Five of a Kind
A/N: This is a sequel to “Haunted,” and was printed in Jeanne Gold's 2012 fanzine Blood Brothers 6.
As with Haunted, it goes AU from Swan Song, where Sam and Adam are mysteriously rescued from Lucifer's Cage, and the boys take Adam under their wing as a hunter.
This story picks up some four months after the first story.
Special thanks to Jeanne, K Hanna Korossy, geminigrl11 and Phx, who all had a part in reading/editing.
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Granada Hills, California
“Just one more,” Stephie Gavilan gritted out between panting breaths. “You can do it.”
She was on the last lap of her five-mile run and was almost out of steam, but this year was going to be different. Stephie had always talked about running the L.A. Marathon, but for the past four years had dropped out at the last minute. There were always excuses-work, emergencies, allergies-but that’s all they were: excuses.
This year’s going to be different.
Stephie turned the corner along the road that looped around the southeast corner of O’Melveny Park, and started her southbound lap. It was already after sunset, but it was still light enough for her to find her car. The air was warm but not too humid, and a breeze was blowing in from the ocean, perfect running weather in Stephie’s opinion.
She raised her left arm to get a look at her watch, but did a double take when she saw movement along the tree line near the road. There were five men standing just a few dozen feet from where she was running…just standing there, looking in her direction.
An uncomfortable chill of fear gripped Stephie when she realized the men were watching her. With growing alarm, she put on some more speed, her earlier exhaustion forgotten. It was getting darker, and she certainly didn’t want to be confronted by five strangers in the middle of the park.
The sound of her footfalls pounding the pavement and her heavy breathing filled her ears as her run became a sprint. Stephie wasn’t sure why she was suddenly so afraid, but something was wrong. She could sense it. Her car was parked at the far end of the road, beneath a street light. It seemed impossibly far away, even though she was moving quickly and was fast approaching it.
Stephie risked a glance over her shoulder. The five men were standing in the road now, facing her from a mere hundred feet away. How had they gotten so close? A surge of adrenaline pushed her faster, and she bolted for the parked car, now just yards away.
She practically collided with the driver’s side door as she careened to a stop and fished frantically for her keys. The sound of heavy-unusually heavy, part of her realized-footsteps from behind caused her to freeze. Her fingers slid around the cool cylinder of pepper spray attached to her keychain.
Pulling the cylinder into her hand, Stephie turned to face her potential attackers. With luck, the pepper spray would buy her a few seconds to get into her car and escape. As the footsteps stopped, she spun on her heel, bringing the mace up.
She barely had time to scream as flames engulfed her.
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The Next Day
Some days, Bobby couldn’t believe the Apocalypse was over.
Sure, he remembered that it had been averted, nearly fifteen months earlier; he’d been there for most of the confrontation between Dean, Michael and Lucifer. It was just that some days, it seemed too good to be true.
And then there were days like this one.
“You gonna sit on your ass all day, Singer?”
Bobby sighed heavily, lowering his newspaper long enough to glare across the study at Rufus Turner, who was arching an annoyed eyebrow from his wheelchair near the phone bank. He tried not to get too irritated with the other hunter, who had, after all, broken his leg helping Bobby wiggle out of his deal with Crowley. Bobby owed him-again.
But, had Bobby known that Rufus would spend his recovery under his roof…well, Hell was starting to sound like the lesser evil. Nonetheless, he did owe the man, so he didn’t say that out loud.
“No. I’m not.”
“Looks like you are,” Rufus persisted. “This is why you’re getting fat, old man.”
Bobby slammed the paper down on his lap and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Rufus, this is the first day in a month that those phones aren’t ringing. It’s the first week in six months that I haven’t been involved in a hunt. All I want is to sit here, read the paper, drink some coffee and relax.”
The dark-skinned man held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, fine. You want to sit around and grow old, don’t let me stop you.”
“Thank you,” Bobby snarled back, lifting the newspaper. Just as he resumed the article about Sheriff Mills’ big drug bust, one of the phones rang. Bobby groaned, letting his head drop against the chair back. “Balls.”
He moved to get up, but Rufus waved him back. “Oh, no. Allow me, Bobby. This is your day off.”
Bobby considered getting up just to spite the man, but Rufus was already lifting the receiver on the yellow phone, which Dean Winchester had snarkily labeled “Hunter’s Help Desk” a few months back when he and Sam had color coded and labeled all six phones.
“Y’hello?” Rufus answered with uncharacteristic cheerfulness. “Who? Arthur Kandinsky? Wait, Arthur Kandinsky from Phoenix? You’re still alive?” Rufus looked up at Bobby. “Hey, Bobby, it’s Arthur Kandinsky.”
“He’s still alive?” Bobby asked, standing and moving into the study. “I can’t believe it.”
Rufus hit the speakerphone button and placed the phone on the table so Bobby could join the conversation.
“You know I can hear you guys, right?” Kandinsky asked.
“Hearing was never your problem, Arthur, it was listening,” Rufus replied with a snort.
