SPN Gen Fic: Weaver 3/9
Nov. 13th, 2006 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superbadgirlTitle: Weaver
Author: sbg
Rating: R, for language
Category: H/C, Angst, A/A
Season/spoilers: 1/directly follows "Nightmare"
Summary: Sometimes dreams teach, sometimes they tell the future and sometimes they just hurt like hell.
Disclaimer: The Impala, Sam Winchester and (oh, this one hurts) Dean Winchester and various other characters don't belong to me. Some of the things referenced in the story also don't belong to me, but then some of them do. All these things, sans my own words, belong to Kripke Enterprises (Scrap Metal & Entertainment) and The CW. Not trying to step on toes or claim ownership, much as I would really enjoy that.
~~*~~
“Stop. Here. From what I can tell, it looks like the attacks originated along this stretch of the railroad tracks,” Sam said. It was only a couple miles outside city limits. “They’ve happened on several arterial roads since then, all around the edges of town. Like the thing is holding this place captive. Herding the town.”
“And they don’t even know it.”
“Apparently animal incidents aren’t that uncommon out here. It’s only recently they’ve increased enough for anyone to take notice. Regular attacks didn’t really happen at night, either.”
“If the thing has smartened up and has staggered its attacks, you know we probably won’t find much out here, right?” Dean said. He switched off the engine and everything became really quiet for a second. Sam glanced over. Dean was squinting at the rocky landscape. “Its tracks won’t look much different than a regular dog’s. Maybe bigger.”
“We have to start somewhere.” Sam wasn’t entirely sure Dean wasn’t hoping to find nothing. Sam wasn’t entirely sure he was right there with him on that. “Right?”
Dean gave him a funny look, not the first in the past few days, and again Sam didn’t blame him. He knew he wasn’t pulling off normal, but was just too damn tired to try very hard anymore. And apparently it showed. He couldn’t stop thinking. His brain was always on, and it was always tuned to something pretty horrible. His dreams. Nothing in them left him with the underlying sense they were portentous he was familiar with, only apprehension and exhaustion.
“Right.” Sam waited for the inevitable. “You do have my back?”
Sam nodded, but yawned for dramatic effect. It was the perfect thing to do. Dean immediately lost his anxious expression and scowled at him instead. Sam’s door creaked as he opened it and slid out of the car. The air out here was crisp and fresh like it couldn’t be in a city. It helped wake him up and cleared his head. He met Dean at the trunk.
“How sure are we silver bullets are going to work on this thing?” Sam said.
“Yeah, that’s kind of tricky.”
“Tricky how?”
“Tricky as in we’ve never actually fought one before. They’re not a North American phenomena for the most part,” Dean said. He darted Sam a glance and grabbed for the bullets. “Some legends include shape shifting, so we start with silver bullets and improvise if that doesn’t work.”
“And hope like hell we can get away if they don’t work.” Not a happy thought. “What if it’s not even corporeal?”
“Regret skipping your morning runs now, don’t you?”
“Hey, I can take you any day of the week.”
Dean snarked about an unfair advantage, which Sam had to admit was true. By sheer genetic luck, his stride alone made him a decent runner. Unless he purposely slowed his gait just walking, he left people in his wake all the time. Supernatural beings didn’t exactly follow that rule, and since they really did seem to target him he figured Dean’s question was valid. What Dean didn’t know was that Sam counted on it going after him. The Black Dog, if it was here and he felt certain it was, had to come after him. The alternative was one of those horrible things he couldn’t stop thinking about, a thing that wouldn’t come to life if he had anything to do with it.
“You think maybe it lives here?” Dean said. “Just expands out to keep people from hunting it down?”
“It’s got to sleep or…whatever somewhere, right?”
“Dude, if it’s an apparition it’s not really going to sleep.”
“It’s not really going to live, either, is it? Let’s just start looking.”
Dean slammed the trunk shut and started walking away. Sam followed. The railroad tracks were desolate and bare. Sam wondered if it meant anything that the dog had chosen it instead of a road, if maybe it was bigger or different because of its choice of haunting. He decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to dwell on that. It wouldn’t change the ultimate purpose for them tromping around in the near-dark; since they already didn’t know if they had what they needed to get rid of it, size didn’t make that much of a difference.
They split only slightly. Sam made sure he kept a direct line on Dean’s location every second, and he was comforted to know Dean did the same for him. Especially since Dean was the one who’d done the research on the legends while he had scoured the town’s news articles. He did know that it wasn’t a good thing to encounter these things alone. Dean had made sure to stress that about five times on the way out there. Sam stroked the barrel of his pistol lightly. It might have been a better idea to grab a rifle, he thought. If this thing turned out to be big, a handgun wasn’t the best force weapon.
He didn’t see any recent tracks, but then the terrain was rocky and the wind would blow them away pretty quickly. Which it apparently had, if they had ever been there. Sam couldn’t even tell where Dean had walked. He wasn’t exactly the best tracker in the family, though. His skill set was different, way different. There wasn’t much about him that wasn’t diametrically opposite of his brother and father. Sam squinted at the copse of small, gnarly trees and felt as though a big weight pressed down on him. Not physical, he didn’t think, but almost as tangible anyway.
“You got anything, Dean?” he said softly.
“Some EMF activity, but that could be the power lines. These things aren’t that reliable so close to them. You?”
“No, but…”
“What?” Dean said, and Sam could hear his brother tensing just in the way the word came out of his mouth.
“I don’t know, does the air feel…heavy to you?”
“That’s part of what this thing does, Sam. Shake it off.” The feeling couldn’t be what he thought it might be if Dean felt it too. Sam was incredibly relieved to know that. “Keep your head clear.”
