You Can't Stop Yourself From Falling
Title: You Can't Stop Yourself From Falling
Author: gayeld
Recipient: kaethe
Word Count: 6500+
Prompt: A case involving a literary or mythological character.
Disclaimer: Mine. No, seriously, mine. Prove otherwise. Unless you’re Eric Kripke or, you know, the CW, Warner Bros, then, uh, my bad.
Summary: Takes place between ELAC and Bloodlust. Sam and Dean hunt a monster, have misunderstandings, drive a rental.
“Dean, man, I need you to listen to me. Just step back, man, okay? Just a couple feet. Please.”
---
Sam stood in the dusty junkyard, listening more to the sounds that weren’t there than the ones that were. No music. None of the rhythmic tapping that normally accompanied Dean at work. No whisper of the stupid, loving pet names his brother usual lavished on the car. Just the muted sounds of tools on metal.
Jesus, he didn’t know what to do. Dean was scaring the shit out of him and everything he’d done to try and help just seemed to push his brother further away from him, closer to the edge he’d been dancing around ever since dad had died.
Maybe bringing him another hunt so soon after the last was a mistake. All the hunt for the Rakshasa had done was widen the rift between them and leave Dean more worn around the edges than before.
He could call the Roadhouse. Ask Ellen if she could pass this hunt on to someone else.
“What do you want, Sam?”
Dean looked drawn and tired, the circles under his eyes deeper than they’d been at dinner last night and Sam had to bite his lower lip to keep the words from slipping out. I want you to be all right. I want us to be all right. I want you to let me help you with this.
“There’s been another one.”
“Same as the others?” Dean wiped his hands on a dusty rag and shoved it in his back pocket before reaching for the stack of printouts in Sam’s hand.
“Looks like it.” Sam stepped closer, bumped his shoulder against Dean’s, and was grateful when his brother didn’t pull away. “Coroner’s office ruled it death by misadventure, accidental drowning.”
“And the body was near the river?” Dean flipped quickly through the pages, stopping at a picture of a smiling woman.
“A place called Cat Island. It’s in the middle of the river, between Arkansas and Mississippi.” He took the papers back, shifted through them until he found the one he wanted. “Coroner’s report says the bones had evidence of bite marks but they were unable to match them to any known species.”
“Yeah, sounds like our kind of thing.” Dean sighed and rubbed a weary hand across the back of his neck. “But I am not taking that freakin’ minivan. I will walk to Arkansas first.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Sam couldn’t help laughing at the sour look on Dean’s face.
“Dude, I would rather drive a Gremlin,” Dean replied, disgust evident in his voice.
“A Gremlin? Man, I had no idea you swung that way.” Sam danced away from the fist Dean aimed at his shoulder and started back toward the house, feeling lighter than he had in days.
---
“I hate you.”
Sam bit back his laughter and followed his brother through the parking lot. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It’s a Volvo, Sam.” The horror on Dean’s face made every penny Joseph Perry had spent on the rental worth it.
“They’re very safe cars.”
“They’re pieces of crap. Ugly pieces of crap.” Dean scowled as he opened the door to the police station and ushered his brother in. “And they faked all those crash test results. So, really, they’re ugly, unsafe pieces of crap.”
“Dude, you used to love that one Bobby had in his yard.” Sam reminded him with a grin.
“I did not. Besides, Bobby’s was a classic. A 1962 P1800, not-” Dean hooked his thumb back over his shoulder as he strode past Sam. “-a piece of crap.”
“Whatever, dude, you know you loved that car.”
Sam didn’t bother trying to hide his smirk as Dean glared at him before stopping in front of a battered desk, manned by matronly looking woman in a police uniform.
“Can I help you boys?” she asked, her tone polite, but the look in her eye saying she clearly found them untrustworthy.
“I certainly hope so, ma’am,” Dean replied, turning on the charm. “I’m Warden Tyler, this is Warden Kramer, I spoke to an Officer Kramer on the phone earlier and-”
“Oh, you’re the Fish and Game boys, the ones look for the swamp monster.”
“I don’t know that I’d put it quite like-”
“Files are over there.” She pointed to a beat-up box sitting on the counter behind her desk. “One of you’s gonna need to sign a receipt for them.”
Sam leaned over the desk and signed “Warden J. Kramer” as illegibly as possible while Dean grabbed the box of files. “Can you point us in the direction of the Coroner’s Officer?”
---
“Man, I hate the Coroner’s office.” Dean shed his jacket and tie, tossing them carelessly in the direction of the nearest chair before belly-flopping onto his bed. “It’s gonna be a week before I get rid of that smell.”
“The body or the Coroner’s assistant?” Sam dropped a stack of folders on the small table next to the door and plopped down on the second bed, kicking his shoes off and breathing a sigh of relief. “What the hell was that cologne he was wearing?”
“Ode to dead skunk,” Dean mumbled into his pillow before turning over. “You catch those mark on the bones?”
“Yeah.”
“Look like any animal you ever seen?”
“No.” Sam scooted up on the bed and jammed a pillow under his head before turning to look at Dean. “They looked more like human teeth marks.”
“Only pointier.” Dean flashed him a half-hearted smile, all teeth and no humor. “Much, much pointier.”
“So, something humanoid? Another Wendigo, you think?”
“Nah.”
“Too far south?”
“Too much meat left on the bones.”
Sam groaned and rolled over to plant his face in the pillow. “Too much information, man.”
Dean sniggered and Sam could hear him getting up and moving around the room followed by the sound of the shower coming on, the familiar sounds lulling him to sleep.
“Sam. Sam, wake up. Pizza’s here.”
Sam wasn’t sure how much time had passed, only that it was fully dark outside the windows as he rose and crossed over to where Dean had balanced the pizza box across the folders spread out over the table. “You get any sleep?”
Dean ignored the question, which Sam took to be a no, and gestured toward the map in front of him. “Looks like whatever it is it’s moving steadily down river.”
“You think it’s headed toward the ocean or just trying to spread out its kills to keep the cops from picking up a pattern?” Sam dropped into the second chair and pulled out a piece of pizza.
“It’s hard to tell without knowing what it is.” Dean shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I figured tomorrow you can hit the library and see if you can find any local legends.”
“Uh huh. And what’ll you being doing while I’m doing all the research?” Sam asked, a note of challenge in his voice.
“I thought I’d go down to the river and see what-”
“What? No way, Dean.”
“No way what?” Dean looked up at him, confused.
“You’re going down to that river alone.” Sam replied, unable to school the anger from his voice.
“I-Why the hell not?”
“Why the hell not? Dean, people are being eaten!” Sam threw his hands up in frustration and stared at his brother. Jesus, what was so hard to understand about that.
“I know how to take care of myself, Sam!”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t, but-”
“But what, Sam?” Several files slid off the table, scattering their contents as Dean jumped to his feet.
“But that’s no reason to take stupid chances.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“Damn it, Dean, stop putting words in my mouth!” Sam returned his brother’s scowl, with interest. “You know that’s not what I’m saying.” Long seconds passed as they stared angrily at one another. “Fine, you think it’s so safe to go out there alone, you go to the library and I’ll go out to the-”
“The hell you will!”
“Why not, Dean? Huh?” Sam asked, stepping up to his brother. “Why is it all right for you to go, but not me?”
“I didn’t say-That’s not-Whatever.” Dean turned away and started gathering the fallen pages. “Fine, we’ll both go to the library, Nancy Drew.”
“Fine.” Sam dropped back into the chair and stared disinterestedly at his pizza, picking aimlessly at the toppings until he realized that Dean had frozen over something out of the spilled files. “Dean? What is it?”
“I-Nothing.” Dean shoved what Sam could now tell was a photograph back into the folder and slammed it shut.
“Dean.” Sam leaned forward and pulled the folder out of his brother’s hand and flipped it open. On top lay a picture of a car smashed beyond recognition.
“One of the victims was in a car accident a couple months before he was killed and-” Dean gestured awkwardly at the file. “The police station must have gotten that file mixed in with the rest.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Sam closed the folder and set it carefully back on the table, an uncomfortable silence settling between.
---
Sam held back a sigh as he pulled his boot out the thick mud with a sickening squelch. The library had proved useless, too many tall-tales and legends built up around the river to be any help, at least until they had more information.
