I don't own Supernatural. Darn. I do own Asher Michaels and this story, excluding the bits from the show. My friend Shauna owns Amelia Shaw, and I am using her in my story with her permission. This fic is rated for violence, blood, language, drinking, sexual situations and, hopefully, some scary shit. I don't know how good I will be at writing scary stuff since I've never actually tried before. Enjoy the stories.


Monster Hospital, Book One: Zombies.
Chapter Two: Can't Get Away That Easily.


"You seemed awfully eager to gank that girl, Dean."

"She's a werewolf, Sam. We kill her kind for a living."

"But I've never seen you eager to kill a human before. And don't tell me she's not human, because you know as well as I do that three-quarters of the time, she's just like you and me."

Dean sighed and sat back in his seat as he drove. He knew Sam was right, but letting that woman—Asher—get away still went against everything his father had taught him. You kill the monsters. After the girls had left the house, Sam and Dean had argued about whether or not to follow them or finish up at the crime scene first. They'd picked the case. It had taken Sam a while to convince Dean that the current case, dead as it was, was more important than a werewolf who wasn't immediately dangerous, but he'd done it eventually. When Sam and Dean had made it back to the motel, the massive black pick-up was no where to be seen and the owner said the girls had checked out about half an hour ago. Using the excuse that Asher and Amelia were their sisters and there'd been some miscommunication about the location where they were supposed to be meeting, Sam had found out from said owner that the girls had drive east; if Dean had tried that, the woman behind the counter probably would have called the police.

"Let's just find them, okay? Maybe they picked up the trail of the demon."

The priest they'd been investigating had indeed been possessed by a demon—the boys had found traces of sulphur by one of the windows—but the thing was long gone and no one they'd talked to had seen any of the classic markers of a demonic presence in the area. So, they'd left. And decided to follow the weird hunters to see if they had any information.

"Whatever. Just don't attack her again."

Dean shifted uncomfortably. There was something he wasn't telling Sam, and that was that he knew Asher. He couldn't exactly place her face in his mind, but he knew he knew her. He had met her before, a long time ago. "I don't think we should just let her go, Sammy. I think she's the werewolf who killed that guy a few months back, and we picked up the trail that led to nowhere? Who knows what else she's done?"

Sam was quiet for a moment, thinking. "You mean the man who was growing pot in the basement?" he asked, voice mimicking the confusion on his face.

"No, the father of three who didn't even have a parking ticket in his record. That other guy was killed by that shapeshifter pretending to be a werewolf."

"Oh. Still, we never found any evidence that the mystery wolf killed anyone else, and we never found her. And that other girl—Amelia?—she said they'd found a way to keep Asher from changing or from killing people anyway. I think we should listen to what they have to say." Sam fixed his best pleading gaze on his brother. "We should at least give them a chance."

Dean sighed again, although this time, it was a lot less serious. Sam was right, again, but that didn't mean Dean had to like the idea, although part of him wanted to talk to the girls and see if he could finally place Asher's face. It was like an itch you couldn't scratch, or a song you couldn't remember the name of, and it would be satisfied until Dean remembered where he had met her. "Fine. When we find them, we'll see if they have any information about the demon and ask what they do to keep the werewolf on a leash and if it's a load of crap, which is probably will be, we gank her." Dean paused and mentally mulled over the harshness of his words.

"What's if your problem with her?" Sam asked after a moment.

What is my problem with her? "She's a hunter," he started. "And a werewolf. You can't be the good guy and the monster, Sammy… It just doesn't work that way."

"So what? You're just going to shoot her?" Sam's voice took on an accusing tone.

Dean was silent for a minute, chewing over his next words. Everything in his teaching told him to say yes, but there was a fairly large part of him that wanted to say no, that Asher Michaels was a good person, a hunter and deserved to live. And it wasn't just because he wanted to figure out where he knew her from. Would he be able to just shoot her without any provocation? "I don't know, Sam," he said finally. "This is a weird situation. Even for us."

Sam turned in his seat so he could fix the full force of his stare on Dean. "I get that," he said. "And I get that you don't like the fact she's a werewolf and a hunter, but that can't be the only thing making you hate her. Dean, I've never seen you hate someone so much without even knowing who they were or anything about them, Yellow Eyes being the exception of course, so what is it about her? Do you not like her haircut or something?"