Dean had an amazing way of making this all look easy. Sam had to wonder, though, how much of the cool and collected Dean was a façade. He’d seen more and more glimpses of what lay beneath his shell the longer they were on the road together. He still hated that this was his life now, but he did like getting to know Dean on a level he hadn’t been able to as a kid. He was discovering the way he thought Dean had been wasn’t really the way Dean actually was. Everything he thought was black and white was becoming shaded in variations of gray.
Sam shook his head and returned to studying the terrain. And it finally occurred to him that the tracks he should be looking for weren’t necessarily physical. Duh. If the Black Dog was casting a gloom on emotions, then that meant they had found the right spot and that the creature was probably nearby right now.
“Dean,” he said, turning toward his brother again.
Dean stood stock still, frozen in a stance Sam would have recognized immediately even if Dean didn’t have his weapon raised. Their prey wasthere. He brought his own weapon up slowly and silently asked Dean where it was. A simple head bob indicating a point behind him was all he got. Sam resisted the urge to swing around, aware that motion would provoke the Black Dog into action. Dean kept his eyes locked on him long enough to gain assurance Sam wasn’t going to make any sudden movements. At least he didn’t have to worry about Dean being attacked anymore. It was better if it was him; Dean wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Sam’s heart pounded harder, seeming to create pressure from within that rivaled the weight on his shoulders and all around him.
His brother took a careful step, gave Sam one last, long look and then aimed his gun. Sam braced, ready to dive out of the way if he had to. He couldn’t sense anything behind him, had no feeling he was being stalked at all. He relied on Dean’s movements to tell him what was going on behind him. An overwhelming feeling of dread returned, and he tried to suppress it; negative thinking could only get in the way and that was the last thing he needed while Dean had a gun pointed in his general vicinity.
“Down,” Dean ordered sharply.
Sam dove for the ground, and immediately rolled onto his back with his handgun up. Dean’s shot rang out before Sam could get a line on the Black Dog. It didn’t matter. He didn’t see anything. Dean popped off several more shots, though. Sam frowned at the empty space in befuddlement. He stayed flat on his back until he was sure Dean was done, then sat up carefully.
“Dean, what the hell…?” he said, turning his torso to give his brother a glare. “Dean!”
Dean no longer stood where he had but lay on the ground. Sam choked. There was blood, a lot of it, pooling in the hollow at the base of Dean’s neck. An image of Dean lying in Max’s house, bullet hole in the middle of his forehead superimposed itself over his brother for a second, and then switched to what he’d seen in his dream the night before. He shook his head and looked around quickly. Sam didn’t see the Black Dog anywhere. He didn’t bother getting to his feet, scuttling over on hands and knees. The rocky ground tore at his left hand, his right protected by the butt of the gun. This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening again. Sam tried to breathe around the lump that had formed in his throat. He’d failed. He shakily reached out.
“Dean?”
“Shit, that thing is fast,” Dean croaked, fishing around a little. “I did not see that coming.”
Sam let out a shaky laugh. Up close, he saw that there wasn’t as much blood as he’d thought, though there was a decent set of slash marks along Dean’s right jaw line. Right where they’d been in the dream. He winced in sympathy and helped ease Dean to a sitting position. Sam’s heart continued to pump fast, his skin prickled with adrenaline.
“What happened?” Sam said, trying not to sound too scared or too dumb.
“It’s a sneaky bastard.” Dean grunted and clambered to his feet awkwardly, waving his gun hand when Sam tried to help. The other hand pressed against the wound. “I’m not one to run from a fight, but can this wait until we get out of here?”
“Right.”
They walked quickly to the car. Sam was more than a bit concerned by Dean’s inability to walk a straight line. He hovered near enough to catch a fall, but far enough that Dean didn’t object to him doing it. He was still new at this, too, being the one to offer this kind of support. Listening to Jess vent about a bad day was so different. He grimaced.
“Keys.”
Dean didn’t argue, heading right to the passenger seat. Sam popped the trunk and grabbed their makeshift first aid kit. A little gauze would go a long way to soak up the blood, a hell of a lot farther than Dean’s hand. He tossed the kit onto his brother’s lap before he slid behind the wheel. He jammed the key in the ignition at the same time he moved the seat back as far as it would go.
“Aw, man,” Dean said under his breath. Sam glanced over once he got the car on the road. “Why do they always go for the face?”
Sam shook his head and smiled. What remained of his apprehension faded at Dean’s grousing; as long as his brother made bitchy comments, he was all right. Sam checked the rear view mirror and saw nothing but dust. It bothered him that it had all gone down and he hadn’t seen or felt anything. Maybe Dean had been right to question his readiness.
“It won’t even leave a scar, man.”
“Even if it did, it would just make me look rakish and even more handsome.”
“There’s always that,” Sam said, and rolled his eyes.
Darkness was falling around them fast. Sam reached forward and flicked the headlights on. They were already back in city limits. He turned onto West Winnemucca. At night the small-town attempt at Vegas garishness looked sad. Still, he had to admit he found the Butch Cassidy stuff that proliferated the town amusing and a little interesting. Their motel was, however, the most nondescript on the main mini-strip of Winnemucca. Sam pulled the car into the lot.
Dean rolled out of the car with another grumble about his latest war wound. Sam sat in the car for a second, glad to see Dean’s gait had lost its unsteadiness. He got out, and followed his brother into the room. Dean’s jacket was on the floor in a heap, shrugged off carelessly. Dean himself was in the bathroom assessing the damage under the unforgiving fluorescent lighting.
