kindness.
He was dressed in the same clothes he'd worn in the store: a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and held out of his way by a pair of black sleeve garters, an unbuttoned dark brown vest, tan pants, and a pair of simple work boots. His light brown hair was longer than most men in Laramie seemed to wear theirs, almost covering his ears and hanging down in his face. He seemed young, twenty-two or twenty-three at the most, and Sam found himself liking him almost immediately.
Josiah was as different from his younger brother as he could possibly be. He was as quiet and pensive as Jim was outgoing, as reserved as Jim was sociable. He wore the same clothes Sam had seen on pictures of a hundred different sheriffs from the same time period, white shirt with a black string tie, black pants, vest and jacket, black cowboy boots and a tan hat. And of course, his badge. His hair was darker and shorter than Jim's, trimmed close to his head above his ears but a bit longer on top.
Sam guessed his age at around thirty, no more than a year or two in either direction. Dean was right about there being nothing overly "vampire-ish" about him, but being close to him still made Sam uncomfortable. All he could think when he saw him was that the only difference between the Joe Edwards walking toward their table in 1882 and the Josiah Edwards that had tried to kill Dean in 2007 was the clothes he wore. If he hadn't been turned yet, it was going to happen soon.
"So, boys." Jim clapped Dean on the back as he passed him, then pulled out a chair and sat down. "How was supper?"
"Big," Sam said.
"But good," Dean added. "Real good."
Josiah settled himself in the other chair and nodded at them wordlessly in greeting. Dean and Sam did the same in return.
A few seconds of awkward silence passed before Jim crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. "Okay, here's the thing, boys. I been talkin' to Joe here about yer huntin' trip. And the thing is, we don't neither one believe you."
Sam fought the urge to fidget under the scrutiny of two pair of blue eyes, one bright and slightly bloodshot, the other dark and piercing. He felt Dean stiffen slightly across from him, but neither of them visibly reacted to what Jim had said.
"It's a dumb story, boys, real dumb. But the thing is..." He turned to Dean. "Pancho, that bite on your neck?"
Dean nodded once.
"I've seen one before. Not exactly like it, but real close." Josiah's voice took them both by surprise, and they turned toward him. "There's somethin' in those mountains, and it's been killin' people round here. I'm thinkin' ya know what it is, and I'm thinkin' ya tangled with it."
Sam and Dean shared a look across the table, and Sam swallowed hard.
"Joe's been tryin' to catch it or kill it for months," Jim said. "But we don' know what it is. We're thinkin' it's got somethin'a do with that ol' wizard man up there..."
"What wizard?" Sam asked.
"He's not a wizard," Josiah said. "He's just an ol' hermit. Has a cabin up there, moved in a coupla months ago. Coincidence."
"Everybody says he's a wizard," Jim argued. "Real strange stuff happenin' up in them mountains now, since he showed up. Flashin' lights and windstorms and all kinda stuff."
"Stop, Jimmy," Josiah said. He steepled his fingers on the table in front of him, and looked directly at Dean. "I don't care why yer really here, boys. Long as you leave these folks be, you can stay long as ya want. What I want to know is - did ya see what bit you?"
Dean shook his head slowly without looking away from Josiah's eyes. "No," he lied. "I didn't."
Josiah turned to Sam. "Did you?"
"No, sir," Sam said. "I just saw a blur of something. It was moving too fast."
"You sure?" Josiah sounded disappointed.
"Positive," Dean said. "Never saw it."
Josiah looked across the table at Jim and sighed. "I told you. Waste of time." He pushed away from the the table and started to stand.
"But," Dean interrupted. "If you want help finding it, we're willing to volunteer."
Josiah settled back down in his seat. "You sure 'bout that?"
Dean nodded again. "Thing bit me in the neck," he said. "Do just about anything to stop it from doing it again."
"And I told you," Jim said with more than a hint of victory in his voice. "We'd get something outta them."
Dean held up his arm and caught the bartender's attention, then held up four fingers and pointed at his empty beer glass. The bartender nodded once before going to fill his order.
"Tell us what we need to know, Sheriff," Sam said.
"First thing, call me Joe. All the 'sheriff this' and 'sheriff that' stuff makes me nervous."
Dean smiled broadly. "Okay, then, Joe. Tell us what you need us to do."
"So how'd you end up in Laramie, Joe?"
As the night had gone on, the conversation had moved away from the "wizard" and the "thing" in the mountains. Under normal circumstances, Dean would have been all over the "thing," because he was sure it was a hunt of some kind, but he didn't want to get pulled into a job with no weapons. The "wizard" was something they'd have to think about looking into, though, if their search in the morning didn't turn up anything else powerful enough to bend time.
Sam and Jim were still sitting at the table, talking. Dean and Joe had moved to a smaller table to play cards and talk, and they'd both had a couple of beers.
Joe tilted his head a bit and looked thoughtful. "Jimmy," was all he said.
Dean snorted and raised his mug. "Here's to little brothers being a pain in the ass."
Joe didn't return the toast, though. He didn't even smile. "We lived in Cheyenne when our pa died. Jimmy was eighteen, took it real hard. And one day, he just up'n disappeared. Our mama went to her grave not knowin' if he was alive or dead."
"Wow," Dean said. "That's rough."
Joe nodded slowly. "Then he just showed up, outta the blue. Told me he's livin' in Laramie. Didn't have nobody left 'cept for him, so when he came back, I came with him."
"And now you're the sheriff."
"And now I'm the sheriff," Joe said with a nod. "Last one died on a..." His words trailed off and he looked hard at Dean. "Huntin' trip in the mountains."
Dean forced a smile.
"I know I said I don't care, and it's not gonna change nothin'. But where you from, Pancho?"
"Kansas," Dean said. "That part was true. As for the rest..." He shrugged. "We were on our way to California. We hooked up with a coupla guys in Buford, said they knew a good trail through here. Last thing I remember is starting to set up camp last night, up in the mountains. Woke up this morning in the hills outside of town, and everything we own was gone." The story came effortlessly, a mix of truth and lie blended smoothly enough that he doubted anyone would be able to pick it apart.
"Then why'd ya lie?" Joe asked. "Why not just tell Jimmy what happened to ya?"
"Embarrassed, mostly. We're not either one quite sure how we ended up here, and I feel kinda dumb about that. I mean, you think you know a guy, right? You talk to him, get to know him, start to trust him and even call him friend, and then it turns out he's a..."
Dean looked up at Joe, at the intense look of attention on his face, and he couldn't finish that sentence.
He didn't have to, though, because Joe understood his meaning. He nodded slowly.
"All kindsa monsters in the world, Pancho. And most of 'em are real good at hidin' right in front of ya."
Sam had barely closed the door to their room before Dean spun on him.
"We've gotta tell him, Sam."
Sam walked past him, shaking his head sadly. "We can't."
"I just spent the last three hours playing cards and drinking with the guy. And talking to him. And you know what I found out?"
"What?"
"He's a great guy, and an awesome big brother."
"I know." Jim had told Sam all about Joe. He knew that Joe was the only reason Jim had survived their parents dying, and that Jim was the only reason Joe was even in Laramie.
"We can stop it, Sam," Dean continued. "All we have to do is warn him. We don't even have to tell him why."
"No, we can't, Dean," Sam said as he flopped down on his bed.
Dean followed him and stood over him. "You know what he's gonna become!"
"Yes, I do!" Sam returned hotly. "And I hate it as much as you do! You have no idea what I'd give to stop him from... God, Dean, he tried to kill you."
"He's gonna kill a shitload of people before he gets to me again," Dean pointed out. "We can save them, all of them. And Joe. But we have got to..."
Sam jumped to his feet, using his full height to his advantage and forcing Dean to step back.
