Dean swallowed down a mouthful of mashed potatoes. "Okay, so how about this one?" he asked Sam, pointing to an article in the newspaper. "Nova Scotia, Canada. People are mysteriously falling ill. Doctors blame it on Canadian flu, except all the victims are middle-aged men."
Sam arched an eyebrow. "Canadian flu?" he scoffed.
"Yeah," Dean said. "It's like the American flu. Only colder." He grinned as he stabbed a sausage off Sam's plate.
"Be serious," Sam said. He rolled his eyes and continued to scour the Internet for any potential gigs. Just as he was reaching for his beer, a very curious homicide article from Manning, Colorado caught his eye. "Dean," he said, turning the laptop to face his brother.
Dean skimmed the article before him. "Third case of this kind this week, wow… people being brutally killed… left for dead in nearby forest… completely naked…" he looked up. "Sam this isn't our kind of problem. They've probably just got some horny Freddy Kreuger wanna-be running around."
"No, look at this," Sam said as he pulled up another window. "Abel Schmidt. He's the one who got killed, and look at what happened to him a year ago." Dean looked at the article as Sam spoke. "He and his buddies got lost in the woods, but they were found five days later taking shelter in a wolf's den."
Dean blinked and said slowly, "Yeah, I guess it sucks he survived that only to get sliced and diced in the same damn forest again."
"Dean, that's not the point." Sam stopped talking as a waitress walked past their table, smiling shyly at them. When she was gone, he lowered his voice and leaned closer to Dean. "What do you know about werewolves?"
It was Dean's turn to quirk an eyebrow. "Uh… they're hairy, silver bullet to the heart is the only thing that'll kill 'em, and they piss purple," he said as Sam flipped through their dad's journal.
"Look," Sam said, pointing to the page he had open. "One of the ways you can become a werewolf is if you drink water from the paw print of a wolf, then eat the brains of a wolf and then sleep in a wolf's lair."
"Dude, if you can stomach wolf brains, you can become whatever the hell you want as far as I'm concerned," Dean said.
Sam ignored that as he flipped to the next page and turned the journal to face Dean. "And look here. When you kill a werewolf when it's in wolf form, it'll revert back into its human form. That's why all the victims are naked. And," Sam said, pulling up a weather website, "there was a full moon the night Abel Schmidt died."
"But a silver bullet to the heart is the only thing that can kill a werewolf," Dean countered. "And this says our buddy Abel here was mauled, and there's nothing here about a gunshot wound, so he can't be a werewolf."
Sam frowned. Dean was right. With a sigh, Sam closed the page and continued to search the Internet as Dean continued to read through various newspapers.
By the time the boys finished eating their dinner, they still hadn't found anything to hunt, but they were not dismayed. Tomorrow would be a new day with new problems and new gigs.
Dean shifted from one foot to the other as he stood in front of the coffee maker in their motel room, watching as his coffee fell drop by drop with small splashes into the large pot below. He sniffed the air, inhaling the welcome scent.
Taster's Choice, he thought to himself. Damn straight.
He reached into the cupboard above and pulled out two coffee mugs, lining them up before the coffee maker. He kneeled down to make sure the mugs were angled identically. After slightly shifting the mug on the right, he straightened again, pleased.
He checked on the coffee maker once more, but the pot wasn't even halfway full.
Dean could hear movement behind him, meaning Sam was awake.
Sam yawned, then saw his brother staring intently at the coffee maker. "Dean, you know that would go a lot faster if you'd quit staring at it, right?"
Dean turned around, a look of annoyance on his face. The nerve of Sam to criticize this sacred morning ritual!
"I think I know how to make coffee, thanks. And it's not going to brew faster if I quit looking at it—"
All of the sudden, the coffee maker began to make a gurgling noise, and Dean whipped his head around to discover that the coffee was finished.
"Don't even—!" Dean began to say.
"Told ya," Sam smirked impishly.
Dean glowered as he poured the coffee into the mugs before him. "Just come get your coffee."
"I'll pass," Sam replied, looking through the newspaper on the bedside table.
"Why?" Dean demanded, placing his hands on his hips as he turned to look at his brother.
"Because I don't feel like drinking coffee right now," Sam said, putting the newspaper down as he got out of bed. "What's so wrong with that? Quit staring!"
"You don't feel like drinking coffee?" Dean gawked. "How can you even say that?"
"I dunno, I think I caught something at the diner yesterday. I feel like crap." He used his hand to rub his head and blinked a few times to clear his vision. "Man, do we have any aspirin?" Sam groaned. He thought he was going to vomit. He stumbled toward the bathroom, but before he could take hardly two steps, the bathroom door began to wobble. Then the doorframe seemed to have jumped right out of the wall. And then there was Dean, dropping the spoon he'd been holding and running toward him—did he always run in zigzags like that?
