While working on my book: The Fourth Tier: Heroes of the Line Book 4, a couple friends of Shep and Tommy's decided to stick their nose into a hunt they never should've been involved in. This is how it went.

Enter – The Living Dark

Pt. 1

By: JA Carlton

Loved: always and forever

Disclaimed: Sam, Dean and their world… sadly.

OOooOO

Lakeview, OR.

The sign read: "Welcome To Lakeview" with that same damned giant cowboy he remembered from the last time he and Sam came here to destroy a demon they'd helped create, and to salt and burn the bones of a serial child killer Dean had the misfortune of stumbling across and killing before he'd even hit puberty.

"Fuckin' hate this place… Talk t'me Sam," he ordered, casting his glance into the rear view mirror at the doughy pale face of his little brother, his eyes were ringed with dark ghoulish circles and his lips were virtually indiscernible from the rest of his face.

"Mmmm, mmm'okay," the younger man grunted, he'd've thought by now, that after all they'd each been through, there wasn't any kind of pain that they weren't familiar with, but this was… different. It felt like his skull was splitting apart, like there was a cherry bomb about to go off in the middle of his brain and make him nothing more than 'squish' on the backseat.

"Like hell you are…" Dean grumbled, "Garth says this Masters guy knows some shit about some shit that we don't know about, once told him about a guy named Silas Templar, apparently he's some sort of mage or something."

Sprawled across the back seat Sam cocked a half smile, "…got it from a guy named Masters… any relation to Meg?"

"Oh shit, don't even think like that," Dean shook his head, "we're about ten minutes out, you just gotta hold on Sammy, whatever this is, we're gonna get you through it."

"Hmm, just my luck," Sam gasped, "shoulda just let me go Dean… shoulda let me go." He slumped even more deeply into the seat as consciousness departed and left Dean chewing his lower lip till it bled.

"Never gonna happen little bro."

OOooOO

Silas Templar's Residence:

"What the hell're we doin' back here? Didn't we get everything we could already?" Sixteen year old Harry Armstrong asked, pulling his newest acquisition to the curb, it was a clanky, clunky old Pontiac Bonneville from the mid sixties and it had more dents than most of Lonnie's friends had meth or heroin sores, but unlike any of his mother's ex-boyfriend's thug friends, it worked.

He glanced at Mickey first, her raven hair and luminous blue eyes were so like that kid Nick's he couldn't help but wonder if they were maybe long lost brother and sister or something. Considering what he knew about what was going on with them, which was almost nothing, they looked so much alike it kinda gave him the creeps.

"Silas was a mage and the schades singled him out because of that. From what both Nick and Frankie have said they're trying to take over hunters, ANY hunters, that means not just the few who have ties to the Heroes but the normal ones, the guys who hold the line against ANY of the things that go 'bump' in the night. They're the only ones that can stop what those sons of bitches are shuttling into our universe."

"The living dark," Harry shuddered remembering the snapping jaws of darkness that broke through the driver door window of his last car trying to get its hooks into both him and Nick.

"Exactly."

He shook his head, "Never shoulda gone to that kid, never shoulda got involved."

"Then you'd inevitably wind up dead without a chance to fight for your own life, I think Nick knows you better than you do yourself," she sighed trying hard to play the part as she made sure her stun-gun was charged, her knife was in her back pocket and the gun Harry'd acquired for her was in the back of her pants.

Guns were tools of last resort at the moment. They wouldn't do much if anything, to schades if they were wearing a human meatsuit, but if it was a human still inside its own skin, well that'd be murder and set a whole different ball of trouble rolling.

So far, from information Mickey'd been able to hack, both the bodies of Lizzie Daykin and Silas Templar had been flagged as 'Unexplained', then quietly shuffled to the back of whatever X-File cabinet coroners kept. It seemed their bodies, when found, were missing certain internal structures, namely bones and organs.

"So what're we supposed to do here?"

"Jack seemed pretty sure Silas would've had some secret stash of tomes or tools or something that we didn't find the first time. I mean let's face it, we were kinda in a rush after all." She was referring to events just a couple days ago when she and Harry and kinda Jack, had rescued Nick from rescuing Frankie from the clutches of The First Schade's right hand, a creature named Ne'Min while it was wearing Silas' meat.

"And why're we listenin' t'that fool? I mean he's the motherfucker shot Nick, why the hell're YOU of all folks listenin' t'him?" Harry demanded wondering for the umpteenth time what he was doing involved in stuff that came from other universes where bad guys could slip into a guy's body, ride it till it was empty and command supposedly living pieces of dark to do its bidding. "…aint' there a place somewhere on this damned shithole planet where the sun shines twenty four seven, I mean what the FUCK!?" he raged again as Mickey grabbed his chin, forcing him to look into her eyes.

"I can't imagine what this must be like for you, but you help me search that house till we find what we're looking for, you get me back to Jack then you can head out to Timbuktu. Nick'll be pissed but he's got the old version of you with him, and that one's loyal, so maybe not so much after all."

"Old version of me… a version of me wasted a lifetime lookin' after that kid and this is what he does t'me!" he shook his head watching the young woman's lip curl up in a sneer of contempt.

"How'd you ever become a man he looked up to?" She spat stepping out of the car and striding with cautious certainty up the lawn to the dark and uninhabited house.

"Son of a bitch!" Harry shook his head wiping the sweat streams from his face as he bolted out of the car, following the young woman into the shadows toward the back door as just a couple doors down the street a glass pack chop fell silent in shadows.

Tbc

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JACarlton