Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The wind blew hot and dry, whipping sand into his face. Adam put his hand over his eyes, squinting. “Jesus Christ, it’s hot,” he said, heaving his backpack up.

“Nevada in summer, man,” said Justin, and grinned broadly, smacking his shoulder. “Not so bad, right?”

Adam made a face. “I have sand in places there should not be sand.”

“Cry on, dude, cry on.” Justin strode forward, humming under his breath. The wind died down, teasing the last few strands of Adam’s sweaty hair. The sun was setting slowly, but it still felt like it was beating directly down on his neck.

He glanced up and blinked once. ‘Hey Justin! Am I hallucinating or is that a mansion?”

Justin stopped and turned, then exclaimed. “Well, shit, looks like it. All the way out here.”

“Think they have air conditioning?” Adam pulled a smile. “Let’s go say hi. I could use a drink of something besides lukewarm water.”

Justin glanced over and shook his head. “Walk in on the weird desert hermit? Sounds like a good idea,” he said sarcastically. “Come on, Adam.”

“I just want to say hello.” Adam started toward the sprawling house, perched bizarrely in the middle of rock and sand. “I won’t be a minute.”

Justin swore. Adam heard him, and almost snickered as he heard his friend following. “You talk me into so much stupid shit,” Justin muttered.

“You talked me into desert hiking.” There was a gate running hanging open on a slightly overgrown cobblestone path. “Nice place,” Justin murmured. For a moment, Adam felt his skin crawl. He shook it off and paced toward the door. The garden seemed almost overly lush, the plants tangled together. Justin paused.

“This looks kind of – huh. Adam?”

“What are you scared of?” Adam challenged. The knocker on the door was plain brass. Somehow he’d expected something else. “It’s just a house.” He grasped the knocker. It was strangely cold, not heated at all.

He knocked.

Myra sighed and wiped her hands on the towel. The diner was empty by now, three minutes to closing. Her manager was gone, and she was tired, ready to go home. She glanced at the clock again.

“Screw it,” she said, and threw down the towel, going out the back. Everything else on the slender street was already closed. Myra rubbed her eyes, and rolled her stiff shoulders back.

There was a car parked half on, half off the sidewalk.

She jumped. The engine was still running. “Hello?” Myra called, to no answer. She felt her heart sink and beat a little faster, and edged closer, cautiously. The driver’s side door was hanging open. She edged around and peered in.

Why was she so nervous? She scolded herself. It was probably just a couple of drunk teenagers…

She blinked, not understanding at first what she was seeing. There were two men slumped, one covered in blood. She started to back away when the other’s eyes opened and his head lolled to stare at her. One eye was bright red, bloodshot through.

He coughed, blood spattering to the pavement. Myra’s stomach turned over. “Oh my god,” she said. “I need to call-”

“No,” said the man. His eyes rolled wildly. “He’s dead, Justin’s dead. It was the hotel. Shit.”

“I need to-”

He grabbed Myra’s arm. He was a young man, Myra thought. Younger than her. His eyes stared directly at her, crazed. “It’s my fault,” he said. “My fault.”

Blood bubbled over his lips and down his chin, and his eyes closed with an awful choking sound that cut off abruptly. His grip didn’t slacken. Myra tried to pull away, but he held her too tightly.

“Oh god,” Myra said again. “Oh god, help. Somebody help.

“Somebody help me!”

Dean dragged his eyes open to the sound of a radio on low and the smell of coffee. He glanced at the clock and breathed out sharply at the 5:48 AM blinking neon on the screen. “The fuck, Sam,” he said blearily. “It’s early. Lemme sleep.”

The radio turned down. “Sorry. Got it.” He heard some keys tapping and grimaced, rolling over to stick his face in the sour smelling pillow. His neck still hurt and he knew Sam was bruised. Dean grimaced.

“You sleep?”

“Yeah.” Liar, Dean thought. And closed his eyes to listen to Sam typing away, waiting a few moments. “So I was thinking,” he ventured carefully, finally, “We could take a break for a bit. Have a quiet-”

Sam huffed in that uniquely exasperated way of his. “Dean.”

Dean sat up, squinting against the unpleasantly greenish light of the motel room. “I’m not kidding, Sam. We’ve been going nonstop for the past month. You’re not sleeping. Looking at you is making me tired.”

“Then don’t look.” Sam pulled his hands away from the keyboard. “I found a case.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“’Cause you never do that,” Sam said dryly. “Yeah, I am. It’s still a case. Nevada.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “You know what else is near Nevada? The Grand-”

“I don’t want a break, Dean!” Sam’s voice rose and he stood up abruptly, pacing over to the window. “I don’t think you understand…”

“I understand plenty! Like the fact that you have some stupid idea that if you save some kind of quota of lives you can-”

“Can what?” Sam cut him off, and there was something quivering in his tone that Dean didn’t like. “I don’t know, Dean. You’re not the one with an ultimatum hanging over his head, you’re not the one a demon has plans for, you’re not the one who’s a ticking time bomb everyone’s watching, expecting to go bad-”

“No, I’m the one who knows better than to believe any of that crap!”

Dean knew it was the wrong thing to say before he’d finished saying it, and the way Sam shut down was only confirmation. He knew Sam was scared. The fact that Sam had made him fucking promise to kill him was proof of that if nothing else. And when Sam was scared, telling him that he was being stupid just tended to make it worse.

“Sam,” he started to say.

“Just forget it,” Sam said in that voice that meant he wouldn’t, would just worry at it and poke at it until it was all red and inflamed and ready to explode again. Great job, Dean. He tapped the beat of “Master of Puppets” on his thigh.

“Want to get breakfast?”

“Not hungry.” Sam went back to the keyboard of his laptop. Tap tap tappity. Dean glanced at the clock. 6 AM. It’s going to be a long day.

“All right,” Dean said. He practically heard Sam blink.

“All right what?”

“We’ll take the hunt in Nevada,” Dean held up a hand, hurriedly. “But then I want a break. And a good one, too. Maybe in Vegas. I can’t keep up this pace, you aside.”

Silence, and for a moment Dean almost panicked. Then, “Okay,” said Sam. “This case. Then a break. Wherever your grubby little heart desires.”

“Damn straight,” Dean said, and let out the breath he’d been holding. “Can we go get breakfast now, since you woke me up?”

Sam dutifully rolled his eyes, but he closed the laptop with a click, and Dean grinned just a little.

And pretended not to notice that all Sam ate for breakfast was some fruit and two cups of coffee, looking preoccupied through the whole meal, thought’s clearly elsewhere.

It could have been worse, Dean thought mildly, and then wondered if that was practically an invitation.

The drive to Nevada was quiet. Sam sat in the passenger seat, bent over papers and underlining every other line while Dean watched him out of the corner of his eye. He popped in a tap – Led Zeppelin – to no comment, and sang along off-tune with nary a bitchface in sight. Sam’s focus was almost eerie. Dean wondered if he wasn’t just feeding the beast. With Sam, there was probably not even a chance it was a dud. His brother was too careful for that.

He cleared his throat. “So, Sam,” he said carefully. “Want to tell me about this case?”

Sam glanced up with a start, as though he’s forgotten he had company. A moment later, though, he shuffled his papers and straightened.

“Two guys,” he said. “Justin Denver and Adam Williams, go desert hiking on February 12th. Five days later, on the 17th, their car turns up in a nearby town.”

“They weren’t there?” Dean guessed, but Sam shook his head.

“That’s the thing,” he said. “They were. Justin was dead, and his friend followed shortly. ‘No cause of death released.’” Sam raised an eyebrow. “Besides, I checked back, and this desert has a huge chunk of disappearances, deaths…which, it’s a desert, but a disproportionately huge number.”

“Thinking of anything?”

Sam shook his head. “Nah. With this little – so far, it could really be anything. So no guesses yet. Not a chupacabra, though.”

“Bummer,” said Dean insincerely. Chupacabras were nasty. The last one they’d tangled with had taken a chunk out of Dean’s leg – and gotten venomous claws into Sam that resulted in too many nerve-wracking hours of Sam twisting and moaning on a cot.

So yeah, Dean wouldn’t mind missing a chupacabra. He had enough on his mind as it was. Sam’s mouth twitched in either amusement or memory, probably thinking along the same lines.

“Maybe some kind of spirit – witch? I don’t know.”

“Well,” Dean said matter of factly, “That’s what we do, right? Figure it out.”

“Mmm,” Sam said, head already bowed over the papers again, sunk back into his research. Dean sighed. Sam’s single minded focus was all well and good most of the time, but times like this, like lately, it was just maddening.

Hopefully this case wouldn’t get complicated or challenging. Hopefully it would go by quickly and then they could have their promised break, whatever Sam thought he needed to do.

Sam shut out everything but the papers on his lap, narrowing his focus completely. He could feel Dean’s frustration and worry, and ignored it. Dean thought he was tired, thought he was pushing too hard. Dean had the luxury of that.

He said I might have to kill you, Sammy.

Maybe Dean had forgotten that, or maybe he wasn’t thinking about it, but Sam couldn’t do the same. Wouldn’t. Whatever John had known…

His father was many things, but he wasn’t often wrong about a hunt. Sam was having a hard time believing he was wrong about this. So whatever he had to do to stop it, however many he needed to save to prove to himself that he could…

That was worth a little tiredness.

