Title: Hunger in the Dark
Author: Disasteriffic Kaz
Info: Post 3x11 "Mystery Spot" Sam is focused on not letting Dean out of his sight now that he has him back, so focused he makes himself a target and Dean must find a way to save him.
Author's note: Sorry for the holdup kids. This bloody flu has been knocking me back the last couple days. Feeling better finally so on with the show! Also…any rambling in this chapter I totally blame on the Nyquil…not my fault. Honest. Ahem…dammit. :P
Do please Review once you've read. :D Every comment and vote of support helps keep me writing. Not to mention if I've pooched anything, someone can always tell me. :P
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"Dean." He shook the hand and then surreptitiously wiped it on his jeans. "My brother, Sam."
Sam raised his beer in greeting rather than shake the offered hand. Like his brother, he wasn't keen on the two men either.
Gary chuckled and stepped back to a small table, picking up his drink. "Good. Bill can kick someone's ass other than mine for a change."
"Actually, we really just wanted to ask you a few questions." Sam said, stopping Dean from going to the table. "You were playing with our buddy, Tony earlier tonight."
"Oh yeah. Cops were in here a little while ago." Bill shook his head sadly. "Such a shame. He seemed like a nice guy."
"Anyone give him trouble while he was here?" Dean asked, glancing at Sam and seeing the tightness around his eyes. His little brother obviously felt the same about these two.
"No, nothing." Gary put a hand on Sam's arm at his elbow with a sad expression. "We're really sorry about what happened to your friend."
Dean felt an instinctive urge to kick the guy and instead settled for taking Sam's arm and turning him out of the room. "Well thanks guys. Really. Enjoy your game." He gave Sam a nudge toward the door and they left quickly. Outside, both men shook themselves.
"Why do I feel like I need a shower?" Sam asked and resisted the urge to wipe off his arm where Gary had touched him.
"Cause those two are some kind of bad news." Dean said surely and started down the street. "Come on. Let's go check out the crime scene."
"We should suit up." Sam said and headed toward the motel room instead. "It's only been a couple hours. Cops might still be there."
"Crap." Dean groaned but followed him, gearing up to play FBI for the locals.
CHAPTER 2
"Haven't seen two that pretty around here in a long time." Bill commented to Gary as he broke the balls across the table. He stood up, letting his cue fall to the floor as Gary bent to get a good look at the table.
"I like the tall one." Gary smiled and nodded toward the wall. "They went to the motel if you're interested."
"Hmm." Bill took a moment to bring the image of the shorter brother to mind, though he was by no means short and smiled. "Poor Tony didn't hold a candle to those two." His smile widened and he met his friends' eyes, seeing the same desire written there before he bent and lined up his first shot.
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Sam and Dean ducked under the crime scene tape, heading for the lone officer still there. Dean noted the red stains on the sidewalk and frowned.
"Thought you said the guy bled out?" He asked Sam softly. "No way did he leave enough here." Sam nodded and then smiled at the officer as they both pulled out their badges.
"Officer. I'm Agent Torres. My partner Agent Sambora." Sam folded his badge away. "What happened here?"
"Feds?" The officer asked and shrugged. "I'm Jakes. Guy got stabbed."
Dean shook his head, ducking his head to hide the smile at yet another intelligence challenged deputy. "Stabbed how?" He asked finally.
"Well, the M.E. said he'd been stabbed like six or seven times." Deputy Jakes shrugged. "Better ask her."
"Yeah." Sam said slowly and shook his head. "We're gonna take a look around."
"Sure. Help yourselves." Jakes stepped away and went back to his squad car.
"Wow, how did Barney Fife get a badge?" Dean shook his head as Sam stepped toward the alley a few yards away.
Sam chuckled. "It's a little town." He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it into the darkened alley. The streetlight at the corner gave off plenty of light in the street but the alley was near black with darkness. "Whatever killed him was probably waiting in here." He spared a glance for the Deputy, seeing him; head down and oblivious in his cruiser and then drew his handgun, bracing his gun atop of it and stepped into the alley.
"Sammy, what the hell?" Dean growled and dashed over to his brother as he vanished inside the alley. Dean pulled out his own gun and stepped around Sam, taking the lead. "You tryin' to piss me off? You wait for backup." Dean ignored the bitchface Sam gave him and strode ahead, unwilling to let his brother put himself in danger before him just to humor Sam's new protective streak. Dean reached back and plucked the flashlight from him.
"Dean…" Sam started but his brother cut him off.
"Get over it, Sam." Dean told him and shined the light around the alley.
Sam swallowed the argument in his head, knowing now was not the time and settled for keeping close to Dean's back. They swept the alley all the way back to where it dead ended and found nothing save for a few drops of blood. They emerged back onto the street, guns stowed away.
