Thunder greeted him when he surfaced from dark oblivion—thunder both in his head and outside the motel room. Dean moaned as he struggled to open his eyes. After several long seconds, he managed to accomplish this seemingly monumental task and immediately wished he hadn't, as the noise in his head reached a crescendo when greeted by glaring light. He shifted restlessly on the bed before carefully sitting up, cradling his head in his hands. Dean swallowed past fiery pain in this throat.
God, I hurt all over.
His shoulder hurt like hell, almost like it did when he'd been branded by the Benders. A strong sense of déjà vu slithered over him, and Dean shook his aching head to dispel it.
Cold air wrapped itself around his exposed extremities and ghosted its way down his spine, and Dean shivered. The energetic tremors brought on a bout of nausea that had him hurrying to the bathroom. After a few minutes on his knees heaving and spitting over the toilet, the hunter stood on shaky legs and turned to the sink. Glancing in the mirror, he nearly gasped. His skin looked grayish and drawn. Dark shadows ringed both eyes and a circle of deep eggplant purple bruises marred his neck. Worse, on his shoulder was what appeared to be a bite mark. Only it didn't exactly look like a human bite. His fingers brushed lightly against the wound that was fringed with dried blood, and Dean cringed at the razor-sharp stabs of pain that radiated outward from the bite.
What the hell happened?
Through the relentless pounding in his head, Dean desperately tried to recall the events that occurred earlier that night. He remembered fighting with Sam and heading off to a bar, but after that things got a little fuzzy. Other than brief flashes of a pretty face and red hair, he could recall only blinding, intense sexual pleasure, followed by extreme pain.
Lightning flared and thunder crashed outside the motel room causing the lights to flicker. Despite his muddled memory and general confusion, Dean decided it was past time to leave this place and get back to the motel room he shared with his brother. He staggered to the main room to get dressed—only to find his clothes were missing. Not just his clothes, but his cell phone, watch, wallet, and knives were all gone. Only the amulet around his neck, by some miracle, remained. Thank God he'd left his car keys and gun back at the room with Sam.
Dean swallowed his internal disgust at ending up in such a position and determined his only recourse was to call his brother to come and get him. Picking up the handset to the motel room phone, he started to dial Sam's cell number before he realized the phone was dead. Jiggling the lever up and down, Dean tried to get a dial tone without success. A slight hiss of dead air was all that met his ear.
Defeat settled across his shoulders as he hung up the now useless instrument. Out of ideas and feeling worse by the minute, the older Winchester slowly and reluctantly realized that his only option was to walk back to the other motel. Pulling the top sheet off the double bed, Dean knotted it tightly around his waist, grateful that no one was there to see his red-faced embarrassment. Next, he grabbed the blanket and draped it around his torso.
Satisfied that he was as prepared as he could possibly get, Dean moved to the door and then glanced back at the clock on the nightstand—2:33 a.m. He stepped out into the tempestuous storm, instantly enveloped in the torrent of cold rain.