NEW (SPN): Joshua Tree 6/6 (Bob, teen)
Headers and notes in Part 1.
*
"Okay, okay," said Dean, shoving the cell back into his pocket. A lock, Sam had said.
Terry leaned against one of the boulders and uncapped a water bottle. She seemed to be adjusting relatively well to meeting a spirit in the flesh (so to speak). "Did he have any information?"
"Yeah, yeah," said Dean, scanning the ground. "Something about a lock, she buried it." He looked around, but there was nothing on the ground besides sand and sandy dirt, marked with footprints, and the sand-covered and rusting bicycle chain. "Help me look."
Terry put her water away and pushed to her feet, untying the rope around her waist to leave it bundled on the boulder behind her. "A lock?"
"Yeah, a padlock, he said." Dean turned around; it had to be here--here was where the spell was cast, and it wasn't in Folsom's hotel or office. If she left it in her car, I'll shoot her myself.
"Better find it fast." Dell Martinez levered himself to his feet, brushing dust off his jeans. "Look at him," he added, with a nod at Coyote.
Dean didn't want to look: Coyote freaked him out, even if he'd never admit it in a million years. He'd seen stranger things in his life than a naked hairy guy with big ears--but Coyote's weirdness got under his skin. Made him twitch, attracted and repulsed at the same time. And it was worse, now, than even a few minutes ago; Coyote was bouncing on the balls of his feet, the fur on his ears standing up like it was electrified. Those dark eyes were glittering--not metaphorically: there were sparks in there, and sparks arcing off the ground where Coyote's feet touched the stone.
"Yeaaaaah," sounded Coyote, in a growling whine that made Dean's hair stand up. "Soon! Soon soon soon!" He shuddered, and turned a standing backflip. Then suddenly he was calm again--if still sparking--and staring at Dean. "Better get under cover, pup. You wanna be here after, you want what I can give you--" He grinned, a red tongue rolling out of his mouth and past his chin, curling over teeth that were all canines.
"Shit, I don't have time for this." Dean turned away, then back. "Unless you know where the lock is. Do you?" He ignored the offer; wasn't anything Coyote could give him that he wanted. Spirits always made offers you couldn't afford to take. Though some offers were worth it, no matter the price.
But Coyote--weren't his eyes brown before? now they were green--just grinned and snapped his jaws insolently.
Martinez was walking slowly across the clearing, examining the ground with deliberation. "He won't tell you. He doesn't want to be freed that way. Not now he's found the crack, built up the pressure to blow it. It'll be more fun that way."
"For him," said Terry. Martinez nodded. Terry was squatting on the ground, raking her hands through the soil. "There's a lot of climbers on the walls out there," she said, eyes not leaving the ground. "What happens to them when Rin-Tin-Chaos there hits them?"
Dean didn't answer, and Martinez just shook his head.
"I hate you guys," said Terry without rancor, and shifted sideways to sift through some more sand. Dean kept looking, working in a grid pattern across the clearing; Terry focused on the ground in the center where the bicycle chain had been; and Dell moved in seemingly-random spirals out from the middle. Coyote just bounced in place, and howled, and the sparkage grew brighter as the sun climbed the sky.
It was maybe four minutes later when Terry said, "Move your feet."
Dean looked up. Terry was squatting right next to Coyote, about three feet from the chain. One hand on the ground for balance, she was peering up at him, brows lowered. Instead of moving, Coyote waggled his ass so his erect penis bounced in front of Terry's face. "I said, move it," she snapped, and slapped at it.
Dean was pretty sure she didn't connect, but Coyote yelped anyway, and leaped six feet into the air. He came down on top of the boulder he'd been leaning against, and crouched there, snarling and snapping at the air.
Terry ignored him, already scraping at the dry ground with her hands. Within about half a minute she grunted. "Found something," she said, digging deeper. Coyote wailed, and Terry scrabbled, and before Dean even got to her from across the clearing, she had uncovered it and brought it to the light.
It was an old brass padlock, about three inches across and half an inch thick, and definitely, securely, locked. Terry tugged at the shackle, shrugged, and tossed it to Dean. Coyote whined piteously.
"Huh." Dean stared at it, turned it over, looked at the back. "Don't suppose there's a key down there?" he asked Terry; she just glared at him. "Right."
Great. So now he had to solve this, without any of the tools he needed, on top of a cliff. He never should have agreed to splitting up from Sam: it always ended poorly. Hell, it usually ended poorly even when they didn't agree to split up.
"Whattaya think, grandpa?" he said to Martinez. "Opening it up do the trick?"
Martinez pushed his cap back on his head and put his hand out for the lock. "Ouch," he said softly, as Dean passed it to him. "You didn't feel that? The power?"
"Nah, just a tingle," said Dean. To tell the truth, he'd barely noticed it; there was so much energy in the air around them now, it felt like lightning was about to strike, despite the clear sky. He watched impatiently as Martinez turned the lock over in his hands, humming under his breath. "Well?"
"Maybe," said Martinez. "But..." The first time they'd met, Martinez didn't look that old: maybe in his sixties. But something about the harsh light up here, or the short night he must have had, to get on the bluff top at this hour, made him look a lot older. The lines on his face looked carved, worn like the stone about them by the summer wind and winter rains. "There's too much energy built up here: even if you can open it, it'll probably kill you. And us."
"Well, fuck," said Terry. "What's the point, then?" She looked nearly as frustrated as Dean, and not anywhere near scared enough. Her hair was falling out of the ponytail, and dust clung to the drying sweat on her face. What the hell was he thinking, bringing her up here? Oh, wait: she'd brought him, hadn't she? Damn.
Dean scratched his head, dirty hands leaving grit in his hair. "So we leave it and run? C'mon, man, there's gotta be another way. A circuit-breaker or something? Some kind of buffer?"
The sun, now well above the horizon, shone right into Martinez's face as he scowled, thinking. After a moment, he grunted, scratching his cheek with one brown and weathered hand. In this light, Dean saw some scarring along his jaw, three fine parallel lines, like he'd been swiped with the claws of a big cat. "Order, not chaos," said Martinez thoughtfully. "Maybe: it's always about balance. We're on rock here, rock, not wood or soil. Might be enough."
"Is that good?" Terry asked.
If Dean was following Martinez's thinking right, he'd use the earth itself to take up the excess entropy, like a heat-sink, or a battery being charged. That could work. "So what do you need? This lock's old, I can probably pick it in a couple of minutes." He was hoping he'd be able to find something in Terry's pack to use.
This surprised a laugh out of Terry. "You really are a criminal, aren't you?" Dean shrugged, raising an eyebrow at Martinez.
"I need you to be quiet," said Martinez, lowering himself to the ground. He sat himself cross-legged, back against one of the biggest boulders, and then looked around. "You," he said to Terry, his voice authoritative, and somehow deeper than it had been a moment ago. "Sit here, and start drumming, like this." He beat out a slow rhythm on his thighs, a simple thump-thumpety-thump, and kept going until Terry picked it up.
"Give me a few minutes," he directed Dean, "then open it." With that, he began to chant, a soft droning "Hey, yah, hey, yah," over and over again.
Dean nodded, and dug into Terry's pack for something to use on the lock. Near the bottom, on a battered carabiner marked with black tape, he found a long thin probe, no idea what it was for; that, plus the paperclips he always had in his pockets, should be enough to do the job.
The bicycle chain wasn't big enough to surround them all; Dean laid it out around Terry, who glared at him--what was her issue this time?--but kept drumming, and then he salted a larger circle around all three of them. When that was done, he settled down inside the circle, across from Martinez, uncomfortably cross-legged, with the lock and his tools in his hands.
"Hey, yah," sang Martinez, thumping on his thighs, his lids drooping but his face simultaneously tight with concentration. On the next measure he complicated the chant, adding more syllables: Dean couldn't tell if they were actual language rather than filler. But Terry continued clapping without pause on the original beat, her eyes completely closed, so Martinez's singing wound around the support of Terry's rhythm. Even Coyote, perched on the boulder above them, was swaying to the beat, his howling dropped to a rumbling whine that rose and sank with Martinez's chant. Dean could feel the music begin to sing in his own veins, could feel the connection Martinez was building, between himself and the earth beneath them. Like an oak, putting its roots down into the living rock, stretching and growing stronger with every beat. Dean and Terry weren't part of it, but they were carried on it, protected by it, rocked in it.
