Stuff I need to get out of the way!
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Supernatural, it is owned by the CW and Eric Kripke, etc., etc. It is merely what inspires me. I do own Amie and other original characters that appear in this story.
Spoilers: Story may have flashbacks to previous seasons and will follow the timeline, somewhat, of season 9. At this time Kevin still exists (though this may change). I plan to follow the Mark of Cain story line. TONS OF SPOILERS FOR SEASON 9! You've been warned!
Author's notes: This is the third story in what I call "The Saga of Dean and Amie." I personally believe you can read this story without reading the first two stories, but if you want to, I hope you enjoy them. Also, I did mess with the season 9 timeline a little bit for the purpose of my stories, but it's not really noticeable (unless stuff like that bothers you). As always, reviews are greatly appreciated.
Missing You
Part I
Chapter One
"Amie! Can I get another beer?" the deep, gravelly voice yelled from across the room.
A chill shot down her spine, the voice causing all kinds of emotions she hadn't expected to wash over her. It was just a bit too close to the voice of a certain someone she spent every damn day of her life trying not to think about.
Amie threw down the rag she was using and grabbed a clean glass from under the bar. "Jesus, Walt, keep your panties on," she yelled over her shoulder. She filled the glass, tipping it perfectly so there wasn't too much foam. She moved down the length of the bar and set the beer in front of one of her regular customers. "Walt, darling, cut down on the cigarettes, will ya?" she teased. He laughed and raised his glass, throwing a wink in her direction.
She took a deep breath and resumed cleaning. There were only about five customers left in the bar, three of them regulars that shut the place down most nights, some guy who'd roared in on a Harley about two hours ago and a woman Amie thought looked familiar, but she wasn't a regular customer. The woman was currently chatting up the guy with the Harley and Amie was pretty confident that they would be heading out together very soon. She glanced at the clock on the far wall. It was time to start shooing everyone out of the bar.
She'd been working at the tiny bar in Warren, Indiana for about five months. Once she'd left the bunker, she'd made her way to Butler, Pennsylvania where her Mini Cooper had been stashed in a storage unit for a year. Then she'd just drove until she got to the first place she was able to find a job. Nate, the bar owner, had been desperate to hire someone. The last woman he'd had working for him had moved out of the tiny town and he hadn't been able to find a replacement. Not only had he offered her a job, but he'd offered her the use of the small two bedroom apartment above the bar, rent-free. She'd accepted right away.
"Closing time folks," Amie called over the sound of the jukebox. She hated that damn thing. It was loaded with a bunch of Dean's favorite songs. It was like it had been put here just to torture her.
As she'd suspected, the biker and the woman paid their tab and left together. Amie saw them getting into a late model Honda and driving off, the Harley still parked in the lot at the side of the bar. She began working on getting her other customers out the door. Walt protested, just like he did every night, but he eventually drained the last of his beer, gave Amie another wink and made his way out.
Amie locked the deadbolt on the bar's front door, pulled the blinds over the windows and turned off the neon 'Open' sign. She made quick work of the few mundane closing tasks she still needed to do before locking the evening's earnings in the safe and heading up the narrow stairs to her apartment. She secured the door at the bottom of the stairs as well as her apartment door with the new locks she'd picked up at the hardware store in Indianapolis. Once she was inside the apartment, she checked the salt lines on all the windows and placed a new one in front of the door. Then and only then was she able to relax.
She went into one of the two small bedrooms, unbuttoning her flannel shirt as she walked. She tossed her clothes on the chair next to the window and grabbed some yoga pants and a t-shirt to wear to bed. She pulled the ponytail from her hair and ran a brush through it. Once she was comfortable, she went into the tiny kitchen and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. She never drank when she was working, not even when the occasional customer offered to buy her a drink. She stuck with water whenever she was down in the bar. She crossed to the couch, making a stop to grab the cell phone on the bookshelf before she sat down. She turned on the television, knowing she wouldn't find anything to watch at two in the morning, but she couldn't stand the silence, it gave her too much opportunity to think. Amie flipped through the few channels she had, finally settling on an old Nicholas Cage movie, one she'd seen many times before and didn't require her to think while she watched it.
