Part 10 – Three months later…
(October 9, 2007)
Liz shook her head at her companions. Max, Isabel and Sam were having a heated argument about some obscure points of law. Law backgrounds made for elongated discussions.
"Wow. Could there be anything more boring?" Dean groaned.
"They're competitive. I never play monopoly with them anymore." Liz leaned back so he could hear her over the music and arguing. "My husband swears he's a passive player but they're both cutthroat."
"If you're gonna play. Play to win." He pulled a deck of cards out. "You play?"
"I'm warning you. I learned from the best."
"I'll heed your warning this time. Gary, Stan, Mary." Dean called over. "Want to make it interesting?"
"Texas Hold 'Em." Kyle plopped himself down at the table. "It's the surest way to ensure fair dealing."
"I agree." Michael sat down.
"What's Texas Hold 'Em?" Maria sat next to Liz.
"You get two cards. Then the table shares the Flop, the River and the Turn. That's seven cards but you can only play five." Liz explained while Dean shuffled. "It's poker, so all the winning hands are the same. You have to ante before you can look at your cards. Then you bluff your way through. Bid before the Flop. Keep your poker face through the River and the Turn, bids in between. Best hand wins. You can fold, you can call and you can raise. You can check if you want but I don't recommend it."
"If you hadn't warned me beforehand, that little instructional speech would have tipped me off." Dean commented as he dealt them each a hand.
"I used to sit in on my dad's poker night sometimes."
"Sometimes?" Kyle snorted. "Right."
"I'm demanding rotating dealers." Liz narrowed her eyes at Dean. "It's not that I don't trust you but you are a pool shark. I don't know you aren't a card sharp, too."
Dean shrugged and grinned. "Can't say I blame you for being cautious. I do have a reputation that I work hard at maintaining."
Sam ignored the game going on behind him. 'Nathan' and 'Amanda' were arguing over how their father had won a particular case. "Can I ask what the hell you all are doing out here, in the middle of nowhere, if you came from a family of lawyers?"
"Your father was a Marine and a mechanic if I have my facts straight. What are you doing out here? Driving from town to town, supposedly working as bible salesmen? A person might think you're on the run." Isabel countered quickly. The questions hung in the air for a few long moments.
"Alright then. Truce." Sam held his hand out. Hesitantly, Max took it.
"Truce." Max nodded. "So. What's that they have going over there?"
"Table's full!" Michael called over. "No cutting in, now."
"Come on. I'll take his money, too." Dean smiled broadly at the ladies. "Why not?"
"Lil is good but Nat is better. You don't want him in on this game." Kyle explained.
"Come on." Max scooted his chair in behind Liz.
"Not tonight, Nathan." Liz pecked his lips as she folded her cards down so he couldn't see them.
"Am I playing this right?" Maria complained as she anted for the cards.
"We're not playing yet, Marie. We ante. We check out our cards, then we bet." Dean explained calmly. "Keep up or I'll let Nathan have your cards."
"What am I doing playing cards when I could be getting laid?" Kyle griped as he followed the ante and then the call.
"At least you're playing cards and have gotten some recently. I think my virginity grew back." Isabel commented as she studied the cards she could see.
Liz nudged her husband, who had pretended not to hear a thing. She nudged him again. They shared a look. Max sighed. "I'm gonna regret this but… Amanda."
"What's up? Your wife have a killer hand?" Isabel called over as she examined Michael and Kyle's hands up close.
"Gary and I were going to swing that way in the not so distant future. You want to come?" His eyes flicked to hers but only for a second.
"What way?" She sat up. "Massachusetts? From here? Why?"
"We're going. Do you want to come and pay him a visit?" Max groaned when Michael started glaring daggers at him.
"Why? Why now?" She straightened, a towering force over the poker table.
"Fine. No shore leave for you, soldier." Max got up and took Liz's drink to refill.
"Wait. I didn't say I didn't want to go." Isabel stood startled but followed him into the kitchen. "Do you mean it?"
"For a visit. I'm not entirely sure it's safe enough for you to stay there but we'll be around to make sure no one makes any calls to anyone if you want to see him."
"Is she twisting your arm?"
"No, but she would have if I didn't offer. It's been a while. Maybe it's been long enough."
--
"I totally kicked her ass." Dean boasted as he tucked away his winnings.
"Good. She embarrassed you at pool." Sam nodded as he ran his blurry eyes over a bunch of flagged articles. He wasn't planning on finding a hunt this late in the night but it might keep his brother from boasting too loudly until he passed out. His phone rang and he picked up after a bit of fumbling. "Hello?" He sat up and glanced at the time. "How long?" He put off Dean's interested look. "We'll be there."
"Sam?"
"You drive. We have to get to New England by week's end."
"Who was that?"
"A friend of a friend. Interesting serial murder that somehow is not making the papers." Sam picked up the laptop and turned it on even as he was gathering his things.
"What kind of case?"
"She didn't have a clear picture but she knows something bad is going on and the cops can't handle it."
"She?" Dean made a face at his brother. "She? Just some she. I don't get a last name."
"Just get in the car." Sam made a face at his brother. "We don't have time to gossip."
--
Max slid into bed next to his wife. She just smiled at him and made herself comfortable. "Who'd you call?"
"No one. Just Sam. Forgot to give him a message." She shook her head. "They're leaving soon. Glad I caught him to pass it along."
"Oh, okay." Max accepted her answer but still, he felt she was holding back.
TBC
These Dreams (SN,XO,UC, Adult) (Complete)
Moderators: Itzstacie, Forum Moderators
Part 11
Part 11 – Later that year…
(November 20, 2007)
Sam was taking a shower and Dean was bored. He eyed the laptop for a minute before booting it up and opening all the regular search engines they used. Dean tapped the keys lightly as his eyes flicked over the screen. He couldn't find a Lillian Sparks anywhere. He tried Nathan and Nathaniel Sparks but still came up empty. How they managed to cover tracks that well was beyond him unless… Lillian and Nathan were not really Sparks. Age search, marriage licenses. Nothing came up. Nothing even close.
Closing the searches, he moved on to the subjects at hand. It was a standard ghost hunt but he needed locations. Gravesites for twenty men and women whose remains had been removed from a fire and later buried in family plots all over the metropolitan area. He hated big cities. No sense of community. Nothing easily done when it came to mass hauntings and salting the graves of the perpetrators.
"Hey Dean!"
"Yeah?"
"Dean!"
"Yeah!" Dean looked to the bathroom door but Sam was not coming out.
"Dean!"
Leaping out of his seat, he threw his weight against the door and burst in to find Sam clutching at the shower door to stay on his feet as a vision rocked his brain. Dean hauled Sam fully out of the shower and held onto him as the pain came and went. "Sam? Sam? You okay? Sammy?"
At long last, he stilled and took a deep breath. "It's Sam… and we can't stay here. We have to get to… Archer Orchards."
"Where's that?"
"Don't know." Sam shook his head slowly; waiting to make sure the pain wouldn't be back any time soon.
"You okay now?"
"Yeah." He nodded slowly.
"Good." Dean whipped a towel off the rack and tossed it over his brother's naked body. "Get dressed." He set about getting a clue about Archer Orchards while Sam pulled himself together. "So, another one of your freaky psychic friends gone psycho?"
"Maybe." Sam emerged finally, dressed and in search of his shoes and a bottle of pain reliever. "It was the sign for the orchard. A girl. Blonde. Impaled with a sapling. I couldn't see who was there but…"
"Cause you dreamed it, it's one of your freaky psychic friends gone psycho… again." Dean waved him off. "We'll run through here later and salt those graves. Getting around the city takes more planning. We'll have to call in a few bomb threats to keep people out of that building."
"Or ask the mayor…"
"To lock down the first, third and fourth floors of his town hall? Right. I'll get right on that after I reinstate myself as a living citizen of this our fine paranoid country."
--
Max sat on the edge of the bed, towel drying his hair until Liz emerged from the shower. He watched her comb out her hair, put on moisturizer, and brush her teeth. He waited but she didn't seem to notice. "When are you going to tell me, Liz?"
"Tell you what?" She mouthed out while applying Chap Stick.
"Marty said you passed out again. But you haven't told anyone what you saw." He waited but she didn't turn around. It was the hesitation in her response that confirmed his fears.
Her eyes flicked to his in the reflection then back down to her bathroom supplies. "Who says I saw anything?"
"Are you sick?"
She sighed heavily. "No."
"Then what did you see?" He waited but she just stood there. "You want me to tell you the truth, implying that I'm a liar or that I keep secrets but you don't tell me the truth… You're the one who said we had to stop playing at house and live a real marriage… I can't do it alone."
"Is that what you feel? That you're doing this alone?" She turned slowly, her eyes wide.
"It's not the first time you've had a vision and not told anyone. I know that you want a semi-normal existence and that it involves hiding what we are but we shouldn't hide from each other."
"Max…" She crossed to sit next to him. "They aren't like my other visions."
"How?"
"It hits me hard. I pass out. When I come to, that's when I see it." She took a breath. "I don’t fully understand it and it's kind of hard to explain… I have some theories but I don't know if that's the right way to say it. Because what I see is so intense. I need some time to process it and fully accept what it is I saw."
"That's not how they usually happen?"
"No. I might freeze for a moment but it's there and I see it. No pain. And I know what it means usually." She slipped her hands into his. "And I tell you. They are things that you have to do. We have to do."
"And the other ones? The intense ones?"
"The first one was Sam and Dean when they killed that thing that took Pete's daughter. The one after that was just so very impressionistic. I don't always understand. There's something Evil. Usually there's a pair of eyes. Calculating. Hunting. The good guy but there's a shadow over him. I don't always see how Evil is killed. I don't always see what the Evil is… there's nothing for me to do but wait and see if it gets clearer."
"You keep saying Evil. What does that mean?"
"I don't know. Just Evil. Something we've never seen before. Something that we can't go after ourselves."
"If you can't do anything about it… why are you seeing it?"
"I don't know, Max." She lied. She hated to lie but lying was easier than saying that something big was going to happen but she didn't know exactly what.
"When I had to go do that thing… the crowbars made out of… what was that about?"
"Something I saw. I don't know why but I know it will help… somewhere down the road."
"Are you happy here?" He turned to her, to watch her expression, to see if she would lie to him anymore.
"Yes. I like it. We have our own space without worrying about thin walls. There's two blocks between us and interruptions. Look. We decorated our space. It looks like we live here and don't just exist in the space. It feels like a home." She scooted into his arms. "I don’t want to leave Valor Springs."
Max felt his throat go dry. He could feel her fear. A fear she hadn't yet named. "Is something bad going to happen if we leave?"
"I don't know. I just… we have a good thing going here. We have friends, Max. Actual friends with people we didn’t grow up with, who don't know the truth but friends." She took a breath and leaned her forehead against his. "Bobby and Marty trust us. We kind of trust them, you know? It's… this town. The secrets this town keeps. We've become one of them. I have no doubt that if the FBI did come with pictures of us and guns… Bobby and Marty and all their friends would point a gun back and tell us in time to run."
"You feel that?"
"I feel it. Some place in my mind knows it. This is where we need to be."
"Okay. If you're happy, we'll stick it out but we still need to be careful. I trust Marty and Bobby to a degree but I can't trust anyone as much as I trust you and our family."
"I know."
A few days later…
(November 23, 2007)
"Cookies!" Kyle exclaimed when he saw them in the corner of the box Liz had brought for his lunch."
"There's a Salisbury steak and garlic potatoes in there, too." Liz commented as she hopped up on the hood of a nearby car.
"Yes, but cookies. Aw…" He drooled as he bit into one. "Homemade cookies. Where'd they come from?"
"I baked them. It feels good to be at that place where doing these things doesn't feel like a chore." She managed a self-satisfied smile as she thought about how much fun she'd had baking while Max was out looking for a second job to save a little extra cash in case a spontaneous road trip was needed.
"How is the honeymoon suite working out?" He watched her slide back into her own head. He was trying to keep things light-hearted but he could tell she was carrying around a weight of late.
"I think after the first year, honeymoon stuff is over."
"Right. It's your first home… or hovel. Whichever. I think the honeymoon stuff starts over… especially with you guys."
She screwed up her face, bit her lip and almost didn't say it but she had to. "He found out about me passing out the other day."
"I didn't say a word."
"Marty told him."
"Dammit. We missed someone." Kyle snapped his fingers then began wolfing down his homemade meal. "Am I gonna be getting more and more homemade stuff from now on?"
"Probably. I don't cook for sluts though. No seducing the ladies through my cooking." She made a face at him but appreciated his attempt to cheer her up.
"Yes, the ladies. They are ever so kind to a student of Winchester lines."
"Oh come on." She rolled her eyes. She'd heard her share of those lines. They were all cheesy and she couldn't believe any self-respecting woman fell for them… then again, maybe that's why sometimes they worked.
"I'm telling you. If you can pull off the sincere eyes and not laugh when you deliver, they eat it up."
"Hey, Stan." Liz cleared her throat. "Did you do what I asked?"
"Sneak some depleted uranium, melt it down into pellets and drive out to Rutherford and stick it inside a locker and mail the key to some mailbox drop we've never used before? Yeah." He looked up and wiped some gravy from his face. "Did that cover it?"
"Yeah." She nodded stiffly.
"Do I get to know why or is this just another secret we keep from your man and hope to god he doesn't find out?"
"I'm not sure what it's about yet, Stan. I'm still working it out."
"Why are you so secretive about this, Lillian? Is the world ending again?"
"Not the whole world, no. I just… I don't have all the details yet but as soon as I do… right now it's just useless to worry everyone when I don't even know what's going on. If Gary gets wind… he'll be on me until I do and who knows how long that will be."
"As long as we don't have to pretend to sleep together again. I seriously thought he was going to kill me after that stunt… especially when you-know-what happened? No witnesses, a thousand places to hide the body. I feared for my life, and even now with the pebble tossing that is my newest asset."
"Do you trust me?"
"With the future vision stuff? Sure. So long as you let me know before I'm about to die so I can make sure my karma is balanced." Kyle munched for a bit, while Liz hummed something totally out of character for her. "What in the hell are you singing?"
"No clue. I think Marty's jukebox is melting my brain."
--
Sam slid the key into the slot and turned it quickly, peering over his shoulder as he reached in for a few envelopes hiding inside. He quickly locked it back up and jogged out to the Impala where Dean was drumming on the steering wheel and shouting out the lyrics to a BTO song. "You ain't seen nothing yet… B-b-b-b-b-baby!"
"Randy! Your band hates you!" Sam shouted over the music, eyes on the contents of the mailbox drop.
"Robbie was just jealous cause Randy had all the fame and the dames." Dean grinned broadly, obviously implying that he was the 'Randy' of the two brothers.
"We are the only two people in the world who know who Randy and Robbie are… I really don't think that makes us privileged individuals." Sam groaned as the music really started to grate on his nerves.
"Philistine!"
"You know what a Philistine is?" Sam stared at his brother.
"Hey. I'm also fluent in Latin. I know my bible, too." Dean shouted over the music. "What'd we get?"
"Um…" Sam turned down the music before flipping through the three envelopes in his hand.
Dean turned it back up. Sam turned it back down. "Come on. It's supposed to be loud."
"You're old. You need it that loud. I still have some hearing left." Sam ignored the finger when Dean threw it. "We have… a message from someone named Iona that there's spirit activity in a house down the street from her. Dad helped her out a few years back… Geez. We're going to have to break the news, aren't we."
"Looks like." Dean nodded but didn't attempt to raise the volume again. "We'll need to restock on rock salt before we go… to…"
"Davidson, Virginia." Sam set the envelope on the dashboard. "There's… a… receipt of cancellation for Dad's cell… because we haven't paid on it, I guess, or the card he put it on came up as stolen."
Cancellation. The man was dead. Not cancelled. Dean's good mood faded just a bit. "Anything else, Sam?"
"A key?" He held it out. "No note. No return address but it's…"
"To another mailbox." Dean took it and examined it. "It doesn’t say where?"
"No. Dad might've known probably."
"Maybe. We'll hold onto it." Dean slipped it into his wallet. "Where's the postmark from?"
"Huh… Rutherford."
"Why 'huh'?" Dean looked to his brother.
"It's where Bobby would run for the expensive parts we needed for the Impala." Sam frowned at the envelope. "But Bobby would have called us or sent a note."
"We'll call him on the way to restock. Maybe he'll know something."
TBC
(November 20, 2007)
Sam was taking a shower and Dean was bored. He eyed the laptop for a minute before booting it up and opening all the regular search engines they used. Dean tapped the keys lightly as his eyes flicked over the screen. He couldn't find a Lillian Sparks anywhere. He tried Nathan and Nathaniel Sparks but still came up empty. How they managed to cover tracks that well was beyond him unless… Lillian and Nathan were not really Sparks. Age search, marriage licenses. Nothing came up. Nothing even close.
Closing the searches, he moved on to the subjects at hand. It was a standard ghost hunt but he needed locations. Gravesites for twenty men and women whose remains had been removed from a fire and later buried in family plots all over the metropolitan area. He hated big cities. No sense of community. Nothing easily done when it came to mass hauntings and salting the graves of the perpetrators.
"Hey Dean!"
"Yeah?"
"Dean!"
"Yeah!" Dean looked to the bathroom door but Sam was not coming out.
"Dean!"
Leaping out of his seat, he threw his weight against the door and burst in to find Sam clutching at the shower door to stay on his feet as a vision rocked his brain. Dean hauled Sam fully out of the shower and held onto him as the pain came and went. "Sam? Sam? You okay? Sammy?"
At long last, he stilled and took a deep breath. "It's Sam… and we can't stay here. We have to get to… Archer Orchards."
"Where's that?"
"Don't know." Sam shook his head slowly; waiting to make sure the pain wouldn't be back any time soon.
"You okay now?"
"Yeah." He nodded slowly.
"Good." Dean whipped a towel off the rack and tossed it over his brother's naked body. "Get dressed." He set about getting a clue about Archer Orchards while Sam pulled himself together. "So, another one of your freaky psychic friends gone psycho?"
"Maybe." Sam emerged finally, dressed and in search of his shoes and a bottle of pain reliever. "It was the sign for the orchard. A girl. Blonde. Impaled with a sapling. I couldn't see who was there but…"
"Cause you dreamed it, it's one of your freaky psychic friends gone psycho… again." Dean waved him off. "We'll run through here later and salt those graves. Getting around the city takes more planning. We'll have to call in a few bomb threats to keep people out of that building."
"Or ask the mayor…"
"To lock down the first, third and fourth floors of his town hall? Right. I'll get right on that after I reinstate myself as a living citizen of this our fine paranoid country."
--
Max sat on the edge of the bed, towel drying his hair until Liz emerged from the shower. He watched her comb out her hair, put on moisturizer, and brush her teeth. He waited but she didn't seem to notice. "When are you going to tell me, Liz?"
"Tell you what?" She mouthed out while applying Chap Stick.
"Marty said you passed out again. But you haven't told anyone what you saw." He waited but she didn't turn around. It was the hesitation in her response that confirmed his fears.
Her eyes flicked to his in the reflection then back down to her bathroom supplies. "Who says I saw anything?"
"Are you sick?"
She sighed heavily. "No."
"Then what did you see?" He waited but she just stood there. "You want me to tell you the truth, implying that I'm a liar or that I keep secrets but you don't tell me the truth… You're the one who said we had to stop playing at house and live a real marriage… I can't do it alone."
"Is that what you feel? That you're doing this alone?" She turned slowly, her eyes wide.
"It's not the first time you've had a vision and not told anyone. I know that you want a semi-normal existence and that it involves hiding what we are but we shouldn't hide from each other."
"Max…" She crossed to sit next to him. "They aren't like my other visions."
"How?"
"It hits me hard. I pass out. When I come to, that's when I see it." She took a breath. "I don’t fully understand it and it's kind of hard to explain… I have some theories but I don't know if that's the right way to say it. Because what I see is so intense. I need some time to process it and fully accept what it is I saw."
"That's not how they usually happen?"
"No. I might freeze for a moment but it's there and I see it. No pain. And I know what it means usually." She slipped her hands into his. "And I tell you. They are things that you have to do. We have to do."
"And the other ones? The intense ones?"
"The first one was Sam and Dean when they killed that thing that took Pete's daughter. The one after that was just so very impressionistic. I don't always understand. There's something Evil. Usually there's a pair of eyes. Calculating. Hunting. The good guy but there's a shadow over him. I don't always see how Evil is killed. I don't always see what the Evil is… there's nothing for me to do but wait and see if it gets clearer."
"You keep saying Evil. What does that mean?"
"I don't know. Just Evil. Something we've never seen before. Something that we can't go after ourselves."
"If you can't do anything about it… why are you seeing it?"
"I don't know, Max." She lied. She hated to lie but lying was easier than saying that something big was going to happen but she didn't know exactly what.
"When I had to go do that thing… the crowbars made out of… what was that about?"
"Something I saw. I don't know why but I know it will help… somewhere down the road."
"Are you happy here?" He turned to her, to watch her expression, to see if she would lie to him anymore.
"Yes. I like it. We have our own space without worrying about thin walls. There's two blocks between us and interruptions. Look. We decorated our space. It looks like we live here and don't just exist in the space. It feels like a home." She scooted into his arms. "I don’t want to leave Valor Springs."
Max felt his throat go dry. He could feel her fear. A fear she hadn't yet named. "Is something bad going to happen if we leave?"
"I don't know. I just… we have a good thing going here. We have friends, Max. Actual friends with people we didn’t grow up with, who don't know the truth but friends." She took a breath and leaned her forehead against his. "Bobby and Marty trust us. We kind of trust them, you know? It's… this town. The secrets this town keeps. We've become one of them. I have no doubt that if the FBI did come with pictures of us and guns… Bobby and Marty and all their friends would point a gun back and tell us in time to run."