"Okay, not a Chupacabra." Dean said and pulled up the yellow crime scene tape, letting Sam duck under first. "This is way too neat."
"Whatever this is, it's not a sloppy eater." Sam commented and followed Dean down the street. He sighed and looked up into the night sky. "It's the third night of Holy Week. It takes a child a night Dean."
Dean cringed inwardly at the tone in his brother's voice. "I know, Sam." There was nothing they could do about it yet, not until they knew what they were hunting. "We'll find them, one way or another."
Sam was silent as they reached their room and quickly went to his laptop. He threw himself into the research while Dean puttered around the room pouring salt lines and vandalizing the window sill with a sharpie drawing protective symbols. He vaguely acknowledged the beer his brother set beside him with a nod and didn't look up from the screen.
Dean chuckled. Nothing made Sam more driven to puzzle something out than knowing lives were on the line. He watched him hunch over the laptop with single minded intensity and shook his head, turning on the tv as he stretched out on his bed; the same intensity with which he was attacking the need to find a way to save Dean. He gave an involuntary shiver; glad Sam was too preoccupied to see it. Dean kept smiling and making jokes for Sam's sake while inside he felt a level of terror he hadn't felt since he was a child, carrying his baby brother from a burning house. He glanced up from the tv at Sam and steadied; it was worth it. He only wished he could have gotten more than a year. Watching Sam's tired eyes as they bored into the screen and the exhausted tension in his shoulders, he found he was going to miss taking care of him and then smirked at himself and his internal chick flick moment. He'd give Sam another hour before he forced him into bed.
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Sam jerked awake, sitting up with a confused "Huh?" as the motel room door slammed shut. He looked over to find Dean standing in the door with a bag of food, coffee and an amused grin.
"Morning, princess. Got the keyboard imprinted on your face there." Dean nodded and rolled his eyes. Contrary to his good intentions, he'd fallen asleep before Sam and woken in the morning to find his little brother sound asleep at the little table with his face planted into the laptop's keyboard.
Sam wiped drool off his cheek and frowned. "Shouldn't have gone without me." He muttered as he got up and headed to the bathroom.
"I can handle getting breakfast, Sam." Dean said, irritated and set the bag down on the table. "Been doing it for a while you know." His brother ignored him and shut the bathroom door. "Well this crap is gonna stop, Sammy." Dean muttered to the closed door and sat down in front of the laptop. He booted it up, as it had long since gone to sleep, to see what Sam had found. The open page was not about the case and Dean sighed. It was a study on Hellhounds and how to stop them. "Sam." He whispered and closed it, checking the desktop instead. His OCD brother always kept his research together. Sure enough he found a folder waiting labeled 'Nashville' and opened that as the sound of the shower filtered out to him.
Sam emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, toweling his hair off and found Dean scooping up the last of a container of scrambled eggs over his keyboard.
"You sure about this?" Dean asked him and pointed to the screen with a fork. "A Sigbin?"
"Not entirely, no." Sam admitted and tossed the towel on his bed before sitting at the table and taking the container Dean handed him. "So far it's the closest fit and honestly there really just aren't that many supernatural creatures that use Holy Week as a killing cycle. It's a safe bet." He took a bite of the now cold eggs and shrugged. "They drink blood, take kids and…" He paused. "According to the lore they take the hearts of the children and turn them into some kind of amulet." Sam swallowed hard and set the eggs aside. "I'm gonna call Bobby. See if he has any better info on them."
"What kind of amulet?" Dean was working to keep the disgust off his face at hearing what was likely happening to the missing children.
"I can't find anything on that or on how to gank them." Sam pushed the rest of the food away, no longer hungry.
"Let's go have a look at the bodies." Dean shut the laptop and stood. "I wanna find this thing tonight." He said fiercely, not wanting to let another kid be killed while they spun their wheels. "Checked the news while you were in there."
Sam sighed and closed his eyes. "It took another child last night, didn't it?"
Dean didn't need to answer and grabbed his duffel on his way to the bathroom to put on his Fed suit.
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"What'd Bobby say?" Dean asked as they pulled up at the County Coroner's office and got out.
"That he's never heard of a Sigbin this side of the Philippines before and he'll have to do some digging." Sam followed him inside the low building.
The inside of the building smelled like every other Coroner's they'd been in; antiseptic and slightly minty air freshener trying to cover the musty scent of death that never the less lurked beneath and on the edge of the senses. The lobby was absurdly decorated with framed photographs of country music stars and cowboys hung on white walls over dented plastic chairs. A bored looking man in his twenties manned the desk and barely brought his eyes up to meet theirs as they showed their badges and requested the ME.
"Yeah, whatever." The desk clerk waved a hand toward a door in the far wall. "She's down in the crypt."
