Chapter 2
Williamsport, Pennsylvania

When Dean and I rolled into town, it was mid-afternoon on Tuesday. We pulled into the first half-decent looking motel we saw which, unsurprisingly, had an early-American colonial theme - one of the hazards of travelling around the original colonies. I do like it better than the Wild West stuff we get down south, though.

When Dean got out of the car, he immediately groaned and pulled his jacket tight around him, collar turned up and his hands stuffed into his pockets. "Why couldn't this thing have been down in Tennessee or something? You know, where we wouldn't freeze our backsides off?" he complained, and I sighed as I climbed out to stretch my legs. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, and a stiff, bone-chilling wind that cut straight through my jeans and jacket. I must admit, it was like stepping out into a freezer.

"Well when we find this werewolf, you be sure to tell it that you'd have been much more comfortable hunting it down in Memphis." I shut the door on the Impala a little harder than was necessary, and Dean shot me a glare - for being a smartass and for slamming the door - but I ignored him.

We were both kind of crabby. We hadn't stopped driving since we left Bobby's, because we were on a pretty tight deadline - the full moon was tonight, and we had to get into town in time to go hunting. Dean and I each took turns stealing a few hours' sleep while the other drove, and on a cross-country trip like this one that was guaranteed to put us both in a bad mood. And yeah, Dean making my life miserable for the last week might've had something to do with it, too.

Dean stomped off to the motel office without another word while I zipped my jacket up right to my chin, leaned against the Impala's front quarter-panel, and took a look around. We were on the outskirts of Williamsport, a good ten minutes drive from the town centre, and the motel was set on the edge of what looked like a small forest. Evergreen trees and shrubs surrounded the wooden buildings, looking picturesque in the soft sunlight with their coating of white snow. The rooms were actually individual little cabins, scattered around a larger central building that housed the office, and the place looked like a small early-American village.

The whole scene reminded me of a chocolate box painting, but the thought of the monster that would be prowling among those trees tonight stole some of the appeal. It's also possible I might have appreciated the picturesque setting a little more if my toes hadn't been freezing in my boots. While I waited for Dean to get back from the motel office - which had a lovely wood fire going, judging by the smoking chimney that poked through the roof - I actually moved around to the front of the car and sat on the warm hood.

If I'm honest, lack of sleep and an annoying older brother weren't the only things darkening my mood. Now that the initial relief of getting back on the road had worn off, I found myself remembering the last werewolf Dean and I had hunted.

Usually, I tried not to think about Madison if I could help it. She was the latest in a line of women I'd cared about to have been torn out of my life - I mostly managed to put her out of my mind, but I still sometimes had nightmares about... well, about how it ended. But now that we were on the trail of another werewolf the memories were back, front and centre - and in full, bloody colour.

I took a few deep breaths and made a conscious effort to put those thoughts out of my head, concentrating on the snowy scenery instead. By the time Dean finally came back, a full ten minutes later, I was reasonably sure he'd deliberately drawn out check-in so as to leave his little brother standing in the cold. Payback for slamming his baby's door, I figured, and tried not to let him see me shiver. I was freezing, but I'll be damned if I was going to let Dean think he'd won this one.

"Cabin 19, Sammy." Dean held his hand up and dangled the key for me to see. The little smile on his face removed all doubt that he'd left me out here on purpose. "We should get changed while we're here - there's still enough daylight left to go and see the medical examiner. I wanna check out the damage for myself before we go chasing this thing." Dean went on cheerfully, ignoring the glare I gave him as he got back into the driver's seat. I got back into the passenger side wordlessly, secretly relieved to be back in the warm car, but kept an indifferent expression on my face.

"So I asked the owner about these 'animal attacks'." Dean said conversationally, putting the Impala in gear for the short drive across the gravel carpark. "Is that what took you so long?" I replied casually, and a grin flashed across Dean's face. "Over the last two nights, they've had seven bodies turn up." he went on, a smug little smile still on his lips. He was well aware I knew he'd left me outside on purpose. I shot him a glare, but he ignored me and went on as if nothing had happened.

"Local cops are saying it's a rogue wolf, and apparently the rangers from one of the nearby State Forests are hunting the thing. They're advising people on the outskirts of town to stay inside after sundown, but that's about it. They haven't made the connection with Connecticut or Massachusetts or anything yet." Dean parked the Impala out the front of Cabin 19 and killed the engine.

