Chapter Text
June 17th, 2012
Outside of Grand Junction, Colorado
It was all screaming tires, fire, and blood.
Sam’s ankle wrenched, pushing the gas pedal flush up to the floor of the car. His one-handed feel on the steering wheel—all that was keeping the Impala from veering into the opposite lane. His other hand pressed over Dean’s, pressed over the gaping gunshot wound in his shoulder.
“Hold on, man, just hold on.” Sam’s desperate, smoke-choked voice didn’t, couldn’t, offer much comfort.
In the rearview mirror, flames twisted like dragons into the sky, racing each other up the dry tinder of what had been Sam and Dean’s home for the past three-and-a-half days. Stupid, stupid, amateur move; they should’ve known better than to stay in one place that long. Especially now.
Dean was hunched over, his forehead almost on his knees. Blood had completely ruined the sleeve of his leather jacket. A long, low sound, halfway to a sob, escaped from between his clenched teeth, punching into Sam’s chest. He slid his hand down, to Dean’s head, steadying him.
“Just hold on.” He repeated. “I’ll get you to a hospital.”
“No.” Dean moaned. “No hospital, Sam.”
“Dean, he nailed you. You could bleed out.”
“Just…stitch it up when we stop.”
Sam grimaced; they were running.
They weren’t going to stop anytime soon.
One Hour Earlier
Sam hated the house they were squatting in.
Tucked away in the ridges of the Rocky Mountains, it was miserably decrepit, if not on the verge of collapse. The only reason Dean had chosen it: it was so far off the beaten path, they weren’t likely to be bothered. Which meant hours uninterrupted inside mountains of lore books scrounged from God-knew-where.
At least, that was Sam’s job.
More often than not these days, Dean had himself locked in the attic of the house; or, before that, he’d stayed planted to his grungy bed in whatever motel they sacked in for the night; or he let Sam drive, and stayed on the laptop. Always, on the laptop; always searching. No more beers, no more women, no more chasing normal cases. They’d passed up on a wraith, two vengeful spirits and a Crocotta in the past month. Sam knew what Dean was doing.
Hunting Kaila.
Looking for John.
But even knowing, now, that Kaila was the one they’d been searching for, for months—since Palo Alto, the night she’d killed Jesse Turner in cold blood—and knowing for sure that she was back in the United States, didn’t make finding her any easier. She kept her head below the radar, better than Sam and Dean ever had; better than anyone in the business, except, maybe, for John Winchester.
Sam hated that a part of him blamed her resourcefulness on the Shifter she’d incorporated by force into her anti-monster battalion.
But that was the whole point of everything that Sam and Dean were doing now, abandoning jobs that would’ve normally had them driving cross-country, eighty-five miles an hour on backroads that didn’t seem to lead anywhere, to Podunk towns that lived and breathed backwater lore. Places where stories told on grandma’s front porch on a breezy summer day, could just as easily crawl out from under your bed in the middle of the night.
For now, that life wasn’t their life; because John, the Shapeshifter who’d taken on their father’s face going on seven years ago, was still in Kaila’s hands, still stranded on the front lines. And they’d made it their singular mission to get him back.
Easier said than done.
Sam palmed down the newspaper he’d been flipping through, leaning his chair back on two legs and watching Dean; separated from him by the length of the dusty table and half a dozen precarious stacks of lore books, he might as well have been in another world. More and more, it felt like he was; like there was a chasm between them. For once, not created by their clashing personalities or the mistakes they’d made.
Sam curled his hand into a fist on top of the newspaper.
He could still remember the feeling of warm blood soaking his hands, the heat of it spreading across his knees. Would never forget, with that gut-swooping, cold-throated hum of steady grief, watching the light die from Castiel’s eyes.
Castiel, the angel who, from the first day Sam had met him, had always seemed just one step shy of invincible. Even crippled by the affects of a Horseman’s power, Castiel had remained, as a whole, strong, detached, but loyal almost to a fault. All of the qualities Heaven lacked in places, and needed.
Gone.
Sam hadn’t asked Dean yet if Meg was dead, because he didn’t need to; his brother returning, soaked in blood that he didn’t seem to notice, carrying an archangel blade like it was nothing, like they hadn’t been looking for it on and off ever since Arco, Idaho, a few months before—it was classic Dean. Running from something with silence, digging holes inside himself to bury the dead.
