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Dean slammed the door closed and threw himself against it just in time. The door shuttered but held against the force on the other side. Dean wasn’t sure how it held, but he was glad it did. Again.
He stepped back and watched a moment before the attack ended. Then he gave it a few more before he had faith it was done.
He ran a hand over his face before he grabbed his bag on the bed and began rifling through it. Iron seemed to work on the sons of bitches and he had clips of iron bullets in the bag. He took one and slipped it into his back pocket and replaced the one in his gun quickly.
He looked at the door again and knew he had to go back in. Sam was in there somewhere. It didn’t matter what he saw on the other side. This fucked up hotel had separated them and Dean had to get his brother back. Demons, angels, leviathan; nothing had been able to keep Sam and Dean apart. There was no way he was letting a bunch of cartoon princesses do it.
When he found Sam though, he owed the motherfucker the biggest I told you so in history.
Dean would rather have slept in the Impala than in the pastel covered imitation princess themed rooms they’d pulled into. They hadn’t even come for a hunt but of course, bruised and beaten down from a nasty poltergeist, they’d managed to get the one haunted hotel room in all of Anaheim.
Dean grabbed a bottled water from the room fridge and downed it quickly before he threw two more into a backpack and began filling it with supplies. Beef jerky and water, salt and accelerant, iron and silver and weapons he couldn’t carry on his body but that he might need when he opened the door and the scene changed again.
He’d been separated from Sam by a red haired siren, only to have the entire world change on him and he’d had to run from a djinn. He’d barely made it back to the room alive. When he’d opened the front door again , a shape shifter took the form of a lion and nearly mauled him. The lion’s death changed the landscape and freaking wooden people began attacking him.
Fucking mouse-town and fucking people who rode creepy ass rides and then died in their motel room after. Freaky laughter in the silence around the room and Dean hated that it was a child. Dean still hadn’t found the little girl’s remains and he was beginning to think he was going about this all wrong, but he needed to find Sam before he could rethink it.
He shoved his arms through the straps of the pack and took a deep breath as he walked to the door. He pressed his ear to it but there was no sound. He gripped his iron-loaded gun in one hand and reassured himself that he had Sam’s wicked thrice blessed silver knife in the sheath on his thigh before he opened the door and stepped through.
He swore up a mean streak as he stepped into what should have been a mid-morning parking lot but was actually a forest at the brink of dusk. He didn’t call out his brother’s name but he knew where to find him. He just had to be able to get there before he was beset by whatever fucked up fairytale came this time. He’d only made it twenty feet the last time before the crazy lady had shown up with – yes this was how he’d actually spent his morning – seven really pissed off dwarves. They might have been short, but they were damn good with knives and Dean had barely made it back to the room before they’d cut him to shreds.
The only good thing about this magical forest was that whatever happened there disappeared when he made it back to the room. Good thing, because that icy bitch had nearly turned him into a popsicle.
Nothing moved in the forest and Dean let out a relieved breath as he heard the small scampering of activity in the woods around him. Normal activity meant nothing massive coming out of the shadows to kill him just yet.
Dean set a quick pace to find his brother but he kept a watchful eye as he continued on the darkening path. It was a good half hour walk to where his brother was held and as much as Dean wanted to run the whole damn way he had no idea what he would face once he got there. He needed to show up battle ready and not exhausted.
As the night darkened around him, a howl split the night and an unnatural silence followed it. Dean hated wolves. Hated anything that had hunted him before and wolves were close enough to werewolves. He was glad of the silver at his back, just in case.
He picked up his pace with the unnerving stillness of the forest and he refused to acknowledge the oppressive feel of the air around him. Sweat trickled down to the small of his back and he wiped his brow as he continued on.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing, his brother before him, wrists and ankles wound with ivy to keep him still on the broken husk of a tree that sat as a mockery of a throne. The tree could have been split by lightning, or maybe an axe. Maybe time and weight and wind had done the damage, but Dean stood behind another tree to see if anything came out as he watched.
Sam had his head down but Dean could see the way his hands moved constantly as he tried to get free from his chains.
“He’s close, isn’t he, Sam?”
A young woman came out from behind the tree. Her dress was in tatters and her hair matted and wild. Her gloved hands showed sparkles of gold every so often underneath the dirt and grime but whatever had been beautiful about her had become twisted into something almost demonic.
“My brother will kill you,” Sam said calmly. “And then, he’ll find your beast and kill it too.”
“Liar!” she screamed as she struck out at him. Nails scratched at Sam’s face and Dean was in the clearing before he realized he’d moved.
“Get the hell away from him!”
