Supernatural: Pancho and Lefty (1/3)
All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: Pancho and Lefty
Part One
"Nothing to worry about, Sam. Just a vamp hunt. Small nest, five at most."
He hated vampire hunts, hated everything about them. He hated the sneaking around and the having to be quiet and the fact that it had to be done while the sun was still up. He hated the blood and the mess and the way their heads rolled when they hit the floor. He had always hated vampire hunts and - at the rate they were going - always would.
"I've been reconning that warehouse all night. We go in, clean 'em out, be home in time for supper."
Warehouses were terrible places to hunt - too many wide-open spaces you couldn't defend combined with too many shadows for the monsters to hide in. The building they were in wasn't so much a warehouse as it was just a big empty building with loading docks on the side, one that might have been a factory at one time, or maybe a trucking company, but it didn't make much difference. They'd had one-too-many close calls in one-too-many buildings exactly like it.
"It's a simple job, I'm tellin' ya. One of the easiest we've had in months."
There was no such thing as "simple" or "easy" in their line of work. Even the simplest job could get complicated, and even the easiest hunt could turn deadly. To top it off, they were Winchesters, which meant they were damn near cursed from the start. They could never do anything the simple and easy way if there was a way to make it harder.
The hunt they were on had proven no different.
They were in a warehouse on the east side of Laramie, Wyoming, cleaning out a vampire nest led by a man who had once been named Josiah Edwards. The research Sam had done on him while Dean had been watching the warehouse was sketchy, at best. There was a census record on him from 1880, but there was no date of birth and he never showed up in the census again, despite there being no record of his death, either. They had no idea where he or the rest of his nest had actually come from.
They did know that that nest had at least twice as many members as Dean had originally thought.
"Easy?!" Sam shouted across the room. "You call this easy!?"
He looked up from the headless corpse of the vampire at his feet, the third he'd killed so far, and swiped at the blood on his face with the back of his hand.
Dean spun around, using his momentum to swing both of the machetes he held, and took down another. "Hey, it's not my fault they woke up!" he said.
Sam rolled his eyes as he stepped back. The vampire that was charging him didn't anticipate his sudden movement, and when it tried to change direction, it fell to the floor. Sam swung his machete down on its neck without hesitation. "It is your fault...," he said between swings. "That you can't fuckin'... count!"
The head he'd just severed didn't roll far enough, so Sam nudged it with his toe to knock it out of his way. He knew from experience that stepping on or tripping over a disembodied head was never fun.
God, he hated vampire hunts.
"I got as far as five!" Dean called back. "Anything more than that isn't worth worrying about." He spun and swung his machetes again, and another vampire's head fell to the floor. Dean stopped to watch its body follow it down, and there was no mistaking the grin on his face, even through the blood and gore that covered it.
Sam shook his head, then looked around the suddenly silent warehouse. He glanced across at Dean and saw him inspecting their surroundings in the same way.
"Is that all of them?" he asked.
Dean nodded slowly as he bent down, picked up a discarded rag from the floor and started wiping the blades of his machetes. He kept looking around, constantly on the lookout for anything that might still be lurking in the shadows. "I think so. How many'd you get?"
"Four," Sam said. "You?"
"Six."
"Show off," Sam muttered. He bent down and started cleaning his machete on the shirt of one of the headless bodies on the floor. "We're done, right?"
He could hear Dean's footsteps echoing through the empty building as he walked toward him. "I don't see any more, do you?"
Sam glanced around the room before turning back to Dean. "No, I... Behind you!"
Dean spun at Sam's shout, but he didn't have time to either dodge the vampire that barreled toward him or defend himself against it.
Sam pushed himself up from the floor just as Josiah Edwards slammed into Dean's ribs and dragged him to the ground. Dean's machetes flew out of his hands, and Sam swore he heard Dean's head smack against the concrete. He hit the floor in a heap and lay there, entirely too still. He didn't make a sound when Edwards sank his sharp teeth into the side of his neck.
"No!" Sam cried out.
He ran forward, swinging his machete at the vampire's neck and screaming in rage and fear.
Edwards pulled away from Dean, ducked to the side, and jumped out of Sam's reach. Sam reacted to his movement quickly, pulling his swing at the last second to avoid cutting Dean and spinning to face the vampire. Edwards rolled across the floor and came up to his knees, then growled and flashed his second row of teeth - teeth that were covered in Dean's blood.
Sam picked up one of the fallen machetes, grabbed Dean under the arms and hauled him to his feet. He started dragging Dean back and out of the way while keeping the vampire in front of them.
Dean was too out of it to see, and Sam was too focused on Dean to notice, but there was a wave of some sort in front of them, a ripple forming in the air between them and Edwards. It started small, then exploded out from the center, and threw a sonic blastwave directly at them. Sam felt the change in the room around him, both heard and felt a sudden wind rushing past his ears, and he looked up. His eyes widened and he tightened his grip on Dean as he tried to move them out of the way.
It hit Dean first, with more force than Sam could have anticipated, and knocked him out of Sam’s arms. He fell to the floor face-first, still out cold. Sam jumped and dove toward him, and somehow managed to throw himself across Dean's back before the wave plowed into them both.
He was unconscious before he realized he'd hit the ground.
The first thing Sam saw when he opened his eyes was dirt. He lifted his head slightly and saw a massive expanse of bright blue sky, with just a few high clouds floating across it.
He blinked his eyes to adjust them to the sunlight while shaking his head to clear it. Something had changed, he knew that much, but his head was pounding, and he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong. He pushed himself up and off of Dean and looked around slowly, immediately noticing the mountains in the distance.
He blinked again. Wait - mountains and sky? Where'd the warehouse go?
