- 2 Rhoming -

Romulus watched the human, Sam, drive through the wide, almost empty plains of Texas. The spot Sam was headed toward – he'd nudged Sam that direction using an almost inconsequential force of godly will – would put the brothers into contact with one of Romulus' favorite projects-of-old. Between those old friends and the plans Romulus had already put in motion…

The demigod chuckled, waiting for the show to really begin.

oooOOOooo

For generations, Rhome, Texas, had been little more than a crossroad and travel stop off of US Route 287, but its quaint old-timey atmosphere and an easy 30-minute commute time to Fort Worth meant it was growing fast. New construction had been swiftly digging into previously empty prairie land, and, as the building boom really got hopping, rumors began spreading. Disappearances had been followed by a string of unsolved murders, which at first were laid at the feet of the "drifters and reprobates" who frequented the town's highway-side watering holes, and later attributed to the more and more frequently arriving city-folk neighbors who could (of course) never be trusted.

Into this insular, distrusting environment rolled Sam Winchester – noticeably huge, noticeably new, and above all noticeably noticeable. It was a wonder that no one decked him the instant he arrived. Add all of that to the fact that some hunter was trying to track him down, and Sam opted to stay a bit more under the radar than usual. He checked into one of the more expensive motels available to him. Luckily, "more expensive" in Rhome, Texas, was still pretty cheap; and if push came to shove, Sam wouldn't exactly have to pay the bill. The young woman who checked him in had long black hair and a petite figure. Sam smiled his best dimples and leaned against the counter. "So," he drawled, putting a bit of Texas into his voice, "anything to do around here while I'm staying?"

She laughed. The sound encouraged his smile into sincerity. "Well, that depends," she smiled. "How long do you intend to stay?"

"Long enough." He decided to take advantage of her friendly nature to push his luck, getting an early start on his investigation. "Honestly? I've just started a job over in the city, and I've got to find a place to live that doesn't have concrete all around it. You have any suggestions for a neighborhood I should be looking at?"

The woman's smile vanished and her manner turned cold and professional as she responded, "There's a lot of new neighborhoods goin' up around here. You can see them online. Easy to look up. Will that be a single or a double room?"

Sam blinked at the change. "Um, a double," he said without thinking. And why did that feel so normal? Oh, well, more room to stretch out, I guess. He didn't want to backtrack now. He wanted to leave a pleasant impression with the desk clerk. Sam ducked his head a bit to catch her eyes, and 'nudged' her a bit. "Are you okay? Is it something I said?"

She avoided his look, ducking under the counter to pull out a key card and some papers before continuing politely, "Yeah. I'm sorry. No." Visibly gathering herself together, she finally looked at him. Warmth grudgingly returned to her demeanor and she continued with a forced smile, "Some of the places they're building on the east end of town are nice. Safe neighborhoods, nice neighbors. You should take a look at those."

"East end. Got it." Sam took the key card from her and accepted her directions toward a room on the third floor, thinking west end. Got it.

oooOOOooo

The list Garth sent Dean would have been hilariously long had Dean been in any mood for hilarity. The rundown of entities known to be able to wipe minds of familial bonds covered jinn, angels, voodoo priests, witches (Dean nixed that immediately – no hex bags), several creatures Dean had never even heard of, and a truly disturbing number of gods and demigods.

Dean ignored the note affixed to the email asking if Dean was sure – really sure – that Sam was the victim of the mind wipe rather than Dean. There was little in Dean's life he was more certain of than his brother. Unfortunately, sorting through this pile of possibilities to find out why Sam had apparently forgotten him would have to wait. Figuring out where he'd gone was first on the agenda. Once he'd found his brother, they'd solve the mystery of the mind wipe together, like they always did.

Dean sifted through the case folders Sam had shown him the night before as they'd discussed where they'd be headed next. The apparent poltergeist in New Jersey was discarded immediately – Sam hated New Jersey – as was the simple haunting in Albuquerque. Neither of them was ever particularly interested in a minor, somewhat annoying spirit, preferring to leave such rudimentary cases to less experienced hunters unless they were looking for a vacation. That left two possibilities; a spate of deaths which looked wendigo-ish in Idaho or a bunch of disappearances and deaths in central Texas for which neither brother had formed a theory as yet. He looked through the folders carefully, trying to spot anything which would have caught Sam's attention. The Idaho case had recently been in an uptick, probably because the cold November weather had chased off the camping crowd and brought whatever had been hunting in the woods down into the local farms and town. Sam's meticulously researched table showed a building number of victims. He put that file aside and opened the Texas case folder, finding a map printout inside covered in Sam's cramped writing where strange happenings had… well… where the happenings had happened. Wait… he looked closely at the location of the incidents, comparing it to the list he'd gotten from Garth.

