Fury keeps Dean walking. He ignores the ache settling into his muscles, the way his boots start chafing against his ankles, and the rain that sets in, soaking him through. All he can think, can feel, is betrayal. His own brother hadn't believed him.
It's especially hard to take as Dean had always given Sam every benefit of the doubt. He'd felt something was wrong with his brother that entire year with Ruby but he'd talked with Sam—okay yelled at Sam—but he hadn't tried to exorcise him.
It's only after he's been walking for a couple of hours that he realizes he isn't alone. The hellhound pads along behind him, black tongue dripping from his tongue, eyes only slightly red.
It's perks up when it sees Dean has noticed him and increases his pace so it can butt his head against Dean's hand. Dean half expects fear to slide in, but all he feels is a wary affection. One of these had ripped him to shreds and dragged him to hell, but he senses it wasn't this one. It wasn't Cujo.
But, why is a hellhound following me? Dean thinks as he fondles the beast's ears.
"Christo," he whispers, just to see if he can say it. He feels nothing, but the hellhound whines, eyes flickering red.
"Sorry boy," says Dean. "I just…" his voice trails away and suddenly he's aware of how dark its gotten, how cold and sore he is. He glances around, eyes finally taking in his surroundings. They aren't good. Instead of walking towards Sioux Falls, Dean had walked into the woods bordering Bobby's junkyard.
Trees surround him in every direction; the narrow path he'd driven through the brush nearly invisible in the dim light. Rain splatters his head, and his shoulders hunch up, trying to protect his neck. It does no good. Rain slides under his collar and the cold spreads through him like quick fire.
"Well this sucks." Dean doesn't know what to do. He should go back, talk with Sam and Bobby, try and figure out what had happened. But the thought of going back there like a whipped dog didn't sit right. And there was still the matter of Cujo. The hellhound didn't seem dangerous, but Dean knew all too well the feel of those teeth ripping into him. He shudders at the memory and shoves it aside. Thinking like that isn't going to help him in the here and now.
Taking a breath, Dean crouches in front of the hound. This close it smells of sulfur and wet pine needles. Warm breath huffs out over his face as the hound regards him with serious eyes. Dean thinks he can practically sense what the hound is thinking, which is ridiculous because, one: it's a dog. And two…it's a damn dog!
"Alright," says Dean, voice loud in the quiet air. "Why are you following me?"
He's not sure what he was expecting, but the dog turning from him and trotting away isn't it. He's too startled to stand and instead watches as the hellhound picks up a fallen branch and trots back, and proceeds to write in the dirt.
And its write, not draw. An 'M' appears in the damp soil, followed by an 'a', 's', and 't'.
"Mast?" Dean asks. But the hellhound is still drawing. It adds two final letters and when Dean reads it, he sucks in a great lungful of damp air.
"No." He shakes his head in denial, knees rocking in preparation to stand. The hellhound growls and drops the stick, teeth latching around Dean's wrist instead. It shakes him, tugging and pulling, until Dean's hand is flat against the scratched out letters.
"Look, I'm not a demon, so I can't be your master, alright?"
The hellhound whines around Dean's wrist, red eyes fixed on his face. It seems certain and Dean doesn't have a clue how to prove he's not. Or even if doing so is a good idea. As long as the hellhound thinks Dean's his master, the thing won't attack him. Hell, it'll keep anything from attacking Dean as long as it's got this crazy idea in its head.
Admitting defeat (at least for now), Dean pats the hellhound with his free hand, gently extracting his wrist from between its teeth. "Alright, you win; I'm your master. So now what, huh? If you follow me back to Bobby's, they'll probably hog tie me back to that chair and try to exorcise me again."
The hellhound barks and snatches the stick back up, proceeding to write two more words.
Find Eve.
Time stutters for a moment and then Dean sucks in a harsh breath. It can't mean the Eve Dean's thinking. It can't.
"Why?" he breathes.
The hellhound makes an annoyed noise and goes back to writing. Scritch, scritch.
This time what the hellhound writes makes even less sense—at least to Dean.
To Stop Her stares back at Dean from the dirt. It's what Dean and Sam have been trying to do ever since they'd heard about her. But what would a hellhound want the mother of all monsters stopped for?
A sudden snarl from the hound jerks Dean's mind back into the here and now and he's up and turning, before the sound has time to fade. One man and two women stand in a staggered line, cutting Dean off from the way he'd come.
