Hello lovely readers. I have another offering for you. This time it's a multi-chaptered, actual plot story. You could call this the sequel to my first SPN fic 'Crazy On You' but it's not absolutely necessary to read that if you want to understand this, but it would be helpful. Hope you enjoy this, let me know with reviews what you think =)
Warnings: Crazy On You was rated M for sexy times. This is a pattern that shall continue, but, I stress again, this isn't a PWP. So enjoy =)
Disclaimer: Yeah, still don't own Supernatural. Darn.
The rumbling of the Impala eased off as Dean cut the engine and swung himself out into the parking lot, stretching his legs for the first time in six hours. Even though it was early fall it was still very warm out thanks to the fact they were down in the south of Texas, in the damn desert practically.
"I'm telling' ya Sammy, a little bit further Southwest, we could totally cross the border, swing down to Cancun, Tijuana, have a lot of fun down there." He leaned up against the car and then tipped his head back, stretching the kink out of his neck while Sammy hauled his bag out of the back seat of the Impala and slammed the door shut.
"I told you, Dean, there is no way we're going to Mexico. We'll get flagged by the feds the second we set foot anywhere near the border."
Dean rolled his eyes. "You are such a buzz kill, you know that?"
"Then at least I haven't lost my touch." Sam shot him a sneaky look over the roof of the car and Dean tipped his head to the side in agreement.
"Ok, first things first, there has got to be decent barbecue around here somewhere. I have been craving a greasy pork sandwich dripping in sauce the size of my head." At that moment Dean felt his stomach growl with such ferocity even Sam's eyebrows flicked up, disappearing into his bangs.
"What? I told you I was hungry two hundred miles ago."
They approached the cheap motel they'd decided to stay at and Sam leaned closer to him as they headed for the door. "Dean, we're running low on money. We can't risk the credit cards, not now."
Dean shot his little brother a look that clearly said he was not in the mood to argue. "We gotta sleep somewhere, Sammy, and I am not bunking in the Impala, I don't feel like having my neck bent out of shape for the next two weeks."
Sam however wasn't budging. "Yeah, I figured you'd say that." His lips quirked a bit and Dean knew that look all to well.
"Sam. Sam, what did you do?!" He immediately fumbled for his wallet and dug through it, finding all the credit cards were gone.
"Cut them up in our last room and tossed each little bit out the window on the highway." A positively evil smirk had etched its way onto Sam's face and as he saw his brother's befuddlement he couldn't help but laugh far more than was probably appropriate, but he loved to get one over on Dean. It was such a rare occasion, he couldn't resist savoring it.
"You are an evil bitch, you know that?" Dean growled as he dug the last bits of cash he had left and stalked into the motel, leaving Sam practically rolling on the dusty pavement of the parking lot.
"Room please, at least three days, maybe longer, we'll renew if we end up sticking around," Dean told the clerk, an older man with very thin tufts of white hair sticking up in odd places, his beard a darker silver by the name of Walter Greene according to his name tag.
"You fellas might not want to stick around for even that long, the way things been going lately," the clerk said as he dug through box of keys.
"Oh really? Why's that?" Dean could still hear his brother's laughter from outside and he found himself thinking of ways to get him one back. The next chance he got he was so shaving half of Sammy's head. See how far he got with the ladies with half his precious hair missing. The return of the clerk's voice yanked Dean out of his thoughts.
"We got ourselves some wild animal on the loose. At least that's what the police say, but I don't think that's what it is. Three kids been killed in the past six months, all out on highway 39 coming into town, the last one was only a week ago. Sheriff says it's some rabid coyote or someone's dog that got loose, but I don't buy it." His bushy brows furrowed behind his Coke rim glasses as he set the key onto the counter.
Dean snapped into hunter mode. That was the whole reason him and Sam had come down here in the first place, a rash of bizarre killings by some animal that nobody seemed to be able to explain. They were thinking maybe another werewolf or vampire had gotten loose and was terrorizing people, and Dean was congratulating himself on walking into their first lead.
