Part One
Amory, Mississppi
Twenty-Four Hours Ago
Sam opened his eyes to the soft insides of the Impala's back seat, and to the sounds of Dean fixing the carburetor. This was something that Sam never attempted himself, not knowing the difference between a socket wrench, and a sock. So he left it all up to Dean.
Sam yawned hugely, and very much like a puppy awoken from a nap right before petulance set in from being conscious. He stretched his arms out high above his head. This, of course, naturally produced a coughing fit that rattled his eyeballs like spare change stolen from somewhere where spare change was kept. The coughs hit him with such a medium amount of force that he hurled himself back against the seat of the Impala, hands buried deep into the thick leather in a bone-knuckled grip.
Dean raised his head from his position all up inside the engine block of the car, greased up like a man who knew how to work mechanically. His Sammy Senses tingled erratically.
"Sammy?" The size five socket wrench clamored uproariously into the wires of the car battery, short circuiting it instantly as Dean ran to the Impala's opened back left door.
"Sammy!" Dean took in the sight of Sam braced back against the bench seat, coughing with a deep, medium force, with total fear in his eyes. He knelt down and held his brother's neck in his hands. "Hey, Sammy, kiddo, buddy bear!" Dean gripped worried fingers into Sam's wrinkled plaid shirt that smelled like it had been slept in and not washed in a week. Also, there were some phlegm smelling patches near the elbows that Dean couldn't account for. "Tell me what's wrong!"
"No I'm fine!" Sam said to Dean reassuringly. "Please, I think it's just a lil cold!-" Like a perfectly timed stage cue, Sam's nose began to drip little snot drips of yellow and green from both nostrils like a leaky faucet.
"A cold?" Dean barked a laugh like a seal, or a junkyard dog. He stood up and slapped the wind out of Sam with one hand.
"Guh!" Sam said in offense, rubbing at his ribcage.
Dean looked at him in amusement "Bitch."
"Shut it jerk!" Sam hacked coughs into his hand, mixed with drips from his snotty nose.
"No way bitch!" Dean shot back with emphasis. They, of course, still called each other these names, they just wanted to do it way more than they was normal for them for some reason.
Sam huffed at him, muttering one last "jerk" under his breath in petulance. He blew his long flowing, unruly bangs up in a ruffled formation.
"Damn dude, you get a prissy cold and you act like that?" Dean laughed again, bracing one hand against the car door to keep himself from falling over into the dirt.
"Die can'd help dit, D'n!" Sam said in a voice that greatly exaggerated his clogged up nasal passages that had chosen that moment to clog up on him. He pinched his nostrils closed, then released them, smelling his own boogers. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and found a pathetic looking piece of wadded up tissue. He blew hard onto it's crumpledness; feeling the waistband of his pants side off his hips from the force.
Damn. Sam worried. I lost weight. He thought worriedly again about something else because worriedly was the only way Sam ever thought. He hadn't been able to eat anything for five days except for a single packet of week old McDonalds salad croutons he found under the seat. Dean had been too busy eating his artery clogging burger or pancake tower at every diner they hit to even notice how Sam was getting only enough nutrients to sustain a piece of paper. At least until they both climbed inside Babyand the worn leather and closeness to his brother, and the broken whatevermacalit inside the hood had made Dean be his big brother again, and watch Sam like a hawk of some kind.
Sam tried to breatheagain,but it felt like bullies had pounced on him and jammed quarter sized pebbles up his nostrils. Sam made a softer 'guh' in protest at his lack of breath. His had used the only tissue he had, so he burrowed his nose on the fabric of his shirtsleeve.
"Sammy you sound like crap-on-toast," Dean said matter-of-fact as he watched as Sammy tried to blow his nose in his sleeve. Kid couldn't use a tissue to save his life. His sleeves were always caked in some sort of nasal slime, so much so that Dean had taken to rolling up Sammy's shirt sleeves three times each time he helped Sammy get dressed every morning.
Sam bitchfaced at him not really knowing what crap on toast tasted like. But, he was sure it meant something gross and nasty, and oh, all this talk was making his stomach queasy! Why did he think that?
Without warning, Sam shouted "look out!" to Dean before he crashed onto his knees on the dirt and upchucked the small amount of stale croutons and sips of water he had managed to consume.