He turned his head as far as it would go, first in one direction and then in the other, mentally comparing what he knew he was supposed to see with what he actually saw. The mountains in the distance looked exactly as they had when he and Dean had walked into the warehouse, but the warehouse itself, and all of the other buildings around it, had completely disappeared.
He pressed his hand against his throbbing head. "What the hell?" he muttered.
He heard a groan from the ground next to him and looked down at his brother.
"Take it easy, Dean" he said. "You're a little banged up."
"God, my head," Dean said with another groan. "What hit me?" He opened his eyes and looked up at Sam. "And why does my neck hurt?"
"Josiah Edwards." Sam answered both questions at once. Dean was starting to leverage himself up from the ground, and Sam put an arm behind his back to help him as he sat up.
Once Dean was steady, he pressed his hand against the bite mark on his neck, winced, and looked down at the blood on his hand. Only after that did he notice their surroundings. "The hell are we?"
Sam shrugged and tried to figure out exactly how to explain what he was starting to suspect had happened. "Near as I can tell? I know it sounds crazy, but I think we're exactly where we were."
Dean lowered his eyebrows and shook his head. "Banged up and bit up, maybe, but not stupid. I know we were in a building."
Sam nodded. "Yeah, we were. But it's not here. It's like it vanished."
"Buildings don't just vanish, Sam," Dean argued.
"Not usually, no," Sam agreed.
"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.'
"We weren't in Kansas in the first place."
"Okay, then," Dean returned. "I don't think we're in Wyoming anymore."
"Oh, we're still in Wyoming," Sam said. He shook his head and pointed at the mountains. "Because those haven't moved." He pressed his hands against the ground and pushed himself to his feet, dusting his hands off on his jeans as he straightened. "And it's not just the warehouse. There were dozens of buildings out here, and they're all gone." He looked into the distance behind Dean. "And there's something about two miles west of here that looks like a town."
Dean looked over his shoulder, and saw what Sam was talking about. The buildings in the distance were so small they were barely visible. "That can't be Laramie."
Sam nodded his head slowly. "I think it is."
Dean turned back around. "That's not even possible, Sam. I mean, somebody or something just dragged us out of the building and dumped us out here, that's all."
"You didn't see it, did you?"
"See what?"
"That... vortex or ripple or... whatever it was, in the warehouse? Of course you didn't see it. You were out cold."
Dean was staring at him strangely, and he knew that, but he ignored it. He had a theory about what had happened, and as crazy as it was going to sound, he knew that he had to say it.
"We're still in Wyoming," he said slowly. "We're still in the exact spot we were when that wave thing hit us. But, I don't think..." He turned in another circle, double-checking the positions of the mountains against their location in his memory, checking off the landmarks he'd noticed on the drive out. "Dean, I don't think we're in 2007 anymore."
"What?" Dean turned back around too quickly and regretted it immediately. He lowered his head and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. "That's fucking insane."
"Is it?" Sam asked. He knelt down at Dean's side so he could get a closer look at the bite wound. "Really? Dean, we were hunting vampires. We've killed pagan gods. We know how to kill ghosts. I've got demon blood in me, and a week ago an honest-to-God djinn stuck you in an alternate reality." He paused to let it sink in, not continuing again until Dean looked up at him. "Is time travel really that crazy?"
Dean shook his head slightly and sighed. "Not when you put it that way, no."
Sam shrugged as he finished his inspection of the bite marks and turned his attention to Dean's head wound. "I think those'll heal up on their own, but we'll have to find some water soon to wash them out. Does this hurt?" He pressed gently against the small bump he'd found on the back of Dean's skull.
"Ow! Of course it hurts!" He slapped Sam's hand away. "Stop that."
Sam held his hands up in surrender and stood up again.
"So, any theories, professor?" Dean asked. "Because I always thought time travel was kinda like unicorns - a really cool idea that people want to believe in but that doesn't exist."
"You mean like we used to think vampires were extinct?"
It was Dean's turn to shrug.
Sam sighed. "Until just now," he said. "I did, too."
"So what do we do now?"
Sam sighed again and looked off into the horizon. "Well, if that's Laramie... do you think we should head for it?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah. There's probably not another town close enough to walk to, is there?"
"No," Sam said. "Not likely. Buford would be on the other side of the mountains from here."
"Hey, think there's more than two people there?"
Sam smiled. "Actually? Yeah, there probably is."
Dean groaned again as he started to push himself to his feet. Sam stepped forward and grabbed Dean's arm, helping him stand and holding him until he steadied himself.
"That's gotta be a good two or three miles away," he said. "You gonna make it that far?"
"Yeah," Dean said dismissively, shrugging Sam's hand off as he did. "Dude, I can walk."
"Dude, you've got a concussion," Sam shot right back. "And a bunch of holes in your neck."
"I'm fine," Dean insisted. He pulled away, turned too quickly, and his knees buckled. Sam grabbed him around the chest to keep him from hitting the ground.
"Yeah, I can see that."
Dean sighed and turned away again, but much more carefully than he had before. "Okay, yeah, maybe I've got a little headache. So, we take it slow," he said. "It's not like we really have a choice, do we?"
Sam shook his head and fell into step at Dean's side.
"Maybe we'll get lucky in Laramie. Figure out how we got wherever... or whenever, I guess... we actually are. And maybe start figuring out how to get back where we're supposed to be."
"Yeah," Sam muttered. "Because we get lucky so often."
"Well, there's always the other possibility."
"What other possibility?" Sam asked
"That we're having one of those mass hallucination things."
Sam huffed an almost-humored snort. "I don't think mass hallucination would be the right word."
"So a dual hallucination, then," Dean said with a shrug and a smile. "You burned any weird looking plants since we've been here?"
If there had been any doubt left in Sam's mind that they'd somehow been transported back in time, his first view of downtown Laramie would have removed all traces of it.