It was time.
Dean wasn't Sam, hadn't spent hours in the back of the Impala while his dad and brother hunted, learning to pick a dozen different types of lock based on a book their father had "borrowed" from the library in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Dean wasn't good at staying still that long; not for locks, not for research. But Dean could handle most basic locks, and this old thing--well, he was relieved as shit that Folsom hadn't decided to get sophisticated.
The tool he'd scavenged from Terry's rack wouldn't work on any modern lock: it was far too large. But it would do for this, Dean figured. He took a deep breath, let it out, relaxed his shoulders as much as he could, letting the rhythm of Martinez's chant soak into him, grounding him through his spine. When he was ready, he looked up at Martinez, who gave him a tiny nod.
This was going to be tricky without an angled tension wrench: Dean couldn't hold the lock and manipulate the tension on it with the tool he was using for a tension wrench in the same hand. He scowled, bit back a swear that might disrupt the chanting, and finally wedged the lock between his boot and his other leg.
That worked: he got the tension wrench in and applied some pressure, and the barrel turned minutely. With the other hand, he fed the paperclip in, fumbling his way along the pins. There was a god: only three pins. Except the lock wasn't new, and had been buried in the dirt for weeks: the pins were stiff, the springs reluctant to compress. It took him two minutes to set the first pin, and despite the chill he had sweat dripping off his nose.
When the pin set, and the barrel of the lock moved a couple of degrees, Dean felt it in the air around him. Like a spring had just gone "ping", and something ricocheted off the wall of a small room. Something dangerous and sharp-edged.
The air felt thick, and Terry fumbled the beat--just for a moment, and then she recovered. But it was enough to scare him. Dean wasn't exactly sure what Martinez was doing, but if the puul was going to channel Coyote's energy into the earth, that meant he was drawing it to himself--in essence, trapping it and compressing it into the tiny space set off by the circle Dean had laid around them.
If Dean didn't get this lock open, something bad was going to happen--he didn't know what, but something really fucking bad.
The second pin was just as stiff, but Dean had a better handle on it now. He'd been surprised, when Sam came back, how a guy with such ginormous hands could manage the delicacy needed for this kind of work. He'd have to--well, no, he wasn't gonna ask; couldn't give Sam that kind of opening. But next time it came up, he'd watch more carefully. Except thinking about Sam was a bad idea, because it distracted him, worrying about Sam in the casino--and Sam had gotten off the phone really fast there. He bit his lip, gave the paperclip an extra twist, and the barrel shifted again as the second pin set.
One more pin, and now the air was like soup, thick with dust and glitter and tufts of Coyote fur. His hands were slick, the drumming and chanting was almost drowned out by Coyote's howling, and he dropped the paperclip three times.
When he got the last pin to set and cautiously moved the tension wrench--there. The pins were all set: it should open now. With a shaking hand, Dean let the paperclip fall and pulled at the shackle. It stuck at first, and then came loose, the bottom of shackle shiny and clean of the dust and tarnish on the rest of the lock. If they were right, his job was over, and Coyote was free.
Instead of a boom, as Coyote had warned, there was a stillness. Dean looked up; Terry was still clapping, and Martinez was still chanting, but Dean couldn't hear them. He couldn't even hear his own breath, or the wind in the sage.
What he heard was a soft whistle, as Coyote somersaulted off his perch and landed upright in the center of the circle, facing Dean. "Bout damn time," said Coyote, but the whine was gone from his voice, and his eyes looked sharper, less wild. His tail whipped back and forth a few times, and then he dropped to his haunches in front of Dean, a grin spreading wide across his face. "I gotta go, but I like you, dude, you're a scrapper. You helped me out, so you want me to cut you loose? Cause I can do it, now."
Dean nearly choked: Coyote smelled pungently of wet dog, sage, woodsmoke, and blood. "Cut me loose?"
"Yup-yup. You got all those bindings on you," said Coyote, extended a long black foreclaw towards Dean's arm. "That one's real nasty, too," he added, with a snarl that wrinkled his nose all the way to his eyes. "Goes off that way." He drew a line in the air from Dean's torso down towards the southeast. "Rest of em mostly go that way," and he waved towards the north.
"You can cut them?" Dean swallowed. He wasn't hunting this year because he thought it was going to save him; he hunted because it was something to do, and it was the right thing to do. Somebody had to do it. But if the deal with the crossroads demon was one string, what were the rest?
"Sure, if you want." Coyote peeled his lips back from his teeth and leaned forward.
As those glossy canines approached, though, Dean hesitated. "Wait. Can you just cut that one? The nasty one?"
"Nope."
"What?"
Coyote's eyes widened with annoyance, and he straightened, shifting back away from Dean. At least it smelled better now. "Dude, you want needlework, find one of those Greek bitches. All or nothing, that's the deal."
North was out of the Park: Sam, the casino, even Bobby and Ellen, in a general way. Hell, north was the Impala. Shit. Besides, this might constitute "welching", and no way was he going to take that risk.
"Yeah, thanks man," Dean said, about a tongue that suddenly felt too thick for his mouth. He swallowed once. "I'll pass just the same. Appreciate the offer, though."
"Your funeral," said Coyote with a grin--bastard knew just what it was--and then he was on top of the boulder again. Martinez was chanting, the sound of Terry's clapping was louder and louder. Power gathered in the air like snow in a whiteout. Martinez's voice hesitated, gathered strength until all Dean could hear was the music. Wind whipped around the tiny warded circle, sand and gravel cast into the air, scouring Dean's face. He coughed, covering his eyes with one hand.
And then, on a high note, the puul leaned forward and slapped both hands to the ground.
The wind stopped; the air cleared; Coyote gave a short, sharp bark and faded to transparency. Was gone, between one breath and the next.
Terry clapped another four times, and then stumbled to a halt. "Is it done?" she asked, her eyes wild. Her ponytail had come completely undone, dark hair hanging loose around her face; she clawed some of it away from her mouth.
There was a groan as Martinez rolled over onto his side. "Done, and done," he said, breathing hard. "We're not dead, right?"
"Right," said Dean. He thought about standing up, but for some reason his legs were a little weak. He really wanted a beer, but the only thing they had was water. Except the water was twenty feet away in the packs, and that was just too far right now. Pretty soon he was gonna have to get moving, though, go dig Sam out of whatever trouble he'd doubtless gotten himself into. Which reminded him: "So how do we get down from here, anyway?"
Terry flopped over onto her back, arms splayed wide. "Oh that's easy," she said to the sky. "We rappel."
*
They weren't the most professional cops Sam had ever seen--in fact it only took one of them fumbling for his cuffs for Sam to realize they weren't cops at all, but casino security. Rent-a-cops, Dean would call them, with the same disdain Dad had always had for beer-bellied faux soldiers. But they had guns, and Sam was in no mood to get himself killed, so he let them take his gun and his cell and cuff him awkwardly.
It was a little chaotic for the first bit: Beth was leaking tears, being comforted by the polished young receptionist, Sam was frisked roughly, and Perez went out in the hallway. Sam saw him gesturing at the head of the security team, a skinny white guy. Sam kept his head down but slanted his eyes to the left, to see Paula still leaning against the credenza, arms crossed and a bullish look on her face.
"Miss, are you okay?" asked the one casino cop who looked like she might be Indian, a short stocky woman with a cauliflower ear that belied her soft voice. "He didn't hurt you?"
"No." Paula glared some more, but at least she kept her mouth shut. Maybe she'd get out of this without a charge of accessory to kidnapping.
Beth Folsom jerked her head up. "Hurt her? She was helping him!"
Or maybe not.
"No, she wasn't," said Sam. "She caught me in here and was trying to call the cops when Folsom came in."
Paula switched her glare to Sam, opened her mouth, hesitated, and closed it again. Sam gave her the smallest nod he could summon.