Can croutons go stale when they're just stale bread? Sam thought as he threw up and then threw up some more.
Dean pulled Sam up from the dirty dirt and lifted him up into a bridal carry up and away from the sickness. He laid Sam down gently across the backseat, pillowing his jacket underneath his head, stroking his hair and humming "Smoke on the Water."
Sam opened his eyes, feeling grit the size of boulders in them, he took a swipe at them and called out for his brother: "D'n."
"Right here Sick!Sam Dean reassured, fingers idly tracing Sam's long hair with a purpose to reassure Sam that he wasn't alone.
Sam sighed in deep contentment and started to cry from the relaxation produced from Dean's presence.
"That's my boy," Dean said with a smile and a whistle at Sam. "C'mon Sammy, let's get you someplace warm. It's 75 degrees out here, too cold for your delicate senses!" He closed the door carefully, hitting the top of Sam's head only once with a gentle 'bonk' knocking his brother out to a peaceful sleep. He raced around to the driver's side and turned the key. The engine started, and he put the car in 'reverse' then in drive, then in another gear. He drove like a speed demon, avoiding the roads and driving in the soft tilled dirt when he could. He turned rear view mirror to face Sam's now sleeping face completely, watching him snore sickly, ignoring the screeching of cars he almost collided with.
"Don't worry Sammy," Dean said with sorrow "I'll fix you!" He pushed the gas pedal harder with his foot.
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The hotel had only one room with two tiny single beds, but Dean was too sick with worry to care. He blew into the parking lot, flung open the doors, grabbed Sammy by the shoulders and carried him bridal style again into the motel. Sam's eyes opened blearily from the movement, rolled up and back, and left and right in his head as he searched for something familiar because the movement scared him like all things did when he was sick. "D'n D'n!"
"Take it easy kid. M'right here!" Dean reassured laying Sam on the bed, underneath the covers in one fell-swoop.
Sam's stomach rolled like a bunch of hamsters all competing to get on the same hamster wheel.
"Sammy, what's the matter?" Dean's brow furrowed deep enough to plant a garden in. "You look like a bunch of hamsters are rollin' around inside ya."
How did Dean know his thoughts? Sam nodded furiously at Dean, blinking a bunch of times, like Morse code that signaled: "Deany, Dean, Dean!"
"Now you're thinking how I did that," Dean said aloud what Sam was thinking to himself making Sam's eyes go wide from fever induced confusion/fear. "You have a fever lil brother, you need to rest, you have pneumonia I can feel it- I'll make you some soup!"
"Dn' stop shoutin'," Sam said, raising sick hands to his ears, rolling onto his side. But he had no balance since he was grappling with a fever and a cough of medium force. So he ended up rolling off the bed and landing on his legs, hearing them break instantly because he hadn't been eating the Flintstone Vitamins with Calcium for strong bones like he should have.
"Ow!" Sam said sharply, unable to move. "D'N!"
But Dean had walked out of the motel to the local diner across the street to get Sam his soup without Sam himself noticing. Sam groaned in pain, which only exacerbated his medium cough making him gag and cry weakly. He had no strength to get up, so he remained on the floor, crying, waiting desperately for Dean to come back and rescue him before he succumbed to the elements.
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"Thanks hun," Dean balanced two Styrofoam trays on top of each other. One had a Quadruple-By-Pass burger with extra wild hog deep fried bacon and five pounds of fries; and the other was a container of broccoli soup and Cool Ranch Sun Chips (Sam's favorite combination). He paid the cute diner waitress at the register who was smiling and flirting at him.
"Sure thing," The waitress took the money from him with another smile and handed him back his change. "Take good care of your brother."
Dean looked at her, confused. "How'd you know I had a brother?"
She pointed to the items balanced on top of the teetering pile in his hands. "Broccoli soup and Cool Ranch Sun Chips? That's what I feed my brother whenever he gets a cold or stomach flu. He's seven now, mom got a late start."
"Nothin' wrong with that," Dean flashed her the Winchester Smile.
"How old is your brother?" the waitress asked, instantly swooning at his beautiful face.
"An infant when he's sick," Dean smiled sweetly at the thought. "But he's my little guy."
