The thing was, Sam knew the books were just appearing. He knew, because Dean had started to look through all the drawers and cabinets when they booked into any new motel – and he never found a thing. But Sam... Sam opened a dresser drawer, or a wardrobe, or pulled back the shower curtain... and sure enough, there was a book. A tatty paperback with dog-eared pages and coffee cup rings on the cover and pages that would sometimes just fall out of the wrecked bindings. He had read most of them before – a hundred different schools and a hundred different English teachers with idea on what consisted of a 'real' novel to structure their classes around had widened his material. Sometimes though, like today, when he'd found a well worn copy of 'The Pearl' under his pillow, he remembered that there were so many books out there he'd never read.
Dean wasn't happy, but books? Really, if they were being haunted by the literary version of the tooth fairy, Sam wasn't going to complain. But he'd stopped mentioning the arrival of new reading material to Dean. As far as he knew, his brother thought that he was still working his way through 'The Hobbit' and didn't want to know.
He didn't mention that sometimes he'd open a drawer and there would be the lingering smell of... something. Something nice and familiar that made him smile despite the damp air in the room, or the frigid cold of the sheets.
Yeah, that and it wasn't actually possible for the half thought that formed in his head every time he picked up a gust of that scent to be real.
Dean had just gotten off the phone from a tense conversation with Ben, who had been introduced to Lisa's new boyfriend and hadn't liked him. Dean could tell as soon as he'd heard his voice that he'd been crying, and it hurt him worse than a punch to the gut. I know you aren't in love with mom, he'd said, but can you just come back for me?
He dialled the other number with shaking fingers and tried not to think about the words 'deadbeat dad' because Ben wasn't his kid, he wasn't – and Dean had no reason to feel guilty about leaving.
"Dean?" The voice on the other line was distant, crackling and so unexpected he hung up before thinking. A few quick breaths and he dialled again, fingers perfectly steady.
"The number you have dialled cannot be connected. Please hang up and try again later." The robotic female voice intoned. He hung up and looked at the screen. Maybe he'd just imagined it?
His thoughts were interrupted as Sam pulled open the passenger door and climbed inside. The seat was pushed back as far as it would go to make enough space for his huge frame, but every time he folded himself in to the space, Dean wondered if his baby just wasn't practical anymore.
"You okay, dude? You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Nah." Dean shrugged, not bothering to mention the voice on the line that he'd obviously imagined. "Just a hard call with Ben."
"How is he?" Sam didn't really get it, Dean knew. He didn't know why Dean kept calling, didn't understand that Ben was the nearest thing to a kid Dean was ever going to get and he loved him. God, he loved that kid.
"Lisa invited her new boyfriend to dinner." He said, in way of an explanation. Sam frowned, like any moment he was going to start asking Dean about his feelings and if he wanted to 'talk it out' which wasn't going to happen. "So!" He said, hands finding the steering wheel and gripping it with familiar fondness – god, his baby was so good to him – "Where to, Samsquach?"
"Take the 218, keep going left till you hit Madras." Sam said, distracted by Deans question and forgetting to talk about his feelings. "Then down the 97 till you hit Bend. Something in Shevin park is eating campers – I heard it on the local news when I was checking out."
"How far?"
"We'll be there in a couple of hours." Sam said, and Dean couldn't help but sigh.
"What the hell is going on that all these bugs keep jumping out of the woodwork?" He complained as he pulled out of the parking lot. "Two town's within spitting distance?"
"If we can figure it out today we can just move right on to the next one." Sam sighed at his side. "I'm pretty sure anywhere we go we're going to have to deal with some kind of job."
"We aint getting paid enough for this, Sam."
"We aint getting paid at all, Dean." His brother reminded him. Like Dean needed reminding, with a knife wound on his hip, a limp when it rained, and a hand-print burned into his shoulder. No amount of money would be worth it, anyway, he thought, absent-mindedly rubbing his hand over his shoulder as he drove out of the tiny town.
Stiles wasn't panicking. Well... okay, he was panicking, but he was doing it on his own, in his bedroom, where no one else could see, so he could deny it later. The power was out of the street. Probably out for more than his street – he couldn't see any lights when he looked out of his window.