"We can't!"
Dean didn't stay back for long, but stepped right back into Sam's face.
"Why the hell not?!"
"Because in the future, in our future, Dean, Joe Edwards is a vampire." He hated it, hated it with everything that was in him, but he knew that there was nothing they could do about it. "If we tell him, if we warn him, if we stop it from happening the way we already know it did, we're changing the future. We're changing our future. And I know it seems like a small thing, just save this one guy and save all these other people at the same time, but damn it, we don't know what else that'll change."
Dean stepped back again, then turned away and walked to the window.
"I know it sucks." Sam lowered his voice as his anger gave way to understanding. "And I don't like it. I hate it. I hate that we can't save him, or the people he's going to kill. I hate that Jim is gonna lose him like that. And it hurts, I know that, and maybe if we didn't know, then... it would be easier, if nothing else. But we do know. And we have to let it happen the way it did the first time, because if we stop it, we could be making things a hell of a lot worse."
Dean leaned his head against the window and looked down at the empty street below.
"I like the guy, Sam," he said quietly. "And it's killing me to... he's a good man. And he's gonna lose that. He's gonna become a damn monster, and he's not gonna be able to do anything about it."
"I know." Sam sat back down on his bed again. "But at least we know what not to interfere with there. Every minute we stay, we run the risk of changing something. We've gotta find a way to get home before we break something we can't fix."
"First thing in the morning," Dean said. "We head back out to those mountains, we find what brought us here, and we get the hell out. Because if we have to stay more than a day, if I have to keep looking at him, knowing what I know... I'll tell him, Sam. I will."
Sam sighed deeply and laid back on the bed. "Then here's hoping that we find something in the mountains that'll make this all make sense."
The sun was just coming up over the mountains when they reached their destination. They'd started out before sunrise, because neither of them wanted to run the risk of seeing either of the Edwards brothers on their way out. As hard a time as Dean was having not telling Joe what was going to happen to him, Sam was having almost as much trouble with not telling Jim, and the more they avoided the temptation the easier it was to resist it.
They pulled their horses up next to a stand of bushes near one of the rock formations at the base of the Laramie Mountains and stopped.
Dean jumped down from his saddle with a whoop. "Ya know, I miss my baby, but I gotta say, this is kinda fun."
Sam snorted and dismounted his own horse much more slowly and carefully. "Yeah, you would think so."
Dean noticed Sam's obvious discomfort and chuckled. "Little saddle sore there, Sammy?"
Sam shot him a dirty look over his shoulder as he continued working out the kinks in his muscles. "What, you aren't?"
"Are you kidding?" Dean led his horse to one of the nearby bushes and looped the reins loosely around one of the branches. "I was born for this."
Sam put his hands on his hips and leaned back, trying to alleviate the ache that had worked its way up from his tailbone. "You've got the legs for it."
Dean took Sam's reins from his hand with a smile and cocked his head. "Hey, chicks think bowlegs are sexy."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever you say there, Pancho."
Dean grinned as he hitched Sam's horse to the bush, then turned his attention to the weapons. He checked his Colt in his holster before pulling the machete out of Sam's saddle and handing it to him. "I do miss our weapons, though," he said as he hung the other machete from his belt. "Iron-loaded pistols and a couple of machetes won't kill much."
Sam shrugged, tested the weight and balance of the machete in his hand, then checked the Taurus at his hip. "They'll kill the things we're most likely to run into out here."
"Yeah?" Dean said. He grabbed a handhold on one of the massive rocks and pulled himself up it. "Like what?"
Sam looked up at him from the ground. "Like snakes."
Dean froze in place, then slowly turned his head and looked down at Sam. "Snakes," he said. "Why'd it have to be snakes?"
For a brief moment, Sam thought that Dean was serious, and he wondered when Dean had started being afraid of snakes. Then Dean cracked another grin and winked.
"Funny, Indy," Sam huffed. "Climb."
"Ya know, I know we're stuck here and it really kinda sucks, but there's no reason we can't enjoy it."
"I'll look back on it fondly when we get home," Sam said.
"Hey, Sam, there's a snake in my boot!"
Sam just shook his head. "Woody, Dean? Really? We're quoting Disney movies now?"
Dean laughed, turned back around, raised his arms in the air, and jumped to the next rock. His hat fell off and dangled from the cord around his neck, his coat flew out behind him, and he looked every bit like a little kid playing dress-up as a cowboy. Sam rolled his eyes again, shook his head, and pulled himself up the rock face. They'd just gotten started, and Dean was already in top form.
"Somebody poisoned the waterhole!"
It was going to be a very long day.
"Do you even know what we're looking for out here?" Dean asked.
They'd been climbing up and down, weaving in and around the rocks for four hours, and they had yet to find anything that looked even remotely out of place. They were standing at the top of the formation they'd just climbed, looking down at what in their world would have been the outskirts of Laramie, but was nothing but undeveloped nature. The sun was high in the sky above them, and they could see for miles.
"Not really," Sam answered. He turned around and looked the other direction, back toward the mountains that rose up behind them. "But it would have to be pretty powerful, right? So it should be obvious."
"So have you narrowed it down even?" Dean said. He was looking down the side of the rock they were standing on, but Sam couldn't see what he was looking at. "A cursed object or..."
"I'm actually really thinking..."
Dean suddenly spun around and wrapped his hand around Sam's mouth, silencing him. Sam's eyes widened in surprise, but Dean shook his head at him in a silent warning. He nodded in understanding, so Dean moved his hand away, then tipped his head in the direction he'd been looking before. Sam stepped closer to the side of the rock and looked down.
There was a camp of some sort below them, with at least a dozen men milling around it. They didn't seem to have noticed Sam and Dean above them yet, and were just talking. The sounds of voices floated up to the top of the rock, but not the words themselves.
"What are they doing here?" Sam whispered.
"Take a wild guess," Dean whispered back. "There's a lot of reasons why a bunch of guys might have a camp in the middle of the mountains. One or two of those might be good, but the rest of 'em? Probably not."
"So what do we do?"
"Nothing," Dean answered. He turned away and walked back to the side of the rock they'd just climbed. "We head back to Laramie."
"But we've got to find a way to get home! If they're just people..."
Dean spun back around, drawing himself up to his full height and getting as close to Sam as he could. "Outlaws kill people, Sam," he said. "And we are not gonna end up a coupla notches on some hotshot gunslinger's barrel. You got it?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I got it."
Dean pointed at the ground angrily. Sam lowered his head in contrition and started climbing down the rock face without another word. He could feel Dean standing above him, watching him climb down, and he heard a scuffling which he assumed was Dean starting to follow. His feet hit the ground, and he tipped his head back to watch his brother's descent.
"Sam!"
He had no idea what the hell tackled him, but the next thing Sam knew he was face-down in the dirt.
His first instinct was to roll to his back and fight his way free, but he couldn't throw whatever it was off. Then he tried to push up to his knees, but he couldn't do that, either. Whatever had him pinned, it was way stronger than he was. So he ducked and covered his head with his arms to protect it from the multiple blows that were raining down on it.
Something tangled in his hair and pulled his head back. He caught a flash of white, the scent of fetid breath, and then a spray of red.
His head slammed back to the ground hard enough to leave him seeing stars.
And then Dean was there, shoving the weight on his back away and pulling him to his feet. "You okay? Sam? Sammy?"
Sam nodded as he tried to collect his thoughts and process what had just happened. "Dean, what...?"
"They're not outlaws," Dean answered hurriedly. "They're fucking vampires." Dean put his hand against Sam's back and shoved him forward. "We gotta get outta here."