The waitress smiled even more, eyes going dewy. "He sounds adorable." She pushed an extra bag of Cool Ranch Sun Chips at him. "On the house for him."
Dean looked at her in bafflement, wrinkled two dollars already held out for her in payment. "You mean free?"
She laughed again. "Yeah, but it's not charity darlin'." She reached out and touched the stubble on his cheek that hadn't seen a caring female hand since his mom and before Lisa had been brainwashed away from him.
"It's love," she said. "Just like how you love your brother."
A single tear of the deepest emotion slid down Dean's face as he took the extra bag of free Cool Ranch Sun Chips for Sam. He walked away before the clerk could fully seem stream down his cheeks.
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"Sammy!" Dean opened the door wide, then remembered he was shouting and Sam hated it 'cause he hated that kind of thing when he's sick. So he lowered his voice to a whisper and a question mark. "Sammy?" He stepped inside the hotel room, not seeing Sam anywhere.
Fear instantly surged in Dean's heart at the trouble a sick, fevered, delirious Sammy wandering around the two lane low traffic road alone could get into. "Sammy!" He walked all around the twenty square foot hotel room, even looking under the bed and behind the shower curtain. But there was no sign of Sam.
He walked in worried frustration over the giant bump in the crappy motel carpet before looking down and finding his pen that he dropped yesterday. He picked it up happily, but soon it fell unhappily as he saw the shape of his brother lying all crooked on the floor, both legs clearly broken.
"Oh My God!" Dean fell to both knees beside Sam. He gently rolled Sam onto his back, feeling his legs break only once more (thank gawd) before he was able to see Sam's terrified, tear streaked face.
"It's all going to be perfectly fine Sammy!" Dean told a bold faced lie as he reached down and manipulated Sam's legs into a lying down position to save time so he could just slide him back onto the bed easier. "M'helpin, M'here, M'mhmm."
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Sam blinked his eyes open in a sense of disbelief because his last memory was himself lying on the floor in a terribly uncomfortable position. This brought tears to his eyes because he had thought for one terrifying moment that he had been kidnapped by another ghost-wendigo-vampire-alien (well, maybe not alien, they weren't real) hybrid that always lurked in small town hotels and honed in on him likes bees honed in on a naked man covered in honey. He never really questioned why this was, or why they didn't go after Dean too; he was always too busy being kidnapped like Daphne from Scooby Doo to do more thinking and less screaming for Dean to save him from the latest thing that he fell/stepped in/or was turned into.
He kept blinking up and down, up and down – and the world looked like a broken filmstrip from his third grade class. That was the year where the bullies picked on him and called him eight-years-old, and stole his lunch money until Dean beat them all up with his sword and gave Sam a million bologna sandwiches to eat for the reset of forever.
"D'n?"
"Don't move Sammy!" Dean rushed over to Sam with a pot of instant soup bubbling in his hand, noodles hard and straight because he was a failure at cooking when he was afraid for Sam because of a cold and broken legs. "Just, don't move!" He pulled a funnel out from the pocket of his jacket where he kept his hunter's knife, sword, battle ax, and mace, shoving them under the bed after they all fell to the floor in a clang of noise that made Sam jump and claw his way up the curtains.
"It's okay Sammy," Dean removed Sam from his clinging grasp on the curtains and carried him back over to the bed one handed, balancing the pot of soup in his other hand like the pro that he was. "Don't be scared buddy, angels are watching over you."
Sam blinked again, afraid of the word: "angel." "D-D-D-"
"Shh," Dean sat on the edge of the bed and petted his brother's hair and laid him down on the stack of pillows as tall as Mt. Kilimanjaro on the bed so that Sam actually got taller lying down than sitting up. "Drink all of this good soup, okay little brother?" He placed the funnel carefully into Sam's mouth and began pouring it down his throat. "It's Bobby's secret recipe, he got it from a Shaman medicine man two towns over."
"What's it called?" Sam croaked.
"Cup-A-Noodle," Dean said the name reverently and watched Sam repeat it in the same manner because Bobby was an expert on everything and knew a great many things that they had never even heard of before.
Sam continued to swallow the soup going down his gullet like grease in an old coffee tin, his final chokes telling Dean that he had had enough. Dean poured the broccoli soup from the diner down his throat next, and it burned, and the broccoli got jammed half in and half out of his throat, but Dean called him a "bitch," so he kept quiet and waited until he could breathe again.