"They have rangers hunting it?" I raised my eyebrows, and Dean sighed. That thought wiped the smile right off his face. "It's going to tear them apart." I continued, stating the obvious. "Definitely. Silver rounds aren't standard issue in the Forest Service." Dean agreed, and steeled himself against the cold before he opened the door. The wind, which felt like it was blowing straight down from the Arctic, flooded into the car and immediately stole every last drop of warmth from the air. Dean was right - this hunt would have been much less unpleasant in Tennessee.

Moving as quickly as we could in our hurry to get out of the cold, we grabbed our bags from the trunk and went straight for the cabin door. The lock was sticky - a combination of age and the cold - but when Dean finally got the door open, we were both pleasantly surprised by what we found.

There were two queen-size beds with chunky pine frames, adorned with plenty of thick blankets and some comfortable-looking pillows. The floor was covered in that indestructible kind of carpet beloved by motels and other public buildings everywhere, in a dark shade of tan that hid the ingrained dirt nicely, and the walls were a pleasant buttermilk colour. There were a handful of pictures of colonial and Civil War scenes hanging around the room, adding nicely to the early-American ambience. Like I said, much better than cattle skulls and cacti.

Dean, as usual, took the bed closest to the door and I threw my stuff onto the other one. I smiled when I sat down to pull off my shoes - the mattress was surprisingly firm and lump-free. "Not bad, huh Sam?" Dean observed, taking some pretty clean, mostly-unwrinkled clothes from his bag. A heavy jacket over some generic khaki, hiking boots and a fake Forest Service ID was enough to fool people into thinking we were the real deal.

"The themed places usually worry me, but this is kind of nice." I agreed, looking around. Near the foot of my bed there was a door leading to a small but well-equipped bathroom, and a little kitchenette occupied the other end of the cabin. It had a couple of electric hotplates - the metal spiral kind - and a microwave and coffee-maker, which was all Dean and I ever needed. The kitchen table and chairs, again, were pine - they had hard-wearing canvas cushions on the seats, and they looked like they wouldn't collapse if I sat on them. Altogether, the room was nicer than we were used to. Off-peak rates, I guess - must be hard to attract tourists in near-Arctic temperatures.

My examination of the cabin was interrupted by a hoot of delight from Dean, who was now standing over by the TV. "Hey, look - we even get cable." he grinned, holding up the small cardboard sign that had been resting on top of the set. I looked closer, and rolled my eyes when I realised why he was grinning - the sign was an advertisement for Casa Erotica.

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The Williamsport city morgue was a plain, uninteresting brick building, like most of the other morgues we'd visited over the years. As soon as we walked through the glass doors into the beige lobby, we were hit by the familiar tang of pine disinfectant and Dean reflexively wrinkled his nose.

"I hate that smell." he said under his breath, taking his fake Forest Service ID from his jacket pocket. "Better than what they've got in their fridges, I guess." I observed, getting out my own ID. Dean pursed his lips and tilted this head slightly to the side in his 'yeah, you're right about that' expression. The smell of disinfectant was miles better than decomposing flesh.

We strode up to the reception counter, doing our best law-enforcement impression, but the woman sitting behind it didn't even look up. After a few seconds watching her typing furiously, I cleared my throat. I got no response and glanced over at Dean, who shrugged unhelpfully. Almost half a minute later, only when she had finished typing, did the receptionist finally look up to see who was standing in front of her.

I blinked a couple of times when she did. She was gorgeous, and I didn't need to look over at Dean to know his jaw was just about on the floor. I immediately realised I was going to have to do the talking, because I knew Dean's mind would be on something else entirely - the only problem was that my mind had also gone inconveniently blank when I saw her.

"How can I help you?" she asked, pleasant and business-like. She folded her manicured hands on the desk in front of her and looked from me to Dean. I guessed she was in her late twenties, with straight chestnut hair that fell just past her shoulders and was held back from her face by a couple of silvery combs. She wore very little makeup on her creamy skin, with sparingly-applied mascara highlighting her chocolate-coloured eyes and dewy pink gloss accentuating her full lips. I could understand why Dean was speechless.

After a couple of seconds' pause and a small cough, I managed to make my mouth move. "Hello," I started, and glanced at the nametag pinned to her dusky pink blouse, "Mia. I'm Officer Glover, and this is Officer Blackmore." I continued, flashing my ID and kicking Dean discreetly in the shin to remind him to do the same. Thankfully, he managed to hold his ID up the right way as he flipped it open. Mia gave them a cursory glance and looked back to me, oblivious to the ruse.