His dad hadn't come home. His dad hadn't come home and there was no answer at the station – and to make matters worse, he knew the moving shapes outside were normal, human shapes. Carrying baseball bats and other assorted make-shift weaponry. He was home, alone, and – yup, the smashing of glass confirmed it – about to get his house robbed. Normally, he'd just head downstairs with his loud mouth and his brash over-confidence. He couldn't do that now, because he knew that there was more than one of them, and he'd get his ass kicked. They had weapons. Stiles was so fucked.
He used his mobile to send out a mass text to everyone. 991 HQ – dds hve wepns. Snd hlp ASAP. He hit send and waited, hand tightening around his lacrosse stick. When his bedroom door bust open, he smacked out with a mixture of panic, rage and practice. You didn't get to hang out with a pack of werewolves if you couldn't hold your own in a fight. He'd managed against an Alpha, he could manage a dude with a bat.
Turned out there were three of them, and Stiles just wasn't that good.
He wasn't sure who lifted the guy who was testing out his new boots on Stiles ribs, but he sure did like the heavy, solid sound of him being thrown across the room. He wasn't going to try to talk right now, not with the blood in his mouth and the burn in his lungs, but damn he wanted to say something. Something like 'You messed with the wrong human, bitch!' but all in all, he was just pleased that he didn't pass out.
"Stiles!" Scott called, sounding like he was in the hallway, followed by another solid smack. Suddenly the darkness didn't seem quite so oppressive. He was being helped to his feet, hands clutching at leather (so Derek was the one doing the throwing of his attacker) and blood probably getting everywhere as he gasped for breath as he tried to work his legs. He gave a splutter, trying to breathe through the pain, trying to apologise for bleeding on him.
Werewolf eyesight was better than human eyesight, so Scott didn't have any issue with getting up the stairs and into his room in no time at all. "Stiles!" He gasped, diving for him and propping him up much better than Derek was managing. "How many of them are there?"
"Three." Derek said, voice dark and rough. He must have wolfed out. "There are others next door."
"Gotta help!" Stiles tried to say, but the blood and the pain made it hard to pronounce the words right.
"I'll take Isaac and clear out the houses." Derek said in response, and Stiles felt himself slump in relief. There were good people in his street. Regular families, kids. He nodded, hoping that the Alpha understood all the things he wanted to say, but couldn't.
"Dude, I'm gonna have to take you to the hospital." Scott said, walking him carefully to the door. Each step hurt like hell, and he let out a groan. Normally they avoided hospitals, they had to – what with all of the injuries received being from supernatural goings on. This time though, it was all human, and Stiles felt all too human now. He managed a nod, worried that his tongue was working its way around his mouth and he was sure one of his teeth was moving in a way it shouldn't.
Scott helped him into his jeep, Boyd showing up suddenly, eyes flashing gold in the moonlight. "You can't take him to the hospital." He said, and he was out of breath. He lived on the other side of town. To get to Stiles, he would have passed the local hospital. "The place is in darkness. Not sure what's going on."
"My mom is working tonight!" Scott said, pulling away from Stiles and shooting panicked looks about the dark, deserted street. "Stiles is hurt, I need to see if my mom is okay."
A smash, followed by a scream, in the house across the road from them, made Boyd shrug at Scott and dive across the road. Stiles felt useless, hopeless – he knew that things were bad and he was too beat up to do a damn thing about it. Scott dove into the driver's seat and started up the Jeep, turning to Stiles as he pulled out of the narrow driveway. "What is going on, Stiles? Why is this happening?"
God, he wished he had an answer, he thought, as pain bloomed from his ribs and blood dripped out of his mouth. He wished he knew.
The hospital was running on the emergency lights, they knew before they even pulled up, because the normally bright building had only weak yellow lighting shining out of the windows. Scott half carried him from the Jeep, Stiles was trying to stop himself from poking at that tooth that just felt... wrong. God, had the actually knocked is teeth out?
The ER waiting room was bursting with people. Blood everywhere. There wasn't a seat to be had, people were actually spilling out into the corridors, the harassed woman at the desk didn't look too happy to see more people walk through her door.
"You'll have to wait." She waved to the crowds of people already there. She didn't even bother asking them for details.
"My mom works here." Scott said. "Is she okay? We heard something was going on here."
"Whose your mom?" she said, picking up the phone on her desk and hovering her hand over the dial.
"Melissa McCall." Scott supplied quickly. "She's a nurse in the ER ward."
A few moments later, they were sitting in the nurses lounge with Scott's mom carefully examining his face. Sometimes having a best friend like Scott had some great perks.