"You feel that?"
"I feel it. Some place in my mind knows it. This is where we need to be."
"Okay. If you're happy, we'll stick it out but we still need to be careful. I trust Marty and Bobby to a degree but I can't trust anyone as much as I trust you and our family."
"I know."
A few days later…
(November 23, 2007)
"Cookies!" Kyle exclaimed when he saw them in the corner of the box Liz had brought for his lunch."
"There's a Salisbury steak and garlic potatoes in there, too." Liz commented as she hopped up on the hood of a nearby car.
"Yes, but cookies. Aw…" He drooled as he bit into one. "Homemade cookies. Where'd they come from?"
"I baked them. It feels good to be at that place where doing these things doesn't feel like a chore." She managed a self-satisfied smile as she thought about how much fun she'd had baking while Max was out looking for a second job to save a little extra cash in case a spontaneous road trip was needed.
"How is the honeymoon suite working out?" He watched her slide back into her own head. He was trying to keep things light-hearted but he could tell she was carrying around a weight of late.
"I think after the first year, honeymoon stuff is over."
"Right. It's your first home… or hovel. Whichever. I think the honeymoon stuff starts over… especially with you guys."
She screwed up her face, bit her lip and almost didn't say it but she had to. "He found out about me passing out the other day."
"I didn't say a word."
"Marty told him."
"Dammit. We missed someone." Kyle snapped his fingers then began wolfing down his homemade meal. "Am I gonna be getting more and more homemade stuff from now on?"
"Probably. I don't cook for sluts though. No seducing the ladies through my cooking." She made a face at him but appreciated his attempt to cheer her up.
"Yes, the ladies. They are ever so kind to a student of Winchester lines."
"Oh come on." She rolled her eyes. She'd heard her share of those lines. They were all cheesy and she couldn't believe any self-respecting woman fell for them… then again, maybe that's why sometimes they worked.
"I'm telling you. If you can pull off the sincere eyes and not laugh when you deliver, they eat it up."
"Hey, Stan." Liz cleared her throat. "Did you do what I asked?"
"Sneak some depleted uranium, melt it down into pellets and drive out to Rutherford and stick it inside a locker and mail the key to some mailbox drop we've never used before? Yeah." He looked up and wiped some gravy from his face. "Did that cover it?"
"Yeah." She nodded stiffly.
"Do I get to know why or is this just another secret we keep from your man and hope to god he doesn't find out?"
"I'm not sure what it's about yet, Stan. I'm still working it out."
"Why are you so secretive about this, Lillian? Is the world ending again?"
"Not the whole world, no. I just… I don't have all the details yet but as soon as I do… right now it's just useless to worry everyone when I don't even know what's going on. If Gary gets wind… he'll be on me until I do and who knows how long that will be."
"As long as we don't have to pretend to sleep together again. I seriously thought he was going to kill me after that stunt… especially when you-know-what happened? No witnesses, a thousand places to hide the body. I feared for my life, and even now with the pebble tossing that is my newest asset."
"Do you trust me?"
"With the future vision stuff? Sure. So long as you let me know before I'm about to die so I can make sure my karma is balanced." Kyle munched for a bit, while Liz hummed something totally out of character for her. "What in the hell are you singing?"
"No clue. I think Marty's jukebox is melting my brain."
--
Sam slid the key into the slot and turned it quickly, peering over his shoulder as he reached in for a few envelopes hiding inside. He quickly locked it back up and jogged out to the Impala where Dean was drumming on the steering wheel and shouting out the lyrics to a BTO song. "You ain't seen nothing yet… B-b-b-b-b-baby!"
"Randy! Your band hates you!" Sam shouted over the music, eyes on the contents of the mailbox drop.
"Robbie was just jealous cause Randy had all the fame and the dames." Dean grinned broadly, obviously implying that he was the 'Randy' of the two brothers.
"We are the only two people in the world who know who Randy and Robbie are… I really don't think that makes us privileged individuals." Sam groaned as the music really started to grate on his nerves.
"Philistine!"
"You know what a Philistine is?" Sam stared at his brother.
"Hey. I'm also fluent in Latin. I know my bible, too." Dean shouted over the music. "What'd we get?"
"Um…" Sam turned down the music before flipping through the three envelopes in his hand.
Dean turned it back up. Sam turned it back down. "Come on. It's supposed to be loud."
"You're old. You need it that loud. I still have some hearing left." Sam ignored the finger when Dean threw it. "We have… a message from someone named Iona that there's spirit activity in a house down the street from her. Dad helped her out a few years back… Geez. We're going to have to break the news, aren't we."
"Looks like." Dean nodded but didn't attempt to raise the volume again. "We'll need to restock on rock salt before we go… to…"
"Davidson, Virginia." Sam set the envelope on the dashboard. "There's… a… receipt of cancellation for Dad's cell… because we haven't paid on it, I guess, or the card he put it on came up as stolen."
Cancellation. The man was dead. Not cancelled. Dean's good mood faded just a bit. "Anything else, Sam?"
"A key?" He held it out. "No note. No return address but it's…"
"To another mailbox." Dean took it and examined it. "It doesn’t say where?"
"No. Dad might've known probably."
"Maybe. We'll hold onto it." Dean slipped it into his wallet. "Where's the postmark from?"
"Huh… Rutherford."
"Why 'huh'?" Dean looked to his brother.
"It's where Bobby would run for the expensive parts we needed for the Impala." Sam frowned at the envelope. "But Bobby would have called us or sent a note."
"We'll call him on the way to restock. Maybe he'll know something."
TBC
12
Part 12 – Some months later… Spring 2008
(April 8, 2008)
Dean stepped inside and glanced around the "guest house" where he had spent a summer while Dad had fought and hunted. It had been barely livable back then. Now it had yellow curtains and doilies and felt very much like someone's home. Very Nathan and Lillian. A wall was occupied solely by one picture, hand drawn, of Lillian and Nathan in ill-fitting wedding attire. It reminded him of the picture Sammy used to have of Mom and Dad before he'd lost it in Jess's fire. Dad loved Mom and from that picture, Dean had always known she loved him back.
"Sorry," Nathan rubbed a towel over his hair, a second towel wrapped around his hips. "I couldn't hear you knocking back there." He glanced around, trying to remember where it had been put. "I'd forgotten about it. Bobby took off weeks ago but…" He reached to open a drawer next to the door and rifled through it a moment. "Anyway. You're lucky I heard you at all."
"I remember that as a crap shower." Dean pointed to the standing room only bathroom in the back of the small building. Anything to take his eyes off the nearly-naked man in front of him. "Get a better spray from a drizzle."
"It was but…" Max almost told Dean the truth. He had gotten to know the guy way too well. "I had to make it more accommodating for my wife."
"Right." Dean nodded and took the notebook when it was handed over. "Thanks for this. Bobby never takes off like that."
"He said it was important and you'd be by for that… but you know Bobby, man of few words. Lillian's the one that talked to him. I don't know for sure if there was more to the message."
"He didn't say when he'd be back?"
"No. Left in a hurry…" Max debated for a moment. Who knew what was going on with Bobby and all the whispering between him and Marty before the man took off. "With a box of books and a trunk of guns… but I don't think he's out hunting deer. Is he in some kind of trouble?"
"Nah… Bobby is a student of war philosophy but he doesn't really practice it since leaving the Marines."
"Weekend warrior type."
"Right. Thanks again. I'll let you get back to whatever."
--
Liz handed Sam the takeout boxes of food. "You're not going to stick around? Just food to go?"
"We only really stopped to talk to Bobby but he wasn't there. I said I'd get food. Dean was gonna look for something. If Marty was around… I'd ask him but…"
"Marty made a run to Rutherford. Bobby locked the house up tight." Liz paused a minute. She could let it go and let Dean go around to the cottage or she could just tell Sam the truth since he was standing right in front of her. "I wrote it all down. What you need."
"What's that?" Sam stopped his arrangement of items in his hands.
"Bobby just took off but I knew you'd need to get in there. I left a note on the door for whoever to go around to our house. There's a notebook with incantations and descriptions… a recipe or two. Everything I could see you needed." She whispered, glancing around to make sure no one overheard her hurried instructions.
"Seriously?" He blinked at her. "A… vision? Another one, I mean?"
"Yeah." Liz winced a little. She felt guilty. She should have called Sam or asked Bobby to leave the stuff but she wasn't sure how to broach something so complicated.
"You and me, seriously. We need to compare notes but not right now. We don't have a lot of time." Sam grabbed his boxes and his bag. "You have my number. I'll be waiting for you to call."
--
Liz wiped down the bar one last time and sat to relax while Max cleaned up his mess behind it. She must have drifted off because the next thing she knew, she was on the floor of the bar with several concerned faces staring at her. "What?"
"Are you okay?" Max touched her face lightly. "We've been trying to wake you up for twenty minutes."
"What? I just closed my eyes for a second. Did I fall?"
"Yeah. I only barely caught you." He whispered. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I don't think so." Liz sat up and glanced up at Marty who just stared at her as if she had a second head. "I'm okay. Really."
"You've been doing that a lot lately. Maybe you kids ought to hop on over to Baxter and get the doc to look you over." Marty clapped Max on the back before leaving them alone.
"Li… I… you scared me. Is there something wrong?" Max peered into her face.
"I didn't have a vision if that's what you're asking. I don't know what happened."
"Okay. Let's go home."
Liz let him help her up and practically carry her down to the small cottage they shared. Their friends didn't follow but she knew that Maria would be all over her the next day trying to figure out what was wrong. She sat on the bed and watched Max move around getting doors locked and windows shut. He got her a glass of water and sat at the table they used for meals. He ran his hands over his face. "You scared me, Liz."
"I don't even understand what happened." That felt like a lie as suddenly her vision was filled with images. Pain burst behind her eyes. "He's killed again."
"Liz?" Max watched her eyes flick back and forth as if reading a book that he couldn't see.
"He'll be gone by the time you get there. Why is he killing them?" Liz followed the vision through, scene by scene. "He'll kill again and again. How is he picking them? They don't have anything to do with us."
"Who?"
"Him." She shut her eyes and the glass fell from her hand as her body wilted against the bed. Max shot up to keep her from falling to the floor altogether.
"Liz?" He whispered into her ear. "Liz?"
"Hm?" Her eyes opened just a crack. "What? I just closed my eyes for a second."
"Liz? What happened?" Fear coursed through his veins. He didn't understand at all. Not a bit of it. After all the months of worrying about what she was seeing and why she wasn't saying, it was making some sort of sense but… There was no real understanding it.
"Nothing happened? Are you ready?" Liz tried to sit up but her eyes would not open.
"Ready for what?" Max brushed her hair back out of her face, his knee in a puddle of water.
"To go home. I’m tired." Liz opened her eyes all the way to see the ceiling of her little home behind the body shop. "How did I get here?"
"We walked home. You fainted at work… and again just now. Do you remember?" He blinked back the moisture. She couldn't have just missed that, could she?
"No. I was sitting down, waiting for you to finish up. I just closed my eyes for a second." She squeezed her eyes shut. "My head hurts."
"Okay. It's okay. Maybe you're coming down with something. Marty says there's a doctor in Baxter. I'll trust whoever Marty trusts."
"Okay." She nodded and let Max look her over. Her brain was foggy but she just couldn't remember what had happened.
TBC
(April 8, 2008)
Dean stepped inside and glanced around the "guest house" where he had spent a summer while Dad had fought and hunted. It had been barely livable back then. Now it had yellow curtains and doilies and felt very much like someone's home. Very Nathan and Lillian. A wall was occupied solely by one picture, hand drawn, of Lillian and Nathan in ill-fitting wedding attire. It reminded him of the picture Sammy used to have of Mom and Dad before he'd lost it in Jess's fire. Dad loved Mom and from that picture, Dean had always known she loved him back.
"Sorry," Nathan rubbed a towel over his hair, a second towel wrapped around his hips. "I couldn't hear you knocking back there." He glanced around, trying to remember where it had been put. "I'd forgotten about it. Bobby took off weeks ago but…" He reached to open a drawer next to the door and rifled through it a moment. "Anyway. You're lucky I heard you at all."
"I remember that as a crap shower." Dean pointed to the standing room only bathroom in the back of the small building. Anything to take his eyes off the nearly-naked man in front of him. "Get a better spray from a drizzle."
"It was but…" Max almost told Dean the truth. He had gotten to know the guy way too well. "I had to make it more accommodating for my wife."
"Right." Dean nodded and took the notebook when it was handed over. "Thanks for this. Bobby never takes off like that."
"He said it was important and you'd be by for that… but you know Bobby, man of few words. Lillian's the one that talked to him. I don't know for sure if there was more to the message."
"He didn't say when he'd be back?"
"No. Left in a hurry…" Max debated for a moment. Who knew what was going on with Bobby and all the whispering between him and Marty before the man took off. "With a box of books and a trunk of guns… but I don't think he's out hunting deer. Is he in some kind of trouble?"
"Nah… Bobby is a student of war philosophy but he doesn't really practice it since leaving the Marines."
"Weekend warrior type."
"Right. Thanks again. I'll let you get back to whatever."
--
Liz handed Sam the takeout boxes of food. "You're not going to stick around? Just food to go?"
"We only really stopped to talk to Bobby but he wasn't there. I said I'd get food. Dean was gonna look for something. If Marty was around… I'd ask him but…"
"Marty made a run to Rutherford. Bobby locked the house up tight." Liz paused a minute. She could let it go and let Dean go around to the cottage or she could just tell Sam the truth since he was standing right in front of her. "I wrote it all down. What you need."
"What's that?" Sam stopped his arrangement of items in his hands.
"Bobby just took off but I knew you'd need to get in there. I left a note on the door for whoever to go around to our house. There's a notebook with incantations and descriptions… a recipe or two. Everything I could see you needed." She whispered, glancing around to make sure no one overheard her hurried instructions.
"Seriously?" He blinked at her. "A… vision? Another one, I mean?"
"Yeah." Liz winced a little. She felt guilty. She should have called Sam or asked Bobby to leave the stuff but she wasn't sure how to broach something so complicated.
"You and me, seriously. We need to compare notes but not right now. We don't have a lot of time." Sam grabbed his boxes and his bag. "You have my number. I'll be waiting for you to call."
--
Liz wiped down the bar one last time and sat to relax while Max cleaned up his mess behind it. She must have drifted off because the next thing she knew, she was on the floor of the bar with several concerned faces staring at her. "What?"
"Are you okay?" Max touched her face lightly. "We've been trying to wake you up for twenty minutes."
"What? I just closed my eyes for a second. Did I fall?"
"Yeah. I only barely caught you." He whispered. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I don't think so." Liz sat up and glanced up at Marty who just stared at her as if she had a second head. "I'm okay. Really."
"You've been doing that a lot lately. Maybe you kids ought to hop on over to Baxter and get the doc to look you over." Marty clapped Max on the back before leaving them alone.
"Li… I… you scared me. Is there something wrong?" Max peered into her face.
"I didn't have a vision if that's what you're asking. I don't know what happened."
"Okay. Let's go home."
Liz let him help her up and practically carry her down to the small cottage they shared. Their friends didn't follow but she knew that Maria would be all over her the next day trying to figure out what was wrong. She sat on the bed and watched Max move around getting doors locked and windows shut. He got her a glass of water and sat at the table they used for meals. He ran his hands over his face. "You scared me, Liz."
"I don't even understand what happened." That felt like a lie as suddenly her vision was filled with images. Pain burst behind her eyes. "He's killed again."
"Liz?" Max watched her eyes flick back and forth as if reading a book that he couldn't see.
"He'll be gone by the time you get there. Why is he killing them?" Liz followed the vision through, scene by scene. "He'll kill again and again. How is he picking them? They don't have anything to do with us."
"Who?"
"Him." She shut her eyes and the glass fell from her hand as her body wilted against the bed. Max shot up to keep her from falling to the floor altogether.
"Liz?" He whispered into her ear. "Liz?"
"Hm?" Her eyes opened just a crack. "What? I just closed my eyes for a second."
"Liz? What happened?" Fear coursed through his veins. He didn't understand at all. Not a bit of it. After all the months of worrying about what she was seeing and why she wasn't saying, it was making some sort of sense but… There was no real understanding it.
"Nothing happened? Are you ready?" Liz tried to sit up but her eyes would not open.
"Ready for what?" Max brushed her hair back out of her face, his knee in a puddle of water.
"To go home. I’m tired." Liz opened her eyes all the way to see the ceiling of her little home behind the body shop. "How did I get here?"
"We walked home. You fainted at work… and again just now. Do you remember?" He blinked back the moisture. She couldn't have just missed that, could she?
"No. I was sitting down, waiting for you to finish up. I just closed my eyes for a second." She squeezed her eyes shut. "My head hurts."
"Okay. It's okay. Maybe you're coming down with something. Marty says there's a doctor in Baxter. I'll trust whoever Marty trusts."
"Okay." She nodded and let Max look her over. Her brain was foggy but she just couldn't remember what had happened.
TBC
Part 13 – Later that week…
(April 11, 2008)
Liz put her own clothes back on. She hated the paper gowns that hospitals made patients wear. The doctor had been nice. Apparently there was big business in keeping a big business looking like a small business. The hospital looked more like a clinic but all the instruments and equipment had been relatively up to date. Max had hovered outside the room the entire time. She could feel him bouncing off the walls. Marty had been a topic Dr. Meyer liked. Apparently she knew a bit of went on in that town.
Dr. Meyer had insisted on a head CT when she heard about the episodes of late. When she had asked several other questions, she had ordered a pregnancy test with it all. Liz had almost refused the blood work until a quick conference with Max had confirmed he was too scared to risk not having it done.
Taking her seat next to Max in Dr. Meyer's office, they waited. She itched to tell Max about the pregnancy test but she didn't want to start a fight or remind him that they hadn't been using any birth control since moving into Bobby's cottage. She was sure he knew but she didn't want it to become an issue again. He took her hand and kissed the back, chafing it between his.
Dr. Meyer walked in with her sienna colored folders. She offered them a smile and sat down. "Well, Mrs. Sparks, you are perfectly healthy."
"That's it?" Max sat up straighter.
"The CT came out clean." She pulled out the film to show them. "You've got a busy brain but that's not unusual. Everybody runs at different rates. The headaches and fainting spells might just be stress."
"I just… pass out and have migraines, then." Liz felt stupid. Stupid for thinking shiny new equipment and nice doctors meant a thorough opinion. It wasn't normal and it wasn't like she could just tell the doctor she'd been having visions. "What about the pregnancy test?"
"I was just getting to that." She pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder. "It came back negative." Max shut his eyes and took a deep breath before looking to see his wife's crestfallen face. He squeezed her hand but she didn't look up. "Have you been trying long?"
"We haven't been trying at all… but we haven't been preventing either." Max quickly filled the doctor in.
"I want a second opinion." Liz blurted out. "I…"
"Mrs. Sparks, there's nothing physically wrong with you. You're young and healthy. I can recommend you to a fertility specialist but the headaches don't seem to be a symptom of anything serious. It could be your diet or vegetation in Valor Springs…"
--
Sam flipped through the paper and clipped out the article when he came to it. He shoved it in his notebook before reaching for the other paper he'd saved. He wanted to chase it down but he knew Dad had never run after anything half-cocked. He had to figure out how to kill the thing before he told Dean about it. There had been another killing. Internal organs had been turned to ash.
Whipping open his laptop, he put in a few search words but he couldn't find anything else in the state. When he widened the search, there were three more over the last few years. He couldn't find anything to connect the men, except that they were all men. Different occupations, different cities. Some married. Some not. Some with kids, some not. Ages all within a few years of each other. He'd have to wait until it surfaced again… and that meant some other man would die.
"Sam… I have got a couple ladies lined up who would like to help us celebrate our latest victory over the forces of evil." Dean banged out a rhythm on the tabletop. "Remind me to thank Bobby when we get back. He made the hunt so much easier than if we would have had to do the reading and research ourselves."
"Yeah. Sure." Sam shook his head. "I'm gonna keep looking for something else to hunt."
"Oh come on, Sam. I have stamina but these two ladies would wear me down. You have to take one." Dean toned it down for a moment. "I know it's been a rough few years, Sam… but you know… you can let loose."
"Your type isn't my type, Dean." Sam shrugged. "Have fun."
Dean nodded to his brother. "Fine."
"That's it? You're not going to fight me anymore?"
"You don't want to party, that's fine. More for me."
--
Liz endured the chattering until her friends went away. Max was waiting but he wasn't going to push her. "Let's take a walk."
Grabbing her jacket, she followed him into the night. They strolled around Bobby's property. The garage, the junk cars. Liz took a seat on a mangled mess of a former car and waited. She watched her husband pace and take deep breaths but he wouldn't go first. "I was hoping that the test would be positive."
"I know." Max lifted his eyes to hers. "It hurt me too. The negative. I don't think this place is home but it might have been nice since we've been here so long."
Relieved to feel he was sharing with her, Liz had to take a step herself. One she had been putting off a while. She knew she couldn't hold it forever as her visions were coming with more rapidity and even her loving husband would notice if she held psychic conferences over the phone. "I told someone a half-truth."
"Sam Winchester?"
"Yeah."
He nodded to that. He had suspected something but he had never been sure what it was. Private jokes and comments. A phone call here and there late at night. "Do I have something to be worried about?"
"No." Liz smiled at her jealous husband. "He's just a friend. A friend with a similar… gift."
"Gift?"