She made herself comfortable on the old, worn out couch, pulling a blanket up over her legs and tucking a pillow behind her head so she could lie down. Since she'd starting working at the bar, she'd become a night owl, staying up most nights until the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately, she usually only slept for three or four hours most nights and that was only if the nightmares didn't come. She sipped her beer, wondering if she should switch to something stronger to help her sleep, like the vodka she had stashed in the freezer or the whiskey in the cupboard. She ran a hand over her face, contemplating her choices. It was a familiar game she played with herself. Drink herself into a stupor or stick with one beer. Which one she chose was usually dependent on how much she'd thought about Dean during the day. Today had actually been a mild day, so she figured she could get by with just the one beer, maybe two. As long as she chose not to torture herself by listening to the voicemail on the phone in her hand.
Amie hadn't been able to bring herself to turn off the cell phone she'd had when she'd been with Dean. She told herself she kept it just in case she found herself needing it. It hadn't rang but a few times in the last few months, though in the days following her departure from the bunker, it had rang twenty to thirty times a day. It was always Dean and she always ignored it. If ignoring it meant staring at the name and number on her screen and crying. As the days had turned into weeks, the calls from Dean had become fewer and fewer until they had eventually stopped. She didn't know whether she was relieved or upset that he had stopped trying to reach her. She also couldn't get rid of the phone because of the pictures she had on it. While she'd transferred copies of them to her laptop a while ago, deleting them from her phone made everything seem too final, too real.
She stared at the phone sitting next to her leg on the couch, knowing if she picked it up and looked at those pictures or listened to that voicemail, that she would need the vodka to get to sleep. She picked it up and ran her fingers over the buttons on the side, telling herself over and over to just go put it back on the shelf. Instead, she pushed and held the button that would turn it on. After a few seconds, the familiar swirling vortex appeared and the lock screen popped up. Amie slid her finger across the phone's screen to unlock it. Her breath caught in her throat when the picture of her and Dean she'd made her wallpaper popped up. It had been taken in happier times, before they knew about the prophecy and before Mary Grace had died. They'd been messing around with the phone, taking stupid pictures of each other. When she'd set it down on the table for a second, Sam had snatched it up and snapped a picture of her and Dean staring into each other's eyes, tiny smiles on both of their faces, their foreheads touching.
Before she realized what she was doing, Amie had pulled up her voicemail and punched in the code to listen to the one and only message she had.
"Hey baby, it's me. I'll be back in a few hours and I think we should talk. I love you, honey. You have to know that, okay? I love you."
The sound of Dean's deep voice cut straight through her. She absentmindedly brushed away the tears that had sprung to her eyes. She listened to the voicemail again as she got up from the couch and made her way to the kitchen. She pulled the bottle of vodka from the freezer and poured some into a small glass, swallowing it in one gulp, a grimace on her face. She carried the glass and bottle back to the couch and sat down. She figured since she'd already screwed herself for the evening, she might as well go all the way, so she opened the photo gallery on her phone and flipped to her favorite picture. It was also the one that ripped her heart from her chest every time she looked at it.
Dean was sleeping on a chair, his hair slightly tousled and his mouth open. Curled up on his chest was their daughter, Mary Grace. Her tiny fingers were wrapped around one of her Daddy's fingers. Her dark blonde hair, the same color as her father's, was sticking up everywhere and she too had her mouth slightly open. Dean had one hand resting on her back; it was so large it nearly engulfed her tiny body. Amie had taken the picture in the hospital, just two days before they had lost their daughter forever.
God, what had she done? She'd walked away from the only other person on this earth who understood how she felt and what she was going through. She couldn't believe how much she missed him; it had become a never ending ache in her soul. Nothing could fill the emptiness she felt.
She poured more alcohol into her glass and sat back on the couch, pulling the blanket over her lap again. She tucked the vodka bottle against her leg. She turned the volume up on the television as loud as she could and just let the tears fall, the explosions on the movie drowning out her sobs.
Amie woke to the sound of her phone ringing in the other room. She must have left it in the pocket of her jeans last night. She sat up slowly, her neck and back aching, a consequence of falling asleep on the lumpy couch. As soon as she was upright, the room started to spin and she felt her stomach clenching uncomfortable. She got to her feet and hurried to the bathroom. She took deep breaths, slowly in and out, as she splashed water on the back of her neck. Once she felt like she wouldn't throw up, she went into her room and pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. She had a new text message as well as a voicemail from Nate. The text simply asked where she was, causing her to check the time to see if she was late for something. When she couldn't think of anything she might be missing, she listened to the voicemail.