"Is that true, miss?"
"Why would I want to break into an office?" Paula sounded disgusted as only an adolescent could. "I saw him jimmying the lock and followed him in."
Talk about unprofessional: these guys didn't even know enough to separate the witnesses out from the suspects. If Dean were here, give him twenty minutes and he'd have them arresting Beth for something.
But Sam didn't get twenty minutes; ninety seconds later the real cops arrived. Tribal cops, he guessed, from the uniforms with the stylized Joshua Tree on their shoulders. The last Sam saw of Beth and Perez, Beth was arguing heatedly with Perez in the corner of her office, her face pink with anger and resentment, while Perez just looked frustrated. Sam gave Paula a regretful smile as he was hustled out a side door, his hands cuffed behind his back, and tucked into the back seat of a tan sedan with bad shocks.
The cops weren't chatty, so Sam kept silent and just watched as they headed northwest out of town, leaving the valley floor and climbing into the hills. After fifteen or so minutes, they pulled up in front of a small complex of municipal buildings, poorly shaded by a couple of sad-looking palm trees.
They'd taken his phone, so Sam couldn't tell if Dean had called. Had they freed Coyote, or not? Shit, Dean was up there without backup, with civilians. Sam didn't like the feeling; didn't like not knowing where Dean was, what was going on. If this was what hunting solo was like, he didn't want it.
An hour later he'd been printed and photographed, and was cooling his heels in yet another bland and windowless interview room. Sam was getting depressingly familiar with police station decor. This one had green concrete walls, the kind of construction you saw in high schools built in the fifties, and that dull grey linoleum that never looked clean. Ugly didn't begin to describe it. Sam gave it ten minutes--there was a clock mounted high on the wall behind a grate--before he started trying to fish a paper clip out of his pocket.
"Ah-ah," warned the cop who came through the door, a barrel-chested Asian with close-clipped grizzled hair. His name tag said "Ling" in neat letters over the tribal seal. "None of that. I brought you some coffee, though."
Sam lifted his wrists ruefully. "Can't exactly drink it this way."
"No, that's true," said Ling. "You remember walking in through the offices, all those cops with guns between here and the door?"
"Yeah," said Sam, warily.
Ling nodded, leaning across with a key. "Then you know you won't get out of here, even without the cuffs on."
The coffee tasted pretty good, although it was lukewarm by now--Sam was thankful for any caffeine at this point. "So," he said, setting down the half-empty cup. "You gonna charge me?" They'd taken his prints, but clearly hadn't run them yet, or he'd never have been uncuffed. How long did it take, anyway? None of this was the kind of stuff they'd covered in his Street Law class junior year; he sometimes wished he could send Professor Munroe a note. Please add the legal consequences of faking your own death to the syllabus. Also, what to do when a demon has a contract on your brother's soul.
"Well, that's the problem," said Ling, and scratched the back of his head in a way memorialized by television cops for forty years. "We're not sure what charges to file yet."
"Oh, right! This is reservation land, isn't it?" State laws--even state criminal laws--didn't apply on reservations, Sam was pretty sure.
"Oh, got a legal mastermind here?" scoffed Ling. "Think you understand the situation, do you?" He propped himself against the desk, and sneered genially. "Except this is Indian country, not the Golden State. If you were Indian, yeah, I'd charge you--but I'm guessing you're not Indian. Not that we can tell, given you've got no ID on you. Convenient, that."
Sam met his eyes serenely. "I left my wallet in the car."
"Perez told me you said your name was Jon Landau." Ling grinned. "I saw the future of rock and roll? Jeez, man, that's not even trying."
Wincing, Sam shrugged. He wasn't going to give them any information, not if he didn't have to. And next time he saw Dean, they'd have another talk about their assumed identities: he'd told Dean over and over the games with pseudonyms were just juvenile.
Ling frowned, drumming his fingers on the edge of the desk. "Well, that's no problem: they'll run your prints and we'll get that pinned down. So you'll go to the San Bernardino County Sheriff--or, wait, no. This is the casino, and you know who has jurisdiction over crimes involving Indian gaming?" Ling grinned; Sam was kind of beginning to hate him. "The FBI."
The FBI? Sam felt himself pale. Henriksen had been riding them hard for the past four months, ever since that exorcism went so sour in Texas. "Collateral damage", Dad would have said, and shaken it off. But Manuel Franks had been only nine, and Sam still dreamed about the way his skinny legs had collapsed, the blood congealing on his worn Keds.
The FBI wasn't the worst thing that could happen to them, Sam knew in his bleaker moments, but getting caught would be a death sentence for Dean. No way Sam could find a solution to the deal from inside a federal holding facility.
"Cat got your tongue? Or does that scare you?" Ling was looking like he had a mouthful of canary.
Sam thought furiously; they hadn't made the call yet, after all. He couldn't risk the FBI, but the only way to do it was to confess to something else. But then he'd be stuck with the confession.... He wished he'd gotten more sleep last night, but his brain was just sloppy and slow. "Well, the thing is, sir, I didn't break in for any reason to do with gaming."
Ling raised his eyebrows. "That so? You gonna tell me, then?" He pulled a tiny recorder out of his pocket and set it on the table. I'm all ears."
"I was looking for proof of an art theft," said Sam. "Well, not art, really--cultural artifacts. Someone's been conducting rituals in the Park, using Cabrolla artifacts from a private collection. The ritual necessarily destroys the object's value, but not so much they can't be identified."
Ling snorted, then nodded encouragingly. "Uh-huh. So far, this is not going to keep me from calling the FBI, kid."
They couldn't call the FBI. He'd kidded about it with Dean often enough, but the truth was that the FBI had taken on mythic significance for them, and if they had Sam, there was no way Dean wasn't coming to get him. And that... There was no way that would end well. He had to come up with a better story than this lame thing about artifacts, but his brain felt like it had run completely dry, a gasping fish flopping about the bottom of a drought-stricken pond. Had they given him decaf?
There was a knock on the door and someone surged into the room. "He's still here? Is he cuffed? No? Fine, let's go, son."
Sam blinked. The newcomer was an elderly man in a denim shirt and trucker cap, his grey hair in need of a haircut and dust on his cowboy boots. Sam was quite sure he'd never seen the guy before, but something about him was still familiar. "What?"
Ling looked equally baffled. "Wait, no! What are you doing? You can't take him out!"
The elderly man drew himself up and frowned monumentally. "Are you a tribal council member?"
Ling shook his head.
"Are you the most senior elder and puul for the tribe?" Ling shook his head again. "Do you have any authority not granted you by the tribal council?" And again. "Then let him go, lieutenant."
Ling sagged noticeably, then firmed his spine once more, as Sam looked on with some amazement. It was like watching the Williams sisters, practically. "He had a gun, sir! It was an attempted kidnapping!"
"It was not!" protested Sam, and then closed his mouth when the elder waved irritably at him.
"Mary Josephson of Grass Valley just left the casino with four thousand dollars," said the elder. "This boy just helped save your ass, lieutenant. Or," he added, peering at Ling's somewhat worn uniform shirt, "at least your paycheck. It's not your decision. Let him go."
Ling sighed, and moved away from the door. "I'll go to the council," he said warningly.
"You do that," said the elder, and waved Sam to the door.
Outside, possessed once again of his cell phone and even his gun, Sam was unsurprised to see Dean and Terry in the cab of Anatole's truck, parked across from the police station. He waved at Dean and turned to the elder. "Dell Martinez, right?" Sam stuck out his hand. "Thanks." It was awkward and inadequate, but it was all he had.
Martinez's grip was solid, surprisingly strong. "Don't worry about it," he said, an open smile lightening his face. "It keeps the balance. Now you do me a favor--keep your brother out of Indian Country until Coyote forgets who he is. Bastard's got some kind of weird fixation and it's gonna take me months to get him over it."
"Um, what?" But Martinez just slapped Sam on the shoulder and climbed into the front seat of a rattletrap old Ford pickup. "Hey, wait!" Sam said, putting his hand on the door.
Martinez tugged a cap down over his bushy eyebrows. "Yes?"
