TITLE: Deadly Game

AUTHOR: L. C. Brotherton

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringements intended. I just like to bring some of these characters out to visit my playground and promise to put them back when we've finished our game.

RATING: PG-13 or T for sexual situations, crude language, and violence.

SPOILERS & READERS' ADVICE: All of Season One is fair game. If you haven't seen the first two episodes of Season Two, elements of this story will ruin those two wonderful hours for you. Never say I didn't warn you!

REVIEWS/FEEDBACK: Yes, please!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I originally began this tale several years back, then my mother fell ill and I packed my muse away to become her caregiver. Eventually, she passed away and I was hollow for the longest time. My muse started whispering to me and I began to write again. I decided to reshape this story and give it the proper finish it deserved.

. . . S U P E R N A T U R A L. . .

Missouri Mosely slowly sat upright in her bed. Her clock read 12:01 AM as she fumbled in the dark toward the lamp on her nightstand. There was a vague and uninvited presence within the room, but she felt no malice or darkness, even when she felt that it was almost within arm's reach of her bed.

"I know you're here," Missouri said quietly, calm authority steadying her voice. "Show yourself."

There was the briefest hesitation and a faint breeze wafted through the room. Missouri was immediately shocked at the apparition that coalesced before her. Had she not seen the child once every several months for the last twenty-some odd years, Missouri was certain she wouldn't have been able to identify the battered wraith coalescing before her. Pale and disheveled, Arianna Lambert looked at her with sad and bewildered eyes. She held up her hands and Missouri could see that they were covered with blood.

"Baby girl!" Missouri hissed, instinctively reaching toward the girl. Her hands passed through the semi-transparent form before her.

"Help me," the girl whispered before looking away toward something Missouri couldn't see, and then her form began to dissipate as she began to turn away.

"Ari, baby, wait!" Missouri begged, despair crossing her dark-cocoa features. "I don't understand!" she wailed into the empty room. "You're lost, but I know who can find you," she muttered with determination.

With trembling hands, she grabbed for her address book on the bedside table, finger quickly trailing down the list. When her finger landed on the entry for "Winchester," the phone began to ring and even without caller ID, she didn't need to be a powerfully gifted psychic to know whom the caller was.

. . . S U P E R N A T U R A L. . .

Sam Winchester flopped onto the bed, not caring about the caked mud falling off his clothes onto the flowered bedspread. He was exhausted and filthy, but Dutch Simmons had been laid to rest properly and this gig was finally over.

"Hey, you need the bathroom?" Dean asked, kicking off his boots. "I'm gonna get a shower."

"I'm good—just don't use all the hot water," Sam yawned, rubbing his hands over his face.

Heading for the bathroom, his brother was prepared to deliver a witty remark in return when he stood stock-still in the center of the room. "Holy hell!" Dean hissed in amazement. "Sam, you seeing this?"

Sam nodded as a familiar figure coalesced in front of Dean, like smoke blown into a bottle. She looked like the loser in a marathon barroom brawl, bruised and battered, as her gaze locked with Dean's. He paled when she raised blood-covered hands. Tears trickled down her face, mingling with dirt and blood, and she reached out a hand toward him.

"Hurts," she whispered and pity crossed his face as he quickly reached for her outstretched hand, finding only air instead of warm skin. "Dean, help me," she pleaded softly. Her echoed pain and fear.

"Ari, where are you? What happened?" Dean demanded.

Abruptly, she looked away and began to fade. Glancing back, she smiled sadly. "Help me…."

Dean blinked and she was gone.

"Ari, wait!" Dean howled, whirling to face Sam who stared back at him in shock.

There was only a shocked moment of indecision before Dean started reacting. "Dammit, Sam, get moving!" he yelled, racing to his bed to start shoving everything back into his duffel bag. "Call Missouri and see what the hell that's supposed to mean?"

Sam reached slowly for his cell phone, reluctant to share his impending thought with his brother, preparing for the backlash the statement would create. "Dean, it was a Sending. She might have crossed over and – "

"She's not dead, Sam, she's not dead!" Dean snapped, shouldering his bag as he snatched the room keys off the table.

"And you know this because-?"

"Because she would have told us if she was dead, moron!"

"Yeah, she astral projects all the time to deliver messages instead of picking up a phone," Sam muttered sarcastically, keying in Missouri's phone number.

"Shut up with that, just shut up!" Dean ordered. "She's not dead!" he shouted again for good measure, just as Sam's call connected. "Just call Missouri already!"