"I see flashes of the future. He sees flashes of present and future but he's got an unreliable form. He doesn't get the whole picture. He gets a piece and he doesn't get emotions like I do. He just sees something and it's hardly ever something he can stop or change." Liz explained what she knew. "We don’t have intense conversations behind your back, Max. If I see something that needs to be done, I give him a call. When I need an understanding ear, he's available."
"How long has he known?"
"Since that time when you weren't with me."
"Not aliens?"
"No. Completely human. He's a nice guy. He had a crappy life. I don't know everything about his gift. He doesn't know everything about mine."
"I didn't realize how hard it would be for you to deal with. I just figured you'd talk to Kyle if it did become you know… a burden… if you couldn't talk to me."
"Kyle's gifts aren't my gifts. We just got them the same traumatic way." Liz explained briefly. She stroked his arm when he stood near enough to her. "I can talk to you but… just like you have things you'd rather not talk about, so do I. Sometimes the things I see aren't… things I want to share."
"Why?"
"Sometimes the things I see are hard to explain, Max. I've told you that. They're not always easy to resolve. Sometimes, I don't know what they mean at all."
"It's very hard for me to know that there are things that you can't share with me." He admitted, allowing her hand to find his, his eyes on his toes as he rubbed at a grease spot in the dirt.
"I'm still learning about this gift, Max. My progress isn't always what I want it to be. It's hard to be scientific about something that is not a hard science. It kind of throws me, you know."
He had to smile at that. His wife, the scientist. It did make sense that someone accustomed to the rules of physics and carbon-based thinking would have a hard time wrapping themselves around a world of fluid and ever-changing mysticism for lack of a better word. He had trouble himself. "I guess I could see that."
"It's just weird sometimes. I could perform a move seven times a day but what makes one moment different from the next? Why do I get a vision from touching a table I touch everyday? What is different about it other than the uniqueness of the date and time when I do?" She grimaced. "I can't even control when I have them. I can't manipulate them to learn more. I have to put it together with what I feel." She sank against the seat she'd chosen. Then she froze.
"Liz?" Max watched her eyes flick back and forth. Then she was leaping out of the car and staring at it. "What happened?"
"This car. What kind is it?" She pointed to the mess of mangled metal, missing doors and torn seats.
Max stared at it with her. "Chevy… maybe Impala. No clue what year."
"Oh my god…" Liz hesitantly touched the seat she'd been sitting on prior to her vision. "Oh my god… They were lucky to get out alive." The passenger side of the car was smashed in. She lightly touched the driver's seat and this time was ready for the assault of images as they came in a Sam flavor.
"Who?"
"This is… the original Winchester Impala." She whispered. Dried blood marred the seats, especially the back seat where she'd been sitting. She fought with a bout of nausea. Blackness threatened to take her over. "Their dad must have been sitting in the back seat."
"Why do you say that?" He tried to steady her as she worked to put together the pieces of the visions.
Bile rose in her throat because the blackness was there, waiting. "I recognized Death. John Winchester must have died in that car."
--
Sam sipped his morning coffee and barely glanced up at his brother when he joined him in the café. Dean stole a sip of Sam's coffee before ordering his own when the waitress stopped by with Sam's breakfast. "So, get lucky?"
Dean only grinned and sank low in his seat. "What were you so engrossed in last night? I saw clippings. Where are we going next?"
"I don't have anything real right now. Just maybe something. It's too soon to know for sure."
"No more mysterious friends without names or… oh yeah, tangibility?" Dean made a face but welcomed his coffee when it arrived.
"We got there in time. We got there with the info we needed. Quit beating my head about it."
"These friends you got…" Dean stopped at the incredulous look on his brother's face. "What?"
Sam shook his head. He didn't want to open that can of worms but it was going to happen eventually. "You're always on my ass about keeping in touch with my college friends but you've got friends too. Friends of Dad's, friends you've made since you've been on the road. Why can't I have friends?"
"Your friends don't understand what we do. We can't get attached to people like that." He could see the look on Sam's face. That face that had always preceded a blowout between Sam and Dad. "Look what happened to the friends Dad had."
"Okay. Tell that to your best bud, Nathan, next time we drive through. He'll think you're only hanging out with him because you want to nail his wife."
"Hey! Would you cut it out with that?" Dean growled. He knew he was an ass but he didn't need anyone accusing him of being an ass when he wasn't. "Maybe, initially, I wanted to nail his wife. They're not half bad and they help out in a pinch without asking any questions."
"So… those friends are alright." Sam pressed. "Stan and Gary and Amanda and Mary… aside from the ever so cool Sparks…"
"Look, normally, I wouldn't bother but…" Dean relented finally. "You're right. People need friends. Bobby and Marty aren't going to be around forever. Lillian has that freaky future-scope in her head. It couldn't hurt to play nice."
"Right."
"Your future-scope is cool but people always die in yours." He wanted to take the words back immediately but it was a truth that they had avoided for a while. When Sam had his visions, people were already dying. Sometimes it was nice to get there before the killing started.
"Thanks a lot. I was having a beauty time coping with that on my own."
"Hey, look. I’m sorry. I didn't mean it like that. If your… freaky psychic shit is related to the Demon… he probably screws with it just enough to freak you out and then what? You drive yourself crazy with guilt and you end up pushing a shopping cart in some city talking to yourself and raving to everyone about the end of days."
"Thank you for that frightening glimpse into the future, Dean." Sam waved off his brother and dug into his breakfast. He was starving but it tasted like dirt.
"Maybe I lay off on ragging on your friends." Dean relented, scowling at the table and not hungry enough to eat when he was so full of his own foot.
"Maybe."
The day after…
(April 12, 2008)
Max took the farthest computer in the library's computer lab and shifted the screen slightly away from everyone else in the room. He ran a search using details from the article Michael had shown him on the shape shifter's victim. Similar articles popped up but he spent many minutes sorting out the ones that matched enough to peak his interest. There were four that he felt were too close to be mistaken. All over the country and he couldn't find any common denominators with the men besides being in their mid-twenties.
Scribbling down the information in a notebook, he knew he'd have to find another way to dig up more at some later date. Trips to out of town libraries were few and far between. They had to keep prepared though. On top of this threat. This Evil as Liz had called it.
TBC
(April 11, 2008)
Liz put her own clothes back on. She hated the paper gowns that hospitals made patients wear. The doctor had been nice. Apparently there was big business in keeping a big business looking like a small business. The hospital looked more like a clinic but all the instruments and equipment had been relatively up to date. Max had hovered outside the room the entire time. She could feel him bouncing off the walls. Marty had been a topic Dr. Meyer liked. Apparently she knew a bit of went on in that town.
Dr. Meyer had insisted on a head CT when she heard about the episodes of late. When she had asked several other questions, she had ordered a pregnancy test with it all. Liz had almost refused the blood work until a quick conference with Max had confirmed he was too scared to risk not having it done.
Taking her seat next to Max in Dr. Meyer's office, they waited. She itched to tell Max about the pregnancy test but she didn't want to start a fight or remind him that they hadn't been using any birth control since moving into Bobby's cottage. She was sure he knew but she didn't want it to become an issue again. He took her hand and kissed the back, chafing it between his.
Dr. Meyer walked in with her sienna colored folders. She offered them a smile and sat down. "Well, Mrs. Sparks, you are perfectly healthy."
"That's it?" Max sat up straighter.
"The CT came out clean." She pulled out the film to show them. "You've got a busy brain but that's not unusual. Everybody runs at different rates. The headaches and fainting spells might just be stress."
"I just… pass out and have migraines, then." Liz felt stupid. Stupid for thinking shiny new equipment and nice doctors meant a thorough opinion. It wasn't normal and it wasn't like she could just tell the doctor she'd been having visions. "What about the pregnancy test?"
"I was just getting to that." She pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder. "It came back negative." Max shut his eyes and took a deep breath before looking to see his wife's crestfallen face. He squeezed her hand but she didn't look up. "Have you been trying long?"
"We haven't been trying at all… but we haven't been preventing either." Max quickly filled the doctor in.
"I want a second opinion." Liz blurted out. "I…"
"Mrs. Sparks, there's nothing physically wrong with you. You're young and healthy. I can recommend you to a fertility specialist but the headaches don't seem to be a symptom of anything serious. It could be your diet or vegetation in Valor Springs…"
--
Sam flipped through the paper and clipped out the article when he came to it. He shoved it in his notebook before reaching for the other paper he'd saved. He wanted to chase it down but he knew Dad had never run after anything half-cocked. He had to figure out how to kill the thing before he told Dean about it. There had been another killing. Internal organs had been turned to ash.
Whipping open his laptop, he put in a few search words but he couldn't find anything else in the state. When he widened the search, there were three more over the last few years. He couldn't find anything to connect the men, except that they were all men. Different occupations, different cities. Some married. Some not. Some with kids, some not. Ages all within a few years of each other. He'd have to wait until it surfaced again… and that meant some other man would die.
"Sam… I have got a couple ladies lined up who would like to help us celebrate our latest victory over the forces of evil." Dean banged out a rhythm on the tabletop. "Remind me to thank Bobby when we get back. He made the hunt so much easier than if we would have had to do the reading and research ourselves."
"Yeah. Sure." Sam shook his head. "I'm gonna keep looking for something else to hunt."
"Oh come on, Sam. I have stamina but these two ladies would wear me down. You have to take one." Dean toned it down for a moment. "I know it's been a rough few years, Sam… but you know… you can let loose."
"Your type isn't my type, Dean." Sam shrugged. "Have fun."
Dean nodded to his brother. "Fine."
"That's it? You're not going to fight me anymore?"
"You don't want to party, that's fine. More for me."
--
Liz endured the chattering until her friends went away. Max was waiting but he wasn't going to push her. "Let's take a walk."
Grabbing her jacket, she followed him into the night. They strolled around Bobby's property. The garage, the junk cars. Liz took a seat on a mangled mess of a former car and waited. She watched her husband pace and take deep breaths but he wouldn't go first. "I was hoping that the test would be positive."
"I know." Max lifted his eyes to hers. "It hurt me too. The negative. I don't think this place is home but it might have been nice since we've been here so long."
Relieved to feel he was sharing with her, Liz had to take a step herself. One she had been putting off a while. She knew she couldn't hold it forever as her visions were coming with more rapidity and even her loving husband would notice if she held psychic conferences over the phone. "I told someone a half-truth."
"Sam Winchester?"
"Yeah."
He nodded to that. He had suspected something but he had never been sure what it was. Private jokes and comments. A phone call here and there late at night. "Do I have something to be worried about?"
"No." Liz smiled at her jealous husband. "He's just a friend. A friend with a similar… gift."
"Gift?"
"I see flashes of the future. He sees flashes of present and future but he's got an unreliable form. He doesn't get the whole picture. He gets a piece and he doesn't get emotions like I do. He just sees something and it's hardly ever something he can stop or change." Liz explained what she knew. "We don’t have intense conversations behind your back, Max. If I see something that needs to be done, I give him a call. When I need an understanding ear, he's available."
"How long has he known?"
"Since that time when you weren't with me."
"Not aliens?"
"No. Completely human. He's a nice guy. He had a crappy life. I don't know everything about his gift. He doesn't know everything about mine."
"I didn't realize how hard it would be for you to deal with. I just figured you'd talk to Kyle if it did become you know… a burden… if you couldn't talk to me."
"Kyle's gifts aren't my gifts. We just got them the same traumatic way." Liz explained briefly. She stroked his arm when he stood near enough to her. "I can talk to you but… just like you have things you'd rather not talk about, so do I. Sometimes the things I see aren't… things I want to share."
"Why?"
"Sometimes the things I see are hard to explain, Max. I've told you that. They're not always easy to resolve. Sometimes, I don't know what they mean at all."
"It's very hard for me to know that there are things that you can't share with me." He admitted, allowing her hand to find his, his eyes on his toes as he rubbed at a grease spot in the dirt.
"I'm still learning about this gift, Max. My progress isn't always what I want it to be. It's hard to be scientific about something that is not a hard science. It kind of throws me, you know."
He had to smile at that. His wife, the scientist. It did make sense that someone accustomed to the rules of physics and carbon-based thinking would have a hard time wrapping themselves around a world of fluid and ever-changing mysticism for lack of a better word. He had trouble himself. "I guess I could see that."
"It's just weird sometimes. I could perform a move seven times a day but what makes one moment different from the next? Why do I get a vision from touching a table I touch everyday? What is different about it other than the uniqueness of the date and time when I do?" She grimaced. "I can't even control when I have them. I can't manipulate them to learn more. I have to put it together with what I feel." She sank against the seat she'd chosen. Then she froze.
"Liz?" Max watched her eyes flick back and forth. Then she was leaping out of the car and staring at it. "What happened?"
"This car. What kind is it?" She pointed to the mess of mangled metal, missing doors and torn seats.
Max stared at it with her. "Chevy… maybe Impala. No clue what year."
"Oh my god…" Liz hesitantly touched the seat she'd been sitting on prior to her vision. "Oh my god… They were lucky to get out alive." The passenger side of the car was smashed in. She lightly touched the driver's seat and this time was ready for the assault of images as they came in a Sam flavor.
"Who?"
"This is… the original Winchester Impala." She whispered. Dried blood marred the seats, especially the back seat where she'd been sitting. She fought with a bout of nausea. Blackness threatened to take her over. "Their dad must have been sitting in the back seat."
"Why do you say that?" He tried to steady her as she worked to put together the pieces of the visions.
Bile rose in her throat because the blackness was there, waiting. "I recognized Death. John Winchester must have died in that car."
--
Sam sipped his morning coffee and barely glanced up at his brother when he joined him in the café. Dean stole a sip of Sam's coffee before ordering his own when the waitress stopped by with Sam's breakfast. "So, get lucky?"
Dean only grinned and sank low in his seat. "What were you so engrossed in last night? I saw clippings. Where are we going next?"
"I don't have anything real right now. Just maybe something. It's too soon to know for sure."
"No more mysterious friends without names or… oh yeah, tangibility?" Dean made a face but welcomed his coffee when it arrived.
"We got there in time. We got there with the info we needed. Quit beating my head about it."
"These friends you got…" Dean stopped at the incredulous look on his brother's face. "What?"
Sam shook his head. He didn't want to open that can of worms but it was going to happen eventually. "You're always on my ass about keeping in touch with my college friends but you've got friends too. Friends of Dad's, friends you've made since you've been on the road. Why can't I have friends?"
"Your friends don't understand what we do. We can't get attached to people like that." He could see the look on Sam's face. That face that had always preceded a blowout between Sam and Dad. "Look what happened to the friends Dad had."
"Okay. Tell that to your best bud, Nathan, next time we drive through. He'll think you're only hanging out with him because you want to nail his wife."
"Hey! Would you cut it out with that?" Dean growled. He knew he was an ass but he didn't need anyone accusing him of being an ass when he wasn't. "Maybe, initially, I wanted to nail his wife. They're not half bad and they help out in a pinch without asking any questions."
"So… those friends are alright." Sam pressed. "Stan and Gary and Amanda and Mary… aside from the ever so cool Sparks…"
"Look, normally, I wouldn't bother but…" Dean relented finally. "You're right. People need friends. Bobby and Marty aren't going to be around forever. Lillian has that freaky future-scope in her head. It couldn't hurt to play nice."
"Right."
"Your future-scope is cool but people always die in yours." He wanted to take the words back immediately but it was a truth that they had avoided for a while. When Sam had his visions, people were already dying. Sometimes it was nice to get there before the killing started.
"Thanks a lot. I was having a beauty time coping with that on my own."
"Hey, look. I’m sorry. I didn't mean it like that. If your… freaky psychic shit is related to the Demon… he probably screws with it just enough to freak you out and then what? You drive yourself crazy with guilt and you end up pushing a shopping cart in some city talking to yourself and raving to everyone about the end of days."
"Thank you for that frightening glimpse into the future, Dean." Sam waved off his brother and dug into his breakfast. He was starving but it tasted like dirt.
"Maybe I lay off on ragging on your friends." Dean relented, scowling at the table and not hungry enough to eat when he was so full of his own foot.
"Maybe."
The day after…
(April 12, 2008)
Max took the farthest computer in the library's computer lab and shifted the screen slightly away from everyone else in the room. He ran a search using details from the article Michael had shown him on the shape shifter's victim. Similar articles popped up but he spent many minutes sorting out the ones that matched enough to peak his interest. There were four that he felt were too close to be mistaken. All over the country and he couldn't find any common denominators with the men besides being in their mid-twenties.
Scribbling down the information in a notebook, he knew he'd have to find another way to dig up more at some later date. Trips to out of town libraries were few and far between. They had to keep prepared though. On top of this threat. This Evil as Liz had called it.
TBC
Part 14 – Several months later…
(August 6, 2008)
Sam dropped himself into the car. His heart beat so fast that he thought it might leap out of his chest. Dean nearly fell into the driver's seat and took a moment before starting the ignition. He had nearly died again. He could feel Sam's eyes on him but he wasn't in the mood to hear it. "Don't do that."
"You're stupid. So stupid, Dean. How could you do that?" He bit out between his sore teeth and swollen mouth.
"See, there, you went and did it." Dean put the car into gear and started driving. "It was the only way."
"No, it wasn't. There were other ways. It would have taken more time but there were ways." He couldn't believe his ears. Dean was actually rationalizing his own suicidal behavior.
"Yeah, and let the son of a bitch get stronger in the meantime. Right." Dean snorted as he guided them away from the scene of a grisly demon death. "We had to act fast and act strong. He could have killed someone else by the time we had all the proper supplies for that back-up attack you wanted to do."
"You know what. Don't talk to me." Sam shook his head and stared out the window. Tears pooled in his eyes but he didn't let them fall. He had been scared. Scared the way he had been in the hospital both times when the doctors had said it was the end for Dean. He never wanted to feel that scared again but Dean was bent on sacrificing himself for the cause… whatever that meant.
The next day…
(August 7, 2008)
Liz paced the room with a book she'd borrowed off Isabel. Back and forth. Back and forth. When Max's footsteps finally took him around the front building and out of sight, she dove for her purse and ran to the bathroom to finally pee onto the plastic stick. She set it down and went about getting ready, her daydreams invading as she thought of the possibility that she could be pregnant. Max hadn't been trying to get her pregnant but he had stopped preventing conception; in his own words. She didn't know where he still stood on the subject but she knew as soon as the news sunk in, he'd be ecstatic.
She was about to check on the results when a beating at the door distracted her. Maria threw open the door. "Kyle's stuck under a car!"
Liz shot out the door and passed Maria to the garage on the other side of Bobby's house. Several men were trying to lift a car while Bobby fought with the handle on the car lift. Kyle's legs stuck out from one side. The car had stopped just far enough to keep him trapped beneath it. Liz reached out to him when she felt the whisper of something nearby. She would have dismissed it as a breeze if it hadn't been for the fall of events inside the body shop.
She tried to get a sense for whatever it was but it was just out of her realm of consciousness. Still, all the concentrating had built a supply of energy deep inside her body. She could feel it tingling. Maria had gotten down on her hands and knees to talk to Kyle. Liz watched Bobby fight with the handle for just a moment more before she was by his side, pulling the handle down with all her might. Pete was squirting oil on the joint to ease the handle down but nothing was working.
Liz couldn’t stop the energy from escaping down her arms and into the control panel where it shut everything down… in the entire garage. All the lights turned off, all machinery shut down. Pete looked around. "Think it's the breaker?"
"Dunno." Bobby hit the power button once. It popped out. When he hit it again, it stayed depressed and lit. He eased down the handle and the car rose, slowly, off Kyle. Kyle scrambled out of there and sat on the floor with Maria, scared out of his mind by his near death. One by one, machines turned back on, ready for their masters. "That was strange."
Pete nodded and glanced nervously around. Leaning in, he hissed in Bobby's ear. "I think your circles need to be refreshed."
"I think you're right." Bobby agreed quietly, then turned to Liz. "You tell Nathan that I'll be laying some pesticides later today. I want the two of you to stay out of that house until I call you in tonight."
"Okay." Liz nodded, drained from the exertion. She stared at Kyle, his heavy breathing… and his tools rising slightly away from his body the way they did when he had been using his powers. "I'm gonna take Stan to his room."
"Yeah. He's got a couple of days off." Bobby shook his head and kept eyeing the shadows in his garage.
Liz gathered Kyle and Maria before ushering them into the motel just down the street. Kyle didn't say a word until he was safely on his bed and out of the coveralls with its tethered tools. "Look at this. I can't stop it."
"What happened?"
"I don't know. I felt something… like watching me but it was just the guys in there." He explained in a rush. "Then the car was sliding down. I tried to move but it caught me before the guys could stop it. I got it to stop before it damaged me but I'm not that strong yet. I couldn't push it away. Just make it stop coming down on me. Something…"
"Something was in there." Liz finished for him. "I felt it, too."
"Something? Like what something?" Maria prodded them.
"What do you bet that Bobby and Pete and Marty are going to be crawling all over that garage tonight?" Kyle tossed Liz a look.
"It's a high probability." Liz nodded back. "Something changed in that garage. Do you think… someone died in there?"
"I don't know." Kyle shook his head and sighed. "We got a few impounded cars but I don’t know where from. Think they brought something?"
"I don't know. I'm below amateur at this point."
"Hello." Maria cleared her throat. "What are you guys talking about?"
--
"So, what? You're just not going to speak to me ever again?" Dean snapped off the music. The silence was deafening. "It's not the first time we've used me as bait."
"First time since Dad died that you used yourself as bait without letting me know." Sam bit out, rubbing at his sore face.
Dean felt slightly bad about that but he was in the right. That thing needed killing and fast. "You've done the same thing, Sammy. Bloody Mary—"
"It's Sam and we haven't done that since Dad died and for a good reason." The second the car parked in front of the hotel, Sam was out the door and on his feet. Despite traffic, he crossed the road, not caring where he was going. He just had to get away from his idiot brother. "You're just like Dad."