And then there was pain.
The pain consumed his whole body, but mostly his head. It was dancing and screaming, and Sam screamed right along with it until he couldn't hear the screaming anymore and he couldn't see the bathroom door or the doorframe or even Dean, who had just been shaking his shoulders.
No, Sam was in a forest now. A very quiet forest with no screaming. It was dark outside, and there was no moon in the sky. He could smell the wet bark and leaves and all the other ugly yet beautiful smells that all of true nature has to offer. Then he heard a voice behind him. When he turned to see who it was, even in this dream, this dream of a dream, Sam was shocked.
It was Abel Schmidt who stood before him, and he was very alive.
Abel was a tall young man with dark curly hair and tan features, which was quite obvious since he wasn't wearing any clothes. He had just finished drawing two circles on the ground—one small circle inside a larger circle. At the center of both circles stood a wooden tripod, from which an iron pot hung, filled with water. Under the pot was a blazing fire, which boiled the water.
Then Sam was suddenly standing closer to Abel, who was hunched over a very old book that lay flat and open on the ground. Next to the book were a variety of plants, placed in an organized fashion on top of what looked like animal skin.
Abel gathered the plants in his arms and walked over to the pot of water. He placed a handful of each of the ingredients into the pot, saying their names aloud. "Aloe, hemlock, poppy seed, nightshade."
The water inside the pot suddenly began to swirl of its own accord, and Abel smiled a bit before stepping out of the circle. He threw his hands up in the air and screamed at the sky as tears of joy and excitement streamed down his face. "Spirits of the restless! Spirits of the dead! Spirits of the foul darkness! Spirits of the hateful! Spirits of the satyrs! Spirits of the werewolves! I call upon you! Take me as your humble slave, make me yours, and bring me—" Abel choked on his words as he doubled over in pain. He crawled back to the animal skin and reached into a small container, which held something slimy.
Sam automatically seemed to know it was a mixture of animal fat, anise, camphor, and opium.
Once Abel had covered his whole body with the mixture, he wrapped the animal skin around his middle like a loincloth and crawled back to the edge of the outer circle. "Spirits!" Abel yelled. "Take me!"
And all of the sudden, Abel's body began to convulse in every way possible. One moment he had the snout of a wolf, then one of his legs would turn into that of a dog's, then one of his hands would turn into a horse's hoof, and the transformations went on and on like this until they began to slow and a final form took shape.
But without warning, the forest was swirling out of view, a dim light was replacing the darkness, and suddenly Sam realized that the dim light was actually Dean's face. And then the pain came crashing back. With one final scream of anguish, Sam collapsed onto Dean, breathing heavily, sweating profusely, and trembling just slightly.
Dean awkwardly dragged his brother's lanky body to one of the beds and set him there. It took a moment before Sam could sit up on his own, but Dean waited patiently at his side.
Once his head had stopped spinning and his breathing had returned to normal, Sam recounted the things he had just seen, and then his eyes widened when realization dawned on him. "Abel Schmidt is alive," he whispered.
Dean pulled a face, but before he could ask questions, Sam continued. "Abel Schmidt is alive, and he's a werewolf."
Sam sat on his hands to try and make them stop trembling as he recounted his vision to Dean, and Dean seemed frozen as he let Sam's words sink in.
"Sam, it doesn't make any sense," Dean said. He got up and turned away from his brother and added, "Nothing can bring the dead back to life."
Sam pursed his lips together. "Dean, I know what I saw. Abel Schmidt must not have died or something. But he is alive. I saw it. He's alive, and he turned himself into a werewolf."
Dean spun around, his arms crossed over his chest. His forehead was creased with concentration. "This is in Manning, Colorado, right?"
"Yeah. We've got to go there. Something's not right, Dean."
"I know," Dean agreed. "But that's not what's got me worried."
Sam looked confused.
"Manning, Colorado, Sammy!" Dean almost shouted. "It's where the vampires are located, too, don't you remember?"
"And they've got our scent," Sam muttered. Then his eyes suddenly lit up. "Wait!" He swiftly walked out the door, which surprised Dean. It seemed the more visions Sam had, the more painful they became, but the better Sam learned to handle the strain involved with one of his episodes.
From the squeaking sounds Dean heard outside, he could tell Sam was getting something from the trunk. When he returned, Sam held a small black bag in his hand. He reached into it and took out a silver bullet, then applied pressure to the middle, which made it pop open. They were supposed to be do-it-yourself silver bullets, of sorts, but Sam had another idea. "We can fill these silver bullet capsules with a dead man's blood. That way we'll be ready for both the vampires and the werewolves."