"What do you think's out there?"
"You wouldn't believe me, kid," Walter muttered.
"Oh I've seen some things," Dean said with a cocky grin. Sometimes his arrogance played to his favor with old people, thinking they could show him up. Other times, Sammy's ridiculous puppy dog eyes and floppy hair could melt even the most frigid hearts. Very useful on terrified damsels in distress, even Dean had to admit.
Walter's watery, slightly red eyes narrowed at him with distaste. "You wanna know what I think? I think something unnatural killed those kids. Something the police are covering up." He lowered his voice even more and Dean had to lean in to hear.
"I think a chupacabra got them."
Dean's eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. He snorted with laughter and snickered a bit as he passed Walter the cash. "You're right. Don't believe you. This room has what, one king size bed?"
Walter nodded. "Unless you needed something else?"
Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam heading back in, bags in tow, and smirked to himself. "Nope, this'll do just fine, thanks very much Walter. Oh, and by the way, maybe want to keep that spooky story in reserve for the campfire and cowboys." He scooped up the key off the counter and beckoned for Sam to follow him to the room at the end of the hall.
"Dean…what the hell, one bed?" Sam whined just as Dean dove onto the mattress and sprawled everywhere.
"Yep, and it's all mine." Dean kicked off his shoes and rubbed himself down over the sheets and blankets, sighing contentedly just to annoy Sam who when he looked up was definitely scowling.
"So not funny, Dean," Sam growled dropping his bag onto the floor and shutting the door a bit harder than was strictly necessary. "Now that guy out there probably thinks we're…"
Dean sat up with a smirk on his face that was practically dripping off and splattering onto the bed. "Think's we're what, Sammy?"
Sam rolled his eyes and started to stalk towards the bathroom to clean himself up after an all day drive but Dean wasn't done messing with him just yet.
"Aww, don't go away mad darlin', I didn't mean it! Here, you can even have the remote." He tossed the plastic device at Sam's feet who just snorted and walked away, leaving Dean to pick up the remote and flick on the TV.
"Hey, how much is pay-per-view in this place?"
A couple hours later, after picking off the last of an excellent batch of curly fries and a barbecued bison burger of all things, Dean and Sam were doing probably the least fun part about their job, copious research. Digging through old newspapers, any police files they could get their hands on, and anything the dear old information superhighway might be able to tell them.
"Alright, so, three people dead inside of six months, all of them supposedly killed by some kind of animal, all of them teenagers, all of them picked off on highway 39." Sam's brow had that slightly furrowed look he'd get when concentrating. He dug through several newspapers, finding the oldest one on the table and laying it in front of Dean, sweeping off some seasoned potato crumbs and tapping at a circled article highlighting the report on one of the dead kids.
"Could be a serial killer?" Dean said with a shrug. "I mean it fits the pattern. Same type of victims, same place, same method of being killed. Doesn't have to be supernatural."
"Come on Dean. The reports say that these kids were mauled by some kind of animal."
"So what? Thinking a werewolf moved into town and is picking off the kids?"
Sam exhaled a concentrated sigh and eased back in his chair. "Wrong time of the lunar cycle. Plus the hearts were still left. In pieces, but left."
"Vampire?"
"I don't think so. Remember the case we worked with Dad? The victims go missing first, and then turn up dead. They keep them around for a while to get as much blood out as they can."
Dean's jaw twitched. "Yeah. I remember." Sam could see the way his older brother's eyes hardened. Clearly the glass jar labeled 'Dad' was still a very touchy subject with Dean. Sam didn't necessarily blame Dean for that, they had hunted together for a lot longer than Sam had; he knew Dean felt like he'd failed their father in some way. More than anything he wanted to try and help Dean come to terms with the fact that their old man made his own choices and that Dean wasn't responsible for anything that happened, but Dean wouldn't let him get that near. Come to think of it, Dean never let anybody get that near. Too much like his old man in that respect.
"Ok, so if it's not a vampire or werewolf, what else. Zombie, maybe?"