Dean leapt out after him. "What? You're just going to run away again?"
"I can't work with someone who has a death wish." He wanted to stop and talk sense into Dean but right now they were both too hot under the collars to get anything real done. "You're gonna get yourself killed and I'm going to get myself killed trying to save you."
Dean damn near threw the keys at his brother to get him to turn around. "No one asked you to save me! I was doing just fine!"
"Real fine, Dean! That thing was sucking out your soul." Sam whirled on his brother. "If you want to kill yourself… Do it without me."
"So you're just gonna run again. Like you always do." Dean yelled out. "Back to that perfect life of yours, just like you've always wanted."
"Dude, don't even. I've been here. Right here since Dad died, without question. I've been by your side, fighting and watching you drown yourself in whatever excuse you can find. I've been here for you but you would rather be alone. Why don't you just admit it?"
"Okay. Fine. Maybe I do admit it. I want to be alone. I fight better alone. I might need to drop you off at some college so you can pretend to be normal and get someone else killed because you don't know where you belong."
Dean couldn't have hurt Sam more if he had stabbed him in the back. "Take it back."
Jaw set, Dean shook his head. "No. It's the truth."
"Take it back!" Sam screamed, advancing with rage radiating off his body in waves.
"Fuck you!"
Sam let fly a punch at Dean, who managed to step out of range and sweep in to land a blow in his gut. Sam tensed at the last minute, absorbing the blow and grabbing Dean's wrist to force his fist away. Then his legs were kicked out from under him. Dean only had the upper hand for a moment before he too was covered in dust and on the ground. The pair rolled and kicked and swung, a cloud of dust surrounding them. Noses bled, lips split as well as knuckles. Arms, legs, knees, elbows were scraped, clothes torn through… As if they hadn't done enough damage to themselves on this hunt.
Max and Michael pushed through the doors with Marty on their tail. Michael grabbed the first collar that rolled by, Max the other. Sam and Dean were yanked apart still swinging. Marty grabbed them by their chests and looked each in the eye. "You're brothers. Act like it. If your Daddy could see you now…"
"Like he'd give a shit." Sam spat out. "You're just like him!"
"If you hated us so much, why'd the fuck you come back?" Dean spat a mouthful of blood into the dirt at Marty's feet.
"Enough." Marty barked again. "Keep them separated. No drinking for either of them tonight. They both need to cool down before they start a brawl."
"Fine." Dean pushed Max away and headed across the street to the car.
"Fine." Sam shoved Michael away and started walking down the street to the convenience store.
"Keep an eye out for more trouble." Marty ordered Max and Michael. "If they look like they're going to start up again, call me."
Later that day…
Maria just shook her head. "That sounds completely crazy."
"We know that." Kyle nodded as he led the way through the graveyard. The hairs on his arms stood up. "It makes sense though."
"No, it doesn’t. It's completely crazy." Maria reiterated.
"It does." Liz nodded to them as she pointed to the freshly dug earth. "See. I knew it."
"What does that mean?" Maria stared down at the ground. It just looked like a pile of dirt to her.
"While we were calming down Kyle…" Liz stared down at the earth mixed with ash. "Pete took a shovel, two gas cans and the big van. I saw him drive this way. He dug up this grave and did something before he covered it back up. Bobby was running around 'laying out pesticides' around the guesthouse and his house and the garage. He's a little kooky but… it was weird for him."
"I've seen him do it before." Kyle agreed. "There is some interesting graffiti in that garage, I'll tell you."
"So… what am I not getting?" Maria asked of them, her arms crossed.
"The spirit we felt. I think this is the guy." He pointed to the grave marker. "I don't know who he is but… I have a feeling he was not a nice guy." Slowly, he reached down to touch it. Images flashed before his eyes. "Whoa."
"What?" Liz's eyes widened.
"He was a nice guy but some not so nice guy put him down there in the first place."
"Do you think Bobby would tell us more?"
"Bobby is not a talker." Kyle pointed out.
"You guys are talking about ghosts and hauntings." Maria started back to the hotel. "I can't be out here when you two are obviously insane."
--
Sam sat at the bar, picking at a plate of something gooey. Marty and Bobby flanked him. He had told them about the last hunt. What the demon was, how it killed, what the research was about and how Sam had planned to get rid of it. Then he told them about how Dean had taken it upon himself to be both bait and hunter.
"I knew your daddy for a long time." Bobby began. "It's exactly the sort of stunt he would've pulled. You're lucky he didn't use you as bait without permission."
"Dad did that?"
"A time or two. Let it get too close once too often. What made me run him off that last time. I don't fight as much as I used to and I keep the books. If I die… who will take my place?" He mused as he sipped at his whiskey. "Not one of you boys. You got too much of your old man in you to sit still."
"I didn't even want this life." Sam lamented.
"But you're still doing it. You're, what? 25 now… more than your own man, now. The ideal time and place to stop would have been when your old man passed." Marty pointed out. He had always thought John Winchester was a good hunter but he was wasting himself away looking for the yellow-eyed Demon that had taken his Mary away.
"But Dean… and the demon."
"You boys ain't never gon kill that demon. It's too old. It knows all the tricks. He's 5,000 steps ahead of you because who knows how many hundred years he's been playing this game."
"We'll kill it." Sam stated firmly.
"Then you ain't gonna live long enough to do my job." Bobby finished his whiskey. "It'll die with me."
Sam stayed quiet as Marty and Bobby recalled stories of hunts past, those they had participated in and those they had heard about from other hunters. Some of those came second and third hand. Sam felt like he had in high school. Stuck with a life he didn't choose. A life he couldn't escape. One he was good at but still an outsider in. He and Dean used to sneak beers while the men reminisced about days gone past. Dad had always known and woken them up extra early with a racket to get on the road again. Sam thought he might give anything to get woken up by the sound of a borrowed alarm clock if his dad would just take the hunt over and let him go back college. Had it only been two years since he'd died?
--
Dean had considered leaving without Sam. He really had… but Sammy's bag was still in the backseat and Dean had no clue if the kid even had his wallet on him. He couldn’t leave him stranded and naked… It was a lame excuse but he was sticking to it. He didn't open his eyes when an argument approached him.
"We both felt it, O mighty ruler of the stars." Kyle bit out as he took long strides to keep up with Max's pace.
"It almost killed him." Liz had to jog to keep up with them. "Mary didn't understand. She didn't feel its… malevolence."
"Malevolence?" Max stopped to look at them.
"It wanted me dead." Kyle nodded, his eyes flicking to Isabel's quiet countenance.
"Why?"
"I don't know why… by the time we had a clue, the locals had Ghostbustered the thing. Near as I can tell… maybe he didn't like my coveralls."
Dean opened his eyes a crack and peered out the dirty windows to the quartet in the lot. The tall blonde didn't contribute but she looked upset by the subject matter. She seemed to be listening as closely as Dean was pretending not to.
"A ghost." Max stated to them all. "An actual ghost. Do you know how that sounds?"
"I'm aware and it's more like… a malevolent spirit." Liz breathed out. She knew her husband. He was opening himself up to the idea even if his tone was sure to piss Kyle off. A few more minutes of talking and Max would really start coming around to the idea. "Not like the one… when you… that one time back home. This one freaked us both out."
"I'm a walking magnet, now." Kyle gestured to the empty place where his belt usually resided.
"You're not a magnet. You repel." Liz corrected.
"Whatever. I have my own orbit for small metallic objects because I'm so freaked, I can't come down." His hands shot into his hair. He looked like he had a headache.
"Well, calm down." Max advised, his eyes shifting around to make sure no one was listening. "It's done, right? So we'll let it go and hope it doesn't happen again. We have enough problems without getting supernatural crap on top of it."
"You're right." Isabel opened her mouth finally. "Look. So long as this ghost thing is resolved, there's no need to linger on it. Stan, walk me to work."
"What? Why?"
"Because, I said." Isabel grabbed a belt loop and tugged.
Liz tilted her head at Max. "What?"
Max waited until his sister and Kyle were well out of earshot. "Bobby said he was done clearing the house, or whatever."
"Oh. Good." Liz nodded stiffly, not knowing where he was going with it.
"I was looking for you. I found the test… in the bathroom."
The deep furrow between his eyes said it all. His eyes were soft and open but Liz didn't want to look at it. She sat down on the curb and stared across the nearly empty lot. She felt him sit down beside her but she didn't want to be touched. Tears stung at her eyes but she didn't let them fall. "It's not fair."
"What's not?"
"That she never loved you like I did… that she only spent one night with you and she… It's not fair when I love you so much and I want this so much and…" She turned to look at her husband. "What if it never happens?"
"You said that you knew you were meant to be the mother of my children." Max lightly placed his hand on the back of her head. "If you feel it, then it must be true. Maybe this is just not the right time."
"What if we're not compatible that way?"
Dean closed his eyes and was tempted to roll up his window but that would only alert them to the fact their private pain had a witness.
"We'll just have to increase the possibility… maybe… 50 percent?"
Liz burst out laughing and leaned into her husband. "An increase like that would put me out of commission. Try paying rent on your salary alone."
"I'd be willing to sacrifice." Max kissed her head. "Come on. I think we should clear out of the parking lot before we get involved in a brawl."
Dean opened his eyes and watched Sammy cross the road to the Impala through the side-view mirror. So, he waited. The backdoor opened and Sam rummaged around for something for a while before the weight of the car shifted. Through the rear-view mirror, Dean met his brother's eyes. The kid was just sitting there, staring at him. "What do you want me to say? I went in to do a job and I got it done."
"Just… tell me you don't do this shit on purpose. Tell me that you…" Sam shook his head and looked away. "Tell me that I'm wrong about you having a death wish." He fiddled with his wallet for a moment. "I just spent the last couple of hours listening to Marty and Bobby tell hunting stories and I realized that every other story was about a guy who took on something by himself and got himself killed. Guys who didn't normally hunt alone and went solo, pissed off and sloppy… Guys who took on partners to be safe and got themselves killed because they trusted the wrong people and all for a kill."
"Well, you gotta be a little bit crazy to do the jobs we do, Sammy." Dean nodded to the mirror. He shifted his gaze to the departing Sparks across the lot. "That life you want. I want it but… only if I didn't know that the noise my wife wakes me up about in the middle of the night wasn't going to kill me when I check it out. If I could hear my kid tell me about the monster in his closet and didn't need to arm myself with iron and salt before I check it out. If I could give back all this knowledge I have about the dark of the night, I'd want that life. I can't, in good conscience, say that I would take that life now. Not after the life I've lived. I don't think we can have it both ways. I think we have to choose."
"You think so?"
"Dad was… He was 53. It used to sound old to me, Sammy." Dean could feel the tears welling in his eyes but he didn't let them fall. "I'm almost 30 and this isn't a life where you live to an old age. Bobby and Marty are… weekend warriors. They'll probably be around long after I'm salted ash in a field. He was only 53 years old. He never saw grandkids. He almost had a daughter-in-law. If he knew, I'm sure he would have loved her, too. You know? As much as he could because you know that the Demon was going to take his every waking moment. He would have stayed away to keep you safe."
"Dean—"
"He would have dropped in to make sure you taught the kids to fight the monsters in the closet. Insisted on it. It would have meant more fighting but I think you would have spent sleepless nights guarding their rooms against the monsters… just so you wouldn't have to tell them that the monsters were real." Dean blew out a breath. He knew his little brother was a romantic-idealist. He could picture exactly the way his brother would have lived his life with Jess. "I've had some good times. I've had… passion, I guess. I don't think I've ever had real love, though. I've been taking what I can get because I've accepted that each hunt could be my last, Sam."
"You can't think that way."
"Maybe you knowing you can kill the thing makes you feel safer but me knowing that I can die, makes me more willing to put myself on the line so someone else doesn't have to. Give me that, Sammy. I need to be useful. I need to stick my neck out and duck the blade at the last minute. It's the only thing I have to look forward to. I don't really envision a wife and kids for me. If I live to be 53… I'll feel I've done right by Dad. Just let me have it."
TBC
(August 6, 2008)
Sam dropped himself into the car. His heart beat so fast that he thought it might leap out of his chest. Dean nearly fell into the driver's seat and took a moment before starting the ignition. He had nearly died again. He could feel Sam's eyes on him but he wasn't in the mood to hear it. "Don't do that."
"You're stupid. So stupid, Dean. How could you do that?" He bit out between his sore teeth and swollen mouth.
"See, there, you went and did it." Dean put the car into gear and started driving. "It was the only way."
"No, it wasn't. There were other ways. It would have taken more time but there were ways." He couldn't believe his ears. Dean was actually rationalizing his own suicidal behavior.
"Yeah, and let the son of a bitch get stronger in the meantime. Right." Dean snorted as he guided them away from the scene of a grisly demon death. "We had to act fast and act strong. He could have killed someone else by the time we had all the proper supplies for that back-up attack you wanted to do."
"You know what. Don't talk to me." Sam shook his head and stared out the window. Tears pooled in his eyes but he didn't let them fall. He had been scared. Scared the way he had been in the hospital both times when the doctors had said it was the end for Dean. He never wanted to feel that scared again but Dean was bent on sacrificing himself for the cause… whatever that meant.
The next day…
(August 7, 2008)
Liz paced the room with a book she'd borrowed off Isabel. Back and forth. Back and forth. When Max's footsteps finally took him around the front building and out of sight, she dove for her purse and ran to the bathroom to finally pee onto the plastic stick. She set it down and went about getting ready, her daydreams invading as she thought of the possibility that she could be pregnant. Max hadn't been trying to get her pregnant but he had stopped preventing conception; in his own words. She didn't know where he still stood on the subject but she knew as soon as the news sunk in, he'd be ecstatic.
She was about to check on the results when a beating at the door distracted her. Maria threw open the door. "Kyle's stuck under a car!"
Liz shot out the door and passed Maria to the garage on the other side of Bobby's house. Several men were trying to lift a car while Bobby fought with the handle on the car lift. Kyle's legs stuck out from one side. The car had stopped just far enough to keep him trapped beneath it. Liz reached out to him when she felt the whisper of something nearby. She would have dismissed it as a breeze if it hadn't been for the fall of events inside the body shop.
She tried to get a sense for whatever it was but it was just out of her realm of consciousness. Still, all the concentrating had built a supply of energy deep inside her body. She could feel it tingling. Maria had gotten down on her hands and knees to talk to Kyle. Liz watched Bobby fight with the handle for just a moment more before she was by his side, pulling the handle down with all her might. Pete was squirting oil on the joint to ease the handle down but nothing was working.
Liz couldn’t stop the energy from escaping down her arms and into the control panel where it shut everything down… in the entire garage. All the lights turned off, all machinery shut down. Pete looked around. "Think it's the breaker?"
"Dunno." Bobby hit the power button once. It popped out. When he hit it again, it stayed depressed and lit. He eased down the handle and the car rose, slowly, off Kyle. Kyle scrambled out of there and sat on the floor with Maria, scared out of his mind by his near death. One by one, machines turned back on, ready for their masters. "That was strange."
Pete nodded and glanced nervously around. Leaning in, he hissed in Bobby's ear. "I think your circles need to be refreshed."
"I think you're right." Bobby agreed quietly, then turned to Liz. "You tell Nathan that I'll be laying some pesticides later today. I want the two of you to stay out of that house until I call you in tonight."
"Okay." Liz nodded, drained from the exertion. She stared at Kyle, his heavy breathing… and his tools rising slightly away from his body the way they did when he had been using his powers. "I'm gonna take Stan to his room."
"Yeah. He's got a couple of days off." Bobby shook his head and kept eyeing the shadows in his garage.
Liz gathered Kyle and Maria before ushering them into the motel just down the street. Kyle didn't say a word until he was safely on his bed and out of the coveralls with its tethered tools. "Look at this. I can't stop it."
"What happened?"
"I don't know. I felt something… like watching me but it was just the guys in there." He explained in a rush. "Then the car was sliding down. I tried to move but it caught me before the guys could stop it. I got it to stop before it damaged me but I'm not that strong yet. I couldn't push it away. Just make it stop coming down on me. Something…"
"Something was in there." Liz finished for him. "I felt it, too."
"Something? Like what something?" Maria prodded them.
"What do you bet that Bobby and Pete and Marty are going to be crawling all over that garage tonight?" Kyle tossed Liz a look.
"It's a high probability." Liz nodded back. "Something changed in that garage. Do you think… someone died in there?"
"I don't know." Kyle shook his head and sighed. "We got a few impounded cars but I don’t know where from. Think they brought something?"
"I don't know. I'm below amateur at this point."
"Hello." Maria cleared her throat. "What are you guys talking about?"
--
"So, what? You're just not going to speak to me ever again?" Dean snapped off the music. The silence was deafening. "It's not the first time we've used me as bait."
"First time since Dad died that you used yourself as bait without letting me know." Sam bit out, rubbing at his sore face.
Dean felt slightly bad about that but he was in the right. That thing needed killing and fast. "You've done the same thing, Sammy. Bloody Mary—"
"It's Sam and we haven't done that since Dad died and for a good reason." The second the car parked in front of the hotel, Sam was out the door and on his feet. Despite traffic, he crossed the road, not caring where he was going. He just had to get away from his idiot brother. "You're just like Dad."
Dean leapt out after him. "What? You're just going to run away again?"
"I can't work with someone who has a death wish." He wanted to stop and talk sense into Dean but right now they were both too hot under the collars to get anything real done. "You're gonna get yourself killed and I'm going to get myself killed trying to save you."
Dean damn near threw the keys at his brother to get him to turn around. "No one asked you to save me! I was doing just fine!"
"Real fine, Dean! That thing was sucking out your soul." Sam whirled on his brother. "If you want to kill yourself… Do it without me."
"So you're just gonna run again. Like you always do." Dean yelled out. "Back to that perfect life of yours, just like you've always wanted."
"Dude, don't even. I've been here. Right here since Dad died, without question. I've been by your side, fighting and watching you drown yourself in whatever excuse you can find. I've been here for you but you would rather be alone. Why don't you just admit it?"
"Okay. Fine. Maybe I do admit it. I want to be alone. I fight better alone. I might need to drop you off at some college so you can pretend to be normal and get someone else killed because you don't know where you belong."
Dean couldn't have hurt Sam more if he had stabbed him in the back. "Take it back."
Jaw set, Dean shook his head. "No. It's the truth."
"Take it back!" Sam screamed, advancing with rage radiating off his body in waves.
"Fuck you!"
Sam let fly a punch at Dean, who managed to step out of range and sweep in to land a blow in his gut. Sam tensed at the last minute, absorbing the blow and grabbing Dean's wrist to force his fist away. Then his legs were kicked out from under him. Dean only had the upper hand for a moment before he too was covered in dust and on the ground. The pair rolled and kicked and swung, a cloud of dust surrounding them. Noses bled, lips split as well as knuckles. Arms, legs, knees, elbows were scraped, clothes torn through… As if they hadn't done enough damage to themselves on this hunt.
Max and Michael pushed through the doors with Marty on their tail. Michael grabbed the first collar that rolled by, Max the other. Sam and Dean were yanked apart still swinging. Marty grabbed them by their chests and looked each in the eye. "You're brothers. Act like it. If your Daddy could see you now…"
"Like he'd give a shit." Sam spat out. "You're just like him!"
"If you hated us so much, why'd the fuck you come back?" Dean spat a mouthful of blood into the dirt at Marty's feet.
"Enough." Marty barked again. "Keep them separated. No drinking for either of them tonight. They both need to cool down before they start a brawl."
"Fine." Dean pushed Max away and headed across the street to the car.
"Fine." Sam shoved Michael away and started walking down the street to the convenience store.
"Keep an eye out for more trouble." Marty ordered Max and Michael. "If they look like they're going to start up again, call me."
Later that day…
Maria just shook her head. "That sounds completely crazy."
"We know that." Kyle nodded as he led the way through the graveyard. The hairs on his arms stood up. "It makes sense though."
"No, it doesn’t. It's completely crazy." Maria reiterated.
"It does." Liz nodded to them as she pointed to the freshly dug earth. "See. I knew it."
"What does that mean?" Maria stared down at the ground. It just looked like a pile of dirt to her.
"While we were calming down Kyle…" Liz stared down at the earth mixed with ash. "Pete took a shovel, two gas cans and the big van. I saw him drive this way. He dug up this grave and did something before he covered it back up. Bobby was running around 'laying out pesticides' around the guesthouse and his house and the garage. He's a little kooky but… it was weird for him."
"I've seen him do it before." Kyle agreed. "There is some interesting graffiti in that garage, I'll tell you."
"So… what am I not getting?" Maria asked of them, her arms crossed.
"The spirit we felt. I think this is the guy." He pointed to the grave marker. "I don't know who he is but… I have a feeling he was not a nice guy." Slowly, he reached down to touch it. Images flashed before his eyes. "Whoa."
"What?" Liz's eyes widened.
"He was a nice guy but some not so nice guy put him down there in the first place."
"Do you think Bobby would tell us more?"
"Bobby is not a talker." Kyle pointed out.
"You guys are talking about ghosts and hauntings." Maria started back to the hotel. "I can't be out here when you two are obviously insane."
--
Sam sat at the bar, picking at a plate of something gooey. Marty and Bobby flanked him. He had told them about the last hunt. What the demon was, how it killed, what the research was about and how Sam had planned to get rid of it. Then he told them about how Dean had taken it upon himself to be both bait and hunter.
"I knew your daddy for a long time." Bobby began. "It's exactly the sort of stunt he would've pulled. You're lucky he didn't use you as bait without permission."
"Dad did that?"