"They broke into his house." Scott was telling her as Stiles tried not to call out in pain. He was sure that Scott wasn't going to mention the tears running down his face. It wasn't his fault, he couldn't help it. "Derek got there first." Scott added. His mom was one of the only people who actually liked Derek. She thought him staying with Isaac was 'good for them both' and thought Scott could learn a lot more from the Alpha if he just listened.
"Well at least someone is looking out for you." She said, "I want you to keep as close to him as possible until I get home. Actually, ask Isaac if you can stay at his tonight." She added.
"Will Stiles not need to stay here?"
"We've not got enough room anymore." Melissa sighed. "We've got beds in corridors, and upstairs is out of the question with all the Flu cases we've got. The power cut was the last straw." She said, shaking her head. "They are going to close the hospital to new patients. If you'd gotten here in an hour, you'd be sent to St Marys."
"That's over two hours drive away!" Scott said. "What about Dalton?"
"The closed it this morning." She said, working on bandaging Stiles up. "You've got a couple of broken ribs, and you've bitten your tongue, that's where the blood is coming from." She told Stiles. "Normally we'd keep you here and do a few more tests, but I don't think that's a good idea right now."
Stiles nodded. He could see the dark shadows under her eyes and the way she looked at them both, like she wanted to just hold them tightly and not let go. He wasn't going to argue, and he didn't want to go back to his own house – not without knowing if it was safe.
"Okay, so try not to eat anything for a while, okay, take a couple of painkillers if you need them and please... please just be careful?"
Scott nodded for them both, and Stiles felt a strange hurt in his heart when Scott pulled her into a tight embrace, head tucked into her shoulder. He hated it, because he knew he was jealous – of a damn hug, for Christ sakes. He looked away and tried not to think about his own mom, and how her hugs were the best.
Bend was larger and busier than most of the towns they'd been to recently, but it had that desperate stink about it that he just couldn't place. Everyone walked down the sidewalks with blank expressions or those white hospital masks – you saw those more and more now, as people tried to stop the spread of the Flu that was now Pandemic.
It didn't make sense though, that the Flu was so damn dangerous, but the news was saying that nearly 75% of people over the age of 60 who contracted the illness had already died. Babies were the most at risk, and hospitals were now not allowing visitors into the pre and post natal areas at all. You never saw a stroller on the street.
Not only that, but acts of domestic terrorism were being reported all over the country. Gas stations and power stations were the targets of choice, although police stations and airports had been mentioned as well.
Demon activity was through the roof. They just didn't care anymore, Dean thought. They were out of the pit and throwing a party. All those black eyes fuckers who'd thought that Lucifer was some kind of bad guy bedtime story had proof that he was real – he'd walked the Earth – and they'd gone and grown a set of balls. They didn't need a stinking apocalypse to turn the world to hell; they were going to do it the old fashioned way.
Sam reckoned there was a hole somewhere, a door that had been blown open when Lucifer decided that it was high time he got himself a Winchester condom, and that where they were pouring out. Bobby had muttered something about a Hellmouth in a town called SunnyDale, but that was being taken care of by the local hunters. New Orleans was having serious issues (for a damn change, Dean snorted to himself, that place was never quiet) but some guy called Ash – not their Ash – was taking care of it. Anything in-between was up to them.
Dean had a theory about why this was happening, but he hadn't mentioned it. One, if he was wrong, he'd look like a total dick – and two: if he was right, there wasn't actually anything they could do about it.
And the Angels? Well, they'd jut bailed. This just proved to Dean that they were all Dicks. All of them. He refused to even glance at his phone as they left Bend – another monster dispatched back to wherever those things came from. He wasn't going to dial the number after his talk to Ben later. He'd fucking had it with Angels.
I know I don't normally post on weekends, but this story is a little like an itch between the shoulderblades and I needed to get some of it out before Monday kicks off.
I'd like to thank everyone who has given me feedback (Walmart! One L!) and for leaving comments. I'm going to keep the Winchesters and the Pack separated for a while, so I hope you aren't all holding your breath for that!
They will come at this problem from two different sides, because The Pack works in quite different ways to the Winchester Brothers!
On a side note: Amanda – I hear you on the shipping front. Yes. Yes that will happen. I will explain the sickness more later ;)
I Weave Dreams – I've taken out any mention of 'Sammy' as I think you were right about that.