"What about Beth Folsom?"
The old man smiled wryly. "Wouldn't worry about her, son. Now, go on: your brother's waiting for you." With that, he pulled out onto the dusty, pot-holed street and was gone.
"Sammy!" Dean waved, and leaned across Terry to honk the horn. "Get your ass in gear, already!"
Sam blinked. It was noon, maybe, he wasn't sure, and the FBI wasn't coming, and the sun was shining even if it was kind of chilly here in the desert. Nobody had died, and whatever had happened, they'd gotten the job done. He still had five months to come up with something. That was enough for now. "All right, I'm coming!" He grinned and loped across the street to the truck.
*
"I don't get it. How'd he get up there?" Sam popped the beer open and handed it to Dean, his brow furrowed. "You guys had to climb."
Dean shrugged, unconcerned. "Man's a puul, Sammy. You wanna know, you ask him."
Sam rolled his shoulders and took a drink. He looked a lot less fried now than he had when they picked him up, after a three-hour nap on Kia's couch. "Oh, hey, how'd you know where I was?"
Dean gave him his best don't-be-stupid look; it wasn't as good as Dad's, which could blister paint, but it was effective enough: Sam flushed. "Anatole called me as soon as he saw the cops arrive. Sorry it took us so long, though; Terry wouldn't do more than sixty in the Park. They didn't get rough, did they?"
"They were okay," Sam admitted. "But your timing was great, they were just about to call the FBI."
"Aw. Was little Sammy-wammy scared?"
"Little Sammy-wammy has thirty pounds on you and knows all your secrets," warned Sam, with the evil smile Dean was pretty sure he'd been practicing before the mirror.
Before Dean could summon up an appropriate threat, the front door swung open and hit the wall with an almighty crash, so unexpectedly that Dean jumped, hand instinctively going for his gun. A tall black woman stood in the doorway, a duffel bag over one shoulder and a backpack at her feet. The twenty or so climbers scattered around the open living area of Kia's house went silent, beers suspended halfway to mouths, chips falling to the carpet.
"What the hell is that black monster in my car port, and who the hell are--oh, never mind. Someone give me a beer right fucking now, and I'll let you all live."
Terry laughed aloud and ducked under Dean's arm to launch herself at the scowling woman in the doorway. "Ki! Ki! Kia!" she squealed, hugging her before the other woman even set down her duffel.
Dean wiped ineffectually at his jeans--Terry had spilled her beer on him--and tilted his head to check out the new talent.
"Guess that's Kia," Sam said helpfully.
Dean nodded. "Guess so." After a moment, he added, "She's pretty tall, Sammy. Pretty hot, too."
"Shut up," said Sam, without heat. "Terry's pretty hot, too, you know."
"I always know." Dean finished his beer and shoved a handful of chips into his mouth. Which, of course, was the moment Terry chose to bring Kia over to meet them.
Her eyes widening at Dean, Terry hurriedly turned to Sam first. "Sam, I'd like you to meet Kia, whose shower you've been using for the past few days."
While Dean chewed, swallowing chips in jagged pieces, Sam smiled suavely--Dean thought he looked like a lawyer on late-night cable--and stuck out his enormous paw. "We really appreciate your letting us crash here, Kia. My brother's allergic to nylon, so we can't really camp out--" Dean couldn't talk yet, but he squawked around the chips and elbowed Sam hard enough to make him shut up.
Kia smiled, shrugging muscular shoulders in red tie-dye. She had yellow hoops in her ears, set off by her short burgundy hair. "Terry said you needed a place to crash," she said, her smile going puzzled. "But she didn't say anything about allergies..."
Dean shouldered in front of Sam. "Don't worry about it, he's just giving me shit. I'm Dean, and it's a real pleasure to meet you. Kia."
Kia's smile broadened with real humor as she shook his hand. Dean ignored Terry's snort, and Sam coughing into his hand, muttering something about "overkill".
"So," said Terry. "Who needs a beer?"
Two hours later, the party had mostly died down: Anatole was asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace, next to a dark-haired kid Dean thought he'd heard called Ivan. Paula had left with her platinum-haired brother, after a heart-to-heart with Sam that involved some exchange of email addresses: Dean had a dull suspicion Paula wasn't going to be on the reservation for much longer.
After midnight the beer had run out, and Kia had broken out the whiskey--a woman after Dean's own heart. Well, or maybe Sam's--they were shoulder to shoulder on the couch, playing a cut-throat game of Latin Scrabble. Dean snickered--Scrabble!--but apparently six and a half feet of geek worked for Kia. Who knew?
He slid open the door to the deck and wandered outside, breath puffing white in the cold air. This had been a good break from demon-hunting, but Dean could practically hear the clock ticking. There were still over two hundred demons out there, and he was running out of time to put them down. Which reminded him of Coyote's offer: just one more thing never to mention to Sammy.
Tomorrow they'd hit the road again. Well, maybe the next day, depending on how hungover they found themselves in the morning. The whiskey in his glass was the good stuff, and he took a small sip, letting it sit on his tongue before swallowing.
"Stars out?" asked Terry from the doorway.
Dean looked around. "Yeah, but it's fucking cold." The Milky Way was like a river across the sky, pearl luminescence flowing from one horizon to the other. Usually he was too busy driving, or digging up a grave, or running for his life, to look at the stars. Sam would probably call that a metaphor for something; Dean just knew it was the way things were. He gave the stars a toast, anyway.
"Hey, catch."
When he turned, Terry tossed him a blanket, and came outside, sliding the door closed behind her.
"You are an awesome woman," Dean said, pulling the blanket around his shoulders.
She lifted an eyebrow, wrapping herself up in the throw from the couch and leaning against the railing next to him. "Pretty cheap line, Winchester."
"Well, yeah." The stars really were amazing.
"Does it work?"
"Well, yeah." Feeling honest, he added, "Sometimes."
She laughed. "You're kind of impossible, aren't you? With your monsters and your mysterious past. And lock-picking! I don't want to know about the lock-picking, do I?"
Dean's blanket was some geometric pattern that was gray-on-gray in the starlight. It was warm, though. He loosened the blanket and wrapped his arm around Terry, so she had two layers of wool around her. "No, you probably don't."
She slid an arm around his waist in return, tucking fingers into his belt loop. Her thumb, though, found its way under his shirt to the skin above his left hip. He twitched, his hand tightening, then pulled her a little closer. Five months. Not that he was counting or anything.
Her head rested against his chest, her eyes on the stars. "So you gonna ride out of town now, like some guys in a John Wayne movie? That's your M.O., right?"
"Usually, yeah. Sorry." Dean glanced over his shoulder, then grinned. The Scrabble game was over, or they were playing some kind of full-contact version he'd never heard of. "Huh."
"What?" Terry twisted around to look, and snickered. "Kia loves 'em tall."
"I like her, she's cool." Dean dropped his hand to Terry's waist, and found the curve of her hip fit nicely inside his palm. Her hair smelled of woodsmoke and the joint that had been passed around earlier: it was a change from the fruity flowery stuff most girls had in their hair.
"So you should stick around for a couple days," said Terry, turning to press against him directly. "Cause you know, there's something I really want to do with you..."
Dean took in a shaky breath. "Yeah? Like what?" He hadn't thought Terry was the experimental type, but he'd been wrong before.
"Well, there's a five-nine over in Horseshoe Canyon I think you'd really like. It's all jugs and chicken-heads all the way up, and then when you get to the top--"
She shut up about the climbing when he kissed her.
END
Notes: The Cabrolla Band of Mission Indians does not exist. The tribe and their practices are based loosely on the Cahuilla peoples of southern California, but very loosely; nothing in this story should be taken to actually represent any particular tribe. Lagos Entertainment doesn't exist, either. The town of Yucca Valley does, however, exist, as does Joshua Tree National Park and the most excellent Water Canyon Coffeeshop where several scenes take place. The climbing routes are all invented, though.
Any similarity of original characters to actual human beings is entirely intentional. Ahem.
Thanks again to my betas, and early readers vaznetti, minim_calibre, hossgal, and tripoli8.