Dean kept glancing sideways at him. Sam dismissed the thoughts, narrowing his eyes.

Desert hiking…four days gone. Two young men dead with no listed cause of death. They got their car back, though, or at least one of them did. There’s something there, if I can just pin it down… Sam tucked the news reports to the back and moved to the older records. They weren’t really any more helpful, and tended to be even less detailed. Nonetheless…pulling the cap off a pen with his teeth, he started jotting down dates, looking for some kind of pattern. A lot of supernatural nasties had some kind of cycle that would help identify them. Maybe this one…

He barely got three dates in, though, before he had to admit that it was getting him nowhere. The dates were random. The people were random – more young men, but that was probably more due to a type of person that went desert hiking in Nevada than anything else; there were a few couples that might be victims too. Or they might just be people who succumbed to the dangers of going out in a desert.

Sam rubbed his head and reached around into the back seat to find his laptop. Dean grabbed his arm without looking away from the road.

“You said it yourself, Sam,” Dean said, speaking up for the first time in a couple hours after his last attempt at conversation had gone nowhere. “You’re not going to get much else until we can actually get there and talk to people, right? Why don’t you just relax.”

Sam gave Dean a baleful stare that his brother didn’t see. “The more background we have, the better.”

“You’ve been staring at the same papers for hours.”

“Hence why I’m going to try to find some new ones.”

“You can’t even get internet access out here.” Dean actually looked away from the road, and released Sam’s arm at the same time. “Just…breathe. You make these little noises when you’re frustrated, anyway, and it’s starting to bug me.”

“You totally just made that up,” Sam accused, but twisted around to sit forward. “And you know you’re not fooling me, right?”

“Who said I was trying to fool you about anything? Bitch.” Dean’s eyes slid back to the road, which looked just like any other, flat and slate-black and divided by two yellow lines. So much of his life, Sam thought, defined by this image: a road through a windshield.

“Whatever. Jerk,” Sam responded, more because it was expected than anything. He glanced down at the stack of clippings and paper and records in his lap and surrendered, putting it in the backseat and leaning his head back.

It could almost be reassuring, if he let it be; the hum of the Impala and even the music, only slightly too loud. But Sam wasn’t in the mood to be reassured. Reassurance might lead to complacence, and who knew what complacence might lead to?

I might have to kill you.

Maybe just that.

It felt like getting to Nevada should have taken longer than it actually did. Of course, part of that was almost certainly the fact that Dean tended to regard speed limits as guidelines, and sometimes not even that. It was probably part of his charm, though Sam tended to worry about being pulled over. After all, Dean was supposed to be dead, and Sam has more than a few crimes tacked to his name as well. It wouldn’t be likely they’d be recognized, except that Sam wouldn’t put it past them to just happen to get pulled over by the one extra diligent cop who would.

So far, though, they’ve managed to avoid that.

Searchlight, Nevada was a desert town, population 760. There were a few gold mines floating around, but none of them were functional anymore. An airport was two miles out of the so-called business district but it was only marginally more functional than the mines. There was one motel and one diner.

Sam felt his mouth twitch as they drove into town. “Well,” he said. “At least the likelihood of getting lost is pretty small.”

“You know you’re hilarious,” Dean remarked dryly. Sam couldn’t help but smirk at him. “You know this isn’t going to make things easier.”

Sam shrugged. “You don’t know that. This might be one of the talkative small towns.” That happened. Sometimes. More often, though, a lack of witnesses (simply due to lack of people) and almost Innsmouthian suspicion of strangers poking around in corners made things challenging.

“Huh,” said Dean, sounding suspiciously disgruntled. Sam reached over and patted him on the back.

“We’ll get to Vegas, Dean. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

Dean shot him a suspicious glare. “What, are you in a good mood today?”

“It does happen sometimes.” Dean’s eyes narrowed.

“Not so much lately,” he said, with an air of careful and deliberate nonchalance that was incredibly suspicious. Sam glanced away.

“Let’s just check in,” he said, amusement fading a little with Dean’s thinly veiled attempt to initiate a talk that Sam was pretty sure he didn’t really want to have any more than Sam did. “Then we can see what else we can find out, yeah? Dig up details that might have been missing from the newspapers.”

“Bossy,” Dean said, but seemed to let go of his feeble attempt at psychoanalysis. “You don’t think dinner first might be a good idea?”

“You go ahead,” Sam said. “I’m not really hungry.” It was only when Dean cast a sharp look in his direction that Sam remembered he’d said the same thing at lunch. “I’ll have something later,” he amended. “Okay? Don’t look at me like that.”

Dean held up his hands defensively. “Like what?” he said, and turned to look almost mournfully out of the window. “Probably not even a bar,” Dean muttered mournfully, and Sam couldn’t help but snort.

Dean’s suspicions had been correct. There wasn’t a bar, which put any hope of money right out, but there was a diner. It was actually better than Dean had dared to expect of any place that looked like this one. The waitress was out of age range, but he hit on her anyway, for form.

Sam even came, despite his earlier claim to not be hungry and left all of his paper and books and laptop at home besides, which was nothing short of a miracle. Maybe this wouldn’t turn out to be so terrible, miniscule town aside.

“So,” said Dean, once they’d (both!) ordered. “How are we going to play this?”

Sam, who had been looking out the window, started and blinked. “What?” Dean did not even attempt to wonder where his brain had been. Somewhere other than the case, maybe. In that case, though, it was probably brooding.

“The case,” Dean said, with his best ‘don’t be a moron Sam’ voice. “How are we going to play it? FBI, sheriff, grieving family members, close friends…”

“Oh,” said Sam, “Right. We’re going to need police files, so something official. FBI’d probably be better, since – well, I just bet all the local law enforcement is pretty familiar to everyone here.”

“Sensible,” Dean said, “Suits it is,” and grinned at Sam, who gave him a look that wasn’t quite sideways only by virtue of sitting across from his older brother. Then he went back to the window, eyebrows drawing together in a way that surely meant trouble. Dean opened his mouth to stave off the coming conversation (damn, he’d hoped Sam had forgotten about it), but Sam was faster.

“How long do you think he knew?”

Shit. “Knew what?” Dean said, though he had too good a guess what Sam was saying. After all, it wasn’t like he could pretend the same thing hadn’t been in his thoughts some lately. For months. Just…more, since…

I need you to promise me!

First Dad, then Sam. Sam who didn’t even bother to glance away from the fascinating (empty) Main Street to glare at him for being dense like he should have, which meant he was avoiding Dean’s eyes. “Dean. You know what I mean.”

“And if I don’t want to talk about it?”

“I think we need to.”

“And I think we don’t.” Dean set his jaw. “We don’t know anything. We don’t know what Dad might or might not have known. Maybe he was just being-”

“Careful? You think he was just guessing pretty much on his deathbed? I just think we should-”

“We’re not talking about this.” Dean set his voice flat and with a touch of a growl, making sure that Sam recognized it as his ‘no questions, no arguments’ voice. “And you’re going to stop obsessing about it.”

“Obsessing about what,” Sam hissed, “The fact that I might go evil and you might have to kill me?”

Dean opened his mouth to snap a response and heard the footsteps just in time to close it. The waitress looked back and forth between them as she set the food down, seeming uncertain. “Here’s your food,” she said. Dean gave her his best smile.

“Looks fantastic,” he assured her, but she seemed to flee in a hurry nonetheless. Dean frowned after her. “So how about we don’t have this discussion in a diner, anyway,” he said, turning back to Sam, and found his face closed off and shut down, picking at his salad with a fork.

“Yeah,” he said dully. “Right.”

He wasn’t going to say anything now. Dean resisted the urge to sigh heavily. He’d hoped that sharing their father’s little present that he might be sharing the burden. Now Sam had just added a new one on Dean and was trying to shoulder his own bus as well.

After this hunt, Dean promised himself. After this was finished, maybe then they could have Sam’s long desired talk about John Winchester’s last warning. But all it was really going to involve was Dean beating every scrap of “promise that you’ll kill me” and “I’m going to turn evil” out of Sam if it killed both of them.

Or maybe not quite that far.

Dinner finished in awkward silence, which seemed to be a theme lately.

Sam’s ‘quiet’ moods were many and varied, and Dean knew all of them. He knew the ‘I’m trying to work out a problem’ quiet, and the ‘I don’t want to be bothered right now’ quiet, and the ‘I want to talk about something but am pretending I don’t’ quiet.

And yet this one he wasn’t sure about. It seemed to combine elements of all of them, with a healthy dose of ‘I’m mad at Dean’ quiet and ‘I’m brooding on my supposed evil destiny’ quiet, which was a new one. The latter, not the former.

With a room full of that much quiet, a motel could get crowded. And tense.

“I’m not mad at you,” said Sam. Out of nowhere, his nose still in his book and stretched out on the bed. There was a slightly peevish line that had appeared between his eyebrows.

“Never said you were,” Dean said, faintly annoyed.

“Mmm,” was all Sam said, and turned a page in his book. Dean turned on the TV, flipped until he found something that looked loud, and turned it up. Sam glanced at him briefly, rolled his eyes skyward, and went back to the book.

Sam was always hopeless in this mood. He was impossible to cheer up, he wouldn’t be distracted, and dragged down the feeling of the entire motel room, which really didn’t need any help; most of their motel rooms managed that much on their own. It was one of many things about his broody younger brother that all too often drove Dean nuts.