"Amie, it's Nate. When you get up, call me," her boss asked in his typical sheepish fashion.
She laughed to herself. Nate was a teddy bear, he didn't order anyone around; it wasn't in his nature, so he sounded more like he was begging her to call him than anything else. It was one of the many reasons Amie liked him—he wasn't pushy and overbearing, he was calm under just about any circumstance that might come along and he never hit on her. That last one had earned him more brownie points than he realized, considering the type of clientele the bar had and how often she did have some guy asking her out. She was grateful she didn't have to fend off advances from her boss too.
Amie dialed Nate's number. He picked up on the first ring.
"Amie!" Nate hollered into the phone. "I have been calling you for more than an hour. What the hell?"
"I was sleeping," she replied. "You know, that thing I never do." Nate was somewhat aware of the problems she had with nightmares and not sleeping, but he didn't know all of the reasons why. "Why are you calling me anyway? I don't work until later."
"That's actually why I'm calling. I was wondering if you could go down and open the bar," he asked. "Leeann called me and Jerry hasn't been home for a couple of days."
Jerry worked part time at the bar, opening two or three days a week and occasionally closing. He was dependable unless he and his wife were on the outs. "Did they get in another fight?" Amie inquired.
"She didn't say," Nate answered. "But he's supposed to open the bar and he's not around. Will you please do it?"
"Yeah," she sighed. "Let me know if you hear from him." Amie hung up, gathered some clean clothes and hurried into the bathroom to clean up. She was ready within a half an hour. She quickly slipped on her favorite, worn out converse and went in search of her keys. She found them on the coffee table, next to her old cell phone, which she picked up and returned to the shelf. She checked her watch, muttering to herself under her breath about how she was late. She hurried down the stairs, locking the doors behind her as she went. Once she was in the bar, she went to the front door and unlocked it. She pulled open the blinds and turned on the sign she'd just turned off a few hours earlier.
Since she had closed the night before, Amie had very little to do to get the place open, so she turned on the television above the bar to a mid-morning news program out of Indianapolis. She only half-listened to it as she put away glasses and restocked the beer and other liquor. So when the story about the bodies found in and around Indianapolis came on, she missed a large chunk of it. She didn't really pay attention until she heard the words 'bodies drained of blood' come out of the newscaster's mouth.
"Shit," she muttered under her breath, her attention immediately drawn to the television. She caught the tail end of the story—five dead bodies found in the areas around Indianapolis, all had been reported missing in the days prior to their discovery, their bodies were either completely drained or mostly drained of blood and a strange and unidentifiable toxin had been found during the autopsies.
Amie quickly turned off the television. Despite the fact that she strongly suspected she knew what was killing those people, she didn't want to hear anymore or even think about it. She was out of the hunting business, forever. There was no way she was getting involved. She pushed any thoughts of hunting and monsters out of her mind.
She was crouched behind the counter cleaning, trying to keep her mind off of the news story she'd just heard, when the bell over the door rang. She straightened, expecting one of her regular customers to be coming through the door. Instead, it was Nate, followed by a sheriff's deputy. He lifted a hand in a brief wave before sliding onto one of the empty barstools, the deputy taking a seat next to him.
"Amie, this is Deputy Wilhurst," Nate said. "Deputy, this is Amie Dalton. He's here about Jerry."
"Really?" Amie asked. "Is he okay?"
The deputy tipped his hat to her as way of greeting. "We found his vehicle abandoned on the outskirts of town. Considering the recent disappearances, we are rightly concerned," he explained. "You haven't heard from him, have you?"
"No, I haven't talked to him since three or four nights ago," she replied. "He worked until about 11, then left. He was supposed to close, but he asked me if I'd be willing to do it so he could take off."
"Did he leave alone?" Wilhurst inquired.
Amie played the evening back in her head. One of the benefits of her previous lifestyle was that it had trained her to be very observant. She saw everything and she usually remembered everything as well.
"He left the bar alone but I'm pretty sure he was meeting someone afterward," she offered.
"What makes you think that, ma'am?" he asked skeptically, his eyes rolling slightly.