"Employee of the friggin month." Dean said with a laugh as they walked away. "Hope the Coroner's more with it than that guy." They headed through the door and down a flight of stairs, following signs through empty halls and pushed through the double doors to the crypt. Dean's eyes immediately lit up. An attractive woman stood over a covered body in the center of the room; chestnut brown hair was pulled back into a long braid and honey-gold eyes rose up to meet them, curiosity twitching a slender brow into her hair.
"Can I help you?" She asked and Sam was almost sure he heard his brother purr.
"We're Federal Agents." Sam greeted and gave his brother an elbow in the side to stop gawking. "We're here about the drained corpses."
"I was wondering if the Feds were going to show up at some point." She pulled off her surgical gloves and held out a hand. "I'm Doctor Fleures. You can call me Grace." She gave a pointed look to Dean as she shook Sam's hand, quirking her mouth up in appreciation.
Dean took her hand with a grin. "Our pleasure."
Grace's smile widened and she cleared her throat before dropping his hand. "Right, well. Bloodless bodies. This way boys." She headed for the wall of refrigerated doors and pulled open one at knee level. "Start with the freshest. This is last night's victim; Tony Hallard." She tugged out the gurney and pulled back the sheet covering him to reveal the white corpse. "Nine pints of blood lighter than he should be."
"Huh." Dean leaned closer to the man's shoulder. "Those wounds are awful damn neat."
"They all are." Grace pointed to his abdomen and upper thigh. "Whatever the weapon was it was narrow and sharp. Even the single puncture in his throat is clean." She leaned back, frowning. "There's no foreign material in the wound tracks. I mean nothing and all the bodies are like this. Like they were stabbed with…I don't know, air." She chuckled darkly and shook her head.
Sam took Tony's hand, turning the arm as his brows drew down. "No defensive wounds. He didn't fight this?"
"Well that's not as odd as the wounds." Grace turned to a table and picked up a file. "He had a fairly high blood alcohol content. All the victims did actually. Mind you, even plastered I'd still expect to see something, scraped knuckles, knees, something." She sighed and looked back at Tony's body. "It's like they just laid down and bled out."
"Thank you, Doctor Fleures." Sam smiled and turned to leave, noting with a roll of his eyes that Dean was lagging behind. Since he'd made the deal to save Sam's life, Dean had been jumping anything that crossed his path and, truthfully, Sam couldn't blame him so he stepped out of the room to give his brother time to flirt.
"So, Grace." Dean watched her push the gurney away and close the door and smiled when she turned to him. "You ever get a night off?"
Grace blushed prettily and nodded. "Been known to happen." She reached a bold hand up and straightened his tie with a smirk. "Call me when you get the chance. We can…compare notes."
Dean chuckled and nodded. "Count on it." He took her hand in his. "Call me Dean."
"Well, Dean you better get going before your partner comes looking for you." Grace said with a little laugh and pulled her hand away.
Sam stood up from leaning against the wall as Dean emerged, grinning happily. He smirked as his big brother slapped his arm and strode past. "So I take it that went well." Sam said to his back and Dean laughed.
"I'm definitely gonna need a checkup before we leave town." Dean said with a dirty grin.
"Please promise not to give me the play by play." Sam groaned as they headed back out.
Dean laughed. "If you'd get your freak on more than once a decade you'd be a lot less tense." He teased and grinned at the look of disgust Sam sent him. "I need food."
"You always need food." Sam retorted as they got in the car.
"Everyone needs food. You should try it." Dean shot back. "We're going to lunch and you're eating for a change."
"Dean…"
"Shut up, Sammy." Dean cut him off with a grin and turned the radio on, cranking the volume as they pulled out.
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They spent the day after lunch pouring through police reports and visiting crime scenes with little effect. The Sigbin left nothing behind to identify itself beyond the wounds and blood loss.
"Yeah, Bobby. Thanks." Sam flipped his phone closed and looked over to his brother as he pulled two beers from the fridge and held one up. Sam shook his head and Dean grabbed him a bottle of water with a sigh instead, tossing it over.
"So, what'd Bobby say?" Dean dropped into a chair at the table and cracked his beer.
"You're gonna love this." Sam took a gulp of water and sat across from him. "It's about the size of a large dog, has vestigial wings and my favorite; it can become invisible to humans."
"Oh that's just friggin peachy." Dean said, disgusted.
"Bobby says it doesn't feed from people directly. It feeds from their shadows." Sam raised a hand when Dean looked at him. "I don't know. Neither did Bobby. Somehow it feeds directly from a person's shadow."
"That's why the wounds were so clean." Dean nodded. "It never actually touched them."
"He thinks it should become visible while it feeds and he's pretty sure blessed silver will kill it." Sam told him.
