Hi all! This is my first Supernatural fic (I usually write for Bones), so I hope you enjoy it! Special thanks to MaliBearsBuddy for her inspiration and beta skills! Also, many thanks to my Twitter Family for their continued support of my writing, including the use of their names! Please do review and let me know what you think!

Chapter 1 - The Word Is Spoken

It starts out like a murmur
Then it grows like thunder
Until it bursts inside of you
Try to hold it steady
Wait until you're ready
Any second now will do
Throw the door wide open
Not a word is spoken

Anything that you want to do

"Wearing and Tearing" - Led Zepplin

24 HRS AGO

"Hey, honey, sorry I'm late!" Jeff Bloomington calls out as he kicks the front door shut behind him. "A client called just as I was getting ready to walk out the door, and you know how that goes..." He pauses, dropping his briefcase on the floor in the entry way. Not hearing a response, he moved further up the hall, peeking into the kitchen. Seeing no sign of his wife, he continues down the hall to their bedroom.

"Hey, Jena," he says, pushing the door open. "Geez, you always fuss at me for tracking in dirt, but you've got it all down the hall! Are you ready to get something to...Oh, my god, Jena, no!"

~~SUPERNATURAL~~

PRESENT DAY

Dean Winchester slips into the booth across from his brother, Sam. "Hey," he says, reaching for a menu, "did you see they have pigs in a blanket?"

Sam glances up from his laptop with a "not funny" look, and goes back to reading.

Dean chuckles, unrepentant. "Got a case for us yet?"

"I think so, yeah," Sam says as he turns the laptop to face Dean. "Last night, Madison, IN, a husband found his wife dead in their bedroom. She'd been strangled."

Dean skims over the newspaper article Sam pulled up. "Jena Bloomington, huh? Okay, so? Since when is it weird for a woman to be strangled in her home?"

"Well, she was covered in clumps of mud from their yard, and her neck was crushed," Sam says. "Like, practically crushed to bone dust."

Dean looks up from the plate of eggs and sausage that had arrived while they were talking. "Crushed into dust? That's a new one. Could a person do that? A normal person, I mean."

Sam shrugs and motions toward the computer. "Not according to my research, no. It takes an enormous amount of pressure to crush bone like that. Think the pressure of a wolf's jaw."

Dean whistles, shoveling another forkful of eggs in his mouth. "Okay, so not human. Sounds like our kinda gig. You said wolf's jaw...you're not thinking werewolf are you?"

"No, there was no other damage. The heart was intact, nothing else was touched. The weird thing is the mud."

"What's weird about mud?"

"Well, she was covered in it and it was tracked through the house. Straight path back to the bedroom. It came from their backyard, but they haven't had any rain in Madison in 3 weeks. No way should anyone have been able to drag that much into the house," Sam replies.

Dean shrugs, not necessarily seeing the connection. "What else? I know you've got something else..."

"She's the third person in Madison in less than two weeks to die the same way," Sam replies, a slight smile crossing his face.

Dean swallows his last bite of eggs and pushes the plate away. Standing, he tosses some bills on the table. "Alrighty then, Sammy, looks like we got a case! Let's hit the road."

~~SUPERNATURAL~~

Four hours later, Sam and Dean are knocking on the door of the Bloomington house, dressed in their standard issue FBI suits.

Jeff Bloomington answers the door, looking haggard. "Yes, can I help you?"

"Yes, Mr. Bloomington, I'm Agent Garcia and this is my partner, Agent McKernan," Sam says, as they both hold up their FBI "badges." "We're investigating your wife's death and we're hoping to ask you a few questions."

It seems to take a few seconds for Bloomington to absorb the information, but he finally steps back and gestures them inside. "Please, come in. I had no idea the FBI was interested in this case."

Seated in the living room and having declined coffee, Dean begins by asking about how Bloomington had found his wife.

"I came home late from work, around 7 PM, I think. We were supposed to go out to dinner, but I got a client call right as I was leaving," Jeff says, his eyes taking on a faraway look as he remembers. "I called out to her when I came in, but didn't get an answer. I walked down the hall and saw the clumps of mud. I said something about her complaining about me tracking mud in the house." He pauses for a moment, a sad smile on his lips. "When I opened the bedroom door, I saw her..." his voice cracks slightly, but he continues. "I saw her there on the floor. I thought maybe she'd fainted, but her head..."

Seeing the man's distress, Sam speaks up. "Yes, Mr. Bloomington, thank you. Um, can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt your wife? Someone she'd been having trouble with at work, maybe?"

Bloomington shakes his head, as much to dislodge the vision of his wife on the floor, neck twisted at that unnatural angle, as to answer the question. "No, not anyone that I can think of really."

"What did your wife do for a living, Mr. Bloomington?" Sam asks.

"She was a paralegal. Worked for a law firm here in town, Northingham, Grant," Jeff says. "But I can't imagine anyone there wanting to hurt Jena. She loved her job." He smiles again, the same sad smile he'd worn before. "She used to say she was using her powers for good instead of evil by helping the clients get justice."

Sam smiles gently and nudges Dean. "Would you mind if we had a look around, Mr. Bloomington? Just to get a feel for the scene?"

Jeff waves a hand toward the hallway. "Sure, go ahead. The bedroom is at the end of the hall on the right." He hesitates. "It's the way it was when the police left it. I haven't been able to go in there since..." His voice dies out as he swallows hard, dropping his gaze to the floor.