“His eyesight was never that great, either,” Bobby added.
“I misread one ammonia bottle and you two hold it over my head for the rest of my life.”
“Yeah, you misread a bottle, and I got my eyebrows singed off,” Bobby griped.
Rufus nodded sagely. “Which leads us back to: ‘my God, Arthur, you’re still alive!’”
“As fun as the trip down memory lane with you two old guys has been,” Arthur grumbled, “I actually called for a reason.”
Bobby frowned at the jibe, but didn’t retort. “What do you need?”
“I got a case I think should be looked into.”
“So?” Rufus interrupted. “Look into it.”
“I can’t, that’s why I’m calling you!” Kandinsky snapped angrily. “Jesus! I don’t know why I even-”
“All right, all right, Arthur. Calm down.” Bobby cut off the indignant tirade. Arthur was a fellow hunter, even if he was a clumsy idiot. Bobby lifted the phone receiver before Rufus could say whatever was clearly about to come out of his mouth. “What d’ya got?”
“Over the past month, three people have been found dead in northern Los Angeles. The bodies were torn apart, eaten. For the moment, they’ve all been written off as wild animal attacks, a pack of coyotes supposedly.”
Bobby frowned. “In an urban area? Any witnesses?”
“Not a one. But that’s not the weirdest part, either. I have a friend in the coroner’s office, and he said that a few of the…parts, I guess, were roasted, like someone took a flame thrower to them. I don’t know of any coyote that can do that, outside of cartoons.”
“Mmm.” Bobby nodded, realizing belatedly that Kandinsky couldn’t see him. “Well, okay. That definitely sounds like a case, but why can’t you look into it?”
Kandinsky hesitated. “I, um…well, I sorta can’t enter the state of California right now. For a while, at least..”
Bobby’s face fell. “And why not?”
“I’m wanted for a few things. Minor legal stuff.”
“Such as…?”
“Um, well, gun-running…fraud…kidnapping-”
Bobby rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Heaven’s-”
“-and murder.”
“Murder?!”
“It wasn’t my fault! I was hunting a shapeshifter in Riverside County…and it was mimicking the sheriff when I caught up with it…and I sorta, kinda, got caught on video putting it down.”
Bobby snorted. “I honestly don’t know how you’re still alive, Arthur, let alone walking around free.” Before the forlorn hunter could reply, Bobby continued, “Look, Rufus and I will see what we can do. I’ll be in touch.”
Rufus was smirking at him when Bobby hung up the receiver. “Murder, huh?”
“Believe it or not,” Bobby said, shaking his head. “He said there are three people dead in L.A., roasted and torn to bits all in the last few weeks. Locals are calling it an animal attack.”
“Heard that one before,” Rufus replied, shifting uncomfortably in his wheelchair. “So, when are we leaving?”
“We?”
Rufus blinked at him. “Isn’t that why Arthur called?”
“We aren’t going anywhere. You’re in no condition to take on some monster, and I’m not gonna leave you here all by yourself.”
Rufus sat up straighter. “I don’t need you nursemaiding me, Singer.”
Bobby looked at him askance. That was definitely not true. Rufus had faceplanted more than once trying to get up and down the stairs to the bedrooms. His leg was no where close to being healed, though Bobby suspected that was the last thing Rufus wanted to hear. “Who’s talking about a nursemaid? I just don’t want to leave you here breakin’ all my stuff!”
Rufus harrumphed but didn’t argue. “So? What are you gonna do?”
“I guess I’m gonna find another hunter near the West coast to check out Arthur’s story.”
“Who?” Rufus exclaimed. “Lot of us bought it in the Apocalypse. The hunting community’s spread thin out there.”
Bobby’s shoulders slumped. His annoying friend and former partner was right. “I dunno, Rufus. I’ll make some calls. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Rosarito, Baja California
Adam Milligan could count on one hand the number of times any of their phones had rung in the past three months. When he heard Bobby’s faint ringtone coming from somewhere on the patio, he happily disengaged himself from Dean’s unnecessarily complex, unfairly scored, and surprisingly physical game of non-contact flag football, which between Dean’s random point deductions and Sam’s increasingly aggravated protests was becoming more and more contact every minute.
It took a moment for Adam’s eyes to adjust from the blinding white beach sand to the relative shade of the patio awning, and he groped blindly along the remains of their lunch, following the sound to the cell.
He, Sam, and Dean had been in Baja for more than four months now, following their near-disastrous ghost hunt-turned crazy demon cult battle in North Carolina. Dean had suggested they get away for a while, so the three of them could get their heads screwed on right; Sam and Adam because of their trauma of being trapped in Lucifer’s cage, and Dean to escape his falling out with Lisa and his ruined attempt at a normal life.
Adam had been skeptical at first. Someone didn’t just “get over” Hell-especially the deep, dark, frigid depths where he and Sam had been locked up with two furious archangels-but with only one hunt under his belt, he couldn’t exactly keep going without his brothers.