It felt almost like walking into one of the ghost towns they'd hunted in through the years, or the backlot at some old wild west movie studio. The streets were wide but unpaved, hard-packed dirt rutted by wagon wheels and pitted by horse hooves. There were no power lines or telephone poles, no streetlights, and no traffic signals - only a single road, lined on both sides by one- and two-story buildings made of either wood or brick, that led to the train depot and the town's one hotel. Wide wood planks had been laid between the buildings and the road, giving the town a basic sidewalk system.
"Am I the only one that expects to run into the Earps and the Clantons?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, you are," Sam said with a chuckle. "Because Tombstone's in Arizona."
"Smart ass," Dean muttered under his breath, but Sam saw the smile that he tried to hide.
Dean slowed his pace as they crossed the invisible line that separated the town from the undeveloped plain around it, and Sam did the same. He could see townspeople milling around on the sidewalks, walking into and out of the buildings, going about their business, as they would any normal day. That made sense to Sam, because to anyone who hadn't just woken up from an unexpected trip through time, it was just another day.
The men were dressed much the same as he and Dean, except there were no t-shirts or blue jeans, and most of them wore guns on their belts with the casual air of people who'd been doing it their whole lives. The women he saw wore long skirts or dresses that skimmed along the top of the ground, and they had to lift them up an inch or two when they stepped up onto the sidewalks. All of the children were dressed like miniature versions of the adults, and they ran up and down the sidewalks and across the street, stirring up dirt and dust with every step.
He and Dean were earning more than their fair share of odd, sidelong glances from the people they passed, and Sam realized that they actually did stick out in the crowd. Even though their clothes weren't all that different, Sam was only wearing a light jacket instead of a coat, and Dean's had a bit more blood on them than most people's.
"We need..." His words trailed off when he saw the sign on the front of the general store, and he grabbed Dean's sleeve and pulled him into the street.
"The hell, Sam?" Dean said.
Sam pointed at the store they were walking toward. "We've got to get some new clothes," he answered. "And we've gotta do it now."
Dean caught sight of a gap between the store and the livery stable that stood beside it, and he pushed Sam in that direction. "Slow down there, buckaroo."
Once they were safely in the narrow alleyway, Dean turned to face him. "How do you expect us to pay for clothes?" he said. "We can't exactly use the money we've got in our pockets, can we?"
Sam shook his head. "No. They wouldn't recognize it as being money at all." He brightened when a thought occurred to him. "We can trade for it. What have we got with us that might be worth something?"
Dean took quick stock of the few things that had made the trip through time with them. "My Colt, two machetes. You got your Taurus?"
Sam nodded.
Dean shrugged and shook his head. "Then I don't know what we can do, Sam. Because the guns stay with us, and I don't think anyone's gonna pay for a couple old machetes."
Sam pressed his lips together, almost unwilling to broach the subject but knowing they really had no choice. "What about your knife?"
Dean narrowed his eyes at him. "What knife?"
"The one you have in your boot," he said, gesturing at Dean's leg. Dean was already shaking his head, but Sam kept going. "The silver one. You know the one I'm talking about."
"No," Dean answered simply.
"Dean, we have to."
"No way."
Sam just stared at him, keeping his expression serious and making it clear he wasn't taking 'no' for an answer.
"No," Dean said anyway, his voice on the verge of of a whine. "Do you know how hard it was to find that knife? It's an antique, damn it. Silver blade. It's worth..."
"A lot of money," Sam interrupted. "Enough to get us some clothes, maybe even some food and a place to sleep."
Dean kept shaking his head. "No. I'll play some poker. There's gotta be a saloon around here somewhere."
"You get caught hustling, they'll shoot you." Sam held his hand out. "Give me the knife."
"Damn it, Sam." Dean had gone past 'on the verge' and was full-out whining. "It's mine."
"It'll buy us enough time to figure out what the hell is going on. Now give it to me."
Dean sighed loudly, but he crouched down and pulled up the leg of his jeans. He removed the knife from its sheath slowly, then turned it over in his hand and stared at it almost lovingly.
"Who's to say this isn't how you got it in the first place?" Sam asked.
"What?"
"You know, that whole 'time is a circle' thing? Maybe you giving the knife to the storekeeper is how the guy you got it from got it in the first place."
Dean's eyes narrowed as he stood, and he shook his head again. He looked at the knife once more, then turned it around and slapped the handle into Sam's palm.
"Better be worth it," he muttered. "Because that's the only silver we've got. If we run into a shapeshifter, we're screwed."
"You boys ain't from around here, are ya?"
"You have no idea," Dean muttered.
"No, sir," Sam said at the same time. "We're not. We're from Kansas."
The storekeeper, a man who'd introduced himself as James Edwards, didn't look like he believed them, but at the same time, he didn't look like he really cared. He turned back to the shelves behind him and pulled down a few more boxes. "What brings ya to Laramie, then?"
Sam glanced over at Dean, who was wandering around the small walkways of the store aimlessly.
The late afternoon sun shone through the front windows despite the layer of dirt that stuck to the glass, glinting off of the large amount of dust that flew through the air. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, stocked with everything from sugar and flour to fabric and clothing. Massive wood and glass cases filled most of the available floor space, displaying salt and pepper shakers, fine china, guns and ammunition. Dean was particularly fascinated by one of the cases and didn't seem to be the least bit interested in taking part in any more of the conversation. Sam shook his head.
"Hunting," he said.
"Huh." James pulled down another box, put it on the counter and started digging through it. "Long trip to make in October. Specially without coats."
Sam looked at Dean again, but Dean chuckled soundlessly and shook his head. Sam's mouth narrowed and he tilted his head in irritation.
"We've been here most of the summer," Sam said. "Tracking up in the mountains. Didn't know how long we'd been up there until it started getting colder."