Burying while they burned.
Sam cleared his throat. “Find anything?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Dean mumbled, his fingers floating across the keyboard. “String of disappearances up in Oregon. Near Baker City. So far, no suspects, no leads.” Dean shut the laptop and tilted his hand in a There-You-Go gesture. “Could have something to do with Kaila. The bitch breathes, people go missing. She’s gotta be recruiting more monsters for her army.”
“It’s definitely worth looking into, either way.” Sam agreed. “I’m a little more worried about the Mohera, at this point.”
Dean crossed his arms on top of the laptop. “You tracked it down?”
Sam frowned, flipping the newspaper over and sliding it toward Dean. “Maybe. A lot of deaths up in northern Montana recently. Bloodstains no one can explain. The same thing we saw in Japan.”
“Kaila’s probably trying to stay one step ahead of it, since we’ve got this,” Dean picked the archangel blade up from the table and wagged it between two fingers, “And the Colt. We just gotta pick these vultures off, one-by-one.”
“Dean,” Sam started stacking the books, just to give his hands something to do. “It might not be that easy. And I think, deep down, you know that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we’ve been tracking Kaila for six weeks; ever since Japan. We’ve been hunting the Mohera for longer than that. And now we might have a lead on both of them?” Sam folded the newspaper in half and stretched his arms out on the table. “Maybe we should split up. One of us goes to Oregon, one of us goes to Montana.”
“No.” Dean’s reply was quick and totally sure. “It’s not happening.”
“Dean, come on…”
“Sam, no. Not with your seizures, and not with the Mohera on the loose. You need someone watching your back.”
“What, and you don’t?” Sam snapped.
“I can take care of myself.”
“Quit it with the ‘Strong and silent’ attitude, Dean! It’s not helping.”
“What do you want me to say, Sam? Hm? That I’m just crying into my Cheerios every morning? That I can’t sleep because of my manly angst?” Dean pressed a dramatic hand to his chest, and this his face hardened. “Give it a rest.”
Sam shot him a bitchfaced look, then grabbed the backpack off of the arm of his chair and headed for the stairs.
“Where’re you going?” Dean was halfway out of his chair before Sam had taken two steps.
“Upstairs. To change.”
Sam made it to the landing on the top floor, his boots stirring up dust, before the tingling started at the base of his spine; he put his back to the wall and sank down with the backpack on his knees, burying his face in it and wrapping his hands around into the nylon straps.
Life was chaos right now, nothing made sense, and along with Castiel’s memory, Dean was burying himself, and letting his anger take over again.
Sam almost welcomed the memories of Hell.
The absence seizure lasted longer than most; when Sam came to, he was curled on his side in the hallway, the backpack pinned under his arm; the first thing he noticed, that Dean wasn’t there. Which was strange in and of itself, because Sam being gone for more than ten minutes—and he could feel, already, that it had been longer than that—usually put Dean on the hint to come after him, to make sure he was all right.
The second thing he noticed: the house smelled like smoke.
Groggily, Sam sat up, pushing his backpack onto his shoulder again and taking the stairs down to the first floor, one step at a time, and every footfall feeling like a hammerstrike pounding up into his hips. He reached the bottom of the staircase and stopped dead in his tracks; halted by the sick, brutal sound of a fist meeting flesh.
Sam shunted his back to the wall, leaning his head against the wood paneling, the sound driving home into his brain. It made him feel unbalanced, like he was walking inside his memories, inside of his nightmares, awake.
“Where’s the other one, Winchester?”
The voice was vaguely familiar; Sam tried to place it, wishing, almost viciously, that his brain didn’t feel so scrambled.
“Who, Sammy?” Dean’s voice was thick, and Sam heard him spit. “Well, he’s not here. And that’s about all you’re getting outta me.”
The beat of silence held a promise of retribution before that familiar-but-not familiar voice said, “Search the house.”
Sam rocked his weight, settling himself, knowing someone would be coming around that corner, soon, and he’d have to take them down or more than likely he’d be in a world of pain. His firearm was still on the table, with the archangel blade, with Dean.
So when the dark-skinned, curly-haired guy in lumberjack clothes stepped into the room, Sam moved on instinct alone; he snapped a kick into the outstretched arms that held a firearm taut, whipping the weapon up and off target. Sam followed it up by pulling the guy into a headlock and jamming them both back against the well, pinning him in a cradled hold until he passed out from oxygen loss.