Normally, he might have left the room, gotten out for a little while, hustled some pool. His first instinct had been right, though – there was one bar, small and sad and not hustle-worthy in the least. Dean settled back in resignation and watched cars explode with some amount of listlessness.

It was Sam who broke the no-talking rule, to Dean’s surprise. “I’m sorry for bringing it up,” he said, suddenly, lifting his head from the book. “I do know this whole…thing isn’t easy for you either.”

And there you go attempting to bring it up again anyway, Dean thought with annoyance. “I was the one Dad laid this on,” he said, trying to keep the rebuke light. Ish. Sometimes he thought Sam forgot that he wasn’t the only one suffering.

“You could have told me sooner.” A note of resentment crept into Sam’s voice, and Dean felt his jaw tighten.

“Yeah,” he said, with a slight twinge, “Cause telling you did so much good, right?”

“At least now I know,” Sam said, and this time Dean did cut him off, rolling over to face his younger brother.

“You don’t know anything,” Dean snapped. “Not any more than anyone. You’re just…psyching yourself out, and it’s driving me crazy. So just – stop already, okay? We keep having the same conversation and I’m sick of it.”

The expression on Sam’s face was very near mutiny, but his mouth snapped closed and his eyes went back to his book. “What if it were you?” he muttered, after several moments. Dean wasn’t entirely sure he was meant to hear it.

Just for a moment, Dean considered it. What if it’d been him in Sam’s place, with freaky psychic powers and some kind of dark destiny that meant his own father had left instructions for his termination with extreme prejudice. The thought made him feel uncomfortable, a little sick. “Well, it’s not me,” Dean said, before thinking better of it, and Sam had that look on his face again, like Dean had somehow betrayed him in some inexplicable way.

“Yeah,” Sam said, with more bitterness than Dean thought was strictly reasonable. “So we all know.” He threw down the book on the bed and swung his legs down, moving for the door. Dean stood up quickly.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” Sam said, with a touch of nearly teenaged belligerence. “Just for a walk. I’ll be back, don’t panic or anything.”

“I wasn’t panicking,” Dean said, and was going to say something else (he wasn’t sure just what) but Sam shook his head in a vaguely disgusted gesture and stepped outside, closing the door with firm finality. Dean blinked at it.

Well, shit. Every time, you idiot. Every goddamn time. Not sure if he was more frustrated with Sam or with himself, he went back to the bed and sat down, watching a building go up in flames on the TV, frustrated, pissed.

And okay, worried.

Not like they ever had an auspicious start to a hunt, but for sure this wasn’t one.

Chapter Text

They didn’t try talking again until the next morning, when Sam brought back doughnuts and coffee without being asked and hoped it would do as a temporary offer of peace. For the moment, I’ll let this thing go, it was supposed to say. Dean grinned and said something about how well trained Sam was, so maybe they would be okay for a little while.

Sam got it, he did. At least a little. He knew he wasn’t helping with everything Dean was dealing with, and while he was no longer even half pissed at their father on his own behalf, he could be pissed that Dad had thought this was a good idea. But it was true that talking in circles around this thing (this thing, of course, being Sam) was not getting them anywhere but at each others’ throats.

And that wasn’t actually what Sam wanted.

So he watched Dean eat after appeasing his narrowed eyes with a pastry of his own and said, “So, police station? See if we can find any kind of names to track down?”

Dean glanced up. “Both of us? Here I thought you’d be library-bound.”

“I won’t find one in this town,” Sam said, “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be likely to have any records I haven’t already dug up. If you think, though-”

“Nah,” Dean said, “Let’s skip to the witnesses. Maybe then we can actually get some direction in this thing, yeah?”

“Sure thing.” Sam stood up and stretched, then realized Dean was watching him with suspicion. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re doing it again,” Dean accused. “Being accommodating and agreeable. What’s your deal?”

“I’m not the stubborn ass of the two of us,” Sam said, to a meaningful coughing noise. He didn’t bother to respond to it. “And you know it’s just sad that you’re suspicious, right?”

“Right,” said Dean. “Because people suddenly acting strangely never ends badly in our line of work.”

“Soul of hilarity,” Sam said acerbically, but Dean did grin at him, so maybe it wasn’t all bad. He went fishing in their bags for the uniforms and threw Dean’s at him before escaping into the bathroom.

**

The police were both less than suspicious and less than helpful. At least they didn’t seem surprised that ‘the government’ had come poking around, and handed over what they had readily enough – which was a slim file with a single witness report, the autopsies, and not much else. Sam saw the corners of Dean’s mouth turn down as soon as he saw it.

The witness was one Myra Robbins, waitress at the diner they’d been to the night before, who had been the one to find the bodies. Her statement was jumbled and only partially coherent, though she stated that one of the boys, Adam, had still been alive and had spoken for a few moments before, as the account delicately put it, ‘expiring.’ Dean flipped through the autopsy reports as they sat in the car in front of the station.

“Justin Denver. Contusions on body, internal bruising and bleeding, injuries suggest concurrence with severe beating,” Dean read. “Ruptures to liver and spleen, single puncture wound in the shoulder caused by something other than a knife. Death caused by…huh. Heart attack.” Dean glanced up. “What did it say in that article? ‘No cause of death released?’ Doesn’t sound so strange to me.”

“Except for the fact that he died from a heart attack rather than what sounds like a nasty set of injuries? Yeah, not really.” Sam frowned. “What about the other guy? Adam?”

Dean turned the page. “Hm. Well. There’s weird for you. ‘No external wounds or broken bones. Death caused by major hemorrhage in thoracic cavity with massive damage to heart and lungs to the degree that organs were…unrecognizable.’” Dean blinked once.

Sam chewed his lip, and said, “Well, that answers that question. Sound like anything you know of?”

Dean rubbed his eyes. “Vengeful spirit?”

“Why the difference in injuries, though?” Sam shook his head minutely. “Maybe one of them was possessed, or something.”

“Could be. Out in the middle of the desert’s kind of a weird place to find a spirit, though, particularly one nasty enough for that.” Dean closed the autopsy and looked back at the witness report. “Wait, here. It says here that the living boy said something about a ‘hotel.’ That ‘the hotel did it.’” He glanced at Sam with a look of triumph. “Some kind of abandoned building?”

“Could be.” Sam looked at the file and frowned slightly. “Think we should go find this Myra woman?”

“Well, probably.” Dean looked at the statement again, and made a face. “Though I wouldn’t make any bets on how helpful she’ll be, based on this thing.”

Myra wasn’t at the diner. It turned out that she had been off for the past week, apparently since the incident had occurred. They tracked her down at her house about a half-mile out of town and found it half dilapidated, with a fence that required painting and a shed off to the side with half of its roof caved in.

“Looks familiar,” Dean quipped, which Sam did have to allow it did. Most of the houses they’d lived in, when they’d stayed in one place long enough to live in a house, had looked something like this one. Sometimes worse.

Fond memories.

Sam let the corner of his mouth twitch up, and gestured at the door. “Are you going to do the honors, or shall I?”

“She’s not young, and probably not hot,” Dean said, almost suspiciously lightly. “You can go ahead.”

Sam walked up to the door and knocked once. A dog barked from inside, and he waited a few moments before knocking again. The second time he heard a, “Hold on!” from inside and shortly thereafter the rattle of the door unlocking. It opened a sliver and Sam could catch an eye and a little bit of hair. “Who are you and what do you want?” she demanded. Around knee level, a golden retriever was trying to shove his head through the door, tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“FBI, ma’am,” Sam said politely. “If we could just have a few minutes of your time?”

There was a moment’s more hesitation, and then the door opened the rest of the way. The dog came boiling out first and twisted around Sam’s legs. He reached down and scratched its ears idly. It abandoned him a moment later to sit on Dean’s feet. “Roger,” the woman, Myra, scolded, but stepped out on the porch, her arms crossed. “All right, I guess this is about those boys?”

She wasn’t young, but she didn’t look that old, either, Sam noted. Her black hair was cut in a short bob that made her face look thin, and while there were lines around her eyes they didn’t make her look tired. Right now she just looked faintly annoyed. “That’s right,” Dean said, his authority somewhat marred by the dog on his feet. “We read your witness statement. We’d just like some clarification on some of the facts.”

Myra crossed her arms, going from annoyed to irritable. “I don’t know what needs clarifying. What I said’s what happened, and that’s it.”

“You mentioned a hotel,” Sam said. “Or – well, you said one of the victims did. Do you know…”

“I don’t know what the poor bastard was talking about,” Myra said, shaking her head slightly and pulling a slight face. “Sounded delirious to me. I don’t know what you think I can explain.”

“So you’d never seen either of these boys before,” Dean threw in, and Myra looked around at him.

“No,” she said, shortly. “Nobody had. They weren’t from around here, didn’t come through here on their way out –I really don’t see how I can help.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, trying for an ingratiating smile. “We really don’t mean to bother you, but if there were any details at all, anything that might not have seemed important, smells, anything else they said…”

“One was dead. He wasn’t saying anything.” Myra’s lips pressed together. “I don’t want to talk about it. I talked about it enough the first time, and there’s nothing new, nothing’s changed. Will you leave now? I’d like to get back to…”

“You haven’t come back to work for a week,” Dean cut in, abruptly. Sam noticed that he was scratching the dog’s ears without seeming to realize that he was doing it. “Something clearly…”

“Bothered me?” Myra drew herself up. She was a small woman, even at her tallest quite a bit shorter than either of them, but the look on her face was fearsome, trembling lip and all. “I don’t know what you people see in your line of work, but in my opinion seeing two young boys die bloody on the front street of a town you’ve lived in your whole life without so much as a burglary deserves a week off work. If you’d excuse me. Roger!”