Dean gave his brother a "what the hell?" look and then rolled his eyes. Okay, fine. I guess I have to tell him. "I know her."

"What? Wait, do you know her or do you know her know her?"

Dean shot his brother a disbelieving look but it didn't last that long; it was, after all, an accurate assumption to make from his statement. Dean did have a history, after all. "I just know her, but I don't know where from. I can't remember where or when I met her, but I know I've seen her before."

"Well, she is a hunter, presumably raised by a hunter—"

It was like a light bulb in his brain. "Sammy, do you remember Austin Smith?"

The younger Winchester stared ahead for a moment as he ran through his mental catalogue of hunters. After a moment, he seemed to find something. "He had the big dogs he took hunting, right? The German Shepards or whatever they were. And his house was almost as full of books as Bobby's, and he adopted those… two…" Sam looked at Dean, eyes wide with recognition.

"Yeah. He adopted those two girls. Dad thought he was crazy for taking them on, but Austin did it anyway and he trained them and, according to Dad, they became quite good."

"But that doesn't explain how you met Asher before. We never worked with Austin and the girls."

"You didn't." Dean shifted around in his seat for a moment. "The first time I saw her, it was when Dad was hunting a Wendigo when you were four I think. Dad needed a book or something and wanted to talk to Austin about some gun or something, but he was out hunting at the time. Asher, I guess it was, answered the door with a gun in her hand and nearly shot Dad and I before we identified ourselves as hunters. She was quite obviously a hunter. We left when she told us Austin wasn't home and it was after we drove away Dad told me who she was and what an idiot he thought Austin was being."

Sam nodded as if he understood and then asked, "Why wasn't I with you and Dad?"

"You were asleep in the car and Dad didn't want to wake you because you hadn't slept in a while." There was a note of bitterness in Dean's voice; he had long ago convinced himself that Sam was John, their father's, favourite.

"Oh. Okay, so you said the first time. Was there a second time?"

"I think so… Dad and Austin ended up chasing the same demon and we were chasing it through the woods. Asher was up in a tree or something and dropped a bucket of holy water and salt on the thing and then dropped down and tackled it. She nearly landed on me and then she almost shot me when I came through the bush."

Sam stifled a laugh. "Huh. You'd think she'd remember you."

"Well, it was dark and her and Austin were gone before Dad and I."

Sam nodded, and didn't bother asking where he had been. He probably had been at the motel room, anyway. In the earlier days, Sam had never gone on a hunt. In fact, he hadn't even known the monsters were real for a large portion of his life. "Okay, well, what does this have to do with why you hate her?" he asked after a moment. "Is it because she had essentially the same life we did and she turned into a monster? Are you afraid that you could turn into a monster?"

"No. I don't know. Maybe." As Dean thought about it, he realized he didn't really know why he hated her. He just did. Yes, a large part of it was the hunter/werewolf issue, but that wasn't all. Most of it was just… "I really don't know, Sammy. I just don't like her. I think she's bad news. If I'm remembering her right, she's always been a little hot-headed and that combined with being a werewolf can't be a good thing."

"When did she get bitten?"

"I don't know, but her temper can not have improved."

For a while after that, the Winchester brothers drove in relative silence. The only noises were Dean's classic rock blaring through the speakers and the roar of the Impala's engine. Eventually the strip of highway they were driving on was interrupted by a small town, and it was then Dean proclaimed it was time for lunch, and Sam's grumbling stomach agreed for him. They managed to locate a small café with internet access and a decent looking menu which included Dean's favourite food, cheeseburgers, and a selection of "healthier" items for the more conscious Sam. They picked a booth away from the other customers, not that there were too many of them, but when you were talking about the supernatural world, you didn't want anyone to overhear, lest they think you were crazy. They hunkered down in the booth and waited for the waitress to finish refilling coffees so she could come over and take their order.

While Dean inhaled his first cheeseburger and ordered a second one, Sam plugged in to the internet and checked the newspapers for the various towns in the area for any sign of demonic possession or anything else bizarre enough to need their attention. The younger brother was only halfway through his chicken Caesar salad by the time Dean had finished his second cheeseburger and started on his fries, but he had stumbled across something that wasn't the demon, but it didn't sound like anything they'd encountered before either.