They both heard the scuffling that time, a sound that Sam finally recognized as boots dragging across the rocky ground. There was definitely more than one of them coming, and they weren't far away.
"Run, Sam. Go!"
They both ran as fast as they could, weaving their way around the rocks they'd been climbing on. Sam missed his step once and stumbled, but Dean grabbed the back of his coat and steadied him before he fell. Neither one was even trying to run silently, because it would lose time they didn't have, and it wouldn't have made any difference.
The vampires weren't far behind them, and they were making just as much noise and being just as obvious about their location as he and Dean were. They had a good head start on them, but vampires were faster than humans, which had Sam more than a little worried. He and Dean weren't familiar with the territory they were running across, and he didn't know how much farther they had to go to reach the horses. He knew they'd done a lot of circling around as they'd climbed, but what if they'd gone further than he thought they had?
One of the vampires got close enough to Dean to grab the end of his coat where it trailed out behind him. Dean suddenly flew backwards, fighting to keep his balance and stay on his feet. Sam turned around to help him.
"Keep going!" Dean shouted.
Sam ignored him, raised his machete, and ran back to help. By the time he reached them, Dean had already spun on the vampire, raised his own machete, and beheaded it cleanly.
"I said keep going!" Dean said angrily as he turned and started running again, pushing Sam ahead of him as he did.
Sam didn't know how long they'd been running when they finally reached the horses, and he didn't know how far behind them the vampires were, but he honestly didn't care. All of his earlier complaints about traveling on horseback were forgotten as he grabbed both sets of reins from the bush, tossed one to Dean, put his foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up.
All he could think as he kicked his feet back and snapped the reins was that he hoped a vampire couldn't outrun a galloping horse.
The sun was almost straight overhead when they reached the edge of Laramie. There'd been no sign of pursuit from the vampires, but Sam guessed that they weren't exactly the sociable type and would probably avoid town, especially during the day.
They pulled their horses up in front of the hotel.
"Well, this trip just got a lot less fun," Dean said as he swung his leg down to the ground.
Sam dismounted his own horse and hitched it to the post. "Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?" he said. "Jim and Joe said people have been turning up dead with bites like yours. And the one that’s going to turn Joe has to be around here somewhere."
"Yeah, I know," Dean said with a slow nod. "I just didn't expect them to be right there. And I hate running into evil things I'm not expecting."
"We can't take them on," Sam pointed out. "We're not equipped to deal with that many of them."
Dean nodded. "No, you’re right. If we had the Colt, maybe we could..."
Sam's head snapped up. It had been months since Dean had mentioned the Colt, and it took him by surprise. They knew where the gun had gone and why, but talking about it always ended badly, mainly because they disagreed on whether the price paid with that gun was worth what it had bought them.
Dean cleared his throat and looked down at himself, at the blood that covered his hands, arms, and front of his coat.
"You take care of the horses," he said. "Wipe 'em down and get 'em some water. I'm gonna go up to the room and get this blood off me before someone sees it."
Sam nodded, and Dean walked into the hotel.
He turned back to the horses and dug through his saddlebags, looking for a rag. The sound of hoofbeats caught his attention, and he looked over his saddle. Six riders were coming down the street toward him, and from the looks on their faces, they were there on business. Sam didn't recognize any of the men, but his internal danger alert went off. He ducked back behind the horses again.
They didn't ride all the way through town, but stopped in front of the sheriff's office two buildings down. Sam heard the sounds of boots on the wooden planks of the sidewalk as Josiah Edwards himself came out to greet them.
"You're not supposed to be in town, boys."
"We got a problem, Sheriff."
That didn't sound very good.
"What kinda problem you got, Silas?"
"We lost Harkins and Earl."
Great. Sam had a pretty good idea what had happened to them.
"Then go find 'em. I ain't got time for this right now."
"They's dead, Sheriff. Heads chopped clean off by some boy I ain't never seen a'fore."
“What’d he look like?”
“Short brown hair, long coat. S’all we saw. Tha’s his horse over at the hotel, there.”
He didn't know if he actually heard Joe's sigh or if he just imagined it.
“Damn it, Pancho.”
But he didn't need to hear any more.
"Dean!" Sam closed the door quickly and hurried over to the window, walking right past Dean, who was standing at the wash basin with a pitcher of water in his hand, looking confused. "We've got a problem."
Dean put the pitcher down, picked up a towel, and joined Sam at the window while drying his hands. He looked out just in time to see Joe, rifle in hand, cross the street. He had nine men with him that Sam could see - three had rifles, and the six that had ridden into town carried pistols. Jim was one of them.
"Damn, that was quick," Sam muttered.
"Who are they?" Dean asked.
"I think most of them are vampires," Sam said. "They were telling Joe about you cutting their friends' heads off."
"Well, shit," Dean said. He started rolling his sleeves down and buttoning his cuffs hurriedly. "Didn't see that one coming."
Joe and the men disappeared under the roof of the porch outside the window. Dean jogged across the room to grab his hat and machete. Sam started pushing the heavy wooden dresser across the door.
"What are you doing that for?" Dean asked.
"They're coming for you, Dean," Sam said earnestly. He shoved the dresser forward another inch. "A whole bunch of vampires with a few humans and a sheriff who thinks you just murdered two innocent men."
"I know that," Dean said.
"You know what they did to murderers in towns like this, don't you?"
"Well, yeah," Dean said with a nod.
"Then we need to stop them from coming in!" Sam insisted.
"No. We need to get the hell out, is what we need to do."
Sam shook his head. "There's only one set of stairs and they're coming up it!"
Dean smiled. "We're not gonna use the stairs."
"Then how are we supposed to...?" He trailed off when he noticed that Dean was staring out the window. "No. You're not serious."
"They're coming."
"Dean..."
"There's only one way outta here."
"Listen..."
"They're gonna hang me, Sam!"
"This is crazy!"
Dean smushed his hat down on his head, grabbed Sam's sleeve, and ran toward the window. Sam had just enough time to raise his arms to protect his face, and then they were jumping in unison, smashing through the glass and landing on the porch roof below. They ran to the edge and jumped off, hit the ground with bone-jarring impact, and rolled, then pushed themselves back to their feet.
They were already on the horses and backing away from the hotel when Joe Edwards emerged from the hotel with his rifle raised. He managed to squeeze off a few shots in their direction, as did the vampires and men that flanked him. Sam ducked low as he finished turning his horse around, snapped the reins, and headed for the far edge of town.
Dean's horse seemed to stumble a bit, and Dean rocked forward in his saddle, but he recovered quickly. By the time Sam's horse galloped out of the street and back onto the open plain, Dean had caught up and was right beside him.
They rode as hard as they dared, heading straight east. Neither of them had any idea where they were going other than away from Laramie.
They'd been riding for half an hour when Dean started slowing down and falling behind. Sam circled back around and pulled up beside him.
"Dean?" he said. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Dean gasped. "I think I just... just need a minute."
"There's a posse behind us, Dean!"
They'd seen the group of horses a few times in the past thirty minutes, when their path had taken them up high enough to look back. Sam thought he'd counted at least a dozen of them, but they'd been too far away to tell for sure. But it didn't matter how many there were. All that mattered was that there was a hanging posse coming for his brother.
"We've got to keep going!"
"Yeah," Dean said. "In a minute."
Sam realized that Dean was wobbling badly in his saddle, and he jumped down from his horse. He reached Dean's side just in time to catch him as he fell.
"Shit, Dean, what's wrong?" He looked down at his hand, both shocked and horrified by the blood that covered it. "Are you hit?"
Dean didn't answer him.
"Dean! Are you hit?"
Dean nodded slowly.
"Fuck!" Sam laid him out on the ground and started searching for the source of the bleeding. The blood that stained his shirt from the vampires he'd killed had dried to a dark brown, which made the bright red that much more obvious.