“Hey, see if there are any clear butterfly bandages in the kit, will you?” Dean said. “You’re right. I don’t think these will scar.”
Sam grabbed the jacket off the floor and found the first aid kit under it. He sighed and tossed the jacket onto one of the beds. They’d neglected the kit – there were enough bandages for a first dressing only. Since they were still hunting they’d probably need more. Sam remembered they hadn’t neglected the kit. He had. It had been his turn to keep an eye on it. He hoped there was a decent drug store in town. He took the butterflies, the bottle of Bactine and a couple cotton balls into the bathroom. Dean poked at the deepest scratch.
“Here, let me help.”
“Sam, I can patch my own wounds.”
“I know you can.” Sam set the supplies down on the tank of the toilet. “That’s not the point. I can probably get the bandages on tighter. You don’t want to scar, remember.”
“Fine.”
Dean sat down and looked up toward the ceiling, jaw out; he’d already cleaned up the blood, and the scratches were only oozing a little bit. Sam doused the cotton balls with Bactine and swabbed at Dean’s jaw, snickering lightly at his brother’s annoyed hiss of discomfort.
“So what happened back there?” he said casually.
“I saw the Dog behind you, or at least I thought I did. After you went down and I shot at it, something else came at me.”
“Another Black Dog?” Sam tossed the soiled cotton balls in the trash. He let the skin dry a little, then started applying a butterfly bandage. “They don’t usually travel in packs.”
“Not in the UK. Their MO could be different here, for all we know,” Dean said. “Make sure you get that good and tight…the one that got me was smaller, I think. I didn’t get a great look at it. You really didn’t see any of this?”
“No, I really didn’t. I was busy ducking.” He sounded defensive and he knew it. Sam stuck another bandage on Dean’s jaw with too much force. Dean pulled back and glared at him. “You got off a couple shots, Dean, do you think you hit one of them?”
“Unfortunately not. The one behind you dissipated like a spirit, and my other shots were a bit wild.”
“Dissipated from silver? Huh.”
“I wonder if Black Dogs can astral project. Maybe there really was only one, but it looked like two,” Dean said. Sam raised his eyebrows. Dean shrugged. Yeah, that was dumb. “Ambush or astral projection, I didn’t want to be stuck out there in the dark with them coming at us from any direction.”
“What are we going to do, Dean? We’ll have the same problem tomorrow night.”
“But I won’t be bleedin’ all over.” Dean flashed him a smile, rising to his feet. He clapped Sam on the shoulder as he moved past him back into the room. “I figure it couldn’t hurt to do more research. I’ll check to see if any of Dad’s friends have called back yet. They might know something we don’t.”
“And…I’ll go get us something to eat while you do that.”
“It’s like you read my mind,” Dean said. Sam heard the teasing tone and shot Dean a dirty look, who flashed him a smile. “Might as well stock up for a couple days. Buy beer.”
Dean was already sprawled on the bed doing research by watching TV, apparently, when Sam started off in search of food and medical supplies. Giving his brother one last backwards glance as he shut the door, Sam tried to pretend away what both of them knew was a possibility – that Dean seeing the Black Dogs was as good as a death sentence if they didn’t figure out a way to kill the creatures. There was no way to determine if the legend of the Dogs being portents of death was true, but there was no way to determine it wasn’t. Sam didn’t plan on buying many groceries; he hoped they wouldn’t be in Winnemucca very long. If they were, he might end up with a room full of food and no brother.
~~*~~
He’d been certain Pastor Jim would come through for them, but it was Bobby who ended up giving them what they needed. He hoped, anyway. They were on a clock. After Sam came back the previous night without beer and after he also refused to go out for one, they’d spent the evening doing more research. Turned out there weren’t only increased animal attacks, but increased accidental deaths. In a town as small as this one was, that was something they should not have missed the first time around. Second chances were rare in their line of work, after all.
“I’m not sure I get how this is supposed to work,” Dean said. If he told himself the truth, he wasn’t very sure it would even if Bobby knew his stuff. It had never been tested. “If legends say that some manifestations of Black Dogs disappear at the sound of bells, how exactly are we supposed to get one around this monster’s neck? I think that’s a bit of a flaw in the plan.”
“It would have been nice to actually see the source material.”
Leave it to Sam to mourn the mere possibility of book-love. Dean kept his mouth shut. Sam was on top of this stuff much better than him on this hunt, and he didn’t need to piss off the guy who knew what to do. He’d spent the day too busy being paranoid about if he was going to bite it because some yokel named Boyd ran over him with a truck to research and materials-gather. Sam seemed okay with it. In fact, Sam was more alert than he had been for a while; good sleep catching up with him. Or it was the book-love by proxy.
“Bobby knows what he’s talking about.”
“I know he does. It just feels, I dunno, like we got to the end of a puzzle without all the pieces.”
“Dude, come on,” Dean said. “That’s the lamest thing you’ve said in a long time. We’ve had help from people before.”
“True.” Sam sighed. Dean heard paper rustling as Sam looked through the notes he’d scribbled. “Bobby said bells would stop them, not that we had to put them around their necks.”
Dean pulled the car to a stop. He still had a hard time buying that, but he couldn’t really say that now, after telling Sam he was lame. Because if Bobby said to ring the bells, they should ring the bells.
“You think that’ll work?”
“You’re the one who said Bobby knows his stuff.”
Right. Dean peered out the window. They didn’t know if the Dogs would be in the same spot. Neither he nor Sam had been able to find an evident pattern to their attacks, only that they were scattered in differing locales surrounding the town. The suckers were definitely sneaky. Sneaky wasn’t easy to fight, which was why bells seemed stupid.
“Yeah. But…bells?”
