Hi! Thank you for the reviews! I have decided to carry on with this story for now, and I hope that you will like it!
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
A/N: Italics symbolize thoughts or, in some cases, dreams.
Chapter 1
Once more, Sam glanced out the window of the police station in the backwoods Kentucky town that they were investigating. There was still no sign of anything or anyone out of the ordinary.
Then again, he realized, if they weren't normal-acting, we would've gotten them by now.
"This is the first murder we've had in a while," the sheriff of the town sighed. "It's a damn shame that Brian Cain had to be the poor sucker who done got killed. He was a good guy. He was the best dentist in town."
"So you say that the victim's skin was completely stripped off, and a few of his choice organs were missing too?" Dean asked stoically from his seat next to Sam, disregarding the sheriff's remembrance of the dead civilian. Sam glanced at his older brother. There were dark circles under his eyes; Dean hadn't been sleeping again. That wasn't a surprise, though. The last time Sam remembered his brother sleeping a full night was before he'd left for Stanford.
"That's right," the sheriff replied with the deep-seated Kentucky twang that the brothers had come to accept all their lives. "It was the most curious thing, that." He leaned forward, bringing his fists down on his desk loudly enough that the brothers' attention snapped back to the sheriff. "The thing is, this wasn't no ordinary killing. When we found that guy…it looked meticulous, like a surgeon had done it. Or a cook perfectly cutting that prize steak."
Dean's pale green eyes narrowed. "You mean like a professional murderer?"
"Someone who knows all about what human anatomy has to offer and knows how to use it to their advantage?" Sam put in.
"Yup," the sheriff replied thoughtfully. "A real pro."
Sam noticed the stiffening and tensing in Dean's shoulders; his jaw was set in rigid profile. Seeing how his older brother was about to go on a hate-driven rampage, Sam cleared his throat loudly. "Well, Sheriff, that'll be all for today. We'd best be going to look at the body of the deceased. Then we're going to go back to where we're staying and compare notes. We'll get back to you as soon as we can."
After scratching his stomach briefly – So unprofessional, Sam noted – the sheriff nodded slowly. "Okay then. You have a good day now, Agents."
Sam slid out of his chair with practiced composure, but Dean stood up so quickly and harshly that he jarred the chair to the side and, after a slight lip-curl of contempt in the sheriff's direction that only Sam's practiced eye could catch, forced a professional smile. "I guess we'll be seeing you around. And you have a good day too." With that, the shorter hunter turned on his heel and strode stiffly out of the room.
"Sorry about him. He's just a bit frustrated by this case," Sam hurried to explain. It was pretty much the truth, after all. After a quick parting smile to the sheriff, Sam nearly trotted out of the office to catch up with Dean.
As soon as the two brothers had gotten into their crappy car, courtesy of Frank, Dean exploded. "That sadistic bastard!"
"Dean—"
"Dammit, Sam! Just shut the hell up and listen! Dick Roman is just playing with us! He knows that we know his MO, so he's just leaving that little trail of breadcrumbs. He's entertained by us, Sam! And we're falling for his tricks. This has gone on too damn long. I say we find the bastard and take him down." His chest was heaving as he panted wildly; Sam could see that Dean's adrenaline had spiked from the heated effort of his rant. Seeing that he only had a small window of time in which to make his point known, Sam jumped upon the opportunity.
"Dean," he repeated, tentatively placing a hand on his brother's shoulder. When Dean looked up with undisguised fury glimmering in his jade eyes, Sam continued, using the voice that he usually only used on grief-stricken widows. "I know as much as you do how much you want to avenge Bobby's death. You want to get back at Dick Roman and give him what he has coming to him. I understand that. But you can't just lock and load, drive off, and be all 'Let's go kill the things that can't be killed!' That's just not logical. So I say that we go back to the motel and think this out, okay?"
Furious jade eyes shot up to lock with Sam's, and Sam nearly flinched at the pain that he saw. Dean dropped his gaze down to his hands, reaching out and turning the key in the ignition of the dusty Jeep. "Just leave me the fuck alone," he muttered. "I promise I won't go off on any killing raids anytime soon."
"Define 'soon,' Dean."
Dean shot Sam a look that was half amused, half pissed. "Cute," he spat sarcastically as the car roared to life. He backed out of their parking space and turned onto the main street of the town.
"Anyway," Sam grumbled as he picked at the mysteriously yellow stuffing that spilled out of the passenger seat, "We have Frank on it. It's not like we're totally in the dark here."
The older Winchester's eyebrows shot up increduously. "Yeah," he laughed mockingly and without humor, "Like Frank Deveraux, the paranoid technology wonder, is ever going to figure out a way to track down, capture, fight, and kill the damn Leviathans."