"Not that bad," Dean said. "Had to keep moving."
Sam pushed Dean's shirt up and out of the way frantically. He found the wound easily - he'd never stop being amazed at how much damage such a small hole could cause or how much blood could pour out of one - low on Dean's right side, just above the waist band of his jeans.
"God damn it, Dean!" Sam said. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Posse on our ass," Dean said weakly. "Didn't have much choice about riding."
"Well, you can't go any further like this. You'll bleed to death." He pulled his bandana off and pressed it against the bleeding wound.
Dean winced and moaned in pain. "Can't stay here," he gasped. "A posse full of vampires. Hanging me is the least of what they'll do." It took him too long to catch his breath between sentences. Sam didn't like it at all. "So unless you've got something more powerful than a machete on ya..."
Sam stared off into the distance as thought occurred to him. "The wizard."
Dean blinked in confusion. "The what?"
"The wizard in the mountains," Sam repeated. "The one Jim and Joe were talking about last night."
"You think he can help?"
Sam shrugged. "It's worth a shot, isn't it?"
"We don't even know..." He couldn't even finish a sentence without stopping to breathe. He was going downhill too fast. "If he's real."
"But what if he is? What if he's the one that brought us here? What if he's the one who can send us home?" All 'home' meant to Sam at that moment was a hospital for Dean, and that was more than enough reason for him to find the wizard. But Sam could tell from the look in his eyes that Dean needed more than that; Dean needed an absolute, even if it wasn't true. "If we find him, we can go home."
"Okay," Dean said. He pressed down on the bandana with his right hand and held his left arm up. "Get me up. Let's go find him."
Together, they managed to get Dean to his feet before his knees buckled. Sam caught him again and kept him from collapsing into the dirt.
"Okay." Dean's voice was raspy, breathless, and filled with pain. "Change of plan. I'll stay here. You go find him."
"Dean..."
"All these rocks and crannies around. Stash me somewhere. I'll be fine."
He didn't like it. Dean was wounded, badly, and he shouldn't leave him alone. But he helped Dean back to his feet anyway, and together they slipped between two of the larger rock formations. Sam helped Dean settle to the ground, and he leaned against the rocks behind him. He'd be hidden from anyone coming up the path, as long as they stayed on it. If someone decided to dismount and start searching on foot...
"Leave me a canteen. Go, Sam."
"I can't..." He shook his head in denial.
"Not much time," Dean said. "If they see the horses, we're screwed. You gotta go."
"I can't leave you here, Dean. If they find you, if you..."
Dean wrapped his hand around Sam's arm and squeezed. "I get it. I do. But if you don't go, if you don't find this wizard, we're both gonna..." Sam could see the truth in Dean's eyes, all the words that he wasn't saying.
"I don't wanna die here, Sam. Go. Please."
Sam went.
He had no idea where he was going.
He'd been riding for what seemed like days, even though he knew it was only an hour, and he wasn't any closer to finding the cabin than he'd been when he'd left Dean behind. And he knew Dean had wanted him to go, knew they needed help and the "wizard" in the mountains was the best chance they had, knew that he'd had to go, knew that Dean had a bullet in him and couldn't go with him, but that wasn't the damn point.
Dean was dying, and he'd left him behind.
He slowed his horse to a walk and looked around, hoping to find some sign of a cabin, or a trail, or any sign of humanity at all. He heard a sound behind him and turned toward it. His sudden movement spooked his horse, and before he could do anything to calm it, it bolted out from under him. He found himself sitting on a very sore backside in the dirt.
"You really should be taught the proper way to ride a horse, Winchester."
Sam froze, then turned around slowly.
There was a man standing on the hill right behind him, a man he could swear hadn't been there before. It was hard for Sam to tell his age at that distance - he could have been anywhere from thirty-five to sixty. He was a large man, at least six foot tall and powerfully built. He had curly brown hair that just covered his ears, a brown beard with specks of grey, and dark eyes that held more than a hint of amusement. His clothes weren't all that different from what most of the men in Laramie had been wearing, but they seemed to be in much better shape, and he was wearing a fancy coat that hung to his knees. He was smiling down at Sam kindly.
Sam pushed himself to his feet quickly, knocking the dust from his pants as he stood. "You know my name?"
The man's smile grew even wider. "Well, I certainly know that it isn't Lefty."
Sam gaped, open-jawed, as the man started walking down the hill toward him. "Your brother's idea, wasn't it? That name?" Sam narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but he nodded anyway. "From what I understand, it's going to be a good song."
Sam blinked twice, then rubbed his eyes with his fingers. He must have hit his head when he fell, because he was hallucinating. He had to be.
"Gotta be a mirage," he whispered to himself.
"I was unaware that mirages could talk," the man said.
Sam shook his head, more confused than suspicious now. "How do you...?"
The man had gotten close enough for Sam to really see him. He looked familiar somehow, like someone Sam had seen once or twice, not so long ago.
"You're the wizard, aren't you?" he said. "The one Jim and Joe were talking about."
The man shrugged and stepped closer, and suddenly Sam was seeing his face staring back at him from the page of a book, a book his father had given him to read when Sam wanted to learn more about the weapons they used.
"Holy shit," he breathed. "You're Samuel Colt."
Part Three
Part Two
Dean's mood had lightened considerably since they'd left the general store, even though Sam's had been growing steadily darker. While Sam's thoughts were dominated by figuring out how they'd gotten where - and when - they were, how to get back home, and how to avoid Josiah Edwards while they did it, Dean didn't seem to be thinking about anything other than ways to entertain himself.
The atmosphere in the hotel's restaurant should have been charming, or at least interesting, and he knew that. He was as close as he'd ever be to an actual wild west saloon, complete with massive wooden bar and piano music being played by a rather well-endowed young woman in a bright yellow dress, and he couldn't even bring himself to pay attention to what was going on around him. The sounds of booted footfalls on the wood floors mixed with the laughter and conversations of the patrons, and he didn't pay the people around him any more mind than he would have at any other bar.
Dinner had turned out to be a rather large amount of food, a whole lot more than Sam had expected to get for fifty cents each. They'd had plates heaped with ham, fried potatoes, corn on the cob, and custard, with iced tea to drink and a huge chunk of pie for dessert. Dean had eaten every bite, but Sam hadn't done much more than play with his. Their plates had long since been cleared, and they'd switched from tea to beer, but they were still sitting at the same table. Sam had absolutely refused to let him join in for fear of him getting himself shot, so Dean was watching the poker game going on at the back corner table with interest. Every now and then, Sam heard a giggle coming from that direction, and he wondered who Dean was paying more attention to - the card players themselves or the women who stood behind them.
Sam turned the receipt from the general store over in his hand again. He shouldn't have been surprised by the date written on it, but he was still having a hard time processing it all. They'd woken up in a motel on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming on the morning of May 12, 2007, but they'd be going to bed in a room at the original Union Pacific Hotel, the Thornburg House, on October 28, 1882.
"Do you think he's turned yet?"
Dean didn't seem to have heard him, or was ignoring him if he had, so Sam kicked him under the table.
"Ow! What?"
"Do you think he's been turned yet?" Sam asked again. "Edwards?"
Dean reluctantly pulled his attention away from the table in the corner and leaned his elbows on the table. "I don't know," he said. "Nothing about him really screamed 'vamp' to me. You?"
Sam shook his head. "No. But he had to be turned at some point, right? I mean, we saw the census record..."
"From 1880, yeah," Dean interrupted. "How many vampires do you think care about being counted on the census?"
"Probably not many," Sam admitted. "But he's the sheriff. He's got some power here. He's not gonna want to throw that all away."