James snorted as he dusted his hands off, but he didn't say anything else. Instead, he moved to the pile of clothes he'd made from the boxes he'd taken down, pulled out a receipt book, and started writing. "Okay, boys. That's two coats, two shirts, and one pair'a boots." He looked up from his scribbling. "Names?"
Sam balked for a second; thinking up names had never really been his department.
"Pancho," Dean said. He stepped up next to Sam and dropped a hat on top of the pile. "This here's my brother, Lefty."
James looked to Sam for confirmation, but all Sam could give him was an awkward smile.
"Pancho and Lefty, then," James said. He looked at Dean more closely now that he could see him better.
They'd cleaned as much of the blood off of themselves as they could with water from a creek they'd stopped at on the way into town, but Dean's wound had bled pretty heavily. They both had the vampires' blood on the front of their shirts but unlike Sam, he wasn't wearing a jacket he could zip shut. That, combined with the holes on the side of his neck, made it obvious that Dean had ended up on the wrong side of something.
"Ya know, yer supposed to eat what yer huntin'," James said. "Not the other way round."
Dean raised his hand and covered the wound self-consciously. "Yeah, well. Never said we were any good at it."
"Uh huh." James finished adding up the things they were buying, and looked up at them. "Ya know this is gonna cost ya, right? All this ya got here, it's thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents. You got that much?"
Sam put his elbows on the counter and leaned forward. "We thought we'd trade for it. You interested?"
"Depends," James said. "Whatchya got?"
Sam pulled the knife from his pocket and put it on the counter.
James' eyes widened in shock and he took a step back. "S'that silver?"
Sam nodded. "Yes, sir. Silver blade, elephant tusk ivory handle."
"Made in 1793," Dean added.
James reached for the handle tentatively, then shook his head and pulled his hand back. "Boys, I ain't... I can't take it. I can't give ya the diff'rence. I ain't got it."
"We don't need it," Dean said. "You own the livery, too, right?"
James nodded his head.
"Give us the clothes, rent us two horses, and give us enough to get a room and supper at the hotel for a couple days. We'll call it even."
James' smile brightened somewhat. He picked the knife up gingerly, taking care not to touch the blade. "Look around the place," he said. "Get whatever ya need. Ya can change in the back room, there." He pointed at a curtain that hung across the back of the store. "I'll go have my boys do ya up a couple horses."
"Appreciate it," Dean said as James disappeared through the door.
As soon as James was gone, Sam turned around and smacked Dean on the arm.
"The hell is that for?" Dean asked.
"Pancho and Lefty? Seriously?"
Dean shrugged and turned away. "Hey, it's a great song."
Sam shook his head in disbelief. "You are an idiot."
"What? Why?"
Sam sighed. "Pancho Villa, Dean," he said, keeping his voice low in case anyone else walked in. "You don't look much like Pancho Villa."
Dean smiled as he added a few more things to the pile on the counter. He started digging through the clothes, separating his from Sam's, and said, "Just don't sell my ass to the Federales to save yours."
"You keep picking names like that, and I just might." Sam picked his clothes up from the counter and followed Dean to the back of the store.
"Yeah, well, you were almost Sundance." Dean pulled back the curtain and motioned for Sam to walk ahead of him. "So I wouldn't bitch too much if I was you."
They changed into the clothes they'd chosen, and Sam was pleasantly surprised that everything James had picked actually fit him. There were clean shirts for both of them, gunbelts and thigh holsters for their guns, and a new pair of boots to replace Sam's tennis shoes. They both kept their own jeans, for no other reason than they were more comfortable in them. Sam had a brown wool field coat that hung to an inch or two above his knees, and Dean had chosen for himself a leather coat that went almost to his ankles.
The coats would have the dual benefits of keeping them warm and keeping their guns hidden. It was obviously perfectly legal to walk around Laramie with holstered firearms on their belts, and no one would give them a second look for having them, but the grip of Sam's Taurus didn't look anything like the kind of guns the residents of Laramie were used to seeing. Dean's Colt was more inconspicuous, but the pearl-inlaid handle would draw more attention than either of them would be comfortable with.
The bell over the door dinged as someone walked into the store. Sam, thinking it was James returning from the livery, slid his machete into place under his belt, picked his hat up, and pushed the curtain open. He dropped it almost immediately and turned, grabbed up one of the bandanas and started tying it loosely around Dean's neck.
"Sam?" Dean said. "What are you doing?"
Sam shook his head as he finished off the knot and adjusted the bandana so that Dean's wound was completely hidden.
"You are never gonna believe who just walked in."
"Hey, Jimmy!" a voice shouted. "Where ya at?"
Dean tilted his head at Sam in confusion. The voice wasn't familiar to either of them, because they'd never heard it, but the face was one that Sam wasn't likely to forget any time soon. He opened the door of the woodburning stove that heated the store and shoved their bloody clothes into it, then closed and latched it again. With a deep breath, he pulled the curtain open and stepped out of the room slowly. Dean followed him warily. They both froze in place when the man standing at the counter turned to look at them.
"Joe!" James walked through the door from the livery at the same time, and his cheerful call pulled the new arrival's attention to him.
Dean and Sam looked at each other without speaking. Covering that bite wound had definitely been a good idea.
"Hey, Pancho, Lefty," James said as he waved them over with his arm. The antique knife in his possession had obviously lifted his spirits and had apparently made him much friendlier toward the strangers in his store. "Joe, this here's Pancho and Lefty, a coupla brothers out from Kansas on a huntin' trip."
Dean nodded silently at the man, and Sam did the same.
"Boys, this here's my brother, Joe."
Sam shared another sideways glance with Dean before forcing himself to smile at both men.
James' brother wore a badge on his chest that said even though James called him Joe, most people called him sheriff. And their damned Winchester luck had struck again, it seemed, just like it always did. Because they knew him, too.
