2 -Illusions of Safety

Sam liked Hector and Cecilia , he really did, but he was still really pissed off at their Dad. He'd been tempted to say so to Dean, but he knew he'd make a joke of it, so he said nothing.

What was the point of any of this? Dad breezed into their life for maybe a week, and then went out again, to be seen ... whenever. Did they matter to him at all? Dean would claim that they did, but honestly, going by his actions ... they were a pain. A responsibility he didn't want, or a reminder of his dead wife, or both. And Sam was fucking done with it.

Frankly, he wanted to stay in the same school for most of a year. Would that be so bad? He wanted to run the tables of his grades, maybe get a college scholarship, and be done with this madness. Especially after that thing with the oni. Yeah, he and Dean took it down, so yaay them, but why did they have to? And how many people got hurt due to their Dad's carelessness, and their flailing to find an answer? Sam didn't like to think about it too much, because the guilt was overwhelming. He wished he could be Dean, and drink it away, or never really think about it. However he coped.

That was a cop out. Dean coped by combining denial with drinking, and occasional other vices, including sex and drugs. Dean was a mess. But Dad didn't know. He was the good little soldier for Dad, and the moment he was gone, he was swigging from his ever-present flask, or sneaking out at one in the morning. Sam was willing to bet Dean thought he didn't know about that. He thought he was a lot smoother than he ever really was.

Actually, Sam was willing to bet cash he didn't have that both Dad and Dean thought he didn't notice quite a lot of things, or that they were successfully protecting him from them. He stopped thinking they thought he was stupid, though. They thought he was young, and missing things simply because he had his own drama to deal with, but he saw everything. Well, almost everything.

Dad was keeping something from both of them. After New York, he and Dean compared notes. They both knew they were being left out of some loop, that Dad was doing something he wasn't telling them about, but they had no clue what. When John Winchester wanted to keep a secret, goddamn it, he could. Sam thought they should confront him about it, present a united front, and make him tell them, but Dean insisted that wouldn't work, that it would probably have the opposite effect and make him dig his heels in deeper. Dean was most likely right - was there a more stubborn asshole in the world than their Dad? - but he didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. Okay, so, maybe some of that pettiness ran in the family. Lies and pettiness. What a great bloodline.

Sam didn't feel good about being in such an isolated place, although New York kind of drove him crazy. It was crowded everywhere, and there was nothing but asphalt, and it gave Sam heretofore unknown feelings of claustrophobia. He could now worry that he had become somehow allergic to big cities, no matter how boring he found rural towns. It made him afraid that he wouldn't be happy anywhere, another Winchester affliction he didn't want. God, they were all so damaged - could an entire family get a do-over? Because they desperately needed one.

Hector's and Cecilia's place didn't quite evoke the same feelings of home that Bobby's did, but it wasn't as messy or melancholic as Bobby's place either. It looked like a home sane people lived in, mainly because all the hunter stuff was hidden. Like, there was a fake wall panel beside the bookcase, very well camouflaged, that contained a variety of hunting goods, from salt to weapons. There were many hidden caches like this inside the cabin, but the best was in the kitchen. If you looked beneath the rug by the stove, there was a trap door. It led into a thing that pretty much didn't exist in most of California - a basement. Well, a glorified root cellar. But Hector and Cecilia made it themselves, and it contained lots of the heavier weaponry and supplies, and also had a hidden hatch that led to the outside. Because Cecilia was big on having an exit point. Her major hunting tip was to always have a back up exit strategy in case things went tits up, which was just good general advice as far as Sam was concerned. When things went bad, running should always be an option.

Because this was still a cabin, no matter how many renovations they had done, he and Dean basically had to share the back library, which was turned into a guest room, but that was okay. Sure, they had their own rooms at Bobby's, but you couldn't help but get this sad kind of feeling at Bobby's place after a while. He seemed to be a man haunting his own house. It was too big for him alone, at least in theory - piles of books and artifacts had shrunk the dimensions of each room, making them more manageable. Bobby had refused to tell him how he got into hunting, because it was apparently sad and he didn't like to talk about it. But Sam and Dean had pieced some of it together. It involved his wife, that much they knew. And it was a shock to think that Bobby had ever been married. The fact that all hints of his wife had basically been scrubbed away was also a pretty chilling detail.

Sam put his backpack on his bed, and sighed, glad to be rid of everyone for the moment. At least it was easy to find peace and quiet here. He could wander into the woods surrounding the cabin, and spend the whole day away from everyone. Which sounded like a good plan. He was going through his bag, picking out a book to take with him, when Hector showed up and knocked politely on the open door. "Hey kiddo, I was wondering if you'd like to help me with a project."