As had quickly become apparent to him, he wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. Adam had grown close with Sam during the six months they’d spent down under, and after a rocky start he had formed a strong connection with Dean, too. Trying to go on without them would have been foolish, and lonely. They were the only family he had anymore. In the end, he’d been happy they’d gone on this “family vacation.” They’d seen the Grand Canyon, had a blast in Tijuana, and spent the last four months at the beach house of someone named Mike, who Dean had said used to know their dad.
It was almost enough to make him forget Michael and Lucifer. Almost.
Finally, just before the last strains of The Gambler ringtone ended, Adam’s fingers closed around the casing of Sam’s phone. He hit Talk and just barely remembered Dean’s current instructions for answering. “Ghostbusters, what’dya want?”
That’s how a dead man answers a dead fugitive’s phone, little bro, remember that even when you recognize the number.
Bobby Singer’s surly voice greeted his ears. “Cute. You’re becoming more like your oldest brother every day.”
Adam grinned. “Thanks, Bobby.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” Bobby shot back, but Adam could hear the smirk in the other man’s voice. “Where is your bad influence, anyway?”
A yelp and an “oof!” behind Adam caused him to turn his head just in time to see the football go bouncing along the patio and into some shrubs. “Um, we’re just finishing up a friendly game of beach football.”
“Who’s winning?”
Another yelp and some flying sand drew Adam’s eyes from the ball toward the beach. “Uh, well, I’ll have to see who’s left standing.”
“Well, do that and call me back, will ya? I, uh…I want to run something past you boys, get your opinions.”
Adam’s attention was drawn by another round of shouting and more flying sand.
“Contact penalty! Ten points for Team Dean!”
“Like hell! You pushed me!”
Turning back to the phone, Adam rolled his eyes. He was glad he’d left the beach,. “Will do, Bobby. We’ll be in touch.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Sam sighed as he finished setting up the video conference with Bobby and Rufus on his laptop. He was exhausted, and it was only mid-day. He leaned back on the couch and propped his feet on the coffee table while he waited for Dean to arrive and Adam to finish making lunch.
The past few months had done all three of them a lot of good-far more than Sam could have expected when he’d agreed to Dean’s getting-away-from-it-all idea. When they’d started on their bona fide road trip-no hunting, just traveling-all three of them had needed an escape. Sam and Adam had been out of Lucifer’s cage for months, but still very much prisoners of it. Both were prone to flashbacks, non-alcohol induced sleep eluded them. Dean’s relationship with Lisa-his attempt at normalcy-had burned to cinders the moment Sam and Adam reappeared on his doorstep. There was too much baggage. Hunting and “normal” didn’t mix.
Their precarious mental and emotional states had almost derailed a seemingly run-of-the-mill poltergeist in North Carolina, cost the life of a man they had been trying to help, and almost resulted in them all being demon food.
Afterwards, at Dean’s suggestion, they’d told Bobby they were dropping off the grid for a while. They needed to get their heads screwed on straight, and constantly running from town to town, hunting monsters while dodging vengeful angels and angry demons was no way to do it. Not if they wanted to live through the experience…and they did.
For the first time in a long time, Sam realized that they had something to protect. He’d paid his proverbial debts many times over with more than half a century with Lucifer. Dean had his family-his original family-back, and they both now had another brother to look after. It had just been the two of them for so long that they’d forgotten what it was like to have an almost normal family unit. It wasn’t nuclear, but it was more than they had had since their dad died.
Sam blinked out of his reverie as the family in question came into his field of vision. Adam padded barefoot into the den from the kitchen, three plates balanced precariously in his hands. The youngest Winchester-in spirit if not name-had turned out to be a fair cook. Adam’s food was far better than Sam’s spaghetti and Dean’s microwaved hot dogs.
Adam reached the coffee table and placed the plates down around the open laptop. He had a ham sandwich on a hoagie roll, which threatened to fly open from all the toppings that were stuffed into it. Sam’s turkey club was similarly stacked. Dean’s roast beef sub was…thinner.
“We need to make a food run sometime,” Adam said, dropping into the wicker loveseat that flanked the couch. “This is the last of the ham, the turkey, and the roast beef. Where’s Dean?”
As if on cue, Dean entered from the direction of the bedrooms, walking unusually slowly and making an obvious effort to keep his back straight. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow, ow, ow.” He reached the couch and dropped down beside Sam. “OW!”
Sam tilted his head back and observed the patches of angry red skin along his oldest brother’s back, peeking through sloppily applied white cream. He shook his head. “I told you to wear sunscreen.”
Dean grimaced as he settled in, trying to find a comfortable position against the cushions. “Hey, Adam? Remind me to beat that smug out of him as soon as I heal, okay?”
Adam was busily chewing, so he just nodded and gave Dean a thumb’s up.
Sam rolled his eyes. “We ready?”
Getting mumbled affirmatives from his siblings, Sam hit the call button and waited for the laptop to connect to Sioux Falls. As the digitized dial tone started up, Dean grunted, looking up from his sandwich and grimacing in Adam’s direction.