"People change when they turn, Sam, you know that. You turn into a monster like that, you're not usually capable of rational thought."
"But Lenore..."
"Is one of the very few rational vampires we've run into, I know. But most of them aren't. Most of them are batshit." Dean smirked. "No pun intended." He glanced back at the poker game, which seemed to be really getting going, and sighed. "So what have you got on that other thing?"
"The 'how did we get here?' thing?"
Dean nodded.
"Nothing. It's supposed to be impossible, but it's obviously very possible, because here we are."
"So what could do it?" Dean asked. "And damn, I wish we had Dad's journal right now."
Sam shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "I don't know if it would do any good. I mean, don't you think he'd have told us about it if he knew time travel was possible?"
"Gee, Sam, I don't know." The sarcasm in Dean's voice was almost tangible. "He was always so open and honest about the stuff he knew."
When he thought of all the implications behind Dean's statement, and what their father's secrecy had done to both of them through the years, Sam couldn't do anything other than nod again. "Okay, so what could do it that we know about, then? It would have to be something powerful, more powerful than we've ever seen."
"Demon of some kind?" Dean asked. "But that wouldn't make any sense, because... why? If anything, a demon would've made sure we couldn't get out of that warehouse, not pulled us out."
"Witchcraft?" Sam said. "Spellwork of some kind. Maybe a cursed object?"
"That doesn't make any sense, either. Why curse an object to send people a hundred and twenty-five years back in time?"
"Maybe it was a fluke, an accident or something. We woke up in the same spot we were when we got hit by that wave, though, so maybe... I don't know. Maybe whatever it is was tied to that location."
Dean smiled at that. "Which means we have to go back out there, right?"
Sam nodded slowly, confused at how quickly Dean perked up at that thought. "Yeah. In the morning. Why are you so happy about that?"
"Because." Dean grinned from ear to ear. "It means we get to ride those horses after all."
"Pancho! Lefty!"
Sam and Dean turned toward the door and the voice that had called their names. James and Josiah Edwards were walking toward them.
James - or Jim, as he was insisting they call him now - was definitely the more boisterous of the two brothers, once they'd gotten past the casual indifference he showed toward them at first. Sam had learned that from just the few moments that he and Dean had spent with the Edwards brothers in the general store. Sam did have to wonder how much of his sudden friendliness was due to the knife they'd given him, and how much of it was just him. He guessed it was probably a combination of both - their willingness to trade away something so valuable made him more willing to show them a little kindness.
He was dressed in the same clothes he'd worn in the store: a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and held out of his way by a pair of black sleeve garters, an unbuttoned dark brown vest, tan pants, and a pair of simple work boots. His light brown hair was longer than most men in Laramie seemed to wear theirs, almost covering his ears and hanging down in his face. He seemed young, twenty-two or twenty-three at the most, and Sam found himself liking him almost immediately.
Josiah was as different from his younger brother as he could possibly be. He was as quiet and pensive as Jim was outgoing, as reserved as Jim was sociable. He wore the same clothes Sam had seen on pictures of a hundred different sheriffs from the same time period, white shirt with a black string tie, black pants, vest and jacket, black cowboy boots and a tan hat. And of course, his badge. His hair was darker and shorter than Jim's, trimmed close to his head above his ears but a bit longer on top.
Sam guessed his age at around thirty, no more than a year or two in either direction. Dean was right about there being nothing overly "vampire-ish" about him, but being close to him still made Sam uncomfortable. All he could think when he saw him was that the only difference between the Joe Edwards walking toward their table in 1882 and the Josiah Edwards that had tried to kill Dean in 2007 was the clothes he wore. If he hadn't been turned yet, it was going to happen soon.
"So, boys." Jim clapped Dean on the back as he passed him, then pulled out a chair and sat down. "How was supper?"
"Big," Sam said.
"But good," Dean added. "Real good."
Josiah settled himself in the other chair and nodded at them wordlessly in greeting. Dean and Sam did the same in return.
A few seconds of awkward silence passed before Jim crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. "Okay, here's the thing, boys. I been talkin' to Joe here about yer huntin' trip. And the thing is, we don't neither one believe you."
Sam fought the urge to fidget under the scrutiny of two pair of blue eyes, one bright and slightly bloodshot, the other dark and piercing. He felt Dean stiffen slightly across from him, but neither of them visibly reacted to what Jim had said.
"It's a dumb story, boys, real dumb. But the thing is..." He turned to Dean. "Pancho, that bite on your neck?"
Dean nodded once.
"I've seen one before. Not exactly like it, but real close." Josiah's voice took them both by surprise, and they turned toward him. "There's somethin' in those mountains, and it's been killin' people round here. I'm thinkin' ya know what it is, and I'm thinkin' ya tangled with it."
Sam and Dean shared a look across the table, and Sam swallowed hard.
"Joe's been tryin' to catch it or kill it for months," Jim said. "But we don' know what it is. We're thinkin' it's got somethin'a do with that ol' wizard man up there..."
"What wizard?" Sam asked.
"He's not a wizard," Josiah said. "He's just an ol' hermit. Has a cabin up there, moved in a coupla months ago. Coincidence."
"Everybody says he's a wizard," Jim argued. "Real strange stuff happenin' up in them mountains now, since he showed up. Flashin' lights and windstorms and all kinda stuff."
"Stop, Jimmy," Josiah said. He steepled his fingers on the table in front of him, and looked directly at Dean. "I don't care why yer really here, boys. Long as you leave these folks be, you can stay long as ya want. What I want to know is - did ya see what bit you?"
Dean shook his head slowly without looking away from Josiah's eyes. "No," he lied. "I didn't."
Josiah turned to Sam. "Did you?"
"No, sir," Sam said. "I just saw a blur of something. It was moving too fast."
"You sure?" Josiah sounded disappointed.
"Positive," Dean said. "Never saw it."
Josiah looked across the table at Jim and sighed. "I told you. Waste of time." He pushed away from the the table and started to stand.
"But," Dean interrupted. "If you want help finding it, we're willing to volunteer."
Josiah settled back down in his seat. "You sure 'bout that?"
Dean nodded again. "Thing bit me in the neck," he said. "Do just about anything to stop it from doing it again."
"And I told you," Jim said with more than a hint of victory in his voice. "We'd get something outta them."
Dean held up his arm and caught the bartender's attention, then held up four fingers and pointed at his empty beer glass. The bartender nodded once before going to fill his order.
"Tell us what we need to know, Sheriff," Sam said.
"First thing, call me Joe. All the 'sheriff this' and 'sheriff that' stuff makes me nervous."
Dean smiled broadly. "Okay, then, Joe. Tell us what you need us to do."
"So how'd you end up in Laramie, Joe?"
As the night had gone on, the conversation had moved away from the "wizard" and the "thing" in the mountains. Under normal circumstances, Dean would have been all over the "thing," because he was sure it was a hunt of some kind, but he didn't want to get pulled into a job with no weapons. The "wizard" was something they'd have to think about looking into, though, if their search in the morning didn't turn up anything else powerful enough to bend time.
Sam and Jim were still sitting at the table, talking. Dean and Joe had moved to a smaller table to play cards and talk, and they'd both had a couple of beers.
Joe tilted his head a bit and looked thoughtful. "Jimmy," was all he said.
Dean snorted and raised his mug. "Here's to little brothers being a pain in the ass."
Joe didn't return the toast, though. He didn't even smile. "We lived in Cheyenne when our pa died. Jimmy was eighteen, took it real hard. And one day, he just up'n disappeared. Our mama went to her grave not knowin' if he was alive or dead."
"Wow," Dean said. "That's rough."