Feedback makes me do the wacky: please let me know what you think!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
*
"Okay, okay," said Dean, shoving the cell back into his pocket. A lock, Sam had said.
Terry leaned against one of the boulders and uncapped a water bottle. She seemed to be adjusting relatively well to meeting a spirit in the flesh (so to speak). "Did he have any information?"
"Yeah, yeah," said Dean, scanning the ground. "Something about a lock, she buried it." He looked around, but there was nothing on the ground besides sand and sandy dirt, marked with footprints, and the sand-covered and rusting bicycle chain. "Help me look."
Terry put her water away and pushed to her feet, untying the rope around her waist to leave it bundled on the boulder behind her. "A lock?"
"Yeah, a padlock, he said." Dean turned around; it had to be here--here was where the spell was cast, and it wasn't in Folsom's hotel or office. If she left it in her car, I'll shoot her myself.
"Better find it fast." Dell Martinez levered himself to his feet, brushing dust off his jeans. "Look at him," he added, with a nod at Coyote.
Dean didn't want to look: Coyote freaked him out, even if he'd never admit it in a million years. He'd seen stranger things in his life than a naked hairy guy with big ears--but Coyote's weirdness got under his skin. Made him twitch, attracted and repulsed at the same time. And it was worse, now, than even a few minutes ago; Coyote was bouncing on the balls of his feet, the fur on his ears standing up like it was electrified. Those dark eyes were glittering--not metaphorically: there were sparks in there, and sparks arcing off the ground where Coyote's feet touched the stone.
"Yeaaaaah," sounded Coyote, in a growling whine that made Dean's hair stand up. "Soon! Soon soon soon!" He shuddered, and turned a standing backflip. Then suddenly he was calm again--if still sparking--and staring at Dean. "Better get under cover, pup. You wanna be here after, you want what I can give you--" He grinned, a red tongue rolling out of his mouth and past his chin, curling over teeth that were all canines.
"Shit, I don't have time for this." Dean turned away, then back. "Unless you know where the lock is. Do you?" He ignored the offer; wasn't anything Coyote could give him that he wanted. Spirits always made offers you couldn't afford to take. Though some offers were worth it, no matter the price.
But Coyote--weren't his eyes brown before? now they were green--just grinned and snapped his jaws insolently.
Martinez was walking slowly across the clearing, examining the ground with deliberation. "He won't tell you. He doesn't want to be freed that way. Not now he's found the crack, built up the pressure to blow it. It'll be more fun that way."
"For him," said Terry. Martinez nodded. Terry was squatting on the ground, raking her hands through the soil. "There's a lot of climbers on the walls out there," she said, eyes not leaving the ground. "What happens to them when Rin-Tin-Chaos there hits them?"
Dean didn't answer, and Martinez just shook his head.
"I hate you guys," said Terry without rancor, and shifted sideways to sift through some more sand. Dean kept looking, working in a grid pattern across the clearing; Terry focused on the ground in the center where the bicycle chain had been; and Dell moved in seemingly-random spirals out from the middle. Coyote just bounced in place, and howled, and the sparkage grew brighter as the sun climbed the sky.
It was maybe four minutes later when Terry said, "Move your feet."
Dean looked up. Terry was squatting right next to Coyote, about three feet from the chain. One hand on the ground for balance, she was peering up at him, brows lowered. Instead of moving, Coyote waggled his ass so his erect penis bounced in front of Terry's face. "I said, move it," she snapped, and slapped at it.
Dean was pretty sure she didn't connect, but Coyote yelped anyway, and leaped six feet into the air. He came down on top of the boulder he'd been leaning against, and crouched there, snarling and snapping at the air.
Terry ignored him, already scraping at the dry ground with her hands. Within about half a minute she grunted. "Found something," she said, digging deeper. Coyote wailed, and Terry scrabbled, and before Dean even got to her from across the clearing, she had uncovered it and brought it to the light.
It was an old brass padlock, about three inches across and half an inch thick, and definitely, securely, locked. Terry tugged at the shackle, shrugged, and tossed it to Dean. Coyote whined piteously.
"Huh." Dean stared at it, turned it over, looked at the back. "Don't suppose there's a key down there?" he asked Terry; she just glared at him. "Right."
Great. So now he had to solve this, without any of the tools he needed, on top of a cliff. He never should have agreed to splitting up from Sam: it always ended poorly. Hell, it usually ended poorly even when they didn't agree to split up.
"Whattaya think, grandpa?" he said to Martinez. "Opening it up do the trick?"
Martinez pushed his cap back on his head and put his hand out for the lock. "Ouch," he said softly, as Dean passed it to him. "You didn't feel that? The power?"
"Nah, just a tingle," said Dean. To tell the truth, he'd barely noticed it; there was so much energy in the air around them now, it felt like lightning was about to strike, despite the clear sky. He watched impatiently as Martinez turned the lock over in his hands, humming under his breath. "Well?"
"Maybe," said Martinez. "But..." The first time they'd met, Martinez didn't look that old: maybe in his sixties. But something about the harsh light up here, or the short night he must have had, to get on the bluff top at this hour, made him look a lot older. The lines on his face looked carved, worn like the stone about them by the summer wind and winter rains. "There's too much energy built up here: even if you can open it, it'll probably kill you. And us."
"Well, fuck," said Terry. "What's the point, then?" She looked nearly as frustrated as Dean, and not anywhere near scared enough. Her hair was falling out of the ponytail, and dust clung to the drying sweat on her face. What the hell was he thinking, bringing her up here? Oh, wait: she'd brought him, hadn't she? Damn.
Dean scratched his head, dirty hands leaving grit in his hair. "So we leave it and run? C'mon, man, there's gotta be another way. A circuit-breaker or something? Some kind of buffer?"
The sun, now well above the horizon, shone right into Martinez's face as he scowled, thinking. After a moment, he grunted, scratching his cheek with one brown and weathered hand. In this light, Dean saw some scarring along his jaw, three fine parallel lines, like he'd been swiped with the claws of a big cat. "Order, not chaos," said Martinez thoughtfully. "Maybe: it's always about balance. We're on rock here, rock, not wood or soil. Might be enough."
"Is that good?" Terry asked.
If Dean was following Martinez's thinking right, he'd use the earth itself to take up the excess entropy, like a heat-sink, or a battery being charged. That could work. "So what do you need? This lock's old, I can probably pick it in a couple of minutes." He was hoping he'd be able to find something in Terry's pack to use.
This surprised a laugh out of Terry. "You really are a criminal, aren't you?" Dean shrugged, raising an eyebrow at Martinez.
"I need you to be quiet," said Martinez, lowering himself to the ground. He sat himself cross-legged, back against one of the biggest boulders, and then looked around. "You," he said to Terry, his voice authoritative, and somehow deeper than it had been a moment ago. "Sit here, and start drumming, like this." He beat out a slow rhythm on his thighs, a simple thump-thumpety-thump, and kept going until Terry picked it up.
"Give me a few minutes," he directed Dean, "then open it." With that, he began to chant, a soft droning "Hey, yah, hey, yah," over and over again.
Dean nodded, and dug into Terry's pack for something to use on the lock. Near the bottom, on a battered carabiner marked with black tape, he found a long thin probe, no idea what it was for; that, plus the paperclips he always had in his pockets, should be enough to do the job.
The bicycle chain wasn't big enough to surround them all; Dean laid it out around Terry, who glared at him--what was her issue this time?--but kept drumming, and then he salted a larger circle around all three of them. When that was done, he settled down inside the circle, across from Martinez, uncomfortably cross-legged, with the lock and his tools in his hands.
"Hey, yah," sang Martinez, thumping on his thighs, his lids drooping but his face simultaneously tight with concentration. On the next measure he complicated the chant, adding more syllables: Dean couldn't tell if they were actual language rather than filler. But Terry continued clapping without pause on the original beat, her eyes completely closed, so Martinez's singing wound around the support of Terry's rhythm. Even Coyote, perched on the boulder above them, was swaying to the beat, his howling dropped to a rumbling whine that rose and sank with Martinez's chant. Dean could feel the music begin to sing in his own veins, could feel the connection Martinez was building, between himself and the earth beneath them. Like an oak, putting its roots down into the living rock, stretching and growing stronger with every beat. Dean and Terry weren't part of it, but they were carried on it, protected by it, rocked in it.