“Hey, where are my tomatoes?”
Adam shrugged, but kept chewing. “’er all ou’.”
Dean wasn’t so easily deflected. “You’ve got tomatoes on your sandwich.”
Adam nodded. From his expression, he clearly expected Dean to understand. He swallowed, then cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. We ran out after I made mine.”
Sam glanced between them as Adam resumed eating and Dean began grumbling under his breath about little brothers and his lack of adequate nutrients. Before Sam could say anything about it, Bobby’s image popped up on the laptop screen. Well, Bobby’s mouth and chin anyway.
“Sam?”
“Bobby?” Sam smirked. “Uh, Bobby, lift your webcam a little.”
“What? Oh.”
Rufus’ voice filtered through in the background. “I told you-”
“Shut up! How’s this Sam?” The rest of Bobby’s face came into view in the chat window after a few long seconds of a dark, blurry palm. Rufus was seated behind him, just barely in the frame.
Sam smiled. “There we go.” After some pleasant catching up, Sam settled his elbows on his knees. “So, what is it you wanted our opinion about?”
The laptop screen spun around abruptly as Dean’s arm crossed in front of Sam’s face, angling for Adam’s plate.
“Oh, my God! Fine! Here!” Adam’s arm moved in front of the screen and deposited two large slices of tomato onto Dean’s plate.
“Thank you!”
Bobby frowned. “What was that?”
Sam looked between the two overgrown children he called siblings and shook his head as he readjusted the computer. “Nothing. Go on. You were saying?”
“Well, I got a call from Arthur Kandinsky this morning.”
“He’s still alive?” Dean asked around a large clump of roast beef.
“That’s what I asked,” Rufus intoned from behind Bobby.
Bobby shrugged. “He’s got a case out in L.A. that he thinks should be looked into, but he can’t enter the state. Don’t ask why.”
Sam grinned. Knowing Arthur, he was probably wanted for murder again. He could sympathize, as he and Dean had had their share of similar troubles, but Arthur seemed to keep getting into those messes again and again.
Bobby didn’t waste anymore time on the subject.
“Anyway, three people have turned up dead on the north side of L.A., near Santa Clarita, all within a few miles of each other. All of them were torn apart, looked like they were eaten by some wild animal, except they were also cooked. I just checked the net, and a fourth was reported in O’Melveny Park last night.”
“That is weird,” Dean commented between bites.
“Cool!” Adam exclaimed. At the odd looks his brothers shot him, he amended, “Well, not cool. I mean it’s…you know, interesting.”
Sam ignored Adam’s misplaced enthusiasm, and instead stated the obvious, just to get it out of the way. “Well, a wild animal doesn’t cook its food.”
On the screen, Bobby nodded. “Yeah, that’s what we figured, too.”
“Demons have been known to burn people,” Dean said almost casually, but a shadow crossed his face. None of them had good histories with fire. Dean shook his head. “But, I don’t think they eat them.”
“If it’s some kind of monster,” Adam joined in the discussion, “then it’s pretty brazen to hunt down people so close to a huge city like L.A.”
“The burning of the bodies doesn’t quite add up, either,” Rufus chimed in.
Sam glanced at each of them as the conversation went on, eyes narrowing. Something wasn’t adding up, all right, and not just with the case in Los Angeles. “Bobby? Why are you telling us about this?”
He saw Dean and Adam both look at him oddly. The question hadn’t occurred to them, it seemed.
Bobby frowned, and looked uncomfortable. “Um, well…Arthur can’t go-because of his situation-and Rufus is laid up because of his leg….”
“Mm-hmm.” Sam nodded, suspicion growing as to what was coming next.
“And, I know you boys are, uh, on ‘sabbatical’ and everything-”
Rufus nudged his way into view of the webcam. “Oh, spit it out, Bobby, they aren’t children. We were gonna ask you three to check this out. You’re only a few hours away from L.A..”
Sam bit his lip and glanced up at his brothers. Adam looked excited. He was still gung-ho about hunting, and that enthusiasm had only been bolstered by the relative success of his first hunt back in North Carolina earlier that year.
He’s young, as Dean had put it a while back.
Dean, on the other hand, was sporting an expression that Sam figured wasn’t too different from his own: ambivalent. They’d spent four months tucked away in this quiet corner of Baja, working through their various issues and, together, they had a lot of issues. Big issues. Sam hadn’t asked, but he knew Dean hadn’t volunteered any thoughts about a return to hunting, and Sam…was okay with that. Adam, though-
“Look, boys,” Bobby continued, elbowing Rufus out of the way, “I know you wanted to stay off the grid for a while, and believe me, I know you deserved the rest, but…people are dying. You guys are the only hunters close-by that we know of, and all the L.A.P.D. will know to do is send in animal control.”
Dean sighed. “Bobby, are you sure there’s nobody else nearby?”
“I called everyone I know of, but they’re all busy with their own hunts right now.”