As Josiah Edwards.
Part Two
Part One
"Nothing to worry about, Sam. Just a vamp hunt. Small nest, five at most."
He hated vampire hunts, hated everything about them. He hated the sneaking around and the having to be quiet and the fact that it had to be done while the sun was still up. He hated the blood and the mess and the way their heads rolled when they hit the floor. He had always hated vampire hunts and - at the rate they were going - always would.
"I've been reconning that warehouse all night. We go in, clean 'em out, be home in time for supper."
Warehouses were terrible places to hunt - too many wide-open spaces you couldn't defend combined with too many shadows for the monsters to hide in. The building they were in wasn't so much a warehouse as it was just a big empty building with loading docks on the side, one that might have been a factory at one time, or maybe a trucking company, but it didn't make much difference. They'd had one-too-many close calls in one-too-many buildings exactly like it.
"It's a simple job, I'm tellin' ya. One of the easiest we've had in months."
There was no such thing as "simple" or "easy" in their line of work. Even the simplest job could get complicated, and even the easiest hunt could turn deadly. To top it off, they were Winchesters, which meant they were damn near cursed from the start. They could never do anything the simple and easy way if there was a way to make it harder.
The hunt they were on had proven no different.
They were in a warehouse on the east side of Laramie, Wyoming, cleaning out a vampire nest led by a man who had once been named Josiah Edwards. The research Sam had done on him while Dean had been watching the warehouse was sketchy, at best. There was a census record on him from 1880, but there was no date of birth and he never showed up in the census again, despite there being no record of his death, either. They had no idea where he or the rest of his nest had actually come from.
They did know that that nest had at least twice as many members as Dean had originally thought.
"Easy?!" Sam shouted across the room. "You call this easy!?"
He looked up from the headless corpse of the vampire at his feet, the third he'd killed so far, and swiped at the blood on his face with the back of his hand.
Dean spun around, using his momentum to swing both of the machetes he held, and took down another. "Hey, it's not my fault they woke up!" he said.
Sam rolled his eyes as he stepped back. The vampire that was charging him didn't anticipate his sudden movement, and when it tried to change direction, it fell to the floor. Sam swung his machete down on its neck without hesitation. "It is your fault...," he said between swings. "That you can't fuckin'... count!"
The head he'd just severed didn't roll far enough, so Sam nudged it with his toe to knock it out of his way. He knew from experience that stepping on or tripping over a disembodied head was never fun.
God, he hated vampire hunts.
"I got as far as five!" Dean called back. "Anything more than that isn't worth worrying about." He spun and swung his machetes again, and another vampire's head fell to the floor. Dean stopped to watch its body follow it down, and there was no mistaking the grin on his face, even through the blood and gore that covered it.
Sam shook his head, then looked around the suddenly silent warehouse. He glanced across at Dean and saw him inspecting their surroundings in the same way.
"Is that all of them?" he asked.
Dean nodded slowly as he bent down, picked up a discarded rag from the floor and started wiping the blades of his machetes. He kept looking around, constantly on the lookout for anything that might still be lurking in the shadows. "I think so. How many'd you get?"
"Four," Sam said. "You?"
"Six."
"Show off," Sam muttered. He bent down and started cleaning his machete on the shirt of one of the headless bodies on the floor. "We're done, right?"
He could hear Dean's footsteps echoing through the empty building as he walked toward him. "I don't see any more, do you?"
Sam glanced around the room before turning back to Dean. "No, I... Behind you!"
Dean spun at Sam's shout, but he didn't have time to either dodge the vampire that barreled toward him or defend himself against it.
Sam pushed himself up from the floor just as Josiah Edwards slammed into Dean's ribs and dragged him to the ground. Dean's machetes flew out of his hands, and Sam swore he heard Dean's head smack against the concrete. He hit the floor in a heap and lay there, entirely too still. He didn't make a sound when Edwards sank his sharp teeth into the side of his neck.
"No!" Sam cried out.
He ran forward, swinging his machete at the vampire's neck and screaming in rage and fear.
Edwards pulled away from Dean, ducked to the side, and jumped out of Sam's reach. Sam reacted to his movement quickly, pulling his swing at the last second to avoid cutting Dean and spinning to face the vampire. Edwards rolled across the floor and came up to his knees, then growled and flashed his second row of teeth - teeth that were covered in Dean's blood.
Sam picked up one of the fallen machetes, grabbed Dean under the arms and hauled him to his feet. He started dragging Dean back and out of the way while keeping the vampire in front of them.
Dean was too out of it to see, and Sam was too focused on Dean to notice, but there was a wave of some sort in front of them, a ripple forming in the air between them and Edwards. It started small, then exploded out from the center, and threw a sonic blastwave directly at them. Sam felt the change in the room around him, both heard and felt a sudden wind rushing past his ears, and he looked up. His eyes widened and he tightened his grip on Dean as he tried to move them out of the way.
It hit Dean first, with more force than Sam could have anticipated, and knocked him out of Sam’s arms. He fell to the floor face-first, still out cold. Sam jumped and dove toward him, and somehow managed to throw himself across Dean's back before the wave plowed into them both.
He was unconscious before he realized he'd hit the ground.
The first thing Sam saw when he opened his eyes was dirt. He lifted his head slightly and saw a massive expanse of bright blue sky, with just a few high clouds floating across it.
He blinked his eyes to adjust them to the sunlight while shaking his head to clear it. Something had changed, he knew that much, but his head was pounding, and he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong. He pushed himself up and off of Dean and looked around slowly, immediately noticing the mountains in the distance.
He blinked again. Wait - mountains and sky? Where'd the warehouse go?
He turned his head as far as it would go, first in one direction and then in the other, mentally comparing what he knew he was supposed to see with what he actually saw. The mountains in the distance looked exactly as they had when he and Dean had walked into the warehouse, but the warehouse itself, and all of the other buildings around it, had completely disappeared.