"Look at this," he said excitedly, spinning his laptop around so his brother could see the screen. "What does this sound like to you?" Sam's voice betrayed the fact that he already had some ideas floating around his head.

Dean read over the information quickly. "Mutilated bodies and pieces of bodies showing up all over town… That sounds like zombies to me. But for the amount of carnage, there would have to be more than one zombie. Have you ever seen more than one zombie in the same place?" he asked as he shoved some more deep-fried potatoes into his mouth.

"Not unless they were raised by some spell. Do you think there could by a witch or someone behind this?"

"I think there's definitely someone behind this, but most people can only raise two or three zombies at once. At least, I've never seen anyone raise more. There would have to be at least five zombies to do this amount of damage I think. They're finding six or seven bodies at a time." Dean sat back in the booth and stared across at his brother. "This isn't going to turn out well, is it?"

"Does it ever?"

"No." Dean sighed and leaned forward, propping himself up with his forearms on the table. "Well, if Asher and Amelia are as good as they think they are or as good as Dad seemed to think they were going to turn out, then they'll pick this up soon, if they haven't already. They'll be in whatever city this is taking place in." He paused to look at the computer screen again, searching for the location. "Yeah, I can't pronounce that, but the girls will be there, and if we're so bent on talking to them about the demon and their werewolf leash, this will be the way to do it. Plus we get to kick some zombie ass in the process."

One side of Sam's mouth rose in the grin he got when he couldn't believe the words coming out of Dean's mouth. "Yeah," he said, "because that's the big picture. Kicking zombie ass."

"You bet it is."

Twenty or so minutes later, Sam and Dean had finished their food and were back on the road, heading east. Sam had his laptop open, going over the articles which he had saved, and trying to figure out what could be behind the amount of zombies in the town with the unpronounceable name and Dean was singing along with his music under his breath as he did some times when he was bored. It was a fairly typical situation, but as the highway dragged on through the middle of nowhere, they lapsed into complete silence, Sam absorbed with his task and Dean with staring at the road. That is, they sat in silence until Sam decided to break it with some more information he'd uncovered.

"There's one guy who seems to be in all the pictures from the newspaper stories," he said.

Dean snapped out of the trance he'd settled into. "Yeah? You think he's the one who's raising the zombies?"

"It's possible."

"Got a name?"

"Not yet, and there doesn't seem to be anything in the paper. I guess we'll have to wait until we get to Kl… this place in Pennsylvania to ask around and see if anyone knows him."

"Guess so."

As the conversation died away, Sam slipped farther into his seat and closed his eyes, his laptop closed and tucked safely away in his bag. Dean drove on, fighting the temptation to turn the music up really loud or pull something else that would wake his brother up. When he had finally overcome that urge, he instead concentrated on decideding who and what they would dress up as to gather information once they got to the city with the unpronouncable name. The sun began to sink lower as they headed down the highway and before long Dean's stomach was grumbling again and began looking for some place to stop. Any place that had beer and something meaty would do. It took a while, but a small place that looked decent enough finally emerged out of the highway shadows and Dean pulled into the parking lot, Sam waking up when the car stopped moving.

"Hey, does that truck look familiar to you?" Dean asked once Sam had regained consciousness and could focus on something other than keeping his eyes open.

Sam peered out the front window and brushed his hair off his face. "Yeah..." He turned to look at the restaurant, and sure enough there were Asher and Amelia, sitting by the window with plates of food in between them. "What is with Amelia and cowboy hats? That one's different than the black one she was wearing before."

"Who knows? Let's just go in and talk to them so we can get this over with."


Author's Note.

So there doesn't seem to be much interest in this fic so far, but that's okay. I'll keep writing anyway. Mostly for Shauna, whom I'm afraid will kill me in my sleep if I stop. (stupid grin) Plus, I quite like what I have planned with this fic, and like I said before, my brain is so full of Supernatural that this is just coming to me. So please enjoy and review!

Bonus points if anyone can pick the place in Pennsylvania that they're going to.

Oh, and I apologize for the chapter being shorter than the last one. There's not going to be a set length on these ones.

Next Chapter: Holy Shit.