"We're from the Forest Service, and we were hoping to talk to the medical examiner about the victims of the animal attacks." I said, and Mia regarded both of us with a professional detachment. Dean was making a concerted effort to catch her eye, but this woman was apparently immune to his million-watt flirting smile. Her expression didn't change as he leaned on the desk and turned its full power loose on her, and I cringed inwardly.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you, but my brother has a one-track mind and you didn't have to be a mind-reader to know what he was thinking. I would have put money on the fact that he was imagining his own personal Casa Erotica, starring the lovely Mia - and, if I'm honest, the thought kind of appealed to me too. Unlike my brother, though, I can keep my mind on the job even in the presence of beautiful women. However much my hormones might protest. And believe me, they were protesting.

Mia, fortunately, either didn't notice or didn't care what we were thinking. "You'll find Dr. Earnshaw in his office, just down the hallway." she indicated a tea-green, hospital-like corridor to our left with a wave of her hand, diamantes in her French-manicured acrylic nails glinting.

"Thanks." I started off down the hallway, and almost had to drag Dean along behind me. He frowned as we walked, taking a look over his shoulder back towards the reception desk. Mia was absorbed in her typing again, not paying him any attention at all. "Think you can keep your mind on the job, Casanova?" I asked drily, and Dean's frown deepened. He didn't like it when gorgeous women ignored him.

At that point, I decided to conduct a little experiment. "Dean, what's this doctor's name?" I asked, wearily. He opened his mouth to answer, but shut it again after a few seconds. He had no clue.

I sighed. Just as I thought, Dean hadn't heard a word the receptionist had said. "Dr. Earnshaw. His office is down this corridor somewhere." I reiterated, checking the signs on the closed doors as we passed them. "Right." Dean said confidently, and I gave him a look. "I was distracted, okay?" he retorted, and I rolled my eyes. Yeah, right - 'distracted'. See? One-track mind.

Before I could admonish him further, we came upon a door with a panel of frosted glass in it that read Dr. D. Earnshaw - Medical Examiner. The doorframe was painted a slightly darker green than the corridor, and the black adhesive letters on the glass were peeling at the corners. I raised my hand to knock, but the door swung open before my knuckles touched it.

Standing in the doorway was a heavyset man in his late forties, with greying dirty blonde hair and wire-rim spectacles over blue eyes. He wore a white lab coat, white business shirt and black trousers, with a pair of beaten-up cross-trainers on his feet.

"Dr. Earnshaw." Dean said, flashing his badge as I did the same. He gave me a pointed look, as if to say See? I know what's going on. "Officers Blackmore and Glover, from the Forest Service. We're here about the animal attacks." he continued, in his best authoritative tone, and the doctor blinked a couple of times behind his glasses. He didn't exactly look pleased to see us.

"We were hoping you could show us the bodies, Doctor. We've got a few questions we need answered before we can find whatever's doing this." I told him, not entirely untruthfully. We did need to check some facts before we went hunting. "Can't you wait for my report?" Dr. Earnshaw asked, after a short pause.

"We'd prefer to see for ourselves." Dean replied, in his I'm afraid I'll have to insist voice. The doctor sighed and checked his watch like he had somewhere to be. "Okay, Officers - follow me." Dr. Earnshaw shut his office door behind him and led Dean and I off down the hallway and deeper into the building. The further we got from the reception desk, the stronger the disinfectant smell was.

"So you think these deaths are a result of animal attacks?" I asked, while we walked. Dr. Earnshaw paused as we came to the top of a flight of stairs, thinking carefully before he answered. He wore the familiar expression of someone trying to reconcile something inexplicable with what he thought he knew about the world - it was a look Dean and I saw often from cops and MEs struggling to explain the carnage left behind by something supernatural.

"Well, I've found wolf hair on all the victims so far, so the current theory is that it's a rabid wolf. But honestly, the bodies look more like they were torn up by a bear." The doctor's tone was sterile and business-like as he checked his watch again, then started quickly down the stairs. Obviously, we were keeping him from something.

"Isn't it the wrong time of year for bears?" Dean asked, and Dr. Earnshaw shrugged. "I don't know how else to explain it. Those folks were torn up in a way I've only ever seen from big carnivores and bears, and there are no mountain lions or anything around here." he said, as we reached the bottom of the stairs. The ME pushed open a set of green double doors under a sign that proclaimed Autopsy, and led us inside.

The windowless room was cold and clean, and the floor and the bottom two-thirds of the walls were covered in off-white tiles. It was illuminated by bright fluorescent lights that glinted off a trio of stainless steel autopsy tables, and what wall space remained untiled was painted a similar light green to the hallway and stairwell we'd come through on our way down. Dean wrinkled his nose again as we were assaulted by a fresh, stronger wave of pine disinfectant. Down here, it didn't quite cover the eau de decomposition - I tried to breathe through my mouth, but in all honesty it didn't help much.