He pressed his hand against his throbbing head. "What the hell?" he muttered.
He heard a groan from the ground next to him and looked down at his brother.
"Take it easy, Dean" he said. "You're a little banged up."
"God, my head," Dean said with another groan. "What hit me?" He opened his eyes and looked up at Sam. "And why does my neck hurt?"
"Josiah Edwards." Sam answered both questions at once. Dean was starting to leverage himself up from the ground, and Sam put an arm behind his back to help him as he sat up.
Once Dean was steady, he pressed his hand against the bite mark on his neck, winced, and looked down at the blood on his hand. Only after that did he notice their surroundings. "The hell are we?"
Sam shrugged and tried to figure out exactly how to explain what he was starting to suspect had happened. "Near as I can tell? I know it sounds crazy, but I think we're exactly where we were."
Dean lowered his eyebrows and shook his head. "Banged up and bit up, maybe, but not stupid. I know we were in a building."
Sam nodded. "Yeah, we were. But it's not here. It's like it vanished."
"Buildings don't just vanish, Sam," Dean argued.
"Not usually, no," Sam agreed.
"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.'
"We weren't in Kansas in the first place."
"Okay, then," Dean returned. "I don't think we're in Wyoming anymore."
"Oh, we're still in Wyoming," Sam said. He shook his head and pointed at the mountains. "Because those haven't moved." He pressed his hands against the ground and pushed himself to his feet, dusting his hands off on his jeans as he straightened. "And it's not just the warehouse. There were dozens of buildings out here, and they're all gone." He looked into the distance behind Dean. "And there's something about two miles west of here that looks like a town."
Dean looked over his shoulder, and saw what Sam was talking about. The buildings in the distance were so small they were barely visible. "That can't be Laramie."
Sam nodded his head slowly. "I think it is."
Dean turned back around. "That's not even possible, Sam. I mean, somebody or something just dragged us out of the building and dumped us out here, that's all."
"You didn't see it, did you?"
"See what?"
"That... vortex or ripple or... whatever it was, in the warehouse? Of course you didn't see it. You were out cold."
Dean was staring at him strangely, and he knew that, but he ignored it. He had a theory about what had happened, and as crazy as it was going to sound, he knew that he had to say it.
"We're still in Wyoming," he said slowly. "We're still in the exact spot we were when that wave thing hit us. But, I don't think..." He turned in another circle, double-checking the positions of the mountains against their location in his memory, checking off the landmarks he'd noticed on the drive out. "Dean, I don't think we're in 2007 anymore."
"What?" Dean turned back around too quickly and regretted it immediately. He lowered his head and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. "That's fucking insane."
"Is it?" Sam asked. He knelt down at Dean's side so he could get a closer look at the bite wound. "Really? Dean, we were hunting vampires. We've killed pagan gods. We know how to kill ghosts. I've got demon blood in me, and a week ago an honest-to-God djinn stuck you in an alternate reality." He paused to let it sink in, not continuing again until Dean looked up at him. "Is time travel really that crazy?"
Dean shook his head slightly and sighed. "Not when you put it that way, no."
Sam shrugged as he finished his inspection of the bite marks and turned his attention to Dean's head wound. "I think those'll heal up on their own, but we'll have to find some water soon to wash them out. Does this hurt?" He pressed gently against the small bump he'd found on the back of Dean's skull.
"Ow! Of course it hurts!" He slapped Sam's hand away. "Stop that."
Sam held his hands up in surrender and stood up again.
"So, any theories, professor?" Dean asked. "Because I always thought time travel was kinda like unicorns - a really cool idea that people want to believe in but that doesn't exist."
"You mean like we used to think vampires were extinct?"
It was Dean's turn to shrug.
Sam sighed. "Until just now," he said. "I did, too."
"So what do we do now?"
Sam sighed again and looked off into the horizon. "Well, if that's Laramie... do you think we should head for it?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah. There's probably not another town close enough to walk to, is there?"
"No," Sam said. "Not likely. Buford would be on the other side of the mountains from here."
"Hey, think there's more than two people there?"
Sam smiled. "Actually? Yeah, there probably is."
Dean groaned again as he started to push himself to his feet. Sam stepped forward and grabbed Dean's arm, helping him stand and holding him until he steadied himself.
"That's gotta be a good two or three miles away," he said. "You gonna make it that far?"
"Yeah," Dean said dismissively, shrugging Sam's hand off as he did. "Dude, I can walk."
"Dude, you've got a concussion," Sam shot right back. "And a bunch of holes in your neck."
"I'm fine," Dean insisted. He pulled away, turned too quickly, and his knees buckled. Sam grabbed him around the chest to keep him from hitting the ground.
"Yeah, I can see that."
Dean sighed and turned away again, but much more carefully than he had before. "Okay, yeah, maybe I've got a little headache. So, we take it slow," he said. "It's not like we really have a choice, do we?"
Sam shook his head and fell into step at Dean's side.
"Maybe we'll get lucky in Laramie. Figure out how we got wherever... or whenever, I guess... we actually are. And maybe start figuring out how to get back where we're supposed to be."
"Yeah," Sam muttered. "Because we get lucky so often."
"Well, there's always the other possibility."
"What other possibility?" Sam asked
"That we're having one of those mass hallucination things."
Sam huffed an almost-humored snort. "I don't think mass hallucination would be the right word."
"So a dual hallucination, then," Dean said with a shrug and a smile. "You burned any weird looking plants since we've been here?"
If there had been any doubt left in Sam's mind that they'd somehow been transported back in time, his first view of downtown Laramie would have removed all traces of it.