It was time.
Dean wasn't Sam, hadn't spent hours in the back of the Impala while his dad and brother hunted, learning to pick a dozen different types of lock based on a book their father had "borrowed" from the library in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Dean wasn't good at staying still that long; not for locks, not for research. But Dean could handle most basic locks, and this old thing--well, he was relieved as shit that Folsom hadn't decided to get sophisticated.
The tool he'd scavenged from Terry's rack wouldn't work on any modern lock: it was far too large. But it would do for this, Dean figured. He took a deep breath, let it out, relaxed his shoulders as much as he could, letting the rhythm of Martinez's chant soak into him, grounding him through his spine. When he was ready, he looked up at Martinez, who gave him a tiny nod.
This was going to be tricky without an angled tension wrench: Dean couldn't hold the lock and manipulate the tension on it with the tool he was using for a tension wrench in the same hand. He scowled, bit back a swear that might disrupt the chanting, and finally wedged the lock between his boot and his other leg.
That worked: he got the tension wrench in and applied some pressure, and the barrel turned minutely. With the other hand, he fed the paperclip in, fumbling his way along the pins. There was a god: only three pins. Except the lock wasn't new, and had been buried in the dirt for weeks: the pins were stiff, the springs reluctant to compress. It took him two minutes to set the first pin, and despite the chill he had sweat dripping off his nose.
When the pin set, and the barrel of the lock moved a couple of degrees, Dean felt it in the air around him. Like a spring had just gone "ping", and something ricocheted off the wall of a small room. Something dangerous and sharp-edged.
The air felt thick, and Terry fumbled the beat--just for a moment, and then she recovered. But it was enough to scare him. Dean wasn't exactly sure what Martinez was doing, but if the puul was going to channel Coyote's energy into the earth, that meant he was drawing it to himself--in essence, trapping it and compressing it into the tiny space set off by the circle Dean had laid around them.
If Dean didn't get this lock open, something bad was going to happen--he didn't know what, but something really fucking bad.
The second pin was just as stiff, but Dean had a better handle on it now. He'd been surprised, when Sam came back, how a guy with such ginormous hands could manage the delicacy needed for this kind of work. He'd have to--well, no, he wasn't gonna ask; couldn't give Sam that kind of opening. But next time it came up, he'd watch more carefully. Except thinking about Sam was a bad idea, because it distracted him, worrying about Sam in the casino--and Sam had gotten off the phone really fast there. He bit his lip, gave the paperclip an extra twist, and the barrel shifted again as the second pin set.
One more pin, and now the air was like soup, thick with dust and glitter and tufts of Coyote fur. His hands were slick, the drumming and chanting was almost drowned out by Coyote's howling, and he dropped the paperclip three times.
When he got the last pin to set and cautiously moved the tension wrench--there. The pins were all set: it should open now. With a shaking hand, Dean let the paperclip fall and pulled at the shackle. It stuck at first, and then came loose, the bottom of shackle shiny and clean of the dust and tarnish on the rest of the lock. If they were right, his job was over, and Coyote was free.
Instead of a boom, as Coyote had warned, there was a stillness. Dean looked up; Terry was still clapping, and Martinez was still chanting, but Dean couldn't hear them. He couldn't even hear his own breath, or the wind in the sage.
What he heard was a soft whistle, as Coyote somersaulted off his perch and landed upright in the center of the circle, facing Dean. "Bout damn time," said Coyote, but the whine was gone from his voice, and his eyes looked sharper, less wild. His tail whipped back and forth a few times, and then he dropped to his haunches in front of Dean, a grin spreading wide across his face. "I gotta go, but I like you, dude, you're a scrapper. You helped me out, so you want me to cut you loose? Cause I can do it, now."
Dean nearly choked: Coyote smelled pungently of wet dog, sage, woodsmoke, and blood. "Cut me loose?"
"Yup-yup. You got all those bindings on you," said Coyote, extended a long black foreclaw towards Dean's arm. "That one's real nasty, too," he added, with a snarl that wrinkled his nose all the way to his eyes. "Goes off that way." He drew a line in the air from Dean's torso down towards the southeast. "Rest of em mostly go that way," and he waved towards the north.
"You can cut them?" Dean swallowed. He wasn't hunting this year because he thought it was going to save him; he hunted because it was something to do, and it was the right thing to do. Somebody had to do it. But if the deal with the crossroads demon was one string, what were the rest?
"Sure, if you want." Coyote peeled his lips back from his teeth and leaned forward.
As those glossy canines approached, though, Dean hesitated. "Wait. Can you just cut that one? The nasty one?"
"Nope."
"What?"
Coyote's eyes widened with annoyance, and he straightened, shifting back away from Dean. At least it smelled better now. "Dude, you want needlework, find one of those Greek bitches. All or nothing, that's the deal."
North was out of the Park: Sam, the casino, even Bobby and Ellen, in a general way. Hell, north was the Impala. Shit. Besides, this might constitute "welching", and no way was he going to take that risk.
"Yeah, thanks man," Dean said, about a tongue that suddenly felt too thick for his mouth. He swallowed once. "I'll pass just the same. Appreciate the offer, though."
"Your funeral," said Coyote with a grin--bastard knew just what it was--and then he was on top of the boulder again. Martinez was chanting, the sound of Terry's clapping was louder and louder. Power gathered in the air like snow in a whiteout. Martinez's voice hesitated, gathered strength until all Dean could hear was the music. Wind whipped around the tiny warded circle, sand and gravel cast into the air, scouring Dean's face. He coughed, covering his eyes with one hand.
And then, on a high note, the puul leaned forward and slapped both hands to the ground.
The wind stopped; the air cleared; Coyote gave a short, sharp bark and faded to transparency. Was gone, between one breath and the next.
Terry clapped another four times, and then stumbled to a halt. "Is it done?" she asked, her eyes wild. Her ponytail had come completely undone, dark hair hanging loose around her face; she clawed some of it away from her mouth.
There was a groan as Martinez rolled over onto his side. "Done, and done," he said, breathing hard. "We're not dead, right?"
"Right," said Dean. He thought about standing up, but for some reason his legs were a little weak. He really wanted a beer, but the only thing they had was water. Except the water was twenty feet away in the packs, and that was just too far right now. Pretty soon he was gonna have to get moving, though, go dig Sam out of whatever trouble he'd doubtless gotten himself into. Which reminded him: "So how do we get down from here, anyway?"
Terry flopped over onto her back, arms splayed wide. "Oh that's easy," she said to the sky. "We rappel."
*
They weren't the most professional cops Sam had ever seen--in fact it only took one of them fumbling for his cuffs for Sam to realize they weren't cops at all, but casino security. Rent-a-cops, Dean would call them, with the same disdain Dad had always had for beer-bellied faux soldiers. But they had guns, and Sam was in no mood to get himself killed, so he let them take his gun and his cell and cuff him awkwardly.
It was a little chaotic for the first bit: Beth was leaking tears, being comforted by the polished young receptionist, Sam was frisked roughly, and Perez went out in the hallway. Sam saw him gesturing at the head of the security team, a skinny white guy. Sam kept his head down but slanted his eyes to the left, to see Paula still leaning against the credenza, arms crossed and a bullish look on her face.
"Miss, are you okay?" asked the one casino cop who looked like she might be Indian, a short stocky woman with a cauliflower ear that belied her soft voice. "He didn't hurt you?"
"No." Paula glared some more, but at least she kept her mouth shut. Maybe she'd get out of this without a charge of accessory to kidnapping.
Beth Folsom jerked her head up. "Hurt her? She was helping him!"
Or maybe not.
"No, she wasn't," said Sam. "She caught me in here and was trying to call the cops when Folsom came in."
Paula switched her glare to Sam, opened her mouth, hesitated, and closed it again. Sam gave her the smallest nod he could summon.
"Is that true, miss?"