"Nice." Dean smirked. "Y'know, I think you still got it in you, kid."
Sam narrowed his eyes. "It never left me."
The boys spent all of ten minutes packing their belongings, checking out of the motel, then loading into the Impala so that they could start their trip toward Manning, Colorado.
"Nosferatuuu!" Dean sang aloud, holding out the last syllable of the Blue Oyster Cult song.
Sam slumped miserably in his seat, groaning at Dean's annoying singing. "Are we there yet?" he asked again just so his voice could block out a tiny fraction of the noise coming out of the radio.
"Seventeenth time's a charm," Dean said, grinning.
Sam sat up and looked out the window in time to watch as they drove past the Manning, Colorado city limits sign. A couple minutes later, Dean was pulling up to a relatively small, quiet white building that was situated away from everything else in town. The small black letters on the sign before them read: FUNERAL HOME.
Before they got out of the car, Dean pulled open the glove compartment and began rummaging through his stash of fake IDs before he found the pair he was looking for. "We're FBI agents," he told Sam.
"I know," Sam said as he snatched his badge out of Dean's hand. Once he'd gotten out of the car, Sam flipped it open, but immediately closed it when he eyed his profile. "Dean, this thing says I'm female!"
"Your point?" Dean asked with a blank face. He was at the trunk, placing a couple empty bottles into the pockets inside his jacket.
"Dean!" Sam hissed as his brother closed the trunk.
Dean was already walking toward the entrance. "They won't even look at it, Sammy," he said.
"Because you've been right about that one so many times before," Sam muttered to himself.
"Heard that," Dean shouted over his shoulder.
Sam sulked as he took long strides to catch up to his brother.
Compared to its white paint job, the inside of the funeral home was completely different. The walls were painted a deep burgundy color, black curtains covered all the windows, and despite the many light bulbs present, the lighting in the room wasn't very well distributed.
At the front desk sat a dark middle-aged man who was finishing up some paperwork. "Be right with you," he called out in his burly voice. When he finished writing, he gathered his papers and turned to file them in a filing cabinet behind him. "What can I do you for?"
Sam flinched a bit. That was how most waitresses greeted them at a restaurant. But when the man finally turned around and looked at them, Sam had even more reason to flinch. The man's eyes were completely red.
He caught Sam staring at his eyes. "Contacts," he said with a snort. "Things around here are pretty… dead," he said with a wry grin. "Gotta make your own humor, y'know?"
Dean smiled appreciatively.
Sam gave him a tight-lipped grin in response, and then something else caught his eye. It was a blonde-haired boy, probably only a few years younger than he was.
The funeral home owner followed Sam's gaze. "C'mon out here, Garmr," he called to the boy. When Garmr stood next to him, he said, "This is Garmr Medgard, my new assistant. It's his first week on the job."
Garmr looked at his shoes as he muttered a quiet hello.
"And I'm Adam Hel," the man said, sticking out his arm to shake hands.
Dean ignored it and flipped open his badge like a pro, flashing it just long enough for Adam to get a look at Dean's picture on the card, and nothing more. "We're from the FBI. I'm Agent Mulder and this is Agent Scully. We're here about the Schmidt corpse."
Sam's eyes were plates on his face. Agents Mulder and Scully? Luckily, he was used to Dean's antics and flashed his own badge a moment after Dean had put his away.
Although he didn't make it blatantly clear, Sam noticed that Adam Hel suddenly didn't look so friendly anymore—an unfortunate side effect of presenting yourself as a FBI agent.
"Wow, FBI?" Hel scratched the back of his head as he eyed the two men standing before him. "I was wondering when they'd call you in."
Sam and Dean shot a quick glance at one another.
"Why do you say that?" Sam asked slowly.
Hel frowned. "Garmr, can you take these gentlemen to the Schmidt corpse?"
Garmr walked toward the door, and when he opened it and left, Sam and Dean realized they were supposed to follow him. Five silent minutes later, they'd walked down the road and were approaching the next closest building. "The body's still in autopsy," Garmr said, still not making eye contact with anyone.
"It's been over two days since the corpse was found, and it's the third homicide case of this kind. Why are they still examining the body?" Sam asked.
Garmr's shoulders moved a bit and Sam took that as a clueless shrug. Then the boy shoved his way past them and walked back toward the funeral home.
Once he was out of earshot, Dean snorted. "Sam, y'know who he reminds me of?"
Sam raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
Dean smirked. "You."
Sam made a face. "I think society's lucky there isn't anyone who reminds me of you. Dean—Agents Mulder and Scully from The X-Files? Are you stupid, or what?"
"Hey, it worked. We were trying to pass as FBI agents, and those are good FBI agent names."
"They are FBI agent names. The most well-known FBI agent names on the planet, Dean," Sam said, annoyed.