Dean frowned, glancing back at Sam with a minute shrug. “All right. We’ll see what we can find out. Email us anything else you got.”
TBC
As with Haunted, it goes AU from Swan Song, where Sam and Adam are mysteriously rescued from Lucifer's Cage, and the boys take Adam under their wing as a hunter.
This story picks up some four months after the first story.
Special thanks to Jeanne, K Hanna Korossy, geminigrl11 and Phx, who all had a part in reading/editing.
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Granada Hills, California
“Just one more,” Stephie Gavilan gritted out between panting breaths. “You can do it.”
She was on the last lap of her five-mile run and was almost out of steam, but this year was going to be different. Stephie had always talked about running the L.A. Marathon, but for the past four years had dropped out at the last minute. There were always excuses-work, emergencies, allergies-but that’s all they were: excuses.
This year’s going to be different.
Stephie turned the corner along the road that looped around the southeast corner of O’Melveny Park, and started her southbound lap. It was already after sunset, but it was still light enough for her to find her car. The air was warm but not too humid, and a breeze was blowing in from the ocean, perfect running weather in Stephie’s opinion.
She raised her left arm to get a look at her watch, but did a double take when she saw movement along the tree line near the road. There were five men standing just a few dozen feet from where she was running…just standing there, looking in her direction.
An uncomfortable chill of fear gripped Stephie when she realized the men were watching her. With growing alarm, she put on some more speed, her earlier exhaustion forgotten. It was getting darker, and she certainly didn’t want to be confronted by five strangers in the middle of the park.
The sound of her footfalls pounding the pavement and her heavy breathing filled her ears as her run became a sprint. Stephie wasn’t sure why she was suddenly so afraid, but something was wrong. She could sense it. Her car was parked at the far end of the road, beneath a street light. It seemed impossibly far away, even though she was moving quickly and was fast approaching it.
Stephie risked a glance over her shoulder. The five men were standing in the road now, facing her from a mere hundred feet away. How had they gotten so close? A surge of adrenaline pushed her faster, and she bolted for the parked car, now just yards away.
She practically collided with the driver’s side door as she careened to a stop and fished frantically for her keys. The sound of heavy-unusually heavy, part of her realized-footsteps from behind caused her to freeze. Her fingers slid around the cool cylinder of pepper spray attached to her keychain.
Pulling the cylinder into her hand, Stephie turned to face her potential attackers. With luck, the pepper spray would buy her a few seconds to get into her car and escape. As the footsteps stopped, she spun on her heel, bringing the mace up.
She barely had time to scream as flames engulfed her.
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The Next Day
Some days, Bobby couldn’t believe the Apocalypse was over.
Sure, he remembered that it had been averted, nearly fifteen months earlier; he’d been there for most of the confrontation between Dean, Michael and Lucifer. It was just that some days, it seemed too good to be true.
And then there were days like this one.
“You gonna sit on your ass all day, Singer?”
Bobby sighed heavily, lowering his newspaper long enough to glare across the study at Rufus Turner, who was arching an annoyed eyebrow from his wheelchair near the phone bank. He tried not to get too irritated with the other hunter, who had, after all, broken his leg helping Bobby wiggle out of his deal with Crowley. Bobby owed him-again.
But, had Bobby known that Rufus would spend his recovery under his roof…well, Hell was starting to sound like the lesser evil. Nonetheless, he did owe the man, so he didn’t say that out loud.
“No. I’m not.”
“Looks like you are,” Rufus persisted. “This is why you’re getting fat, old man.”
Bobby slammed the paper down on his lap and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Rufus, this is the first day in a month that those phones aren’t ringing. It’s the first week in six months that I haven’t been involved in a hunt. All I want is to sit here, read the paper, drink some coffee and relax.”
The dark-skinned man held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, fine. You want to sit around and grow old, don’t let me stop you.”
“Thank you,” Bobby snarled back, lifting the newspaper. Just as he resumed the article about Sheriff Mills’ big drug bust, one of the phones rang. Bobby groaned, letting his head drop against the chair back. “Balls.”
He moved to get up, but Rufus waved him back. “Oh, no. Allow me, Bobby. This is your day off.”
Bobby considered getting up just to spite the man, but Rufus was already lifting the receiver on the yellow phone, which Dean Winchester had snarkily labeled “Hunter’s Help Desk” a few months back when he and Sam had color coded and labeled all six phones.
“Y’hello?” Rufus answered with uncharacteristic cheerfulness. “Who? Arthur Kandinsky? Wait, Arthur Kandinsky from Phoenix? You’re still alive?” Rufus looked up at Bobby. “Hey, Bobby, it’s Arthur Kandinsky.”
“He’s still alive?” Bobby asked, standing and moving into the study. “I can’t believe it.”
Rufus hit the speakerphone button and placed the phone on the table so Bobby could join the conversation.
“You know I can hear you guys, right?” Kandinsky asked.
“Hearing was never your problem, Arthur, it was listening,” Rufus replied with a snort.
“His eyesight was never that great, either,” Bobby added.