Dr. Earnshaw went over to a stainless steel cart that held various nasty-looking surgical tools - the big ones, like shears for cutting ribs - and picked up a clipboard. He handed it to Dean, who looked from the clipboard to the doctor as if to say So what am I meant to do with this?

"All the paperwork on the victims is here, and the bodies are in the fridge." the doctor motioned to the rows of 3-foot-square stainless steel doors set into the far wall of the autopsy room. "Got somewhere to be, doc?" Dean asked, eyebrows raised. Dr. Earnshaw looked at the clock on the wall and pursed his lips. "As a matter of fact, I do. So, if you don't need me for anything else..." he left the sentence unfinished and looked from me to Dean, obviously hoping we didn't.

"Can we get a copy of the paperwork?" I asked, and the doctor waved his hand at the clipboard Dean was holding. "Keep those if you like." He made a quick exit through the double doors before we could ask him anything else, and left us alone with the clipboard and a familiar wall of numbered stainless steel fridges.

"Wonder where he's off to." Dean mused, looking at the double doors as they swung gently back and forth in ever-decreasing arcs. "I mean, what does a medical examiner do for fun?" he went on, picking up a random, nasty-looking piece of stainless steel equipment from the cart for a closer look.

"I bet the smell of disinfectant and rotting flesh does wonders for his social life. If he stays home, it's probably even hard to watch TV - all those procedural cop shows must drive him crazy." Dean looked over at me for a response, and I gave him a look of mild disinterest. I really didn't care what Dr. Earnshaw was doing with his evening.

"No? Okay." he put the tool down on the cart with a sigh and moved onto a new topic. "Why are morgues always underground? It's cold and creepy and the ventilation sucks." Dean complained, handing me the clipboard as he went over to the fridge doors. "I imagine it makes refrigeration easier." I answered, even though I knew it was a rhetorical question. It irritated Dean when I answered rhetorical questions, which is precisely why I did it. After the last two weeks, he had it coming.

"So who's our first customer?" Dean ignored my little grin, and I scanned the front page on the clipboard. It was list of the fridge's occupants, and apparently the morgue was close to capacity. "Number 9 - Thomas Whitman." I decided, flipping through to the report on Mr. Whitman as Dean opened up the door. "Male, Caucasian, 5'11", 160lb..." I read out loud, but trailed off as he pulled out the sliding tray. A bloodstained white sheet was covering what was obviously not a whole body anymore, and any levity that had been in the room evaporated.

"Was the heart taken?" Dean asked, a little grimace on his face. He took hold of the sheet, but didn't pull it back just yet. He knew as well as I did that it wasn't going to be pretty. I skimmed Thomas' autopsy report, and it produced a grimace of my own. "The heart is missing, yeah, but apparently so is a lot of other stuff. I think the body is so torn up it's going to be hard to tell if what's missing was taken deliberately or just by coincidence."

"Okay." Dean sighed. "Let's see what we're dealing with." He took a deep breath before he drew back the sheet, and what I saw under there turned my stomach.

Thomas Whitman's remains looked more like a pile of butcher's waste than a corpse. His torso was torn open from throat to navel and parts of him were obviously missing, including most of his internal organs. Eaten by whatever had torn him to ribbons, probably, although this level of damage could just as easily have been inflicted by putting the body through a meat grinder.

There were clear bite marks on what was left of the body, where huge hunks of muscle had been torn from the legs, arms and back, and Dr. Earnshaw had been right when he said it looked like the work of a bear. I'd certainly never seen a werewolf rip away whole pieces of a victim like this before.

A whole section of Whitman's ribcage had been torn from his chest, and it was obvious the heart was missing - along with the lungs, liver, and a few other things. His bloodied face was frozen in an expression of pure terror, eyes wide and mouth open in a silent scream, and his short black hair was matted with his own blood.

"Jesus Christ." Dean muttered under his breath, looking at one of the bites in the man's quadriceps. A section of muscle the size of a pot roast was just gone. What was left of the body must have weighed dozens of pounds less than when Thomas Whitman was alive.

Dean took a slightly shaky breath and pulled the sheet back up before he slid the tray back into the fridge and shut the door. "Where's the next one?" he asked quietly, but I didn't answer right away. My mind was preoccupied with the mental image of what remained of Thomas Whitman. Mostly, I wondered what kind of werewolf was capable of doing that to a human being - I knew they were vicious, and I'd seen some thoroughly mangled corpses left in their wake, but this kind of damage was something new.