The dog abandoned Dean in a moment and slipped into the house on his mistress’ heels. Dean glanced across at Sam and mouthed ‘suspicious?’

Sam shook his head, after a moment. “No,” he said, quietly, grimacing a little. “Just irritable. And she has a point. Most people aren’t used to running across dead people in their evenings.”

“True,” Dean allowed. His mouth twisted downwards. “Lucky bastards, aren’t they?”

“I suppose they are.” Sam deliberately did not think too much about that answer. Didn’t think about the years he’d had with not one dead person in his evenings. That was far behind him. Another life, even. “I think we’d better just…”

“Don’t even say it,” Dean groaned, and then turned away, rubbing his eyes. “I know, I know. We’ve got next to nothing and two dead people, and no one else to talk to. Running out of options, I guess. I just don’t like walking out there with nothing but a few vague ideas.”

“I don’t know that we have many other options,” Sam said. Dean gave him a skeptical stare, and sighed.

“I know,” he said, finally. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

**

It took less time than Dean would have perhaps liked to get their gear together. Sam already had most of it ready, which just figured. Sam was on a roll, besides, with that intense, single-minded focus that he got from Dad and that was so often both annoying and unnerving. This was the Sam that charged forward, heedless of anything that got in his way. Or reasonable delays.

Something about this case was putting Dean’s back up, but he couldn’t say what it was, and he didn’t think bringing up something unfounded would fly with Sam’s current state of mind.

At any rate, it was far too short a time in Dean’s opinion before they were on foot in a landscape that was a collection of sand, rock, and not much else. Not even, so far as Dean could see, a lizard. “So where are we going to start looking?” he asked. Sam was scouring a map with his eyes, but he folded it a moment later.

“I have a general idea of the course these guys would have been taking. So we’ll head off that way and see if we run across this…house thing. It should stand out, don’t you think?”

“You’d hope so,” Dean said dryly, and got a quirk of the corner of Sam’s mouth for his trouble. Not much, but it was something, which was an improvement. Barely.

The desert, Dean realized shortly, was hot. It was also dry. And while he did see a lizard, and a few birds, and a number of scrub brushes, so far they were low on houses. There was still nothing by the time it was getting dark and they had to set up tents. Out of habit (and maybe worry) Dean checked for reception, and was relieved to see that they still had it.

Their tent was small and cheap, but it was functional. Dean built a fire and Sam made some soup that actually didn’t suck, which was a pleasant surprise, and looking up as the sun set and the stars came out, it almost felt like normalcy.

That wasn’t Dean’s favorite word, but he couldn’t deny that it felt nice. “You still know all these, Sammy?” he asked, indicating the stars with one hand as he set his bowl down. Sam glanced up and actually even smiled.

“Yeah. You know-” He stopped, abruptly. Dean blinked, trying to work out as always what had set Sam off, because the smile had faded and Sam was looking somewhere far away, off into Brood-land.

“I don’t know, not with that much to go on,” he said, deliberately lightly. Sam seemed to hesitate.

“Jess used to be really impressed that I could name all those constellations,” Sam said, quietly. “She thought it was really cool. ‘Specially when I told her that you taught me.”

Jess. Over a year behind them and still Sam never seemed to talk about her. Dean couldn’t help feeling a little flush of pride, though; Sam was smart, smarter than him for sure, and it was nice to know that he’d taught him a few things that had stuck, things that had even been useful for impressing girls. Or one girl.

“I really wish I could have gotten to know her,” Dean said carefully, and was answered by silence. For a moment, he was sure he’d said the wrong thing, and felt a flash of anger – at himself, at Sam, it didn’t really matter. Then Sam nodded, slowly, barely visible in the gathering dark, even by the light of the fire.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

They sat in quiet for a while. Sam retreated first, and Dean heard him tossing and turning for a while as he himself sat outside, watching the fire burn down to embers.

They rose early the next morning to keep walking, packing up the tent and moving at a brisk pace. The night had been cold, but the morning was actually pleasant, with the sky blazing pink and orange fading out to blue. “What do you think we’ll find if we can get to this place?” Dean ventured to ask.

Sam glanced at him, seeming surprised, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. An updated red cap, maybe? Or some kind of…I guess we still don’t really know.”

“Gotta love going into a hunt blind,” Dean said, and for a moment thought that the look Sam shot him, like acid, was going to earn him a half an hour of silence. Then Sam said, “Half blind, come on,” and if it was a little too lightly they both ignored it.

The sun was all the way up and almost halfway across the sky before anything happened.

“Dean,” Sam said suddenly, and Dean turned to see Sam staring at the thing they’d been looking for. It most assuredly did not, he thought, seem to him as though it’d been there before. The house was huge, but looked…somehow not at all out of place, despite the lush garden spilling out and the white fence that barely enclosed it; despite the fact that the walls were immaculately clean as though they’d just been painted and weren’t perpetually exposed to sand and wind and dirt.

He blinked, once. “Where’d that come from?” he said, and Sam shook his head, so he continued, “You think that’s the one we’re looking for?” Dean murmured. Sam shrugged one shoulder.

“Unless you think there’s another house – hotel – lurking out in this place.”

“Somehow I’m not betting on that one,” Dean said, and took a step toward the house and Sam. “So, what do we do now?”

Sam hefted the bag with the guns and the salt higher on his shoulder. “Against all horror movie clichés, I think go in,” he said. “It’s a house. I don’t think the house killed Adam and Justin.”

“A house that appears out of nowhere.” Dean watched Sam closely, half expecting him to go dashing for the front door. “And if it disappears the same way?”

Sam twitched his shoulders. “I just have a feeling. I don’t think we’re going to work anything out by standing out here and waiting.”

“How about burning the house down?” Dean suggested, not even a little bit non-serious, and Sam just glanced at him and moved for the fence and the gate, and the front door. Dean sighed, and followed after, feeling less and less sure with every step.

The gate swung open at a touch of Sam’s hand. Dean reached into his own bag, and lifted out one of the sawed-offs out, cocking it. The garden looked even lusher up close, he noted, all crawling vines and bushes and greenery. And somehow it made his skin crawl.

“I don’t like this,” he said. Sam didn’t answer, just kept moving forward. The door was double, and had a big brass knocker on each side. Something was wrong about this whole thing, and if he felt it Sam did too. Sam didn’t have Dean’s instincts, but he had his own, whether it was freaky psycho mojo or…

Or whatever.

“Hold on,” Dean said, when Sam paused on the porch. “I just think we should-”

Sam knocked on the door. Dean froze.

And nothing happened.

“That was anticlimactic,” he said, and Sam glanced over his shoulder.

“No,” he said, and there was a strange note in his voice that Dean didn’t like. “This just means we’re inviting ourselves in.”

“And that just means I’m going first,” Dean said, edging around to step between Sam and the door. To his surprise, Sam seemed to blink and snap out of something.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Isn’t that usually how it goes?”

Dean blinked, feeling slightly disconcerted. He stepped forward, though, turned the knob, and nudged the door open. There was no creak, just a soft whoosh of cool air from inside. “Well, whoever they are, they’ve got AC,” Dean observed, and peered in. The hallway looked dark, but it also looked fairly innocuous.

As innocuous as it could, considering Dean’s spine was trying to crawl out of his back. And Sam was staring at the door and the hallway like it held the answer to life’s questions. Which for Sam, was saying a lot. “Are we going in?” Sam said, abruptly, and Dean narrowed his eyes.

“I guess,” he said, finally. And opened the front door the rest of the way to step inside. The hair on the back of his neck kept trying to stand up. “Do you have a funny feeling?”

“Yes,” Sam said, to Dean’s relief. Or perhaps not at all. “Definitely a funny feeling.” He stepped inside after Dean, seeming to be looking for something.

“Come on,” Dean said after a moment. “Let’s look through this place quickly. He started moving along the hallway and stopped abruptly when he heard a sound from Sam, a noise of surprise quickly cut off. “What is it?” He started to ask, turning.

Sam wasn’t there. The door was still ajar, warm air wafting inside. There couldn’t have been five feet between it and Dean.

And somewhere between the door and Dean, Sam had vanished.

The bad feeling had gone, though.

“Fuck,” he said.

**

Sam couldn’t remember being unconscious, but when he opened his eyes he couldn’t see anything, he was flat on his back and he couldn’t move his arms and legs. He bit off a curse under his breath, trying to see what was holding him down, but the dark around him was absolute and complete.

At least, he hoped it was just dark.

He tried to track back and work out what had happened, but things got fuzzy as soon as the house – hotel, whichever – had caught his eye, and after the door had opened it seemed like he’d lost track of things altogether. His head didn’t hurt, maybe it was some kind of supernatural drug effect…

“Sst,” came the soft sound out of the dark. Sam twitched and once again caught against his bonds.

“Hello?” he called. “Who’s there?”

