Hey! HEY! Which one of you relentless wretches has been feeding the plot bunny? *taps foot* Well? This little sod has been chewing on my ear while I'm trying to get some work done!
Chapter Two
Sam had the phone clamped to one ear and two tablets on the small cluttered desk in front of him. He might have been too old to do much Hunting himself any more, but he had taken on unofficial yet indispensable coordination of an extensive network of Hunters, much as Bobby had done when the Winchesters were still on the job. The two of them were widely acknowledged as the go-to guys if you couldn't figure out what you were dealing with, how to kill it, or if a Hunt went south and somebody had to be sent in to take over. He was also a tinkerer, researcher and poker-atter of various occult spells, rituals and artefacts, which had produced some very useful new items and weapons (the Hellhound bloodline detection kit being the latest) and a blessed minimum of mishaps (the less said about the unfortunate incident with the zombie gummi bears the better).
"You're kinda like M and Q rolled into one", Dean had once opined, "Which makes me 007, and makes you, uh..."
"The Big O, I guess," replied Sam guilelessly. "In between M and Q."
"That is so disturbing I have to go and lie down now," Dean had muttered in disgust.
"Uh-huh," Sam talked as he tapped at one tablet, "Okay... okay... you sure? Yeah, I'll see who I can find. You take care. Heal up properly, this time, remember what happened last time you went back to the job with a limb still in a cast. What? Don't you call me a mother hen, you young asshole, I'll have you know that when I was your age, we didn't know about the binding chant, you had to get close enough to set 'em on fire! Okay. You behave yourself. Bye." He sighed as the call ended.
" 'When I was your age'?" cackled Bobby, "Did I actually hear you say 'When I was your age'?"
"Oh, God," sighed Sam, "How she's not dead I don't know. The kid has no sense of self-preservation..."
"That 'kid' turned thirty a month ago," chortled Bobby.
"What?" Sam's head snapped up. "You're shitting me."
"I shit you not," Bobby replied. "She's been thinkin' of getting another dog, too. Maybe one of Shannon's, when they're old enough. She's in the queue, anyway."
"Not that it matters," Sam grinned back. Dogs from the small kennel that Dean had established at Singer Salvage, descended from 'Winchester Ladies' Man', were highly sought after by Hunters, but it was well known that no Hunter got to choose a dog – a pup would choose its Alpha, and that was the end of it. "But we still have the problem of the mysterious retirement home deaths."
"You figured out what they're tryin' to deal with yet?" Bobby asked.
Sam shook his head.
"It seems to vary every time someone goes in to check it out, then they get damaged," Sam related to Bobby. "That's four who've had to break off due to injury." He brought up a map on one tablet, and picked up his phone again. "I'll see who's in the area.'
"O' course, when I was your age, we'd just charge in there and cut off its head," declared Bobby, cackling again for good measure as he adjusted his glasses and took down another book.
"When I was her age, we used to gank anybody who cackled, on account of them probably being a witch," he replied.
"One of the privileges of reaching my age and being considered a crazy old idjit is being allowed to cackle," Bobby insisted. "Hell, it's not just allowed, it's expected!"
"Can't you take up collecting teabag tags or something?" pleaded Sam.
"It's cackling, or hoarding cats," Bobby informed him, "Or wearin' my shorts on my head."
Sam was muttering about statistics regarding development of dementia when they heard the door bang.
"Sam? Sam!" The dulcet tones of Dean yelling for his brother as he stomped into the house drifted to them. "SAAAAAAAAAM!" He made his way to the study, and took in the sight of Bobby poring over a book while Sam peered at his tablets. "Hey, Darth Grandad," he grinned, "Can I borrow Darth Bitch here?"
"Sure," shrugged Bobby, "Just stamp him and have him back in two weeks."
"What do you want, Dean? I'm kind of busy," Sam frowned.
"I need to get the ladder out and evict some pigeons," Dean explained, "They've been getting into the shed roof, and crapping on my Baby."
"Tiem and Zan usually take care of the pigeons," remarked Bobby.
"These flying rodents have crawled in where the gargoyles can't get 'em," explained Dean. "A raccoon made a hole in the eaves, and I need to block off the hole. Plus, I may get a coonskin hat out of it!"
"Yeah, well, you just be careful," Bobby warned, "They carry diseases. You corner one, it may decide it wants a Dean skin scarf."
"So, come on Francis," prompted Dean, "Make yourself useful."
"Sure," Sam agreed, "Just as soon as I've done this." He dialled on his cell.
"Now, Sam!" scowled Dean impatiently, "I want to get it done right away!"
"Well, I need to get this done right away," Sam replied, "Connor? It's Sam. Yeah, look I got a job that needs someone to cover it, Wendy got her leg broken..."
"Saaaaaaam!" whined Dean.
"Hang on a minute," Sam said pleasantly. "Dean, will you stop whining?"
"I'm an old man here, Sam," complained Dean.
"Only from the chin down," replied Sam tartly, "Sorry, Connor... no, it's just Dean. I think a witch put a hex on him that regressed him mentally to four years old, and it's permanent; he'll never grow up any more than that between the ears. When? By my estimation, about sixty years ago now..."
"I could be dead before you finish dicking around there!" snapped Dean.