Joe nodded slowly. "Then he just showed up, outta the blue. Told me he's livin' in Laramie. Didn't have nobody left 'cept for him, so when he came back, I came with him."
"And now you're the sheriff."
"And now I'm the sheriff," Joe said with a nod. "Last one died on a..." His words trailed off and he looked hard at Dean. "Huntin' trip in the mountains."
Dean forced a smile.
"I know I said I don't care, and it's not gonna change nothin'. But where you from, Pancho?"
"Kansas," Dean said. "That part was true. As for the rest..." He shrugged. "We were on our way to California. We hooked up with a coupla guys in Buford, said they knew a good trail through here. Last thing I remember is starting to set up camp last night, up in the mountains. Woke up this morning in the hills outside of town, and everything we own was gone." The story came effortlessly, a mix of truth and lie blended smoothly enough that he doubted anyone would be able to pick it apart.
"Then why'd ya lie?" Joe asked. "Why not just tell Jimmy what happened to ya?"
"Embarrassed, mostly. We're not either one quite sure how we ended up here, and I feel kinda dumb about that. I mean, you think you know a guy, right? You talk to him, get to know him, start to trust him and even call him friend, and then it turns out he's a..."
Dean looked up at Joe, at the intense look of attention on his face, and he couldn't finish that sentence.
He didn't have to, though, because Joe understood his meaning. He nodded slowly.
"All kindsa monsters in the world, Pancho. And most of 'em are real good at hidin' right in front of ya."
Sam had barely closed the door to their room before Dean spun on him.
"We've gotta tell him, Sam."
Sam walked past him, shaking his head sadly. "We can't."
"I just spent the last three hours playing cards and drinking with the guy. And talking to him. And you know what I found out?"
"What?"
"He's a great guy, and an awesome big brother."
"I know." Jim had told Sam all about Joe. He knew that Joe was the only reason Jim had survived their parents dying, and that Jim was the only reason Joe was even in Laramie.
"We can stop it, Sam," Dean continued. "All we have to do is warn him. We don't even have to tell him why."
"No, we can't, Dean," Sam said as he flopped down on his bed.
Dean followed him and stood over him. "You know what he's gonna become!"
"Yes, I do!" Sam returned hotly. "And I hate it as much as you do! You have no idea what I'd give to stop him from... God, Dean, he tried to kill you."
"He's gonna kill a shitload of people before he gets to me again," Dean pointed out. "We can save them, all of them. And Joe. But we have got to..."
Sam jumped to his feet, using his full height to his advantage and forcing Dean to step back.
"We can't!"
Dean didn't stay back for long, but stepped right back into Sam's face.
"Why the hell not?!"
"Because in the future, in our future, Dean, Joe Edwards is a vampire." He hated it, hated it with everything that was in him, but he knew that there was nothing they could do about it. "If we tell him, if we warn him, if we stop it from happening the way we already know it did, we're changing the future. We're changing our future. And I know it seems like a small thing, just save this one guy and save all these other people at the same time, but damn it, we don't know what else that'll change."
Dean stepped back again, then turned away and walked to the window.
"I know it sucks." Sam lowered his voice as his anger gave way to understanding. "And I don't like it. I hate it. I hate that we can't save him, or the people he's going to kill. I hate that Jim is gonna lose him like that. And it hurts, I know that, and maybe if we didn't know, then... it would be easier, if nothing else. But we do know. And we have to let it happen the way it did the first time, because if we stop it, we could be making things a hell of a lot worse."
Dean leaned his head against the window and looked down at the empty street below.
"I like the guy, Sam," he said quietly. "And it's killing me to... he's a good man. And he's gonna lose that. He's gonna become a damn monster, and he's not gonna be able to do anything about it."
"I know." Sam sat back down on his bed again. "But at least we know what not to interfere with there. Every minute we stay, we run the risk of changing something. We've gotta find a way to get home before we break something we can't fix."
"First thing in the morning," Dean said. "We head back out to those mountains, we find what brought us here, and we get the hell out. Because if we have to stay more than a day, if I have to keep looking at him, knowing what I know... I'll tell him, Sam. I will."
Sam sighed deeply and laid back on the bed. "Then here's hoping that we find something in the mountains that'll make this all make sense."
The sun was just coming up over the mountains when they reached their destination. They'd started out before sunrise, because neither of them wanted to run the risk of seeing either of the Edwards brothers on their way out. As hard a time as Dean was having not telling Joe what was going to happen to him, Sam was having almost as much trouble with not telling Jim, and the more they avoided the temptation the easier it was to resist it.
They pulled their horses up next to a stand of bushes near one of the rock formations at the base of the Laramie Mountains and stopped.
Dean jumped down from his saddle with a whoop. "Ya know, I miss my baby, but I gotta say, this is kinda fun."
Sam snorted and dismounted his own horse much more slowly and carefully. "Yeah, you would think so."
Dean noticed Sam's obvious discomfort and chuckled. "Little saddle sore there, Sammy?"
Sam shot him a dirty look over his shoulder as he continued working out the kinks in his muscles. "What, you aren't?"
"Are you kidding?" Dean led his horse to one of the nearby bushes and looped the reins loosely around one of the branches. "I was born for this."
Sam put his hands on his hips and leaned back, trying to alleviate the ache that had worked its way up from his tailbone. "You've got the legs for it."
Dean took Sam's reins from his hand with a smile and cocked his head. "Hey, chicks think bowlegs are sexy."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever you say there, Pancho."
Dean grinned as he hitched Sam's horse to the bush, then turned his attention to the weapons. He checked his Colt in his holster before pulling the machete out of Sam's saddle and handing it to him. "I do miss our weapons, though," he said as he hung the other machete from his belt. "Iron-loaded pistols and a couple of machetes won't kill much."
Sam shrugged, tested the weight and balance of the machete in his hand, then checked the Taurus at his hip. "They'll kill the things we're most likely to run into out here."
"Yeah?" Dean said. He grabbed a handhold on one of the massive rocks and pulled himself up it. "Like what?"
Sam looked up at him from the ground. "Like snakes."
Dean froze in place, then slowly turned his head and looked down at Sam. "Snakes," he said. "Why'd it have to be snakes?"
For a brief moment, Sam thought that Dean was serious, and he wondered when Dean had started being afraid of snakes. Then Dean cracked another grin and winked.
"Funny, Indy," Sam huffed. "Climb."
"Ya know, I know we're stuck here and it really kinda sucks, but there's no reason we can't enjoy it."
"I'll look back on it fondly when we get home," Sam said.
"Hey, Sam, there's a snake in my boot!"
Sam just shook his head. "Woody, Dean? Really? We're quoting Disney movies now?"
Dean laughed, turned back around, raised his arms in the air, and jumped to the next rock. His hat fell off and dangled from the cord around his neck, his coat flew out behind him, and he looked every bit like a little kid playing dress-up as a cowboy. Sam rolled his eyes again, shook his head, and pulled himself up the rock face. They'd just gotten started, and Dean was already in top form.
"Somebody poisoned the waterhole!"
It was going to be a very long day.
"Do you even know what we're looking for out here?" Dean asked.
They'd been climbing up and down, weaving in and around the rocks for four hours, and they had yet to find anything that looked even remotely out of place. They were standing at the top of the formation they'd just climbed, looking down at what in their world would have been the outskirts of Laramie, but was nothing but undeveloped nature. The sun was high in the sky above them, and they could see for miles.
"Not really," Sam answered. He turned around and looked the other direction, back toward the mountains that rose up behind them. "But it would have to be pretty powerful, right? So it should be obvious."
"So have you narrowed it down even?" Dean said. He was looking down the side of the rock they were standing on, but Sam couldn't see what he was looking at. "A cursed object or..."