“It worked for Pavlov.” Sam probably thought he didn’t get that. “I’ve been thinking of a way we can use them.”
“Create a perimeter, connect them all with rope, wait for the Dogs to show up and breach the perimeter and then we trip it?” Dean said, putting as much ‘well, duh, fool’ attitude into his tone as he could. “Just an idea. We should have just enough daylight left to get it all set up.”
Dean smirked and got out of the car, leaving Sam with his mouth gaping open. Sometimes Sam forgot that just because he preferred to avoid research didn’t mean he was stupid. Sam needed reminding now and again, and Dean had to admit he enjoyed the hell out of producing those flustered expressions. It was about a minute before Sam got out of the car and joined him at the trunk.
“I hope it’s still around tonight,” Sam said. “Your idea’s decent.”
“Just decent? Sammy, I’m insulted.” Sam huffed out something under his breath and reached for the bells. Big ass suckers. The only store that had what they were looking for had been a feed and livestock supply place, but cowbells should work for what they were going to do. “It was the first and most obvious thing to try. Even if bells are a stupid idea.”
“So you were just being a jackass when you were complaining about putting bells around their necks.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Dean said. “But why did you think we were getting so many of these things? I had the idea as soon as Bobby said bells.”
“Whatever,” Sam said. “Let’s just get working.”
Dean declared himself victor. Reigning champion, actually. They each grabbed a couple bells and clanked over to the general area of yesterday’s attack. Even if the Dogs went on the prowl somewhere else, it still seemed likely that this was their…base of operations, for lack of a better term. He and Sam worked quickly. It was a pretty simple trap; they shouldn’t have any problems making it work and getting out of this crappy little town. Even the casinos were podunk there. He’d won more money, but they were still podunk.
“Okay,” Dean said. He secured the last bell. The trap they’d laid was big enough to hold two Dogs, if there actually were two. “That should do it.”
“So now we wait.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think we should just sit here out it the open. These things aren’t stupid.”
“There isn’t much cover.”
Sam looked unnaturally nervous. If anyone should be on edge, it should be him. Just because nothing had happened to him yet, besides having to drink truly horrible coffee for breakfast, didn’t mean something still couldn’t. Damn. Dean suddenly had an urge to check over his shoulder. He did. A couple times.
“If we leave the car just sitting here, I’m afraid they’ll see it and won’t come back. Most of their victims haven’t shot back. They might remember me.”
“You think we should move the car and walk back?”
“I don’t know. It should be dark by then, but I also don’t like the idea of the car being way out of eyeshot.”
“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” Sam said. “I really think this could work.”
He actually sounded like he meant that, which made the nervous facial ticks Sam was now sporting even more out of place. Dean nodded though, and made a mental note to watch his brother carefully. Bobby said the silver bullet idea had merit, but grounding the Dogs first was key. That wasn’t difficult to buy, considering the crazy shit they’d gone through their whole lives.
“Probably, but I don’t know if I’ll be up for a long run after fighting with this thing or things. You didn’t see it. Them.”
“Let’s assume there are two.”
“Right. Anyway, if they hadn’t disappeared earlier, I’m not sure we would have made it to the car,” Dean said. “Even you and your long-ass stride.”
Sam looked at him, consternation written all over his face. Dean had no clue what he’d said that was so annoying. Before he could ask, Sam walked to the car He followed. They loaded the unused rope back into the trunk. As he was getting behind the wheel, it finally dawned on him that Sam might be twitchy on his behalf. They were quite a pair, he thought, both too damn preoccupied with the others’ welfare. That was dangerous to do anywhere, let alone on a hunt. It was also all he had in his life that felt solid. He had to say this anyway.
“We’re going to get these things, Sam. You don’t have to worry about me.”
For a second, Sam said nothing. Dean realized it was the first time either of them had even remotely acknowledged that he could be a walking dead man, though it had apparently been in Sam’s head as much as it had been in his.
“I don’t know how you can say that,” Sam said. “I don’t have to worr… Dean, we don’t know if killing those things will cancel out the portent.”
“We don’t know that it won’t. We can’t go around scared of our own shadows. That’ll get both of us killed.”
“It might be better…” Sam clenched his jaw and looked away.
Here they went again. It would have been better if he’d just kept his mouth shut. Dean started the car, put it in gear and took off, giving it more gas than he should have.
“If…?” he said, waving his right hand for emphasis.
“It might be better if we both get killed than if it’s just you. If anything happens to you, you’ll be dead. I’ll have to go on al…”
Sam drifted off again and the car filled with emptiness. Dean knew exactly what Sam meant, because he would feel the same way, but man, he hated talking about this shit. It suddenly felt as though he had indigestion, his stomach swirling in a way that was uncomfortably reminiscent of the Sam’sgonesomething’swrong feeling he was burdened with so often. He spotted a slight copse of brush and pulled the car behind it. They sat in silence for a minute or two. Dean figured they had the time to pull themselves together before heading out for the hunt. He needed to clear his head of their discussion, and he knew Sam must too.
“I need you to listen to me, Sam,” he said. Dean glanced toward Sam, but not at him, keeping his eyes focused on the dashboard. “We’ve faced worse than portents of death, right? You have to believe things are going to be okay, because if you don’t it’ll just eat at you. A self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.”
He let Sam ruminate on that for a second, expecting some kind of reply sooner or later. When one didn’t come, Dean finally looked directly at Sam…who had his head tipped back against the rest, mouth agape. Son of a bitch, here he was being all existential or whatever and Sam found it a good time to take a nap. The surge of irritation only lasted a moment, then he was relieved. He really did hate the touchy-feely crap. He reached over to shake his brother awake.
