N.B.: I always wanted to write a story with Ellen and Jo in it. So here it is.
1 – Undone
Now
"Pick one," the yellow eyed demon said.
Sam tried his bonds again, but he was just screwed. They were plastic zip ties, so tight they were cutting into his flesh. He couldn't break out of them or slip them off. The chair also seemed nailed to the floor, which was a weird but smart detail that he had to figure the yellow eyed demon would not overlook. He seemed to always be organized.
"Sam," he said, and touched his face. Sam jerked his head aside, and from the broad grin that split his face, that was exactly the reaction he was hoping to get. "I'm going to count to three. If you haven't picked by then, I'm gonna kill them both."
"I pick me," he insisted.
The yellow eyed demon shook his head, his smile never faltering. "If I wanted you dead, Sam, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Three …"
Sam's mind raced, but there was no way out of this. He didn't trust him to keep his word at all. This fucker was responsible for Jess's death, Mom's, probably Dad's too. But he believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he would kill them both. He might anyway.
"… two …"
Sam could feel tears of frustration and rage gathering in his eyes. Goddamn it. He was going to kill this monster. He had no idea how right now, but he was going to find a way out of this, and he was going to kill him. He'd die bloody and screaming.
"Dean," Sam finally said, squeezing his eyes shut. He knew, if Dean was here, this was what he'd tell him to do. But it still felt like he'd just slit his own throat, and reached down and pulled out his own guts through the hole.
"What was that?" the yellow eyed demon said. He could hear the gloating in his voice.
"Dean. I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch!" he roared, opening his eyes and trying to lunge out of the chair. But the ropes held, and he did nothing.
The yellow eyed demon laughed, and gestured to the two big demons behind him, who left the room. Presumably to kill Dean. "Was that so hard, Sammy? And you know what makes it extra special? Your Daddy died to save Dean. So now his death was absolutely worthless. Isn't that great?"
Sam seethed, blinking away tears, and trying very hard to remember to breathe. He was going to figure out a way to kill the yellow eyed bastard, if it was the last thing he ever did.
Then
Even though it was kind of early, they decided to check in at the Roadhouse and let Ellen know they finally put the Brownsville poltergeist to rest. It wasn't easy either. Dean was hoping to get a drink to kill the ache in his head. He could probably use a Band-Aid too; blood kept dripping into his eyes.
They weren't the first hunters to try it, but they were the first to be successful. The problem with this poltergeist was it was as an old lady murdered in a very cluttered house. Today she'd be called a hoarder, but back then it was simply chalked up to eccentricity. She'd been cremated, so there was no body to burn. She was attached to an object in her super cluttered home. But what? Dean had suggested they burn the whole place down, just to be sure, but apparently that had been tried before, and only made the poltergeist angrier. (Also, she was able to extinguish the fire. She was one crafty ghost.) But what object out of the thousands left – the ones other hunters didn't destroy – was the one keeping her here?
Sammy did some hard core research, and finally figured it out. When she was a young woman, she got engaged before her fiance went off to fight in World War Two. He never came home. Her engagement ring had been burned first thing by other hunters, but nothing happened. Because it was the wrong object.
Up in the attic, buried under a whole bunch of dusty shit, was an even dustier wedding dress. Technically she never wore it, unless trying it on counted, or maybe she Miss Haversham-ed for a few years there, wearing it when no one else was around. But it was the dress that kept her bound to this plane. They had to fight their way up two stories of house and get into the attic, and find that goddamn dress, and while they prepared for it as best they could, that old lady was one mean bitch. They were both fairly lucky to make it out alive, and they had the injuries to prove it.
Considering how early it was, Dean wasn't surprised to find they were the only car in the Harvelle's Roadhouse parking lot, but wasn't there always at least one car here? Maybe it was around back.
The front door was unlocked, which was something, but inside it seemed empty. Ash wasn't even passed out anywhere. Before Dean could say anything, Jo came out of the back room, carrying out a box of pretzels. "I'm glad you – what the hell happened to you two? Did you get hit by a bus?"
Dean wiped the blood out of his eyes, while Sam limped over to the nearest bar stool and collapsed on it. "Brownsville poltergeist," Sam said.
"We ganked that bitch," Dean added proudly, finding another stool to sit on.
"Really?" She put the box own behind the bar, and came back up with a first aid kit, which she gave to Dean. "Wow, I didn't think she was ever going away."
"For a moment, I didn't think so either," Sam admitted.
"Oh ye of little faith." Dean cracked open the first aid kit, and asked Jo, "Can I have a beer?"
She stared at him. "It's eleven in the morning."
"Yeah, and?"
