3 – Haunt

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jo reaching for him, prepared to pull him down, but Sam was sure she wasn't going to grab him in time.

It was weird how time slowed down when you were sure you were going to die. He could see everything, from a bead of sweat on the man's forehead to his finger starting to tense on the trigger, and none of it seemed to be moving at a regular rate.

But then Dean came charging out of a nearby aisle, running straight for the gunman.

This was a couple of different kinds of terrible. The gunman must have heard him, or seen him, because he started turning towards Dean almost immediately, and Sam could tell Dean wasn't going to make it. He was going to get shot before he could reach him. At the last second, Dean seemed to realize that too, and lunged, catching the gunman in a full body tackle. They both slammed hard to the floor, although the gunman kept hold of his weapon and aimed it Dean, who was able to grab his wrist and angle the gun away from him. The gunman fired a bullet harmlessly into the ceiling as Dean tried to wrestle him down. The whole time, the man was screaming about zombies.

"Dude, calm down," Dean said, trying to pin the man's hands to the floor. He got the gun away finally, and threw it aside. "I'm not a zombie."

Sam approached, wondering if Dean even knew how close to death he was. That was an astoundingly reckless thing to do, but Sam couldn't quite call Dean on it, since it had probably saved his life. But it reminded him what a shitty mindset Dean was still in since Dad's death.

Although Dean had a couple of inches and at least forty pounds on the dude – not to mention non bleeding, non-occluded eyes – the guy was twisting and bucking so wildly, Dean was barely able to keep a hold of him. Sam came over and held down his shoulders, looking into the man's disturbed face. The blood was still pouring down his face, and his eyes remained blindly white. His words were all mashing together, slipping into one another. " – zombiesalloverkilledeverybodyimnotazombieiwillnotbeeatenicantbeeatentheywontgetme –"

"Guy, hey, we're not zombies!" Dean shouted down into his face, to no avail. He waved his hand too, which just seemed mean. He didn't respond to either.

Jo stood over all of them, and asked, "What do we do?"

That was an excellent question. Sam didn't know, and caught Dean's eye, but he just shrugged. None of them knew what to do.

Sam was about to suggest tying up his hands – they had to have rope in a hardware store – and taking him out of here until they could figure out what to do, but he suddenly stilled beneath Dean, and said, in a gasping voice, "I hafta kill all the zombies." He then sighed, and stopped, his head lolling to the side.

"Hey, buddy," Dean said, patting his face. He then leaned down and tried to hear if he was breathing, while Sam searched for a pulse on his neck. He couldn't find one."He's dead."

"Of what?" Sam asked, looking to see if he had any obvious injuries. He seemed to have been bleeding only from his eyes, and even then, not enough to kill him.

There was a distant but growing sounds of sirens, and they knew they had to go. But what the hell had happened to him?

The three of them left out the back, feeling equally baffled and terrible. "What the hell was that?" Dean asked, as soon as they were back in the car.

Sam shook his head. "Clearly something made him that way."

"But what?" Jo asked. "I've never heard of a thing that makes you blinded with hallucinations and bleed from the eyeballs."

"Witchcraft?" Sam suggested, although that didn't feel right to him.

Dean shrugged as he started the car. "But how did Ash get that confused with a succubus?"

"He wouldn't," Jo said. "I mean, I know he acts like an idiot sometimes, but he's not."

"I don't suppose you saw anything that'd give us a clue?" Dean asked him.

Sam shook his head, and tried to remember everything he saw in his painful vision. Nothing unrelated to the shooting, as far as he could tell.

"Are there succubus relatives?" Dean asked. "Something close to but not exactly them?"

It was Sam's turn to shrug. "I'll have to –"

"Ash, pick up your goddamn phone," Jo said, and Sam turned to see she was indeed on her phone. "Look, it's not a succubus, it's something that blinds people with hallucinations and makes their eyes bleed. Is there a different kind of succubus? Let me know ASAP, or I'm adding to your tab." She hung up her phone and dropped it in her pocket. "Maybe with both of you looking, we can find something faster."