"You won't stay dead," Sam said casually, "Not while I'm still alive to annoy. Sorry, Connor, so, there's this job, we're not sure what it is..."
"HEY, CONNOR!" shouted Dean, "TELL FRANCIS TO COME AND HELP ME AND CALL YOU BACK LATER!"
"Dean!" snapped Sam. "Will you shut up? You're like a toddler who can't handle delayed gratification!"
"Delayed gratification has no place outside the bedroom, Sam," Dean told him sternly. "Unless you're in a car, or a spa, or up a tree, there was this girl once, she was an arborist..."
"Gah!" Sam shot Dean a glare of pure Bitchface #6™ (I SO Do NOT Want To Hear The Gory Details Of One Of Your Sexual Conquests, Jerk). "Dean! Shut! Up! And! Go! Away! I'll come and help when I can!"
Muttering darkly that he'd take care of it himself, Dean stomped back out of the house.
He headed for the kennels, his grumpiness evaporating as he approached.
"Hey, guys," he called cheerfully, grinning. He was answered by a series of yips, yaps and woofs, as the pups left off their games and rassling to rush to the fencing and wag their tails, little faces grinning doggily. Their dam, Shannon, lounged lazily in the sun on her day bed, the end of her tail wagging as he approached. He had intended to spend some time with the pups, maybe let them out to stalk each other around the gnarled old rosemary shrub, a game that never got old for them, when one nosed uncertainly at the wire mesh.
Suddenly, as he watched, one of the litter managed the walk-right-through-the-fence thing, and came galumphing towards him as fast as her little feet would carry her. Her siblings went into a frenzy of barking, then, one by one, they followed her example. Shannon watched, unconcerned; she was not of Jimi's bloodline, but this was her second litter, and she was well accustomed to dealing with offspring with Hellhound heritage.
"Aren't you clever!" He hunkered down to pet and rassle with the pups, who clustered around him, wanting to play. "Aren't you all just so clever!" They basked in his attention. "It'll be time for you guys to pick Hunters soon, won't it? Yes it will! Yes it will!" He opened the pen to let Shannon out, and she languidly made her way to the red rosemary – Kali's Rosemary, Sam called it, in memory of the first Hunter's dog they'd ever encountered, whose ashes had changed the plant and given it some interesting occult properties – a very pleasant place to sit and take in the sun, where the incumbent pensioners, Mercury and Shiloh, had already made themselves comfortable. Rumsfeld, like his many namesakes before him, preferred to snooze on the hood of an old truck that afforded him an elevated view of the yard.
Dean paused and watched as the puppies enjoyed their squabbling games of stalk and chase, then suddenly ran out of energy, the way pups do, and flopped down against their dam, and their... what would Shiloh be? A cousin, so many times removed? He'd have to ask Sam. There was something about having dogs around the place that was... comfortable.
Satisfied that all the pups were out of the way, he went to fetch the ladder.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
In the cosmic scheme of things, 'bad luck' is usually a misperception of undesirable outcomes in all sorts of situations outweighing more fortuitous ones in the experience of an individual. It's what makes people notice that the other checkout queue at the supermarket, or the adjacent lane of traffic, is moving faster than their own, whereas they rarely notice when the line they are in moves faster than the others.
Occasionally, there would be instances in which Time, Creation and Chaos would appear to conspire to produce an event which, given the range of possible outcomes, manifested as the least desirable, least convenient and most unhelpful one. If it happened once, it could be chalked up to statistical randomness. If it happened twice, a person could jokingly sigh 'God hates me'.
If it happened through your entire life every time you desperately needed Fate, Destiny, Chance or just the random motion of the universe to cut you a break, it could be described as Winchester Luck.
The person watching Dean fetch the ladder, extend it to its full length, lean it up against the shed and then test its footing had heard a lot about the Winchesters, including the Winchester Luck. She'd heard that they were the best Hunters that North America had seen in a generation. She'd heard that once killed, they had a habit of not staying dead. (Theories about that abounded, but the consensus seemed to be that Heaven couldn't handle them, Hell was afraid they'd take over, and Purgatory had nailed the gate shut just in case.) Trying to kill them was certainly regarded as A Bad Idea – chances were you'd just annoy them.
She smiled to herself as she watched. From tales she'd heard, Winchesters were supposed to be ten feet tall, bullet proof, immortal, piss holy water and shit consecrated iron, snap wendigos across their knees, pull vampires' heads off with their teeth, smack werewolves into submission with rolled-up newspapers and burn demons out just by smiling at them – but this was just an old guy, somebody's grandfather, with greyed hair thinning slightly at the temples and a slight limp and posture that hinted at old injuries of shoulder and knee come home to roost. Not just an old guy, but an old fool – anyone with half a brain could see that going up a ladder like that without somebody to steady it was a risky proposition.
Briefly, she considered just darting out, giving the ladder a good shove, and letting Newtonian physics take its course. It would be deemed an unfortunate accident, cause of death: gravity. But that was not in her nature. It had taken her a lot of time and effort to get through the wards around the place; after all that work, she wanted a chance to sneer. She wanted a chance to gloat.
After all, what kudos would there be in disposing of a Winchester if he didn't know he'd been disposed of by a demon?
*taps foot again* I'm waiting for the culprit to own up...
Reviews will, no doubt, feed the damned rabbit some more.