Sam scrambled, grabbed the gun and whipped himself around the corner.
Straight into a face-off.
Two guns, Sam’s against another man’s; and Dean in between them, in the guy’s iron grip, with the muzzle tapping between Sam’s face and the side of his head.
Sam went completely still.
He knew the man who was holding Dean.
“Larry?” Sam’s aim stayed level, straight for the head; a kill shot, but with consequence. “Larry Monroe. You’re Bobby Singer’s friend.”
“Hiya, Sam.” Larry’s voice shook just a little bit. “Sorry about all this. But I’m gonna have to ask you to put the gun down, son.”
“Don’t do it, Sam!” Dean ordered, and leaned his head sideways when the muzzle of the gun pressed into his hair.
Sam’s sights listed. “Larry, come on, man. Is this a joke? We’re both hunters, here. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Hunters. Right.” Larry snorted. “This is what has to be done. And I’m sorry you boys are caught in the crosshairs—really, I am. You’re decent people. At least, to each other. But a job’s a job.”
Sam saw Larry’s finger tighten on the trigger.
Two simultaneous gunshots punched out loud, rattling the fragile glass on the windows. Sam’s hit first; Larry’s, second.
Both Larry and Dean dropped to the floor.
Sam threw the firearm skidding and ran to his brother, hauling Dean up with one hand on his back and one across his chest, gripping the front of his shirt. Dean’s upper arm was saturated with blood; almost the same spot where he’d been shot when a Draugr possessed his body. His head rolled down, his hand gripping the bleeding gunshot wound. Sam moved to staunch the bleeding, then hesitated.
The smoky smell was getting stronger, coming from outside.
One look toward the doorway showed Sam the flames licking through the bushes and up toward the porch.
Those idiots had lit the outside of the house on fire.
“C’mon, I’ve got you. Dean, come on.” Sam hefted Dean to his feet, keeping one arm around him while he reached back and grabbed the archangel blade off the table. It was all he had a free hand for; that, and Dean. No time to grab the laptop, no time to find their duffle bags. The dry, hot wood of the house caught like tinder and the canyon-deep, achingly well-known and visceral fear of fire pounded through Sam’s veins.
They stumbled down the front path, through a garden of thigh-high weeds toward the gravel driveway, where the Impala was parked gleaming in the sun. Sam popped the shotgun door and lowered Dean inside, nudging his brother’s legs into the stoop under the dashboard and closing the door.
By the time Sam turned back toward the house, it was already roaring, a brilliant blast of heat on a warm June night. Sam stared, feeling the flames reflecting on his face, against his eyes.
All of their clothes; some of their weapons. His laptop, both duffle bags. Which meant more than half of their worldly possessions, gone, swallowed up.
In less than a minute.
Including, Sam realized, his laptop bag; with the engagement ring he’d bought Jessica, still inside.
“Sam, come on!” Dean bit out from the front seat; Sam back-stepped, feeling behind him for the door, shaking himself out of it finally when his hand met the handle. He climbed inside, jammed the keys into the ignition and gunned the engine, snaking the Impala down the wide, bendy trail back toward the asphalt throughway.
Sam almost didn’t see the black truck; almost.
It came screaming up on their right, dangerously close to broadsiding the Impala where the gravel road met the pavement. Sam spun the wheel left, fishtailing the car out of harm’s way, watching in the rearview mirror as the truck swerved wildly down the lane toward the house.
They’d see the fire in a minute; and Sam had a feeling there would be payback to their names after that.
He reached over, clamped his hand on Dean’s shoulder, and drove.
Finding a motel was impossible; worse when Sam realized the first-aid kit had been in the house, and burned along with the rest of their belongings. Dean slid into fuzzy unconsciousness more than once as Sam pulled the Impala down from a headlong blazing fury and into a more permissible speed, the further they traveled from the house, and from the hunters who’d attacked them
If Sam had a dollar for every time Dean asked him, in between bouts of shallow-breathing semi-delirium, if the Colt and the archangel blade were safe, they could’ve bought a new laptop.
Finally, with nothing else to do, Sam pulled up at a small vet hospital outside of De Beque. He shucked off his jacket and wadded it against Dean’s damaged shoulder, then climbed out into a warm, sultry night.