Sam nodded. "Smart."

Since they weren't sure what else to do, it was decided they'd still check out motels, and follow the succubus hiding places on the map, as that's presumably what Carlos was doing before he called Ellen. Maybe if they could retrace their steps, they'd find some clues.

Sam took a few aspirin with some beer, hoping the ache in his head would go away, and also hoping that he wouldn't have to have another vision before they found them. Because the more time it took to find them, the less likely they were to be alive. Not that he was going to say that with Jo in the car.

The next two motels they checked out were a bust, as was the first condemned warehouse. But at the closed down lumber mill, they found what may have been a break of a kind. Dean found a couple of spent shotgun shells in the detritus and dead birds on the ground. It was impossible to say how old they were, but there was still a hint of gunpowder in the air. Jo thought they were from one of her mother's shotguns, but that was impossible to know. Bullets were bullets. But they let her believe it because there was no harm in it.

Still, it wasn't a great clue. Someone shot at something here, but there was no sign anything was hit or hurt, and no sign anyone was taken either. No sign of anything really, which was kind of weird, especially since they found the shells. Unless the scene was staged. Breadcrumbs, just enough to pique their interest and keep them looking … but that was crazy. Why was he thinking that?

They decided to take a break and get some food at a nearby bar, and discuss strategy. Not that there was much to discuss, but it made them feel less helpless.

Speaking of which, the TV over the bar was tuned to the local news when they arrived, and they were covering the hardware store shooting. Three dead, five injured, which was probably not as bad as it could have been, or at least that's what Sam told himself. Then, the worst part. Someone had shaky camera phone footage of Dean tackling the gunman. His face wasn't visible – which was a blessing, because Sam was pretty sure he was still wanted by at least one police department – and the footage was pretty shitty, but as was spelled out under the video, the hunt was on for the "mystery hero". Dean saw it, and when Sam came back to the table, he was grinning ear to ear. "They said I'm a hero," he said, picking up his beer. He was clearly enjoying this. Even Jo rolled her eyes.

"You're a maniac is what you are," Sam said, keeping his voice low. "You almost got yourself killed."

Dean just shrugged, still grinning. Sam knew he was an idiot for even thinking he'd talk about this, especially in front of someone else. He couldn't get Dean to talk about anything even when it was just the two of them.

Why was his paranoia not going away? Sam felt like his skin wanted to crawl off, and he had a sense someone was staring at him, even though, when he looked, he caught no one looking their way.

"So where do we go now?" Jo asked, consulting the rudimentary succubus nesting sight map. "We can't do all these houses, can we?"

Dean shrugged. "Why not?"

Sam stared at him. "Because we'd be breaking into one house after another. Call me crazy, but I'm thinking we'd be joined by cops by house three."

"We're breaking into basements, not houses. If we're careful, we can do it."

Sam shook his head, and rubbed his eyes, which felt dry and sandy. Goddamn it, Dean was in full crazy bravado mode. This didn't bode well. "I'll be back," he said, standing up and heading for the bathroom.

What the hell were they supposed to do now?

Jo watched Sam walk off, both glad and a little anxious. For reasons she didn't fully understand, Dean seemed slightly different when it was just the two of them talking. It was like he dropped a lot of his macho bullshit act, but the why of it eluded her. Sam had to see through his bullshit machismo even better than she did, so why did he keep it intact when Sam was around? Weird.

She picked at the label on her beer bottle, and asked him, "What are the chances they're still alive?"

Dean shook his head. "You can't think that way. They're still alive."

"How do you know that?"

"Experienced hunters? They're better equipped to survive than anybody." He sounded like he almost believed this.

Which did answer one question. Dean embraced this positivity to sell it, to other people, to his brother, while not believing it himself for a single second. But like many hunters, he was an excellent liar. Jo recalled him trying to take care of Sam's injuries while he was bleeding all over the bar, and pieces fell into place. Dean was a Dad. He instantly stepped into the role like it was second nature. He played Dad for Sam earlier, and he was playing Dad for her now. Jo almost told him to knock it off, but then it occurred to her he might not know he was doing this. "What was your Dad like?" It probably sounded like a non-sequitur to him, but she felt like she had almost cracked Dean's code.