Which left them slogging through the mud and debris along the river, an uncomfortable silence still between them in the wake of last night’s argument.
“Sam.” Something yellow fluttered on the breeze, flickering in and out of sight between the trees, and Sam followed with a quick nod.
Police tape, one end left tied to a tree, marking the site where the last body had been found.
Sam ducked beneath a branch and crouched next to where Dean was examining marks in the soft soil. “What are those?”
“They look like bird tracks, only bigger.” Dean outlined the print. “There wasn’t anything about a killer emu in those legends, was there?”
“Dude, how do you even know what an emu is?” Sam snorted and bent closer to the tracks. Dean was right, they looked like they’d been made a bird, a really big one. “Thunderbird?”
“Nah.” Dean gestured at the thick, intertwined braches over their heads. “No way one would fit in here.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and cocked his head to the side.
“What?” Sam looked around the clearing and tried to listen for whatever had caught Dean’s attention.
“You hear that?” Dean rose slowly, stepping out the clearing and toward the river.
“No, man, what?” Sam caught up to him, cocking his own head and listening intently, but only heard the rush of the river.
“I-Nothing, I guess. It was just-” Dean shook his head and gazed blankly at Sam for a long moment. “Nothing. We should get back to the room, see if we can find out what Big Bird is up to these days. Big yellow bastard always did creep me out.”
---
“Anything?”
Sam sighed and closed the laptop. “No. There are plenty of legends around here and things that prey on humans, but no birds that I can come up with.”
“Something imported?” Dean slid the last piece into the gun he’s been cleaning and looks over to toward the window, frowning.
“Maybe, but that leaves the field wide open.” Sam watched his brother for a long moment and tries to put his finger on why the picture in front of him seems wrong, off. There’s an air of distraction around Dean, something other than the pain and grief that’s been clinging to him since the accident. But instead of bringing relief, Sam feels something clench tight and worrisome low in his gut. “Dean, what is it?”
“Huh?” Dean turned back to him, the same blank look that he gave Sam down at the river, before shaking his head and smiling. “Just tired, I guess.”
“You sure?”
Dean shrugged and looked out the window. “Go to bed, Sam.”
---
A soft rustling brought Sam instantly awake and he rolled quietly to his side, checking the bed next to his for his brother.
Empty.
He scanned the rest of the room, almost missing the silent figure at the window. “Dean?”
Dean turned away from the window and Sam felt his breath catch in his throat at the depth of sorrow reflected back it him before Dean seemed to shake himself out of it. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Sammy. Go back to sleep.”
“Don’t tell me nothing, man.” Sam rolled out of the bed and crossed to stand next to his brother. “You’ve been acting weird ever since we got back from the river this afternoon. What’s going on?”
“I told you, Sam, it’s nothing. I just-” Dean shrugged and looked out the window again. “Let it go, Sam. It’s not important.”
“If it’s keeping you up at night, then, yes, it is.” Sam leaned into the window and tilted his head, trying to meet Dean’s eyes. “Dean, what did you hear down at the river?”
He shrugged again, still gazing into the night. “Nothing.”
“Dean!”
“Sam, please, just go back to sleep.” His voice was soft, imploring, and Sam was torn between giving his brother the space he was asking for and the worrying knot is Sam’s gut. “I swear, Sam, it’s nothing. Just a weird dream.”
“Was it about Dad?”
Dean’s head drops forward and Sam holds his breath, silently begging his brother to trust him with this.
“No, it was-“ Dean rubs a hand across his face and sighs. “It was Mom, she was singing, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying and-“ He shrugged and looked back out the window. “I woke up.”
“Oh.” Sam didn’t have an answer for this, didn’t even know where to start. Mom, her loss, had always been a touchy subject, an unspoken pain shared between Dean and Dad that Sam had never felt the way they had.
“Let’s get some sleep.” Dean dropped onto the edge of his bed and rolled away from Sam, burying his face in the pillow.
Sam stood, a moment longer, and watched, wondered how you could know someone your entire life and still not know what to say to them.
---
Alkonost - Russian/harmless?
Bennu - Eygptian/benevolent
Camulatz - Mayan, ate heads
Harpies - Greek, various myths, angel of death, bringer of death
Quetzalcoatl - Aztec/too big
Raven - Native American/Trickster?
Roc - carried off and ate elephants??
Sachamo - Chinese, feeds on bears?/too big
Simurgh - Persian/benevolent
Sirin/Siren - Russian/Greek, lure sailors to their deaths with song?
Swan Maiden - shapershifter/skinwalker? victim in mythology
Thunderbird - Native American/too big
Ziz - Talmudic/too big
Sam ignored the cramp in his hand and scanned the list of creatures once more. So much for getting more information. It may have narrowed the field some, but not enough to be of any real use.
“Find anything?” Dean sat heavily in the chair across from him and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Lots of things.” Sam closed the book on Asian mythology and leaned back in his chair. “Too many. Most of them are too big, too small, not known for eating people, not-”
“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture.” Dean waved a hand at him, leaning further back in the chair. “We need talk to the families, see if they can tell us what the victims were doing down at the river in the first place.”
“You sure you’re up to this?” Sam already knows what Dean’s answer will be, but he can see the bags under his brother’s eyes, the tired slouch of his body.
“I’m fine, Sam. Let it go.”
“Right.” Sam shifts through his pile of notes until he finds the list of victims. “You want to start with the most recent ones?”
“I already called the mother of the last victim, Katie Tennant.” Dean stood slowly and paused, tilting his head to the right.
“And?”
“What?” Dean startled, looking at Sam as though he’d forgotten about him.
“You called the last victim’s mother?” Sam prompted, gathering his notes and stuffing them in his backpack.
“She said it was no problem if we came by.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys, eyes drifting toward the nearest window.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” That knot Sam had been trying to ignore since he’d woken, to find Dean once more standing at the window gazing out, tightens even more.
Sam can almost see the sharp retort on the tip of Dean’s tongue, the snappy comeback that’s supposed to make him stop worrying about his brother and start focusing on the case, and he’s not sure if he feels better or worse when Dean simply shrugged and started for the door.
---
“Mrs. Tennant?” Sam pasted what he hoped was a sincere and sympathetic smile on his face as the elderly woman opened the door. “I’m Officer Hamilton, this is Officer Whitford. My partner spoke to you on the phone about your daughter?”
“Yes. Please come in.” She ushered them into a small living room and Sam’s eyes were immediately drawn to the portrait over the mantle. “That’s Katie, in the middle, with her brother and sister.”
“They’re nice looking kids,” Dean comments quietly.
She gazes at the portrait a moment longer before turning back to them. “Will’s all I have left now. He’s a cardiac surgeon in Boston and-But you’re hear to ask about Katie.“ She motions for them to sit and takes the chair opposite the couch. “I’m not sure what I can tell you. The detective I spoke to assured me that it had been ruled an accident. That hasn’t changed, has it?”
“No, no,” Sam assured her, ignoring the guilt that always came with deceiving grieving relatives. “We’re just trying to clarify things.”
“We were hoping you could give us some kind of idea what Katie was doing at the river,” Dean adds, his gaze drawn to the scattering of family pictures that line the mantle. “The Coroner’s report estimates that she went in the water sometime around 3am.”
“I don’t-I-“ She looks uncomfortable, at a loss for words, for a long moment before clearing her throat. “Katie’s only been back home with me for a few weeks, since she got out of the hospital. At first she seemed… better, more like her old self. But that last week, she was distracted. Couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything for longer than a few seconds.”
“Did she mention anything unusual?” Dean asked gently. “See anything weird? Feel like she was being followed?”
“No, nothing like that.” She’s looking down at the hands clasped tightly in her lap. “She was having trouble sleeping.”
“Do you know if she’d been down to the river prior to the night she drowned?”
She looks up sharply at Sam and shudders. “No! Katie, she was never a strong swimmer and after she drowned, she-”
“After she drowned?” Sam sat up straight and leaned in toward her.
“Six weeks ago. Katie was in a boating accident with some of her friends, back in Texas. The boat capsized. Katie and two other girls were thrown in the water.” She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “Katie drowned, the doctors told me she was clinically dead for almost five minutes before she was revived.”
The room around him disappears and Sam’s back standing in a cold hospital hallway, watching and praying, as doctors swarm around his brother and the heart monitor stays stubbornly flat.