That surprised him. Usually he wrangled Dean for one of his projects. "What?"

"I'm putting together a sort of mystical lock box for an artifact. Thought you might like to help me with the warding."

Sam couldn't help but be intrigued, almost in spite of himself. "What kind of artifact?"

"Come on, I'll show you."

Part of Sam knew this was a trap, but he went anyway, dropping his paperback on his bed and following Hector. The cabin had a small woodshed in the back, and he went there, with Sam following behind.

The woodshed was somehow smaller than their basement, but at least it was warmer and brighter, and smelled of wood chips rather than soil. There wasn't much in it besides a work bench and a wall full of tools - no hidden caches here - and on top of the work bench now was a small bag of silky blue cloth, which couldn't have looked more out of place. "I'd tell you to keep it a secret, but any adults saying that to kids makes my skin crawl," Hector admitted, opening the bag. "But, please, let's keep this in house, okay?"

Holding it by its very corroded looking chain, Hector pulled out a necklace. It looked both old and gaudy, with some kind of metal in a starburst pattern as the pendant, and in the middle was ... a gemstone? Except, no, it wasn't, because it appeared to be a deep blue-black, which was not a gemstone color Sam was aware of, and also, unless it was a trick of the light, it appeared to be moving. Just swirling back and forth inside the gem bubble. "What the hell ..?" He leaned in for a closer look, but Hector pulled it back.

"Ooh, try not to touch this. That's why I'm building a box. The bag's great, but blessed cloth can only go so far."

That was a new one to Sam too. Blessed cloth? "What is this?"

"It's the Star of Anqara."

Weirdly enough, Sam had heard of that, thanks to Bobby. It was basically one of the holy grails of hunters, an artifact everyone wanted to find. It was an amulet either created by a black magician or a demon - it depended on which one of the variations of the tale you heard - that had the "soul" of a demon in it. Which brought up so many theological issues it was a nightmare, but that was besides the point. It could supposedly do a whole host of evil things, and killed the person who wielded it, so it was a kind of a mystical suicide bomb. You got one chance with it, so you had to make it count. Attempts to destroy it had been many and futile, and it had been hunted for for centuries, according to the tales. Also, according to the tales, there were some people who would pay out the nose to own it. Like, up into the millions of dollars, which seemed crazy to Sam. It was an old - and apparently tacky - necklace that could only bring misery, and would instantly kill you regardless. Why would someone want it? "Holy shit. Where did you find it?"

Hector put it carefully back in the blue silk bag, making sure the pendant part came nowhere near him. "You're not gonna believe me, but me and Celia came across it at an estate sale of some former Hollywood producer. Can you believe that? And to make it worse, it was lumped in with a whole bunch of costume jewelry. Apparently no one involved knew exactly what they had. We bought the whole lot for twenty bucks. Which reminds me. If you have someone you don't like very much who you still need to get a present for, I can give you a fistful of ugly jewelry."

That made Sam smile. Maybe he should give Dad a big, garish brooch for Christmas. "So what are you gonna do with it?"

"Well, destroying it is apparently out of the question, so I've decided to hide it. I'm gonna put it in a couple of warded boxes, and bury it in the forest. Most likely under an animal carcass or something, something to discourage anyone who might look for it." Hector reached up, and pulled a box off the one high shelf. It was clearly handmade, and very well done for it, although currently missing a lid. There was one sigil on it that Sam recognized, and it meant unbreakable, or something like that.

Hector also shifted what looked like a small collection of papers on the workbench towards him, and Sam saw it was a sort of cliff notes of symbolism. "I need to decide what else I'm gonna etch on this box. I have limited room, and I have to make every one count. No one can ever find this thing, by accident or on purpose. So I'd appreciate the input."

Sam looked at the pages, scanning what he had. Cecilia could have helped him with this, so could have Dean, but he picked him. Maybe he was just throwing a bone to the poor, forgotten younger kid, but Sam would be lying if he didn't admit that it felt really good to be needed for once.

John already knew doing a hunt with Bobby was not going to be pleasant, not after how they left it last time, but he was trying to keep positive. Maybe they could set aside their differences, and just work to solve this common problem like grown ups.

And maybe the yellow eyed demon would write him an apology note and bake him a batch of cookies.