"Fuck. Hold on Sammy. I'm coming."

He packed up and left the motel room in record time. To his surprise, he didn't even have to steal a car to leave. A set of keys he'd found on the motel table opened the door of a vehicle just outside, inside of which he found a familiar green cooler. The car's plates were from Kansas, and a check in the glove compartment found registration in the name of Dean Walsh, an old alias but absolutely one of his. What the fuck? Fuck it. I need to get to Texas.

The car didn't even suck. Within thirty minutes of making his decision to head south, Dean was on the road in a gleaming black Dodge Charger, Metallica blaring. The digital clock in the dashboard over the CD player read 2:23PM.

He arrived in Rhome the next morning with the light from the rising sun glaring into his eyes. The bright light did not help allay the headache he was already trying to push away and which only strengthened when he discovered that no one had checked into the Charo Motel under the name Rockford. Sammy either didn't remember that bit of family code or was intentionally hiding from him. It took Dean three tries until he found a desk clerk at a midline hotel who remembered a very tall man with floppy hair. She wouldn't give Dean Sam's room number, but she smiled shyly as she let Dean call his brother on the front desk telephone. No one answered, and the Impala wasn't in the parking lot. Dean checked himself into a room and sat by the window to wait and read the lore about a local pair of demigod brothers Garth had listed in his "forget somebody" email.

oooOOOooo

The first assumed victims of whatever was going on had disappeared without trace at a quarry a couple of miles west of Rhome proper. Long since flooded, the quarry was still used to a small degree, though where it had once produced high quality granite, it had long since been given over to mining rough gravel used in the making of concrete. The northern half of the pit was abandoned, forming little more than a steep-walled scar behind a chain-link fence off a dirt road. The bottom of the pit was flooded to form a small lake filled with brackish green water, with banks semi-hidden from prying eyes by the quarry's high, carved granite walls and a few scrubby trees. It had, naturally, become an irresistible hangout for the local teenaged population who built small campfires, smoked, and dabbled in methamphetamines on its makeshift 'beaches' and made out in their cars nearby. Three of those teenagers had been reported missing, suspected drowned, in the past two months. Their bodies had not been recovered despite local rescue teams' repeated searches using scuba equipment and one odiferous attempt at dredging the water.

The Impala's engine rumbled to a stop near the flooded pit, and Sam got out to walk the last hundred meters or so to the quarry, ducking under the fence with ease and avoiding the single dusty minivan parked off of a dirt track. Sam made his way carefully over the lip of the quarry and followed tracks down the steep walls toward the lakeside. Small stones crunched under his feet, sliding and tumbling toward the water.

Overlooking the pit, Sam found it hard to see how anyone could drown here. No doubt the pool was deep – quarries were, by definition – but it couldn't have been more than a couple of hundred meters across at its widest, and the water was still, its surface barely ruffled even by the prairie winds, protected as it was by high walls. Moreover, he thought, quarry water is cold, this quarry stank, and, even in Texas, it wasn't exactly swimming weather in October and November. Why had anyone been in that fetid pool to begin with?

When he reached the water's edge, Sam followed the shoreline along well-worn footpaths littered with cigarettes and a few used condoms. Low laughter alerted him to the presence of other visitors ahead well before he saw them. He approached slowly, listening as two voices bantered back and forth without letting them know he was there.

"No! I swear. I do it all the time!" came a wheedling and cajoling male voice.

"No. Eww. No. I'm not getting in that. It's rusty and gross. And besides, the lake smells!" responded his young female companion.

There was a scraping sound, further attempted convincing by the boy, and the sound of stomping feet as the girl began to walk away. The boy half shouted and half laughed, "Okay, okay! We'll just…" the voices slowly faded as the boy's footsteps caught up with the girl's and they continued south along the shoreline, away from Sam.

Once the pair was out of sight, Sam moved to where they had been arguing. A flat-bottomed, rusty metal rowboat was wedged against the gravel shoreline there, half hidden in weeds. Sam shifted it, hearing the scraping sound from earlier, and noted the well-trampled earth around him. So, this is a popular spot. Likely, the rowboat was brought by the boy, or someone very like him, to create a "romantic" setting for clumsy, teenaged overtures of lust. He explored the area a bit more, finding little of interest and nothing which surprised him, before continuing further down the shoreline.