"He thinks?" Dean raised his brows. "Well that inspires me with confidence."
Sam chuckled and set his water aside with a frown. "Must be coming down with something. Water tastes funny."
Dean chuckled. "You come up with the flu I am so not cleaning up your altar to the snot god again."
"Bite me." Sam smirked and looked at his watch. "If we're gonna hunt this thing we should get started. There's a park about six blocks from here that's roughly in the middle of all the attacks."
"Good a place to start as any." Dean stood and grabbed his jacket. "Let's lock and load."
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The park was more of a forested acre, crisscrossed with walking and bike paths, than a typical city park; trimmed expanses of well-kept lawns with scarce trees and abundant park benches. Katsky Park was a tamed forest of dirt paths and streetlights making beacons of light through the darkness as it descended. Sam and Dean had arrived ten minutes earlier and crouched a hundred meters or so off the main path, leaning against a large tree and waited for the park to close and the last of the people to trickle out. They didn't have long to wait. The weather was edging toward another record low winter and few people were brave enough to take a romantic walk or brisk jog in the nearly zero degree temperature.
"Ok. Ten o'clock. Parks been closed for an hour." Dean took out his flashlight and handgun, loaded with blessed silver rounds, Sam doing the same beside him. "Let's see if we can gank us a bloodsucker."
"Watch your shadow." Sam warned him as they stepped out onto the deserted path. Dean had wanted to split up to better search but Sam had adamantly vetoed that idea. They still weren't entirely sure how the Sigbin's feeding process worked and frankly, the park was too large. He didn't want to worry about one of them yelling for help only to not be heard. Dean had grudgingly given into his logic and strode ahead of him now, light sweeping back and forth across the path and into the bushes and trees on either side.
Sam kept his light down, trying not to throw his brother's shadow ahead of him and make him a potential target. He stumbled on the path and straightened, putting a hand to his head.
"You okay back there, Sammy?" Dean asked, suddenly in front of him.
"Huh? Yeah. I tripped." Sam said ruefully and waved him off. Dean gave him a look and shrugged, taking the lead again.
"Try not to trip over those flamingo legs of yours." Dean said with a laugh and didn't see the finger Sam cheerfully flipped behind his back. They passed beneath one of the staggered street lamps, the pool of light doing little beyond the trees, only lighting the path itself. It was quiet and just as he was sure they were on a wild goose chase, the crickets and lone owl that had been hooting in the dark went silent.
"You hear that?" Sam asked behind him and saw his brother nod. Something was close by and scaring the forest denizens. He stumbled again in a sudden wave of dizziness and shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. "What the hell?" He whispered. He looked up. Dean was twenty paces ahead of him, the streetlamp behind Sam throwing both their shadows down the path and into the bushes at the turn ahead. "Dean?" Sam called, feeling another wave of dizziness sweep through him. His mouth went dry as his vision began to swim.
"Sam?" Dean spun, hearing the odd tone in his brother's voice and saw him standing…wobbling behind him. "What's wrong?"
"I dunno." Sam was beginning to feel as though he'd had too much to drink which was ridiculous he thought, as he'd had nothing to drink. How could he be drunk? His thoughts were starting to scatter as he saw Dean take a few paces to close the distance between them. At the same moment, something large rustled in the bushes at the edge of the turn beyond them. "Dean…" Sam called and then cried out as something stabbed into his left leg just below his knee. He dropped to his knees in pain and confusion as Dean raced to him.
"Sam!" Dean shouted and slid down beside him, catching him as he tipped sideways.
"Dean…sh…shadows." Sam managed to get out around the cotton in his mouth.
Dean swung his flashlight up, following the line of Sam's shadow into the bushes. Something gave an inhuman scream as his light swept into them and he raised his gun, firing into the bushes as they shook. Another screech broke the night air and something big took off deeper into the forest.
"Sam?" Dean looked down to where Sam had fallen in front of him. "Hang on." He grabbed Sam under the shoulders and pulled him back to the streetlamp, getting him under it so there shadows all but vanished beneath them. He ripped a hole in the leg of Sam's jeans to get a better look and found two neat holes, bleeding profusely. "Crap. Sammy?"
Sam's head lolled back and forth. He knew he was lying down but it felt like the ground was spinning under him. "Dean…" He gasped. "Something's…somethin' wrong."
"Sam." Dean pulled him up so he was leaning against him, looking for more wounds. "Where else, Sam? Where else did it get you?"
Sam shook his head and tried to focus on the wavering image of Dean's worried face above him. "Didn't…feel weird. I feel…I think…Dean?" His head dropped forward, he could no longer hold it up and dimly heard Dean calling his name and shaking him while two red eyes peered out at him from the trees further down the path.
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To Be Continued…
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