“They said it was a miracle that she survived.” Mrs. Tennant seemed to just crumble before them, her face falling into her hands as her shoulders started to shake.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tennant.” Sam looked awkwardly over at this brother, seeking help, only to find Dean gazing blankly out the window. “We should really-just-We should go.” He dug his elbow into Dean’s ribs, trying to get his attention. “If you think of anything else,” he slips a piece of paper with his cell number on it across the coffee table. “Please, give us a call.”
Dean’s attention snapped back to them, the blank look replaced with something that looks like loss, sorrow, and he murmurs his apologizes to her.
Sam’s at the door, two steps behind Dean when he feels Mrs. Tennant’s hand on his arm.
“Is he all right?”
Sam looked over his shoulder to where Dean was standing on the sidewalk beside the rental car, that same distracted frown on his face again, his head once more tilted to the side as if he were listening to something. “I don’t-Why do you ask?”
“He just-something about him makes me think of Katie in the days before…” her voice trailed off as they both watched Dean for a moment longer. “It’s probably just my imagination.”
---
Sam tossed his cell phone onto the table in disgust and pulled his hands through his hair before letting out a groan of frustration.
“Same story?” Dean asked, looking up from the laptop.
“Yeah. All the relatives say the same thing. They were distracted, not quite themselves. But now of them know why, none of them spent any significant time down at the river.” He flicked his pen across the table and sighed. “Only one of them seems to have been anywhere near the river in the weeks proceeding their death.”
Dean snorted and pushed the laptop away. “I’ll trade you clueless relatives for freaky bird monsters.”
“No lucky narrowing it down?”
“Not really. Kind of distracted? Doesn’t really add a lot to the profile.”
“Speaking of which,” Sam reached across the table and grabbed his pen, focused on twisting it back and forth between his fingers. “You’ve been kind of distracted yourself. Is this something I should be worried about?”
“Jesus, Sam, I’m tired. I got, like, three hours of sleep last night and all we’ve got to go on are giant bird feet that distract people. Give it a rest, will ya?”
“I’m not-I’m just-” He grasps for a way to say that won’t piss his brother off, but isn’t sure how to negotiate around the brother he brought home from the hospital. “Maybe you should give it a rest. I mean, get some rest.” He gestured toward the bed. “It’s not like we’ve got a lot to go on and-”
“I’m not a child, Sam. I don’t need a nap!” Dean sprang to his feet and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair.
“We are you going.”
“Out.”
“Out where?” Sam followed him to the door, grabbing his own jacket.
“Just out, Sam. What are you, seven?” Dean stopped in the doorway and glared back at him. “And I don’t need a babysitter, Sam. Just give me some space.”
---
Sam’s chewing on the edge of his fingernail and trying to turn all of his attention the woman on the phone, but he can’t help checking his watch every few seconds, tallying how long Dean’s been gone.
“-and then after he started having those strange dreams about his first wife-”
“I’m sorry, what?” Sam sat up straight in the chair, realizing that something important had just slipped past him. “What dreams?”
“About his first wife,” Martha Jones replied. “Every since he came home from the hospital, he’d been having dreams about his dead first wife singing to him.”
“The hospital?” Sam’s breath caught in his throat as he started flipping through the folders in front of him, pulling out the notes he was looking for. “Your husband was in a car accident, right?”
“That’s right, about four months before he drowned. Doctors had to bring him back from the dead.”
“I-Thank you, Mrs. Jones, I have to-“ He hung up the phone and started dialing again immediately. “Mrs. Tennant? This is Officer-“ Crap, what had he told her? “Hamilton. I’m sorry to bother you again, but you said that Katie was having trouble sleeping. Can you tell me why?”
“She kept having dreams about her dead sister, Brenna.”
“Dreams?” Sam swallows past the lump in his throat. “What kind of dreams?”
“Brenna was singing to her.”
“I-I have to-Thank-“ He dialed again, fingers fumbling over the two buttons required to call his brother.
Voicemail.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. No.
“Dean! Call me back, call me back right the fuck now.”
What the hell is he supposed to do now? He doesn’t have a fucking clue where his brother took off to. Hell, maybe it’s all just a coincidence, because, hey, that happens all the time in their world, right? So what if a couple, few, several, of the victims had near death experiences and then heard their fucking dead relatives singing to them. It probably doesn’t mean anything that his brother, who just happened to die once or twice in the last year, is having dreams about their dead mother singing to him and now isn’t answering his fucking phone!
It’s just because Dean’s being a stubborn ass and ignoring Sam’s calls, that’s all.
“Bobby!” Sam tightened the grip on his cell phone. “Bobby, I need you to call Dean for me.”
“You need me to what?”
“Call Dean. Bobby, I need to know-“ He’s not going to panic, he’s not. “I need to know if he’s just being a dick and ignoring my calls or-”
“Sam, what’s going on?” Bobby’s calm and direct, exactly what Sam needs someone to be at this moment, because he’s anything but.
“We’re on a hunt, down in Arkansas-”
“The chewed up bodies along the river?”
“Yes, that one. We found something that looks like giant bird prints where the last body was found. And the previous victims, they’d all had near death experiences and had started hearing dead relatives singing in their dreams and Dean had a dream about Mom last night, she was singing and-“ It all came out in a rush, the fear and anxiety that had been building even before he started putting the pieces together, ever since he woke to find Dean standing so still in the darkened motel room.
“You’ve got a siren on your hands.”
“A siren? Are you sure?” Sam scrambled through the files, scattering the pages across the floor. “I thought they only went after sailors or-“
“Damn it, Sam, you should know better than to listen to the Hollywood version of most legends.” Bobby sighed. “I can’t tell you why all the victims have had near death experiences, but the rest of it? It all adds up to siren. They’ve got birds’ bodies with a woman’s head and they’re cannibalistic, Sam. The singing, that’s about the only thing that Hollywood got right.”
“Jesus, I have to find Dean, Bobby. I have-”
“I’ll start calling him, but I suggest you get down to the river as quick as you can. Start where they found the last body and work from there.”
Sam’s about to hang up when Bobby’s calls out to him again. “Sam, make sure you take iron bullets with you. I’m not sure if they’ll do the trick, but even if they won’t kill ‘em, they hurt ‘em. And you call me the minute you find your fool of a brother.”
“I will, Bobby. I will.”
---
The trail Sam’s following is obvious, broken branches and muddy footprints, just barely visible in the fading light. He’s not sure if he should be worried or grateful that Dean’s not bothering to hide his tracks.
He can hear the river before he sees it, its constant roar drowning out all the normal sounds of the evening, and he wonders, briefly, why he didn’t notice it before.
Sam’s just about to raise his freak out level from a fully justified eleven out of ten to two billion, because Dean had at least a forty-five minute start on him and he’s been following this trail for over half an hour, when he breaks through the tree cover and sees Dean.
He’s standing at the edge of a bluff, eyes closed and his head tilted at that same angle, as if he’s listening to something far off, and leaning too far forward to make Sam’s heart do anything but turn over in his chest.
“Dean!”
Dean doesn’t acknowledge Sam’s panicked shout or the snap, crackle of broken tree limbs and underbrush as Sam rushed up the side of the small hill. If it weren’t for the slight movement of his chest, Sam might think he’d fallen victim to a Gorgon instead of a siren.
“Dean, man, I need you to listen to me.” He stopped a few feet back from his brother and reached an arm slowly toward him. “Just step back, man, okay? Just a couple feet. Please.” He edged slowly closer. “Come on, Dean.”
Dean finally turned, his eyes still far off as he looked at Sam, head still tilted toward some far off sound. “Sammy? Can you hear her?”
“It’s not Mom, Dean. It’s not. I swear, man.” Sam inched forward, ignoring the urge to lunge, to grab Dean and drag him back from the edge. “You know Mom wouldn’t want this. She’d want you to come with me, Dean. Come on.”
“I can’t.” He looked lost and sad as he turned back toward the river. “I’m sorry, Sammy, but she’s calling me. Mom wants me to come to her.”
He stepped forward, off the edge of the bluff.
Sam fell forward, making a desperate grab for his brother, and felt the muscle in his shoulder pull and strain as his hand closed around Dean’s forearm.