They had fought about what they always fought about - the boys. Bobby didn't approve of the way he was raising them and whatnot, which seemed rich coming from a man who had no children, and had basically dedicated himself to a life of monster hunting solitude. Also, what about that time he put the boys in danger? He knew there was a torture demon running around town, and he actively encouraged Dean to ignore his order to get Sam out of there. Sure, it turned out okay in the end - okay if you considered Dean being in the hospital for a few days okay, which he did not - but it could have gone badly in a million different ways. He didn't care if the boys wanted to stay and help him run it down. They were boys, and they should have had no part in a demon hunt.

But John told himself he was going to bigger man this time. They had a job to do, and to be brutally honest, it was probably way too much for them alone. Bobby said he knew some good hunters who would be able to help them, and John was trusting that Bobby actually did. He couldn't get into an argument with him about the boys.

He could save that for after the job was done.

John rendezvoused with Bobby at a cheap roadside motel outside of Tulsa, where Bobby had been for the last couple of days gathering intel. Bobby let him in, and both he and John managed to be civil and not get into a screaming argument. So far, so good.

Bobby's motel room was small, and really quite homely - the best he could describe it as was refugee '70's decor - but it didn't look super lived in. At least Bobby had actually been out doing his job. John had no idea why he opened his closet door, until he saw a map tacked up to the inside of it, and ringed with photographs. "This is where the howls are staying," Bobby said, pointing at the photo on the bottom right.

John leaned in for a better look. It looked like a sprawling ranch house, very average, only notable for being somewhat large, and set back on a good chunk of property that had probably seen better years. "The owners haven't been seen for over a week, so I'm thinkin' ..."

"Wolf chow?"

Bobby nodded, lips thinned to a grim line. "It fits the M.O. too, since nowhere they've stayed has ever had a living witness left behind." Bobby moved his finger to the map, and a line drawn on it in Sharpie. "There's a back road to the property. It isn't paved for the last half mile, but we don't wanna go in that far anyway. No matter how noisy it gets, they're gonna hear car engines."

"Noisy?" John wondered.

"They throw week long parties at whatever place they're staying in," Bobby said, rolling his eyes. "The only difference between their parties and your average dirtbag rager is they leave bodies behind with the beer cans."

This brought up an aspect John hadn't considered before. "There aren't civilians at these things that aren't prisoners, are there?"

From the way Bobby sighed heavily, he knew the answer before he said a word. "Sometimes, yeah. If it makes you feel any better, most don't leave alive or human."

Great. That complicated things. "How many people are we looking at here?"

"That's a hard question to answer. Usually no more than a dozen or so, but it varies. If we attack after one in the morning, most of them should be gone or passed out."

"And the wolves should be drunk off their asses, which may give us an edge. How many other hunters are coming?"

"Jack and Rosie are already here," Bobby told him. If he was reading his posture correctly, Bobby was tired. But who wouldn't be after tailing these assholes? "Rufus is too busy with a haunted house in Detroit, supposedly. Julie should be here within the hour, and I haven't heard back from Jeff, so we might have to go without him."

"They good?"

Bobby gave him a scalding look, but if he was going to snap at him, he managed to hold it back. "Very. And all have dealt with werewolves before. No rookies on this squad."

"Good. I'm ready to roll out when you are."

Bobby let out a humorous grunt as he closed the closet door. "You might wanna cool your jets there, sport. We got four hours 'til midnight, when we should head out. I'm gonna go get something to eat." Bobby shrugged on his coat, and walked towards the door. He paused before stepping out, and politeness overcame their natural wariness of each other. He turned back, and asked, "Wanna come with?"

John could just imagine how tense that would be. It would be like eating with a wolverine, and wondering when the little bugger was going to try and rip your throat out. At least Bobby felt much the same way about him. "Nah." He opened the closet, and gestured at the photos. "I'm gonna get more of an idea of the layout of the place."

Bobby nodded. "Good idea. There's some more photos on the nightstand, but most are pretty worthless. Lock the door when you leave."

"Sure." As soon as Bobby was gone, John let out a breath he hadn't even realized he was holding. It was amazing to think they'd once been pretty good friends. Well, kind of. And now they could hardly be in the same room together. Would he even deal with Bobby anymore if he wasn't one of the better hunters he'd ever met, and so generous with the boys? Because John knew, if he stepped away from Bobby like he honestly wanted to, it would break their hearts. And hadn't they had enough of that in their lives already?

John examined the map and the photographs, and had to admit on a very good day, he couldn't have even done half of this. In theory, since they knew the layout this well, it should have been easy. Sneak up, put some silver in some werewolves, and put an end to this particular nightmare.

But why did he have this feeling it wouldn't be that simple at all?

N.B.: Creating my own continuity again. The demon incident John refers to happened in my story Gehenna.