Fic: Morgantown (3)
Title: Morgantown (3/6)
Author: ignipes
Written for: gekizetsu
Rating: This chapter, PG-13. Overall, R for violence.
Disclaimer: The show and the boys do not belong to me, and I am not making any money from this story.
Notes: Thanks to jebbypal for her mad beta skills!
Summary: The boys learn that they have been making quite a name for themselves in the hunting world, and what looks like an ordinary job turns out to be anything but routine when they encounter old friends, old enemies, and unfinished business from the past.
Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
~
Sam blinked several times and lifted his head.
"I don't approve of guns."
Startled, he turned quickly and winced at the sudden pain. Dark spots danced before his eyes, but he could see that he was lying on the floor of Mrs. Lawson's living room. On the sofa above him, she was sitting primly, hands folded in her lap, dressed in another garish smock with a mismatched scarf on her head. Both patterns clashed violently with the paisley upholstery of the sofa. Her mouth was set in a thin frown.
Sam sat up and saw his gun on the coffee table. She made no move to stop him when he picked it up.
"I told Walter I didn't want guns in the house." Mrs. Lawson shook her head distastefully. "I don't approve of guns, no matter what kind of business you're in."
"I'm...I'm sorry. Where's Dean? The guy who was with me?" He tried to scramble to his feet, but a wave of dizziness forced him to stop. Sam looked back at Mrs. Lawson and asked incredulously, "Were you the one -- did you hit me?"
"Oh, no, that was Walter. Joe saw him. Joe says he also took your friend away."
"Joe? Who's--" Sam broke off, remembering the newspaper articles he'd read yesterday: Joseph Lawson. Disappeared April 20, 1959.
Mrs. Lawson patted the air above the sofa cushion beside her. "Joe watched the whole thing. He said you were sneaking around like thugs, just like Walter said you would be."
"Joe...your husband?" Sam stared at the empty sofa beside Mrs. Lawson. "He's...is he..."
"He's been here all these years, you know. He's not angry anymore." A small glass trinket box on the end table spun around suddenly, and Mrs. Lawson smiled fondly.
"He's sitting beside you right now? Talking to you?"
The trinket box spun again, and Mrs. Lawson nodded. "Walter says that it's perfectly normal, if a spirit doesn't want to leave the world.
"Well, it is, uh..." Sam cleared his throat and sat up straighter. The lamp on the end table rocked slightly. Perfectly normal. "Joe says that Walter took Dean -- Walter?" Sam broke off suddenly. Walter. "Who is Walter?" Shitty old Scout, Arkansas plates. "What does he -- Walter Pickton? Are you talking about Walter Pickton?" A seedy Little Rock bar, another tip, another job: Hey, Winchester, I heard about this place up in Morgantown that sounds like your kind of gig.
"He's our nephew," Mrs. Lawson explained. The trinket box spun in agreement. "We raised him from a boy, you know. He's like a son to us. He said that you were business associates of his." She looked at Sam over the rim of her glasses. "Walter doesn't like to talk about his business, but I know he's not a plumber. I don't like that this deal of yours involves guns."
"It's a trap." Sam stood quickly, realization washing over him like a cold shower. "Walter set us up, he -- where is he now? Where did he take Dean?"
Mrs. Lawson looked up at him. "Well, how should I know? Walter doesn't like to talk about his business. He said you met with some colleagues of his yesterday."
"Yesterday -- when did you last talk to Walter? Do you have a phone number? Did he say where he was going? Do you know where he's staying? Who he was going to meet? What did he tell you -- you have to tell me what he told you!"
Some part of Sam's mind knew that he was raving, and he forced himself to slow down when Mrs. Lawson only gaped wordlessly and the picture frames around the room began to rattle. He rubbed his hand over his face and sat down in a wing-backed chair across from Mrs. Lawson, hoping that poor dead Joe hadn't switched seats.
A trap. Set by Walter fucking Pickton, of all people. Dean was going to be furious they were waylaid by that loser. It was so stupid of them to be caught off-guard. Twice. And after they were warned, too. Shit. God, they were losing their touch.
But Dean could handle Walter Pickton, could probably handle him with both hands tied behind his back.
No problem. Probably.
Sam took a deep breath and rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head.
"Mrs. Lawson," he said. "Can you tell me what Walter told you?"
She glanced sideways. "Well, I guess so. Joe says we should tell you. I don't approve of guns, you know." She looked pointedly at the handgun, and the lamp on the end table rattled and flickered. "Joe doesn't like guns in the house, either."
Sam bit back his annoyance and set the gun on the coffee table. "Tell me what Walter said."
~
Mrs. Lawson and her ghostly husband didn't know anything useful. They didn't know where Walter was staying. They didn't know his phone number, or the names of his associates, what he was planning or where he was going or if he was expected to drop by the house again. They knew nothing about the bounty; they had believed Walter when he told them he was involved in a simple business deal. When Sam persisted in asking even after Mrs. Lawson said many times over that she didn't know, the lamps around the room flashed and the picture frames on the walls shook, and he suspected that he had outstayed his welcome.
Mrs. Lawson's neighbors were no better. Of those who were home and answered Sam's knocks, none of them had seen or heard anything.
The Impala was parked where they had left it, untouched. Sam slid in behind the wheel but didn't start the engine right away. Walter had given him one hell of a knock on the head; he had been unconscious for far too long. It was already after noon.
"Think," he said quietly. "You have to think."
He took out his phone and called Dean. Just as he expected, the voicemail picked up after a few rings, and his heart sank.
