Title: Death from Within

Author: Disasteriffic Kaz

Info: The Monster of the Week turns out to be more than the boys bargained for within an abandoned hotel in the Nevada desert. post 1x09 "Home" hurt/comfort/awesome!Sam/Dean

Author's Note: I'm working my way into this story. Lol Can you tell?

ALSO: No new chapters are likely until Sunday. Our lovely Janice has a busy couple of days and probably won't have time for them until then. In deference to that, I took pity and didn't cliffie. :P

Beta'd by the Always Awesome JaniceC678 - Friend and Muse's co-conspirator

**Follow me on Facebook as "Disasteriffic Kaz" for frequent fic updates or just to chat!
~Reviews are Love~

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Dean frowned while Sam went back to look over the body and promised himself to keep an eye on that hand. Disease free didn't mean Sam couldn't catch something from the dead guy. "Ok, back to the motel to gear up and then we'll go check out the Goldfield."

Sam nodded. "Works for me." He straightened his suit tie and pulled at the neck of his shirt while he followed Dean out of the morgue. He was more than ready to get out of the monkey suit as it seemed to get hotter the moment they stepped outside. "Next time you can crack the ribs open. Geez." The pain moved up his arm into his shoulder and he rubbed it to relieve the ache.

Dean strode to the Impala, gleaming in the late day sun and grinned. "You need me to kiss it and make it better, princess?"

"Bite me, Dean," Sam said with a dirty look and sincerely hoped this wasn't the first blood he was going to lose to whatever was killing people in the Goldfield Hotel.

Chapter 2

"Aw, what the hell is this?" Dean grumbled as he parked the Impala in front of the Goldfield Hotel and behind a truck and a van. "This place is supposed to be deserted."

Sam climbed out of the car and shook his head. "Tourists maybe?" He gazed up at the weathered building and then along its façade and frowned. "Dean." He pointed to the back end of a police cruiser just visible at the far end of the hotel in the fading daylight. Night would fall in minutes and the air already held a desert chill.

"Awesome." Dean rolled his eyes and checked to make sure he had his FBI badge. "Got your creds?"

"Yeah." Sam straightened his jacket and gave a lopsided smile. "I'll go talk to them. You get the gear."

"Hey! How is that a division of labor?" Dean snarked at him but headed for the trunk.

"I don't irritate local law enforcement like you do," Sam called back and strode down the sand-covered sidewalk in front of the hotel. There were only a few buildings left on either side of it, and they were all dark and boarded up, long since abandoned with the failure of the hotel. He rubbed absently at his left shoulder. It ached almost more than his hand at that point, but he shrugged it off as he neared the car and reached into his pocket for his fake badge. He froze with his hand mid-way as he reached the car and a last ray of sunlight shone on the trunk for a second before fading completely.

"Oh, crap," Sam said softly. He looked quickly around and drew his gun instead of the badge. He circled the cruiser warily with his eyes on the drying, bloodied handprint there on the white paint. Something bad had happened; that much was clear. He frowned again to find the cruiser empty and walked quickly back out from the side of the building.

"Sammy?" Dean called as his brother reappeared and he read the tension in Sam's body like a book; something was wrong. "Shit." He hefted the weapons bag higher on his shoulder and drew his own weapon when he saw that Sam had his gun out. "What's going on?"

Sam jogged back to him and shook his head. "I don't know. The car's empty but there's dried blood on the trunk so…nothing good."

"This just gets better and better." Dean looked up the tall front of the brick building again, and this time it appeared sinister in the deepening dusk. He shivered. "Lookie-loos and at least one missing cop wandering around while we've got something to gank."

Sam nodded and went to the front doors. He pointed to the tape with a raised brow and got an answering nod from Dean before he pulled the door open. It was surprisingly quiet, and Sam stepped into what had once been a grand entryway, leading with his gun. He fumbled his flashlight out of his pocket with his sore hand and whistled softly when he flicked it on. "This place must have been beautiful back in the day." He shined his light around the expansive lobby, wood tiling, and dusty chandelier still hanging overhead. "You know this place was built on top of two other hotels with the same name?" He looked over at his brother and shrugged. "They both burnt to the ground.

"Not inspiring me with confidence here, dude," Dean said ruefully. "Maybe it is a vengeful spirit after all. Don't suppose you found mention of anyone dying during the fires?"

Sam shook his head. "Nothing. Doesn't mean it isn't, but…" He sighed and looked around the lobby again. "I don't know. It doesn't feel like a spirit."

"Well, better safe than sorry." Dean pulled out his EMF and turned it on. It whined softly, but the needle stayed mostly in the green. "Huh. Nothing here, anyway."