“I misread one ammonia bottle and you two hold it over my head for the rest of my life.”
“Yeah, you misread a bottle, and I got my eyebrows singed off,” Bobby griped.
Rufus nodded sagely. “Which leads us back to: ‘my God, Arthur, you’re still alive!’”
“As fun as the trip down memory lane with you two old guys has been,” Arthur grumbled, “I actually called for a reason.”
Bobby frowned at the jibe, but didn’t retort. “What do you need?”
“I got a case I think should be looked into.”
“So?” Rufus interrupted. “Look into it.”
“I can’t, that’s why I’m calling you!” Kandinsky snapped angrily. “Jesus! I don’t know why I even-”
“All right, all right, Arthur. Calm down.” Bobby cut off the indignant tirade. Arthur was a fellow hunter, even if he was a clumsy idiot. Bobby lifted the phone receiver before Rufus could say whatever was clearly about to come out of his mouth. “What d’ya got?”
“Over the past month, three people have been found dead in northern Los Angeles. The bodies were torn apart, eaten. For the moment, they’ve all been written off as wild animal attacks, a pack of coyotes supposedly.”
Bobby frowned. “In an urban area? Any witnesses?”
“Not a one. But that’s not the weirdest part, either. I have a friend in the coroner’s office, and he said that a few of the…parts, I guess, were roasted, like someone took a flame thrower to them. I don’t know of any coyote that can do that, outside of cartoons.”
“Mmm.” Bobby nodded, realizing belatedly that Kandinsky couldn’t see him. “Well, okay. That definitely sounds like a case, but why can’t you look into it?”
Kandinsky hesitated. “I, um…well, I sorta can’t enter the state of California right now. For a while, at least..”
Bobby’s face fell. “And why not?”
“I’m wanted for a few things. Minor legal stuff.”
“Such as…?”
“Um, well, gun-running…fraud…kidnapping-”
Bobby rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Heaven’s-”
“-and murder.”
“Murder?!”
“It wasn’t my fault! I was hunting a shapeshifter in Riverside County…and it was mimicking the sheriff when I caught up with it…and I sorta, kinda, got caught on video putting it down.”
Bobby snorted. “I honestly don’t know how you’re still alive, Arthur, let alone walking around free.” Before the forlorn hunter could reply, Bobby continued, “Look, Rufus and I will see what we can do. I’ll be in touch.”
Rufus was smirking at him when Bobby hung up the receiver. “Murder, huh?”
“Believe it or not,” Bobby said, shaking his head. “He said there are three people dead in L.A., roasted and torn to bits all in the last few weeks. Locals are calling it an animal attack.”
“Heard that one before,” Rufus replied, shifting uncomfortably in his wheelchair. “So, when are we leaving?”
“We?”
Rufus blinked at him. “Isn’t that why Arthur called?”
“We aren’t going anywhere. You’re in no condition to take on some monster, and I’m not gonna leave you here all by yourself.”
Rufus sat up straighter. “I don’t need you nursemaiding me, Singer.”
Bobby looked at him askance. That was definitely not true. Rufus had faceplanted more than once trying to get up and down the stairs to the bedrooms. His leg was no where close to being healed, though Bobby suspected that was the last thing Rufus wanted to hear. “Who’s talking about a nursemaid? I just don’t want to leave you here breakin’ all my stuff!”
Rufus harrumphed but didn’t argue. “So? What are you gonna do?”
“I guess I’m gonna find another hunter near the West coast to check out Arthur’s story.”
“Who?” Rufus exclaimed. “Lot of us bought it in the Apocalypse. The hunting community’s spread thin out there.”
Bobby’s shoulders slumped. His annoying friend and former partner was right. “I dunno, Rufus. I’ll make some calls. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Rosarito, Baja California
Adam Milligan could count on one hand the number of times any of their phones had rung in the past three months. When he heard Bobby’s faint ringtone coming from somewhere on the patio, he happily disengaged himself from Dean’s unnecessarily complex, unfairly scored, and surprisingly physical game of non-contact flag football, which between Dean’s random point deductions and Sam’s increasingly aggravated protests was becoming more and more contact every minute.
It took a moment for Adam’s eyes to adjust from the blinding white beach sand to the relative shade of the patio awning, and he groped blindly along the remains of their lunch, following the sound to the cell.
He, Sam, and Dean had been in Baja for more than four months now, following their near-disastrous ghost hunt-turned crazy demon cult battle in North Carolina. Dean had suggested they get away for a while, so the three of them could get their heads screwed on right; Sam and Adam because of their trauma of being trapped in Lucifer’s cage, and Dean to escape his falling out with Lisa and his ruined attempt at a normal life.
Adam had been skeptical at first. Someone didn’t just “get over” Hell-especially the deep, dark, frigid depths where he and Sam had been locked up with two furious archangels-but with only one hunt under his belt, he couldn’t exactly keep going without his brothers.