He broke one of the windows with his elbow, pulled himself over the glass-dusted windowsill, and made a quick sweep of the place. No alarms, no silent trips that he could find. It was a relatively small establishment; Sam unlocked the door from the inside and went back for Dean.
His brother was pretty out of it, but seemed like he was trying to balance himself when Sam brought him inside and hauled him up sitting on the edge of one of the examination tables. Bracing Dean with his shoulder, Sam stripped off the ruined jacket and tossed it on the floor; the shirt quickly followed it, exposing the gaping hole and bruised, hot flesh around the wound.
“Ugh,” Sam winced, scrunching his face. He put pressure on the wound again, turning his attention to Dean’s face. “Dean. Hey, man, I need your help.”
Dean’s head was tucked down, but he muttered, “’M’awake.”
“Good.” Sam said, relieved. “Stay sitting up, and hold this in place for me.”
A bottle of antiseptic, a roll of sutures and a sewing needle; all locked in a case. Easy enough to pick the lock. Sam returned with the supplies and got started.
Once he flushed the wound out, it was easy to see the brachial artery hadn’t been compromised; the wound was clean, through-and-through, had scooped out a lot of skin and bled a lot but wasn’t fatal. Sam didn’t let himself think what would’ve happen if he hadn’t shot Larry when he did, jerking his aim off and twisting Dean’s body; the bullet could’ve gone straight through Dean’s arm and into his side instead.
By the time Sam had the wound cleaned and both sides of his arm stitched, Dean was a little more lucid, shivering shirtless on the cold exam table with nothing but his amulet on. Sam swept the dirty instruments into a tray and picked up a spool of bandages, wrapping the top of Dean’s arm in one thick swathe.
“I need to clean this up,” Sam gestured to the bloodstains on the floor and the needle and thread he’d used. “You good?”
“I’ll live.” Dean mumbled.
That was a good thing.
When Sam returned, re-sterilized needle and wet mop in hand, Dean was trying to pull his shirt back on. Sam stopped him. “You need something clean.”
“This’ll work.” Dean sounded nine kinds of cranky.
“Dean. No, it won’t. That thing’s filthy. You don’t want to get an infection.” Sam pulled off his shirt and traded it, slipping on just his jacket and zipping it up.
“Man, I hate wearing your stuff.” Dean complained, dragging the shirt on over his head. Sam ignored him, rolling up the ruined shirt; they had no choice but to keep it until they could find a place to dump or burn it. For half a second, he thought about throwing out the leather jacket with it; then decided he’d rather not be on Dean’s hit-list for disposing of something that had belonged to their dad. He wiped the blood off the ripped sleeve and stuffed it into his backpack instead.
Dean mashed the heel of his hand against his eye. “The whole room’s spinning.”
“You lost a lot of blood.” Sam replied. “Give me a second, I’ll be right back.”
For once, their luck held out; Sam found an unopened bottle of Gatorade in the employee’s lounge in the back. Dean swished it down while Sam mopped up the bloodstains on the floor and locked the antiseptic, needle and gauze in the cabinet again.
“Treated at a vet clinic,” Dean commented when he’d finished off the Gatorade. “Drinking Smurf piss out of a bottle. This has gotta be an all-time low for us, Sam.”
Sam hooked his foot around a rolling chair in the corner and shoved it toward the exam table, sinking into it. “Nah.”
“Really? Name worse. Name one time we’ve had to do something like this.”
“Plenty of times!” Sam protested, and Dean raised an eyebrow. “Just give me a second to remember when.”
“That’s what I thought.” Dean moved like he was going to chuck the Gatorade into the trash can, then stopped and set it on the exam table beside him. “So. Larry Monroe, huh?”
“Yeah.” Sam rubbed his forehead. “And the other hunter must’ve been Jack Cosgrove. They were always teaming up together when they came by Bobby’s place, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. I remember them giving us popsicles when we were kids.” Dean scowled. “What the hell were they doing, trying to waste us?”
Sam shrugged. “Possessed, maybe?”
“No, I threw holy water at ’em when they came in. Didn’t do anything.”
“Shapeshifters?”
“Larry’s gun was silver-plated, same as mine. To keep those kinds’a fugly things from lifting a weapon off of us.”
“So, it was them.” Sam frowned. “Totally them?”
“Looks like it.”
“But why?” Sam tossed his hair out of his eyes. “And what did Larry mean when he called it a job?”