"A time or two. Let it get too close once too often. What made me run him off that last time. I don't fight as much as I used to and I keep the books. If I die… who will take my place?" He mused as he sipped at his whiskey. "Not one of you boys. You got too much of your old man in you to sit still."
"I didn't even want this life." Sam lamented.
"But you're still doing it. You're, what? 25 now… more than your own man, now. The ideal time and place to stop would have been when your old man passed." Marty pointed out. He had always thought John Winchester was a good hunter but he was wasting himself away looking for the yellow-eyed Demon that had taken his Mary away.
"But Dean… and the demon."
"You boys ain't never gon kill that demon. It's too old. It knows all the tricks. He's 5,000 steps ahead of you because who knows how many hundred years he's been playing this game."
"We'll kill it." Sam stated firmly.
"Then you ain't gonna live long enough to do my job." Bobby finished his whiskey. "It'll die with me."
Sam stayed quiet as Marty and Bobby recalled stories of hunts past, those they had participated in and those they had heard about from other hunters. Some of those came second and third hand. Sam felt like he had in high school. Stuck with a life he didn't choose. A life he couldn't escape. One he was good at but still an outsider in. He and Dean used to sneak beers while the men reminisced about days gone past. Dad had always known and woken them up extra early with a racket to get on the road again. Sam thought he might give anything to get woken up by the sound of a borrowed alarm clock if his dad would just take the hunt over and let him go back college. Had it only been two years since he'd died?
--
Dean had considered leaving without Sam. He really had… but Sammy's bag was still in the backseat and Dean had no clue if the kid even had his wallet on him. He couldn’t leave him stranded and naked… It was a lame excuse but he was sticking to it. He didn't open his eyes when an argument approached him.
"We both felt it, O mighty ruler of the stars." Kyle bit out as he took long strides to keep up with Max's pace.
"It almost killed him." Liz had to jog to keep up with them. "Mary didn't understand. She didn't feel its… malevolence."
"Malevolence?" Max stopped to look at them.
"It wanted me dead." Kyle nodded, his eyes flicking to Isabel's quiet countenance.
"Why?"
"I don't know why… by the time we had a clue, the locals had Ghostbustered the thing. Near as I can tell… maybe he didn't like my coveralls."
Dean opened his eyes a crack and peered out the dirty windows to the quartet in the lot. The tall blonde didn't contribute but she looked upset by the subject matter. She seemed to be listening as closely as Dean was pretending not to.
"A ghost." Max stated to them all. "An actual ghost. Do you know how that sounds?"
"I'm aware and it's more like… a malevolent spirit." Liz breathed out. She knew her husband. He was opening himself up to the idea even if his tone was sure to piss Kyle off. A few more minutes of talking and Max would really start coming around to the idea. "Not like the one… when you… that one time back home. This one freaked us both out."
"I'm a walking magnet, now." Kyle gestured to the empty place where his belt usually resided.
"You're not a magnet. You repel." Liz corrected.
"Whatever. I have my own orbit for small metallic objects because I'm so freaked, I can't come down." His hands shot into his hair. He looked like he had a headache.
"Well, calm down." Max advised, his eyes shifting around to make sure no one was listening. "It's done, right? So we'll let it go and hope it doesn't happen again. We have enough problems without getting supernatural crap on top of it."
"You're right." Isabel opened her mouth finally. "Look. So long as this ghost thing is resolved, there's no need to linger on it. Stan, walk me to work."
"What? Why?"
"Because, I said." Isabel grabbed a belt loop and tugged.
Liz tilted her head at Max. "What?"
Max waited until his sister and Kyle were well out of earshot. "Bobby said he was done clearing the house, or whatever."
"Oh. Good." Liz nodded stiffly, not knowing where he was going with it.
"I was looking for you. I found the test… in the bathroom."
The deep furrow between his eyes said it all. His eyes were soft and open but Liz didn't want to look at it. She sat down on the curb and stared across the nearly empty lot. She felt him sit down beside her but she didn't want to be touched. Tears stung at her eyes but she didn't let them fall. "It's not fair."
"What's not?"
"That she never loved you like I did… that she only spent one night with you and she… It's not fair when I love you so much and I want this so much and…" She turned to look at her husband. "What if it never happens?"
"You said that you knew you were meant to be the mother of my children." Max lightly placed his hand on the back of her head. "If you feel it, then it must be true. Maybe this is just not the right time."
"What if we're not compatible that way?"
Dean closed his eyes and was tempted to roll up his window but that would only alert them to the fact their private pain had a witness.
"We'll just have to increase the possibility… maybe… 50 percent?"
Liz burst out laughing and leaned into her husband. "An increase like that would put me out of commission. Try paying rent on your salary alone."
"I'd be willing to sacrifice." Max kissed her head. "Come on. I think we should clear out of the parking lot before we get involved in a brawl."
Dean opened his eyes and watched Sammy cross the road to the Impala through the side-view mirror. So, he waited. The backdoor opened and Sam rummaged around for something for a while before the weight of the car shifted. Through the rear-view mirror, Dean met his brother's eyes. The kid was just sitting there, staring at him. "What do you want me to say? I went in to do a job and I got it done."
"Just… tell me you don't do this shit on purpose. Tell me that you…" Sam shook his head and looked away. "Tell me that I'm wrong about you having a death wish." He fiddled with his wallet for a moment. "I just spent the last couple of hours listening to Marty and Bobby tell hunting stories and I realized that every other story was about a guy who took on something by himself and got himself killed. Guys who didn't normally hunt alone and went solo, pissed off and sloppy… Guys who took on partners to be safe and got themselves killed because they trusted the wrong people and all for a kill."
"Well, you gotta be a little bit crazy to do the jobs we do, Sammy." Dean nodded to the mirror. He shifted his gaze to the departing Sparks across the lot. "That life you want. I want it but… only if I didn't know that the noise my wife wakes me up about in the middle of the night wasn't going to kill me when I check it out. If I could hear my kid tell me about the monster in his closet and didn't need to arm myself with iron and salt before I check it out. If I could give back all this knowledge I have about the dark of the night, I'd want that life. I can't, in good conscience, say that I would take that life now. Not after the life I've lived. I don't think we can have it both ways. I think we have to choose."
"You think so?"
"Dad was… He was 53. It used to sound old to me, Sammy." Dean could feel the tears welling in his eyes but he didn't let them fall. "I'm almost 30 and this isn't a life where you live to an old age. Bobby and Marty are… weekend warriors. They'll probably be around long after I'm salted ash in a field. He was only 53 years old. He never saw grandkids. He almost had a daughter-in-law. If he knew, I'm sure he would have loved her, too. You know? As much as he could because you know that the Demon was going to take his every waking moment. He would have stayed away to keep you safe."
"Dean—"
"He would have dropped in to make sure you taught the kids to fight the monsters in the closet. Insisted on it. It would have meant more fighting but I think you would have spent sleepless nights guarding their rooms against the monsters… just so you wouldn't have to tell them that the monsters were real." Dean blew out a breath. He knew his little brother was a romantic-idealist. He could picture exactly the way his brother would have lived his life with Jess. "I've had some good times. I've had… passion, I guess. I don't think I've ever had real love, though. I've been taking what I can get because I've accepted that each hunt could be my last, Sam."
"You can't think that way."
"Maybe you knowing you can kill the thing makes you feel safer but me knowing that I can die, makes me more willing to put myself on the line so someone else doesn't have to. Give me that, Sammy. I need to be useful. I need to stick my neck out and duck the blade at the last minute. It's the only thing I have to look forward to. I don't really envision a wife and kids for me. If I live to be 53… I'll feel I've done right by Dad. Just let me have it."
TBC
Part 15 – Later that month…
(August 26, 2008)
Dean stared into the display case. "They have food in there."
"It's usually where they keep it." Sam nodded and reached passed his brother to select his dinner.
He couldn't get his hopes up. His entire young adult life he had survived on frozen burritos, over-cooked hot dogs and stale nachos. "Since when does 7-Eleven keep full meals in the refrigerator?"
"Since the working man stopped buying groceries and getting married and having someone to cook for him. This is the food of college land. Lasagna without the baking. Salisbury steak and potatoes that taste just as good as any cafeteria you've ever been to and definitely better than the lunchroom in school." Sam handed Dean a microwaveable meal and pointed to the microwave at the other end of the store. "Bon appétit."
"And it's not going to taste like that shit Mrs. Fortson used to dump on my plate at that little shithole Dad made us go to school?"
"Absolutely not… unless you overcook it." Sam flipped the box over. "But they make these very handy directions. It's Dean-proof."
"Goodbye frozen burritos." Dean shoved his brother out of the way so he could have something that resembled a normal meal for once. "Frozen lasagna, where have you been all my life?"
Sam took their empty boxes and the bottles to the counter to pay. "I've been doing some research on that Ash-Silver-Handprint demon for a while."
"And?" The older Winchester watched his brother. It was going to be interesting. His little brother had a gleam in his eye.
"It's killed a couple of times since that one we investigated. I think I found the MO."
--
Max lowered his voice as he explained to Michael what he'd been researching. "Look at these."
"Birth certificates." Michael flipped through them. "They're all our age. All men."
"And the place of birth is listed as Chavez county." He tapped a page marked with the New Mexico state seal.
"Well, why isn't Chavez county empty of all its '83 births?" He groaned as he absorbed what little details the certificates gave. "What's special about these guys?"
"Because all of these men were given up for adoption and moved away… or ran away as in our case."
"You think this thing is looking for us." Michael cursed under his breath and glanced across the bar where the remainder of their gang was laughing at something Kyle had said. "Is it close?"
"It's been zigzagging all over the middle states… there was maybe one in New York but… the body wasn't found soon enough to confirm the silver handprint. I think it could get closer to us. I think our saving grace has been the lack of paperwork and…"
"Our aliases."
Max pulled out another print out. "I did a search of adoptions. Nothing came up. Then I called down to the records office in Chavez. Since we are well over 18 and I desperately need a kidney transplant from a blood relative, they were very cooperative. I have a list of names. Most of them are dead now but there are a handful left. It's only a matter of time before they all go the same way."
"Max Evans and Michael Guerin… right at the top." He ran a hand through his hair. "Sylvester Donnelly and Jason Ambrose… the only other humans on the list."
"Right." Max glanced at his map and at the addresses he had dug up on the two men. "Do we split up and protect each guy or do we roll the dice on who will die next?"
--
"We have two possible targets… about 300 miles apart. We could split up or hope we got the one he'll go after next." Sam pointed to the towns on opposite sides of the state.
"There are two more names on this list." Dean pointed out.
"I can't find those guys. They might already be dead for all we know. I called these two guys as a collector this morning. They're alive."
"Did you do a search on them?" He jabbed his finger at the two on the list with question marks next to them. "What's up with them? Did you even check them out?"
"Of course I did. After an incident in 2002, it's like they disappeared off the face of the earth." Sam nodded to his brother's face. "They might actually be the first two victims but… no bodies, no handprints."
"Did you do a search on the handprints?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes but do you have any idea how popular a term that is? Silver handprints turns up over 50,000 original hits. Some lady wrote a bunch of books about them; silver handprints and fingerprints. Really popular and really fucked up my research. This was the best I could do. This thing is escalating. The deaths are getting closer and closer together. We have to kill it before it takes out the last two. Who knows when we'll find it again if these two eat it before we get there."
--
"He's closing in on us." Max stared out the window. "I can feel it."
"How are we getting away this time? If you tell the wife that you're getting me laid again, they'll all know we're lying and Mary will kill me." Michael pointed out.
"Nothing grand. We go buy some presents or do some errands. Once we're gone, we go." Max stared at Liz, laughing and smiling. Happy in this town. With her life. He felt guilty but he liked seeing her that way. If he killed the shapeshifter, her visions would come to an end. It had to be alien and that was his fault. "She passed out again. We have to act now."
"You should really tell her about that." He hoped he sounded like he disapproved but Michael knew that Liz knowing would severely cramp any chance they had of taking the alien out.
"And make her worry? I like it better when she doesn't remember the visions. When she gets one of those bad ones… she's on the phone constantly and she doesn't sleep, she doesn't eat. When she doesn't remember, she gets over it quicker and it doesn't interfere with her life."
"Do you take it back?" Michael exchanged a look with his oldest friend in the world… and maybe off it. It was their longest standing point of contention, what Max had done that September in '99. "I know what it means that she gets them. It helps us. She'll kill you when she finds out you went off again. You and I both know that. Do you take it back?"
"The visions are her life. She should know. When we get back… I'll tell her." He watched her smiling face. "We should get some of those crowbars to take with us. Do it now, so no one notices until after we leave. I want this guy dead. I'm not asking questions first… because he's obviously not."
"Yes, sir." Michael nodded and made his excuses before he slipped out the back.
Max felt bad. Michael had a point but he wasn’t twisting anyone's arm to do the right thing. The alien had to die. It was killing innocent people while looking for the two hybrids. Then Liz bounded over with a broad smile. "Marty says you've been shooting pool behind my back. I want a demonstration."
--
Dean ran his eyes over all the research. Sam was snoring, again. That last broken nose hadn't set well. He wondered why all the men were chosen. What was significant about the birthplace being anywhere in Chavez County, New Mexico. What was significant about 1983 in the desert? All adopted. Not an overwhelming number but more than a few. He ran the names through all the standard searches but nothing significant stood out. Absolutely nothing on the two Sam hadn't found.
Glancing back at his snoring brother, Dean opened up Sam's favorite search engine. FBI's most wanted. One by one, he ran the names… just to be fair. Nothing until he typed in Michael Guerin. The warrant was unspecified beyond tampering with a federal investigation. Michael appeared with hair shorter than Dean would have ever guessed Gary Henderson would ever wear it. A mug shot from '99. Known accomplice was none other than Max Evans, wanted for tampering with a federal investigation and armed robbery. Upon viewing Max Evans, it was found to be none other than Nathan Sparks. Known accomplices were listed as Michael Guerin, Isabel Ramirez, and Elizabeth Parker. There was no picture of Isabel Evans-Ramirez but Dean had a feeling that Amanda Jamison bore an uncanny resemblance. One last name on the list of Max’s accomplices: Elizabeth Parker.
"Well, fuck me." He breathed out. Lillian Sparks's face stared back at him from her mug shot from an armed robbery in Utah in '01. She had been charged but released due to a lack of evidence; namely the gun she had allegedly used to hold up the store.
"What are you doing?" Sam stared at his brother.
"Some research."
"Can't sleep again?"
"Just…" Dean turned the laptop for Sam to see what he'd found. "Looks like those last two names on the list are accounted for… and then some."
--
"I love you." Max whispered.
"I love you, too." Liz whispered back. The dark swallowed them up in the dead of the night. Kissing his lips, she snuggled in closer as their heartbeats slowed. "Where did you learn to play like that?"
"Maybe I've always played that well." He only grinned in the dark.
"Uh-huh." She giggled. "Well, I'll get it out of you someday."
"Michael and I are going shopping tomorrow." He hoped he didn't sound like he was hiding something.
"I know. Maria already told me. Help him out." She pleaded. "And help him hide it afterward. She gets excited and has to know what he bought. Kyle said she tore up their room last year."
"I will. We'll get the shopping done and out of the way. You keep Isabel from… you know… getting too upset about Jesse?"
"I'll try but… I think she misses him more since you took her on that trip." It wasn't meant as an accusation but it was hard not to gripe. Liz loved her sister-in-law but seeing her so much more miserable after that trip had been hard to stomach. "Famine hits the hardest after a feast. That's when you feel true hunger… knowing what you're missing."
"Do you really think it's that safe?" Max knew what she was hinting at. He wanted his sister happy but he wanted her safe more.
"Maybe for her. Just her. Jesse has connections."
He frowned. Jesse's connections had faded a bit after all the business in Roswell. "Not enough connections."
"I know."
"I'll be back before you know it." He promised.
"Then… Michael will have to drive. I'm going to give you the best send off ever."
"Promises, promises."
TBC
(August 26, 2008)
Dean stared into the display case. "They have food in there."
"It's usually where they keep it." Sam nodded and reached passed his brother to select his dinner.
He couldn't get his hopes up. His entire young adult life he had survived on frozen burritos, over-cooked hot dogs and stale nachos. "Since when does 7-Eleven keep full meals in the refrigerator?"
"Since the working man stopped buying groceries and getting married and having someone to cook for him. This is the food of college land. Lasagna without the baking. Salisbury steak and potatoes that taste just as good as any cafeteria you've ever been to and definitely better than the lunchroom in school." Sam handed Dean a microwaveable meal and pointed to the microwave at the other end of the store. "Bon appétit."
"And it's not going to taste like that shit Mrs. Fortson used to dump on my plate at that little shithole Dad made us go to school?"
"Absolutely not… unless you overcook it." Sam flipped the box over. "But they make these very handy directions. It's Dean-proof."
"Goodbye frozen burritos." Dean shoved his brother out of the way so he could have something that resembled a normal meal for once. "Frozen lasagna, where have you been all my life?"
Sam took their empty boxes and the bottles to the counter to pay. "I've been doing some research on that Ash-Silver-Handprint demon for a while."
"And?" The older Winchester watched his brother. It was going to be interesting. His little brother had a gleam in his eye.
"It's killed a couple of times since that one we investigated. I think I found the MO."
--
Max lowered his voice as he explained to Michael what he'd been researching. "Look at these."
"Birth certificates." Michael flipped through them. "They're all our age. All men."
"And the place of birth is listed as Chavez county." He tapped a page marked with the New Mexico state seal.
"Well, why isn't Chavez county empty of all its '83 births?" He groaned as he absorbed what little details the certificates gave. "What's special about these guys?"
"Because all of these men were given up for adoption and moved away… or ran away as in our case."
"You think this thing is looking for us." Michael cursed under his breath and glanced across the bar where the remainder of their gang was laughing at something Kyle had said. "Is it close?"
"It's been zigzagging all over the middle states… there was maybe one in New York but… the body wasn't found soon enough to confirm the silver handprint. I think it could get closer to us. I think our saving grace has been the lack of paperwork and…"
"Our aliases."
Max pulled out another print out. "I did a search of adoptions. Nothing came up. Then I called down to the records office in Chavez. Since we are well over 18 and I desperately need a kidney transplant from a blood relative, they were very cooperative. I have a list of names. Most of them are dead now but there are a handful left. It's only a matter of time before they all go the same way."
"Max Evans and Michael Guerin… right at the top." He ran a hand through his hair. "Sylvester Donnelly and Jason Ambrose… the only other humans on the list."
"Right." Max glanced at his map and at the addresses he had dug up on the two men. "Do we split up and protect each guy or do we roll the dice on who will die next?"
--
"We have two possible targets… about 300 miles apart. We could split up or hope we got the one he'll go after next." Sam pointed to the towns on opposite sides of the state.
"There are two more names on this list." Dean pointed out.
"I can't find those guys. They might already be dead for all we know. I called these two guys as a collector this morning. They're alive."
"Did you do a search on them?" He jabbed his finger at the two on the list with question marks next to them. "What's up with them? Did you even check them out?"
"Of course I did. After an incident in 2002, it's like they disappeared off the face of the earth." Sam nodded to his brother's face. "They might actually be the first two victims but… no bodies, no handprints."
"Did you do a search on the handprints?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes but do you have any idea how popular a term that is? Silver handprints turns up over 50,000 original hits. Some lady wrote a bunch of books about them; silver handprints and fingerprints. Really popular and really fucked up my research. This was the best I could do. This thing is escalating. The deaths are getting closer and closer together. We have to kill it before it takes out the last two. Who knows when we'll find it again if these two eat it before we get there."
--
"He's closing in on us." Max stared out the window. "I can feel it."
"How are we getting away this time? If you tell the wife that you're getting me laid again, they'll all know we're lying and Mary will kill me." Michael pointed out.
"Nothing grand. We go buy some presents or do some errands. Once we're gone, we go." Max stared at Liz, laughing and smiling. Happy in this town. With her life. He felt guilty but he liked seeing her that way. If he killed the shapeshifter, her visions would come to an end. It had to be alien and that was his fault. "She passed out again. We have to act now."
"You should really tell her about that." He hoped he sounded like he disapproved but Michael knew that Liz knowing would severely cramp any chance they had of taking the alien out.
"And make her worry? I like it better when she doesn't remember the visions. When she gets one of those bad ones… she's on the phone constantly and she doesn't sleep, she doesn't eat. When she doesn't remember, she gets over it quicker and it doesn't interfere with her life."
"Do you take it back?" Michael exchanged a look with his oldest friend in the world… and maybe off it. It was their longest standing point of contention, what Max had done that September in '99. "I know what it means that she gets them. It helps us. She'll kill you when she finds out you went off again. You and I both know that. Do you take it back?"
"The visions are her life. She should know. When we get back… I'll tell her." He watched her smiling face. "We should get some of those crowbars to take with us. Do it now, so no one notices until after we leave. I want this guy dead. I'm not asking questions first… because he's obviously not."
"Yes, sir." Michael nodded and made his excuses before he slipped out the back.
Max felt bad. Michael had a point but he wasn’t twisting anyone's arm to do the right thing. The alien had to die. It was killing innocent people while looking for the two hybrids. Then Liz bounded over with a broad smile. "Marty says you've been shooting pool behind my back. I want a demonstration."
--
Dean ran his eyes over all the research. Sam was snoring, again. That last broken nose hadn't set well. He wondered why all the men were chosen. What was significant about the birthplace being anywhere in Chavez County, New Mexico. What was significant about 1983 in the desert? All adopted. Not an overwhelming number but more than a few. He ran the names through all the standard searches but nothing significant stood out. Absolutely nothing on the two Sam hadn't found.