Dean frowned. "This is because I made you be Scully, isn't it? Fine, next time you can be Mulder." And with that, he turned around and headed into the building.
Sam's mouth fell open in disbelief. He shook his head and scoffed as he walked in behind Dean. They both had to duck their heads, as the doorframe was unusually short, but fortunately, the ceiling was built higher.
The inside of this building was very cold and had an eerie iridescent glow that made everything look oddly orange or yellow. "Hello?" Dean called out, as no one was situated at the front desk.
A moment later, staccato-like footsteps could be heard getting louder and louder until finally, a slender young woman stood before them. She had light brown hair that fell down to her lower back and over the long white lab coat she wore. Her eyes were a pale blue, and in the odd lighting, her pallid complexion made her look almost waif-like.
She strode toward the boys, her movements fluid and graceful.
"Hello," Dean said, flashing his charming, toothy grin as he looked the girl up and down.
The woman introduced herself. "I'm Lilith Hel." Her voice was velvety and her words hung in the air like molasses.
The look on Dean's face was almost instantly replaced by a pout. "Hel? As in Adam Hel?"
Her eyes widened and she smiled as she replied. "Yes, I see you've already met my husband."
Dean pulled out his badge and Sam followed suit while stifling back his snickering as well. "We're with the FBI," Dean said. "I'm Agent Mulder, this is Agent Scully. We're here to see the Schmidt corpse.
"Garmr Medgard brought us here," Sam added.
"Oh. Adam just called me about this. Right this way, gentlemen," Lilith said, walking back toward the same hallway she'd emerged from minutes before.
Dean readjusted his jacket to make sure the bottles were securely inside while Sam walked ahead of him.
Lilith led them down a long hallway and stopped at the last door on the left. "The body's on the table. I could show you—"
"No, that's okay," Dean interjected. He jutted a thumb at Sam. "He's a medical doctor. We'll take it from here," he said as he opened the door and disappeared behind it.
Sam looked at her apologetically, but the woman seemed unfazed by Dean's behavior, almost as if she'd expected as much from him.
She must have small children, Sam thought, shaking his head. He thanked Lilith for her assistance and followed Dean inside.
Once the door was closed and the tip tapping of Lilith's heels melted into silence, Dean pulled the empty bottles out of his jacket, setting them on a nearby table, and Sam lifted the sheet that was covering Abel Schmidt's body.
"All right, let's drain this sucker," Dean said a bit too enthusiastically.
But Sam stared at the body with a look of alarm. "Uh, Dean? I think someone beat us to it."
"What're you talking about?" But when Dean looked at the body, the expression on his face shifted to match the one on Sam's.
The body had many markings on it, as though Abel Schmidt had been mauled to death, but his face, arms, legs, and all the rest of his body's cavities just barely hung from his bones. All the blood had been drained from his body.
Dean was the first to speak. "If you don't have a silver bullet, I guess that's one way to kill a werewolf." He used one of the operating tools to make a small incision on Schmidt's arm and marveled over the dried up insides.
Sam went through his vision again. Werewolf or not, Abel Schmidt had been alive. He was supposed to be alive. Yet here he was, definitely dead.
Dean looked up. "What're you thinking?"
Sam narrowed his eyes, going over things one more time, then looked up at his brother. "Vampires."
A few miles away on the far edge of the forest sat the surprisingly sturdy and intact remnants of a black barn. Exploring such a place would make for quite an interesting afternoon, but in all the years the location of the barn had been known, no living soul dared to venture across the dark and uninviting threshold.
It was surrounded by a protective grove of trees, which only allowed entry if you knew where you were going, or if you'd taken an unfortunate, definitely fatal turn off the marked trails.
Unbeknownst to the people inhabiting the town across from the forest, this barn wasn't as dead as they thought it was. In fact, it was pretty undead.
Inside, in an assortment of hammocks, sleeping bags, and makeshift beds slept about two dozen young people, clothed in dark garments or not clothed at all. Near the back corner, a blonde girl slept in a hammock with her cowboy hat pulled over her face, but she suddenly jerked awake from her peaceful slumber.
"Kate!" She hissed so quickly and quietly that her lips hardly moved. "Do you smell that?"
But Kate was already awake. She sat in her bed, sniffing the air. Her eyes widened in delight when she was able to register the stench. She thought about waking up the rest of the coven, but decided against it. The maddening smell would have them all up by the end of the hour.
Kate stood up, licking her lips, and when she saw her blonde companion had recognized the smell too, a sinister smile snaked across her face.
"Tonight, we eat out."
Author's Note: Vampires, werewolves, and visions, oh my! Hopefully you're interested and anxious for the next chapter, which will be posted in a couple days. :)