Black eyes regard him with cool contempt.
"Winchester," the woman in the middle says, her voice a dusky purr. "We've been searching for you."
"Yeah?" Dean says. "And why's that? Were you missing the beat downs we were giving you?" His words are a bluff, pure and simple. He has no weapons, nothing in his pockets but lint. He might be able to take down one demon, maybe two if he got lucky. But three? Three meant he was screwed.
Cujo didn't seem to agree. The hellhound slid between Dean and the demons with a low warning snarl. He rippled, growing larger before Dean's eyes until he's nearly to Dean's shoulder.
The demons falter, confusion sweeping through them. Whatever intel led them to Dean it hadn't included Cujo.
"What is this?" hisses the male demon. "How have you tethered a hellhound?"
"The same way I do everything; because I'm awesome." Dean smirks at them through the rain, recklessness surging through him like a red-hot flood.
Cujo throws his head back and howls and Dean laughs. He can feel Cujo's excitement as if Cujo was an extension of himself, the need to hunt, to feed, to destroy, ricocheting back and forth between them until Dean can't tell which of them the emotions originated from.
He barks something at Cujo, the words like gravel in his mouth. They hit the air, but Dean doesn't understand them as much as feels their meaning.
Kill. Kill the demons.
The demons never stand a chance. Cujo hits them like a wave of lethal force: all teeth and claws and death. But Cujo doesn't rip the bodies apart. His claws and teeth snap not at human flesh, but at the black smoke writhing underneath.
The demons' screams fly from human throats as they disintegrate into wisps of black that fade in the cool air. Its over in seconds. Cujo sniffs at the prone bodies a couple of times as if to check for remnants of demon, but both the hellhound and Dean know the demons are finished.
Dean's heart is roaring in his chest; and its not until he's kneeling besides the first woman, checking for a pulse, that he realizes what just happened. What he caused to happen.
The woman's ice cold, but so is Dean, her pulse thread and weak. Or maybe it's weak because Dean's shaking so hard he can barely press down to find it. He pulls away and turns to stare at Cujo. The hellhound starts to shrink down, but Dean finds more gravel-like words falling from his lips and the hellhound shimmers once, and then stops, body towering over the fallen hosts.
It's the work of moments to sling the three bodies over Cujo's back. Dean climbs up behind them and with a few more words, Cujo sets off. His pace is fast; much too fast for how smooth it is. And they are back at the junkyard in under a fifteen minutes.
It's full dark now and the spot lights ringing Bobby's house spring to life as they approach. The door flies open, Sam and Bobby tumbling out, shotguns at the ready, before Dean has even full dismounted.
They stare at each other through the rain and Dean feels the gulf between them, feels his brother's fear. It unnerves him and angers him at the same time.
"Either shoot or put 'em down and help me," he snarls before putting his back to them and pulling a limp body off Cujo's back. A softly spoken command to Cujo to stay still, and Dean is striding across the yard towards the house.
Sam and Bobby still have their guns up, but neither attempts to shoot as Dean pushes past them. The inside is baking hot after the freezing temperatures of outdoors and Dean takes the stairs two at a time, eager to get this one down and the other two in so he can revel in the toasty warmth.
To his surprise, Sam and Bobby are carrying the man in as Dean descends. Not a word is spoken as Dean hurries back out. This woman is smaller than the first. Her head lulls against Dean's chest as he carries her, her breath creating small white clouds as he crosses the yard. Cujo shimmers and shrinks back to dog-size and follows them inside, nudging the door closed with his nose.
It's not until the three humans are stripped of their wet outer layers and tucked in, that Sam, Bobby, and Dean gather in the kitchen.
Dean sinks gratefully into a chair and rests his aching head against the table. Every muscles screams in relief to be sitting, but he can't fall asleep, not yet. First he has to face the firing squad.
"Whatever you're going to say, just say it, alright?" he says, exhaustion causing the words to slur despite his best efforts.
"Who are those people, Dean?" It's Sam who speaks first, his voice a mix of worry and accusation.
Anger stirs in Dean's chest, but he's too tired to give it the tinder it requires, and it dies away quickly. "They were possessed by demons," he says. "But Cujo killed the demons so now they're just people. Just people…" His eyes close as the words slide out and Dean's tenuous hold on conscious fades away.
The last thing he thinks he hears is Bobby demanding, "Killed how?" and then there is nothing but blessed silence.