"We should split up," Sam said and smirked when Dean opened his mouth to shoot down the idea. "Dude, this place is huge. Four floors in a U-shape plus the basement level, and I've got the spare EMF." He put his flashlight in his mouth for a moment to reach in his pocket and turn it on. He pulled the flashlight back out and smiled. "I'll hear it if anything ghostly tries to pop out at me."

Dean opened his mouth, closed it and glared. "Thought you said it didn't feel like a spirit. There's plenty of other stuff that will leave you dead and bloody that doesn't set off the EMF. You call me every ten minutes. I don't hear from you, I'm calling you, 'cause you're right; this place is huge. I'd never hear it if something did take a chunk out of you."

"I'm not a kid, Dean," Sam said and rolled his eyes before heading to the left wing. "I can handle myself. You should worry about who drove those vehicles out front." He looked back at Dean with a grin. "Could be a cheerleading team."

Dean blew out a breath and flipped his brother off. "It's called a squad, Sam." He waited a moment and then chuckled. "You see a door with a pom-pom a-rockin' on the knob, keep walkin'."

"Dude, don't put those images in my head!" Sam groaned and quickly headed away before Dean could disturb him further.

Dean chuckled and took out his own flashlight. "Geek," he said softly and started into the right wing. He heard Sam sneeze from the other hall and snorted. "Serves him right," he laughed under his breath and started pushing open long-closed doors onto empty, or nearly empty rooms. He had worked his way almost to a door marked 'stairs' when his phone vibrated in his back pocket. The low hum was eerily loud in the silence and made him jump.

"You still kickin'?" Dean asked as he answered the phone and could picture his little brother rolling his eyes.

"Yes, Dean. Nothing's tried to eat me." Sam shook his head fondly for his big brother's over-protective streak and smiled. "Where are you?"

"Getting ready to head up to the second floor. I got bupkis so far. You?" Dean aimed his light into a last empty room and went for the stairs.

"The same. Found a lot of footprints through the dust, but that's about it." Sam put his hand to his suddenly upset stomach and grimaced. "No blood. No bodies. No nothing."

"Ok, ten minutes and then check…" He broke off when he heard the sound of Sam gasping softly. "Sammy? What's wrong?" Dean started back the way he'd come instantly with worry flowing through him. Why had he let Sam go off on his own? What the hell had he been thinking after what had happened back at Lawrence?

"Geez, Dean. It's a stomach cramp," Sam said dismissively. "Calm down." He rubbed a hand over his stomach, pleading silently with it to stop and breathed a sigh of relief when the cramp eased.

"You sure?" Dean asked and slowed his pace at the clearly unworried tone of Sam's voice.

Sam chuckled. "Unless you really feel like you need to run over here and bring me some Rolaids. Yes, Dean, I can handle a stomach ache."

"Ten minutes," Dean said shortly and ended the call on his brother's laugh. "Pain in my ass, Sammy," he muttered and turned back to the stairs.

Sam sighed and pushed open a set of double doors onto an old kitchen. For once, he wasn't lying and trying to cover up a worse injury. It really was just a stomach cramp. His left hand felt a little too warm, but that was likely a response to the injury and nothing to worry about so long as he kept it clean. "Such a mother hen," he said with a smirk as he thought of Dean and shone his light around the big room. There was precious little left of the kitchen. The appliances had long ago been carted away. All that remained were countertops with missing drawers and the hoods that had once covered the ovens. Everything was covered in a heavy layer of dust, and again Sam found footprints, some beginning to fade under the dust and others more crisp and recent as though the feet that had left them had been through recently.

"Hello?" Sam called hesitantly. If there were other people in the building, he didn't want to startle them by sneaking up and waving a gun around. His voice echoed in the room and he shrugged. He searched the room and found three entry pantries and two refrigeration units whose doors had been torn off at some point in the past.

Sam headed back to the hall and just as he opened the door, a horrible, agonized scream echoed through the building. "Dean!" Sam shouted and ran for the stairs while he fumbled his phone out of his pocket, his stomach pain forgotten. He ran up the first flight of stairs and was dialing Dean one-handed by the time he hit the second. He almost dropped his phone when it rang in his hand and he answered it in a rush.

"Dean! Are you alright?"

"Sammy?" Dean's voice rode over his brother's. "Was that you?"

Sam slowed for a moment at the top of the stairs and caught his breath. "No. No, it's not me. I'm fine. So it wasn't you?"

"Holy crap." Dean was dizzy with relief for a second and steadied himself on the wall. "Not me either, but it's on the second floor where I am."

"I'm coming up to you." Sam pulled open the door onto the second floor and waved his flashlight around the darkened hall. "I can't hear anything now."