~~*~~
On to Part 4
Author: sbg
Rating: R, for language
Category: H/C, Angst, A/A
Season/spoilers: 1/directly follows "Nightmare"
Summary: Sometimes dreams teach, sometimes they tell the future and sometimes they just hurt like hell.
Disclaimer: The Impala, Sam Winchester and (oh, this one hurts) Dean Winchester and various other characters don't belong to me. Some of the things referenced in the story also don't belong to me, but then some of them do. All these things, sans my own words, belong to Kripke Enterprises (Scrap Metal & Entertainment) and The CW. Not trying to step on toes or claim ownership, much as I would really enjoy that.
~~*~~
“Stop. Here. From what I can tell, it looks like the attacks originated along this stretch of the railroad tracks,” Sam said. It was only a couple miles outside city limits. “They’ve happened on several arterial roads since then, all around the edges of town. Like the thing is holding this place captive. Herding the town.”
“And they don’t even know it.”
“Apparently animal incidents aren’t that uncommon out here. It’s only recently they’ve increased enough for anyone to take notice. Regular attacks didn’t really happen at night, either.”
“If the thing has smartened up and has staggered its attacks, you know we probably won’t find much out here, right?” Dean said. He switched off the engine and everything became really quiet for a second. Sam glanced over. Dean was squinting at the rocky landscape. “Its tracks won’t look much different than a regular dog’s. Maybe bigger.”
“We have to start somewhere.” Sam wasn’t entirely sure Dean wasn’t hoping to find nothing. Sam wasn’t entirely sure he was right there with him on that. “Right?”
Dean gave him a funny look, not the first in the past few days, and again Sam didn’t blame him. He knew he wasn’t pulling off normal, but was just too damn tired to try very hard anymore. And apparently it showed. He couldn’t stop thinking. His brain was always on, and it was always tuned to something pretty horrible. His dreams. Nothing in them left him with the underlying sense they were portentous he was familiar with, only apprehension and exhaustion.
“Right.” Sam waited for the inevitable. “You do have my back?”
Sam nodded, but yawned for dramatic effect. It was the perfect thing to do. Dean immediately lost his anxious expression and scowled at him instead. Sam’s door creaked as he opened it and slid out of the car. The air out here was crisp and fresh like it couldn’t be in a city. It helped wake him up and cleared his head. He met Dean at the trunk.
“How sure are we silver bullets are going to work on this thing?” Sam said.
“Yeah, that’s kind of tricky.”
“Tricky how?”
“Tricky as in we’ve never actually fought one before. They’re not a North American phenomena for the most part,” Dean said. He darted Sam a glance and grabbed for the bullets. “Some legends include shape shifting, so we start with silver bullets and improvise if that doesn’t work.”
“And hope like hell we can get away if they don’t work.” Not a happy thought. “What if it’s not even corporeal?”
“Regret skipping your morning runs now, don’t you?”
“Hey, I can take you any day of the week.”
Dean snarked about an unfair advantage, which Sam had to admit was true. By sheer genetic luck, his stride alone made him a decent runner. Unless he purposely slowed his gait just walking, he left people in his wake all the time. Supernatural beings didn’t exactly follow that rule, and since they really did seem to target him he figured Dean’s question was valid. What Dean didn’t know was that Sam counted on it going after him. The Black Dog, if it was here and he felt certain it was, had to come after him. The alternative was one of those horrible things he couldn’t stop thinking about, a thing that wouldn’t come to life if he had anything to do with it.
“You think maybe it lives here?” Dean said. “Just expands out to keep people from hunting it down?”
“It’s got to sleep or…whatever somewhere, right?”
“Dude, if it’s an apparition it’s not really going to sleep.”
“It’s not really going to live, either, is it? Let’s just start looking.”
Dean slammed the trunk shut and started walking away. Sam followed. The railroad tracks were desolate and bare. Sam wondered if it meant anything that the dog had chosen it instead of a road, if maybe it was bigger or different because of its choice of haunting. He decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to dwell on that. It wouldn’t change the ultimate purpose for them tromping around in the near-dark; since they already didn’t know if they had what they needed to get rid of it, size didn’t make that much of a difference.
They split only slightly. Sam made sure he kept a direct line on Dean’s location every second, and he was comforted to know Dean did the same for him. Especially since Dean was the one who’d done the research on the legends while he had scoured the town’s news articles. He did know that it wasn’t a good thing to encounter these things alone. Dean had made sure to stress that about five times on the way out there. Sam stroked the barrel of his pistol lightly. It might have been a better idea to grab a rifle, he thought. If this thing turned out to be big, a handgun wasn’t the best force weapon.
He didn’t see any recent tracks, but then the terrain was rocky and the wind would blow them away pretty quickly. Which it apparently had, if they had ever been there. Sam couldn’t even tell where Dean had walked. He wasn’t exactly the best tracker in the family, though. His skill set was different, way different. There wasn’t much about him that wasn’t diametrically opposite of his brother and father. Sam squinted at the copse of small, gnarly trees and felt as though a big weight pressed down on him. Not physical, he didn’t think, but almost as tangible anyway.
“You got anything, Dean?” he said softly.
“Some EMF activity, but that could be the power lines. These things aren’t that reliable so close to them. You?”
“No, but…”
“What?” Dean said, and Sam could hear his brother tensing just in the way the word came out of his mouth.
“I don’t know, does the air feel…heavy to you?”
“That’s part of what this thing does, Sam. Shake it off.” The feeling couldn’t be what he thought it might be if Dean felt it too. Sam was incredibly relieved to know that. “Keep your head clear.”