As had quickly become apparent to him, he wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. Adam had grown close with Sam during the six months they’d spent down under, and after a rocky start he had formed a strong connection with Dean, too. Trying to go on without them would have been foolish, and lonely. They were the only family he had anymore. In the end, he’d been happy they’d gone on this “family vacation.” They’d seen the Grand Canyon, had a blast in Tijuana, and spent the last four months at the beach house of someone named Mike, who Dean had said used to know their dad.
It was almost enough to make him forget Michael and Lucifer. Almost.
Finally, just before the last strains of The Gambler ringtone ended, Adam’s fingers closed around the casing of Sam’s phone. He hit Talk and just barely remembered Dean’s current instructions for answering. “Ghostbusters, what’dya want?”
That’s how a dead man answers a dead fugitive’s phone, little bro, remember that even when you recognize the number.
Bobby Singer’s surly voice greeted his ears. “Cute. You’re becoming more like your oldest brother every day.”
Adam grinned. “Thanks, Bobby.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” Bobby shot back, but Adam could hear the smirk in the other man’s voice. “Where is your bad influence, anyway?”
A yelp and an “oof!” behind Adam caused him to turn his head just in time to see the football go bouncing along the patio and into some shrubs. “Um, we’re just finishing up a friendly game of beach football.”
“Who’s winning?”
Another yelp and some flying sand drew Adam’s eyes from the ball toward the beach. “Uh, well, I’ll have to see who’s left standing.”
“Well, do that and call me back, will ya? I, uh…I want to run something past you boys, get your opinions.”
Adam’s attention was drawn by another round of shouting and more flying sand.
“Contact penalty! Ten points for Team Dean!”
“Like hell! You pushed me!”
Turning back to the phone, Adam rolled his eyes. He was glad he’d left the beach,. “Will do, Bobby. We’ll be in touch.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Sam sighed as he finished setting up the video conference with Bobby and Rufus on his laptop. He was exhausted, and it was only mid-day. He leaned back on the couch and propped his feet on the coffee table while he waited for Dean to arrive and Adam to finish making lunch.
The past few months had done all three of them a lot of good-far more than Sam could have expected when he’d agreed to Dean’s getting-away-from-it-all idea. When they’d started on their bona fide road trip-no hunting, just traveling-all three of them had needed an escape. Sam and Adam had been out of Lucifer’s cage for months, but still very much prisoners of it. Both were prone to flashbacks, non-alcohol induced sleep eluded them. Dean’s relationship with Lisa-his attempt at normalcy-had burned to cinders the moment Sam and Adam reappeared on his doorstep. There was too much baggage. Hunting and “normal” didn’t mix.
Their precarious mental and emotional states had almost derailed a seemingly run-of-the-mill poltergeist in North Carolina, cost the life of a man they had been trying to help, and almost resulted in them all being demon food.
Afterwards, at Dean’s suggestion, they’d told Bobby they were dropping off the grid for a while. They needed to get their heads screwed on straight, and constantly running from town to town, hunting monsters while dodging vengeful angels and angry demons was no way to do it. Not if they wanted to live through the experience…and they did.
For the first time in a long time, Sam realized that they had something to protect. He’d paid his proverbial debts many times over with more than half a century with Lucifer. Dean had his family-his original family-back, and they both now had another brother to look after. It had just been the two of them for so long that they’d forgotten what it was like to have an almost normal family unit. It wasn’t nuclear, but it was more than they had had since their dad died.
Sam blinked out of his reverie as the family in question came into his field of vision. Adam padded barefoot into the den from the kitchen, three plates balanced precariously in his hands. The youngest Winchester-in spirit if not name-had turned out to be a fair cook. Adam’s food was far better than Sam’s spaghetti and Dean’s microwaved hot dogs.
Adam reached the coffee table and placed the plates down around the open laptop. He had a ham sandwich on a hoagie roll, which threatened to fly open from all the toppings that were stuffed into it. Sam’s turkey club was similarly stacked. Dean’s roast beef sub was…thinner.
“We need to make a food run sometime,” Adam said, dropping into the wicker loveseat that flanked the couch. “This is the last of the ham, the turkey, and the roast beef. Where’s Dean?”
As if on cue, Dean entered from the direction of the bedrooms, walking unusually slowly and making an obvious effort to keep his back straight. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow, ow, ow.” He reached the couch and dropped down beside Sam. “OW!”
Sam tilted his head back and observed the patches of angry red skin along his oldest brother’s back, peeking through sloppily applied white cream. He shook his head. “I told you to wear sunscreen.”
Dean grimaced as he settled in, trying to find a comfortable position against the cushions. “Hey, Adam? Remind me to beat that smug out of him as soon as I heal, okay?”
Adam was busily chewing, so he just nodded and gave Dean a thumb’s up.
Sam rolled his eyes. “We ready?”
Getting mumbled affirmatives from his siblings, Sam hit the call button and waited for the laptop to connect to Sioux Falls. As the digitized dial tone started up, Dean grunted, looking up from his sandwich and grimacing in Adam’s direction.
“Hey, where are my tomatoes?”