“DEAN!” Sam held on, despite the strain on his shoulder, reaching with his other arm to tighten his hold even as he felt himself slipping forward. “Dean, look at me, damn it! I need you to grab on and climb up. Damn it, listen to me! DEAN!”
Sam dug his nails deeper into the flesh of Dean’s arm, watched as his brother blinked and seemed slowly, finally, to come back to himself.
“Sam?”
“Dean, come on, you need to climb back up here.”
Dean looked around slowly, from Sam’s strained, desperate face to the muddy waters rushing below them. “Sam, you need to let me go.”
“Like hell!”
“Sam, if you don’t let go we’re both going to fall.” The patient, reasonable tone in Dean’s voice only pissed Sam off, made him dig his fingers still deeper.
“No, Dean, if you don’t get your ass back up here now we’ll both go, because I am not letting go of you.”
“Sam-”
“Don’t Sam me, you asshole, just climb!” Sam scowled down at his brother, his expression grim and set, until Dean nodded weakly and reached for the muddy wall.
Dean moved slowly, digging his feet into the tangled roots and rocks embedded in the side of the bluff, as Sam inched slowly back, never letting go of his arm.
Several agonizing minutes later, Sam rolled to his side, heavy Dean the last few feet, and collapsing into the mud gasping for breath.
“You gonna let go now?” Dean asked quietly, trying to pull his arm from Sam’s grasp.
“Like hell, Dean.”
“No offense, bro, but I don’t swing that way.” Dean’s hand landed on top of Sam’s and started to pry gently at his fingers. “And we’re a bit old to be going steady.”
“Forget it, Dean.” Sam replied, sitting up slowly, and refusing to give up his grip. “I’m not letting go until you’re handcuffed to the damn bed back at the motel.”
“Sammy, kinky, but really, little brother-”
“Drop it, Dean! You just tried to throw yourself off a fucking cliff, asshole. I’m not letting go so you can just try it again.” He stood slowly, dragging Dean up with him. “So just give it up.”
“Sam, I’m not-” Dean pulled harder, his expression turning dark as he looked over his shoulder toward the water once more. “I mean it, Sam, just let me--”
Sam’s fist flew out, straight and hard, and he knew the moment Dean was back in his right mind he was going kick Sam’s ass for it. But at the moment, he just didn’t give a shit, hauling his unconscious brother over his shoulder.
---
“Sam! Sam, let me go. SAM!”
Sam turned his back and tried to ignore the sounds of his brother’s struggles. “I don’t know, Bobby. He’s still trying to get away, so I don’t think that part of the legend is true.”
“Maybe you’re not far enough away yet.” Bobby’s frustrated sigh came through loud and clear. “It says here that Odysseus had to pass from earshot, but once he’d escaped that killed them.”
“Yeah, maybe, but how far is from earshot?” Sam glanced back at his brother and winced at the bruises forming around his brother’s wrists. “I think I’d feel better if I actually saw it dead.”
“I’m still of a mind to believe iron will take care of it, but the only other thing I’ve found in the folklore is drowning. But, Sam, you’d have to get awfully close for that.”
“And none of that matters if I can’t find the damn thing.”
“Well, that I might be able to help you with, but you’re not gonna like it much.”
“What are you talking about, Bobby?”
There was a long silence before Bobby spoke again. “Get yourself a good set of earplugs, Sam, then take your brother out at and chain him to a tree near the river.”
“You want me to use Dean as bait! No way, Bobby.”
“Sam, hear me out. All the legends, every scrape of folklore, they all say the same thing, it’s not going to let your brother go. If something doesn’t put a stop to it, it’ll drive him mad.”
“God, Bobby.”
“I know, kid, but it’s got to be done.”
“You’re right, Bobby, I just-” Sam dropped exhaustedly onto the end of his bed. “This just really sucks.”
“Out loud,” Bobby agreed. “You need me to come down there and help you with it?”
“I-No. We’ve got beeswax candles in the supplies we brought, that should do for earplugs and the rest-I’ll think of something. Thanks, Bobby.” Sam turned off the phone and fell back on the bed.
“Sam, you have to let me go. I mean it, Sam!”
“Dean, if you shut up right now, I swear, I’ll take you back out there tomorrow.” He turned his head to see Dean watching him through narrowed eyes. “I swear man, first thing tomorrow.”
---
Sam rubbed his tired eyes and leaned into the solid support of the tree he was hidden behind.
Despite his promises to bring Dean back to the river, his brother had spent most of the night alternately cursing Sam and begging to be let go.
Even now, he could see Dean’s lips moving in a constant litany of pleadings as he tugged and pulled at the chains that held him to tree at the edge of the clearing Sam had settled on.
Come on, come on, come on.
The wax in his ears was sticky and uncomfortable, make his head feel as though the pressure inside of it was building and making his eye strain to compensate for his missing sense of sound.
Come on, come on, come-
Something broke through the bushes on the far side of the clearing, further from the ground than Sam had been expecting, and despite all the strange things he’d spent a lifetime hunting, the sight threw him for a moment.
A long, sleek torso topped with a face that could have been carved of marble and thick, dark hair that resembled a lion’s mane more than anything human. But it was the transition from flesh to feather that ended in clawed and scaly feet that momentarily stunned Sam into in action.
It takes the thing moving toward Dean, opening its mouth to reveal rows of jagged, razor-sharp teeth to get Sam moving again. He steps into the clearing, moving the Dean’s Glock up and inline for the kill shot in one smooth motions.
Three quick shots and he can see them impact its body, the quick jerk, jerk, jerk, before it falls to the ground and stops moving.
He hoped it was dead, but he’d be damned if he’d taking any chances where Dean’s concerned. Stuffing the gun in his waistband, he grabbed two fistfuls of mane and dragged to the edge of the water, dropping it’s head into the muddy wash and planting his foot on the back of it’s neck.
Best to be sure, Bobby’d say.
He’s just getting ready to drag it away from the bank, salt and burn its ass as a final precaution, when something slammed heavy into his back and drove him into the water.
Sam twisted, trying to pull his own head up out of the water, and reached back to grab handfuls of feathers.
Pairs. Sirens are usually found in pairs.
He pulled his legs up underneath, bunching the muscles and using all of his strength to flip them over and pin the second siren under the water, ignoring the sharp pain as it sinks its teeth into his shoulder and the water rising up around, focusing only on the struggling creature beneath him until its finally still.
Once he’d dropped the match on the two soggy corpses, Sam turned away, digging the wax from his ears as he staggered over to Dean, slumped against the tree.
“Dean? Hey, hey, Dean.” He slapped lightly Dean’s check, taking a quick, startled step backward as Dean’s head shot up.
“Sam? Fuck.” Dean leaned back into the tree, slowly sliding down it.
Sam smiled weakly and fumbled for the key in his pocket, hoping he hadn’t lost it in the muddy waters, before closing numb fingers around it and unlocking his brother.
---
“You talk to Bobby?” Dean hoisted the last duffle off the bed and over his shoulder.
“Yeah, he found an earlier victim, Lucy Georgiou. We missed it because she was killed in her home instead of near the river.” He trailed behind Dean to the car. “Bobby thinks she accidentally imported them into the country.”
“How the hell do you accidentally import two sirens into the country?”
“She collected Greek art. Six months ago she bought a statue of two sirens from an estate in Athens.” Sam twisted the keys to the rental around his finger and shrugged. “There were reports that the statue was damaged in shipping and it was missing from her home when they found her body.”
“So, what? The sirens were in the statue?”
“Something like that.” He stopped in front of the car and looked across at his brother. “Dean-”
“Sam, no. We have two days driving in front of us to get back to Bobby’s and I do not want to spend the whole time with you sitting next to me looking all weepy because I won’t share my feeling about the fucking siren who decided to sound like Mom.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything about that.”
“Good. Then there’s no reason we can’t get on the road, right?” Dean scowled across the roof of the car at him, daring him to bring that topic or any other up.
“No.”
“Good. Now can we please get going? Please?” Dean settled into the passenger seat and turned away from Sam. “I want to get back to my girl anyway.”
Sam slid into the passenger seat and closed his eyes, wished his father back, and started the car.
---
---
Author’s Note: Title (and several alias’) taken from Aerosmith “Livin’ On The Edge.” Much thanks to the Mods for trusting me with the pinch and the horrendous beta they got stuck with.