"Funny," Sam commented idly, rubbing the stuffing between his fingers, "I thought that you relied on him for everything. Because, you know, you don't check your phone every five minutes to make sure that you didn't miss a text or call from him. I certainly must be imagining that, right, Dean?"
Dean glared daggers at his brother, who stared right back with that cocky expression that he'd learned from Dean himself. "You're a little bitch, you know that?" he grunted. "Real pain in my ass."
"You're stuck with me," Sam muttered under his breath as they pulled up to the coroner's office. "You might as well deal with it."
The coroner pulled open the door to the human meat locker and pulled out the tray. On it was something that should not have constituted as a human. Its muscles and blood vessels stood out in stark relief against the white bones that lay beneath. Every single square millimeter of skin seemed to have been expertly cut away. There was a gaping maw of ribs and dried blood where the victim's heart and lungs should've been. It was obvious that other organs were missing too.
"Here we are," the lab coat-clad man announced.
"Ouch," Dean commented.
"Gentlemen, meet Brian Cain." The coroner glanced down at his clipboard and prattled on, "Victim suffered a fatal blow to the back of the neck, seems to have been a quick severing of the spinal cord with a knife or other sharp utensil. All skin has been removed, as well as the hair when the scalp was removed. No evidence as to how the skin was taken so expertly. Heart was detached when the aorta and all other blood vessel connections were sheared. Lungs were removed when the assailant cut the bronchi. Also missing are the pancreas, liver, and small intestine. All missing organs seem to have been cut off with a scalpel." He glanced up from the piece of paper, adjusting his glasses as he took in the expressions of the two men before him. "Are you following?" he asked impatiently.
Dean rolled his eyes furtively, glancing at the coroner with obvious annoyance.
Sam gave a quick thumbs-up after shooting a death glare at Dean. "Yes," he affirmed. "So was there any evidence on the victim that could lead us to the identity of the killer?"
"As a matter of fact, yes." The man's white lab coat flew out behind him as he rushed to a steel filing cabinet and drew out a small plastic bag labeled EVIDENCE. "Here you go," he announced. He handed the bag to Sam, who peered at its contents.
"And this is...?" Dean prompted, getting impatient.
The coroner gave Dean a withering look before returning his gaze to the baggie in Sam's hands. "This is a collection of a dried black substance found between the victim's teeth. It has unknown components, making it a classified and possibly potent substance. It seems as if the victim bit whatever oozed this substance."
Dean rolled his eyes heavenward behind the coroner's back. Sam, ever the practiced one, caught sight of Dean mouthing, Sweet baby Jesus, why me?
"Black ooze?" he covered for his older brother. "And you have no idea what it's made of or what it's from?"
"Well, we do know that it's not completely manmade, because there are some organic cells hiding in there among all of that black stuff. So it can't be tar or anything like that." The coroner consulted his clipboard once more, flipping through the pages with a bored expression. "That seems to be it for the autopsy report. We'll contact you if we find anything out."
"Sounds good." Dean quickly flashed a smile and, with one last disgusted glance at the mangled body on the tray, left the room. Sam followed suit after giving the coroner the number for his cell phone under the alias of Agent Nigel Greene.
"Black ooze?" Dean grumbled as they exited the building into the humid summer air. "Sound familiar to anybody here?"
"They're here for sure."
Dean loosened his tie and glanced at his brother. "No shit, Sherlock. But why the sudden appearance of the goop?"
Sam bit his lip thoughtfully. "He fought back and they let him draw some blood, or whatever it is that they bleed. They're getting careless with their killings. The last murder with their name on it was pristinely done, with no trace of them being there except for those teeth marks on that guy's ankle."
"So they're just dropping bodies for the hell of it now? They don't care that they're leaving all kinds of shit laying around on their victims?" Dean shot back disbelievingly.
"Don't think so. I think they're trying to tell us that they're setting down roots in this area. You know, like they're here to stay for a while."
"Even Dick? He's, like, incredibly famous and well-known. Why would the piece of shit sit with his thumb up his ass waiting for us?"
Sam sighed, running a hand through his long brown locks. "All I can tell you is that they're probably close, okay? We'll just have to see what happens."
Dean dug the keys to their old Toyota out of his pocket and fumbled with the button that would automatically unlock the doors. "You know," he growled, "I really hate these electric car doors and shit like this. I miss my baby."
"This car has adjustable seats," Sam offered. "It's good when you want to sleep."
Dean barked out a short laugh. "Yeah, I'm sure that makes the car so much better. What would we do without adjustable seats in our lives?"