Sam had just then keyed in Missouri's phone number and was sure that the woman had just overheard that last bit, and hated how frantic his own voice sounded when he blurted out, "Missouri!"

"It'll be okay," she said, her voice infusing the smallest amount of calm over the miles between them.

"No," Sam protested quickly. "It's bad, Missouri, really bad. Ari's in trouble—she might be dead. She was here—it was a Sending, and she asked Dean to help her!"

"Baby, calm down," Missouri ordered. "I saw her, too. She's hurt bad, but she's not dead." In the background, she could hear commotion and noise. "Breathe in and out, real slow. Tell me what's going on—what happened—and what that racket is."

"Uh, we're getting ready to hit the road in a minute," he said, and Missouri knew she'd never heard packing done so noisily.

She heard Dean yelling at his brother, catching "double-time it, Sammy" and "out of here in five" before the door slammed.

Sam heaved a sigh. "Dean's freaking out—she looked awful."

"Tell me what you saw," she repeated.

"We saw Arianna Lambert," Sam rasped. "She looked pretty rough and was dripping blood. Dean was headed for the bathroom and there she was, right in front of him. She said 'help me' a couple of times and then she was gone."

"Okay, I'm going to call her daddy and see if he knows what in the world is going on. Where are you boys headed?"

"I don't know yet exactly," Sam admitted. Abruptly, the door swung open and Dean stood there expectantly staring at him. "Missouri doesn't know what's up, but she saw Ari, too. She's gonna call Jack."

"Well, good, and that's where we're going," Dean announced.

Sam nodded and relayed that to Missouri who promised to call back as soon as she'd spoken with Ari's father. Two minutes later, the black Chevy's tires squalled as it roared off the parking lot toward the interstate.

. . . S U P E R N A T U R A L. . .

Sam didn't really want to know how fast Dean was driving, although his eyes kept drifting as he tried to catch a glance at the speedometer. When he realized that the needle on the speedometer had climbed past 85 miles per hour and was still moving toward the other side of the gauge, he quit trying to catch a glance, and instead kept his eyes on the side-view mirror. He was expecting red lights from a random Missouri Highway Patrolman at any given minute.

They'd crossed the northern Missouri state line an hour back, but it was only after they'd actually hit Interstate 70 and Sam saw the sign announcing "St. Louis, 30 miles," that he openly cringed.

It was hard to believe it had been more than a year ago when they'd tackled the shape shifter who'd mimicked Dean's form prior to committing a gruesome murder in the midwestern city. Dean had permanently ended the creature, but when it died, it died as a carbon copy of the older Winchester brother. For a short while, Dean enjoyed the dubious distinction of being legally dead and buried in a nondescript cemetery in St. Louis County.

Dean's status among the dead was relatively short-lived, if not eventful. Thanks to a gig in Maryland and a slip-up that included their arrest, and subsequent escape from the local authorities, Dean Winchester was officially alive and well again in the corporeal world-and entered in the FBI database as a dangerous fugitive.

Dean's attempt to break the land speed record on I-70 was bound to be noticed, sooner or later. Sam wondered idly what it would be like to be involved in a high-speed pursuit down the interstate because he knew there was no power on Earth that would be able to make Dean stop driving. That could only end badly, and Sam poked Dean in the leg, pointing emphatically to the speedometer as he raised his eyebrows at his brother.

Dean's potential reply was cut short by Sam's cell chirping for attention. "It's Missouri," Sam announced as he flipped the phone open, putting the call on speaker mode.

"How far away are you?" she asked, her voice strained and hollow-sounding as it emanated from Sam's phone.

Dean's knuckles were white as his fingers dug into and around the steering wheel. "Two hours, if I book it," he commented tersely, eyes boring straight ahead as if the determination in his glare could erase the miles between them and their destination.

"Are you saying we aren't booking it now?" Sam asked in disbelief.

"Dean Winchester, you get your lead foot off that gas, and that's an order!" she snapped. "You'll do that girl no good if you kill yourself and your brother on the way to help her."

Reluctantly and with a pained expression on his face, Dean eased up on the gas and Sam was happy to see the needle dropping away from the 100 on the speedometer.

"Now, that's better," Missouri said, when the car was speeding along in the mid-eighties. "I talked to Jack and he's a nervous wreck. Three days ago, Ari went to baby sit for one of the neighbors down the road. When the parents came home, the kids were alone and they said she'd left several hours earlier. Her truck was found, off the road, down a ravine. . ."