"I'm actually really thinking..."
Dean suddenly spun around and wrapped his hand around Sam's mouth, silencing him. Sam's eyes widened in surprise, but Dean shook his head at him in a silent warning. He nodded in understanding, so Dean moved his hand away, then tipped his head in the direction he'd been looking before. Sam stepped closer to the side of the rock and looked down.
There was a camp of some sort below them, with at least a dozen men milling around it. They didn't seem to have noticed Sam and Dean above them yet, and were just talking. The sounds of voices floated up to the top of the rock, but not the words themselves.
"What are they doing here?" Sam whispered.
"Take a wild guess," Dean whispered back. "There's a lot of reasons why a bunch of guys might have a camp in the middle of the mountains. One or two of those might be good, but the rest of 'em? Probably not."
"So what do we do?"
"Nothing," Dean answered. He turned away and walked back to the side of the rock they'd just climbed. "We head back to Laramie."
"But we've got to find a way to get home! If they're just people..."
Dean spun back around, drawing himself up to his full height and getting as close to Sam as he could. "Outlaws kill people, Sam," he said. "And we are not gonna end up a coupla notches on some hotshot gunslinger's barrel. You got it?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I got it."
Dean pointed at the ground angrily. Sam lowered his head in contrition and started climbing down the rock face without another word. He could feel Dean standing above him, watching him climb down, and he heard a scuffling which he assumed was Dean starting to follow. His feet hit the ground, and he tipped his head back to watch his brother's descent.
"Sam!"
He had no idea what the hell tackled him, but the next thing Sam knew he was face-down in the dirt.
His first instinct was to roll to his back and fight his way free, but he couldn't throw whatever it was off. Then he tried to push up to his knees, but he couldn't do that, either. Whatever had him pinned, it was way stronger than he was. So he ducked and covered his head with his arms to protect it from the multiple blows that were raining down on it.
Something tangled in his hair and pulled his head back. He caught a flash of white, the scent of fetid breath, and then a spray of red.
His head slammed back to the ground hard enough to leave him seeing stars.
And then Dean was there, shoving the weight on his back away and pulling him to his feet. "You okay? Sam? Sammy?"
Sam nodded as he tried to collect his thoughts and process what had just happened. "Dean, what...?"
"They're not outlaws," Dean answered hurriedly. "They're fucking vampires." Dean put his hand against Sam's back and shoved him forward. "We gotta get outta here."
They both heard the scuffling that time, a sound that Sam finally recognized as boots dragging across the rocky ground. There was definitely more than one of them coming, and they weren't far away.
"Run, Sam. Go!"
They both ran as fast as they could, weaving their way around the rocks they'd been climbing on. Sam missed his step once and stumbled, but Dean grabbed the back of his coat and steadied him before he fell. Neither one was even trying to run silently, because it would lose time they didn't have, and it wouldn't have made any difference.
The vampires weren't far behind them, and they were making just as much noise and being just as obvious about their location as he and Dean were. They had a good head start on them, but vampires were faster than humans, which had Sam more than a little worried. He and Dean weren't familiar with the territory they were running across, and he didn't know how much farther they had to go to reach the horses. He knew they'd done a lot of circling around as they'd climbed, but what if they'd gone further than he thought they had?
One of the vampires got close enough to Dean to grab the end of his coat where it trailed out behind him. Dean suddenly flew backwards, fighting to keep his balance and stay on his feet. Sam turned around to help him.
"Keep going!" Dean shouted.
Sam ignored him, raised his machete, and ran back to help. By the time he reached them, Dean had already spun on the vampire, raised his own machete, and beheaded it cleanly.
"I said keep going!" Dean said angrily as he turned and started running again, pushing Sam ahead of him as he did.
Sam didn't know how long they'd been running when they finally reached the horses, and he didn't know how far behind them the vampires were, but he honestly didn't care. All of his earlier complaints about traveling on horseback were forgotten as he grabbed both sets of reins from the bush, tossed one to Dean, put his foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up.
All he could think as he kicked his feet back and snapped the reins was that he hoped a vampire couldn't outrun a galloping horse.
The sun was almost straight overhead when they reached the edge of Laramie. There'd been no sign of pursuit from the vampires, but Sam guessed that they weren't exactly the sociable type and would probably avoid town, especially during the day.
They pulled their horses up in front of the hotel.
"Well, this trip just got a lot less fun," Dean said as he swung his leg down to the ground.
Sam dismounted his own horse and hitched it to the post. "Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?" he said. "Jim and Joe said people have been turning up dead with bites like yours. And the one that’s going to turn Joe has to be around here somewhere."
"Yeah, I know," Dean said with a slow nod. "I just didn't expect them to be right there. And I hate running into evil things I'm not expecting."
"We can't take them on," Sam pointed out. "We're not equipped to deal with that many of them."
Dean nodded. "No, you’re right. If we had the Colt, maybe we could..."
Sam's head snapped up. It had been months since Dean had mentioned the Colt, and it took him by surprise. They knew where the gun had gone and why, but talking about it always ended badly, mainly because they disagreed on whether the price paid with that gun was worth what it had bought them.
Dean cleared his throat and looked down at himself, at the blood that covered his hands, arms, and front of his coat.
"You take care of the horses," he said. "Wipe 'em down and get 'em some water. I'm gonna go up to the room and get this blood off me before someone sees it."
Sam nodded, and Dean walked into the hotel.
He turned back to the horses and dug through his saddlebags, looking for a rag. The sound of hoofbeats caught his attention, and he looked over his saddle. Six riders were coming down the street toward him, and from the looks on their faces, they were there on business. Sam didn't recognize any of the men, but his internal danger alert went off. He ducked back behind the horses again.
They didn't ride all the way through town, but stopped in front of the sheriff's office two buildings down. Sam heard the sounds of boots on the wooden planks of the sidewalk as Josiah Edwards himself came out to greet them.
"You're not supposed to be in town, boys."
"We got a problem, Sheriff."
That didn't sound very good.
"What kinda problem you got, Silas?"
"We lost Harkins and Earl."
Great. Sam had a pretty good idea what had happened to them.
"Then go find 'em. I ain't got time for this right now."
"They's dead, Sheriff. Heads chopped clean off by some boy I ain't never seen a'fore."
“What’d he look like?”
“Short brown hair, long coat. S’all we saw. Tha’s his horse over at the hotel, there.”
He didn't know if he actually heard Joe's sigh or if he just imagined it.
“Damn it, Pancho.”
But he didn't need to hear any more.
"Dean!" Sam closed the door quickly and hurried over to the window, walking right past Dean, who was standing at the wash basin with a pitcher of water in his hand, looking confused. "We've got a problem."
Dean put the pitcher down, picked up a towel, and joined Sam at the window while drying his hands. He looked out just in time to see Joe, rifle in hand, cross the street. He had nine men with him that Sam could see - three had rifles, and the six that had ridden into town carried pistols. Jim was one of them.
"Damn, that was quick," Sam muttered.
"Who are they?" Dean asked.
"I think most of them are vampires," Sam said. "They were telling Joe about you cutting their friends' heads off."
"Well, shit," Dean said. He started rolling his sleeves down and buttoning his cuffs hurriedly. "Didn't see that one coming."
Joe and the men disappeared under the roof of the porch outside the window. Dean jogged across the room to grab his hat and machete. Sam started pushing the heavy wooden dresser across the door.
"What are you doing that for?" Dean asked.
"They're coming for you, Dean," Sam said earnestly. He shoved the dresser forward another inch. "A whole bunch of vampires with a few humans and a sheriff who thinks you just murdered two innocent men."
"I know that," Dean said.
"You know what they did to murderers in towns like this, don't you?"
"Well, yeah," Dean said with a nod.