"Sam - where's the next one?" Dean repeated, more forcefully. I tore my eyes away from the fridge door, blinking as I looked back down at the clipboard. I flipped through a couple more pages, deliberately avoiding the entry on Clay Reynolds. We didn't need to see what this thing had done to the last hunter it ran into.

Dean looked at me expectantly, silently waiting. "There's another victim behind door number 10 - um, Susan Delgado." I took a deep breath. "5'7", 120lb. She was out jogging in a park when she was attacked." I watched as Dean opened door number 10 and slid out the tray. Again, the damage was obvious even before he pulled back the sheet.

Susan Delgado hadn't fared any better than Thomas Whitman. Her chest had also been ripped open; almost the entire front portion of her ribcage had been torn out, and I could only see scraps of lung left in her chest cavity. Her slim, athletic frame was also missing huge chunks of muscle, and even the bottom half of her left leg - it had been torn off at the knee, and there were pieces of white ligament and tendon dangling from the wound.

Unlike Thomas Whitman, however, there was no expression of terror on her face. Whatever had killed Susan Delgado had raked claws diagonally from her left temple across to the point of her jaw on the right, and what skin and muscle hadn't been cleaved clean off the bone was an unrecognisable mess of bloody, torn flesh. Her entire body was covered in her own blood, and it stained her long blonde hair and pale skin a murky maroon.

Dean replaced the sheet and slid the body back into the fridge wordlessly, pushing the door closed with a metallic click of the latch. He put a hand to his mouth and closed his eyes, silently thinking over what he'd just seen. "I've never seen a werewolf do damage like that." I said quietly, taking the papers out of the clipboard and folding them up before I put them in my jacket pocket.

"We've never seen anything do damage like that." Dean sighed, and opened his eyes. "The local cops or the actual Forest Service aren't equipped to handle this, Sam - when they start shooting it, they're just gonna make it mad. We gotta go after it, cause we know what we're dealing with." He had a point, I know, but after what we'd just seen neither of us were exactly thrilled about it.

I followed Dean out through the double doors and we walked up the stairs silently, both of us lost in our own thoughts. "Look, a werewolf's a werewolf. We've got plenty of silver bullets, and we can bring this thing down." Dean said to no-one in particular, when we got to the top of the stairs. He sounded so confident that I almost believed him. "Hopefully before it kills anyone else." I said, and a chill ran down my spine as I remembered the horrors hidden beneath the bloodied sheets behind us.

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Back at the motel, Dean opened the trunk and broke out the silver bullets. I loaded a full clip for both of us and also a spare each - just in case. I wasn't about to take chances with something tearing pot-roast sized chunks out of its victims. No way was I going to get eaten because I hadn't brought enough ammunition.

"So where are we going to look for this thing?" I asked, setting my black Beretta and Dean's stainless steel Taurus on the kitchen table. It was covered with morgue paperwork and a huge map of Williamsport that we'd picked up from a gas station on the way back from our visit to the delightful Dr. Earnshaw. Dean had marked the locations of each body with a red Sharpie, and there was an immediately obvious cluster of little blood-red Xs.

"The morgue paperwork says they found the bodies on the northern outskirts of town, away from the river towards the hills." Dean tapped the grouping of Sharpie crosses with his index finger. "There's a nice, big park here where most of the bodies turned up. If I were a werewolf, I'd be there hunting easy prey - joggers like Susan Delgado." he went on, and I sniffed. "Or the hunters lying in wait."

Dean looked up at me, an amused expression on his face. "I think the silver bullets move us out of the 'easy prey' category, Sammy. But you know, if you're scared, you can stay here."

I looked back at him witheringly, not even bothering to dignify that with a response. My brother, the comedian. I might not be mad keen on running around in the dark looking for a half-wolf half-human monster, but what Dean had said in the morgue was exactly right: we had to do it, because we knew how.

"What do you think about the wolf hair?" I asked, in an effort to change the subject. I picked up the analysis of the hair found on Thomas Whitman and looked it over - apparently, the ME had found hairs belonging to Canis lupus on his body. I know that probably seems like a reasonable thing to find on a werewolf victim - but werewolves aren't supposed to grow actual wolf hair when they change.

Dean thought about my question for a minute before he answered. "It's gotta be incidental, right? Maybe a wolf sniffed around the body after the werewolf was done with it?" he offered, and I shrugged. "Yeah, maybe." That explanation didn't sit well with me, but as yet I didn't have a better one. "Add that to the list of weird stuff going on with this job." Dean told me, and went back to the map.