It felt almost like walking into one of the ghost towns they'd hunted in through the years, or the backlot at some old wild west movie studio. The streets were wide but unpaved, hard-packed dirt rutted by wagon wheels and pitted by horse hooves. There were no power lines or telephone poles, no streetlights, and no traffic signals - only a single road, lined on both sides by one- and two-story buildings made of either wood or brick, that led to the train depot and the town's one hotel. Wide wood planks had been laid between the buildings and the road, giving the town a basic sidewalk system.
"Am I the only one that expects to run into the Earps and the Clantons?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, you are," Sam said with a chuckle. "Because Tombstone's in Arizona."
"Smart ass," Dean muttered under his breath, but Sam saw the smile that he tried to hide.
Dean slowed his pace as they crossed the invisible line that separated the town from the undeveloped plain around it, and Sam did the same. He could see townspeople milling around on the sidewalks, walking into and out of the buildings, going about their business, as they would any normal day. That made sense to Sam, because to anyone who hadn't just woken up from an unexpected trip through time, it was just another day.
The men were dressed much the same as he and Dean, except there were no t-shirts or blue jeans, and most of them wore guns on their belts with the casual air of people who'd been doing it their whole lives. The women he saw wore long skirts or dresses that skimmed along the top of the ground, and they had to lift them up an inch or two when they stepped up onto the sidewalks. All of the children were dressed like miniature versions of the adults, and they ran up and down the sidewalks and across the street, stirring up dirt and dust with every step.
He and Dean were earning more than their fair share of odd, sidelong glances from the people they passed, and Sam realized that they actually did stick out in the crowd. Even though their clothes weren't all that different, Sam was only wearing a light jacket instead of a coat, and Dean's had a bit more blood on them than most people's.
"We need..." His words trailed off when he saw the sign on the front of the general store, and he grabbed Dean's sleeve and pulled him into the street.
"The hell, Sam?" Dean said.
Sam pointed at the store they were walking toward. "We've got to get some new clothes," he answered. "And we've gotta do it now."
Dean caught sight of a gap between the store and the livery stable that stood beside it, and he pushed Sam in that direction. "Slow down there, buckaroo."
Once they were safely in the narrow alleyway, Dean turned to face him. "How do you expect us to pay for clothes?" he said. "We can't exactly use the money we've got in our pockets, can we?"
Sam shook his head. "No. They wouldn't recognize it as being money at all." He brightened when a thought occurred to him. "We can trade for it. What have we got with us that might be worth something?"
Dean took quick stock of the few things that had made the trip through time with them. "My Colt, two machetes. You got your Taurus?"
Sam nodded.
Dean shrugged and shook his head. "Then I don't know what we can do, Sam. Because the guns stay with us, and I don't think anyone's gonna pay for a couple old machetes."
Sam pressed his lips together, almost unwilling to broach the subject but knowing they really had no choice. "What about your knife?"
Dean narrowed his eyes at him. "What knife?"
"The one you have in your boot," he said, gesturing at Dean's leg. Dean was already shaking his head, but Sam kept going. "The silver one. You know the one I'm talking about."
"No," Dean answered simply.
"Dean, we have to."
"No way."
Sam just stared at him, keeping his expression serious and making it clear he wasn't taking 'no' for an answer.
"No," Dean said anyway, his voice on the verge of of a whine. "Do you know how hard it was to find that knife? It's an antique, damn it. Silver blade. It's worth..."
"A lot of money," Sam interrupted. "Enough to get us some clothes, maybe even some food and a place to sleep."
Dean kept shaking his head. "No. I'll play some poker. There's gotta be a saloon around here somewhere."
"You get caught hustling, they'll shoot you." Sam held his hand out. "Give me the knife."
"Damn it, Sam." Dean had gone past 'on the verge' and was full-out whining. "It's mine."
"It'll buy us enough time to figure out what the hell is going on. Now give it to me."
Dean sighed loudly, but he crouched down and pulled up the leg of his jeans. He removed the knife from its sheath slowly, then turned it over in his hand and stared at it almost lovingly.
"Who's to say this isn't how you got it in the first place?" Sam asked.
"What?"
"You know, that whole 'time is a circle' thing? Maybe you giving the knife to the storekeeper is how the guy you got it from got it in the first place."
Dean's eyes narrowed as he stood, and he shook his head again. He looked at the knife once more, then turned it around and slapped the handle into Sam's palm.
"Better be worth it," he muttered. "Because that's the only silver we've got. If we run into a shapeshifter, we're screwed."
"You boys ain't from around here, are ya?"
"You have no idea," Dean muttered.
"No, sir," Sam said at the same time. "We're not. We're from Kansas."
The storekeeper, a man who'd introduced himself as James Edwards, didn't look like he believed them, but at the same time, he didn't look like he really cared. He turned back to the shelves behind him and pulled down a few more boxes. "What brings ya to Laramie, then?"
Sam glanced over at Dean, who was wandering around the small walkways of the store aimlessly.
The late afternoon sun shone through the front windows despite the layer of dirt that stuck to the glass, glinting off of the large amount of dust that flew through the air. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, stocked with everything from sugar and flour to fabric and clothing. Massive wood and glass cases filled most of the available floor space, displaying salt and pepper shakers, fine china, guns and ammunition. Dean was particularly fascinated by one of the cases and didn't seem to be the least bit interested in taking part in any more of the conversation. Sam shook his head.
"Hunting," he said.
"Huh." James pulled down another box, put it on the counter and started digging through it. "Long trip to make in October. Specially without coats."
Sam looked at Dean again, but Dean chuckled soundlessly and shook his head. Sam's mouth narrowed and he tilted his head in irritation.
"We've been here most of the summer," Sam said. "Tracking up in the mountains. Didn't know how long we'd been up there until it started getting colder."