The first thing he did was go back to the motel, but the woman in the office was no more helpful than Mrs. Lawson had been. The men who had rented the room next to Sam and Dean's the night before had paid cash, giving no names. From her description, one of the men certainly sounded like Walter Pickton as Sam had last seen him in Arkansas: middle-aged, receding hairline, prison muscles and prison tattoos, an attitude best described as "memorable." But beyond that, there was nothing to be learned from the motel so Sam left.
He tried Dean's phone again, tried calling anyone he could think of who knew Walter Pickton, and finally began to drive around the city, across the river and back, winding through the university campus and ordinary neighborhoods. Everywhere he went, he checked motels and parking lots for a Scout with Arkansas plates.
Nothing. Every turn he made, every stoplight he caught, he felt time slipping away from him. He finally parked the car along a street down by the river, watching through the windshield as people hurried along the sidewalks. He needed a better plan, any plan. The cops were out of the question; he and Dean had, after all, broken into Mrs. Lawson's house. He tried to figure out what Dean would do, tried to figure out what other options he had, but his mind was racing too quickly, filled with too many possibilities, and he couldn't--
The headache struck him like another blow to the head. Blinding pain exploded behind his eyes and raced down his neck and back like fire.
Broken glass, broken glass on the floor scattered everywhere--
Sam shouted wordlessly and fell forward, collapsing against the steering wheel.
--the shards reflecting, candlelight, firelight, a red and gold glow--
"Fuck," he rasped, pressing his hands to his temples. Not this, not now.
--and voices chanting quietly, the sound echoing through the vast, dark space above, loud enough that they don't hear his approach, crunching and crackling over the broken glass, slinking forward. There is no wall to hide against and the room is nothing but fire and shadows, but he moves forward slowly, toward the fire, toward the three tall silhouettes illuminated by the leaping flames--
Not this. Somewhere distant, somehow muffled, something was screaming. Not now.
--toward the prone body on the floor, in the center of a ring of candles, red and black lines on the floor, skin and blood and a silver ring glinting in the firelight--
"No!"
Sam sat up sharply, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. He was leaning on the horn, and when he jerked back, silence fell at once.
There was a gentle tap on the window. He jumped, startled.
"Hey, you alright?" A man stood outside the car, frowning. "You okay?"
Sam swallowed. His mouth was too dry, so he only nodded and tried to smile, but managed only a horrible grimace. The man frowned doubtfully, but moved away.
Nausea roiled through Sam, and he pushed the car door open. Can't be sick in the car, he thought wildly, think of the upholstery. He slammed the door and leaned against the car, gasping in the cool, damp air. He was aware of a few curious looks from passers-by, but nobody else stopped.
The nausea slowly passed, but the headache remained. His vision was blurred and he was trembling. This was...he took in a deep breath, rubbing his forehead. Worse than usual.
And the images were still vivid in his mind.
Dark room, broken glass. But where, he thought desperately, where the hell is it?
"Not very fucking helpful," he muttered, pulling the car door open again.
Sam knew he was in no shape to drive, not just yet. Take care of the car or I'll come back and haunt your ass, Dean had threatened, once, months ago. "That's not funny," he said aloud, as if Dean was right beside him. He took the keys from the ignition and shook his head, then immediately regretted it as a fresh wave of pain blurred his vision. He shut the door, locked it, shoved the keys into his pocket and looked around, taking deep breaths to stay the nausea.
Dark room, broken glass.
The second worst thing about these stupid visions, he thought, is that they don't always show him a fucking road map. He walked away from the car on shaky legs, trying to ignore the persistent pain in his head. There was a footpath along the river; it crossed the water on a red steel bridge. Joggers in waterproof parkas and a couple of kids on bicycles thumped and rattled across the wooden planks.
Circle of candles. Familiar patterns. Just like the beach.
The absolute worst thing about these stupid visions, Sam thought, is when they show him Dean's face.
Panic rose in him again. Just like that fucking godforsaken beach in California. Naked bodies staked to the ground, blood seeping into the sand. They hadn't understood it at the time, just knew that there was black magic and people dying and angry spirits. They hadn't seen the bigger picture until they were driving away, hands washed clean and guns reloaded, racing across the Mojave toward the rising sun, and Dean had said, I think I know what they were doing.
What they're still doing, Sam thought. Dark room, broken glass. Somewhere. He had to find it.
Sam spun back toward the car and walked straight into a tall woman with dark red hair. Gina.
"Hello, Sam," she said cheerfully. "Fancy meeting you here."
He stared, mouth open, for several seconds. She was smiling, her head tilted slightly to one side, her hands tucked into the pockets of a yellow raincoat. It was raining again, he noticed in some small part of his mind, cold and wet and raining again.
Sudden fury surging through him, Sam reached out and grabbed the front of her coat. "Who the fuck is it?" he demanded, shaking her. "Who put out the bounty? How the hell do you know about it?"
Her eyes widened in alarm, and she looked quickly from side to side. "Sam..."
A pair of joggers slowed as they passed. "Miss? Are you okay? Is he bothering you?"
Sam released her immediately and stepped back.
"No, no," Gina said, smiling. "We're fine. He's just upset because he...lost something." The joggers moved on, and her smile vanished. "Or, I should say, lost someone, right?"
"Who is it? Where are they?"
"I told you, I don't know."
"But you heard about it somehow."
She hesitated, looking past Sam toward the river. "I might be able to find out," she said slowly. "What happened?"
"It was someone we know, lured us here, it was a trap--" Sam stopped. "What are you doing here? Were you following--"
"I was looking for your brother," Gina said.
"Why?"
She smiled slightly. "It's not me, Sam. I did try to warn you, didn't I?"