"That's ok, Mr. Bloomington," Sam replies, "we'll find our way."

The boys make their way down the hall to the bedroom and step inside. Dean surreptitiously pulls out the EMF meter, sweeping it around the room. "No EMF," he says, slipping the device back in his pocket, "so probably not a ghost."

Sam checks the window sills and around the door. "No sulfur, either. See any hex bags?"

"No, nothing in the bathroom. Did you check everything in here?" Dean says, moving out the master bath and back into the bedroom.

Sam drops the mattress back into place and dusts his hands off. "Nope, nothing."

Dean surveys the room, hands on his hips, trying to find something they or the police had missed. "Damn. Now what?"

Sam sighs. "I guess it's back to the motel for some more research. Maybe you could go down to the morgue and see what you can find out there."

Rolling his eyes, Dean strides out of the room. "Great, I get the dead bodies and you get to sit at the hotel and drink beer while you surf the web."

Sam snickers as he follows him out of the house and out to the car.

~~SUPERNATURAL~~

It's several hours later before Dean flips open the motel room door, slamming it behind him. He pulls at the knot on his tie, loosening it halfway, before tossing the files in his hand onto the table near Sam. Without saying a word, he walks to the mini-fridge, pulls out a beer, and knocks half of it back all at once.

Sam looks up from the book he's reading, eyebrow raised, a bemused smile on his face. "How'd it go with the coroner?"

"Oh, it was a freakin' blast, I'll tell you. Lookin' at a pretty young woman's head twisted mostly off her shoulders was exactly how I wanted to spend my afternoon." Dean flops back on the bed, beer dangling from one hand, as he flings his other forearm over his eyes.

Sobering, Sam flips through a few more pages in his book before tossing it aside. "Sorry."

"Well, I didn't get a whole lot more from the coroner, other than confirmation Jena Bloomington died the same way as the other two victims," Dean says, not moving the arm covering his eyes. "All of them were covered in mud from their own yards," he continues, "but no one's been able to figure out how it got there." The hand holding the beer gestures toward the files. "I was able to charm copies of the files out of the receptionist, though."

Sam shook his head, smothering a grin. "Of course you were," he says, picking up one of the files and glancing through it. He tosses it back on the table, rubbing his eyes. "We gotta figure out where this thing's gonna be next, Dean, or we're never gonna find out what it is."

"Bright idea, Edison, but how the hell are we gonna do that?" Dean snarks, sitting up and draining the last of the beer.

Rolling his eyes, Sam turns back to the files and books littering the table. "The answer has to be in these files somewhere. I don't think these victims are random, so we need to find the connection."

Dean sighs, standing to shrug off his suit jacket and beginning to unbutton his dress shirt. "Fine, let me get outta this monkey suit and I'll get my crystal ball so we can get on it."

~~SUPERNATURAL~~

"You know, if we get arrested, I am totally diming you out for whatever deal they'll give me," Dean hisses as he shifts for the hundredth time, trying to find a comfortable spot in the chilly dirt of Laura White's backyard.

"Shhhh," Sam hisses back. "You're going to get us arrested if you don't stop complaining and moving around."

Dean grunts, rolling his head side to side to release the kinks in his neck. They've been sitting in this woman's backyard for some two hours now. It's nearing 2 AM, it's cold, and there's no sign of anyone or anything. "Tell me again why you think she's the next victim..."

"Because, Dean, she fits the profile," Sam replies, shifting his own position so he can lean back against the white picket fence surrounding the backyard. "All three victims so far were young women, professional, and from this area," he says, ticking off the points on his fingers as he speaks. "They were also all clients of the local coffee shop and the local fitness center. I'm thinking someone at one of those places is responsible."

Dean merely grunts again, rubbing his hands together in an attempt to warm them. As he's opening his mouth to grumble at Sam again, there's a noise from near the front gate. The brothers look at each other briefly, then slip from their hiding place, moving as quietly as possible toward the sound.

Sam leads the way, gripping a sawed off shotgun loaded with rock salt tightly. Dean follows a few feet back, pearl handled pistol pointed down at his side. The noise from the front comes again, a low keening tone. As the brothers round the last set of hedges, Sam stops short at the sight in front of him, nearly causing Dean to fall over him.

"Damn it, Sam, what are you..." Dean's voice trails off as he catches sight of what caused his brother to stop so abruptly. "What the hell is..." But Dean doesn't get to finish his sentence before all hell breaks loose.

The whatever it was in front of them turns toward them when it hears their voices and starts to move in their direction, still making that same odd noise, something almost like a whale's song.

Dean shifts to Sam's side, aiming the pistol at the thing's head and pulling the trigger. The bullet sails right through the figure, shattering part of the fence behind it. "Not good, not good," he mutters as he aims and fires again, hoping to at least slow the creature.

He empties the clip, doing precisely zero damage. Sam raises his shotgun, but before he can get off a round of salt, another figure appears from the shadows.

The new figure swiftly approaches the creature from the front, reaches for what appeared to be its hand, and rubs it. Seconds later, the creature crumbles into a pile of dirt at the newcomer's feet.

Finally gathering his wits back about him, Dean flicks on his flashlight and points it and the newly re-loaded pistol at the intruder. A dark haired young woman, dressed in jeans and a heavy coat turns slowly, raising her hands in submission as she hears Dean ratchet a round into the chamber.

"Well, if it isn't the Winchesters," she says, a slightly mocking edge to her voice. "I didn't know you boys were in town."