"Why would I want to break into an office?" Paula sounded disgusted as only an adolescent could. "I saw him jimmying the lock and followed him in."
Talk about unprofessional: these guys didn't even know enough to separate the witnesses out from the suspects. If Dean were here, give him twenty minutes and he'd have them arresting Beth for something.
But Sam didn't get twenty minutes; ninety seconds later the real cops arrived. Tribal cops, he guessed, from the uniforms with the stylized Joshua Tree on their shoulders. The last Sam saw of Beth and Perez, Beth was arguing heatedly with Perez in the corner of her office, her face pink with anger and resentment, while Perez just looked frustrated. Sam gave Paula a regretful smile as he was hustled out a side door, his hands cuffed behind his back, and tucked into the back seat of a tan sedan with bad shocks.
The cops weren't chatty, so Sam kept silent and just watched as they headed northwest out of town, leaving the valley floor and climbing into the hills. After fifteen or so minutes, they pulled up in front of a small complex of municipal buildings, poorly shaded by a couple of sad-looking palm trees.
They'd taken his phone, so Sam couldn't tell if Dean had called. Had they freed Coyote, or not? Shit, Dean was up there without backup, with civilians. Sam didn't like the feeling; didn't like not knowing where Dean was, what was going on. If this was what hunting solo was like, he didn't want it.
An hour later he'd been printed and photographed, and was cooling his heels in yet another bland and windowless interview room. Sam was getting depressingly familiar with police station decor. This one had green concrete walls, the kind of construction you saw in high schools built in the fifties, and that dull grey linoleum that never looked clean. Ugly didn't begin to describe it. Sam gave it ten minutes--there was a clock mounted high on the wall behind a grate--before he started trying to fish a paper clip out of his pocket.
"Ah-ah," warned the cop who came through the door, a barrel-chested Asian with close-clipped grizzled hair. His name tag said "Ling" in neat letters over the tribal seal. "None of that. I brought you some coffee, though."
Sam lifted his wrists ruefully. "Can't exactly drink it this way."
"No, that's true," said Ling. "You remember walking in through the offices, all those cops with guns between here and the door?"
"Yeah," said Sam, warily.
Ling nodded, leaning across with a key. "Then you know you won't get out of here, even without the cuffs on."
The coffee tasted pretty good, although it was lukewarm by now--Sam was thankful for any caffeine at this point. "So," he said, setting down the half-empty cup. "You gonna charge me?" They'd taken his prints, but clearly hadn't run them yet, or he'd never have been uncuffed. How long did it take, anyway? None of this was the kind of stuff they'd covered in his Street Law class junior year; he sometimes wished he could send Professor Munroe a note. Please add the legal consequences of faking your own death to the syllabus. Also, what to do when a demon has a contract on your brother's soul.
"Well, that's the problem," said Ling, and scratched the back of his head in a way memorialized by television cops for forty years. "We're not sure what charges to file yet."
"Oh, right! This is reservation land, isn't it?" State laws--even state criminal laws--didn't apply on reservations, Sam was pretty sure.
"Oh, got a legal mastermind here?" scoffed Ling. "Think you understand the situation, do you?" He propped himself against the desk, and sneered genially. "Except this is Indian country, not the Golden State. If you were Indian, yeah, I'd charge you--but I'm guessing you're not Indian. Not that we can tell, given you've got no ID on you. Convenient, that."
Sam met his eyes serenely. "I left my wallet in the car."
"Perez told me you said your name was Jon Landau." Ling grinned. "I saw the future of rock and roll? Jeez, man, that's not even trying."
Wincing, Sam shrugged. He wasn't going to give them any information, not if he didn't have to. And next time he saw Dean, they'd have another talk about their assumed identities: he'd told Dean over and over the games with pseudonyms were just juvenile.
Ling frowned, drumming his fingers on the edge of the desk. "Well, that's no problem: they'll run your prints and we'll get that pinned down. So you'll go to the San Bernardino County Sheriff--or, wait, no. This is the casino, and you know who has jurisdiction over crimes involving Indian gaming?" Ling grinned; Sam was kind of beginning to hate him. "The FBI."
The FBI? Sam felt himself pale. Henriksen had been riding them hard for the past four months, ever since that exorcism went so sour in Texas. "Collateral damage", Dad would have said, and shaken it off. But Manuel Franks had been only nine, and Sam still dreamed about the way his skinny legs had collapsed, the blood congealing on his worn Keds.
The FBI wasn't the worst thing that could happen to them, Sam knew in his bleaker moments, but getting caught would be a death sentence for Dean. No way Sam could find a solution to the deal from inside a federal holding facility.
"Cat got your tongue? Or does that scare you?" Ling was looking like he had a mouthful of canary.
Sam thought furiously; they hadn't made the call yet, after all. He couldn't risk the FBI, but the only way to do it was to confess to something else. But then he'd be stuck with the confession.... He wished he'd gotten more sleep last night, but his brain was just sloppy and slow. "Well, the thing is, sir, I didn't break in for any reason to do with gaming."
Ling raised his eyebrows. "That so? You gonna tell me, then?" He pulled a tiny recorder out of his pocket and set it on the table. I'm all ears."
"I was looking for proof of an art theft," said Sam. "Well, not art, really--cultural artifacts. Someone's been conducting rituals in the Park, using Cabrolla artifacts from a private collection. The ritual necessarily destroys the object's value, but not so much they can't be identified."
Ling snorted, then nodded encouragingly. "Uh-huh. So far, this is not going to keep me from calling the FBI, kid."
They couldn't call the FBI. He'd kidded about it with Dean often enough, but the truth was that the FBI had taken on mythic significance for them, and if they had Sam, there was no way Dean wasn't coming to get him. And that... There was no way that would end well. He had to come up with a better story than this lame thing about artifacts, but his brain felt like it had run completely dry, a gasping fish flopping about the bottom of a drought-stricken pond. Had they given him decaf?
There was a knock on the door and someone surged into the room. "He's still here? Is he cuffed? No? Fine, let's go, son."
Sam blinked. The newcomer was an elderly man in a denim shirt and trucker cap, his grey hair in need of a haircut and dust on his cowboy boots. Sam was quite sure he'd never seen the guy before, but something about him was still familiar. "What?"
Ling looked equally baffled. "Wait, no! What are you doing? You can't take him out!"
The elderly man drew himself up and frowned monumentally. "Are you a tribal council member?"
Ling shook his head.
"Are you the most senior elder and puul for the tribe?" Ling shook his head again. "Do you have any authority not granted you by the tribal council?" And again. "Then let him go, lieutenant."
Ling sagged noticeably, then firmed his spine once more, as Sam looked on with some amazement. It was like watching the Williams sisters, practically. "He had a gun, sir! It was an attempted kidnapping!"
"It was not!" protested Sam, and then closed his mouth when the elder waved irritably at him.
"Mary Josephson of Grass Valley just left the casino with four thousand dollars," said the elder. "This boy just helped save your ass, lieutenant. Or," he added, peering at Ling's somewhat worn uniform shirt, "at least your paycheck. It's not your decision. Let him go."
Ling sighed, and moved away from the door. "I'll go to the council," he said warningly.
"You do that," said the elder, and waved Sam to the door.
Outside, possessed once again of his cell phone and even his gun, Sam was unsurprised to see Dean and Terry in the cab of Anatole's truck, parked across from the police station. He waved at Dean and turned to the elder. "Dell Martinez, right?" Sam stuck out his hand. "Thanks." It was awkward and inadequate, but it was all he had.
Martinez's grip was solid, surprisingly strong. "Don't worry about it," he said, an open smile lightening his face. "It keeps the balance. Now you do me a favor--keep your brother out of Indian Country until Coyote forgets who he is. Bastard's got some kind of weird fixation and it's gonna take me months to get him over it."
"Um, what?" But Martinez just slapped Sam on the shoulder and climbed into the front seat of a rattletrap old Ford pickup. "Hey, wait!" Sam said, putting his hand on the door.
Martinez tugged a cap down over his bushy eyebrows. "Yes?"
"What about Beth Folsom?"