"What do you want with Dean?"
"It's...a long story. But the bounty -- I might be able to find out who it is."
He shook his head and looked upward; cool rain misted across his face. "I think I...I know who it is. I just don't know where."
"I might be able to find that out, too."
"Why? Why would you do that? I don't even know who you are." And Dean doesn't trust you, he didn't add, but he suspected she knew he was thinking it anyway.
"Let's just say," she interrupted, her voice suddenly stern, "that I owe your brother a favor. Do you want my help or not?"
He took a deep breath, looked at Gina, looked out over the river. She showed up in the town where a trap had been set for them. She showed up just when he was trying to figure out what to do next. She wasn't telling him everything. Dean didn't trust her. Everything suggested that she was involved.
Sam sighed and turned back toward Gina.
But he didn't have any other options.
~
Gina's help, it seemed, consisted mostly of making telephone calls. She steered Sam into a nearby coffee shop and told him to wait while she contacted some people she knew.
"They're offering a bounty," she explained, hushing his protest even before he voiced it, "and that means somebody knows how to get in touch with them. Otherwise it doesn't do much good, does it?"
He sat a small table by the window, watching her pace under the eave outside the shop, speaking into her cell phone. The longer he waited, the more the girl behind the counter glared at him, so he bought a cup of coffee and stirred sugar into it absently. The shop was crowded with people taking refuge from the cold rain, chatting in groups, reading quietly, laughing. Jazz played quietly over the radio, and cool bursts of air swept through the room when the door opened and closed. Everything looked so ordinary, so normal. There were restored warehouses and a broad gray river outside rather than palm trees and sunshine, but Sam felt a pang of familiarity, of longing for easy days spent reading textbooks and writing essays while the afternoon slipped away.
Dark room, broken glass. The longing transformed immediately into guilt, and he sat upright, searching the café for a clock. Wherever they were, he told himself, whether Walter Pickton had handed Dean over yet or not, they wouldn't do anything until night. Their ceremonies, the spells they used, all of it drew its power from the night. He had time.
He sipped his coffee and looked through the window again. Gina was speaking rapidly, shaking her head. She met his eyes through the glass and nodded. A moment later, she snapped her phone shut and came back into the shop.
"Now," she said, sliding into the chair across from him, "we wait."
"Wait?"
"For them to call me back." She struggled out of her yellow raincoat and looked around the shop curiously. Her hair and the collar of her dark suit were damp with rainwater.
"Them? Do you know who it is?"
She looked at Sam sideways. "Don't you?"
"I...I think so." He wrapped his hands around the coffee mug, watching her reaction carefully. "There was this family out in California. They were into necromancy, capturing spirits, that sort of thing."
I have a theory, Dean had said, when they were driving away, racing east across the desert. That was after. After they knocked on doors at white stucco mansions in neighborhoods they had no hope of blending into, after they pored over newspaper articles and websites, after they prowled the UCSB campus and slunk into on a religious studies class and felt the professor's cool blue gaze fix on them in the back of the lecture hall.
Sam lifted the coffee mug but didn't drink. "We got wind of what they were doing and went down to investigate."
Most necromancers, Dean had said, both hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white, most of them are content to harness just any old spirit floating around. Sam had offered to drive; Dean's hands were burnt, nothing too serious but it probably hurt like hell. But Dean had shaken his head and said something that Sam didn't hear because his ears were still ringing from the shotgun blasts.
"Turns out they were killing people for their spells," Sam went on. Gina raised an eyebrow but didn't interrupt.
But these folks, Dean said, they're making their own spirits. As soon as the words were out, something inside Sam went oh and jagged pieces began to fall into place. The symbols, the ceremony, the hungry way the young woman had smiled when she saw Sam walking across the beach.
"When we caught them we--" Dean "--killed two of them." Sam swallowed and looked out the rain-streaked window. "The mother and one of the daughters." Eva and Caroline Parish. UCSB prof. and daughter among slain in beach murders.
"And the others?"
They had argued before they left Santa Barbara, sitting in the front seat of the car, blood-stained and exhausted. Finally, finally, Sam had convinced Dean that there would be enough evidence for the cops to catch the rest of them, to put them away the normal way. Dean had looked at him for a long, silent moment. Sam's ears were still ringing, his mind still stumbling through reasons they should go, his breath still caught in his throat where it had lodged when the woman had said We thought you might come and he had said What are you doin-- and the gunshot had interrupted them both, blasting away half her chest.
Sam was ready to keep arguing, but Dean started the car without another word. He didn't speak until they were well away from Santa Barbara, and when he did his voice was flat and dull. The more violent the life, Dean had explained, and the more violent the death, the more violent the spirit will be. It can make them more powerful. So killing people like that -- like that, which had drawn their attention in the beginning, never heard of a creature that kills people like that -- the spirits are custom-made for...whatever the hell they wanted to use them for.
A deep breath, a long silence. That's what I think they were doing, Dean said.
Sam nodded, and they didn't speak of it again.
Sam had been wrong. The cops never solved the case of the burned bodies on the beach, and the rest of the Parish family got away. Professor's husband cleared of suspicion. Father, two sons, the other daughter. Victims of beach murders finally laid to rest. Dean never mentioned it, but Sam knew that he still checked newspapers and websites for news that they had resumed their activities.
Gina said, "Sounds like they have reason to be upset with you."
"Yeah," Sam agreed quietly.
He closed his eyes briefly. The headache lingered, still painful but duller than before, and he could still see the vision in his mind: circle of candles, unconscious body -- Dean -- on a floor covered with broken glass.