She wheeled around, staring at Dean. She licked her lips and smiled at him. “Such a pretty thing,” she said. “Two pretty things tonight. On a full moon too. I think it means something. I think my beast will feast tonight and we will dance in your blood!”
“That’s a pretty twisted fantasy you got there, sister,” Dean said as he moved closer. He wasn’t sure if she was something human or not, but he wasn’t willing to set her off any further until he could get to Sam. He moved closer and she stepped back, circling away as Dean got to Sam.
He used a knife to free Sam’s hands and handed it to him so he could take care of his feet. “Dean, she’s got-”
He was cut off by her wicked laugh and she spun herself around under the moonlight and clapped her hands. “He comes, he comes!” When she stopped, her face was transformed into the beauty she had once been. “My beast, he comes for his beauty.”
The forest around them erupted with a howl that was far too close for his liking. “Sammy?”
“Run, Dean. It’s a werewolf bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. We need to get back to the room.”
Dean grabbed Sam and pushed him ahead, down the path he’d come. The girl behind them cackled and laughed, and the sound of it trailed through the forest after them, echoed by the child’s laughter he’d heard before. It was too quiet then; the only sounds as they moved were their own crashing and stumbling through tree branches and briars.
“Almost there, Sam,” Dean called encouragingly.
“Dean!” Sam jumped to the left but Dean ran straight into the creature that had shot into their path. He felt claws rake across his arm and he rolled away from the massive body and pulled the knife from his back. He dropped his backpack and threw it in Sam’s direction and knew his brother would understand. Dean pulled his gun as well, but the lead bullets wouldn’t do much against the beast.
Sam was right. It wasn’t a real werewolf but some monstrous hybrid of reality and fantasy. Dean shot it in both legs just to slow it down as he tried to circle around to the other side of the path. They needed to get back to the room. They were safe there, even if they couldn’t ever leave it. He could get Sam there to safety and they could figure out what to do next.
The beast howled but it kept Dean in front of it.
“Dean! Now!” Sam yelled and Dean caught a glance of his brother on the other side of the beast. Sam could make a break and run for the room but Dean knew Sam wouldn’t leave him, no matter how he yelled at him too. Dean took another shot at the werewolf’s leg just as Sam opened fire on him with the silver bullets. The beast roared and turned his attention to Sam and Dean took the chance to run past. The beast swiped out clumsily at him, but Dean dodged as he gained Sam’s side. They fired on the beast together, walking backwards down the path to keep the beast in sight.
When Dean saw the door, he nudged Sam and they both concentrated on the beast’s legs. The creature went down with a howl of outrage and pain but Sam and Dean were running before it hit the ground. They reached the door and flung themselves through it. Sam landed on the bed as Dean locked the bolt in place. For a brief moment, he could still hear the howling from the forest beyond and then it was quiet again.
“What the hell?” Sam asked as he caught his breath.
“You okay, Sammy?” He knew that whatever had physically happened to Sam on the other side would be healed now but that didn’t mean his brother was alright.
“This is so far beyond fucked up I can’t even describe it.”
Dean let out a shattered huff of laughter and Sam followed. They stared at one another, stupid grins on their faces and both alive and unhurt even if they still needed to find the ghost.
“Alright, we need to find her body. What the fuck, Sammy?” Dean demanded as he got back to normal grounds. “What sort of people take their kid to a theme park and then dispose of them in the motel?”
A half hour later, Sam had an answer. “Natalie Greenshaw, age 7. She had a degenerative disease. Her last wish was to go to Disneyland. She went to the park and died in this hotel room that night.”
“Some part of her left in the room then?”
“I don’t think so. I think, we just need to cleanse it. Let her love of all of this free and give her memories the peace she deserved.”
Dean nodded. It wouldn’t hurt to cleanse the room and he’d looked on his own to see if he found anything when he’d first been separated from Sam and he couldn’t find anything that might have belonged to a little girl. Other than burning the whole room down, he was out of ideas.
“We have everything, right?”
“Yeah, we do,” Sam said with a sigh. “Let’s get this done and get the hell out of here.”
“Ready to see the light now, Sammy?” Dean asked. “Back seat of the Impala isn’t looking too bad.”
“Shut up, Dean.”
Dean just smiled because it was his brother’s fond ‘shut up’ and nothing more. He grabbed the bag with the supplies Sam needed and dropped it on the bed as he turned around and glared one last time at the princesses that lined the wallpaper and the strange art on the walls.
“Next time Sam, when I say no to a room, we walk away.”
Sam rolled his eyes, Dean didn’t have to look to see it, but he let out sigh of relief anyway.
“Yeah Dean, next time, you pick the room.”