There was no answer. Sam tested whatever was holding him down again. He couldn’t feel any material, and couldn’t budge at all. Demon, was Sam’s immediate thought, and he cursed under his breath.

“Hsst. Pretty thing.” The voice was thin, almost what Sam would have called ‘wispy.’ It didn’t sound like a ghost, but it didn’t sound quite human either. And his skin had started to crawl. The darkness felt…charged. Sam fell still, trying to listen, to see if he could hear whatever it was moving. Nothing.

“How about a light!” Sam yelled, not really expecting an answer. The flame flared up so suddenly that Sam saw spots momentarily, and only caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure placing it in a socket on the wall. He blinked rapidly to clear his vision, and took in his surroundings.

Directing his gaze downward, it looked like he was lying on stone. There were no visible bonds, and at his feet was a woman in a sleek red dress, staring at him with her head cocked slightly to the side. Her hair was long and black, thick, wavy. “Christo,” Sam said, and she blinked at him with eyes that remained dark, but not black.

“Ssst,” she said again, which solved that mystery, at least. “Pretty thing. I know you.”

Sam tried ineffectually to wriggle, his stomach clenching. “What?”

“Walking by. Pretty, precious thing. Mine.” She bared her teeth in what could have been mistaken for a smile by someone who’d never seen chimpanzees make the same expression. “Yes.”

Apparently having come to some conclusion, she glided forward and climbed up onto whatever he was lying on, straddling his ankles. “No,” Sam said, as firmly as he could manage, feeling his eyes widen. Whatever she was doing, whatever she was, and he was no longer thinking ghost…

She planted her hands and slunk up his body undeterred by Sam’s useless struggles, crawling like a cat. Her fingernails, he noticed in a flash of torchlight, were painted red. Her legs squeezed against his thighs and she leaned down and – licked the line of his jaw. Sam tried to recoil.

“What do you want?” He tried, and she drew back and looked in his eyes. Her own were full of misery and fear, and Sam felt an unwilling well of sympathy that he knew might prove deadly.

“Everything,” she whispered, her hands moving to press his shoulders back, and then she was moving back down his body, her head lowering toward his chest…

The pain was a surprise. The fact that he couldn’t scream even more so.

Chapter Text

So far, Dean found his situation thus:

He was inside of a house in the middle of a desert that had appeared apparently from thin air.

At least two people were known to have died after hiking in this area, with mention of a ‘hotel.’

Sam was gone.

The first two, he could handle. It was the third one that had him going straight into full-out panic mode. The basement, the upstairs, and the entire middle floor were both huge and deserted. Worse, Sam’s duffel was sitting by the door like he’d just set it down for a moment, so wherever Sam was it was weaponless.

Of course this had to happen. Of course. With Sam where his head was now, and on the last hunt before they got a well-earned break, this kind of thing was just inevitable. Right.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it must have been hours. Dean went to the window to look out and blinked. The sun was still shining through, at the same angle as it had been before.

If Dean’s skin had been crawling before, it was trying to crawl away now. They needed to get out of here, and fast. Whatever this was, it was well beyond what either of them knew how to deal with. And now Sam was somewhere inside, on his own, with god knew what kind of monsters that might be lurking in the walls of this place.

It wasn’t all that often, but there were times when Dean fully understood Sam’s desire to get far, far from the hunting life forever. “Sam!” he bellowed, again, to no response. “Sam!”

He pulled out his cell phone, but of course that wasn’t working. He didn’t know if that was because they were in a desert or because whenever something supernatural went down, cell phones were the first thing to go.

Dean started rubbing his temples, pausing in his movement for a moment. Sam had to be somewhere in the house. There was just a room he hadn’t found yet, some kind of secret passage, something. He would find it, and find Sam, and get them both the hell out of this place before doing like he should have in the first place and burning it to the ground. If it could be burned.

Dean hoped it could be burned. Setting things on fire would go a long way toward helping his mood.

He turned to try the hallway behind him again, and…

…was that music?

A minute ago there hadn’t been a sound except for his own voice and the tread of his boots. Now he could hear, faintly and from below him, the soft sound of music. Maybe jazz. Old fashioned kind of music.

Dean jumped into action, hurrying back toward the stairs and hurtling down them two at a time, following the sound. Ahead of him he could see a pair of huge double doors and he slammed into them and into a room he…definitely hadn’t seen before.

And dammit, but he had scoured the entire ground floor.

The music was definitely jazz, turned on low, and the room was definitely a ballroom. The wood floor and the grand piano in the corner said that much, although from the few old hotels they’d visited – mostly to get rid of spirits or poltergeists – it looked familiar.

Less familiar was what was at the end of the room. It looked like a throne. Ornate, wooden, and occupied. A woman was sitting sprawled in it, and she was surrounded by men. From what he could tell, they were all young, all shirtless, and all obviously fawning over her. Dean raised his gun and moved slowly closer, keeping his feet quiet, and he found himself looking for a familiar…

He found Sam at her feet. His jeans had been replaced by what looked like black silk, and his head was tilted back, looking up at the – not woman, thing, with an expression of complete and total adoration as she ran her fingers through his hair. Dean could see it in all their faces, but worst was seeing it in Sam’s: the blank, slack lack of expression, all will just gone.

Dean felt his jaw clench. Whatever you are, he thought, You’re not doing this to Sammy. He cleared his throat harshly. “Hey,” he said, “Am I interrupting something?”

Any number of heads snapped around, but it was her face Dean watched as she looked up. Her eyes were big and dark and sad, her face heart-shaped. She was pretty. And then her eyes found his, and Dean saw her hand clench possessively in Sam’s hair.

The mask dropped. The teeth were crowding out of her mouth, narrow, sharp and pointed. Her eyes slitted and doubled in size, lidless and reptilian. She opened her jaws and they unhinged, a long tongue flickering out, and the men, or shells of men, rose up around her as one, and Dean could see murder in their eyes.

And then they were coming for him.

Dean held his ground, pumping the gun and shooting one in the leg. The rock salt scattered to the floor, useless, going right through what looked like solid body. “Shit,” Dean yelped, and turned tail, dropping the duffel bag. He’d come back. Soon.

Because he could see Sam still with the thing at the back of the room, leaning against her leg, and if she wasn’t sending Sam after him then maybe his brother wasn’t too far gone yet.

Whatever they were, ghosts or whatever, they didn’t follow him for too far. Maybe they couldn’t go too far from that…thing. Dean stopped moving when he realized they weren’t following, and leaned against a wall, racking his brain for something that he could think of to match the description of the thing he’d just seen that seemed intent on having Sam join her – its – parade of pretty men-boy slaves for god-knew-what.

Not letting his brain go that direction.

What he came up with was nothing but the fact that it didn’t matter, he was getting Sam the fuck out of there before he was completely brainwashed. They could work out the research later. Or go with the burning the house down, that was looking better and better.

Dean rubbed his palms against his jeans and checked the sawed-off, and then the handgun in the waistband of his pants. Both were still secure, though he wasn’t sure they would do any good. Nonetheless…

He pondered his options. They seemed all too few and far between.

He needed to get that thing away from Sam, that much was clear. And the rest of her little man-slaves, whatever they were – whoever they were, Dean corrected himself. He could guess well enough that those disappearances and deaths that Sam had mentioned…at least some of them had wound up here.

Justin and Adam had gotten out, he reminded himself. There was some way to get out of this.

Of course, they’d also died, and that was not exactly what Dean wanted.

So, what he had. A sawed-off loaded with apparently useless rock salt, and a handgun that would probably be even less useful. A brother being progressively brainwashed, to what degree Dean had no idea. None of this was adding up.

And the throbbing, panicky need to find and get Sam was getting progressively more intense. He had to work something out, fast. Some kind of distraction…

Sometimes, Dean thought with a reluctant sigh, simpler and ridiculously dangerous was just better. Back to playing bait. Always fun.

Sam floated in a dizzy, pleasant haze.

Things had been ugly. He remembered that. He remembered pain and sorrow and suffering, but she had taken it all away and replaced it with Her sweet smell and Her hand soft running through his hair…

(Something you need to remember there’s something something)

“My pretty thing,” she purred, only for his ears. The others, she promised him, they were nothing. He needn’t mind them. He thought they were trying to say something, but it couldn’t be important. Nothing was important but Her. “It’s better like this. Mine, mine.”

Belonging. He’d always wanted to belong. To someone? (That’s not right.) Yes it is.

Her hand stopped moving through his hair, suddenly, and Sam cringed, sensing Her anger. “Hsst,” She said, and pulled her hand away, and Her body. He almost cried out for the cold. “Soft,” She murmured. “Something I must deal with.”

He looked up at her, and Her fingernails pricked his cheek, a promise of return. Sam let his head rest against her throne and tried to smell the remnants of Her, let himself float and think of nothing, because he didn’t need to think, only She needed to think and know and feel.

Someone was tugging on him. Not her. Something hard and fierce and outside. Sam fought the haze, trying to understand – it wasn’t her. It was someone else. Why?

“—get out of here-”

Trying to take him away. No. No.

Sam lunged with a snarl, knocking the intruder down, lifting his fist and hammering down, and he kept struggling, kept fighting and kicking and at first the intruder held him back, but he was weakening, his attempts to hold Sam back becoming more feeble.