He opened his eyes again and looked across café at the clock. It was just after three, though it felt like time was racing away from him. He still had time. They would wait until night, he was sure of it. They had to wait until night. He forced himself to stop bouncing his leg nervously, tried to push the image from his mind. He had time.
Then he thought of something else. "Why..." He frowned.
Gina looked at him curiously. "Why what?"
"I'm just wondering...why did Walter -- the guy who lured us here -- why did he only grab Dean? He knocked me out, too."
"Maybe he thought he could only handle one of you." She shrugged and smiled a little bit. "Or maybe he knew that he only had to do half the work."
"What do you mean?" Her amused smile made Sam feel like he was missing something important.
"Sam, if this guy knows you well enough to set a trap for you, he also knows you well to enough to know that if he grabs one of you, it's only a matter of time before the other comes running."
"Oh. I didn't...I didn't think of that." God, were they really that predictable? Sam decided that when it was over, he would blame that particular part of the ordeal on Dean. The whole moving-mountains-come-hell-or-high-water attitude really was more his thing. He started to say something of the sort to Gina, then stopped, wondering how she knew them well enough to know that. He asked, trying to keep his voice neutral, "How do you know Dean, anyway?"
"Didn't he tell you?"
"I want to hear your version."
She looked mildly impressed. "I was beginning to worry that you actually trusted me," she said. "Very well. One of the young men who died in Palo Alto was a good friend of mine. I met your brother when--"
Sam's stomach dropped unpleasantly, and he blurted, "Palo Alto?"
Gina tilted her head slightly to one side. "He didn't tell you."
"He, uh, told me--"
"Did he?" She reached across the table and ran a fingernail along the scars on his cheek. "You didn't have these the last time I saw you."
Sam flinched away from her touch. "We haven't met before," he said warily.
"I didn't say we had." She dropped her hand and sat back. "Maybe you don't remember the...incidents. You were probably very busy with school, and the deaths took place all over the Bay Area. No reason at all for you to notice them. Half a dozen young men, no connection between them--"
"I remember."
"I thought you might," Gina said, smiling slightly.
It had been during his second year at Stanford. He had noticed the first couple of deaths because they were students, guys who died in off-campus apartments of seemingly natural but ultimately inexplicable causes. There had been a lot of gossip about them at the time because the only similarity the authorities could find was that both men had apparently died shortly after having sex. Succubus, Sam had thought, the word skittering across his mind one morning in his comp lit class as he listened to a couple of girls chatting a few rows back. He'd pushed the thought away and forgotten about it until a couple of weeks later, when he saw an article in the San Jose newspaper about another death. He cut out the article, tucked it into his poli sci textbook, and when he went home that night, he did an online search for more information. There had been four deaths so far, it seemed: the first in Oakland, two in Palo Alto, the last in San Jose.
It wasn't that difficult to catch a succubus, if that's what it was. They were predictable, relatively easy to kill, as long as you had one virile young man to use as bait and a couple of others to spring the trap. If you knew what you were doing. If it was, in fact, a succubus, which he was beginning to doubt. None of the men had been out at bars or clubs -- usual succubi hunting grounds -- before their deaths. None of them had been seen with strange women. It could be anything.
"Your brother was working alone," Gina explained, her voice jarring Sam from his memory.
"Where was our dad?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I don't know. Busy with something else, I imagine. Dean had a plan, and one of my closest friends was dead, so I offered to help."
For another week after the fourth death, every morning while he walked across campus, Sam had taken out his phone and scrolled down to Dean's number. But he didn't call. He stopped thinking about it after a week passed.
He was in the library, half-heartedly studying and casually listening to the conversations around him, when he heard about the fifth death, up in San Francisco. He still didn't call. He was hurrying toward a midterm when he saw the newspaper headline reporting the sixth death, this one in Cupertino.
He still didn't call, but two days later he came home from the library and found a scribbled note from his roommate taped to his desk: Some guy called, no name or #, said he'd call back.
But nobody called back, and there were no more deaths.
"What was it?" Sam asked Gina. "Succubus?"
She shook her head. "A night-mare. Not a very powerful one, as it turned out, nor very smart, just one that had a particular liking for erotic dreams."
"And you and Dean...?" He didn't try to hide the doubt in his voice. Dean had said that Gina helped him, but Sam had a difficult time believing it was just that simple.
"We took care of it."
When a couple of months passed without any more deaths, Sam had assumed that either he was wrong and the deaths were perfectly natural after all, or the creature responsible had moved on. He told himself there was nothing he could have done. He told himself the phone call had just been a coincidence.
Sam started to ask, "Is that the favor he--"
Gina's phone rang. She nodded at Sam and answered it smoothly, "Do you have what I want to know?" She fell silent, listening, tapping her fingernails idly on the tabletop. "I see." Sam shifted in his seat impatiently, every muscle suddenly tense, leaning forward as though he could hear the person on the other end of the line. "Very well," Gina said. "Right turn, a mile off the road." She stopped tapping her fingers and nodded. "I understand." Then she hung up.
"What? What did they say? Did they--"
"Yes," she said, smiling. "You do know that they are simply setting another trap for you, right? That would have been their plan, wherever their bounty caught up to you."
"Of course I know that," Sam snapped, scowling. "What else can I do?"
Gina shrugged. "Nothing. As long as you're prepared. I told them I would get my hands on you later this evening."
"Why later?" Sam glanced across the café at the clock again. "We need to go now."
"We will go now, but they won't be expecting us until later. They want me to bring you to the abandoned Old Hundred Glass Factory, outside of town."
Dark room, broken glass.
Sam stood up so quickly he knocked over his chair. "Let's go."