"All gone!" Dean removed the funnel from Sam's mouth and wiped it with the packet of Wet Wipes he kept up his sleeve, looking on adoringly as Sam instantly passed out from the warmth of the amazing concoction. Dean tiptoed up off the mattress and tiptoed over to the sink, washing the pot and funnel and half watching Sam, and half humming that tune by Taylor Swift that he secretly adored.
He reached over and grabbed the sheets off his own bed, ripping them up into small pieces. He then wove them into a perfectly shaped cast for Sam's broken legs, slipping them on over his jeans, humming more Taylor Swift as he did so. He was amazed at how innocent and bloody someone looked with a head cold and two broken compound femurs set with only ripped up bedsheets. Dean blamed himself for Sam's weak bones; he had failed in his attempts to get his 33-year-old brother to take his Flintstone Plus with Calcium. That, and Sam was a stubborn ass.
Dean thought all this affectionately as he brought in parts of the Impala's engine to weld together to keep himself busy so he wouldn't over worry about Sam. He kept this up for hours at a time, until Sammy had to use the bathroom and he had to help him not be scared of the sound his broken legs made when he walked.
On one of his many rounds with Sammy, Sammy cried out that his face was burning. Dean reached into pajama pocket, pulling out his thermometer. He gasped at the reading: "99.3", almost a fever! Dean immediate sprang into Big!Brother!Dean!OhYeah! action and coaxed his bedraggled little brother back into the bathroom.
Dean cranked on the faucet from a bear claw tub that was missing one of its front bear claws so that it wobbled like a boat in a turbulent storm. The tub quickly filled with rust flecked water, sloshing out onto the tile below.
Sam stared glassy eyed at Dean from his precariously balanced position sitting on the toilet and leaning against the towel rack. He mumbled incoherent things as Dean fiddled to undo the buttons on his shirt, cursing his dexterity that decided to take a dirt nap at the very moment he needed it the most to help a brother out.
"Okay Sammy, this will be cold, so don't be frightened-" Dean warned in a soothing-I'm-going-to-do-it-anyway kind of voice.
"Dude-" Sam blinked through eyes the color of hot electric stove burners, head cocked to one side like puppy with an earache. "did you just say frightened?"
Dean suddenly closed his expression down and thought hard for a moment. "I. don't. know-" he blinked like he tried to clear away a hangover that he'd forgotten about.
Sam stared at him like some of his bricks were loose. "You don't know?-" Sam repeated Dean's words like he had misheard him. His eyebrows knit together in confusion, watching as Dean stared at the thermometer that he still clutched in his hand like he would a bloody, severed, finger. "Dean, what is going on with you?"
"Me?" Dean said. "Nothing-"
"Really?" Sam returned, sounding more lucid than he did a second ago, which made more sense than being struck down by a temperature that wouldn't put a field mouse out of commission. "Because you sound like you snorted brown acid-"
"I do not."
"Dean you just told me not to be 'frightened' of cold water." Sam took a step forward and elbow planted into the bathroom floor, tripping on a loose string of sheets wrapped around his legs like mummy bandages. "What the hell?"
"I don't know man!" Dean threw up his hands in frustration, chucking the thermometer away from himself like it was a live grenade. It broke into pieces against the cracked tile that had been cured an egg yolk yellow from stains. "It's like I was suddenly possessed by something."
"You mean like a demon?"
"No man," Dean answered like he wished it had felt like demon possession. "It was like I knew what I was doing, but I didn't know what I was doing."
"That, doesn't make any sense-" Sam sat back on the tile, rubbing at his bruised elbows and yanking off the torn scraps of fabric from over his jeans.
"Yeah, tell me about it," Dean ran a frustrated hand through his hair, looking towards Sam with wide eyes at him standing on what he thought should have been two broken legs. "I should've known something was up when you were whining in that diarrhea diaper voice earlier about a friggin' runny nose." He walked out of the bathroom, Sam following him.
"I wasn't whining," Sam interjected, a little off put.