Sam was easy to figure out. He was affable, kind of cute, quieter, more bookish, a nice, solid guy, dependable and good to have in a crisis. With demon caused psychic visions, but that was hardly his fault. Dean was a puzzle made of many pieces that didn't seem to fit together. He was a cocky asshole who seemed to hate himself, a cynic who played positive for other people, an irresponsible man boy who could turn into someone's Dad at the drop of a hat. He was a whole bunch of things that didn't make sense. And also, maddeningly, crazy hot. She'd met handsome hunters before – although they were few and far between – but Dean made them look like dog shit. In another, civilian life, he could have been a male model. He was simultaneously aware of this, and unaware of this. He was a Schrödinger's Cat of a human being, and you never knew which one you were getting until you opened the box.

Dean raised an eyebrow at the question, but answered it. "He was a hero. He always knew what to do." With a self-aware chuckle, he added, "He'd probably know what to do here."

"Was he around a lot, growing up?"

"Of course, yeah. He raised us after Mom died."

"But he was on the road a lot hunting, right? So it was just you and Sam?"

"We traveled with him," Dean replied, which wasn't exactly an answer, but close enough. So, yeah, that's what she thought. He'd been playing Dad for Sam most of his life. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugged, and glanced down at her beer bottle. "No reason." She reached into her pocket to look at her phone, since Ash really should have called her back – he'd never been unconscious this long – and was shocked at what she discovered. "My phone's dead."

"You didn't charge it?"

"It had a full charge last time I looked. There's no way the battery could have run down that fast."

Dean grabbed his phone out of his pocket, and from the way he frowned, he really didn't have to say anything. "Mine's dead too."

"What does that mean?" Jo actually knew it meant nothing good, but she meant besides that.

Dean shook his head, pocketing his phone and looking around the bar. Was he looking for someone else on their phone? Oddly enough, there wasn't, which seemed like an impossibility nowadays.

It was then the lights flickered, briefly, and Jo thought she saw dark movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked towards it, but there was nothing there but shadows. But she saw them move, right? She was sure she did.

The lights came back up full, and the television hissed with static. The bartender turned it off. "Jeeze, not again."

Dean looked at him. "This happen a lot?"

"For the last few days, yeah," the bartender replied. He was a chubby guy with a chinbeard, and went back to pouring drinks as he talked. "The electric company says it's a short on the line, but I don't know why they haven't fixed it yet."

Dean frowned down at the table, considering this. After he was quiet for too long, she prompted him. "What does it mean?"

"No idea. But that's when all this weirdness started, right? A few days ago?"

She shrugged. "It's a bit vague, but yeah." What did that mean? Succubuses that weren't succubuses, also draining the town's energy supply? Seemed like random stuff thrown in a blender.

Dean thought about it a moment, but if he came to any conclusions, he kept them to himself. His eyes darted to the men's room door. "Shouldn't Sam be back by now?"

"I have no idea. He's your brother." She almost said pseudo-son, but kept the observation to herself. He'd probably hate it.

Dean got up and headed for the men's room, and she followed, partially out of curiosity, and partially because she still didn't trust those shadows.

Dean opened the door, and said, "Sam?" She let him go in alone, because the brief glimpse of what a dirty, depressing men's room it was was enough for her. But she heard Dean inside, still calling out "Sam," and opening stall doors with increased forcefulness. It's when he shouted, "Sammy," that her gut suddenly clenched. Dean came out, eyes wide and shoulders tensed. "He's not in there."

"Is there another way out?" But even as she asked, she knew it was a stupid question. Sam wouldn't just ditch them, especially now.

Dean slapped the door. "Only way in and out. Something -"

Whatever else he was going to say was interrupted by a big burly guy slamming open the door of the bar. He had a rifle in his hands, and his eyes were opaque white, with blood falling like tears from his empty eyes. "You brought the monsters here!" he screamed, and opened fire.