~
Go to Chapter 4
Author: ignipes
Written for: gekizetsu
Rating: This chapter, PG-13. Overall, R for violence.
Disclaimer: The show and the boys do not belong to me, and I am not making any money from this story.
Notes: Thanks to jebbypal for her mad beta skills!
Summary: The boys learn that they have been making quite a name for themselves in the hunting world, and what looks like an ordinary job turns out to be anything but routine when they encounter old friends, old enemies, and unfinished business from the past.
Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
~
Sam blinked several times and lifted his head.
"I don't approve of guns."
Startled, he turned quickly and winced at the sudden pain. Dark spots danced before his eyes, but he could see that he was lying on the floor of Mrs. Lawson's living room. On the sofa above him, she was sitting primly, hands folded in her lap, dressed in another garish smock with a mismatched scarf on her head. Both patterns clashed violently with the paisley upholstery of the sofa. Her mouth was set in a thin frown.
Sam sat up and saw his gun on the coffee table. She made no move to stop him when he picked it up.
"I told Walter I didn't want guns in the house." Mrs. Lawson shook her head distastefully. "I don't approve of guns, no matter what kind of business you're in."
"I'm...I'm sorry. Where's Dean? The guy who was with me?" He tried to scramble to his feet, but a wave of dizziness forced him to stop. Sam looked back at Mrs. Lawson and asked incredulously, "Were you the one -- did you hit me?"
"Oh, no, that was Walter. Joe saw him. Joe says he also took your friend away."
"Joe? Who's--" Sam broke off, remembering the newspaper articles he'd read yesterday: Joseph Lawson. Disappeared April 20, 1959.
Mrs. Lawson patted the air above the sofa cushion beside her. "Joe watched the whole thing. He said you were sneaking around like thugs, just like Walter said you would be."
"Joe...your husband?" Sam stared at the empty sofa beside Mrs. Lawson. "He's...is he..."
"He's been here all these years, you know. He's not angry anymore." A small glass trinket box on the end table spun around suddenly, and Mrs. Lawson smiled fondly.
"He's sitting beside you right now? Talking to you?"
The trinket box spun again, and Mrs. Lawson nodded. "Walter says that it's perfectly normal, if a spirit doesn't want to leave the world.
"Well, it is, uh..." Sam cleared his throat and sat up straighter. The lamp on the end table rocked slightly. Perfectly normal. "Joe says that Walter took Dean -- Walter?" Sam broke off suddenly. Walter. "Who is Walter?" Shitty old Scout, Arkansas plates. "What does he -- Walter Pickton? Are you talking about Walter Pickton?" A seedy Little Rock bar, another tip, another job: Hey, Winchester, I heard about this place up in Morgantown that sounds like your kind of gig.
"He's our nephew," Mrs. Lawson explained. The trinket box spun in agreement. "We raised him from a boy, you know. He's like a son to us. He said that you were business associates of his." She looked at Sam over the rim of her glasses. "Walter doesn't like to talk about his business, but I know he's not a plumber. I don't like that this deal of yours involves guns."
"It's a trap." Sam stood quickly, realization washing over him like a cold shower. "Walter set us up, he -- where is he now? Where did he take Dean?"
Mrs. Lawson looked up at him. "Well, how should I know? Walter doesn't like to talk about his business. He said you met with some colleagues of his yesterday."
"Yesterday -- when did you last talk to Walter? Do you have a phone number? Did he say where he was going? Do you know where he's staying? Who he was going to meet? What did he tell you -- you have to tell me what he told you!"
Some part of Sam's mind knew that he was raving, and he forced himself to slow down when Mrs. Lawson only gaped wordlessly and the picture frames around the room began to rattle. He rubbed his hand over his face and sat down in a wing-backed chair across from Mrs. Lawson, hoping that poor dead Joe hadn't switched seats.
A trap. Set by Walter fucking Pickton, of all people. Dean was going to be furious they were waylaid by that loser. It was so stupid of them to be caught off-guard. Twice. And after they were warned, too. Shit. God, they were losing their touch.
But Dean could handle Walter Pickton, could probably handle him with both hands tied behind his back.
No problem. Probably.
Sam took a deep breath and rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head.
"Mrs. Lawson," he said. "Can you tell me what Walter told you?"
She glanced sideways. "Well, I guess so. Joe says we should tell you. I don't approve of guns, you know." She looked pointedly at the handgun, and the lamp on the end table rattled and flickered. "Joe doesn't like guns in the house, either."
Sam bit back his annoyance and set the gun on the coffee table. "Tell me what Walter said."
~
Mrs. Lawson and her ghostly husband didn't know anything useful. They didn't know where Walter was staying. They didn't know his phone number, or the names of his associates, what he was planning or where he was going or if he was expected to drop by the house again. They knew nothing about the bounty; they had believed Walter when he told them he was involved in a simple business deal. When Sam persisted in asking even after Mrs. Lawson said many times over that she didn't know, the lamps around the room flashed and the picture frames on the walls shook, and he suspected that he had outstayed his welcome.
Mrs. Lawson's neighbors were no better. Of those who were home and answered Sam's knocks, none of them had seen or heard anything.
The Impala was parked where they had left it, untouched. Sam slid in behind the wheel but didn't start the engine right away. Walter had given him one hell of a knock on the head; he had been unconscious for far too long. It was already after noon.
"Think," he said quietly. "You have to think."
He took out his phone and called Dean. Just as he expected, the voicemail picked up after a few rings, and his heart sank.