"Dude, you were saying guh, what kind of word is that?" Dean returned, not off put at all about addressing his sole right to have topped Sam's point. "Winchesters get possessed, stabbed, or killed Sammy, we don't break our damn legs from falling out of bed, and we don't get sick. Name the last time either one of us has had a cold?"
"Actually, I can't." Sam stared at the tub of rust filled water, wondering just what the hell would have gone on next.
"See?" Dean returned, "I can't either. And if we did we wouldn't be a little bitch about it," He reached into the weapons duffle and pulled out his silver Colt, sliding the full clip into his hand then pushing it back into the gun to give his hands something to do besides want to feed Sam broccoli soup and Cool Ranch Sun Chips? What the hell?
"Do you think Chuck is writing again?" Sam threw something out of left field.
"Chuck wouldn't write this way." Dean insisted, stashing the gun into his jacket with a satisfied extra addition of weight inside the pocket. "And he sees the future, he can't create it, remember? And if he did he wouldn't make it this doushy-"
"Becky?" Sam suggested.
"Sam, Becky watches Rom Com in adult footie pajamas, she doesn't have the mojo to bend time and reality like this-"
"And the only Trickster we know is a dead archangel-" Sam said. "So what do you think we're dealing with?"
"Maybe Metatron?" Dean suggested. "He is the Angel of Doushy."
"Yeah, but, stroking my hair while humming Smoke on the Water like you did for that shifter baby? That's a pretty bizarre fetish, even for Metatron."
"You remember that?" Dean said in a clearing-his-throat-kind of voice.
"I was awake," Sam returned, actually clearing his throat like the weird feeling would diminish, which it didn't. "So yeah- Believe me, I don't want to either."
"So what we know about whatever's behind this is a whole lot of nothing, that's just, perfect-" Dean took his gun out of his jacket and cocked the hammer with a resonating click, heading towards the door of their motel room.
"Whoa," Sam started to follow him. "What are you doing? -"
"I'm going to take care of this-"
"With your gun?" Sam returned.
"You're damn right with my gun," Dean threw back, waving the gun like a signal flag. "I'm tired of being yanked around like some puppet in a Bunch and Judy show."
"Dean-" Sam blocked Dean even more with his height, making his label as little brother a bit laughable in the physical sense right now. "First of all its Punch and Judy-" Sam stopped talking when Dean glared at him in a way that said: man and tried to push past him, but Sam blocked him with a hand on his chest. "And you're not about to just wander around a small town looking for things to shoot at!"
"Whatever we're calling this thing, it's sick, Sam!" Dean cut in. "If you want to mess around with someone else's life, you need to get your stories straight, not Mad Lib it up!"
"So you want to combat something crazy, by waving your gun around and acting crazy?" Sam said this like Dean was holding a piece of poop in his hand and pretending that it was his gun.
"Unless you need me to sit here and spoon feed you broccoli soup with mashed up Cool Ranch Sun Chips then, yes, Sammy, that's exactly what I'm going to do!" he turned and set his hand on the door knob.
"No you're not," Sam grabbed Dean's wrist off the knob and twisted it around and pulled the gun from his hand all in the same movement.
"Sam-"
"Dean, NO," Sam slid the clip of the gun into his hand and cocked the chamber to pop out the bullet that was already engaged. He placed these items in the back pocket of his jeans and tossed the gun back to his brother.
Dean caught his gun with a steel melting look at Sam the eventually melted into a sigh because of the look Sam matched it with. "You can such be a little bitch sometimes."
"You're damn right I can," Sam returned.
"Glad we cleared that up," Dean ran a weary hand though his hair. "Alright, grab your stuff, whatever the hell is screwing with us isn't doing it at the State Road 15 Super 8."
"Right," Sam walked over to the bed, his boot bumping against something half hidden beneath the unmade comforter of his bed. He bent down and grasped some kind of handle, then a second one; pulling the heavy objects up off of the floor.
"Dean-" In Sam's right hand was a laybrs- a double headed Greek Battle axe made of solid bronze with a handle length spanned his entire upper body; and in his left was a forged black iron Mace with razor sharp iron spikes "These aren't mine."
Dean gave a what the hell? look at the full on battle axe Sam was holding up. "What the hell is this thing? -"
A knock came from the motel room door, jerking Dean's look away from Sam. The knock came again, louder, and the door knob began to wiggle.