(Seemed to be trying not to hurt him. Why would…)

“My pretty thing.” She was back. Sam felt relief, pure and sweet, wash over and through him. “Good boy. Good.”

He looked up at her as he let go. The strange man was breathing hard. (Something nagging at the back of your brain, come on, it’s right there.) She leaned down and licked his ear, then whispered, “Now finish it.”

Sam moved without thinking, because she had told him to, and his hands fastened so easily around the column of throat like they knew how to fit there. And didn’t tighten. Sam blinked at them, curious about this display of disobedience from his own body.

(Not right this isn’t right this isn’t)

He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Sammy, please,” said the man underneath him. “Come on. It’s me.”

Sam groped for what he felt, just at the edge of understanding. Something, just there. Something…

“No,” She said, her voice a little sharper. “Finish it, or he will take you away from me. Is that what you want?”

Sam shook his head, and resolved himself, but he couldn’t make his hands close. He pulled them away, frowning. “Dean?” he said, without knowing why.

“Yes,” said the man, relief plain in his voice. “Come on, Sam. Shake it off.”

Sam shook himself and squeezed his eyes shut. Dean. That means something. What does it mean?

“Pretty thing,” She said, then, “Sam.”

He stood up and turned to face her. He didn’t understand, didn’t understand anything, not really, but something was wrong and he knew the answer now. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t want to.”

Whatever this thing was, apparently it wasn’t used to being denied. The look on its face, the borrowed, human one, was one of sheer surprise. Yeah, bitch, Dean thought, swallowing a few times to get rid of the sensation of Sam’s hands on his throat, all too close to tightening. That’s right.

His face hurt. The rest of him, too. Sam fought viciously when he was spazzing out, and his brother had power in that Sasquatch frame. It didn’t matter too much, though, because whatever spell this thing had had him under, it was broken now.

“Hsst,” the thing said. “Bad.” Dean saw Sam twitch like he was unsure, and shoved himself up with a wince.

“Back off, bitch,” he said, fiercely. “We’re-”

The woman-thing turned on him and had his shirt before he could react. Then Dean was airborne. He hit the wall with something that sounded all too much like a crack, the air punched out of his lungs. The nice wood floors for dancing came next, and gasping for air Dean could only stare as the monster took a step closer to Sam.

“No one leaves me,” she hissed, the mask sliding away like wax paper. “No one ever leaves me.”

Then, like a ghost, she thrust her taloned hand into Sam’s chest.

Dean felt like he was choking on air and couldn’t move; she was holding him down somehow so all he could do was watch Sam’s body heave and convulse and hear the awful scream that came tearing from Sam’s throat, thrashing wildly as he tried to escape the pain-

Death caused by major hemorrhage in thoracic cavity with massive damage to heart and lungs to the degree that organs were unrecognizable.

Oh no, Dean thought. No.

Sam’s screaming cut off. He choked once, and a dribble of blood ran out of his open mouth, dripping to the wood floor. The creature’s mask was entirely gone now, the sumptuous red dress falling over a body that looked too reptilian.

Dean strained against his bonds. The air was humming, and the other men had gathered around to watch Sam die-

The creature dropped Sam, very suddenly, and took a step back. It looked…nervous, Dean realized, and he took another look at the ghost-thrall-things. Sam fell limply to the floor, but a moment later he rolled weakly over, spitting or drooling blood. The moment after, Dean’s bonds were gone, and he was stumbling to his brother’s side.

“My pretty things,” he heard, and only then did Dean look up. The thralls hadn’t moved, just kept…staring. It was unnerving Dean. “Sam,” Dean said tightly, and discovered that his younger brother had passed out. Hurriedly, he started bundling Sam into his arms, lifting him as carefully and as quickly as he could manage.

The creature, he thought, seemed to have lost control of her toys. And he wasn’t going to trust to their mercy after they finished with that thing. He started for the exit, his burden limp and unwieldy.

“Sam,” he hissed. “You little bastard, why couldn’t you wait five more minutes before passing out-“

There was blood on his lips, and a wet trail down his chin and at the corner of his mouth. His heart was still going, though. Still unliquefied. That was going to be enough, dammit, for them to get somewhere. Anywhere.

He was in the front hallway when the screaming sounded. If he could call it that, a sound that harsh and raucous and awful that it could only come from a throat that was unquestionably not human. Dean hastened his pace as it built in tone, out the front door and through the garden, out the gate-

He felt a tug at his heels, for a moment, passing through the white picket fence gate, and then it snapped back, like a rubber band, and night fell.

Or so it seemed, for a moment, before Dean remembered the sun, at the same position hours after entering as it had been when they’d first arrived. But it was night now, in the real world.

The house was still there. He couldn’t hear the screaming. And the cell still had no signal. Dean set Sam down for a moment and just breathed. Sam’s breathing sounded…a little wet, and he hadn’t stirred. Dean felt his stomach turn over.

They weren’t out of the woods yet. Or the desert, as the case might be.

“Okay, Sam,” Dean said. “We’d better get walking. And you owe me.”

He was having a good day.

It was Sam’s birthday, and Jess had made the birthday cake. Chocolate with cream cheese frosting. Dean had had three slices. “Come on,” Jess had griped. “Leave some for the rest of us.”

Sam sat at the head of the table and watched his family laugh together, smiling. John was regaling Jess and Dean both with a story about a hunt that had actually turned out to be a harmless homeless man mistaken for a vampire. The California sun felt sweet and warm on his face.

There was someone else at the table. A woman, wearing a red dress, and looking at him. Her eyes made him feel cold, and his chest hurt. Like, really hurt. Like-

Sam bent double and choked blood onto his empty paper plate.

When he straightened, he said, “I think something’s wrong.”

“Yeah, dumbass,” said Dean. “You.” Jess was holding a handgun and pointing it at him. John was no longer smiling, just sitting very still and watching Sam with eyes that were full of disappointment.

“I can’t believe you didn’t work it out before,” John said. “I never thought I had an idiot for a son.”

“You know I’m going to have to kill you,” Jess said sadly.

“Wait,” Sam objected. “I can explain.”

“Explain what?” Dean scoffed. “That you didn’t tell anyone you were a demon? We can’t keep secrets in this family, you know that.”

“You kept a secret,” Sam accused. “You wouldn’t tell me Dad wanted to kill me.”

“If we’d told you you would have run,” John said reasonably. “We couldn’t let you get away. You understand that, right?”

“It’s important to me that you understand,” Dean insisted. Jess nodded in agreement.

“Okay,” Sam said, resigned. “I understand.”

“Good,” said Jess, and cocked the gun, and fired.

Sam sat bolt upright, and a moment later regretted it for the pain that spiked mercilessly through his upper body. “Shit,” he swore, and a moment later familiar hands were easing him down, and Sam was looking up into the familiar expression of Dean’s face when something bad had happened and he didn’t want to talk about it.

Sam was instantly trying to remember what, particularly considering the colorful bruises down one side of Dean’s face, and the ginger way he moved indicating that there were probably more, maybe a cracked rib. “You okay?” Dean asked. “What was that about?”

“Nothing,” said Sam. “Nothing. Um. Are you okay?”

“Says the guy who almost got his lungs ripped to shreds.” Dean snorted. “Yeah, I’m fine. And before you ask, yes, I got checked out.”

Sam let his head fall back and looked at the ceiling. “How’d you explain…”

“I…hm. Didn’t.” Dean gave him a slight grin. “I’ve been avoiding questions, so if you think you can manage getting out of here, that might be for the best? Apparently you are in one piece. More or less.” His expression sobered. “You got lucky.”

Sam didn’t feel lucky. He felt tired and vaguely sick to his stomach and was still trying to work out what was hiding in the fuzzy memories floating around in his head. So far, nothing good was the only answer he’d come up with. “We can leave,” he said. He remembered…it was weird. All of it was weird.

“Sam?” Dean sounded worried, and Sam blinked and glanced at him.

“Yeah, what?”

“You kind of…spaced. Are you – if you’re not good to go I can probably come up with something, or keep stalling, or-”

“No, we can go.” Sam hated the smell of hospitals, and the feeling. More to the point, since the car crash he’d hated them on principle. He wasn’t all that in favor of staying in for too long, not if his bill of health was more or less clean.

(He remembered pain. Acute, intense pain, radiating out from his chest. Also feeling like his brain was thick and made of pudding, which was an unnerving situation to remember.) “I think you’re going to have to clarify a few things for me,” he said, finally, as Dean began disconnecting the machines monitoring Sam’s vitals. “Things seem a little…blurry. Muddled.”

“Let’s just keep ‘em that way for now, uh huh?” Dean said, sounding almost distracted. Sam frowned at his lowered head, to no effect. “It’s – well. Never mind, actually, let’s just keep away from that until we can get out of here and-”

“Did we finish the case?”

Dean lifted his head as he finished the process of disconnecting Sam. “Define finish,” he said.

“Did we kill the thing in that house – hotel – whatever?”

“No,” Dean said. Sam frowned.

“So we didn’t finish.”

“Oh no,” Dean said, with finality. “We’re finished with this case. Neither of us is going back there. We’ll pass this off to someone else.”

“Like who,” Sam wanted to know, and Dean shook his head.

“Bobby? One of Bobby’s contacts? But we’re not going back.” Dean straightened, and folded his arms. “You could have been killed. Both of us could have been killed, almost were, and I’m not sure still why we weren’t. Sure wasn’t anything either of us did right.” His tone was derisive. Sam tensed. Something was nagging just at the edge of his memories.