Sam's eyebrows disappeared into his bangs. "That is just a really bad shot in the dark and you know it. Zombies don't do this. They do the bidding of the people who bring them back. They don't actually eat people. That was just Romero and his legions of followers."
"Strange how the creator creates an army of loyal minions like that," Dean muttered absentmindedly, scanning through the article Sam had circled. "Ok, first victim, one Ricky Martin, sixteen years old, goes out for a drive, is headed back to town on highway 39, car breaks down, heads down the road towards town, next morning highway patrol finds him looking like road-kill." Because of the boy's age Dean knew the press was limited but the tone of the article said it was gruesome. He shrugged his shoulders and glanced up at Sam who was reading another paper.
"Yeah, and then two months later another boy is killed, Peter Baker. Same circumstances except his car didn't break down, it was just found on the side of the road. His body was found next to the car, torn to bits." Sam's brow furrowed even more as he arched up over the table. "Dean, check this out. Says here that there were gouge marks in the hood of the car. Like something had clawed it."
Dean tipped his head to the side. "The guy who checked us in, Walter, said that there's a kind of local legend about a chupacabra. But they don't normally go after people, they prefer livestock."
"Not always. There are plenty documented cases hunters know about where chupacabras take people."
"Yeah but don't they normally just drain their blood? Not tear them to pieces?" Dean shifted uncomfortably in his chair, staring down at the mess of research, feeling the typical 'haven't worked through the sticky parts of the case' headache start to form at the base of his skull.
"Maybe the kid put up a fight and that's why it ripped him to shreds. Maybe they all did," Sam muttered quietly. Dean could tell his brother was disturbed by the idea that whatever was out there was attacking kids.
"Think it could be a hellhound?" Dean questioned.
Sam dug through more papers and clicked a few buttons on his laptop. "I don't think so, I mean, hellhounds come to collect on souls that made deals with demons. None of the victims are a day over eighteen, they'd of had to make a deal when they were between six and eight years old." Sam twisted his laptop around and showed Sam a picture of the local high school football team. "Martin played ball but he didn't have spectacular talent. None of these kids were especially remarkable or had any out of the ordinary talent, not that I could find."
Dean bit his lower lip as he racked his brain for information. "Ok, so hellhound is doubtful, so are vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Chupacabra maybe but really all we know is that it seems like the kids are the ones who are the targets. I mean no adults were killed were they?"
Sam shook his head. "No. And I can't find any common denominator amongst the victims either. They all lived in different places, had different groups of friends, at least from what I can tell on paper."
"There has to be some connection," Dean muttered, frustration growing in the pit of his belly. He wouldn't ever really admit it, but he enjoyed the challenging hunts, the ones where it took a while to get the bottom of it, and then he could finally waste that son of a bitch that was trying so hard to get away with whatever horrible scheme they were up to.
"The only thing I can find that they all have in common is they were killed in the same place, and they went to the same school. But then again, every kid goes to that school, it's the only one in this tiny town, and highway 39 is the only way in or out of this place."
Dean dug out the map they'd been using lately to get around this section of Texas and unfolded it and set his fingernail onto highway 39, letting it trace towards the small dot that marked their current town, Cross Plains, Texas. He picked up a red Sharpie off the side of the table and uncapped it.
"Whereabouts were they killed?"
"Uhh…well Martin was here," Sam nudged the line about six miles out of town on highway 39." Dean marked the spot with a small x with the marker. "Baker was further away, about nine miles." Another x. "And Jessica was about here, ten miles out."
"So they were all killed ten miles outside of town, give or take. What else is out there? Maybe it's not the kids or the road, maybe there's something else out there."
"There's nothing on these maps, maybe we should drive out there and check it out," Sam suggested. Dean shrugged and grabbed the Impala's keys off the table and Sam clicked the computer shut and shrugged into his jacket before following Dean out the door.
Oh, I should also mention, all the logistics of the story (names of places, people, etc) are entirely arbitrary and any similarity in name with actual places or events is entirely coincidence.