1 – Drown So I Can Watch

Dean really hoped this case was more interesting than it sounded.

To call Three Rivers, Colorado sleepy was probably an insult to Rip Van Winkle. There was no truly central part of town; there was a cluster of shops on what passed for a main street, but most of the residents were spread out on lots varying from a quarter of an acre to several acres. The town sprawled like a drunk on New Year's Eve. Some people had cows and horses. It was so rural, animal shit was probably the town's official smell.

Not that that was obvious now. A half foot of snow blanketed everything in a soft white carpet, and the air just smelled clean and cold, sharp enough to hurt Dean's sinuses. He had to stop about ten miles back, and he and Sam put the chains on the tires, as the road became too icy to risk the Impala.

Bobby had sent them on this one. Apparently there had been a lot of weird portents around the area about a week ago, and a hunter that Dean didn't know named Carter Jenkins came to check it out. And Bobby hadn't heard from him since.

Was this more Lucifer bullshit? Bobby didn't think so at first, but now that was up for grabs. Dean kind of hoped not. He'd had his fill of Lucifer and Michael bullshit. An old fashioned case would be just the thing to take his mind off Apocalypse shit.

Sam was looking at the reports Bobby had sent him on his laptop, and he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "These reports are kind of all over the place. It sounds like there's a haunting at one place, and a possible demon possession at another. And cattle mutilations that sound like werewolves."

"Stranger things have happened than a bunch of monsters showing up in one place at the same time," Dean replied, but even he knew it was bullshit while he was saying it.

"Maybe. It's not really likely though, not in a place this small. A big city, yeah, I'd buy it. Not here."

"Where was Carter's last known location?"

"According to Bobby, he called him from the Dew Drop Inn, the only motel in town. Then he seemed to drop off the face of the Earth."

"Okay. Corny inn it is."

There was a remarkable similarity in everything covered by white. It was pretty, sure, but the silence and lack of people made it almost unbearably eerie. Dean found himself glancing around for footprints, some signs that the whole town wasn't just dead or hibernating. He saw mostly bird tracks.

The inn was situated near the cluster of other shops on the main street – a diner, a hardware store, a drugstore, a dentist's – and the elderly guy running it seemed harmless. Of course, what better cover for a demon? They asked about Carter Jenkins, saying they were friends of his who hoped to meet up here for some "snowmobiling" (where Sam came up with that Dean had no idea, but it sounded appropriately dorky) and all the guy – Gerald – running the place could remember is that he said he was going to check out the Sterling River before he left and never came back. Gerald thought that was funny, because the Sterling was frozen over. They were having the worst and earliest winter they'd had in over a hundred years. Considering the apocalypse was nigh, that made sense.

The inn didn't have rooms with double beds, so Sam and Dean got connecting rooms; in fact, Sam got Carter's room, and they made a beeline for it once Gerald gave them the key. He claimed to have not touched any of the stuff since he checked in and disappeared.

They'd been hoping to find a journal or maybe some notes of what he'd been hunting, but the closest they came to that was some cut out of news articles, with a big question mark written in ink over the headlines. The room was neat, and had never been used, as far as Sam and Dean could tell. His bags were still at the foot of the bed, unpacked. "So we have the hunter equivalent of some guy going out for smokes and never returning?" Dean wondered, checking the closet. Nope, nothing in here but empty hangers. The drawers of the dresser and nightstand held nothing either, except the hotel standard Bible.

"I guess so," Sam said, zipping up the duffle bag he'd been checking. It was just full of hunter stuff: salt, silver, ammo, holy water. "But we have one place we can check out. The Sterling River."

Dean nodded, afraid he was going to say that. Dean looked out the chintzy curtains to see Carter's room had a thrilling view of the iced over back parking lot. How could he leave behind something as glorious as this?

Before they left, Dean called Cass, and left him a message saying where they were. He had no idea what he was doing now on his God search, but since he'd never contacted them and said he found him, they had to assume God wasn't about to save them. Dean honestly never thought that was on the table, but good on Cass for being an angel and yet still that naïve.

The drive out to the Sterling was the same as the drive in: weirdly quiet, empty, kind of pretty. Something in this picturesque scenery seemed to encourage them not to talk much either. Then again, what was there to say? They'd been enjoying an increase in awkward silences since Sam came back from his latest demon blood detox, which came after they got Famine's ring. Sam didn't mention what the blood had done to him, and Dean didn't mention Famine telling he was broken inside as the reason Dean was unaffected by Famine's power. They were both kind of miserable, but it was a quiet misery that couldn't be shared. That was probably for the best. They didn't need to talk about how hopeless they felt. They could feel it, and that was good enough.