Glancing back at his snoring brother, Dean opened up Sam's favorite search engine. FBI's most wanted. One by one, he ran the names… just to be fair. Nothing until he typed in Michael Guerin. The warrant was unspecified beyond tampering with a federal investigation. Michael appeared with hair shorter than Dean would have ever guessed Gary Henderson would ever wear it. A mug shot from '99. Known accomplice was none other than Max Evans, wanted for tampering with a federal investigation and armed robbery. Upon viewing Max Evans, it was found to be none other than Nathan Sparks. Known accomplices were listed as Michael Guerin, Isabel Ramirez, and Elizabeth Parker. There was no picture of Isabel Evans-Ramirez but Dean had a feeling that Amanda Jamison bore an uncanny resemblance. One last name on the list of Max’s accomplices: Elizabeth Parker.
"Well, fuck me." He breathed out. Lillian Sparks's face stared back at him from her mug shot from an armed robbery in Utah in '01. She had been charged but released due to a lack of evidence; namely the gun she had allegedly used to hold up the store.
"What are you doing?" Sam stared at his brother.
"Some research."
"Can't sleep again?"
"Just…" Dean turned the laptop for Sam to see what he'd found. "Looks like those last two names on the list are accounted for… and then some."
--
"I love you." Max whispered.
"I love you, too." Liz whispered back. The dark swallowed them up in the dead of the night. Kissing his lips, she snuggled in closer as their heartbeats slowed. "Where did you learn to play like that?"
"Maybe I've always played that well." He only grinned in the dark.
"Uh-huh." She giggled. "Well, I'll get it out of you someday."
"Michael and I are going shopping tomorrow." He hoped he didn't sound like he was hiding something.
"I know. Maria already told me. Help him out." She pleaded. "And help him hide it afterward. She gets excited and has to know what he bought. Kyle said she tore up their room last year."
"I will. We'll get the shopping done and out of the way. You keep Isabel from… you know… getting too upset about Jesse?"
"I'll try but… I think she misses him more since you took her on that trip." It wasn't meant as an accusation but it was hard not to gripe. Liz loved her sister-in-law but seeing her so much more miserable after that trip had been hard to stomach. "Famine hits the hardest after a feast. That's when you feel true hunger… knowing what you're missing."
"Do you really think it's that safe?" Max knew what she was hinting at. He wanted his sister happy but he wanted her safe more.
"Maybe for her. Just her. Jesse has connections."
He frowned. Jesse's connections had faded a bit after all the business in Roswell. "Not enough connections."
"I know."
"I'll be back before you know it." He promised.
"Then… Michael will have to drive. I'm going to give you the best send off ever."
"Promises, promises."
TBC
Part 16 – The next day…
(August 27, 2008)
Michael nodded to the bag on the floor. "Liz was right about it being easier to hide the things in plain sight as crowbars but I'm thinking we find a place that can turn them into knives. We might not get close enough to stab or hit but I throw a mean dart or two."
"Yeah." Max nodded as he slipped a crowbar out of the bag. He wished it would be easier done with his powers but the depleted uranium resisted their powers. The molecules were too dense to manipulate but he wondered if he could push it with his powers.
--
"What do you think?" Dean looked to his baby brother. "This is your hunt. You tell me. Should we go cover these guys or go cover Nate and Gary?"
"They have Lillian. She'd get them out in time." Sam didn't even look up as he studied the map. "I'm not worried about them."
"I'm just thinking, maybe, if this thing is after anyone, it's after them."
"It might just go after the guys that are easier to find first so… really, we go where needed. You did say this was my hunt."
"Okay. We go after the other two, but which one?"
"The thing was last in Rockford, Alabama. I'm thinking the guy in Missouri is the next target."
--
Marty plopped a bag on the counter. "Hey, Lillian. Do me a favor, huh?"
"Sure." Liz popped the pen into her pocket.
"Bobby's been busy. Go take him some lunch."
"Got it."
"It's on the house."
"Got it." Liz smiled and grabbed the bag to make the short trek down the street. She sighed when a warm breeze caressed her face. She missed Max already but he'd be back in a few days. Present shopping always seemed to take Michael a day or two longer than anyone else. Normally she would have suggested he not try so hard but when he didn't try at all, the real fighting came.
Bounding through the body shop door, she looked around for the older man but didn't see him anywhere. "Anybody seen Bobby?"
Kyle stood up from under a hood. He glanced at the other guys. They all exchanged unreadable looks. "He's been holed up in the house for days. He hasn't been coming out here at all."
"And nobody cares?" Liz scoffed at the men when they shrugged.
"Hey, can you make sure he has our checks?" Pete asked then immediately ducked under the hood of the truck he'd been working on at the look on 'Lillian's' face.
"Whatever." Liz ran around to the house and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so she tried the handle. It creaked open. Liz carefully stepped over the salt in the doorway. She had stopped questioning all Bobby's precautions against the spirits. She just made sure she didn't disrupt anything that looked like any type of pattern. "Hello! Bobby?"
"Who's there?" The deep voice came from the back of the house.
"It's Lillian. Marty sent you some lunch."
"Back here!"
Liz picked her way through the house. There were stacks of books everywhere, most of them on the occult. A star-circle design graced the ceiling in what looked like his office. There were some pictures on the desk. She resisted the urge to look them over; to see if Bobby had family or something close to it. Passing through, she found Bobby in a small kitchen where he had every available surface covered with jars and canisters with various colored powders. On the table, he had bottles of liquids. He was systematically wetting his hand and dipping it in a powder then applying it to pieces of paper. He didn't seem happy with the results. "I don't know what Marty put in here but I'm sure he knows what you like."
"More like it's some crap he would eat." Bobby muttered and jerked his head to the counter. "Tell him, I'll pay him later. I'm busy."
"He said it was on the house." She offered lamely.
"Right." He snorted.
"Well, it's what he said."
"I'm not owing that son of a bitch anything for more than a day. He charges interest." Bobby grabbed a towel and wiped his hands off, roughly. "Come on. My wallet's in the office."
Liz followed him back to the room where she'd been fascinated by the ceiling art. On the floor was a strange brownish stain that she feared might be blood. Stepping out from under the circle, she examined the pictures in a way she hoped didn't seem rude. There was one of Marty, much younger, with a woman that Liz had never seen before. One she assumed was Bobby when he was a boy; he had the same scowl on his face. A third caught her eye, a man and two boys sitting on a car. An Impala. The man looked familiar.
"I know it's around here somewhere." Bobby picked up a book and laid it aside, looked under some papers and notebooks. Liz couldn't take her eyes off that picture. She imagined a few years and some stubble around that smile; that man's face was very familiar. The kids were happy enough. A sort of darkness in the younger one's brown eyes. A light and laughter in the green eyes of the older one. "What's that you got there?"
They were just boys but seeing those green eyes with that kind of light in them, she knew she had seen the man before. Liz froze as she picked up the picture on Bobby's desk. She pushed her memory for the one she had tried to block out. She knew those boys. "Is that John Winchester?"
"It sure is… one of the best h--. One of the best, John was. Sammy and Dean right there with him." He watched her. She looked like she was going to be sick. "How did you know that was him?"
"I met him, once. Briefly… a few years ago." Liz whispered. "Before we moved to Valor Springs. I've heard stories but I didn't know that this… was him. That I had met him before."
"John was unforgettable, I guess. Dean got that from him. Sammy's great but he's a good boy. Blends in."
"Not Dean." Liz smiled sadly. "He wants to be remembered by everyone."
"Maybe so. That family could charm the pants off anyone. Make people do stupid things and still claim it wasn’t their idea."
Liz started to say more as she crossed to ask something about the picture, but suddenly her vision went black. Bobby rushed to catch her before her head hit the floor. The picture frame clattered to the ground and the glass cracked.
--
Max stared at his phone for a minute before he turned it off. Michael had done the same just a moment before. They had just mailed off Maria's birthday presents and committed themselves to the hunt. Max was scared out of his mind but he had to end at least one dangerous thing. He was still on the FBI's postings for wanted men. There were probably more alien threats but this one was going to end.
--
Sam studied all the information he'd dug up. All coroner reports. All interviews with anyone who would talk to him. All research. "I don't know what we're dealing with."
"Any guess? Something close?" Dean tapped the steering wheel but he was discomfited by his brother's confusion.
"I have Bobby doing some tests but he says it's definitely not sulfur. Whatever this thing is, it's not acting like a spirit. It's not acting like any demon we've ever heard of. I'm… coming up empty on ways to kill it when we do find it."
"Is it something old?"
"Bobby and Marty have the circuits burning but no one has heard of anything that could do this. Nothing in history."
"So, it's new?" Dean didn’t like the sound of that. Old things had rules. New things were unpredictable but it didn't mean that it was wholly new. That Woman in White hadn't played by the rules but it had been killed. There were still rules. "We just have to figure it out."
"Okay. It's not linked to an object. It's doing its search like we are, probably. Orphaned men born in 1983 from Chavez County, New Mexico. It started with the ones in New Mexico. Then it kind of zigzagged… alphabetically." Sam went over the names and dates of the murders. "When it finds them, it probably studies them. The bodies are always found with the handprint on the chest. It kills face to face. Initial coroner reports have the handprint but it fades after a few days. I'd say demon but there's no chemical residue. No sulfur."
"It skipped these four why? Guerin and Evans are living under assumed names but we only know that cause we met the guys. The other guys?"
"They move around quite a bit. Speeding ticket on this one was how I got his address. The other one was arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct."
"Even if it really wants Nate and Gary, it would have to find them first. It's impatient but meticulous. It is going to kill every single one of these guys until it gets what it wants but what does it want?" Dean racked his brain for everything he could think of. "We know that something is up with them. FBI's most wanted. Lillian has visions. Nate saw a ghost once."
"How do you know that?"
"I was eavesdropping." Dean waved off his brother. "Maybe it's unfinished business with a demon. Maybe it's old. Fucking old like with our demon."
TBC
(August 27, 2008)
Michael nodded to the bag on the floor. "Liz was right about it being easier to hide the things in plain sight as crowbars but I'm thinking we find a place that can turn them into knives. We might not get close enough to stab or hit but I throw a mean dart or two."
"Yeah." Max nodded as he slipped a crowbar out of the bag. He wished it would be easier done with his powers but the depleted uranium resisted their powers. The molecules were too dense to manipulate but he wondered if he could push it with his powers.
--
"What do you think?" Dean looked to his baby brother. "This is your hunt. You tell me. Should we go cover these guys or go cover Nate and Gary?"
"They have Lillian. She'd get them out in time." Sam didn't even look up as he studied the map. "I'm not worried about them."
"I'm just thinking, maybe, if this thing is after anyone, it's after them."
"It might just go after the guys that are easier to find first so… really, we go where needed. You did say this was my hunt."
"Okay. We go after the other two, but which one?"
"The thing was last in Rockford, Alabama. I'm thinking the guy in Missouri is the next target."
--
Marty plopped a bag on the counter. "Hey, Lillian. Do me a favor, huh?"
"Sure." Liz popped the pen into her pocket.
"Bobby's been busy. Go take him some lunch."
"Got it."
"It's on the house."
"Got it." Liz smiled and grabbed the bag to make the short trek down the street. She sighed when a warm breeze caressed her face. She missed Max already but he'd be back in a few days. Present shopping always seemed to take Michael a day or two longer than anyone else. Normally she would have suggested he not try so hard but when he didn't try at all, the real fighting came.
Bounding through the body shop door, she looked around for the older man but didn't see him anywhere. "Anybody seen Bobby?"
Kyle stood up from under a hood. He glanced at the other guys. They all exchanged unreadable looks. "He's been holed up in the house for days. He hasn't been coming out here at all."
"And nobody cares?" Liz scoffed at the men when they shrugged.
"Hey, can you make sure he has our checks?" Pete asked then immediately ducked under the hood of the truck he'd been working on at the look on 'Lillian's' face.
"Whatever." Liz ran around to the house and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so she tried the handle. It creaked open. Liz carefully stepped over the salt in the doorway. She had stopped questioning all Bobby's precautions against the spirits. She just made sure she didn't disrupt anything that looked like any type of pattern. "Hello! Bobby?"
"Who's there?" The deep voice came from the back of the house.
"It's Lillian. Marty sent you some lunch."
"Back here!"
Liz picked her way through the house. There were stacks of books everywhere, most of them on the occult. A star-circle design graced the ceiling in what looked like his office. There were some pictures on the desk. She resisted the urge to look them over; to see if Bobby had family or something close to it. Passing through, she found Bobby in a small kitchen where he had every available surface covered with jars and canisters with various colored powders. On the table, he had bottles of liquids. He was systematically wetting his hand and dipping it in a powder then applying it to pieces of paper. He didn't seem happy with the results. "I don't know what Marty put in here but I'm sure he knows what you like."
"More like it's some crap he would eat." Bobby muttered and jerked his head to the counter. "Tell him, I'll pay him later. I'm busy."
"He said it was on the house." She offered lamely.
"Right." He snorted.
"Well, it's what he said."
"I'm not owing that son of a bitch anything for more than a day. He charges interest." Bobby grabbed a towel and wiped his hands off, roughly. "Come on. My wallet's in the office."
Liz followed him back to the room where she'd been fascinated by the ceiling art. On the floor was a strange brownish stain that she feared might be blood. Stepping out from under the circle, she examined the pictures in a way she hoped didn't seem rude. There was one of Marty, much younger, with a woman that Liz had never seen before. One she assumed was Bobby when he was a boy; he had the same scowl on his face. A third caught her eye, a man and two boys sitting on a car. An Impala. The man looked familiar.
"I know it's around here somewhere." Bobby picked up a book and laid it aside, looked under some papers and notebooks. Liz couldn't take her eyes off that picture. She imagined a few years and some stubble around that smile; that man's face was very familiar. The kids were happy enough. A sort of darkness in the younger one's brown eyes. A light and laughter in the green eyes of the older one. "What's that you got there?"
They were just boys but seeing those green eyes with that kind of light in them, she knew she had seen the man before. Liz froze as she picked up the picture on Bobby's desk. She pushed her memory for the one she had tried to block out. She knew those boys. "Is that John Winchester?"
"It sure is… one of the best h--. One of the best, John was. Sammy and Dean right there with him." He watched her. She looked like she was going to be sick. "How did you know that was him?"
"I met him, once. Briefly… a few years ago." Liz whispered. "Before we moved to Valor Springs. I've heard stories but I didn't know that this… was him. That I had met him before."
"John was unforgettable, I guess. Dean got that from him. Sammy's great but he's a good boy. Blends in."
"Not Dean." Liz smiled sadly. "He wants to be remembered by everyone."
"Maybe so. That family could charm the pants off anyone. Make people do stupid things and still claim it wasn’t their idea."
Liz started to say more as she crossed to ask something about the picture, but suddenly her vision went black. Bobby rushed to catch her before her head hit the floor. The picture frame clattered to the ground and the glass cracked.
--
Max stared at his phone for a minute before he turned it off. Michael had done the same just a moment before. They had just mailed off Maria's birthday presents and committed themselves to the hunt. Max was scared out of his mind but he had to end at least one dangerous thing. He was still on the FBI's postings for wanted men. There were probably more alien threats but this one was going to end.
--
Sam studied all the information he'd dug up. All coroner reports. All interviews with anyone who would talk to him. All research. "I don't know what we're dealing with."
"Any guess? Something close?" Dean tapped the steering wheel but he was discomfited by his brother's confusion.
"I have Bobby doing some tests but he says it's definitely not sulfur. Whatever this thing is, it's not acting like a spirit. It's not acting like any demon we've ever heard of. I'm… coming up empty on ways to kill it when we do find it."
"Is it something old?"
"Bobby and Marty have the circuits burning but no one has heard of anything that could do this. Nothing in history."
"So, it's new?" Dean didn’t like the sound of that. Old things had rules. New things were unpredictable but it didn't mean that it was wholly new. That Woman in White hadn't played by the rules but it had been killed. There were still rules. "We just have to figure it out."
"Okay. It's not linked to an object. It's doing its search like we are, probably. Orphaned men born in 1983 from Chavez County, New Mexico. It started with the ones in New Mexico. Then it kind of zigzagged… alphabetically." Sam went over the names and dates of the murders. "When it finds them, it probably studies them. The bodies are always found with the handprint on the chest. It kills face to face. Initial coroner reports have the handprint but it fades after a few days. I'd say demon but there's no chemical residue. No sulfur."
"It skipped these four why? Guerin and Evans are living under assumed names but we only know that cause we met the guys. The other guys?"
"They move around quite a bit. Speeding ticket on this one was how I got his address. The other one was arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct."
"Even if it really wants Nate and Gary, it would have to find them first. It's impatient but meticulous. It is going to kill every single one of these guys until it gets what it wants but what does it want?" Dean racked his brain for everything he could think of. "We know that something is up with them. FBI's most wanted. Lillian has visions. Nate saw a ghost once."
"How do you know that?"
"I was eavesdropping." Dean waved off his brother. "Maybe it's unfinished business with a demon. Maybe it's old. Fucking old like with our demon."
TBC
Part 17 – Later that night…
Liz sat still as stone on her empty bed for hours. Max's cell phone was off. So was Michael's. She picked up a pen and paper and started writing as much as she could. Nothing was clear, there was so much going on. So much that might happen. Then she was frantically dialing their numbers again, pleading silently for them to pick up.
Kyle had left her when she said she was fine. She kept getting glimpses of it but she couldn't see it all. Her head pounded but she refused to sleep. She told herself that Max had not lied about why he was leaving. He just had his phone off so he could sleep. He was just really tired but when he turned it back on, he'd check in. Dialing again, she waited for the beep. "Nathan… it's Lillian. I need you to call home. It's important. I need you to call me. I'm worried. Something isn't right. I passed out again. I need to talk to you. Please, call me back."
--
Kyle looked to Maria. "She's in bad shape. I don't know what she saw but it freaked her out. Bobby said they were talking and she just… collapsed. That's a vision right? That's how she's been having them lately?"
"She hasn't said anything to me. She hasn't had a vision in a while." Maria shook her head.
"She hasn't?"
"No. Her loving husband is always on her ass about them and he's been really laid back and comfortable, lately. So yeah, I figure she hasn't had many."
"That doesn't mean that she didn't have one today. High and Mighty went shopping with the Big Hair."
"Maybe she's really just pregnant, this time." Isabel offered but she didn't know if it was wise to broach that subject with Liz right now. "I'm worried about her, though. She called in sick. Marty gave me a look like maybe he thinks something's wrong. Whatever it is… I think we all know that it's not going to be good news."
"Give her the day. We check in on her but we don't bug her. She'll come to us when she's ready." Maria held out her hands. "And yeah, I'm worried, too."
"Maybe she just had a fight with the Astounding Natharini and she just needs space. It happens, right? Five year itch, maybe?" Kyle offered with a lame joke.
"Amanda! Get busy. We're short-handed today." Marty called from the back. "Mary! Run her over some soup or something, yeah?"
--
Liz scribbled image after image, writing her feelings about them in the margins. Arrows and dashes accompanied each image, like a comic strip. She kept coming back to the same events with different outcomes. She found a lot of things confusing. She labeled stick figures as the faces were brought to mind but nothing was finite. Nothing was clear. She ransacked her husband's things. His nightstand, his drawers. Nothing.
Picking up the phone, she dialed rapidly and was directly taken to his voicemail. "Max. Call me. It's important. Whatever you're doing. Don't. Please just come home."
--
Max watched the guy examine the crowbars. Michael had picked the guy out of a phone book in a seedy city they had originally planned just to drive through. "Well, can you do it?"
"What is this stuff again?"
"Depleted uranium. Very strong. It's been melted once into these."
"Can you pay?" Michael flashed the guy a wad of cash. The guy nodded to himself. "Then I can do it. Knives you said?"
"Like for throwing." Michael clarified.
"Can I be creative?" The guy grinned.
"Whatever. Just don't mix the metal. It's very important that the knives are pure depleted uranium."
"You probably don't have time for smelting but I'll do my best."
--
Dean shelled peanuts, tossing the shells to the ground. He popped the nut into his mouth and groaned. "Oh, come on, Sammy. Nobody is going to kill this guy. He's boring."
"Boring is not always unkillable. You bore me to death but I'm willing to bet there are hundreds of people who want you dead." Sam scanned his notes for anything of interest. Finding more common threads was extremely difficult. He was momentarily knocked off balance when Dean punched him in the arm. "But… nothing is more annoying than a demon that doesn't have patterns."
"So, all these guys were given up for adoption." Dean was tired of running in the same circles. "How many were actually adopted?"
"Little over half. The others grew up in foster homes and moved away of their own volition."
"Our friends Nate and Gary?"
"One of each. Nate was adopted by a couple, along with Amanda. Gary was bounced around before he settled with one family for a while. Emancipated minor at 16. He was picked up for murder more than once. No convictions."
"Murder? Gary?"
"It's what his, Michael Guerin's, rap sheet says. Nate just has the one armed robbery… but he didn't steal anything. It could be some trumped up charge to get him on the list. He really doesn't strike me as the type to rob convenience stores."
"Why not?"
"He tends bar and doesn’t drink; minimum wage. If he were some kind of bandit, he'd have more money and he probably wouldn't work for Marty. I mean… come on." Sam gestured to the two of them. He personally hadn't done any honest work since he was in college. And Dean hadn't done any in longer. Neither of them was starving.
"Maybe Lillian's the crook. Nate just follows her around. She's smart. She might have a day job to throw off the cops."
"Right… cause Lillian is intimidating. She couldn't scare off a bee."
"Stan says she threw Nate's ex against a wall." He caught the look his brother threw him and shrugged. "It's what Stan said and Lillian didn't deny it."