The old man smiled wryly. "Wouldn't worry about her, son. Now, go on: your brother's waiting for you." With that, he pulled out onto the dusty, pot-holed street and was gone.
"Sammy!" Dean waved, and leaned across Terry to honk the horn. "Get your ass in gear, already!"
Sam blinked. It was noon, maybe, he wasn't sure, and the FBI wasn't coming, and the sun was shining even if it was kind of chilly here in the desert. Nobody had died, and whatever had happened, they'd gotten the job done. He still had five months to come up with something. That was enough for now. "All right, I'm coming!" He grinned and loped across the street to the truck.
*
"I don't get it. How'd he get up there?" Sam popped the beer open and handed it to Dean, his brow furrowed. "You guys had to climb."
Dean shrugged, unconcerned. "Man's a puul, Sammy. You wanna know, you ask him."
Sam rolled his shoulders and took a drink. He looked a lot less fried now than he had when they picked him up, after a three-hour nap on Kia's couch. "Oh, hey, how'd you know where I was?"
Dean gave him his best don't-be-stupid look; it wasn't as good as Dad's, which could blister paint, but it was effective enough: Sam flushed. "Anatole called me as soon as he saw the cops arrive. Sorry it took us so long, though; Terry wouldn't do more than sixty in the Park. They didn't get rough, did they?"
"They were okay," Sam admitted. "But your timing was great, they were just about to call the FBI."
"Aw. Was little Sammy-wammy scared?"
"Little Sammy-wammy has thirty pounds on you and knows all your secrets," warned Sam, with the evil smile Dean was pretty sure he'd been practicing before the mirror.
Before Dean could summon up an appropriate threat, the front door swung open and hit the wall with an almighty crash, so unexpectedly that Dean jumped, hand instinctively going for his gun. A tall black woman stood in the doorway, a duffel bag over one shoulder and a backpack at her feet. The twenty or so climbers scattered around the open living area of Kia's house went silent, beers suspended halfway to mouths, chips falling to the carpet.
"What the hell is that black monster in my car port, and who the hell are--oh, never mind. Someone give me a beer right fucking now, and I'll let you all live."
Terry laughed aloud and ducked under Dean's arm to launch herself at the scowling woman in the doorway. "Ki! Ki! Kia!" she squealed, hugging her before the other woman even set down her duffel.
Dean wiped ineffectually at his jeans--Terry had spilled her beer on him--and tilted his head to check out the new talent.
"Guess that's Kia," Sam said helpfully.
Dean nodded. "Guess so." After a moment, he added, "She's pretty tall, Sammy. Pretty hot, too."
"Shut up," said Sam, without heat. "Terry's pretty hot, too, you know."
"I always know." Dean finished his beer and shoved a handful of chips into his mouth. Which, of course, was the moment Terry chose to bring Kia over to meet them.
Her eyes widening at Dean, Terry hurriedly turned to Sam first. "Sam, I'd like you to meet Kia, whose shower you've been using for the past few days."
While Dean chewed, swallowing chips in jagged pieces, Sam smiled suavely--Dean thought he looked like a lawyer on late-night cable--and stuck out his enormous paw. "We really appreciate your letting us crash here, Kia. My brother's allergic to nylon, so we can't really camp out--" Dean couldn't talk yet, but he squawked around the chips and elbowed Sam hard enough to make him shut up.
Kia smiled, shrugging muscular shoulders in red tie-dye. She had yellow hoops in her ears, set off by her short burgundy hair. "Terry said you needed a place to crash," she said, her smile going puzzled. "But she didn't say anything about allergies..."
Dean shouldered in front of Sam. "Don't worry about it, he's just giving me shit. I'm Dean, and it's a real pleasure to meet you. Kia."
Kia's smile broadened with real humor as she shook his hand. Dean ignored Terry's snort, and Sam coughing into his hand, muttering something about "overkill".
"So," said Terry. "Who needs a beer?"
Two hours later, the party had mostly died down: Anatole was asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace, next to a dark-haired kid Dean thought he'd heard called Ivan. Paula had left with her platinum-haired brother, after a heart-to-heart with Sam that involved some exchange of email addresses: Dean had a dull suspicion Paula wasn't going to be on the reservation for much longer.
After midnight the beer had run out, and Kia had broken out the whiskey--a woman after Dean's own heart. Well, or maybe Sam's--they were shoulder to shoulder on the couch, playing a cut-throat game of Latin Scrabble. Dean snickered--Scrabble!--but apparently six and a half feet of geek worked for Kia. Who knew?
He slid open the door to the deck and wandered outside, breath puffing white in the cold air. This had been a good break from demon-hunting, but Dean could practically hear the clock ticking. There were still over two hundred demons out there, and he was running out of time to put them down. Which reminded him of Coyote's offer: just one more thing never to mention to Sammy.
Tomorrow they'd hit the road again. Well, maybe the next day, depending on how hungover they found themselves in the morning. The whiskey in his glass was the good stuff, and he took a small sip, letting it sit on his tongue before swallowing.
"Stars out?" asked Terry from the doorway.
Dean looked around. "Yeah, but it's fucking cold." The Milky Way was like a river across the sky, pearl luminescence flowing from one horizon to the other. Usually he was too busy driving, or digging up a grave, or running for his life, to look at the stars. Sam would probably call that a metaphor for something; Dean just knew it was the way things were. He gave the stars a toast, anyway.
"Hey, catch."
When he turned, Terry tossed him a blanket, and came outside, sliding the door closed behind her.
"You are an awesome woman," Dean said, pulling the blanket around his shoulders.
She lifted an eyebrow, wrapping herself up in the throw from the couch and leaning against the railing next to him. "Pretty cheap line, Winchester."
"Well, yeah." The stars really were amazing.
"Does it work?"
"Well, yeah." Feeling honest, he added, "Sometimes."
She laughed. "You're kind of impossible, aren't you? With your monsters and your mysterious past. And lock-picking! I don't want to know about the lock-picking, do I?"
Dean's blanket was some geometric pattern that was gray-on-gray in the starlight. It was warm, though. He loosened the blanket and wrapped his arm around Terry, so she had two layers of wool around her. "No, you probably don't."
She slid an arm around his waist in return, tucking fingers into his belt loop. Her thumb, though, found its way under his shirt to the skin above his left hip. He twitched, his hand tightening, then pulled her a little closer. Five months. Not that he was counting or anything.
Her head rested against his chest, her eyes on the stars. "So you gonna ride out of town now, like some guys in a John Wayne movie? That's your M.O., right?"
"Usually, yeah. Sorry." Dean glanced over his shoulder, then grinned. The Scrabble game was over, or they were playing some kind of full-contact version he'd never heard of. "Huh."
"What?" Terry twisted around to look, and snickered. "Kia loves 'em tall."
"I like her, she's cool." Dean dropped his hand to Terry's waist, and found the curve of her hip fit nicely inside his palm. Her hair smelled of woodsmoke and the joint that had been passed around earlier: it was a change from the fruity flowery stuff most girls had in their hair.
"So you should stick around for a couple days," said Terry, turning to press against him directly. "Cause you know, there's something I really want to do with you..."
Dean took in a shaky breath. "Yeah? Like what?" He hadn't thought Terry was the experimental type, but he'd been wrong before.
"Well, there's a five-nine over in Horseshoe Canyon I think you'd really like. It's all jugs and chicken-heads all the way up, and then when you get to the top--"
She shut up about the climbing when he kissed her.
END
Notes: The Cabrolla Band of Mission Indians does not exist. The tribe and their practices are based loosely on the Cahuilla peoples of southern California, but very loosely; nothing in this story should be taken to actually represent any particular tribe. Lagos Entertainment doesn't exist, either. The town of Yucca Valley does, however, exist, as does Joshua Tree National Park and the most excellent Water Canyon Coffeeshop where several scenes take place. The climbing routes are all invented, though.
Any similarity of original characters to actual human beings is entirely intentional. Ahem.
Thanks again to my betas, and early readers vaznetti, minim_calibre, hossgal, and tripoli8.
Feedback makes me do the wacky: please let me know what you think!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6