Dean had an amazing way of making this all look easy. Sam had to wonder, though, how much of the cool and collected Dean was a façade. He’d seen more and more glimpses of what lay beneath his shell the longer they were on the road together. He still hated that this was his life now, but he did like getting to know Dean on a level he hadn’t been able to as a kid. He was discovering the way he thought Dean had been wasn’t really the way Dean actually was. Everything he thought was black and white was becoming shaded in variations of gray.
Sam shook his head and returned to studying the terrain. And it finally occurred to him that the tracks he should be looking for weren’t necessarily physical. Duh. If the Black Dog was casting a gloom on emotions, then that meant they had found the right spot and that the creature was probably nearby right now.
“Dean,” he said, turning toward his brother again.
Dean stood stock still, frozen in a stance Sam would have recognized immediately even if Dean didn’t have his weapon raised. Their prey wasthere. He brought his own weapon up slowly and silently asked Dean where it was. A simple head bob indicating a point behind him was all he got. Sam resisted the urge to swing around, aware that motion would provoke the Black Dog into action. Dean kept his eyes locked on him long enough to gain assurance Sam wasn’t going to make any sudden movements. At least he didn’t have to worry about Dean being attacked anymore. It was better if it was him; Dean wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Sam’s heart pounded harder, seeming to create pressure from within that rivaled the weight on his shoulders and all around him.
His brother took a careful step, gave Sam one last, long look and then aimed his gun. Sam braced, ready to dive out of the way if he had to. He couldn’t sense anything behind him, had no feeling he was being stalked at all. He relied on Dean’s movements to tell him what was going on behind him. An overwhelming feeling of dread returned, and he tried to suppress it; negative thinking could only get in the way and that was the last thing he needed while Dean had a gun pointed in his general vicinity.
“Down,” Dean ordered sharply.
Sam dove for the ground, and immediately rolled onto his back with his handgun up. Dean’s shot rang out before Sam could get a line on the Black Dog. It didn’t matter. He didn’t see anything. Dean popped off several more shots, though. Sam frowned at the empty space in befuddlement. He stayed flat on his back until he was sure Dean was done, then sat up carefully.
“Dean, what the hell…?” he said, turning his torso to give his brother a glare. “Dean!”
Dean no longer stood where he had but lay on the ground. Sam choked. There was blood, a lot of it, pooling in the hollow at the base of Dean’s neck. An image of Dean lying in Max’s house, bullet hole in the middle of his forehead superimposed itself over his brother for a second, and then switched to what he’d seen in his dream the night before. He shook his head and looked around quickly. Sam didn’t see the Black Dog anywhere. He didn’t bother getting to his feet, scuttling over on hands and knees. The rocky ground tore at his left hand, his right protected by the butt of the gun. This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening again. Sam tried to breathe around the lump that had formed in his throat. He’d failed. He shakily reached out.
“Dean?”
“Shit, that thing is fast,” Dean croaked, fishing around a little. “I did not see that coming.”
Sam let out a shaky laugh. Up close, he saw that there wasn’t as much blood as he’d thought, though there was a decent set of slash marks along Dean’s right jaw line. Right where they’d been in the dream. He winced in sympathy and helped ease Dean to a sitting position. Sam’s heart continued to pump fast, his skin prickled with adrenaline.
“What happened?” Sam said, trying not to sound too scared or too dumb.
“It’s a sneaky bastard.” Dean grunted and clambered to his feet awkwardly, waving his gun hand when Sam tried to help. The other hand pressed against the wound. “I’m not one to run from a fight, but can this wait until we get out of here?”
“Right.”
They walked quickly to the car. Sam was more than a bit concerned by Dean’s inability to walk a straight line. He hovered near enough to catch a fall, but far enough that Dean didn’t object to him doing it. He was still new at this, too, being the one to offer this kind of support. Listening to Jess vent about a bad day was so different. He grimaced.
“Keys.”
Dean didn’t argue, heading right to the passenger seat. Sam popped the trunk and grabbed their makeshift first aid kit. A little gauze would go a long way to soak up the blood, a hell of a lot farther than Dean’s hand. He tossed the kit onto his brother’s lap before he slid behind the wheel. He jammed the key in the ignition at the same time he moved the seat back as far as it would go.
“Aw, man,” Dean said under his breath. Sam glanced over once he got the car on the road. “Why do they always go for the face?”
Sam shook his head and smiled. What remained of his apprehension faded at Dean’s grousing; as long as his brother made bitchy comments, he was all right. Sam checked the rear view mirror and saw nothing but dust. It bothered him that it had all gone down and he hadn’t seen or felt anything. Maybe Dean had been right to question his readiness.
“It won’t even leave a scar, man.”
“Even if it did, it would just make me look rakish and even more handsome.”
“There’s always that,” Sam said, and rolled his eyes.
Darkness was falling around them fast. Sam reached forward and flicked the headlights on. They were already back in city limits. He turned onto West Winnemucca. At night the small-town attempt at Vegas garishness looked sad. Still, he had to admit he found the Butch Cassidy stuff that proliferated the town amusing and a little interesting. Their motel was, however, the most nondescript on the main mini-strip of Winnemucca. Sam pulled the car into the lot.
Dean rolled out of the car with another grumble about his latest war wound. Sam sat in the car for a second, glad to see Dean’s gait had lost its unsteadiness. He got out, and followed his brother into the room. Dean’s jacket was on the floor in a heap, shrugged off carelessly. Dean himself was in the bathroom assessing the damage under the unforgiving fluorescent lighting.
“Hey, see if there are any clear butterfly bandages in the kit, will you?” Dean said. “You’re right. I don’t think these will scar.”