Author: gayeld
Recipient: kaethe
Word Count: 6500+
Prompt: A case involving a literary or mythological character.
Disclaimer: Mine. No, seriously, mine. Prove otherwise. Unless you’re Eric Kripke or, you know, the CW, Warner Bros, then, uh, my bad.
Summary: Takes place between ELAC and Bloodlust. Sam and Dean hunt a monster, have misunderstandings, drive a rental.
“Dean, man, I need you to listen to me. Just step back, man, okay? Just a couple feet. Please.”
---
Sam stood in the dusty junkyard, listening more to the sounds that weren’t there than the ones that were. No music. None of the rhythmic tapping that normally accompanied Dean at work. No whisper of the stupid, loving pet names his brother usual lavished on the car. Just the muted sounds of tools on metal.
Jesus, he didn’t know what to do. Dean was scaring the shit out of him and everything he’d done to try and help just seemed to push his brother further away from him, closer to the edge he’d been dancing around ever since dad had died.
Maybe bringing him another hunt so soon after the last was a mistake. All the hunt for the Rakshasa had done was widen the rift between them and leave Dean more worn around the edges than before.
He could call the Roadhouse. Ask Ellen if she could pass this hunt on to someone else.
“What do you want, Sam?”
Dean looked drawn and tired, the circles under his eyes deeper than they’d been at dinner last night and Sam had to bite his lower lip to keep the words from slipping out. I want you to be all right. I want us to be all right. I want you to let me help you with this.
“There’s been another one.”
“Same as the others?” Dean wiped his hands on a dusty rag and shoved it in his back pocket before reaching for the stack of printouts in Sam’s hand.
“Looks like it.” Sam stepped closer, bumped his shoulder against Dean’s, and was grateful when his brother didn’t pull away. “Coroner’s office ruled it death by misadventure, accidental drowning.”
“And the body was near the river?” Dean flipped quickly through the pages, stopping at a picture of a smiling woman.
“A place called Cat Island. It’s in the middle of the river, between Arkansas and Mississippi.” He took the papers back, shifted through them until he found the one he wanted. “Coroner’s report says the bones had evidence of bite marks but they were unable to match them to any known species.”
“Yeah, sounds like our kind of thing.” Dean sighed and rubbed a weary hand across the back of his neck. “But I am not taking that freakin’ minivan. I will walk to Arkansas first.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Sam couldn’t help laughing at the sour look on Dean’s face.
“Dude, I would rather drive a Gremlin,” Dean replied, disgust evident in his voice.
“A Gremlin? Man, I had no idea you swung that way.” Sam danced away from the fist Dean aimed at his shoulder and started back toward the house, feeling lighter than he had in days.
---
“I hate you.”
Sam bit back his laughter and followed his brother through the parking lot. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It’s a Volvo, Sam.” The horror on Dean’s face made every penny Joseph Perry had spent on the rental worth it.
“They’re very safe cars.”
“They’re pieces of crap. Ugly pieces of crap.” Dean scowled as he opened the door to the police station and ushered his brother in. “And they faked all those crash test results. So, really, they’re ugly, unsafe pieces of crap.”
“Dude, you used to love that one Bobby had in his yard.” Sam reminded him with a grin.
“I did not. Besides, Bobby’s was a classic. A 1962 P1800, not-” Dean hooked his thumb back over his shoulder as he strode past Sam. “-a piece of crap.”
“Whatever, dude, you know you loved that car.”
Sam didn’t bother trying to hide his smirk as Dean glared at him before stopping in front of a battered desk, manned by matronly looking woman in a police uniform.
“Can I help you boys?” she asked, her tone polite, but the look in her eye saying she clearly found them untrustworthy.
“I certainly hope so, ma’am,” Dean replied, turning on the charm. “I’m Warden Tyler, this is Warden Kramer, I spoke to an Officer Kramer on the phone earlier and-”
“Oh, you’re the Fish and Game boys, the ones look for the swamp monster.”
“I don’t know that I’d put it quite like-”
“Files are over there.” She pointed to a beat-up box sitting on the counter behind her desk. “One of you’s gonna need to sign a receipt for them.”
Sam leaned over the desk and signed “Warden J. Kramer” as illegibly as possible while Dean grabbed the box of files. “Can you point us in the direction of the Coroner’s Officer?”
---
“Man, I hate the Coroner’s office.” Dean shed his jacket and tie, tossing them carelessly in the direction of the nearest chair before belly-flopping onto his bed. “It’s gonna be a week before I get rid of that smell.”
“The body or the Coroner’s assistant?” Sam dropped a stack of folders on the small table next to the door and plopped down on the second bed, kicking his shoes off and breathing a sigh of relief. “What the hell was that cologne he was wearing?”
“Ode to dead skunk,” Dean mumbled into his pillow before turning over. “You catch those mark on the bones?”
“Yeah.”
“Look like any animal you ever seen?”
“No.” Sam scooted up on the bed and jammed a pillow under his head before turning to look at Dean. “They looked more like human teeth marks.”
“Only pointier.” Dean flashed him a half-hearted smile, all teeth and no humor. “Much, much pointier.”
“So, something humanoid? Another Wendigo, you think?”
“Nah.”
“Too far south?”
“Too much meat left on the bones.”
Sam groaned and rolled over to plant his face in the pillow. “Too much information, man.”
Dean sniggered and Sam could hear him getting up and moving around the room followed by the sound of the shower coming on, the familiar sounds lulling him to sleep.
“Sam. Sam, wake up. Pizza’s here.”
Sam wasn’t sure how much time had passed, only that it was fully dark outside the windows as he rose and crossed over to where Dean had balanced the pizza box across the folders spread out over the table. “You get any sleep?”
Dean ignored the question, which Sam took to be a no, and gestured toward the map in front of him. “Looks like whatever it is it’s moving steadily down river.”
“You think it’s headed toward the ocean or just trying to spread out its kills to keep the cops from picking up a pattern?” Sam dropped into the second chair and pulled out a piece of pizza.
“It’s hard to tell without knowing what it is.” Dean shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I figured tomorrow you can hit the library and see if you can find any local legends.”
“Uh huh. And what’ll you being doing while I’m doing all the research?” Sam asked, a note of challenge in his voice.
“I thought I’d go down to the river and see what-”
“What? No way, Dean.”
“No way what?” Dean looked up at him, confused.
“You’re going down to that river alone.” Sam replied, unable to school the anger from his voice.
“I-Why the hell not?”
“Why the hell not? Dean, people are being eaten!” Sam threw his hands up in frustration and stared at his brother. Jesus, what was so hard to understand about that.
“I know how to take care of myself, Sam!”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t, but-”
“But what, Sam?” Several files slid off the table, scattering their contents as Dean jumped to his feet.
“But that’s no reason to take stupid chances.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“Damn it, Dean, stop putting words in my mouth!” Sam returned his brother’s scowl, with interest. “You know that’s not what I’m saying.” Long seconds passed as they stared angrily at one another. “Fine, you think it’s so safe to go out there alone, you go to the library and I’ll go out to the-”
“The hell you will!”
“Why not, Dean? Huh?” Sam asked, stepping up to his brother. “Why is it all right for you to go, but not me?”
“I didn’t say-That’s not-Whatever.” Dean turned away and started gathering the fallen pages. “Fine, we’ll both go to the library, Nancy Drew.”
“Fine.” Sam dropped back into the chair and stared disinterestedly at his pizza, picking aimlessly at the toppings until he realized that Dean had frozen over something out of the spilled files. “Dean? What is it?”
“I-Nothing.” Dean shoved what Sam could now tell was a photograph back into the folder and slammed it shut.
“Dean.” Sam leaned forward and pulled the folder out of his brother’s hand and flipped it open. On top lay a picture of a car smashed beyond recognition.
“One of the victims was in a car accident a couple months before he was killed and-” Dean gestured awkwardly at the file. “The police station must have gotten that file mixed in with the rest.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Sam closed the folder and set it carefully back on the table, an uncomfortable silence settling between.
---
Sam held back a sigh as he pulled his boot out the thick mud with a sickening squelch. The library had proved useless, too many tall-tales and legends built up around the river to be any help, at least until they had more information.
Which left them slogging through the mud and debris along the river, an uncomfortable silence still between them in the wake of last night’s argument.