Dean turned back around to Sam in silence, and Sam responded by tossing Dean back his loaded gun clip.
Sam set the axe and mace down as carefully as their weights would allow on the bed, throwing the unmade blue sheets over them both, before reaching into the weapons duffle for his own gun.
He clicked off the safety and moved closer to the door, his gun drawn. Dean walked right up to the door and pressed the muzzle of his Colt against the blue painted wood.
Dean slid out the bolt from the door's chain lock, twisted the knob, and opened the door with a fast movement.
Sunlight poured into the room followed by jangle of keys and a startled gasp of: "Oh my god! -"
A woman stood there in a pink diner waitress uniform, complete with white frilly apron, tennis shoes on her feet.
Dean lowered his gun from the door, but kept his finger on the trigger. From across the room Sam did the same.
Dean eyed the woman up and down. "Can I help you?"
"You forgot this," the woman spoke in a breathless voice still somewhat in shock of being so abruptly set upon. She held up a brown paper bag out to Dean, smoothing the flyaways of corn silk colored hair back up into her bun. "Goldfish crackers? For the soup? My shift ended five minutes ago, so I thought I'd just bring them over-"
Dean stared at her like she had five heads. "Lady, who are you?"
The woman's face fell for a moment like he was telling a joke that she didn't get. "Suzanne- I work at the diner across the street-" She pointed behind her to the white concrete building that sat across the one lane highway attached to a truck stop and a gas station. "You came in to buy some stuff for your baby brother, you said he was sick-" She broke off, glancing behind Dean and into the motel room. Her eyes met Sam standing there, and no one else. "Oh-" her eyebrows knit into confusion that was laced with more than a bit of embarrassment. "From the way you talked about him, I thought your brother was a child-"
"Where'd you get this room key?" Sam pointed to the gold key in her hand attached to a green plastic key fob.
"My parents own the hotel," Suzanne said by way of explanation. "I asked them for it. I told them that this sweet guy came in, all concerned for his little brother who had a cold-" she broke off, her embarrassment colored her almost a fire engine red at the sight of Sam, well over six feet tall, standing in front of her. "I'm sorry, he really was speaking about you like you were five-years-old or something. I gave him soup and a free bag of chips, then he cried-one, perfect tear-"
Sam's eyebrows raised at the mention of Dean crying one perfect tear over free chips.
"It was so heartwarming-"
"Alright," Dean cut Susanne off with a wave of his hand."Before I came in did you notice anything different, or smell anything?"
"It's a diner," Susanne returned. "I smell a lot of things-food mostly."
"Anything that smelled like rotten eggs?"
Suzanne shook her head in answer to Dean's question. "No, we may be a small town diner but we're up to code." A bit of edge went into her voice.
"Did anything strange happen before he showed up?" Sam asked Suzanne, gesturing towards Dean.
"Like X Files strange?" Suzanne said, her eyebrows narrowing again. "Sorry if you got the wrong idea here guys, but we're not one of those roadside attraction places- we're a legit business. I did the same thing I do every day. I served breakfast, couple hours go by, then lunch happened, then he showed up, right after Safi left."
"Safi?" Dean cut her off.
"A regular. Sweet kid," Suzanne spoke in the casual manner of small towns, where everyone knew everyone enough to not be on guard when talking about them. "Foster parents took her in after her mom dumped her at the motel about a year ago."
"Safi?" Dean repeated again. "That's not a common name you hear every day."
"That's because she's not from here originally," Suzanne's voice stalled like she had reached her small town talking about everything limit.
"She's not? -"
"I've already said too much," Suzanne said. "You guys aren't from here, you got no right asking about people."
"We're sorry, we're not trying to be nosy-" Sam held up his hands as if he was surrendering, his eyes flashing sincerity. "But the key in your hand kind of gave us a reason to be." the sincerity gave way to a slightly hardened edge.