Adam shrugged, but kept chewing. “’er all ou’.”
Dean wasn’t so easily deflected. “You’ve got tomatoes on your sandwich.”
Adam nodded. From his expression, he clearly expected Dean to understand. He swallowed, then cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. We ran out after I made mine.”
Sam glanced between them as Adam resumed eating and Dean began grumbling under his breath about little brothers and his lack of adequate nutrients. Before Sam could say anything about it, Bobby’s image popped up on the laptop screen. Well, Bobby’s mouth and chin anyway.
“Sam?”
“Bobby?” Sam smirked. “Uh, Bobby, lift your webcam a little.”
“What? Oh.”
Rufus’ voice filtered through in the background. “I told you-”
“Shut up! How’s this Sam?” The rest of Bobby’s face came into view in the chat window after a few long seconds of a dark, blurry palm. Rufus was seated behind him, just barely in the frame.
Sam smiled. “There we go.” After some pleasant catching up, Sam settled his elbows on his knees. “So, what is it you wanted our opinion about?”
The laptop screen spun around abruptly as Dean’s arm crossed in front of Sam’s face, angling for Adam’s plate.
“Oh, my God! Fine! Here!” Adam’s arm moved in front of the screen and deposited two large slices of tomato onto Dean’s plate.
“Thank you!”
Bobby frowned. “What was that?”
Sam looked between the two overgrown children he called siblings and shook his head as he readjusted the computer. “Nothing. Go on. You were saying?”
“Well, I got a call from Arthur Kandinsky this morning.”
“He’s still alive?” Dean asked around a large clump of roast beef.
“That’s what I asked,” Rufus intoned from behind Bobby.
Bobby shrugged. “He’s got a case out in L.A. that he thinks should be looked into, but he can’t enter the state. Don’t ask why.”
Sam grinned. Knowing Arthur, he was probably wanted for murder again. He could sympathize, as he and Dean had had their share of similar troubles, but Arthur seemed to keep getting into those messes again and again.
Bobby didn’t waste anymore time on the subject.
“Anyway, three people have turned up dead on the north side of L.A., near Santa Clarita, all within a few miles of each other. All of them were torn apart, looked like they were eaten by some wild animal, except they were also cooked. I just checked the net, and a fourth was reported in O’Melveny Park last night.”
“That is weird,” Dean commented between bites.
“Cool!” Adam exclaimed. At the odd looks his brothers shot him, he amended, “Well, not cool. I mean it’s…you know, interesting.”
Sam ignored Adam’s misplaced enthusiasm, and instead stated the obvious, just to get it out of the way. “Well, a wild animal doesn’t cook its food.”
On the screen, Bobby nodded. “Yeah, that’s what we figured, too.”
“Demons have been known to burn people,” Dean said almost casually, but a shadow crossed his face. None of them had good histories with fire. Dean shook his head. “But, I don’t think they eat them.”
“If it’s some kind of monster,” Adam joined in the discussion, “then it’s pretty brazen to hunt down people so close to a huge city like L.A.”
“The burning of the bodies doesn’t quite add up, either,” Rufus chimed in.
Sam glanced at each of them as the conversation went on, eyes narrowing. Something wasn’t adding up, all right, and not just with the case in Los Angeles. “Bobby? Why are you telling us about this?”
He saw Dean and Adam both look at him oddly. The question hadn’t occurred to them, it seemed.
Bobby frowned, and looked uncomfortable. “Um, well…Arthur can’t go-because of his situation-and Rufus is laid up because of his leg….”
“Mm-hmm.” Sam nodded, suspicion growing as to what was coming next.
“And, I know you boys are, uh, on ‘sabbatical’ and everything-”
Rufus nudged his way into view of the webcam. “Oh, spit it out, Bobby, they aren’t children. We were gonna ask you three to check this out. You’re only a few hours away from L.A..”
Sam bit his lip and glanced up at his brothers. Adam looked excited. He was still gung-ho about hunting, and that enthusiasm had only been bolstered by the relative success of his first hunt back in North Carolina earlier that year.
He’s young, as Dean had put it a while back.
Dean, on the other hand, was sporting an expression that Sam figured wasn’t too different from his own: ambivalent. They’d spent four months tucked away in this quiet corner of Baja, working through their various issues and, together, they had a lot of issues. Big issues. Sam hadn’t asked, but he knew Dean hadn’t volunteered any thoughts about a return to hunting, and Sam…was okay with that. Adam, though-
“Look, boys,” Bobby continued, elbowing Rufus out of the way, “I know you wanted to stay off the grid for a while, and believe me, I know you deserved the rest, but…people are dying. You guys are the only hunters close-by that we know of, and all the L.A.P.D. will know to do is send in animal control.”
Dean sighed. “Bobby, are you sure there’s nobody else nearby?”
“I called everyone I know of, but they’re all busy with their own hunts right now.”
Dean frowned, glancing back at Sam with a minute shrug. “All right. We’ll see what we can find out. Email us anything else you got.”
TBC