“Sam.” Something yellow fluttered on the breeze, flickering in and out of sight between the trees, and Sam followed with a quick nod.
Police tape, one end left tied to a tree, marking the site where the last body had been found.
Sam ducked beneath a branch and crouched next to where Dean was examining marks in the soft soil. “What are those?”
“They look like bird tracks, only bigger.” Dean outlined the print. “There wasn’t anything about a killer emu in those legends, was there?”
“Dude, how do you even know what an emu is?” Sam snorted and bent closer to the tracks. Dean was right, they looked like they’d been made a bird, a really big one. “Thunderbird?”
“Nah.” Dean gestured at the thick, intertwined braches over their heads. “No way one would fit in here.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and cocked his head to the side.
“What?” Sam looked around the clearing and tried to listen for whatever had caught Dean’s attention.
“You hear that?” Dean rose slowly, stepping out the clearing and toward the river.
“No, man, what?” Sam caught up to him, cocking his own head and listening intently, but only heard the rush of the river.
“I-Nothing, I guess. It was just-” Dean shook his head and gazed blankly at Sam for a long moment. “Nothing. We should get back to the room, see if we can find out what Big Bird is up to these days. Big yellow bastard always did creep me out.”
---
“Anything?”
Sam sighed and closed the laptop. “No. There are plenty of legends around here and things that prey on humans, but no birds that I can come up with.”
“Something imported?” Dean slid the last piece into the gun he’s been cleaning and looks over to toward the window, frowning.
“Maybe, but that leaves the field wide open.” Sam watched his brother for a long moment and tries to put his finger on why the picture in front of him seems wrong, off. There’s an air of distraction around Dean, something other than the pain and grief that’s been clinging to him since the accident. But instead of bringing relief, Sam feels something clench tight and worrisome low in his gut. “Dean, what is it?”
“Huh?” Dean turned back to him, the same blank look that he gave Sam down at the river, before shaking his head and smiling. “Just tired, I guess.”
“You sure?”
Dean shrugged and looked out the window. “Go to bed, Sam.”
---
A soft rustling brought Sam instantly awake and he rolled quietly to his side, checking the bed next to his for his brother.
Empty.
He scanned the rest of the room, almost missing the silent figure at the window. “Dean?”
Dean turned away from the window and Sam felt his breath catch in his throat at the depth of sorrow reflected back it him before Dean seemed to shake himself out of it. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Sammy. Go back to sleep.”
“Don’t tell me nothing, man.” Sam rolled out of the bed and crossed to stand next to his brother. “You’ve been acting weird ever since we got back from the river this afternoon. What’s going on?”
“I told you, Sam, it’s nothing. I just-” Dean shrugged and looked out the window again. “Let it go, Sam. It’s not important.”
“If it’s keeping you up at night, then, yes, it is.” Sam leaned into the window and tilted his head, trying to meet Dean’s eyes. “Dean, what did you hear down at the river?”
He shrugged again, still gazing into the night. “Nothing.”
“Dean!”
“Sam, please, just go back to sleep.” His voice was soft, imploring, and Sam was torn between giving his brother the space he was asking for and the worrying knot is Sam’s gut. “I swear, Sam, it’s nothing. Just a weird dream.”
“Was it about Dad?”
Dean’s head drops forward and Sam holds his breath, silently begging his brother to trust him with this.
“No, it was-“ Dean rubs a hand across his face and sighs. “It was Mom, she was singing, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying and-“ He shrugged and looked back out the window. “I woke up.”
“Oh.” Sam didn’t have an answer for this, didn’t even know where to start. Mom, her loss, had always been a touchy subject, an unspoken pain shared between Dean and Dad that Sam had never felt the way they had.
“Let’s get some sleep.” Dean dropped onto the edge of his bed and rolled away from Sam, burying his face in the pillow.
Sam stood, a moment longer, and watched, wondered how you could know someone your entire life and still not know what to say to them.
---
Alkonost - Russian/harmless?
Bennu - Eygptian/benevolent
Camulatz - Mayan, ate heads
Harpies - Greek, various myths, angel of death, bringer of death
Quetzalcoatl - Aztec/too big
Raven - Native American/Trickster?
Roc - carried off and ate elephants??
Sachamo - Chinese, feeds on bears?/too big
Simurgh - Persian/benevolent
Sirin/Siren - Russian/Greek, lure sailors to their deaths with song?
Swan Maiden - shapershifter/skinwalker? victim in mythology
Thunderbird - Native American/too big
Ziz - Talmudic/too big
Sam ignored the cramp in his hand and scanned the list of creatures once more. So much for getting more information. It may have narrowed the field some, but not enough to be of any real use.
“Find anything?” Dean sat heavily in the chair across from him and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Lots of things.” Sam closed the book on Asian mythology and leaned back in his chair. “Too many. Most of them are too big, too small, not known for eating people, not-”
“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture.” Dean waved a hand at him, leaning further back in the chair. “We need talk to the families, see if they can tell us what the victims were doing down at the river in the first place.”
“You sure you’re up to this?” Sam already knows what Dean’s answer will be, but he can see the bags under his brother’s eyes, the tired slouch of his body.
“I’m fine, Sam. Let it go.”
“Right.” Sam shifts through his pile of notes until he finds the list of victims. “You want to start with the most recent ones?”
“I already called the mother of the last victim, Katie Tennant.” Dean stood slowly and paused, tilting his head to the right.
“And?”
“What?” Dean startled, looking at Sam as though he’d forgotten about him.
“You called the last victim’s mother?” Sam prompted, gathering his notes and stuffing them in his backpack.
“She said it was no problem if we came by.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys, eyes drifting toward the nearest window.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” That knot Sam had been trying to ignore since he’d woken, to find Dean once more standing at the window gazing out, tightens even more.
Sam can almost see the sharp retort on the tip of Dean’s tongue, the snappy comeback that’s supposed to make him stop worrying about his brother and start focusing on the case, and he’s not sure if he feels better or worse when Dean simply shrugged and started for the door.
---
“Mrs. Tennant?” Sam pasted what he hoped was a sincere and sympathetic smile on his face as the elderly woman opened the door. “I’m Officer Hamilton, this is Officer Whitford. My partner spoke to you on the phone about your daughter?”
“Yes. Please come in.” She ushered them into a small living room and Sam’s eyes were immediately drawn to the portrait over the mantle. “That’s Katie, in the middle, with her brother and sister.”
“They’re nice looking kids,” Dean comments quietly.
She gazes at the portrait a moment longer before turning back to them. “Will’s all I have left now. He’s a cardiac surgeon in Boston and-But you’re hear to ask about Katie.“ She motions for them to sit and takes the chair opposite the couch. “I’m not sure what I can tell you. The detective I spoke to assured me that it had been ruled an accident. That hasn’t changed, has it?”
“No, no,” Sam assured her, ignoring the guilt that always came with deceiving grieving relatives. “We’re just trying to clarify things.”
“We were hoping you could give us some kind of idea what Katie was doing at the river,” Dean adds, his gaze drawn to the scattering of family pictures that line the mantle. “The Coroner’s report estimates that she went in the water sometime around 3am.”
“I don’t-I-“ She looks uncomfortable, at a loss for words, for a long moment before clearing her throat. “Katie’s only been back home with me for a few weeks, since she got out of the hospital. At first she seemed… better, more like her old self. But that last week, she was distracted. Couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything for longer than a few seconds.”
“Did she mention anything unusual?” Dean asked gently. “See anything weird? Feel like she was being followed?”
“No, nothing like that.” She’s looking down at the hands clasped tightly in her lap. “She was having trouble sleeping.”
“Do you know if she’d been down to the river prior to the night she drowned?”
She looks up sharply at Sam and shudders. “No! Katie, she was never a strong swimmer and after she drowned, she-”
“After she drowned?” Sam sat up straight and leaned in toward her.
“Six weeks ago. Katie was in a boating accident with some of her friends, back in Texas. The boat capsized. Katie and two other girls were thrown in the water.” She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “Katie drowned, the doctors told me she was clinically dead for almost five minutes before she was revived.”
The room around him disappears and Sam’s back standing in a cold hospital hallway, watching and praying, as doctors swarm around his brother and the heart monitor stays stubbornly flat.