"Then we need to stop them from coming in!" Sam insisted.
"No. We need to get the hell out, is what we need to do."
Sam shook his head. "There's only one set of stairs and they're coming up it!"
Dean smiled. "We're not gonna use the stairs."
"Then how are we supposed to...?" He trailed off when he noticed that Dean was staring out the window. "No. You're not serious."
"They're coming."
"Dean..."
"There's only one way outta here."
"Listen..."
"They're gonna hang me, Sam!"
"This is crazy!"
Dean smushed his hat down on his head, grabbed Sam's sleeve, and ran toward the window. Sam had just enough time to raise his arms to protect his face, and then they were jumping in unison, smashing through the glass and landing on the porch roof below. They ran to the edge and jumped off, hit the ground with bone-jarring impact, and rolled, then pushed themselves back to their feet.
They were already on the horses and backing away from the hotel when Joe Edwards emerged from the hotel with his rifle raised. He managed to squeeze off a few shots in their direction, as did the vampires and men that flanked him. Sam ducked low as he finished turning his horse around, snapped the reins, and headed for the far edge of town.
Dean's horse seemed to stumble a bit, and Dean rocked forward in his saddle, but he recovered quickly. By the time Sam's horse galloped out of the street and back onto the open plain, Dean had caught up and was right beside him.
They rode as hard as they dared, heading straight east. Neither of them had any idea where they were going other than away from Laramie.
They'd been riding for half an hour when Dean started slowing down and falling behind. Sam circled back around and pulled up beside him.
"Dean?" he said. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Dean gasped. "I think I just... just need a minute."
"There's a posse behind us, Dean!"
They'd seen the group of horses a few times in the past thirty minutes, when their path had taken them up high enough to look back. Sam thought he'd counted at least a dozen of them, but they'd been too far away to tell for sure. But it didn't matter how many there were. All that mattered was that there was a hanging posse coming for his brother.
"We've got to keep going!"
"Yeah," Dean said. "In a minute."
Sam realized that Dean was wobbling badly in his saddle, and he jumped down from his horse. He reached Dean's side just in time to catch him as he fell.
"Shit, Dean, what's wrong?" He looked down at his hand, both shocked and horrified by the blood that covered it. "Are you hit?"
Dean didn't answer him.
"Dean! Are you hit?"
Dean nodded slowly.
"Fuck!" Sam laid him out on the ground and started searching for the source of the bleeding. The blood that stained his shirt from the vampires he'd killed had dried to a dark brown, which made the bright red that much more obvious.
"Not that bad," Dean said. "Had to keep moving."
Sam pushed Dean's shirt up and out of the way frantically. He found the wound easily - he'd never stop being amazed at how much damage such a small hole could cause or how much blood could pour out of one - low on Dean's right side, just above the waist band of his jeans.
"God damn it, Dean!" Sam said. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Posse on our ass," Dean said weakly. "Didn't have much choice about riding."
"Well, you can't go any further like this. You'll bleed to death." He pulled his bandana off and pressed it against the bleeding wound.
Dean winced and moaned in pain. "Can't stay here," he gasped. "A posse full of vampires. Hanging me is the least of what they'll do." It took him too long to catch his breath between sentences. Sam didn't like it at all. "So unless you've got something more powerful than a machete on ya..."
Sam stared off into the distance as thought occurred to him. "The wizard."
Dean blinked in confusion. "The what?"
"The wizard in the mountains," Sam repeated. "The one Jim and Joe were talking about last night."
"You think he can help?"
Sam shrugged. "It's worth a shot, isn't it?"
"We don't even know..." He couldn't even finish a sentence without stopping to breathe. He was going downhill too fast. "If he's real."
"But what if he is? What if he's the one that brought us here? What if he's the one who can send us home?" All 'home' meant to Sam at that moment was a hospital for Dean, and that was more than enough reason for him to find the wizard. But Sam could tell from the look in his eyes that Dean needed more than that; Dean needed an absolute, even if it wasn't true. "If we find him, we can go home."
"Okay," Dean said. He pressed down on the bandana with his right hand and held his left arm up. "Get me up. Let's go find him."
Together, they managed to get Dean to his feet before his knees buckled. Sam caught him again and kept him from collapsing into the dirt.
"Okay." Dean's voice was raspy, breathless, and filled with pain. "Change of plan. I'll stay here. You go find him."
"Dean..."
"All these rocks and crannies around. Stash me somewhere. I'll be fine."
He didn't like it. Dean was wounded, badly, and he shouldn't leave him alone. But he helped Dean back to his feet anyway, and together they slipped between two of the larger rock formations. Sam helped Dean settle to the ground, and he leaned against the rocks behind him. He'd be hidden from anyone coming up the path, as long as they stayed on it. If someone decided to dismount and start searching on foot...
"Leave me a canteen. Go, Sam."
"I can't..." He shook his head in denial.
"Not much time," Dean said. "If they see the horses, we're screwed. You gotta go."
"I can't leave you here, Dean. If they find you, if you..."
Dean wrapped his hand around Sam's arm and squeezed. "I get it. I do. But if you don't go, if you don't find this wizard, we're both gonna..." Sam could see the truth in Dean's eyes, all the words that he wasn't saying.
"I don't wanna die here, Sam. Go. Please."
Sam went.
He had no idea where he was going.
He'd been riding for what seemed like days, even though he knew it was only an hour, and he wasn't any closer to finding the cabin than he'd been when he'd left Dean behind. And he knew Dean had wanted him to go, knew they needed help and the "wizard" in the mountains was the best chance they had, knew that he'd had to go, knew that Dean had a bullet in him and couldn't go with him, but that wasn't the damn point.
Dean was dying, and he'd left him behind.
He slowed his horse to a walk and looked around, hoping to find some sign of a cabin, or a trail, or any sign of humanity at all. He heard a sound behind him and turned toward it. His sudden movement spooked his horse, and before he could do anything to calm it, it bolted out from under him. He found himself sitting on a very sore backside in the dirt.
"You really should be taught the proper way to ride a horse, Winchester."
Sam froze, then turned around slowly.
There was a man standing on the hill right behind him, a man he could swear hadn't been there before. It was hard for Sam to tell his age at that distance - he could have been anywhere from thirty-five to sixty. He was a large man, at least six foot tall and powerfully built. He had curly brown hair that just covered his ears, a brown beard with specks of grey, and dark eyes that held more than a hint of amusement. His clothes weren't all that different from what most of the men in Laramie had been wearing, but they seemed to be in much better shape, and he was wearing a fancy coat that hung to his knees. He was smiling down at Sam kindly.
Sam pushed himself to his feet quickly, knocking the dust from his pants as he stood. "You know my name?"
The man's smile grew even wider. "Well, I certainly know that it isn't Lefty."
Sam gaped, open-jawed, as the man started walking down the hill toward him. "Your brother's idea, wasn't it? That name?" Sam narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but he nodded anyway. "From what I understand, it's going to be a good song."
Sam blinked twice, then rubbed his eyes with his fingers. He must have hit his head when he fell, because he was hallucinating. He had to be.
"Gotta be a mirage," he whispered to himself.
"I was unaware that mirages could talk," the man said.
Sam shook his head, more confused than suspicious now. "How do you...?"
The man had gotten close enough for Sam to really see him. He looked familiar somehow, like someone Sam had seen once or twice, not so long ago.
"You're the wizard, aren't you?" he said. "The one Jim and Joe were talking about."
The man shrugged and stepped closer, and suddenly Sam was seeing his face staring back at him from the page of a book, a book his father had given him to read when Sam wanted to learn more about the weapons they used.
"Holy shit," he breathed. "You're Samuel Colt."
Part Three