She rolled her eyes, and reached for a beer. She just gave him a bottle, unopened, which suited him just fine. But first, he took out some antiseptic wipes and butterfly bandages, and moved over towards Sam. He wiped the cut on the side of his face until Sam twisted away and grabbed his hand. "Dude, I'm an adult. I can do it myself."
"Fine, do it." He gave him the bandages, and left Sam to it. Sometimes Dean slipped and fell into his old caretaker role without meaning to, especially now that he had Dad's last words rattling around his head. (He couldn't have really meant kill him, could he? He still refused to believe that.)
When Dean moved back to his stool, Jo was giving him a weird look. He didn't know how to interpret it, so he didn't bother. He just opened the cap on his beer and took a serious swallow to clear the dust out of his throat.
"I'm actually kinda glad you guys are here," Jo said, leaning over the bar and pressing a clean rag to the cut on Dean's head. He took the towel from her and kept it pressed there. "I might need your help."
"What's going on?" Sam asked, clumsily bandaging the cut on his face. It was hard to do without a mirror.
She sighed. "It's my Mom. I think she's missing."
Dean tried to imagine something grabbing Ellen without getting its face caved in, and couldn't. "Are you sure about that?"
"Okay, so, this old friend of my Mom's, Carlos, went to a place called Cedar River to hunt down a rogue succubus. She got a weird phone call from him, and thought he might need some help, so she went to go check on him, and told me she'd be back by nightfall. That was last night. Not only is she not back yet, but she's not answering her phone. She wouldn't stay this long out of contact, and she certainly wouldn't let me run this place by myself."
"Succubuses are real things?" Dean suddenly imagined some sexy beast sucking out his life force – or other things – while he slept, and it seemed like there were worse ways to die. "Why don't we get cases like that?"
Sam sighed, apparently knowing what he was thinking. "They're not … they're grotesque creatures. Don't believe porn."
"And their victims aren't just men," Jo added. "A lot of the mythology around them is bullshit. They're basically just an energy vampire, but without the charm."
"Do you think it could have gotten Ellen, and this Carlos guy?" Sam asked.
Jo shook her head and frowned. "I wouldn't think so. Carlos has killed succubus before, and it's hard to imagine anything getting the jump on my Mom."
Dean nodded. "Tell me about it."
Jo gave him a weird look again. What? It was true. She just shook her head at him, and went on. "Cedar River is only a few hours away. I was thinking about going there myself, but if you guys are game, we can all go."
"Your mom would kill us if we took you," Dean said.
She scowled. "My Mom might be in trouble. Do you really think I'm just gonna sit here?"
He didn't want to admit it, but she had a point. If it were his mother, not even Hell or high water could keep him away. Dean looked down at his beer and took another gulp. These days, he couldn't seem to drink enough to shut his mind off. He really wished he could.
"Do you have the case file?" Sam asked.
Jo looked behind the counter until she found a beige folder, which she slapped on the bar. "Don't know how that helps."
"What kills a succubus?" Dean asked, using his faint reflection in the beer bottle to slap a bandage on his cut, which actually needed a few. It was a bigger gash than he thought. But the old broad did throw him through a wall and through a cabinet, and tried to drop a chandelier on him, so he was probably lucky he didn't have a concussion.
"Silver blade washed in holy water."
Dean finally finished fiddling with the bandages. Probably the best he could do for now. Might have to Super Glue it closed later. "Well, we got those."
Sam was flipping through the folder, and Dean couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Five people died in weird ways. One sleepwalked in front of a truck, another went on a rampage inside a grocery store, another jumped off their roof claiming they were being chased by their dead brother … how is this a succubus?"
Jo had moved farther down the bar. She had taken off her bar apron, and was currently selecting knives from a piece of tooled leather. Girl liked her knives. "They don't just kill you in your sleep, although that's the usual method. They can cause waking sleep states, and make people do weird shit. Usually weird, harmful shit, that inevitably ends in their death."
"So they're like demonic Ambien?" Dean asked. Now Sam frowned at him. What? How was that not true?
Jo shrugged, as she slipped a couple of silver knives in the pockets of her jeans. "Kinda, I guess."
"How do they attack?" Sam asked.
"Well, one part of the mythology's true. They only prey on the sleeping."
Dean peeled off part of the beer label with his fingernail as he considered that. He noticed he had blood caked under his nails. "Okay, so, as long as Ellen didn't take a nap, how could the succubus have gotten to her?"
Jo shrugged on a brown leather jacket that seemed one size too big for her, and pulled her long blonde hair back into a ponytail, snapping on a rubber band that seemingly came from nowhere. "That's what we're going to hafta find out." She grabbed a rifle from underneath the bar, and held it in her arms like a sleeping kitten.
Dean had to give Jo credit. She didn't dick around.