The first thing he did was go back to the motel, but the woman in the office was no more helpful than Mrs. Lawson had been. The men who had rented the room next to Sam and Dean's the night before had paid cash, giving no names. From her description, one of the men certainly sounded like Walter Pickton as Sam had last seen him in Arkansas: middle-aged, receding hairline, prison muscles and prison tattoos, an attitude best described as "memorable." But beyond that, there was nothing to be learned from the motel so Sam left.
He tried Dean's phone again, tried calling anyone he could think of who knew Walter Pickton, and finally began to drive around the city, across the river and back, winding through the university campus and ordinary neighborhoods. Everywhere he went, he checked motels and parking lots for a Scout with Arkansas plates.
Nothing. Every turn he made, every stoplight he caught, he felt time slipping away from him. He finally parked the car along a street down by the river, watching through the windshield as people hurried along the sidewalks. He needed a better plan, any plan. The cops were out of the question; he and Dean had, after all, broken into Mrs. Lawson's house. He tried to figure out what Dean would do, tried to figure out what other options he had, but his mind was racing too quickly, filled with too many possibilities, and he couldn't--
The headache struck him like another blow to the head. Blinding pain exploded behind his eyes and raced down his neck and back like fire.
Broken glass, broken glass on the floor scattered everywhere--
Sam shouted wordlessly and fell forward, collapsing against the steering wheel.
--the shards reflecting, candlelight, firelight, a red and gold glow--
"Fuck," he rasped, pressing his hands to his temples. Not this, not now.
--and voices chanting quietly, the sound echoing through the vast, dark space above, loud enough that they don't hear his approach, crunching and crackling over the broken glass, slinking forward. There is no wall to hide against and the room is nothing but fire and shadows, but he moves forward slowly, toward the fire, toward the three tall silhouettes illuminated by the leaping flames--
Not this. Somewhere distant, somehow muffled, something was screaming. Not now.
--toward the prone body on the floor, in the center of a ring of candles, red and black lines on the floor, skin and blood and a silver ring glinting in the firelight--
"No!"
Sam sat up sharply, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. He was leaning on the horn, and when he jerked back, silence fell at once.
There was a gentle tap on the window. He jumped, startled.
"Hey, you alright?" A man stood outside the car, frowning. "You okay?"
Sam swallowed. His mouth was too dry, so he only nodded and tried to smile, but managed only a horrible grimace. The man frowned doubtfully, but moved away.
Nausea roiled through Sam, and he pushed the car door open. Can't be sick in the car, he thought wildly, think of the upholstery. He slammed the door and leaned against the car, gasping in the cool, damp air. He was aware of a few curious looks from passers-by, but nobody else stopped.
The nausea slowly passed, but the headache remained. His vision was blurred and he was trembling. This was...he took in a deep breath, rubbing his forehead. Worse than usual.
And the images were still vivid in his mind.
Dark room, broken glass. But where, he thought desperately, where the hell is it?
"Not very fucking helpful," he muttered, pulling the car door open again.
Sam knew he was in no shape to drive, not just yet. Take care of the car or I'll come back and haunt your ass, Dean had threatened, once, months ago. "That's not funny," he said aloud, as if Dean was right beside him. He took the keys from the ignition and shook his head, then immediately regretted it as a fresh wave of pain blurred his vision. He shut the door, locked it, shoved the keys into his pocket and looked around, taking deep breaths to stay the nausea.
Dark room, broken glass.
The second worst thing about these stupid visions, he thought, is that they don't always show him a fucking road map. He walked away from the car on shaky legs, trying to ignore the persistent pain in his head. There was a footpath along the river; it crossed the water on a red steel bridge. Joggers in waterproof parkas and a couple of kids on bicycles thumped and rattled across the wooden planks.
Circle of candles. Familiar patterns. Just like the beach.
The absolute worst thing about these stupid visions, Sam thought, is when they show him Dean's face.
Panic rose in him again. Just like that fucking godforsaken beach in California. Naked bodies staked to the ground, blood seeping into the sand. They hadn't understood it at the time, just knew that there was black magic and people dying and angry spirits. They hadn't seen the bigger picture until they were driving away, hands washed clean and guns reloaded, racing across the Mojave toward the rising sun, and Dean had said, I think I know what they were doing.
What they're still doing, Sam thought. Dark room, broken glass. Somewhere. He had to find it.
Sam spun back toward the car and walked straight into a tall woman with dark red hair. Gina.
"Hello, Sam," she said cheerfully. "Fancy meeting you here."
He stared, mouth open, for several seconds. She was smiling, her head tilted slightly to one side, her hands tucked into the pockets of a yellow raincoat. It was raining again, he noticed in some small part of his mind, cold and wet and raining again.
Sudden fury surging through him, Sam reached out and grabbed the front of her coat. "Who the fuck is it?" he demanded, shaking her. "Who put out the bounty? How the hell do you know about it?"
Her eyes widened in alarm, and she looked quickly from side to side. "Sam..."
A pair of joggers slowed as they passed. "Miss? Are you okay? Is he bothering you?"
Sam released her immediately and stepped back.
"No, no," Gina said, smiling. "We're fine. He's just upset because he...lost something." The joggers moved on, and her smile vanished. "Or, I should say, lost someone, right?"
"Who is it? Where are they?"
"I told you, I don't know."
"But you heard about it somehow."
She hesitated, looking past Sam toward the river. "I might be able to find out," she said slowly. "What happened?"
"It was someone we know, lured us here, it was a trap--" Sam stopped. "What are you doing here? Were you following--"
"I was looking for your brother," Gina said.
"Why?"
She smiled slightly. "It's not me, Sam. I did try to warn you, didn't I?"
"What do you want with Dean?"