"Uh-huh. Stan also said that he's waiting for the big alien invasion. I wouldn't listen to everything that guy says."
"Oh, man. Really?" Dean tossed another shell to the ground in annoyance. He scoffed at his boots when he kicked the shells away. "I gave that guy some of my best come-ons and he's a freaking… 'I saw a UFO in my backyard' guy?"
"Well, these guys must have pissed somebody off because the whole crew picked up and ran from something even though not all of them are on the most wanted list. Details on their rapid departure aren't very clear…"
"Where are they from?"
"Roswell, New Mexico."
"No shit?" Dean laughed. "Maybe they're aliens. Stan might be on to something."
--
Liz sat drinking at the end of the bar. Marty kept a close eye on her. It seemed just like every other time 'Nathan' had left but 'Lillian' seemed to think differently. When asked, she stated that she had to figure some things out on her own. None of her friends seemed to be able to get through to her. He had to hand it to her. She only drank two beers over the course of the evening. A strong woman who didn't want to let her guard down too much.
Maria tried but Liz wasn't talking. She kept waving off her friend and rubbing her forehead. Every time AC/DC, Scorpions or something similar came on the jukebox, she got up with some change to change the song to something less dated.
Isabel offered her shoulder but it was refused. Liz did, however, take the mug of soup when it was left in front of her. She only ate half but it was more than she had eaten all day.
Kyle tried to make her laugh but they had been gone too long not to worry. He had seen her making calls and leaving voicemails. It wasn't like Max to turn off his phone or not to check his voicemail. Maybe Liz was right. Maybe something was going to happen.
TBC
Liz sat still as stone on her empty bed for hours. Max's cell phone was off. So was Michael's. She picked up a pen and paper and started writing as much as she could. Nothing was clear, there was so much going on. So much that might happen. Then she was frantically dialing their numbers again, pleading silently for them to pick up.
Kyle had left her when she said she was fine. She kept getting glimpses of it but she couldn't see it all. Her head pounded but she refused to sleep. She told herself that Max had not lied about why he was leaving. He just had his phone off so he could sleep. He was just really tired but when he turned it back on, he'd check in. Dialing again, she waited for the beep. "Nathan… it's Lillian. I need you to call home. It's important. I need you to call me. I'm worried. Something isn't right. I passed out again. I need to talk to you. Please, call me back."
--
Kyle looked to Maria. "She's in bad shape. I don't know what she saw but it freaked her out. Bobby said they were talking and she just… collapsed. That's a vision right? That's how she's been having them lately?"
"She hasn't said anything to me. She hasn't had a vision in a while." Maria shook her head.
"She hasn't?"
"No. Her loving husband is always on her ass about them and he's been really laid back and comfortable, lately. So yeah, I figure she hasn't had many."
"That doesn't mean that she didn't have one today. High and Mighty went shopping with the Big Hair."
"Maybe she's really just pregnant, this time." Isabel offered but she didn't know if it was wise to broach that subject with Liz right now. "I'm worried about her, though. She called in sick. Marty gave me a look like maybe he thinks something's wrong. Whatever it is… I think we all know that it's not going to be good news."
"Give her the day. We check in on her but we don't bug her. She'll come to us when she's ready." Maria held out her hands. "And yeah, I'm worried, too."
"Maybe she just had a fight with the Astounding Natharini and she just needs space. It happens, right? Five year itch, maybe?" Kyle offered with a lame joke.
"Amanda! Get busy. We're short-handed today." Marty called from the back. "Mary! Run her over some soup or something, yeah?"
--
Liz scribbled image after image, writing her feelings about them in the margins. Arrows and dashes accompanied each image, like a comic strip. She kept coming back to the same events with different outcomes. She found a lot of things confusing. She labeled stick figures as the faces were brought to mind but nothing was finite. Nothing was clear. She ransacked her husband's things. His nightstand, his drawers. Nothing.
Picking up the phone, she dialed rapidly and was directly taken to his voicemail. "Max. Call me. It's important. Whatever you're doing. Don't. Please just come home."
--
Max watched the guy examine the crowbars. Michael had picked the guy out of a phone book in a seedy city they had originally planned just to drive through. "Well, can you do it?"
"What is this stuff again?"
"Depleted uranium. Very strong. It's been melted once into these."
"Can you pay?" Michael flashed the guy a wad of cash. The guy nodded to himself. "Then I can do it. Knives you said?"
"Like for throwing." Michael clarified.
"Can I be creative?" The guy grinned.
"Whatever. Just don't mix the metal. It's very important that the knives are pure depleted uranium."
"You probably don't have time for smelting but I'll do my best."
--
Dean shelled peanuts, tossing the shells to the ground. He popped the nut into his mouth and groaned. "Oh, come on, Sammy. Nobody is going to kill this guy. He's boring."
"Boring is not always unkillable. You bore me to death but I'm willing to bet there are hundreds of people who want you dead." Sam scanned his notes for anything of interest. Finding more common threads was extremely difficult. He was momentarily knocked off balance when Dean punched him in the arm. "But… nothing is more annoying than a demon that doesn't have patterns."
"So, all these guys were given up for adoption." Dean was tired of running in the same circles. "How many were actually adopted?"
"Little over half. The others grew up in foster homes and moved away of their own volition."
"Our friends Nate and Gary?"
"One of each. Nate was adopted by a couple, along with Amanda. Gary was bounced around before he settled with one family for a while. Emancipated minor at 16. He was picked up for murder more than once. No convictions."
"Murder? Gary?"
"It's what his, Michael Guerin's, rap sheet says. Nate just has the one armed robbery… but he didn't steal anything. It could be some trumped up charge to get him on the list. He really doesn't strike me as the type to rob convenience stores."
"Why not?"
"He tends bar and doesn’t drink; minimum wage. If he were some kind of bandit, he'd have more money and he probably wouldn't work for Marty. I mean… come on." Sam gestured to the two of them. He personally hadn't done any honest work since he was in college. And Dean hadn't done any in longer. Neither of them was starving.
"Maybe Lillian's the crook. Nate just follows her around. She's smart. She might have a day job to throw off the cops."
"Right… cause Lillian is intimidating. She couldn't scare off a bee."
"Stan says she threw Nate's ex against a wall." He caught the look his brother threw him and shrugged. "It's what Stan said and Lillian didn't deny it."
"Uh-huh. Stan also said that he's waiting for the big alien invasion. I wouldn't listen to everything that guy says."
"Oh, man. Really?" Dean tossed another shell to the ground in annoyance. He scoffed at his boots when he kicked the shells away. "I gave that guy some of my best come-ons and he's a freaking… 'I saw a UFO in my backyard' guy?"
"Well, these guys must have pissed somebody off because the whole crew picked up and ran from something even though not all of them are on the most wanted list. Details on their rapid departure aren't very clear…"
"Where are they from?"
"Roswell, New Mexico."
"No shit?" Dean laughed. "Maybe they're aliens. Stan might be on to something."
--
Liz sat drinking at the end of the bar. Marty kept a close eye on her. It seemed just like every other time 'Nathan' had left but 'Lillian' seemed to think differently. When asked, she stated that she had to figure some things out on her own. None of her friends seemed to be able to get through to her. He had to hand it to her. She only drank two beers over the course of the evening. A strong woman who didn't want to let her guard down too much.
Maria tried but Liz wasn't talking. She kept waving off her friend and rubbing her forehead. Every time AC/DC, Scorpions or something similar came on the jukebox, she got up with some change to change the song to something less dated.
Isabel offered her shoulder but it was refused. Liz did, however, take the mug of soup when it was left in front of her. She only ate half but it was more than she had eaten all day.
Kyle tried to make her laugh but they had been gone too long not to worry. He had seen her making calls and leaving voicemails. It wasn't like Max to turn off his phone or not to check his voicemail. Maybe Liz was right. Maybe something was going to happen.
TBC
Part 18 – The next day…
(August 28, 2008)
Maria lingered after she served Liz the beer she'd asked for. It was early in the day but the worse Liz looked, the worse a feeling Maria got about the whole situation. "Chica… you have to tell us something if you know something."
"I don't know anything." Liz shook her head and fingered the notebook she'd brought in with her.
"You know something."
"I have a feeling, Maria. I don't know anything." She locked eyes with her friend.
"Talk to me. Let me know what you're feeling because you're scaring the shit out of everyone."
Liz wiped a tear from her eye. "He lied to me."
"How?"
"He promised he wouldn't lie about leaving again… but he always does. He did it to me in Roswell."
Maria knew it was serious. It had been an unspoken pact not to discuss Roswell in public since they'd left. Liz had used Maria's given name and spoken the unspeakable in less than two minutes. "What do you mean?"
"I mean… He's always done this. He broke up with me, without giving me a real reason that first time. Just stopped being there for my own good, he said. Then he doesn't believe me when I feel so strongly that I'm right… and I was. I was right. I was right about Alex." She gasped in a breath to keep from crying. "Then he was going to leave me. He was going to leave us all and he didn't even call to tell me. He just was going to leave me to live on this Earth without him. Then that time he changed all our plans and didn’t tell me until… I realized I was all alone. I was afraid for those minutes when I didn't know where anyone was and it was because he didn't want to start a panic but I panicked. He did it when Marty's goddaughter was taken and he's doing it again."
"He's a man. The curse of being a man is to constantly repeat all his mistakes." Maria knew it was lame but she didn't know what to do with her distraught friend. "Wouldn't you rather eat ice cream than cry? I know Max loves you but he's being an idiot."
"I don't want ice cream, Maria. I don't want to buy shoes. I don't want to go to Rutherford to watch a movie with hot guys or to a club to dance with hot guys." Liz stared at her best friend. "I know he loves me. That's never been a question. I want my husband here. With me. That's what I want. If you can get him on the phone to tell me why he lied again, then I'll do something else… but until you do, I'm going to sit here with my beer and cry. Okay?"
Maria stared at her miserable friend and felt utterly useless. "Is it… not safe? For the guys to be out of town?"
"I don't know." Liz lamented. "I just… how could he lie and run off like that?"
"What kind of vision did you have?"
"Not a good one but it's too blurry right now. I can't see it." Liz lied. "I can't talk about it until I know what we can do about it… and that's all I know for sure."
--
Max examined the set of throwing stars and throwing knives. He chucked a throwing star at the dartboard on the far end of the room. It flew wide and missed by several inches. On the second throw, he tried to use his powers to adjust for the difference. It worked, but only slightly.
"Don’t think Frisbee quite so much. Use the hole in the middle as a guide." The blacksmith took one in his hand and tossed it in a quick flick of his hand. “Your finger guides the star.”
Michael picked one up and did the same. He got it close to the bull's eye. "Awesome."
Max picked up a knife and threw it end over end. It hit the mark. "I guess I'll be using these."
"That was good." The blacksmith retrieved the sharp objects from the wall and placed them with their sets. "I threw this in, free of charge." He laid out two short daggers. "I figured you'd be into this. There was enough left over to make them. I love hand to hand, man. Where do you guys perform?"
"All over. We were on the way to a show." Michael lied and gathered everything together. "When we get placed, we'll drop a line."
"Awesome. You guys good?"
"We'd better be." Max paid the man and walked out the door, his gut agitated by something he couldn't name. He kept walking when Michael stopped at the car. He turned into the alley and puked into a trashcan.
Michael was waiting when Max sat in the car finally. "Something wrong?"
"Just… it hit me… we're going to kill someone. I kind of thought we'd never have to kill anyone again." Max breathed out and searched his bag for mints. "I've never thrown a knife in my life and I…"
"Maybe you threw knives in a past life."
"Shut up."
--
Dean flipped through page after virtual page of demon lore on the Internet. There was nothing from any reputable source that said anything about demons that left their victims with bellies full of ash. He kept tabs on the other potential victim via crime logs and news from the area but nothing was popping up.
Glancing over at Sam, he knew his brother was having the same kind of luck. Sam pulled out his cellphone and pulled out their father's journal. Dean shut his eyes. Calling the old guys might help but somehow he doubted anyone had anything on ash demons. Bobby had come up short. There wasn't much hope for the rest of the guys.
He pulled up the list of victims and began examining what he could of their lives. All born within Chavez county, given up for adoption within the county. All lived pretty unremarkable lives in their respective cities. Graduated high school or didn't. Most moved away. There was still nothing clear but his suspicions grew that Nathan Sparks and Gary Henderson were the ones this thing was after.
Dean changed his search. 1983-2002. Roswell, New Mexico. Max Evans. Michael Guerin. Elizabeth Parker. Before he could read anything significant, his phone rang.
--
Liz sniffed as she crossed out images that were missing from the internal reel in her head. There were still a number of variable outcomes but the path had become clearer. Tearing sheets out, tearing squares out, she arranged them as they were in her head. Stick figures were moved and renamed. Liz threw her hands up in frustration. She almost took a shot from the bottle she'd purchased after she'd left the bar. She almost drank herself into a stupor but she didn't like the way the odds were stacking up against her husband. She studied the images and cleared her mind. She moved pieces around. She drew in new opportunities as she saw them. It had to work. It had to. She had to put all the soldiers in the right places. It was like a high-stakes game of Risk and she was the General. She had to win.
Liz walked into Bobby's house. He watched as she sat at his desk and drew a picture. Then she flipped through his phone directory. He had a rotary phone but she diligently dialed all eleven digits.
"Dean, it's Li---Lillian." She licked her lips and took a deep breath. "I need you to stop what you're doing and get to Rutherford, South Dakota. There's a mailbox there… yes, that key was from me… Yes. Then you need to get to Stephenson, Montana… It's Ma—My husband. It's Nathan… I know but I need you to bring him home to me… It has to be you. It's a… it's a really powerful demon… Your usual ammo won't work… No. No. Not silver, not salt, not iron. Maybe fire. Depleted uranium will slow it down… In the mailbox in Rutherford. There are six boxes of pellets… I didn't have shells so you'll have to pack some yourself… It's important and it has to be you and Sam… Please, Dean. Just bring him home to me."
When she hung up the phone, she let a tear slip from her eye. Bobby just watched as she pulled herself back together. "Sorry to just barge in, Bobby. He's going to call back. You describe this to him." She tapped the picture she'd drawn on the desk.
"Why didn't you just tell him this?"
"Because it does him no good until he gets there. He has to find them first. He has to get there and find them first. I don't want the Winchesters going after this thing until after they find my husband. When they call, make sure they're with Nathan and Gary before you hand over the info. It's very important."
--
Sam cursed to himself. He had picked the guy in Missouri. He just seemed like
the more likely victim. The easiest to get killed. Dean drove like a demon from the hick town in Missouri to Rutherford, South Dakota. Sam was tempted to call Lillian to get more details but he doubted she could say anything more than she said to Dean earlier. Dean screeched to a halt at a stop sign. Heavy traffic. It was a junction. "We could go get all the details from her now or we could keep going and pick up the damned pellets."
"We go get the pellets." Dean muttered. "She seemed to be in a hurry. Nathan and Gary are demon-hunting amateurs. They're going to get themselves killed. How long until it closes?"
"Three hours. We've got time to get there without worrying that we'll have to break in. How much time until we need to get to them?"
"I don't know. As soon as we get the pellets and get on our way to Stephenson… then we call to see if she knows more." Dean tossed his brother his phone before sending the car roaring into traffic, nearly clipping a truck in the far lane. "Check where she called from, would you?"
TBC
(August 28, 2008)
Maria lingered after she served Liz the beer she'd asked for. It was early in the day but the worse Liz looked, the worse a feeling Maria got about the whole situation. "Chica… you have to tell us something if you know something."
"I don't know anything." Liz shook her head and fingered the notebook she'd brought in with her.
"You know something."
"I have a feeling, Maria. I don't know anything." She locked eyes with her friend.
"Talk to me. Let me know what you're feeling because you're scaring the shit out of everyone."
Liz wiped a tear from her eye. "He lied to me."
"How?"
"He promised he wouldn't lie about leaving again… but he always does. He did it to me in Roswell."
Maria knew it was serious. It had been an unspoken pact not to discuss Roswell in public since they'd left. Liz had used Maria's given name and spoken the unspeakable in less than two minutes. "What do you mean?"
"I mean… He's always done this. He broke up with me, without giving me a real reason that first time. Just stopped being there for my own good, he said. Then he doesn't believe me when I feel so strongly that I'm right… and I was. I was right. I was right about Alex." She gasped in a breath to keep from crying. "Then he was going to leave me. He was going to leave us all and he didn't even call to tell me. He just was going to leave me to live on this Earth without him. Then that time he changed all our plans and didn’t tell me until… I realized I was all alone. I was afraid for those minutes when I didn't know where anyone was and it was because he didn't want to start a panic but I panicked. He did it when Marty's goddaughter was taken and he's doing it again."
"He's a man. The curse of being a man is to constantly repeat all his mistakes." Maria knew it was lame but she didn't know what to do with her distraught friend. "Wouldn't you rather eat ice cream than cry? I know Max loves you but he's being an idiot."
"I don't want ice cream, Maria. I don't want to buy shoes. I don't want to go to Rutherford to watch a movie with hot guys or to a club to dance with hot guys." Liz stared at her best friend. "I know he loves me. That's never been a question. I want my husband here. With me. That's what I want. If you can get him on the phone to tell me why he lied again, then I'll do something else… but until you do, I'm going to sit here with my beer and cry. Okay?"
Maria stared at her miserable friend and felt utterly useless. "Is it… not safe? For the guys to be out of town?"
"I don't know." Liz lamented. "I just… how could he lie and run off like that?"
"What kind of vision did you have?"
"Not a good one but it's too blurry right now. I can't see it." Liz lied. "I can't talk about it until I know what we can do about it… and that's all I know for sure."
--
Max examined the set of throwing stars and throwing knives. He chucked a throwing star at the dartboard on the far end of the room. It flew wide and missed by several inches. On the second throw, he tried to use his powers to adjust for the difference. It worked, but only slightly.
"Don’t think Frisbee quite so much. Use the hole in the middle as a guide." The blacksmith took one in his hand and tossed it in a quick flick of his hand. “Your finger guides the star.”
Michael picked one up and did the same. He got it close to the bull's eye. "Awesome."
Max picked up a knife and threw it end over end. It hit the mark. "I guess I'll be using these."
"That was good." The blacksmith retrieved the sharp objects from the wall and placed them with their sets. "I threw this in, free of charge." He laid out two short daggers. "I figured you'd be into this. There was enough left over to make them. I love hand to hand, man. Where do you guys perform?"
"All over. We were on the way to a show." Michael lied and gathered everything together. "When we get placed, we'll drop a line."
"Awesome. You guys good?"
"We'd better be." Max paid the man and walked out the door, his gut agitated by something he couldn't name. He kept walking when Michael stopped at the car. He turned into the alley and puked into a trashcan.
Michael was waiting when Max sat in the car finally. "Something wrong?"
"Just… it hit me… we're going to kill someone. I kind of thought we'd never have to kill anyone again." Max breathed out and searched his bag for mints. "I've never thrown a knife in my life and I…"
"Maybe you threw knives in a past life."
"Shut up."
--
Dean flipped through page after virtual page of demon lore on the Internet. There was nothing from any reputable source that said anything about demons that left their victims with bellies full of ash. He kept tabs on the other potential victim via crime logs and news from the area but nothing was popping up.
Glancing over at Sam, he knew his brother was having the same kind of luck. Sam pulled out his cellphone and pulled out their father's journal. Dean shut his eyes. Calling the old guys might help but somehow he doubted anyone had anything on ash demons. Bobby had come up short. There wasn't much hope for the rest of the guys.
He pulled up the list of victims and began examining what he could of their lives. All born within Chavez county, given up for adoption within the county. All lived pretty unremarkable lives in their respective cities. Graduated high school or didn't. Most moved away. There was still nothing clear but his suspicions grew that Nathan Sparks and Gary Henderson were the ones this thing was after.
Dean changed his search. 1983-2002. Roswell, New Mexico. Max Evans. Michael Guerin. Elizabeth Parker. Before he could read anything significant, his phone rang.
--
Liz sniffed as she crossed out images that were missing from the internal reel in her head. There were still a number of variable outcomes but the path had become clearer. Tearing sheets out, tearing squares out, she arranged them as they were in her head. Stick figures were moved and renamed. Liz threw her hands up in frustration. She almost took a shot from the bottle she'd purchased after she'd left the bar. She almost drank herself into a stupor but she didn't like the way the odds were stacking up against her husband. She studied the images and cleared her mind. She moved pieces around. She drew in new opportunities as she saw them. It had to work. It had to. She had to put all the soldiers in the right places. It was like a high-stakes game of Risk and she was the General. She had to win.
Liz walked into Bobby's house. He watched as she sat at his desk and drew a picture. Then she flipped through his phone directory. He had a rotary phone but she diligently dialed all eleven digits.
"Dean, it's Li---Lillian." She licked her lips and took a deep breath. "I need you to stop what you're doing and get to Rutherford, South Dakota. There's a mailbox there… yes, that key was from me… Yes. Then you need to get to Stephenson, Montana… It's Ma—My husband. It's Nathan… I know but I need you to bring him home to me… It has to be you. It's a… it's a really powerful demon… Your usual ammo won't work… No. No. Not silver, not salt, not iron. Maybe fire. Depleted uranium will slow it down… In the mailbox in Rutherford. There are six boxes of pellets… I didn't have shells so you'll have to pack some yourself… It's important and it has to be you and Sam… Please, Dean. Just bring him home to me."
When she hung up the phone, she let a tear slip from her eye. Bobby just watched as she pulled herself back together. "Sorry to just barge in, Bobby. He's going to call back. You describe this to him." She tapped the picture she'd drawn on the desk.
"Why didn't you just tell him this?"