He never saw the two boys – identical twins dressed in animal skins - who silently watched him, their long braided hair blowing fitfully in the breeze by the rim of the quarry.

oooOOOooo

As the day marched on, Dean's anxiety grew. Was he in the right town? Should he have headed to Idaho? Or, and here he shuddered, to New Jersey? He took the rather well-appointed elevator to the lobby, confirming with a young Native American man behind the desk that he'd seen an enormous moose with floppy hair flirting unsuccessfully with his co-worker the night before. The man looked resentful, but he confirmed Sam's identity when shown a photo.

Toward noon, Dean ordered a pizza delivered, not wanting to risk missing Sam if he arrived while Dean went out to find food. He ate it in the lobby of the hotel. Another desk clerk, this one a cute female with beautiful brown eyes watched Dean as he ate with a mixture of appreciation and confusion, but let him stay where he was. After Dean finished the pizza, he sauntered toward the front desk and turned on the charm. With little else to do, he began to work the case he knew Sam must be investigating…and to do a bit of flirting of his own. If Sam had struck out with this clerk, maybe she was looking for a more experienced older brother. Dean wouldn't object too strongly.

He managed two questions – had she seen the tall man and had she heard of anything going on that was weird – before the young woman shut down his line of questioning saying, "I've got to get back to work," and heading toward a back room, leaving Dean staring at her colleague who was even less amenable to Dean's charms than he'd been earlier.

oooOOOooo

Sam's next stop was the county morgue. The coroner was packing up to go to lunch when he arrived, but was not particularly bothered by the idea of an FBI agent looking through his files while he was gone. It was a waste of time – each of the three cases the man had asked about was a snakebite victim – but if the fed wanted to waste a lunch hour, it was no concern of his. He left Sam in the outer office with his files and some coffee and headed out into a cool, dry Texas afternoon.

Sam read the files and examined the one body still in residence at the morgue, allowing experience and an eye for the weird to consider the evidence. Each of the three victims had been impressively covered with snakebites from the hips down, almost as if they'd been chewed rather than receiving a series of single bites, or as if they'd waded knee-deep in a movie-style viper pit. The problem with that theory, though, was that American pit vipers don't really do the whole viper pit thing. Sure, a rattlesnake will hibernate with a couple of its friends in the winter, but the condition of these bodies implied dozens of animals were involved. Another problem was the victims' belongings. None of the three hikers who'd been bitten had been wearing what Sam would call 'hiking clothes'. The latest had been in a business suit for Chuck's sake. Sam left the morgue, ready to speak with the victims' families but without any more idea of what he was seeking than when he'd arrived.

oooOOOooo

Sam left victim number four's house as the sun began to set, reviewing in his mind the totality of what he'd learned that day. To sum it up? Squat. Maybe there was a case in Rhome – OK, he thought, there likely was a case here – but Sam would be damned (again) if he knew what that case might be. Drownings in a lake that shouldn't be big or interesting enough to drown in, snake bites killing hikers who, according to each of their families, didn't hike - this was "News of the Weird" stuff, which made it his business. It didn't add up to any particular type of weird, though. The MO's were just too different. Maybe it was more than one case? He folded himself into the driver's seat of the Impala, intending to head back to the hotel, write up his notes, and maybe give Garth a call.

As he reached into the backseat for his journal, the EMF sensor in his duffel spiked with a growling screech. Sam pulled it out, watched the lights dance across its top, and glanced around himself. High power wires crossed the road less than a block away. Sam switched off the high-pitched annoyance, tossed it onto the passenger side of the bench seat, and started the car.

OOOoooOOO

Romulus smiled broadly as he watched first one set of brothers and then the other far below him on what was once the unbroken prairie of an untamed land. One pair of boys, with identical features and intricately beaded necklaces, had walked this land when it was unspoiled. He smiled indulgently at that pair as they sat unseen by their living companion in the rear of the black car called "Baby". The pair looked up, back toward where Romulus was in the sky, as if they could see him through the metal roof, beyond the clouds and ether. Their eyes showed fear and submission, as they ought.

The other pair? Well, the other pair had no idea Romulus existed. At that moment the other pair were seeking one another; and each was well armed and well trained. Romulus rubbed his hands with glee, and thunder rolled across the plains of Texas.