Suzanne stared down at the key in her fingers like it had burned her. "I don't know much about her background-she was around eleven or twelve when she first came here last year. But you could tell she wasn't native to America, her hair is jet black and her English is accented. I can't tell what exactly, but it's like Middle Eastern or something. She started coming in to the diner when I my dad hired me on. She told me how the kids at her school make fun of the way she talks," Suzanne spoke in a way like she knew what that felt like. "I usually pay her bill with my tip money. She always carries this little notebook with her, it's painted gold or something. She had it when the police found her; I think it's a diary, because she's always writing in it." Suzanne paused. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this, but that's all I'm telling you, she's just a kid." The silence came hard and awkward after she finished. She fingered the keys in her hand, and the bag of goldfish crackers like it was a bag of dog poop she was about to give them. "I'm sorry for barging in-" she said no more to that and just left, leaving the door wide open to the sounds of the parking lot.
Dean closed the door after Suzanne left, returning the motel room to the dim lighting of three table side lamps.
"So, I guess that officially rules out Crowley and the Gang," Dean clicked the safety on his gun and tossed it on the bed. "Demons don't have the best track record with possessing little girls," He turned one of the dinette chairs around and sat on it, rubbing at his eyes like the confusion of the last few minutes was something tangible he could wipe away. "Now we just have to spin the wheel of crazy to see what this thing is."
"I think I already know," Sam cut in.
Dean glanced up at Sam, in bewildered confusion. "Don't strain yourself Sammy."
"Shut up," Sam walked to the table, pushing aside the opened Styrofoam container half filled with broccoli soup that had congealed into a single cold lump. He brought up his laptop from the brown leather messenger bag that sat on the floor. The screen woke up in a few seconds from its sleep mode and Sam's hands clicked and moved over the keys. The sounds of his fingers stopped after about a minute and Dean's curiosity piqued at the look on Sam's face. "What is it?"
"Safkhat," Sam answered.
Dean looked at him. "Gesundheit."
Sam turned his laptop around so that the screen faced Dean with a painted image of a woman in Hieroglyph Profile in a long gown made of leopard skin. "The Egyptian Goddess of Writing."
Dean pulled back from his forward leaning position in the chair. "You gotta be kidding me-"
"According to this she is credited with inventing writing."
"So what you're saying is that she writes something and it comes to life?"
"More or less," Sam said. "It also says she was a scribe, and you remember how Cas told us that Metatron was able to manipulate reality by making it seem like Gabriel had come back to life? Safkhat must possess the same kind of mojo-"
"So she's like Metatron, but with teenage angst, great." Dean's hand was back to running over his eyes. "Why is she so interested in fangirling out our lives? Shouldn't she be out smiting people and making blood sacrifices like other ancient gods?"
"Why don't we ask her?" Sam returned. "She gets free food at the diner. Let's see if that includes dinner."
"And what keeps her from having me braid your hair and putting you in footie pajamas? Or you crying about coughing?" Dean asked. "Obviously the antipossesion tattoos haven't stopped her from dicking around."
"How about if either one of us catches the other acting out of character, we just- punch each other in the face?" Sam said the last part like it was an easily accessed remedy for ancient Egyptian goddesses who screw with people's heads.
"Oh yeah, that's a great plan," Dean threw back.
"You got a better one?" Sam returned.
"Yeah," Dean flipped the sheets off of Sam's bed, picking up the iron mace, examining it like he was checking the balance in an arrow, then reached for the axe, which he nearly dropped from the weight. "See if one of these shoved into her face kills her."
Sam gave a brief laugh of disbelief. "Dean, neither of those are Egyptian weapons, and I doubt she's stupid enough to write something in that she knows can kill her."
Dean dropped both weapons down on the bed with a thump that cut a hole into the mattress. "So you just want to find her, and then what? Bounce her royalty checks? She's a goddess Sam, I doubt she'll just drop her stylus because we asked her too."
"We bind her," Sam stood up and walked over to where his duffle bag lay open on the bed. He reached into and the bag, feeling past all the soft layers of shirts and rough, faded denim until he pulled a thick heavy mass of iron chain and heavy manacles etched in spell work. "Add some Egyptian hieroglyph spell work into these and hold her until she stops."
"And what if she doesn't?" Dean threw out.
Sam looked at him with a right cock of his head. "You know what."
Dean cocked his head at Sam in the opposite direction. "Sam, we don't even know how to gank her."
"The diner doesn't start serving dinner until five," Sam returned in a voice that said he had had enough of being screwed with. "We'll figure it out."
Dean's head leveled back into a straight angle on his neck, a smile creeping towards pride on his face. "Alright then."