"Because it does him no good until he gets there. He has to find them first. He has to get there and find them first. I don't want the Winchesters going after this thing until after they find my husband. When they call, make sure they're with Nathan and Gary before you hand over the info. It's very important."
--
Sam cursed to himself. He had picked the guy in Missouri. He just seemed like
the more likely victim. The easiest to get killed. Dean drove like a demon from the hick town in Missouri to Rutherford, South Dakota. Sam was tempted to call Lillian to get more details but he doubted she could say anything more than she said to Dean earlier. Dean screeched to a halt at a stop sign. Heavy traffic. It was a junction. "We could go get all the details from her now or we could keep going and pick up the damned pellets."
"We go get the pellets." Dean muttered. "She seemed to be in a hurry. Nathan and Gary are demon-hunting amateurs. They're going to get themselves killed. How long until it closes?"
"Three hours. We've got time to get there without worrying that we'll have to break in. How much time until we need to get to them?"
"I don't know. As soon as we get the pellets and get on our way to Stephenson… then we call to see if she knows more." Dean tossed his brother his phone before sending the car roaring into traffic, nearly clipping a truck in the far lane. "Check where she called from, would you?"
TBC
AN: I decided I couldn't leave you hanging over the weekend. You all need resolution before I go offline this weekend soo.. here's the new part.
Part 19 – Two days later…
(August 30, 2008)
Maria opened her presents from Max and Michael with a heavy heart. Liz had been right about whatever stupid thing they had gone to do. They would have brought the gifts back in person if it was just a shopping trip like they had said. The cards both wished her a Happy Birthday but neither gave any sort of explanation as to why they had run off. Max had given her a book on the stars. She smiled as she flipped through it. It reminded her of home and her mother. She showed it to Liz, who had managed to remain sober for the last day and a half. The brunette's smile seemed genuine and her tone was even while she spoke. "I'll tell him that you like it."
"I do." Maria nodded. She picked up Michael's gift. A silk scarf in a smoky sort of red and pink. A set of decorative hair combs that gleamed in her fair hair, each one adorned with Chinese prosperity characters. "Wow. He really…"
"Shopped." Liz nodded.
"'To my spirited lady. Have a Happy Birthday. I know I'm not the best at gift-giving but I figure that anything half as beautiful could only make you look more like the angel you've always been to me. Love, Michael." She half-laughed and tried not to look worried when she showed Liz the card. "He actually signed his real name on it."
"They're coming back." Liz squeezed her friend's hands.
"He'd better. I'd like to thank him before I kill him."
--
Isabel sat in the front pew with Kyle beside her. "I never know if I really believe in it. You know… God."
"Why not?"
"It's just… God creates everything, right? Did He plan for someone to revive my soul and put it in a test-tube filled with alien DNA, human DNA and Gandarium? Was that something He did?" She stared at the cross behind the pulpit. "I mean. It's a lot of work for eight beings, you know? Should I be that much more special just because that was such a contrived set of circumstances?"
"Or? I'm sensing an 'or' in there."
"Or… am I really just an abomination in His eyes?"
"Come on, Isabel."
"I went to church every Sunday with my parents. I celebrated the heck out of every Christmas. I was married by His laws… in a ceremony by a priest with a man I loved, waiting to give myself to him until after the wedding. Just the way I was taught in Sunday school. You know? I followed the rules…" She trailed off. "But do the rules apply to someone like me? Not only an alien but someone who regularly broke the commandments even though I considered myself a good person? I took His name in vain. I did not honor my father and mother as I should have. I have killed. I have stolen. I have coveted that which I could not have. Maybe I even bore false witness to save my own skin. How many is that? Six out of ten? Doesn't that guarantee a seat in Hell? Or does the devil not take me either because I am not of this earth?"
"Isabel…"
"Do you know what always bothered me? Max, when he died that time. His body turned to ashes. He died and he burned up. Burned until he was ash. Why? Is it some sort of encoding in our DNA that we fly beneath the radar even in death?" She turned to her friend. "Do not quote that fat bald man to me, Kyle Valenti. Looking at Liz this way, it scares me, Kyle. It makes me think about death and what comes after. It terrifies me to not know where I belong."
"It terrifies everyone." Kyle took her hand in his. "I know how you feel… and don't say that I don't." He cut her off. "I was born human. That was an absolute. My dad begged Max to heal me when I got shot and now… I'm not human and I'm not alien. I'm some hybrid in between that can levitate rocks, sometimes I have telekinetic tendencies and I have a halo of tools on my belt. There is only one person on the planet like me. Maybe Dad is like me too but… there are only three of us… just like there are only three of you left who have this human-alien DNA."
"Okay. I am not alone." Isabel took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Where is she?"
"She's with Maria. Opening presents from the guys. They didn't leave a trail, though. We'll have to sit and wait. Liz comes unhinged if anyone mentions going after those morons. She's okay today. She looks like she believes they will come back."
"What changed?" Isabel whispered. "What changed that she would do that to us? Make us believe something bad was going to happen and then just… changed her mind that they were going to be okay?"
--
Bodies lay strewn all over the room. Kyle's head lolled against the back of the armchair, Isabel across his lap. Maria had passed out on the floor, leaving Liz alone and cold in her bed. Liz shut her eyes but she couldn't see it anymore. Whatever had happened had passed. It was over but… where were they?
The next day…
(August 31, 2008)
Dean stepped out of the car and then pulled something out of the backseat. He was dirty, sweaty, and weary. He hadn't slept in three days and honestly didn't know if he could walk across the parking lot much less around to Bobby's. Kyle raced across the street to the bar to get the ladies. They all stepped outside in time to see Sam help Michael out of the car. Michael stepped in front of them, his eyes dead. "Something sort of came up. Sorry."
Liz stepped passed him and stood in front of Dean, whose eyes were not laughing. Not at all. In fact, they were welling with tears. "Lillian…"
She resisted the urge to look into the car behind him. "Did you bring him to me?"
"Yeah." He pulled a Maxwell House coffee can out of a burlap sack. "I'm so sorry, Lillian. I tried to get there in time. I’m sorry."
She stared at the can. "No." She shook her head as her shoulders started shaking. "No."
"I am so sorry. We got there as soon as we could. I did everything I could. Sammy did everything he could. We just… we tried so hard."
"You were supposed to get there in time. You were supposed to use the pellets I sent you."
"We did. We tried everything we knew." Dean reached for her when it looked like she was going to fall. She slapped his hand away and yanked the can out of his hands. "The pellets slowed it down but… we couldn't get him out of the thing's reach."
"You put him in a coffee can." She sobbed as she cradled her husband's remains to her body. "What did you do to his body?"
"I didn't." Dean shook his head. "The thing did it, I swear it."
Liz turned her back on him and let the tears fall onto the can. She started to walk away when he gripped her shoulder to turn her back. "Don't touch me!"
"You want these." Dean pulled some other items out of the sack. Max's wedding band and the medallion from his necklace. "I'm sorry. We tried. I tried."
"Just… stay away from me."
Dean fell against the car, tears streaming down his face. Michael's body was supported by Maria and Isabel. Kyle walked with Liz at a distance. Dean watched through blurry eyes as Liz collapsed before the turn, weeping on Kyle's shoulder. Sam leaned next to his brother but didn't say a word. "Sammy? I'm tired."
"Me, too." Sam's voice sounded like rust and iron.
"Did you see her face?" He coughed suddenly and had to fight the rising bile for the millionth time since they had left that field in flames. He coughed so hard, he thought he was going to stop breathing until Sam whacked his back hard enough to get the air going. Then he was dry heaving into the dust. He wept into his brother's denim jacket. "I said I'd bring him back. Why'd I say that?"
"You thought you could."
--
Liz choked on her tears as she ripped page after page from the notebook, electricity shot up and down her arms. Sparking the paper and making holes but not setting the pages on fire, the energy leapt off her body like she was the electrode in the plasma globes in the mall.
"Kyle." Isabel whispered. "Can you?"
Kyle nodded and approached Liz slowly, the arcs of energy reached for him. He absorbed them as he inched closer. It stung but he could see that Liz was hurting far worse than anything he could imagine. He took the notebooks away from her and held her arms away when she tried to hit him. "Sh. Sh. Liz. Sh. We're here for you." Tears slipped down his face as it began to sink in. He'd been numb out there, waiting to see what Liz would do. He still expected Max to rush into the room, breathless, and take Liz into his arms to prove that everything had gone according to plan. That wasn't happening. The coffee can sat on the dining table. The Maxwell House side turned to the wall. "Liz. Sh."
"I tried to warn him." She sobbed. "I tried. As soon as I saw it, I tried to call him. I didn't know it would happen this way. I didn't know. I tried but he wouldn't call me back. I should have warned him sooner."
"It's okay. It's okay. You couldn't have known." Kyle wrapped his arms around her shaking body.
"I could have tried. I didn't try hard enough." Liz sobbed on Kyle, unable to hold her body upright any longer. The energy dying down to a light crackle around her body.
Michael bent and picked up a page that had landed near his feet. He stared at it and stared at it. "What the fuck is this, Liz?"
"What is it?" Isabel frowned at the only brother she had left.
"This is the field." Michael bit out. "This is the fucking field where we caught up with him."
Liz stilled suddenly, eyes wide. Kyle looked her over. He knew that look. She looked guilty. "I drew it from memory. I tried to call…"
"This is dated last month." He pointed to the scribbled date at the top of the page.
Liz began scrambling around gathering the pages before anyone else could look at them. "You don't understand."
Isabel raced around, gathering the pages and comparing the doodles on them and the dates each was drawn. "These are before the guys took off. How long have you known?"
"It's not… I just…" Liz dropped the pages on the floor and trudged across the room to pick up her husband in his coffee can. "I didn't want to worry anyone."
"How do you just not tell me my brother was going to die?" Isabel shrieked, the tears finally arriving.
"I did everything I could. I spent so long analyzing every way with what little I knew." Liz whispered, her eyes on the coffee can in her hands.
"How do you just accept your husband is going to die?"
"I didn't just accept it." Liz snapped her eyes to her sister-in-law. "I tried to prevent it. I stuck us in the middle of nowhere so he couldn't go far. I've had a while to find a way to fight it. I never knew just how or when it was going to happen but I knew something would if I couldn't keep him here. The timing was important. I tried to stop him."
"You couldn't get back-up there sooner?" Michael demanded, weakly. Maria tended to his wounds quietly.
"Not without killing you all." She stood to face all her friends, the can never leaving her arms. "I didn't know details until after you two left and turned off your phones! Michael, I couldn't get you a specific warning. I went over and over it. Too soon and twenty people would die. Too late and two people die. Both ways it got away. It had to be exact. It had to be precise so that it died. So that it was stopped."
"So you sacrificed Max?"
"I sacrificed Max?" Liz turned on Michael, towering over his seated form. "Who dragged him out there? Who convinced him that killing the shapeshifter was the right thing to do? Who turned off the phones?! I told you not to go without telling me!"
"You're blaming me." Michael knew what was his fault but Liz should have warned them if she had known something. "It wasn't just some shapeshifter. It was Kivar in all his alien glory! If we'd had a clue—"
"No, don't put this on me. I didn't tell him to go. I begged him to stay. I didn't kill him, lay my hands on him and burn him from the inside out. I sent Dean and Sam as backup to let you kill it when it was vulnerable. To get you out of there before the Feds showed up to investigate." She dropped her gaze back to the coffee can. "To bring him home… but not like this."
"Liz."
"Shut up! Get out of my house." She turned back to Michael. Everyone stared at her, stunned. "I said get out!"
TBC
Part 19 – Two days later…
(August 30, 2008)
Maria opened her presents from Max and Michael with a heavy heart. Liz had been right about whatever stupid thing they had gone to do. They would have brought the gifts back in person if it was just a shopping trip like they had said. The cards both wished her a Happy Birthday but neither gave any sort of explanation as to why they had run off. Max had given her a book on the stars. She smiled as she flipped through it. It reminded her of home and her mother. She showed it to Liz, who had managed to remain sober for the last day and a half. The brunette's smile seemed genuine and her tone was even while she spoke. "I'll tell him that you like it."
"I do." Maria nodded. She picked up Michael's gift. A silk scarf in a smoky sort of red and pink. A set of decorative hair combs that gleamed in her fair hair, each one adorned with Chinese prosperity characters. "Wow. He really…"
"Shopped." Liz nodded.
"'To my spirited lady. Have a Happy Birthday. I know I'm not the best at gift-giving but I figure that anything half as beautiful could only make you look more like the angel you've always been to me. Love, Michael." She half-laughed and tried not to look worried when she showed Liz the card. "He actually signed his real name on it."
"They're coming back." Liz squeezed her friend's hands.
"He'd better. I'd like to thank him before I kill him."
--
Isabel sat in the front pew with Kyle beside her. "I never know if I really believe in it. You know… God."
"Why not?"
"It's just… God creates everything, right? Did He plan for someone to revive my soul and put it in a test-tube filled with alien DNA, human DNA and Gandarium? Was that something He did?" She stared at the cross behind the pulpit. "I mean. It's a lot of work for eight beings, you know? Should I be that much more special just because that was such a contrived set of circumstances?"
"Or? I'm sensing an 'or' in there."
"Or… am I really just an abomination in His eyes?"
"Come on, Isabel."
"I went to church every Sunday with my parents. I celebrated the heck out of every Christmas. I was married by His laws… in a ceremony by a priest with a man I loved, waiting to give myself to him until after the wedding. Just the way I was taught in Sunday school. You know? I followed the rules…" She trailed off. "But do the rules apply to someone like me? Not only an alien but someone who regularly broke the commandments even though I considered myself a good person? I took His name in vain. I did not honor my father and mother as I should have. I have killed. I have stolen. I have coveted that which I could not have. Maybe I even bore false witness to save my own skin. How many is that? Six out of ten? Doesn't that guarantee a seat in Hell? Or does the devil not take me either because I am not of this earth?"
"Isabel…"
"Do you know what always bothered me? Max, when he died that time. His body turned to ashes. He died and he burned up. Burned until he was ash. Why? Is it some sort of encoding in our DNA that we fly beneath the radar even in death?" She turned to her friend. "Do not quote that fat bald man to me, Kyle Valenti. Looking at Liz this way, it scares me, Kyle. It makes me think about death and what comes after. It terrifies me to not know where I belong."
"It terrifies everyone." Kyle took her hand in his. "I know how you feel… and don't say that I don't." He cut her off. "I was born human. That was an absolute. My dad begged Max to heal me when I got shot and now… I'm not human and I'm not alien. I'm some hybrid in between that can levitate rocks, sometimes I have telekinetic tendencies and I have a halo of tools on my belt. There is only one person on the planet like me. Maybe Dad is like me too but… there are only three of us… just like there are only three of you left who have this human-alien DNA."
"Okay. I am not alone." Isabel took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Where is she?"
"She's with Maria. Opening presents from the guys. They didn't leave a trail, though. We'll have to sit and wait. Liz comes unhinged if anyone mentions going after those morons. She's okay today. She looks like she believes they will come back."
"What changed?" Isabel whispered. "What changed that she would do that to us? Make us believe something bad was going to happen and then just… changed her mind that they were going to be okay?"
--
Bodies lay strewn all over the room. Kyle's head lolled against the back of the armchair, Isabel across his lap. Maria had passed out on the floor, leaving Liz alone and cold in her bed. Liz shut her eyes but she couldn't see it anymore. Whatever had happened had passed. It was over but… where were they?
The next day…
(August 31, 2008)
Dean stepped out of the car and then pulled something out of the backseat. He was dirty, sweaty, and weary. He hadn't slept in three days and honestly didn't know if he could walk across the parking lot much less around to Bobby's. Kyle raced across the street to the bar to get the ladies. They all stepped outside in time to see Sam help Michael out of the car. Michael stepped in front of them, his eyes dead. "Something sort of came up. Sorry."
Liz stepped passed him and stood in front of Dean, whose eyes were not laughing. Not at all. In fact, they were welling with tears. "Lillian…"
She resisted the urge to look into the car behind him. "Did you bring him to me?"
"Yeah." He pulled a Maxwell House coffee can out of a burlap sack. "I'm so sorry, Lillian. I tried to get there in time. I’m sorry."
She stared at the can. "No." She shook her head as her shoulders started shaking. "No."
"I am so sorry. We got there as soon as we could. I did everything I could. Sammy did everything he could. We just… we tried so hard."
"You were supposed to get there in time. You were supposed to use the pellets I sent you."
"We did. We tried everything we knew." Dean reached for her when it looked like she was going to fall. She slapped his hand away and yanked the can out of his hands. "The pellets slowed it down but… we couldn't get him out of the thing's reach."
"You put him in a coffee can." She sobbed as she cradled her husband's remains to her body. "What did you do to his body?"
"I didn't." Dean shook his head. "The thing did it, I swear it."
Liz turned her back on him and let the tears fall onto the can. She started to walk away when he gripped her shoulder to turn her back. "Don't touch me!"
"You want these." Dean pulled some other items out of the sack. Max's wedding band and the medallion from his necklace. "I'm sorry. We tried. I tried."
"Just… stay away from me."
Dean fell against the car, tears streaming down his face. Michael's body was supported by Maria and Isabel. Kyle walked with Liz at a distance. Dean watched through blurry eyes as Liz collapsed before the turn, weeping on Kyle's shoulder. Sam leaned next to his brother but didn't say a word. "Sammy? I'm tired."
"Me, too." Sam's voice sounded like rust and iron.
"Did you see her face?" He coughed suddenly and had to fight the rising bile for the millionth time since they had left that field in flames. He coughed so hard, he thought he was going to stop breathing until Sam whacked his back hard enough to get the air going. Then he was dry heaving into the dust. He wept into his brother's denim jacket. "I said I'd bring him back. Why'd I say that?"
"You thought you could."
--
Liz choked on her tears as she ripped page after page from the notebook, electricity shot up and down her arms. Sparking the paper and making holes but not setting the pages on fire, the energy leapt off her body like she was the electrode in the plasma globes in the mall.
"Kyle." Isabel whispered. "Can you?"
Kyle nodded and approached Liz slowly, the arcs of energy reached for him. He absorbed them as he inched closer. It stung but he could see that Liz was hurting far worse than anything he could imagine. He took the notebooks away from her and held her arms away when she tried to hit him. "Sh. Sh. Liz. Sh. We're here for you." Tears slipped down his face as it began to sink in. He'd been numb out there, waiting to see what Liz would do. He still expected Max to rush into the room, breathless, and take Liz into his arms to prove that everything had gone according to plan. That wasn't happening. The coffee can sat on the dining table. The Maxwell House side turned to the wall. "Liz. Sh."
"I tried to warn him." She sobbed. "I tried. As soon as I saw it, I tried to call him. I didn't know it would happen this way. I didn't know. I tried but he wouldn't call me back. I should have warned him sooner."
"It's okay. It's okay. You couldn't have known." Kyle wrapped his arms around her shaking body.
"I could have tried. I didn't try hard enough." Liz sobbed on Kyle, unable to hold her body upright any longer. The energy dying down to a light crackle around her body.
Michael bent and picked up a page that had landed near his feet. He stared at it and stared at it. "What the fuck is this, Liz?"
"What is it?" Isabel frowned at the only brother she had left.
"This is the field." Michael bit out. "This is the fucking field where we caught up with him."
Liz stilled suddenly, eyes wide. Kyle looked her over. He knew that look. She looked guilty. "I drew it from memory. I tried to call…"
"This is dated last month." He pointed to the scribbled date at the top of the page.
Liz began scrambling around gathering the pages before anyone else could look at them. "You don't understand."
Isabel raced around, gathering the pages and comparing the doodles on them and the dates each was drawn. "These are before the guys took off. How long have you known?"
"It's not… I just…" Liz dropped the pages on the floor and trudged across the room to pick up her husband in his coffee can. "I didn't want to worry anyone."
"How do you just not tell me my brother was going to die?" Isabel shrieked, the tears finally arriving.
"I did everything I could. I spent so long analyzing every way with what little I knew." Liz whispered, her eyes on the coffee can in her hands.
"How do you just accept your husband is going to die?"
"I didn't just accept it." Liz snapped her eyes to her sister-in-law. "I tried to prevent it. I stuck us in the middle of nowhere so he couldn't go far. I've had a while to find a way to fight it. I never knew just how or when it was going to happen but I knew something would if I couldn't keep him here. The timing was important. I tried to stop him."
"You couldn't get back-up there sooner?" Michael demanded, weakly. Maria tended to his wounds quietly.
"Not without killing you all." She stood to face all her friends, the can never leaving her arms. "I didn't know details until after you two left and turned off your phones! Michael, I couldn't get you a specific warning. I went over and over it. Too soon and twenty people would die. Too late and two people die. Both ways it got away. It had to be exact. It had to be precise so that it died. So that it was stopped."
"So you sacrificed Max?"
"I sacrificed Max?" Liz turned on Michael, towering over his seated form. "Who dragged him out there? Who convinced him that killing the shapeshifter was the right thing to do? Who turned off the phones?! I told you not to go without telling me!"
"You're blaming me." Michael knew what was his fault but Liz should have warned them if she had known something. "It wasn't just some shapeshifter. It was Kivar in all his alien glory! If we'd had a clue—"
"No, don't put this on me. I didn't tell him to go. I begged him to stay. I didn't kill him, lay my hands on him and burn him from the inside out. I sent Dean and Sam as backup to let you kill it when it was vulnerable. To get you out of there before the Feds showed up to investigate." She dropped her gaze back to the coffee can. "To bring him home… but not like this."
"Liz."
"Shut up! Get out of my house." She turned back to Michael. Everyone stared at her, stunned. "I said get out!"
TBC