"We'd be uncomfortable?"
"The Impala didn't have fancy adjustable chairs in it, and you slept like a fucking baby just fine in it. And the seats were leather! The good black kind, not this pathetic crap!" Dean fumed, punching at the driver's side seat as he hopped into the car. "I just want to go back to the motel and sleep."
"No dinner?" Sam asked in disbelief. Dean had to be going off the deep end if he was refusing food.
Dean frowned and turned the car on. "No dinner."
Sam crawled into his bed, wincing as a few of the springs in the mattress creaked in protest. It was 2:05 in the morning, as the digital bedside clock proclaimed in dim red lights. Dean had gone to sleep at around 11 after finally eating the cheeseburger that Sam had insisted he eat. He'd proclaimed that consciousness was a thing of the past and had flopped down on his bed with a grunt of satisfaction. Since then, Sam had been surfing the internet for any news on Dick Roman, watching Dean carefully to make sure that his brother was actually getting some sleep.
Well, Sam thought as he glanced over in the semidarkness at the large black lump that was his brother, it's better than nothing.
He reached over and clicked off the lamp that sat on the nightstand, plunging the room into blackness. He withdrew his hand into the comfort of the single sheet he covered himself with, feeling safe and relieved that he and Dean had survived another day. His eyes fluttered closed; exhaustion set in. Sam let the wave of unconsciousness take over.
He wakes up in the air. The wind rushes past his face and howls past his ears. He is not cold, though. He feels hot instead; burning with the fire of excitement and the flames that seem to bubble inside his stomach. Sam is flying.
He's flying, but he's not on a plane.
Sam is flying, and he's doing it himself.
He loves it.
He isn't human anymore. He is new, he is powerful, he is Sam, and it feels so damn good to be free for once. He has wings, wings so large that they cast shadows over entire valleys as he soars over them, climbing to impossible heights. He alights on the peak of a mountain. Maybe it is Mount Everest; he doesn't know.
Sam inspects this new form that is so foreign to him but also feels so familiar, like a part of himself that he'd almost forgotten. He raises a foreleg - he has four legs now? - and admires the shimmering inky black of scales and talons. He has claws that are nearly mirrored, they are so iridescent and such a pure black that shimmers like a film of glass. He snorts in amusement; he has no thumbs. Definitely not human. Far from it.
Next, he shakes his head, feeling how long and large it is. He peers down his muzzle and notices that he has massive fangs, so long and white and terrifying that he shivers in anticipation. He has to put those to good use soon, has to try out every part of his new body.
He cranes his long, serpentine neck and looks behind himself. He has the most glorious wings, made of row after row of perfectly formed feathers. Wait-
No, these aren't feathers. These are not made of lightweight fibers and hollow bone. These feathers of his are far more glorious than a bird or angel's feather could ever be. These feathers on his wings are pointed blades of black steel, a million knifes that hold him up somehow. He rustles his wings with a thrill of joy are he hears the musical rustle and clink of blade upon blade upon blade. He spreads and folds the wings over and over, reveling in the freedom of having flight at his fingertips.
He has to use this new body, has to fly!
He lashes the tail that he has discovered, and boulders of rock tumble down the mountain as the three spikes on the tip of his newfound appendage dislodge them easily. Sam laughs to himself, and surprises himself when a tongue of pure golden flame bursts from his mouth. He can breathe fire! Sam spreads those glorious wings of his and is about to leap forth, to fly to the nearest lake and see in his reflection what it is that he has become. He leaps-
Sam woke up with a gasp, sitting upright in an instant. He looked down and saw and felt that he was covered in a cold sheen of sweat.
"Rise and shine, Sammy!"
Sam looked over to the other bed and saw Dean pulling on a pair of jeans to the tune of some obscure song by Metallica that blasted from the radio that rested on the table in their motel room. "What time is it?" he asked incredulously.
Dean raised a single eyebrow. "It's 7:15. Why?" He acquired a small smirk, the light of mockery dancing in his jade eyes. "Oh," he answered knowingly. "Did I interrupt a nice dream? Because you were making some pretty intense happy noises."
"Shut up," Sam groaned. He dragged himself out of the bed and pushed Dean onto his ass as he passed his older brother. He walked into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind himself. Sam stared intensely at his reflection.
No scales, no wings, no fire.
Just Sam.
Just like always.
And that was the biggest disappointment of all.
He was just Sam.
What do you think? Please review! The next chapter might be a while, though. I've had this one in the works for ages now; I just never published this story. But PLEASE keep on reviewing! And I'm always open to suggestions for future chapters!
