Sam slipped quietly through the crack in the door.
He settled the unwieldy, heavy duffel bag more firmly on his shoulder – it was cumbersome to try to sneak up on anything while juggling the thing, but he was not prepared to risk going into this particular fight without all the back-up arsenal he could think of.
He looked towards the back end of the dusty dilapidated barn, Dean should be there somewhere by now.
This whole thing had been planned carefully, and if everything panned out, they actually stood a chance of getting the job done without risking life and limb.
He stopped for a moment, tilted his head and listened – Jack should be coming in at his left, using his teleporting to get through the side of the barn where there were no openings.
Was that a whoosh of wings? Nah, not yet.
He crept forwards to duck behind a moldy bale of hay.
Slowly, silently, letting the duffel bag settle on the floor. Good, not a jingle from the assorted weaponry in there. Shotgun up, sliding onto his knees, using the haybale as support, he aimed at the giant silhouette of the jætte. The brute was rocking back and fort making a grumbling sound interspersed with some rather ghastly crunching.
Good, the thing was absorbed by its meal. Sam did his best to avoid thinking about the fact that the meal in question had been a person once, and worse, likely a child, since jætter was known to go for the younger ones by preference.
Without knowing precisely how he knew, Sam realized that Dean had made it to his post – he looked over. There, the glint of a stray sunbeam hitting a gun, good.
Anytime now. Just had to get Jack into place.
It had required a lot of research, but in the end, they had found the answer in an obscure Islandic saga: Iron, silver and oak.
Since there was no reason to take unnecessary risks they had opted to make bullets out of those three items. Of course, a bullet made entirely of wood wouldn't exactly work, but the shotgun Sam was carrying had shells containing a mix of tungsten and oak pellets. If that failed, he had a simple sharpened oak stake in the duffel bag at his feet.
Dean was going to be shooting his beloved .45, loaded with silver bullets. Those were par for the course to the Winchesters, not like the damn oak shotgun pellets which had been a real pain in the ass to make. That had been one hell of a long night of doing unusual woodwork.
Jack had been given a quick tutorial on using a shotgun, and was going to be in charge of the iron part. That had been the easiest one, since steel birdshots should do the trick nicely.
There, that was the whoosh he had been waiting for – Jack was in place.
The jætte raised its head looking towards the sound.
What the Hell? There was Jack, not behind cover, but walking straight towards the jætte, eyes already glowing. Sam started yelling at Jack to get back. He heard Dean's voice from the other side of the barn. Jack ignored them and kept approaching the jætte.
The jætte threw something, it sounded like a bone, negligently to the side, got to its feet in a surprisingly athletic, fluent movement, while reaching down to pick something up from the ground.
The terrified, painfilled scream of a child suddenly filled the air. Sam raised the shotgun, but the jætte was swinging from side to side, the helpless girl dangling by an ankle. There was no way to take the shot without hitting her. Sam's ears popped as the air pressure skyrocketed. Jack was striding into the middle of the barn, enveloped in a yellow haze, eyes glowing and a hand held in front of him.
"Put her down," he roared.
"Dammit Jack," Sam heard Dean roar. "Get back."
Still no response, the air was tingling with power, but the jætte – a creature straight out of old Norse mythologic - seemed to be no more bothered than it would have been by a strong gust of wind. It focused on Jack and sprang easily to meet him, still holding the shrieking child in one hand.
With its free hand it gave Jack a roundhouse blow, which threw him into the air, slamming him against the wall. He fell in a limp heap and didn't get back up.
Sam was digging through the duffel for weapons alternative to the guns. He stood up, an axe in each hand, when Dean's voice froze him to the spot.
"Take me instead."
Dean stepped towards the monster, holding out his empty hands. He pointed at himself, then the child, and made a motion with his hands indicating a switch.
The jætte tilted its head and said something in a guttural language. Dean did the hand signals again. The jætte lifted the child up in front of itself and looked quizzically from child to Dean. Dean held his hands far out from his body, and bowed his head.
The jætte carelessly threw the child aside, then reached for Dean, who did nothing to get out of the way or fight back, but just as its claws were about to close on Dean's shoulders, Sam got there and swung the axe hard at the monster's right arm.
It was like hitting solid wood, but at least the jætte stopped trying to grab Dean and went for Sam instead. Ducking under one swinging blow, Sam tossed the second axe to his brother, then came up behind the jætte, chopping at its knee while continuing to move in a circle behind it. Dean swung the axe at the arm, Sam had ducked under.
For a while everything was motion, the two hunters circling, ducking and turning like wolves attacking a bear. The jætte was large, head and shoulders over Sam. Worse: it was incredibly fast and agile.
Things were not going well. Sam was beginning to think that they had bitten of more than they could chew this time, going up against this thing without an army of hunters for back-up. Or Thor. Having Thor the Jættehunter along would have been nice. The thought sauntered through Sam's mind as he skipped breathlessly away from one long, clawed arm.
Finally, Dean managed to chop through one Achilles tendon and the brute went down with an eerie howl. After that it was sheer butchery. The jætte had surprisingly thick skin. Sam's shoulders were aching from lifting and chopping with all his might. It was like chopping firewood, except quite a lot gorier. Firewood don't tend to spray green tinged gooey blood into the air when you hit it. It doesn't make nearly as much noise either.
Then Jack was there with a machete and they took turns chopping at the thing, until it stopped trying to stand up.
"Guns!"
Dean shouted, and they all went for their originally planned weapons of choice. Standing side by side, they levelled the guns at the head of the jætte, who was unbelievably still staring at them, trying to fight back, chomping its teeth at one shotgun barrel, that came almost within reach.
"Now!"
Three guns roaring in the barn. The jætte slumped lifeless.
Sam turned towards the child, who was whimpering in the dusty half-light, but before he had gone two steps Dean was roaring at Jack.
"We said to stay back!"
A dull thud followed, and Jack went to his knee from the punch. Sam flung himself at Dean and manhandled him away from Jack.
"Stand down, dammit Dean, stand down! Stop it."
He had to block a punch himself, but he managed to get Dean some steps back and shook him, hard.
"What the hell are you doing, Dean? Calm down, we'll handle this at home, but you need to calm down first!"
"Sam, he –"
"I know, I know, but not now. Go get the car around, I'll take the kid. We have to get out of here."
Still furious Dean stalked out of the barn, Sam clasped a hand to Jack's arm and hauled him back up.
"Are you ok, Jack?"
"He hit me!"
"Yeah, I'm sorry about that, you scared him, and with Dean – fear becomes anger. We'll sort it out back at the bunker, but right now, we have a child to help."
The girl was perhaps 7. It took a while for her to calm down enough for Sam to talk to her. By some miracle she wasn't badly hurt. Her left arm was broken. She had bruises everywhere, but she was conscious and able to give her name, and, even more helpful, her mother's phone number.
Jack carried the girl out to the car, while Sam called the mother, presenting himself as a state trooper. Dean occupied himself in the meantime by setting the barn on fire to get rid of the evidence.