Sam grabbed the jacket off the floor and found the first aid kit under it. He sighed and tossed the jacket onto one of the beds. They’d neglected the kit – there were enough bandages for a first dressing only. Since they were still hunting they’d probably need more. Sam remembered they hadn’t neglected the kit. He had. It had been his turn to keep an eye on it. He hoped there was a decent drug store in town. He took the butterflies, the bottle of Bactine and a couple cotton balls into the bathroom. Dean poked at the deepest scratch.
“Here, let me help.”
“Sam, I can patch my own wounds.”
“I know you can.” Sam set the supplies down on the tank of the toilet. “That’s not the point. I can probably get the bandages on tighter. You don’t want to scar, remember.”
“Fine.”
Dean sat down and looked up toward the ceiling, jaw out; he’d already cleaned up the blood, and the scratches were only oozing a little bit. Sam doused the cotton balls with Bactine and swabbed at Dean’s jaw, snickering lightly at his brother’s annoyed hiss of discomfort.
“So what happened back there?” he said casually.
“I saw the Dog behind you, or at least I thought I did. After you went down and I shot at it, something else came at me.”
“Another Black Dog?” Sam tossed the soiled cotton balls in the trash. He let the skin dry a little, then started applying a butterfly bandage. “They don’t usually travel in packs.”
“Not in the UK. Their MO could be different here, for all we know,” Dean said. “Make sure you get that good and tight…the one that got me was smaller, I think. I didn’t get a great look at it. You really didn’t see any of this?”
“No, I really didn’t. I was busy ducking.” He sounded defensive and he knew it. Sam stuck another bandage on Dean’s jaw with too much force. Dean pulled back and glared at him. “You got off a couple shots, Dean, do you think you hit one of them?”
“Unfortunately not. The one behind you dissipated like a spirit, and my other shots were a bit wild.”
“Dissipated from silver? Huh.”
“I wonder if Black Dogs can astral project. Maybe there really was only one, but it looked like two,” Dean said. Sam raised his eyebrows. Dean shrugged. Yeah, that was dumb. “Ambush or astral projection, I didn’t want to be stuck out there in the dark with them coming at us from any direction.”
“What are we going to do, Dean? We’ll have the same problem tomorrow night.”
“But I won’t be bleedin’ all over.” Dean flashed him a smile, rising to his feet. He clapped Sam on the shoulder as he moved past him back into the room. “I figure it couldn’t hurt to do more research. I’ll check to see if any of Dad’s friends have called back yet. They might know something we don’t.”
“And…I’ll go get us something to eat while you do that.”
“It’s like you read my mind,” Dean said. Sam heard the teasing tone and shot Dean a dirty look, who flashed him a smile. “Might as well stock up for a couple days. Buy beer.”
Dean was already sprawled on the bed doing research by watching TV, apparently, when Sam started off in search of food and medical supplies. Giving his brother one last backwards glance as he shut the door, Sam tried to pretend away what both of them knew was a possibility – that Dean seeing the Black Dogs was as good as a death sentence if they didn’t figure out a way to kill the creatures. There was no way to determine if the legend of the Dogs being portents of death was true, but there was no way to determine it wasn’t. Sam didn’t plan on buying many groceries; he hoped they wouldn’t be in Winnemucca very long. If they were, he might end up with a room full of food and no brother.
~~*~~
He’d been certain Pastor Jim would come through for them, but it was Bobby who ended up giving them what they needed. He hoped, anyway. They were on a clock. After Sam came back the previous night without beer and after he also refused to go out for one, they’d spent the evening doing more research. Turned out there weren’t only increased animal attacks, but increased accidental deaths. In a town as small as this one was, that was something they should not have missed the first time around. Second chances were rare in their line of work, after all.
“I’m not sure I get how this is supposed to work,” Dean said. If he told himself the truth, he wasn’t very sure it would even if Bobby knew his stuff. It had never been tested. “If legends say that some manifestations of Black Dogs disappear at the sound of bells, how exactly are we supposed to get one around this monster’s neck? I think that’s a bit of a flaw in the plan.”
“It would have been nice to actually see the source material.”
Leave it to Sam to mourn the mere possibility of book-love. Dean kept his mouth shut. Sam was on top of this stuff much better than him on this hunt, and he didn’t need to piss off the guy who knew what to do. He’d spent the day too busy being paranoid about if he was going to bite it because some yokel named Boyd ran over him with a truck to research and materials-gather. Sam seemed okay with it. In fact, Sam was more alert than he had been for a while; good sleep catching up with him. Or it was the book-love by proxy.
“Bobby knows what he’s talking about.”
“I know he does. It just feels, I dunno, like we got to the end of a puzzle without all the pieces.”
“Dude, come on,” Dean said. “That’s the lamest thing you’ve said in a long time. We’ve had help from people before.”
“True.” Sam sighed. Dean heard paper rustling as Sam looked through the notes he’d scribbled. “Bobby said bells would stop them, not that we had to put them around their necks.”
Dean pulled the car to a stop. He still had a hard time buying that, but he couldn’t really say that now, after telling Sam he was lame. Because if Bobby said to ring the bells, they should ring the bells.
“You think that’ll work?”
“You’re the one who said Bobby knows his stuff.”
Right. Dean peered out the window. They didn’t know if the Dogs would be in the same spot. Neither he nor Sam had been able to find an evident pattern to their attacks, only that they were scattered in differing locales surrounding the town. The suckers were definitely sneaky. Sneaky wasn’t easy to fight, which was why bells seemed stupid.
“Yeah. But…bells?”