"Me either, but I think it came from somewhere in the center of the building." Dean propped his phone on his shoulder so he could have both hands free for his gun and his light. "Sweep in from your side and call if you find something before I find you."

"Same goes." Sam swallowed the lump of cold fear that had lodged in his throat when he'd heard the scream and put his phone back in his pocket before starting a quick search of each room as he passed. For a moment, he'd kicked himself for leaving Dean on his own. It wasn't that his brother couldn't take care of himself, but Sam never would have forgiven himself if something had happened to Dean, especially when he had been the one to push for splitting up.

Sam moved more quickly through the halls and rooms than he had on the floor below, intent on finding Dean and finding whoever had screamed. He didn't think they were going to find anyone alive, not after that sound. It was the kind of scream a person only made when they thought their life was about to end. He would know. He'd heard it often enough in his life, and they had not always gotten there in time. He paused at a corner when he heard footsteps and tightened his grip on his gun.

"Dean?" Sam called and smiled when he heard the soft whistle. He stepped around the corner and watched Dean jogging toward him from the other end.

Dean gave Sam a quick look up and down when he reached him, making sure he wasn't sporting any new wounds and then nodded. "There's a set of double doors back there," he told Sam softly. "Sign on them says 'ballroom'. I'm betting that's where our screamer is."

"Let's go." Sam strode along beside him and knew they were both now hyperaware. He could see the same tension in Dean's movements that he knew was in his own. They reached the doors and Sam took one leaf while Dean took the other.

Dean held up three fingers, counted in his head, and together they pulled the doors wide and slid into the room with their flashlights sighted along their guns. "Son of a bitch," Dean breathed and for the second time that day was fighting to keep his lunch where it belonged.

"Oh, my God," Sam whispered. Several tables had been set up though two were overturned. Boxes lay strewn about and several computers still sat on the one standing table, their screens lending an eerie, blue light to the scene. Blood had been sprayed everywhere. It looked like someone had taken a paint brush and tried to cast it as far and wide as possible. In the center of the destruction lay a body. "Is he…"

"He's twitching. Holy crap, he's still alive. Sam." Dean nodded and started scanning the room with his light.

Sam followed the unspoken order and went to the victim. The man lay on his back. His right arm was gone at the elbow, and his left leg looked as though someone…or something…had tried to twist it loose at the knee. Sam knelt by his bald head and the twitching stub of his arm and put his fingers to the man's neck. "Yeah, he's alive. Barely. His pulse is weak." He turned to find Dean. "We've got to get him to help quick."

"Crap," Dean moved closer to them and ground his teeth together. "It'd take an ambulance an hour to get out here."

Sam shoved his gun at his back, trusting Dean to protect him and pulled over a few lengths of wire. "We can take him. You'll get him there faster." He hastily tied one length of the wire above the man's elbow and pulled it as tight as he could until he saw the blood flow begin to slow.

Dean shook his head while Sam moved to the man's leg and repeated the act of tying the wire around below his knee. It was a desperate attempt to save someone Dean was sure was probably already dead, but that was Sam. If there was a chance, he was going to try. "I'll hotwire the truck out front. We can lay him out in the bed and you keep him still while I haul ass."

Sam looked up from tying the wire with a grim smile. "You're just gonna leave the Impala out front?"

"Well, he's not bleedin' all over my interior!" Dean said firmly, but it wasn't just that. The man was too tall for them to put him in the backseat, not with his injuries. "If he lives, that leg is gone."

Sam nodded solemnly. "We need to move."

"I don't like this," Dean said softly and took a last look around the ballroom. "Why'd it - whatever it is - just leave him like that? And where are the others? He didn't come here alone. There was at least one other person driving that other car."

"Don't know." Sam took the man's head and shoulders in his arms while Dean moved to his feet. "Gift horses."

"Yeah." Dean picked up the man's bottom half as carefully as he could with a grunt of effort and tried to keep one hand free for his gun while Sam's flashlight shone from his grip across the man's chest. "This is gonna be awkward."

"Should be stairs across the hall somewhere." Sam tried not to think too hard about the blood slicking his hands and had to adjust his grip for his sore left hand. "Leading down to the entrance hall." He grimaced as they moved and his stomach cramped again. Sam shoved the discomfort away. There was no time for it with a man's life at stake. They found the stairs and started down them as fast as they dared with the man's considerable weight. "What are we…gonna tell…hospital?"

Dean snorted and tried to watch where he was putting his feet, wondering how he ended up walking backward down the stairs instead of Sam. "I dunno. Can't say we…found him…crap, hang on." Dean stumbled slightly and righted himself. "Can't say we found him here. It'd be crawling with cops…shit, this guy's heavy."