“They said it was a miracle that she survived.” Mrs. Tennant seemed to just crumble before them, her face falling into her hands as her shoulders started to shake.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tennant.” Sam looked awkwardly over at this brother, seeking help, only to find Dean gazing blankly out the window. “We should really-just-We should go.” He dug his elbow into Dean’s ribs, trying to get his attention. “If you think of anything else,” he slips a piece of paper with his cell number on it across the coffee table. “Please, give us a call.”
Dean’s attention snapped back to them, the blank look replaced with something that looks like loss, sorrow, and he murmurs his apologizes to her.
Sam’s at the door, two steps behind Dean when he feels Mrs. Tennant’s hand on his arm.
“Is he all right?”
Sam looked over his shoulder to where Dean was standing on the sidewalk beside the rental car, that same distracted frown on his face again, his head once more tilted to the side as if he were listening to something. “I don’t-Why do you ask?”
“He just-something about him makes me think of Katie in the days before…” her voice trailed off as they both watched Dean for a moment longer. “It’s probably just my imagination.”
---
Sam tossed his cell phone onto the table in disgust and pulled his hands through his hair before letting out a groan of frustration.
“Same story?” Dean asked, looking up from the laptop.
“Yeah. All the relatives say the same thing. They were distracted, not quite themselves. But now of them know why, none of them spent any significant time down at the river.” He flicked his pen across the table and sighed. “Only one of them seems to have been anywhere near the river in the weeks proceeding their death.”
Dean snorted and pushed the laptop away. “I’ll trade you clueless relatives for freaky bird monsters.”
“No lucky narrowing it down?”
“Not really. Kind of distracted? Doesn’t really add a lot to the profile.”
“Speaking of which,” Sam reached across the table and grabbed his pen, focused on twisting it back and forth between his fingers. “You’ve been kind of distracted yourself. Is this something I should be worried about?”
“Jesus, Sam, I’m tired. I got, like, three hours of sleep last night and all we’ve got to go on are giant bird feet that distract people. Give it a rest, will ya?”
“I’m not-I’m just-” He grasps for a way to say that won’t piss his brother off, but isn’t sure how to negotiate around the brother he brought home from the hospital. “Maybe you should give it a rest. I mean, get some rest.” He gestured toward the bed. “It’s not like we’ve got a lot to go on and-”
“I’m not a child, Sam. I don’t need a nap!” Dean sprang to his feet and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair.
“We are you going.”
“Out.”
“Out where?” Sam followed him to the door, grabbing his own jacket.
“Just out, Sam. What are you, seven?” Dean stopped in the doorway and glared back at him. “And I don’t need a babysitter, Sam. Just give me some space.”
---
Sam’s chewing on the edge of his fingernail and trying to turn all of his attention the woman on the phone, but he can’t help checking his watch every few seconds, tallying how long Dean’s been gone.
“-and then after he started having those strange dreams about his first wife-”
“I’m sorry, what?” Sam sat up straight in the chair, realizing that something important had just slipped past him. “What dreams?”
“About his first wife,” Martha Jones replied. “Every since he came home from the hospital, he’d been having dreams about his dead first wife singing to him.”
“The hospital?” Sam’s breath caught in his throat as he started flipping through the folders in front of him, pulling out the notes he was looking for. “Your husband was in a car accident, right?”
“That’s right, about four months before he drowned. Doctors had to bring him back from the dead.”
“I-Thank you, Mrs. Jones, I have to-“ He hung up the phone and started dialing again immediately. “Mrs. Tennant? This is Officer-“ Crap, what had he told her? “Hamilton. I’m sorry to bother you again, but you said that Katie was having trouble sleeping. Can you tell me why?”
“She kept having dreams about her dead sister, Brenna.”
“Dreams?” Sam swallows past the lump in his throat. “What kind of dreams?”
“Brenna was singing to her.”
“I-I have to-Thank-“ He dialed again, fingers fumbling over the two buttons required to call his brother.
Voicemail.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. No.
“Dean! Call me back, call me back right the fuck now.”
What the hell is he supposed to do now? He doesn’t have a fucking clue where his brother took off to. Hell, maybe it’s all just a coincidence, because, hey, that happens all the time in their world, right? So what if a couple, few, several, of the victims had near death experiences and then heard their fucking dead relatives singing to them. It probably doesn’t mean anything that his brother, who just happened to die once or twice in the last year, is having dreams about their dead mother singing to him and now isn’t answering his fucking phone!
It’s just because Dean’s being a stubborn ass and ignoring Sam’s calls, that’s all.
“Bobby!” Sam tightened the grip on his cell phone. “Bobby, I need you to call Dean for me.”
“You need me to what?”
“Call Dean. Bobby, I need to know-“ He’s not going to panic, he’s not. “I need to know if he’s just being a dick and ignoring my calls or-”
“Sam, what’s going on?” Bobby’s calm and direct, exactly what Sam needs someone to be at this moment, because he’s anything but.
“We’re on a hunt, down in Arkansas-”
“The chewed up bodies along the river?”
“Yes, that one. We found something that looks like giant bird prints where the last body was found. And the previous victims, they’d all had near death experiences and had started hearing dead relatives singing in their dreams and Dean had a dream about Mom last night, she was singing and-“ It all came out in a rush, the fear and anxiety that had been building even before he started putting the pieces together, ever since he woke to find Dean standing so still in the darkened motel room.
“You’ve got a siren on your hands.”
“A siren? Are you sure?” Sam scrambled through the files, scattering the pages across the floor. “I thought they only went after sailors or-“
“Damn it, Sam, you should know better than to listen to the Hollywood version of most legends.” Bobby sighed. “I can’t tell you why all the victims have had near death experiences, but the rest of it? It all adds up to siren. They’ve got birds’ bodies with a woman’s head and they’re cannibalistic, Sam. The singing, that’s about the only thing that Hollywood got right.”
“Jesus, I have to find Dean, Bobby. I have-”
“I’ll start calling him, but I suggest you get down to the river as quick as you can. Start where they found the last body and work from there.”
Sam’s about to hang up when Bobby’s calls out to him again. “Sam, make sure you take iron bullets with you. I’m not sure if they’ll do the trick, but even if they won’t kill ‘em, they hurt ‘em. And you call me the minute you find your fool of a brother.”
“I will, Bobby. I will.”
---
The trail Sam’s following is obvious, broken branches and muddy footprints, just barely visible in the fading light. He’s not sure if he should be worried or grateful that Dean’s not bothering to hide his tracks.
He can hear the river before he sees it, its constant roar drowning out all the normal sounds of the evening, and he wonders, briefly, why he didn’t notice it before.
Sam’s just about to raise his freak out level from a fully justified eleven out of ten to two billion, because Dean had at least a forty-five minute start on him and he’s been following this trail for over half an hour, when he breaks through the tree cover and sees Dean.
He’s standing at the edge of a bluff, eyes closed and his head tilted at that same angle, as if he’s listening to something far off, and leaning too far forward to make Sam’s heart do anything but turn over in his chest.
“Dean!”
Dean doesn’t acknowledge Sam’s panicked shout or the snap, crackle of broken tree limbs and underbrush as Sam rushed up the side of the small hill. If it weren’t for the slight movement of his chest, Sam might think he’d fallen victim to a Gorgon instead of a siren.
“Dean, man, I need you to listen to me.” He stopped a few feet back from his brother and reached an arm slowly toward him. “Just step back, man, okay? Just a couple feet. Please.” He edged slowly closer. “Come on, Dean.”
Dean finally turned, his eyes still far off as he looked at Sam, head still tilted toward some far off sound. “Sammy? Can you hear her?”
“It’s not Mom, Dean. It’s not. I swear, man.” Sam inched forward, ignoring the urge to lunge, to grab Dean and drag him back from the edge. “You know Mom wouldn’t want this. She’d want you to come with me, Dean. Come on.”
“I can’t.” He looked lost and sad as he turned back toward the river. “I’m sorry, Sammy, but she’s calling me. Mom wants me to come to her.”
He stepped forward, off the edge of the bluff.
Sam fell forward, making a desperate grab for his brother, and felt the muscle in his shoulder pull and strain as his hand closed around Dean’s forearm.