“It worked for Pavlov.” Sam probably thought he didn’t get that. “I’ve been thinking of a way we can use them.”
“Create a perimeter, connect them all with rope, wait for the Dogs to show up and breach the perimeter and then we trip it?” Dean said, putting as much ‘well, duh, fool’ attitude into his tone as he could. “Just an idea. We should have just enough daylight left to get it all set up.”
Dean smirked and got out of the car, leaving Sam with his mouth gaping open. Sometimes Sam forgot that just because he preferred to avoid research didn’t mean he was stupid. Sam needed reminding now and again, and Dean had to admit he enjoyed the hell out of producing those flustered expressions. It was about a minute before Sam got out of the car and joined him at the trunk.
“I hope it’s still around tonight,” Sam said. “Your idea’s decent.”
“Just decent? Sammy, I’m insulted.” Sam huffed out something under his breath and reached for the bells. Big ass suckers. The only store that had what they were looking for had been a feed and livestock supply place, but cowbells should work for what they were going to do. “It was the first and most obvious thing to try. Even if bells are a stupid idea.”
“So you were just being a jackass when you were complaining about putting bells around their necks.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Dean said. “But why did you think we were getting so many of these things? I had the idea as soon as Bobby said bells.”
“Whatever,” Sam said. “Let’s just get working.”
Dean declared himself victor. Reigning champion, actually. They each grabbed a couple bells and clanked over to the general area of yesterday’s attack. Even if the Dogs went on the prowl somewhere else, it still seemed likely that this was their…base of operations, for lack of a better term. He and Sam worked quickly. It was a pretty simple trap; they shouldn’t have any problems making it work and getting out of this crappy little town. Even the casinos were podunk there. He’d won more money, but they were still podunk.
“Okay,” Dean said. He secured the last bell. The trap they’d laid was big enough to hold two Dogs, if there actually were two. “That should do it.”
“So now we wait.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think we should just sit here out it the open. These things aren’t stupid.”
“There isn’t much cover.”
Sam looked unnaturally nervous. If anyone should be on edge, it should be him. Just because nothing had happened to him yet, besides having to drink truly horrible coffee for breakfast, didn’t mean something still couldn’t. Damn. Dean suddenly had an urge to check over his shoulder. He did. A couple times.
“If we leave the car just sitting here, I’m afraid they’ll see it and won’t come back. Most of their victims haven’t shot back. They might remember me.”
“You think we should move the car and walk back?”
“I don’t know. It should be dark by then, but I also don’t like the idea of the car being way out of eyeshot.”
“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” Sam said. “I really think this could work.”
He actually sounded like he meant that, which made the nervous facial ticks Sam was now sporting even more out of place. Dean nodded though, and made a mental note to watch his brother carefully. Bobby said the silver bullet idea had merit, but grounding the Dogs first was key. That wasn’t difficult to buy, considering the crazy shit they’d gone through their whole lives.
“Probably, but I don’t know if I’ll be up for a long run after fighting with this thing or things. You didn’t see it. Them.”
“Let’s assume there are two.”
“Right. Anyway, if they hadn’t disappeared earlier, I’m not sure we would have made it to the car,” Dean said. “Even you and your long-ass stride.”
Sam looked at him, consternation written all over his face. Dean had no clue what he’d said that was so annoying. Before he could ask, Sam walked to the car He followed. They loaded the unused rope back into the trunk. As he was getting behind the wheel, it finally dawned on him that Sam might be twitchy on his behalf. They were quite a pair, he thought, both too damn preoccupied with the others’ welfare. That was dangerous to do anywhere, let alone on a hunt. It was also all he had in his life that felt solid. He had to say this anyway.
“We’re going to get these things, Sam. You don’t have to worry about me.”
For a second, Sam said nothing. Dean realized it was the first time either of them had even remotely acknowledged that he could be a walking dead man, though it had apparently been in Sam’s head as much as it had been in his.
“I don’t know how you can say that,” Sam said. “I don’t have to worr… Dean, we don’t know if killing those things will cancel out the portent.”
“We don’t know that it won’t. We can’t go around scared of our own shadows. That’ll get both of us killed.”
“It might be better…” Sam clenched his jaw and looked away.
Here they went again. It would have been better if he’d just kept his mouth shut. Dean started the car, put it in gear and took off, giving it more gas than he should have.
“If…?” he said, waving his right hand for emphasis.
“It might be better if we both get killed than if it’s just you. If anything happens to you, you’ll be dead. I’ll have to go on al…”
Sam drifted off again and the car filled with emptiness. Dean knew exactly what Sam meant, because he would feel the same way, but man, he hated talking about this shit. It suddenly felt as though he had indigestion, his stomach swirling in a way that was uncomfortably reminiscent of the Sam’sgonesomething’swrong feeling he was burdened with so often. He spotted a slight copse of brush and pulled the car behind it. They sat in silence for a minute or two. Dean figured they had the time to pull themselves together before heading out for the hunt. He needed to clear his head of their discussion, and he knew Sam must too.
“I need you to listen to me, Sam,” he said. Dean glanced toward Sam, but not at him, keeping his eyes focused on the dashboard. “We’ve faced worse than portents of death, right? You have to believe things are going to be okay, because if you don’t it’ll just eat at you. A self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.”
He let Sam ruminate on that for a second, expecting some kind of reply sooner or later. When one didn’t come, Dean finally looked directly at Sam…who had his head tipped back against the rest, mouth agape. Son of a bitch, here he was being all existential or whatever and Sam found it a good time to take a nap. The surge of irritation only lasted a moment, then he was relieved. He really did hate the touchy-feely crap. He reached over to shake his brother awake.
~~*~~
On to Part 4