Sam nodded. "'Til he wakes up…and tells them. Almost there."

Dean glanced over his shoulder and saw the bottom of the stairs. "Dude." He looked up and met Sam's eyes, not needing words to communicate what he thought the odds of the man ever waking up were. He looked away from the sadness in Sam's eyes. Losing people was never easy. It didn't matter that they didn't even know the man's name. He was their responsibility now along with anyone else who died before they finished the job. And that brought up another sticky dilemma. "Sam, you know there's gotta be at least two more people in here somewhere; the cop and whoever drove the other car. We take this guy into town, we're gonna be abandoning them…and considering the condition he's in..."

Sam glanced up at him, and it was clear from his expression that the same thought had occurred to him. "I know," he said sadly. "But we can't just let him die if there's even a chance."

Dean nodded, knowing that Sam would never be able to live with himself if they didn't try. On his own, Dean wasn't sure what choice he would have made. He hated the idea of abandoning anyone who might be left behind. When they got to the main lobby area with the door just feet away, he paused, looking back into the depths of the building. Taking a breath, and breaking every rule he had learned about NOT attracting attention to yourself on a hunt, he yelled as loud as he could, "Is there anyone here who needs help? Anybody?" The sound seemed to echo around the empty building, but there was no answering cry that they could hear. Not wasting any time after having created such a commotion Dean signaled to Sam to move again and they quickly exited the building.

The drive out of Goldfield and into Vegas was a mad rush along mostly empty roads until they reached the city. Dean had easily hotwired the truck and wove in and out of traffic with the ease of long practice. Sam braced himself in the bed of the truck with the man's upper body in his lap so he could keep him as still as possible. He smiled grimly down at the stranger as he held on to life in spite of the odds. The man was tough.

Dean parked in front of the first emergency room he found and was out of the truck and running inside for help. He spun a story of finding the man on the road outside of town and jogged back out to find Sam already opening the bed of the truck. "He's in the back." Dean told the nurses with the gurney and moved to his brother as Sam jumped down. "What?" he asked under his breath. Sam had a strange look on his face.

Sam shook his head for Dean to wait while they maneuvered the stranger out of the truck and onto a gurney. There was a pool of blood in the bed of the truck, smeared this way and that from the hectic drive. Once they were alone, Sam went to rub a hand over his face and then grimaced at all the blood, dried and fresh, on his skin. He dropped it to his side and met Dean's eyes. "He woke up about ten minutes ago, just for a minute. He had two other people with him in the hotel."

"Son of a bitch," Dean groaned while guilt twisted in his gut at the now sure knowledge they had left people to die in there. He grabbed an old rag from the truck bed and tossed it to his brother. "What'd he say?"

Sam got in the passenger seat as Dean went around and climbed behind the wheel. "He kept muttering about someone named Ellie and another guy, Joe I think he said; but mostly he called for Ellie." He wiped at his hands with the rag, trying to clear the blood away as best he could and the blood-soaked gauze around his left hand made his stomach churn unhappily again.

"He mention what did that to him?" Dean asked while he pulled away from the hospital before someone inside remembered to come looking for the good Samaritans with questions.

Sam shook his head. "No. Just that it got his friends. He said it took them, whatever that means."

Dean reached over and pushed the weapons bag between them toward Sam. "Get that gauze off your hand and clean the wound before it gets infected or something." The gauze he'd put over his brother's palm was dark with the man's blood and made him nervous. "Maybe we should go back and let them look at that."

"Dude, it's fine," Sam said quickly and dug the alcohol and a fresh roll of gauze from the bag while he rolled his eyes. "Better than it was, actually. My arm stopped hurting finally."

"That's a relief." Dean aimed them out of Vegas again. He wanted to call it a night and go back to their motel, but if the man they'd saved had woken once, he could wake again and they might only have hours before he told someone where he really was and the Goldfield would be crawling with cops - cannon fodder, he thought to himself as whatever was doing the killing was clearly vicious.

"I wish he'd told me his name," Sam whispered while he poured alcohol over his hand, letting it run down onto the floorboard. He clenched his teeth at the sting and then started wrapping a fresh bandage around it. "I checked his pockets. No ID."

"Hey, he made it that far." Dean smiled at Sam. "The guy's a fighter."

"We have to find his friends." Sam tossed the alcohol and gauze back in the bag. "One way or another, he should know what happened to them." He settled a hand over his stomach and the lingering ache there while they drove.

"We'll find them." Dean's eyes were firmly on the road but his thoughts were ahead with the old hotel and how they were going to find something in a place that big without one of them becoming lunch.

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To Be Continued…