"It's...a long story. But the bounty -- I might be able to find out who it is."
He shook his head and looked upward; cool rain misted across his face. "I think I...I know who it is. I just don't know where."
"I might be able to find that out, too."
"Why? Why would you do that? I don't even know who you are." And Dean doesn't trust you, he didn't add, but he suspected she knew he was thinking it anyway.
"Let's just say," she interrupted, her voice suddenly stern, "that I owe your brother a favor. Do you want my help or not?"
He took a deep breath, looked at Gina, looked out over the river. She showed up in the town where a trap had been set for them. She showed up just when he was trying to figure out what to do next. She wasn't telling him everything. Dean didn't trust her. Everything suggested that she was involved.
Sam sighed and turned back toward Gina.
But he didn't have any other options.
~
Gina's help, it seemed, consisted mostly of making telephone calls. She steered Sam into a nearby coffee shop and told him to wait while she contacted some people she knew.
"They're offering a bounty," she explained, hushing his protest even before he voiced it, "and that means somebody knows how to get in touch with them. Otherwise it doesn't do much good, does it?"
He sat a small table by the window, watching her pace under the eave outside the shop, speaking into her cell phone. The longer he waited, the more the girl behind the counter glared at him, so he bought a cup of coffee and stirred sugar into it absently. The shop was crowded with people taking refuge from the cold rain, chatting in groups, reading quietly, laughing. Jazz played quietly over the radio, and cool bursts of air swept through the room when the door opened and closed. Everything looked so ordinary, so normal. There were restored warehouses and a broad gray river outside rather than palm trees and sunshine, but Sam felt a pang of familiarity, of longing for easy days spent reading textbooks and writing essays while the afternoon slipped away.
Dark room, broken glass. The longing transformed immediately into guilt, and he sat upright, searching the café for a clock. Wherever they were, he told himself, whether Walter Pickton had handed Dean over yet or not, they wouldn't do anything until night. Their ceremonies, the spells they used, all of it drew its power from the night. He had time.
He sipped his coffee and looked through the window again. Gina was speaking rapidly, shaking her head. She met his eyes through the glass and nodded. A moment later, she snapped her phone shut and came back into the shop.
"Now," she said, sliding into the chair across from him, "we wait."
"Wait?"
"For them to call me back." She struggled out of her yellow raincoat and looked around the shop curiously. Her hair and the collar of her dark suit were damp with rainwater.
"Them? Do you know who it is?"
She looked at Sam sideways. "Don't you?"
"I...I think so." He wrapped his hands around the coffee mug, watching her reaction carefully. "There was this family out in California. They were into necromancy, capturing spirits, that sort of thing."
I have a theory, Dean had said, when they were driving away, racing east across the desert. That was after. After they knocked on doors at white stucco mansions in neighborhoods they had no hope of blending into, after they pored over newspaper articles and websites, after they prowled the UCSB campus and slunk into on a religious studies class and felt the professor's cool blue gaze fix on them in the back of the lecture hall.
Sam lifted the coffee mug but didn't drink. "We got wind of what they were doing and went down to investigate."
Most necromancers, Dean had said, both hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white, most of them are content to harness just any old spirit floating around. Sam had offered to drive; Dean's hands were burnt, nothing too serious but it probably hurt like hell. But Dean had shaken his head and said something that Sam didn't hear because his ears were still ringing from the shotgun blasts.
"Turns out they were killing people for their spells," Sam went on. Gina raised an eyebrow but didn't interrupt.
But these folks, Dean said, they're making their own spirits. As soon as the words were out, something inside Sam went oh and jagged pieces began to fall into place. The symbols, the ceremony, the hungry way the young woman had smiled when she saw Sam walking across the beach.
"When we caught them we--" Dean "--killed two of them." Sam swallowed and looked out the rain-streaked window. "The mother and one of the daughters." Eva and Caroline Parish. UCSB prof. and daughter among slain in beach murders.
"And the others?"
They had argued before they left Santa Barbara, sitting in the front seat of the car, blood-stained and exhausted. Finally, finally, Sam had convinced Dean that there would be enough evidence for the cops to catch the rest of them, to put them away the normal way. Dean had looked at him for a long, silent moment. Sam's ears were still ringing, his mind still stumbling through reasons they should go, his breath still caught in his throat where it had lodged when the woman had said We thought you might come and he had said What are you doin-- and the gunshot had interrupted them both, blasting away half her chest.
Sam was ready to keep arguing, but Dean started the car without another word. He didn't speak until they were well away from Santa Barbara, and when he did his voice was flat and dull. The more violent the life, Dean had explained, and the more violent the death, the more violent the spirit will be. It can make them more powerful. So killing people like that -- like that, which had drawn their attention in the beginning, never heard of a creature that kills people like that -- the spirits are custom-made for...whatever the hell they wanted to use them for.
A deep breath, a long silence. That's what I think they were doing, Dean said.
Sam nodded, and they didn't speak of it again.
Sam had been wrong. The cops never solved the case of the burned bodies on the beach, and the rest of the Parish family got away. Professor's husband cleared of suspicion. Father, two sons, the other daughter. Victims of beach murders finally laid to rest. Dean never mentioned it, but Sam knew that he still checked newspapers and websites for news that they had resumed their activities.
Gina said, "Sounds like they have reason to be upset with you."
"Yeah," Sam agreed quietly.
He closed his eyes briefly. The headache lingered, still painful but duller than before, and he could still see the vision in his mind: circle of candles, unconscious body -- Dean -- on a floor covered with broken glass.