Amie sighed inwardly, irritated at the officer's attitude. She was so tired of jerks like this guy thinking she was some stupid idiot who didn't know what the hell she was talking about. Well, she was about to set him straight.
"Jerry spent a large part of the evening waiting on a pretty blonde that was sitting right there," she said curtly, pointing to the exact barstool she remembered the woman sitting in. "An excessive amount of time to be honest with you. She was very chatty with him, kept calling him over, flirting with him a lot." She glanced at the deputy and was surprised to see he was actually listening to her, so she continued. "Jerry left at 11 and the blonde woman, she left about 10 minutes later, alone. I know Jerry didn't leave the lot right away either; he owns this old Ford pick-up that is noisy as hell. You can always hear it coming and going, and I didn't hear it pull out until after the woman left. Right after she left, as a matter of fact." Amie crossed her arms over her chest and waited.
Deputy Wilhurst nodded. "That's actually very helpful, thank you." He seemed about to say something else, but his cell phone rang. He put up a finger, answering it as he took a few steps away, turning his back to Nate and Amie. He spoke for several minutes before hanging up and returning to stand at the bar. He looked very uncomfortable.
"Would one of you mind coming with me?" he asked, his voice quiet. "They think they may have found Jerry's body. His wife, she's not able to help us. She's, um… well, she's refusing to help actually. Says she doesn't believe it's her husband."
Amie looked at Nate, hoping he would volunteer to go so she wouldn't have to get any more involved than she already was. He looked slightly green and was shaking his head minutely. When she caught his eye, he cleared his throat.
"Do you mind going?" he asked sheepishly. "I just don't think I can." His eyes were begging Amie to agree.
She smiled at Nate, when really all she wanted to do was punch him. She turned to the deputy. "Could you give us a minute, please?" she said.
"I'll just wait outside," he replied, opening the door and stepping out.
"Come on, Nate, really? You know I don't want to get involved. Will you just go?" Amie implored.
"I'm sorry, I just can't," he said. "I've never been good with stuff like that. I'll puke before we even get near the body. Will you please go? I know Leeann would really appreciate it."
Amie glared at Nate, but he just continued smiling somewhat sheepishly at her. Finally, she nodded her agreement. She shoved her cell phone in her back pocket, grabbed her jacket and sunglasses then pushed through the swinging door at the end of the bar.
"You owe me, Nate," she muttered as she crossed the room and stepped outside.
Amie rode in silence with Deputy Wilhurst to a spot just outside of town where the body had been found. When she had met him outside the bar, he had explained that he was taking her there because they were planning to take the body into Indianapolis for an autopsy immediately after the identification.
As Wilhurst parked the squad car, Amie noticed several news vans also parked along the narrow road. When she stepped out of the car, the deputy stepped up next to her and led her past the cameras and under the crime scene tape to a small cluster of official looking people milling around a tarp-covered body. She stood to the side as he spoke to the group, eventually leading a tall, older man in a suit over to her.
"Ms. Dalton, I'm Detective Russ Lyons," he introduced himself, shaking her hand. "Thank you for coming out to do this. I know it's not how you wanted to spend your day. We'll try to make it as brief as possible." He gestured for her to follow him.
She followed him to the body and waited as he knelt next to it and pulled the tarp back. She sighed as soon as the face became visible. It was Jerry. Her eyes took in as much detail as possible—the unnatural pallor, obviously from lack of blood, the puncture wounds on the shoulder just under the shirt collar, and the emaciated look of the corpse. When Detective Lyons looked questioningly at her, she nodded.
"It's him," she whispered. Every instinct she had was screaming at her that this had been either a vetala or a vampire. Dammit, this was not good. She didn't want to be involved; she had done a great job of avoiding anything supernatural for the last five months, but this was someone she knew, someone she considered a friend and she was probably the only person in a two hundred mile radius who knew what was doing this and how to kill it.
Detective Lyons stood up and extended a hand to Amie. "Thank you for your help Ms. Dalton. Deputy Wilhurst will take you back to town," he said, gesturing for her to follow the deputy back to his car.
She smiled weakly at the detective as she shook his hand again. "Happy I could help," she replied. She turned and made her way back to the deputy's car, hoping the cameras pointed her direction did not find her interesting. She put her sunglasses on as she slid into the passenger seat and waited for the deputy. Amie hoped he wouldn't take too long because she wanted to get back to the bar. She had some research to do.