“What does that mean?”

“That we screwed up,” Dean said. “We didn’t have enough information going in, and we walked right into a great big trap that we escaped based on dumb luck. I’m not stupid enough to do that twice. Not when that thing-”

“It did something to me,” Sam said with certainty, abruptly. Dean stopped.

“Why do you say that?” The ginger tone to his voice, though, only confirmed Sam’s suspicions. And looking at the bruises again, he imagined he could almost recognize the shape, and a cold, sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach.

“Because I know you, Dean,” Sam said, quietly. “And there aren’t that many reasons you would give up on a case. So it – what. Possessed me, somehow?”

“Sam,” Dean said, on a low, cautionary tone. “Don’t make a thing out of this.”

“I’m not the one making a ‘thing’ out of this by refusing to finish the job,” Sam said tightly, and Dean opened his mouth, but closed it when a nurse’s head poked around the corner.

“Is everything all right? –oh, you’re awake, I’ll-”

“Everything’s fine,” Dean said, glaring at her. “He’s still groggy, you don’t need to call anyone. Okay?”

The nurse seemed taken aback by his tone. “I think I’d better,” she started to say, and Dean narrowed his eyes. She backed off abruptly. “Right,” she said. “Yes, of course. I’ll come back in a bit to…check in.”

“You do that,” Dean growled. Sam waited until she retreated to give his older brother a withering look. Dean just stared back at him, suspiciously expressionless, and Sam sighed.

“Let’s just get out of here, okay? We can talk about this later.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” was Dean’s terse answer, and Sam gave up, submitting to being smuggled out of the hospital. For the moment.

Sam didn’t stay quiet for long. Never did, Dean thought, with something that was half annoyance and half reluctant affection. “Did you drive out of the desert?” Dean was tempted to scoff. He wouldn’t have dared, not with the color of Sam’s skin at the time. That, and the blood that hadn’t come from biting his tongue or lip.

“Nope. Called for help as soon as we were in range.”

“Helicopter?” Sam seemed amused, damn him. The ride back had been anything but amusing. The worry for Sam was nauseating enough, and flying in a helicopter was worse than flying in a plane. Much, much worse.

“Yeah. You owe me. For that, and for carrying your sorry ass what must have been a couple miles.” At least the cell phone reception had come in long before the trailhead had. “You can clean the Impala. She’s covered in dust. And sand. And a few dead bugs, too.”

“I’ll clean the Impala if we finish the hunt.”

Dean fell silent and didn’t bother to respond to that. Sam sighed. “Dean,” he said, “What are you afraid of? Why don’t you at least answer that question?”

Like you aren’t, Dean wanted to snap. He’d seen the flicker in Sam’s eyes at the hospital, of worry and fear, when he’d started to work out what was going on. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m kind of thinking it does. I’m not going to leave this alone.”

“You never leave anything alone.”

“Trying to start an argument isn’t going to deter me.” Sam turned and looked at him, and out of the corner of his eye Dean could just see the pleading on his face. “Dean, I just think…we don’t leave things unfinished. Let’s not leave this one. Particularly not if it’s personal.”

“Dad said not to take hunts that were personal.”

“Dad’s whole life was a hunt that was personal,” Sam said, and this time there was a sharper note to his voice, tension reappearing, and Dean was reminded again of Sam’s damned perseverance. He gritted his teeth, determined to remain stubborn.

“No. We’re not going back.”

“Is this because I hurt you?”

That one took Dean by surprise. He was dumbstruck, silent, and he knew the moment it became too long.

“So I did. It was me.” Sam’s mouth tightened, and his head turned so he was staring forward, his body curled into himself – though that was probably the pain. Stupid, Dean thought, and wasn’t sure if he meant himself or Sam.

“You weren’t exactly you,” Dean attempted. Sam looked sideways at him, and Dean had a feeling that his little brother was looking at the bruises, memorizing them for future guilt trips. The thought frustrated him.

“But that’s why you don’t want to go back, isn’t it? You think it’ll happen again? That I’m somehow – susceptible or-”

“It could have latched onto me just as easily,” Dean said. “Next time, it might, and maybe I won’t shake it off. That’s the important thing, Sam – you shook it off. But we were lucky getting out, I just don’t want to risk it-”

“Happening again.” Sam breathed out through his nose. “That’s exactly why we can’t just leave this, Dean. It could happen again. Even if we send someone else – what if it happens to them? We got out once. You say I shook it off once. Why couldn’t I-”

“No,” Dean said harshly. Flatly.

“Dean,” said Sam, softly, and Dean made the mistake of looking at him, and found himself facing down those damnable puppy eyes. “I need to do this. Please.”

Dean thought of the thing with its claws inside Sam’s chest. Thought of the desperation in Sam’s expression right now. The house and the way it pulled you inside.

“Fine,” he said, grudgingly. “We’ll go, in a couple days, once you can stop wincing every time the car takes a turn. But the only thing we’re doing when we get there is burning it to the ground, you get me?”

Sam made an effort to smile. It was weak, but it was still there. “I think,” Sam said, “I can see my way clear to be fine with that.”

Things came back slowly, blurrily, and Sam was fairly sure, sometimes not at all. He had enough of the picture, though. As far as Dean was concerned, it seemed, more than enough.

Dean was also hovering, almost constantly, and Sam didn’t know how to make him stop. He wasn’t entirely sure, either, what the reason for it was; fear on Sam’s behalf or fear that Sam would relapse? After all, he’d been under someone else’s control and attacked his own brother. Sam kept searching himself for some kind of sign of lingering effects.

So far, he’d found nothing. That did nothing, though, to assuage his other thoughts.

That they’d failed, very nearly spectacularly. That he’d allowed that creature to somehow move into his mind and take over his will. That she’d chosen him. Over Dean.

Pretty thing.

Sam shuddered. The twinges in his chest were fading, but they were still a vivid reminder, as much as the breathy, silky voice that was still all too clear in his memories, even when everything else was not.

It was probably nothing, Sam knew that. Probably just coincidence. Probably. But he couldn’t help the nagging feeling, the nagging wondering that maybe, somehow, like recognized like and was drawn toward it. That she’d chosen him because of something she’d seen, something dark that she – it – recognized and approved of.

Something his father knew about, and Dean was stubbornly denying. It was there somewhere, though, both of them knew that. Maybe lurking just under the surface. Maybe not even that far.

Maybe turning evil wasn’t the only thing that he was vulnerable to.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Dean said from the other bed, where his eyes seemed fixed on Raiders of the Lost Ark, but Sam knew he was watching.

“Just trying to remember how many times you’ve watched this movie,” Sam drawled. Dean made a face at him.

“You just don’t appreciate quality cinema, Sammy.”

He wanted to bring up his worries and talk about them out loud, voice them somewhere other than his own mind. But he knew how that conversation would go. Hey Dean, I think I might not just be potentially evil, but maybe a magnet to it, too. His brother got touchy enough over the former. The latter just might send him ballistic.

So this stayed in his own head, stuck with all the rest of the things Dean didn’t want to talk about. Sam felt a flicker of resentment, and squashed it.

“You know I can always tell when you’re brooding,” Dean said. Sam glanced at him.

“I’m just thinking.”

“Sure. Thinking doesn’t put that sourpuss bitchface look on you. Most of the time.” Dean smirked a little at his own remark, but sobered quickly enough that Sam presumed it was just for form. “So what is it now?”

“We should go take care of this hunt,” Sam said, instead of answering. “Finish it off, get out of here.”

“Head for Vegas. I have the same feeling.” Dean eyed Sam. “You’re looking less pale and sickly. Feel better?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Definitely.” He wouldn’t be able to keep the same pace as the first time they’d gone in, but he could move around without wincing now. That was good enough. Or it was going to have to be. He wanted this over with.

“Well enough to change the subject, anyway,” Dean said, then shook his head. “Whatever, I’ll leave it. For the moment. We’ll head out tomorrow, does that make you feel better? Maybe I’ll even let you bring the flamethrower.”

“We don’t have a flamethrower,” Sam said, dutifully, and Dean grinned.

“Should, though, shouldn’t we? It’s fine, Sam. We’ll get there. No going in, though, right?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, “Right.” He hoped that this would do the trick, though he wasn’t sure it would. Wasn’t sure of much. Including himself, at the moment.

Finish this hunt, he told himself. Just finish this, and then you can let go of it. Okay? It’s just coincidence that it grabbed you. Just coincidence.

His father had never believed in coincidence. John Winchester saw connections where others would see coincidence. John Winchester had seen something that made him think Sam might be enough of a danger to kill.

Sam wanted so badly to know what it was. But then, he thought, maybe he didn’t want that at all.

“You’re doing it again,” Dean said, not looking away from the TV. Sam glanced over at his brother and hoped, hoped that Dean would come through if worst came to worst. He was on the verge of opening his mouth to say so when he thought better of it.

“Just thinking,” he said. “Shut up. I’m trying to watch the movie.”

Chapter Text

The hike out the second time seemed to take less time than before. Sam had that expression on his face the whole way, the one of almost brutal determination. That expression tended to make Dean nervous. It tended to remind him of Dad. And while Dad being Dad was one thing, Sam imitating Dad never seemed to end well.