“DEAN!” Sam held on, despite the strain on his shoulder, reaching with his other arm to tighten his hold even as he felt himself slipping forward. “Dean, look at me, damn it! I need you to grab on and climb up. Damn it, listen to me! DEAN!”
Sam dug his nails deeper into the flesh of Dean’s arm, watched as his brother blinked and seemed slowly, finally, to come back to himself.
“Sam?”
“Dean, come on, you need to climb back up here.”
Dean looked around slowly, from Sam’s strained, desperate face to the muddy waters rushing below them. “Sam, you need to let me go.”
“Like hell!”
“Sam, if you don’t let go we’re both going to fall.” The patient, reasonable tone in Dean’s voice only pissed Sam off, made him dig his fingers still deeper.
“No, Dean, if you don’t get your ass back up here now we’ll both go, because I am not letting go of you.”
“Sam-”
“Don’t Sam me, you asshole, just climb!” Sam scowled down at his brother, his expression grim and set, until Dean nodded weakly and reached for the muddy wall.
Dean moved slowly, digging his feet into the tangled roots and rocks embedded in the side of the bluff, as Sam inched slowly back, never letting go of his arm.
Several agonizing minutes later, Sam rolled to his side, heavy Dean the last few feet, and collapsing into the mud gasping for breath.
“You gonna let go now?” Dean asked quietly, trying to pull his arm from Sam’s grasp.
“Like hell, Dean.”
“No offense, bro, but I don’t swing that way.” Dean’s hand landed on top of Sam’s and started to pry gently at his fingers. “And we’re a bit old to be going steady.”
“Forget it, Dean.” Sam replied, sitting up slowly, and refusing to give up his grip. “I’m not letting go until you’re handcuffed to the damn bed back at the motel.”
“Sammy, kinky, but really, little brother-”
“Drop it, Dean! You just tried to throw yourself off a fucking cliff, asshole. I’m not letting go so you can just try it again.” He stood slowly, dragging Dean up with him. “So just give it up.”
“Sam, I’m not-” Dean pulled harder, his expression turning dark as he looked over his shoulder toward the water once more. “I mean it, Sam, just let me--”
Sam’s fist flew out, straight and hard, and he knew the moment Dean was back in his right mind he was going kick Sam’s ass for it. But at the moment, he just didn’t give a shit, hauling his unconscious brother over his shoulder.
---
“Sam! Sam, let me go. SAM!”
Sam turned his back and tried to ignore the sounds of his brother’s struggles. “I don’t know, Bobby. He’s still trying to get away, so I don’t think that part of the legend is true.”
“Maybe you’re not far enough away yet.” Bobby’s frustrated sigh came through loud and clear. “It says here that Odysseus had to pass from earshot, but once he’d escaped that killed them.”
“Yeah, maybe, but how far is from earshot?” Sam glanced back at his brother and winced at the bruises forming around his brother’s wrists. “I think I’d feel better if I actually saw it dead.”
“I’m still of a mind to believe iron will take care of it, but the only other thing I’ve found in the folklore is drowning. But, Sam, you’d have to get awfully close for that.”
“And none of that matters if I can’t find the damn thing.”
“Well, that I might be able to help you with, but you’re not gonna like it much.”
“What are you talking about, Bobby?”
There was a long silence before Bobby spoke again. “Get yourself a good set of earplugs, Sam, then take your brother out at and chain him to a tree near the river.”
“You want me to use Dean as bait! No way, Bobby.”
“Sam, hear me out. All the legends, every scrape of folklore, they all say the same thing, it’s not going to let your brother go. If something doesn’t put a stop to it, it’ll drive him mad.”
“God, Bobby.”
“I know, kid, but it’s got to be done.”
“You’re right, Bobby, I just-” Sam dropped exhaustedly onto the end of his bed. “This just really sucks.”
“Out loud,” Bobby agreed. “You need me to come down there and help you with it?”
“I-No. We’ve got beeswax candles in the supplies we brought, that should do for earplugs and the rest-I’ll think of something. Thanks, Bobby.” Sam turned off the phone and fell back on the bed.
“Sam, you have to let me go. I mean it, Sam!”
“Dean, if you shut up right now, I swear, I’ll take you back out there tomorrow.” He turned his head to see Dean watching him through narrowed eyes. “I swear man, first thing tomorrow.”
---
Sam rubbed his tired eyes and leaned into the solid support of the tree he was hidden behind.
Despite his promises to bring Dean back to the river, his brother had spent most of the night alternately cursing Sam and begging to be let go.
Even now, he could see Dean’s lips moving in a constant litany of pleadings as he tugged and pulled at the chains that held him to tree at the edge of the clearing Sam had settled on.
Come on, come on, come on.
The wax in his ears was sticky and uncomfortable, make his head feel as though the pressure inside of it was building and making his eye strain to compensate for his missing sense of sound.
Come on, come on, come-
Something broke through the bushes on the far side of the clearing, further from the ground than Sam had been expecting, and despite all the strange things he’d spent a lifetime hunting, the sight threw him for a moment.
A long, sleek torso topped with a face that could have been carved of marble and thick, dark hair that resembled a lion’s mane more than anything human. But it was the transition from flesh to feather that ended in clawed and scaly feet that momentarily stunned Sam into in action.
It takes the thing moving toward Dean, opening its mouth to reveal rows of jagged, razor-sharp teeth to get Sam moving again. He steps into the clearing, moving the Dean’s Glock up and inline for the kill shot in one smooth motions.
Three quick shots and he can see them impact its body, the quick jerk, jerk, jerk, before it falls to the ground and stops moving.
He hoped it was dead, but he’d be damned if he’d taking any chances where Dean’s concerned. Stuffing the gun in his waistband, he grabbed two fistfuls of mane and dragged to the edge of the water, dropping it’s head into the muddy wash and planting his foot on the back of it’s neck.
Best to be sure, Bobby’d say.
He’s just getting ready to drag it away from the bank, salt and burn its ass as a final precaution, when something slammed heavy into his back and drove him into the water.
Sam twisted, trying to pull his own head up out of the water, and reached back to grab handfuls of feathers.
Pairs. Sirens are usually found in pairs.
He pulled his legs up underneath, bunching the muscles and using all of his strength to flip them over and pin the second siren under the water, ignoring the sharp pain as it sinks its teeth into his shoulder and the water rising up around, focusing only on the struggling creature beneath him until its finally still.
Once he’d dropped the match on the two soggy corpses, Sam turned away, digging the wax from his ears as he staggered over to Dean, slumped against the tree.
“Dean? Hey, hey, Dean.” He slapped lightly Dean’s check, taking a quick, startled step backward as Dean’s head shot up.
“Sam? Fuck.” Dean leaned back into the tree, slowly sliding down it.
Sam smiled weakly and fumbled for the key in his pocket, hoping he hadn’t lost it in the muddy waters, before closing numb fingers around it and unlocking his brother.
---
“You talk to Bobby?” Dean hoisted the last duffle off the bed and over his shoulder.
“Yeah, he found an earlier victim, Lucy Georgiou. We missed it because she was killed in her home instead of near the river.” He trailed behind Dean to the car. “Bobby thinks she accidentally imported them into the country.”
“How the hell do you accidentally import two sirens into the country?”
“She collected Greek art. Six months ago she bought a statue of two sirens from an estate in Athens.” Sam twisted the keys to the rental around his finger and shrugged. “There were reports that the statue was damaged in shipping and it was missing from her home when they found her body.”
“So, what? The sirens were in the statue?”
“Something like that.” He stopped in front of the car and looked across at his brother. “Dean-”
“Sam, no. We have two days driving in front of us to get back to Bobby’s and I do not want to spend the whole time with you sitting next to me looking all weepy because I won’t share my feeling about the fucking siren who decided to sound like Mom.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything about that.”
“Good. Then there’s no reason we can’t get on the road, right?” Dean scowled across the roof of the car at him, daring him to bring that topic or any other up.
“No.”
“Good. Now can we please get going? Please?” Dean settled into the passenger seat and turned away from Sam. “I want to get back to my girl anyway.”
Sam slid into the passenger seat and closed his eyes, wished his father back, and started the car.
---
---
Author’s Note: Title (and several alias’) taken from Aerosmith “Livin’ On The Edge.” Much thanks to the Mods for trusting me with the pinch and the horrendous beta they got stuck with.