James snorted as he dusted his hands off, but he didn't say anything else. Instead, he moved to the pile of clothes he'd made from the boxes he'd taken down, pulled out a receipt book, and started writing. "Okay, boys. That's two coats, two shirts, and one pair'a boots." He looked up from his scribbling. "Names?"
Sam balked for a second; thinking up names had never really been his department.
"Pancho," Dean said. He stepped up next to Sam and dropped a hat on top of the pile. "This here's my brother, Lefty."
James looked to Sam for confirmation, but all Sam could give him was an awkward smile.
"Pancho and Lefty, then," James said. He looked at Dean more closely now that he could see him better.
They'd cleaned as much of the blood off of themselves as they could with water from a creek they'd stopped at on the way into town, but Dean's wound had bled pretty heavily. They both had the vampires' blood on the front of their shirts but unlike Sam, he wasn't wearing a jacket he could zip shut. That, combined with the holes on the side of his neck, made it obvious that Dean had ended up on the wrong side of something.
"Ya know, yer supposed to eat what yer huntin'," James said. "Not the other way round."
Dean raised his hand and covered the wound self-consciously. "Yeah, well. Never said we were any good at it."
"Uh huh." James finished adding up the things they were buying, and looked up at them. "Ya know this is gonna cost ya, right? All this ya got here, it's thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents. You got that much?"
Sam put his elbows on the counter and leaned forward. "We thought we'd trade for it. You interested?"
"Depends," James said. "Whatchya got?"
Sam pulled the knife from his pocket and put it on the counter.
James' eyes widened in shock and he took a step back. "S'that silver?"
Sam nodded. "Yes, sir. Silver blade, elephant tusk ivory handle."
"Made in 1793," Dean added.
James reached for the handle tentatively, then shook his head and pulled his hand back. "Boys, I ain't... I can't take it. I can't give ya the diff'rence. I ain't got it."
"We don't need it," Dean said. "You own the livery, too, right?"
James nodded his head.
"Give us the clothes, rent us two horses, and give us enough to get a room and supper at the hotel for a couple days. We'll call it even."
James' smile brightened somewhat. He picked the knife up gingerly, taking care not to touch the blade. "Look around the place," he said. "Get whatever ya need. Ya can change in the back room, there." He pointed at a curtain that hung across the back of the store. "I'll go have my boys do ya up a couple horses."
"Appreciate it," Dean said as James disappeared through the door.
As soon as James was gone, Sam turned around and smacked Dean on the arm.
"The hell is that for?" Dean asked.
"Pancho and Lefty? Seriously?"
Dean shrugged and turned away. "Hey, it's a great song."
Sam shook his head in disbelief. "You are an idiot."
"What? Why?"
Sam sighed. "Pancho Villa, Dean," he said, keeping his voice low in case anyone else walked in. "You don't look much like Pancho Villa."
Dean smiled as he added a few more things to the pile on the counter. He started digging through the clothes, separating his from Sam's, and said, "Just don't sell my ass to the Federales to save yours."
"You keep picking names like that, and I just might." Sam picked his clothes up from the counter and followed Dean to the back of the store.
"Yeah, well, you were almost Sundance." Dean pulled back the curtain and motioned for Sam to walk ahead of him. "So I wouldn't bitch too much if I was you."
They changed into the clothes they'd chosen, and Sam was pleasantly surprised that everything James had picked actually fit him. There were clean shirts for both of them, gunbelts and thigh holsters for their guns, and a new pair of boots to replace Sam's tennis shoes. They both kept their own jeans, for no other reason than they were more comfortable in them. Sam had a brown wool field coat that hung to an inch or two above his knees, and Dean had chosen for himself a leather coat that went almost to his ankles.
The coats would have the dual benefits of keeping them warm and keeping their guns hidden. It was obviously perfectly legal to walk around Laramie with holstered firearms on their belts, and no one would give them a second look for having them, but the grip of Sam's Taurus didn't look anything like the kind of guns the residents of Laramie were used to seeing. Dean's Colt was more inconspicuous, but the pearl-inlaid handle would draw more attention than either of them would be comfortable with.
The bell over the door dinged as someone walked into the store. Sam, thinking it was James returning from the livery, slid his machete into place under his belt, picked his hat up, and pushed the curtain open. He dropped it almost immediately and turned, grabbed up one of the bandanas and started tying it loosely around Dean's neck.
"Sam?" Dean said. "What are you doing?"
Sam shook his head as he finished off the knot and adjusted the bandana so that Dean's wound was completely hidden.
"You are never gonna believe who just walked in."
"Hey, Jimmy!" a voice shouted. "Where ya at?"
Dean tilted his head at Sam in confusion. The voice wasn't familiar to either of them, because they'd never heard it, but the face was one that Sam wasn't likely to forget any time soon. He opened the door of the woodburning stove that heated the store and shoved their bloody clothes into it, then closed and latched it again. With a deep breath, he pulled the curtain open and stepped out of the room slowly. Dean followed him warily. They both froze in place when the man standing at the counter turned to look at them.
"Joe!" James walked through the door from the livery at the same time, and his cheerful call pulled the new arrival's attention to him.
Dean and Sam looked at each other without speaking. Covering that bite wound had definitely been a good idea.
"Hey, Pancho, Lefty," James said as he waved them over with his arm. The antique knife in his possession had obviously lifted his spirits and had apparently made him much friendlier toward the strangers in his store. "Joe, this here's Pancho and Lefty, a coupla brothers out from Kansas on a huntin' trip."
Dean nodded silently at the man, and Sam did the same.
"Boys, this here's my brother, Joe."
Sam shared another sideways glance with Dean before forcing himself to smile at both men.
James' brother wore a badge on his chest that said even though James called him Joe, most people called him sheriff. And their damned Winchester luck had struck again, it seemed, just like it always did. Because they knew him, too.
As Josiah Edwards.
Part Two