A part of Dean murmured grimly that Dad being Dad hadn’t really ended well either, but he pushed that aside.

The desert was still hot, still full of lizards, and still sandy. “I don’t like deserts,” he told Sam, at one point. Sam had shrugged.

“Nobody likes deserts. This one’s not actually that bad.”

“Other than the demonic house that eats people?”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed with a twist of his mouth, looking like he always did when that place was brought up – a mixture of guilty, pained, and angry. “Except that.”

There was a lot of silence, Dean discovered quickly, when Sam was in this kind of mood. He couldn’t tell if it was a moody mood or just an angry mood. He supposed Sam probably had a right to be a little ticked off. It wasn’t Dean’s brain that had been hacked into.

He suspected at least part of it was guilt, though, and that bothered him.

“What do you think the deal with this is, anyway?” He asked, when they finally made camp for the night. It was already half dark. Dean had a feeling Sam would have pressed on, but he’d noticed a little while back that his brother was starting to move gingerly, and that was less than okay.

“This?” Sam barely glanced at him. “Don’t know.”

“How do you think no one noticed the house there?”

“I don’t think it always is there,” Sam said, simply. “I think it might…I dunno. Exist partly in another dimension. Or something.”

Dean hooted, until he realized Sam was giving him a strange look. “You’re actually serious,” he said, nearly incredulous. Sam shrugged again, or rather, raised a shoulder and let it fall back down.

“About half. Whatever that thing was, it was powerful, and that house was – not just a house.”

“I kind of noticed that when I realized that the time of day coming in the windows didn’t change,” Dean said, and Sam blinked at him.

“You didn’t mention that.”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“Everything’s important.” Sam was staring at him in a strange way, almost like he’d never seen Dean before. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

“No,” said Dean, confused, and then Sam said, “I don’t just mean about the house,” and Dean got it. “Shut up, Sam,” he said, and turned away. To his surprise, Sam actually listened. But that just left him more room to brood.

Sam might have been the one to get his head messed with, but Dean had his own reasons for wanting to kill this bitch and the house it lived in. Most of them had to do with the nightmares that had become regulars over the past couple days as Sam was recovering.

Nightmares where Sam didn’t snap out of it, or where Sam did and died, or where he did but turned into a drooling wreck afterwards. He’d screwed up. Whatever Sam thought, there probably hadn’t been much that his little brother could do after that thing had him, and it was supposed to be Dean’s job to keep things from having Sam in the first place.

He should have seen the warning signs in the way Sam was acting, almost mesmerized. They should never have gone in, Dean first or otherwise. They shouldn’t have even left the town without more information. He’d been reckless and it’d nearly gotten Sam killed. Had gotten Sam’s brain nearly sucked out of his ears.

And that was something Dean had never dealt well with.

Should haves and would haves were useless now. What was useful was burning this place to the ground, if they even could. Dean really hoped they could, or he was going to go back in and plant some dynamite, to hell with the consequences.

Somehow he doubted Sam would let that happen, though.

He was pretty sure that his little brother blamed himself for what had happened, to both of them. Probably thought that in a half a second it would happen again, something else controlling him, using him as a weapon. Dean knew better. Dean had seen him shake it off, and he didn’t think that was something that happened often. He didn’t think that creature would catch Sam again.

But trying to tell Sam that would probably be useless. So they’d do this, and then move on, and eventually it would fade to nothing but a bad memory of another hunt gone screwy. He hoped.

“We’ll get there tomorrow,” Dean said, suddenly and half on impulse, looking at Sam, who was staring into the fire. Brooding. “And finish this thing. Just think of Vegas.”

Sam looked at him like he had two heads, but he almost kind of smiled, too. That was worth something. “Yeah,” Sam said, “But I was actually thinking more of the Grand Canyon. We could go rafting.”

“That, Dean allowed, “wouldn’t be half bad either.”

The house wasn’t where they’d left it.

“Are we in the right place?” Dean asked, and Sam just nodded wordlessly, feeling his heart sink.

“Yeah,” he said, with surety. “It was right around here. Somewhere…”

“I think we’d see it if it were still here,” Dean said, caustically, and Sam just shot him a look. Something was odd, something was making his skin crawl uneasily. Something about instincts and what his senses were telling him.

“There’s nothing here,” Sam said abruptly. Dean glanced at him.

“Yeah, I think we just covered that.”

“No,” said Sam. “I mean…there’s nothing here. No birds. No lizards. No insects.”

It was so quiet. The hair on the back of Sam’s neck prickled. Dean turned in a slow circle, and Sam could see his eyes narrowing as he saw it, felt it, too. “Jesus,” Dean said, on a softer tone. “That’s eerie.”

Sam swallowed, and felt sure it was audible. “I think,” he started to say, but Dean was already moving, his eye catching on something a few feet away from them both, a patch of darker ground. Sam shut his mouth and held very still, half expecting…he didn’t know what he expected. Dean crouched next to the mark on the ground and touched it with two fingers, then rubbed them over the surface and examined them.

“It’s burnt,” Dean said, and Sam blinked.

“What?” He went over to his brother’s side and dropped down next to him. Dean was right. The ground wasn’t black, it was blackened, hard, and it was soot on Dean’s fingers.

“Something burned here,” Dean repeated. “Something hot.” Sam looked at it and thought of the creature, the woman in the red dress. He remembered a scream.

“It was here,” he said, quietly. All around them, it was so quiet. Sam wondered if the animals would come back, or if they’d ever been here. Animals tended to recognize evil places. Dean glanced at him, seeming startled.

“What? How do you know?”

“I just do.” Sam pushed himself up and looked around them both. They were on flat, dry, cracked ground, nothing particularly remarkable about it. Except the silence. “I think it’s over.”

Dean was definitely staring at him now. “And why do you…think that?”

“Something left over, maybe,” Sam said, and shook his head. “Just a…just a feeling. I guess. But I’m pretty…sure. It’s not here. And it’s not coming back.”

Dean straightened slowly after him. “Are you sure?”

I’m never sure, Sam thought. About anything. But he nodded, once. He could feel it. This place had no power left. Dean was giving him a weird look, but Sam ignored it. He wasn’t sure himself, and he didn’t want to think about it enough to explain it. Some kind of freak.

“Okay,” Dean said, and then seemed to shake himself, sounding more sure. “Okay. If you’re…yeah. Okay. How…”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Maybe something to do with…the other ones. Maybe…I don’t know.” He felt faintly nauseous, abruptly, and something in his chest had started to hurt. “Can we leave? Get out of here?”

Dean hesitated. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Sam said. “I just don’t like it here.”

“Neither do I,” Dean said, and then seemed to shake himself. “Yeah. If it’s done…let’s get out of here. I’m ready to be done with this place. Past ready.”

“Me too,” Sam said, but under his breath. He glanced back once as they started to trudge away, and imagined he saw a flash of red, of dark, sad eyes. It was gone, though, when he looked again, and the stain on the ground remained unchanged.

It was time, past time, to leave.

The way out of town was quiet again, in the car. Sam was staring out the window, and even the music didn’t seem to touch him. Dean wondered if he wanted to know what was in Sam’s thoughts, or if they were better off kept quiet.

It was always a guessing game, where that was concerned.

He didn’t like this case. Hadn’t liked anything about it, and didn’t like how they were leaving it. There was an uneasy feeling in his gut about the whole thing that wasn’t going away. But Sam had seemed sure that there was nothing left.

“So,” he said, finally, trying to shake off his uncertainties. “Grand Canyon?”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Sure. That’d be good. After that, though, I think I’m done with deserts. Let’s go somewhere wet and rainy.”

“Sure thing,” Dean said agreeably, watching Sam under his eyelids. It took two to make a quiet, and Sam had been nearly silent ever since they’d left the place where that damned house had been. Something was under his little brother’s skin.

Under both of theirs.

“You all right?” he said, finally, not really expecting anything but what he got, which was a slightly startled look and a “Fine.”

He was surprised, a moment later, by Sam’s, “Do you think that creature picked me for a reason?”

“Bad taste,” said Dean, though he felt an inexplicable sinking feeling.

“No, I mean,” Sam grimaced, and glanced away. “Something about me. Maybe something like what…Dad was talking about.”

If you can’t save him, you have to kill him. Sam thought he’d forgotten. Sam thought he was the only one whose mind kept sticking on those words. Sam was far from right. “No,” he said, at once. “I don’t think so.”

“What if-”

Dean heard his own voice snap. “No what ifs, Sam. We have enough to deal with without speculating, okay? It was – it could have just as easily have been me.”

“But it wasn’t,” Sam said. Dean turned a stare on him.

“Sam.”

Sam’s mouth spasmed, but he stopped. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” He sounded anything but convinced.

Dean turned his eyes back toward the road. If you can’t save him… And he’d done such a bang up job at saving him this time. It was just one hunt, he told himself. Stop freaking out or you’ll turn into Sam.

Sam was staring out the window again, expression troubled. There wasn’t an alternative. There wasn’t an or. Whatever their father had meant, Dean was choosing the first option. And that was it. That was just…it. Whatever Sam thought.

Dean clenched his hands on the wheel and kept on driving. This was just another hunt.

Above all, he kept his doubts, his unease, to himself.

Sam didn’t need any more of those.

(Only quietly did Dean allow the whisper that neither, really, did he.)