Three Rivers was surrounded by forests of evergreens and pine, now dusted with enough snow to look Christmas card perfect. Sterling was one of the namesake three rivers, although it was apparently the smallest (according to Sam). He was trying to figure out why Carter might have been interested in it, but he'd left no mention of that, and the best Sam could scrounge up was there had been animal attack near here that had been attributed to wolves, but was most likely more of the continuing werewolf problem. But there had been attacks near the Frost River and up in the hills too. This place was no more likely than any place else.

There was no shoulder on the dirt back road, but since Dean hadn't seen any traffic either, he didn't care about leaving the Impala parked in the middle of the road. Despite the fact that he was wearing three layers, it was fucking freezing, and out here in the sticks the snow was even deeper. His boots cracked through the icy crust, and the snow came up half way to his knees. He kept his eyes peeled for paw prints, but the only ones he saw were too small for wolves. There was no sign another person had been here, but the snow was fresh as well as thick. He could be walking on Carter's snow swamped corpse right now and never know it. Now there was an unpleasant thought.

Dean made his way down a gentle slope to the river, which was indeed frozen solid. He could see lines in it that indicated that some foolhardy individuals had been ice skating on it, maybe playing a pick up game of hockey. Brave, stupid kids probably, but there probably wasn't a ton of stuff to do in a one horse town like this.

Sam was looking through a grove of trees for … something. Honestly, Dean had no idea what he was looking for. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for claw marks, scratches, some kind of telltale werewolf sign," he said, scooping out some snow from the base of tree for a better look.

"Any luck?"

"No."

Dean tested the ice on the river tentatively, pushing down on it with a toe, and when nothing happened, he put all the weight of one foot on it. Still nothing. Didn't even crack.

"Should you be doing that?" Sam wondered.

Dean now stood with both feet on the icy river, and he jumped up and down a couple of times. The ice did nothing. "This thing is solid. It's fucking ridiculous. But is it a shock? It's so fucking cold I swear my balls have completely retracted inside my body."

"Dude, I told you, never tell me about your balls," Sam said, moving on to another tree.

The river was surprisingly narrow in this part, and Dean thought he saw something hunter orange hidden in the frozen grass on the opposite bank. Would Carter have come out here wearing something safety orange? He didn't know him, so he couldn't say for sure, but Bobby had described him as old hunting buddy – as in deer hunting buddy, not demons. It was possible.

He walked across the icy river, looking at some of the ice skating tracks, wondering if these kids had managed to dodge whatever was out here, and fearing they hadn't. But if it was werewolves, they wouldn't be out after sunrise, so maybe they had. He saw no sign that there had been any violence here. And skate blades were, in all honesty, fantastic weapons. They could slice through skin and tendons like a hot knife through butter. It was kind of insane to think people strapped them to their feet and gave them to kids.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked.

"There's something on the opposite bank. Might be Carter's."

"I hope so, 'cause I'm not finding anything up here. No sign of him, no sign of werewolves, nothing."

"Do you think it's possible he bugged out without telling Bobby?"

Sam considered it a moment, as Dean found his eyes following deeper grooves in the ice. A duller blade perhaps, or maybe a heavier participant. An adult? "He wouldn't have left all his stuff, though."

"Did you see his car? Bobby said it was a '98 Nissan, blue with a dent in the left side door."

"No, I didn't. Did you?"

"If I saw that piece of shit, I'd have been the first to make fun of it." Dean was within several feet of the opposite bank, and he saw that the orange he spotted in the grass was the inside of a discarded winter hat. Carter's? He still didn't have enough data.

The river was uniformly white, as fresh powder had glazed the ice, but in some spots it was thin. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw some color, and he looked …

… to see a face staring at him from beneath the ice. "Sam," he shouted, alarmed, dropping to all fours and wiping away more of the snow.

"What?"

It wasn't Carter. The face belonged to a young woman, maybe early twenties, with a round, pale face like the moon, and dark hair that had fanned out around her head like a frozen mane. Dean's heart trip hammered, and he considered trying to punch through the ice, but even if he could, it wouldn't have mattered. If she was under the ice, she was already dead. He couldn't imagine how cold the water was. It must have been closer to liquid nitrogen than anything else he could think of.

"There's a girl here." How had she ended up in the river? He looked around for signs of a break, a crack, a hole, but he saw nothing. The river appeared to be a solid sheet.

"What? In the river?"

Dean looked down at her, so sorry for whomever she was, when her half lidded brown eyes opened, and she stared up at him. He felt a jolt as she smiled at him, and he understood as human as she looked, she wasn't. Far from it.

Her hand smashed through the ice, and before Dean could react, she had grabbed his wrist, and pulled him headfirst into the dark, icy water.