“One person oughta know the answer to both those questions.” Dean said.
Sam didn’t have to ask, already fishing out his phone. “I’ll call Bobby.”
About the time the phone started ringing, some dog in a back kennel woke up yelping; Sam saw the annoyance pull across Dean’s face, felt bad because he knew, ever since the Hellhound ordeal, how much Dean hated dogs. Not just big, iron-jawed attack dogs, but little yappy ones, too.
The line clicked to life. “Y’ello?”
“Bobby? It’s Sam.”
Sam heard something that sounded like meat pan-searing in the background. “I ain’t dug up anything new, if that’s why you’re callin’ me.”
“Actually, no, it’s something else.” Sam slid a look toward Dean. “Have you talked to Larry Monroe lately?”
“Not in the last six, eight months.” Bobby replied. “Sam, what is that crazy racket in the background?”
“Uh, sorry,” Sam winced. “We’re in an animal hospital.”
“Animal hospital?” Bobby echoed severely. “What, your brother get turned into a Great Dane?”
“No, Dean’s fine.” Sam cocked his head. “Relatively speaking.”
“You wanna tell me what this is about?”
Sam put the phone on speaker and set it on the cart, nodding to Dean.
Dean leaned his injured arm across his knees. “Any idea why Larry Monroe would want to gank me and Sam?”
“He did what?” There was a clattering sound in the background, like Bobby had dropped a spatula. “You’re kiddin’ me!”
“No, you better believe it. Him and Jack, showed up with a couple’a pieces and tried to kill us.” Dean said flatly. “Before you ask, we did the whole drill: holy water, they had silver on ’em.”
“So you’re sayin’ they just showed up outta the blue and—?”
“Yes, Bobby. Yes, your frat pals tried to kill us. I wanna know if you know anything about it.”
“It don’t make a lick’a sense.” Bobby protested—then got quiet. Way too quiet, way too fast.
Sam met Dean’s eyes over the phone, quickly, then leaned his elbows on his knees. “Bobby?”
“Aw, hell.” Bobby groaned.
“What?” Dean demanded.
“’Bout a week ago, I got a call from a guy I ran with out in Wichita, in ninety-one. Said he’d heard about a job broadcastin’ to every hunter. People that needed to be taken care of, and I don’t mean put in a nursing home.”
“Wasted.” Dean said bluntly.
“Told ’im I was a hunter, I wasn’t a murderer and if I ever heard from him again, I’d call the cops on his ass.”
“And you didn’t ask him who the hit was on?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t wanna know.”
“Well, that’s great, Bobby, ’cause I’m pretty sure it’s our names in the killpool.” Dean palmed a hand back through his hair.
Sam frowned. “But who would—?” He sat back, realization crashing like an icy wave over his shoulders. “Kaila.”
“She knows you boys are a real threat to her, with what she’s up to.” Bobby agreed. “Wouldn’t surprise me if she fabricated some story to get the other hunters on your tail.”
Dean sat back, clapping a hand on his knee. “Well, great. That means no credit cards, no more hustling pool—”
“Nothing they can use to track us.” Sam’s brain was already scrambling, wondering how they could recoup their losses, if they couldn’t fall back on their usual methods of income.
“You boys better watch your backs, be extra kinds of careful.” Bobby warned. “You don’t got an archangel with the mojo to hide you from a pack’a human bloodhounds anymore.”
“Ya think?” Dean snarled, and Sam blinked, watching the furious stare Dean pinned on the wall, not looking him, or at the phone that had gone quiet.
“I’ll call ya if I find anything.” Bobby said, and then the line went dead.
“Dean.” Sam slid the phone back into his pocket. “Bobby’s just trying to help.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Dean turned his vitriol on Sam, and the glare to match it. Sam just waited, knowing by now that the reality behind Dean’s mood would unveil itself if he kept his temper in check and didn’t bite back. After a few seconds, Dean reached up and massaged the bandage on his arm. “This whole thing’s backsliding fast, Sam.”
“I know.” Sam clasped his hands loosely and hung them between his knees. “So? What’s next?”
“If Kaila wants us dead? I say we give her a taste of her own medicine. If we can’t kill the whole Hydra, let’s start lopping off heads.” Keeping his arm pinned closed to his ribs, Dean hopped off the table. “Take the fight to her, and figure this out our own damn selves.”
Sam half-smiled. “Sounds good.”