He opened his eyes again and looked across café at the clock. It was just after three, though it felt like time was racing away from him. He still had time. They would wait until night, he was sure of it. They had to wait until night. He forced himself to stop bouncing his leg nervously, tried to push the image from his mind. He had time.
Then he thought of something else. "Why..." He frowned.
Gina looked at him curiously. "Why what?"
"I'm just wondering...why did Walter -- the guy who lured us here -- why did he only grab Dean? He knocked me out, too."
"Maybe he thought he could only handle one of you." She shrugged and smiled a little bit. "Or maybe he knew that he only had to do half the work."
"What do you mean?" Her amused smile made Sam feel like he was missing something important.
"Sam, if this guy knows you well enough to set a trap for you, he also knows you well to enough to know that if he grabs one of you, it's only a matter of time before the other comes running."
"Oh. I didn't...I didn't think of that." God, were they really that predictable? Sam decided that when it was over, he would blame that particular part of the ordeal on Dean. The whole moving-mountains-come-hell-or-high-water attitude really was more his thing. He started to say something of the sort to Gina, then stopped, wondering how she knew them well enough to know that. He asked, trying to keep his voice neutral, "How do you know Dean, anyway?"
"Didn't he tell you?"
"I want to hear your version."
She looked mildly impressed. "I was beginning to worry that you actually trusted me," she said. "Very well. One of the young men who died in Palo Alto was a good friend of mine. I met your brother when--"
Sam's stomach dropped unpleasantly, and he blurted, "Palo Alto?"
Gina tilted her head slightly to one side. "He didn't tell you."
"He, uh, told me--"
"Did he?" She reached across the table and ran a fingernail along the scars on his cheek. "You didn't have these the last time I saw you."
Sam flinched away from her touch. "We haven't met before," he said warily.
"I didn't say we had." She dropped her hand and sat back. "Maybe you don't remember the...incidents. You were probably very busy with school, and the deaths took place all over the Bay Area. No reason at all for you to notice them. Half a dozen young men, no connection between them--"
"I remember."
"I thought you might," Gina said, smiling slightly.
It had been during his second year at Stanford. He had noticed the first couple of deaths because they were students, guys who died in off-campus apartments of seemingly natural but ultimately inexplicable causes. There had been a lot of gossip about them at the time because the only similarity the authorities could find was that both men had apparently died shortly after having sex. Succubus, Sam had thought, the word skittering across his mind one morning in his comp lit class as he listened to a couple of girls chatting a few rows back. He'd pushed the thought away and forgotten about it until a couple of weeks later, when he saw an article in the San Jose newspaper about another death. He cut out the article, tucked it into his poli sci textbook, and when he went home that night, he did an online search for more information. There had been four deaths so far, it seemed: the first in Oakland, two in Palo Alto, the last in San Jose.
It wasn't that difficult to catch a succubus, if that's what it was. They were predictable, relatively easy to kill, as long as you had one virile young man to use as bait and a couple of others to spring the trap. If you knew what you were doing. If it was, in fact, a succubus, which he was beginning to doubt. None of the men had been out at bars or clubs -- usual succubi hunting grounds -- before their deaths. None of them had been seen with strange women. It could be anything.
"Your brother was working alone," Gina explained, her voice jarring Sam from his memory.
"Where was our dad?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I don't know. Busy with something else, I imagine. Dean had a plan, and one of my closest friends was dead, so I offered to help."
For another week after the fourth death, every morning while he walked across campus, Sam had taken out his phone and scrolled down to Dean's number. But he didn't call. He stopped thinking about it after a week passed.
He was in the library, half-heartedly studying and casually listening to the conversations around him, when he heard about the fifth death, up in San Francisco. He still didn't call. He was hurrying toward a midterm when he saw the newspaper headline reporting the sixth death, this one in Cupertino.
He still didn't call, but two days later he came home from the library and found a scribbled note from his roommate taped to his desk: Some guy called, no name or #, said he'd call back.
But nobody called back, and there were no more deaths.
"What was it?" Sam asked Gina. "Succubus?"
She shook her head. "A night-mare. Not a very powerful one, as it turned out, nor very smart, just one that had a particular liking for erotic dreams."
"And you and Dean...?" He didn't try to hide the doubt in his voice. Dean had said that Gina helped him, but Sam had a difficult time believing it was just that simple.
"We took care of it."
When a couple of months passed without any more deaths, Sam had assumed that either he was wrong and the deaths were perfectly natural after all, or the creature responsible had moved on. He told himself there was nothing he could have done. He told himself the phone call had just been a coincidence.
Sam started to ask, "Is that the favor he--"
Gina's phone rang. She nodded at Sam and answered it smoothly, "Do you have what I want to know?" She fell silent, listening, tapping her fingernails idly on the tabletop. "I see." Sam shifted in his seat impatiently, every muscle suddenly tense, leaning forward as though he could hear the person on the other end of the line. "Very well," Gina said. "Right turn, a mile off the road." She stopped tapping her fingers and nodded. "I understand." Then she hung up.
"What? What did they say? Did they--"
"Yes," she said, smiling. "You do know that they are simply setting another trap for you, right? That would have been their plan, wherever their bounty caught up to you."
"Of course I know that," Sam snapped, scowling. "What else can I do?"
Gina shrugged. "Nothing. As long as you're prepared. I told them I would get my hands on you later this evening."
"Why later?" Sam glanced across the café at the clock again. "We need to go now."
"We will go now, but they won't be expecting us until later. They want me to bring you to the abandoned Old Hundred Glass Factory, outside of town."
Dark room, broken glass.
Sam stood up so quickly he knocked over his chair. "Let's go."
~
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