June 13th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 7:15 p.m.
Taking a long, deep drink from his soda, Sam used the movement as an excuse to stare at the man and woman sitting across the red linoleum and faux chrome restaurant table. Something was clearly, awkwardly, horribly wrong with the way his brother and the Slayer were interacting with one another, and he was hoping - terrified and hoping - that it wasn't solely due to the matter of the dog.
For starters, they were being stiltedly polite, and Sam had not seen either of them elbow the other even once during their hour in the pizza parlor. That never happened. Faith and Dean weren't the polite kind of people; they were the elbowing kind of people, who typically took every advantage of even the slightest chance at gaining ground in the never-ending prank war between the two of them and Sam. It was bizarre to see them minding their p's and q's. Dinner at Zimorino's without napkins being pelted across the table or straw wrapper torpedoes shot at his nose, or red pepper dumped onto Sam's pizza when he wasn't looking was deeply unsettling.
"Thanks for taking the dog," he said at last, finally breaching the elephant in the vinyl booth.
"Thanks for building our fence," replied Faith sweetly, and she reached across the table for the last slice of sausage pizza.
"That's nice of you, honey," smiled Caroline, patting her husband on the knee. "Did you work on that today?"
"I haven't – " began Sam.
At the same time, Faith cut in on top of him. "Tomorrow, actually. He and Dean are going to spend the day putting the fence in. Can't leave a big dog all cooped up in a little house, now, can we?" Her brown eyes gleamed with malice.
"Oh, is that what I'm doing tomorrow?" grumbled Dean under his breath.
Faith's hand disappeared beneath the table. There was a pause, and then a small grunt of pain from Dean. To Sam's frustration, his wife actually smiled at this.
"Fine," said Dean, wincing, and he grinned the grin of a dead man. "Fencing it is."
Still, despite whatever under-the-table warfare was going on between the two of them, they at least managed to be pleasant until the meal ended and the group stepped outside of the restaurant into the hazy dusk of summer. Sam hesitantly led the other adults over to his car, where the back windows were rolled down a half inch. He unlocked the vehicle and opened the rear driver's side door to let out a heavy shepherd with a fawn-colored coat, heavily blanketed with black along his back, tail, neck, ears, and nose. The dog leapt lightly down onto the gravel of the parking lot.
"Sit," said Sam, and the beast sat obediently at his feet. The hunter glanced from his brother to Faith, who were both staring at the dog with forced neutral expressions. While Sam could read past the mask of indifference to the mild frustration in his brother's eyes, Faith was an enigma. And he sure as hell knew better than to start digging too deep when it came to the Slayer. The tall man bent to clip a lead onto the dog's collar.
"What's his name?" asked Faith as he straightened up.
"Reginald."
"Reginald?" echoed Dean as if he had forgotten. Sam fought the urge to grind his teeth in irritation. His damn brother damn well knew the dog's damn name.
"Shelter named him. Not me. You can call him Reggie."
"A dog named Reggie," muttered the woman. "What'll be next?"
"A Slayer named Buffy?" joked Dean, earning himself a scowl from Faith.
"Honey." That was Caroline, her hand on Sam's shoulder. "We should head home. It's almost Olivia's bedtime."
"Right." Sam turned back to face the others. There was an awkward moment, and then, hand extended, he passed the leash over to his brother, who miraculously made no further quips beyond, "He'd better be potty-trained."
As Dean and the Slayer walked away, he caught one last frustrated grumble from Faith. "We are not calling him Reggie."
"What's up with them?" asked Caro, buckling the eleven-month-old Olivia into her rear-facing car seat. She hadn't wanted to bring the baby in the same car as the shepherd, but in the end Sam had needed to pick her up from work, and there hadn't been another way.
"Huh?" He dodged the question.
"They were weird."
"You always think they're weird."
Caroline smiled but did not disagree. "Even weirder than usual."
"I, uh, I don't think she's too thrilled about the dog."
"You'll find out tomorrow." It was an order, not a question.
"Huh?"
"Tomorrow. When you and Dean put a fence up for Reginald," said Caroline firmly, in the sure tone of one who has stated many, many times before that acquiring a large dog without sufficient planning beforehand was an irresponsible decision. "You're going to take your brother aside and ask him what's wrong."
"Caroline."
"That weird dysfunctional thing he has going on with that woman is likely the best thing either he or her is ever going to have. So don't let him screw it up."
Sam did not voice his unspoken thought that if Dean and Faith had made it all the way from California to Ohio to Kansas to Montana without killing each other, one large herding dog was unlikely to send them hurtling over the falls of homicidality now.
Peter wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting when the small plane had completed its descent and landed with shuddering finality on the tarmac of some deserted private airfield. He cautiously followed the strange man - Andrew's - lead, unbuckling his seat belt and grabbing his backpack before exiting the narrow stairway just behind the cockpit. Throughout the duration of the six hour flight, he had not once seen whoever was flying the plane. Or whatever was flying the plane, the teenager thought grimly, recalling the weird, chirping sounds that had once sounded over the loudspeaker and the embarrassed look on Andrew's face that had instantly followed.
Near the edge of the concrete runway, an old car was idling. A slender woman stood against the front passenger door, her arms folded across her stomach. In the gloom of the evening, Peter could barely make out her frowning expression. His stomach cringed as he remembered that he only had another hour and a half before his next check-in with Mister Stark.
"Now, I know we haven't covered nearly a third of all there is to cover about the Slayers of the Vampyres," Andrew was saying companionably, beginning to walk towards the black car, a reluctant Peter trailing behind him. "But most of it she can tell you, better than I ever could. After all, few are half as familiar with the history of Slayage as is Faith, the Dark Slayer."
"Been running your mouth again, Drew?" said the woman sardonically as they approached.
To Peter's disbelief and mild horror, Andrew bowed. "Milady," he replied with a dramatic flourish. "I bring you the latest trainee, one who could greatly benefit from your years of experience. Peter . . . uh, what's your last name again?" he hissed to Peter in an undertone.
"Parker," replied the boy, too busy looking past Andrew at the woman - Faith? - and the dark interior of the car. He could pick out one - maybe two - additional heads.
"Yes. Peter Parker."
The woman raised her eyebrows. "A boy? We're taking boys now?"
"This isn't the first one," answered Andrew, a bit peevish. "You remember three years ago in Great Britain -"
"Yes, all right, I remember." The woman stepped forward, uncrossing her arms. She extended her hand in the teenager's direction. He shook it gingerly. Her grip was firm and cool, but not crushing. A good sign, Peter thought hopefully. As far as the unspoken and rather confusing language of handshakes went.
"Hi, Peter. I'm Faith. Drew's told me a little about you. I guess he didn't return the favor and tell you much about me." Faith scowled at Andrew, but there was a lingering fondness in her eyes.
"Not, uh, not yet," said Peter. Then, remembering his manners, he added, "It's nice to meet you."
The Slayer gave a minute shake of her head. "Huh. We'll see." She reached over to her right and opened the door to the back seat. "Hop in," she commanded flatly. "I need to wrap up a few things with flyboy here."
Following orders, the teenager shrugged his backpack off, switching it around to the front, before he clambered into the rear of the car. It was more awkward than he had anticipated, for as soon as he had managed to close the door behind him, he was instantly rushed by a wet, pointed nose and a pair of heavy paws.
"Reg," barked a gruff voice from the driver's seat, a voice that sounded like its owner gargled with gravel at least twice a day. "Get back."
With a twitch of its black ears in the direction of the voice, the giant dog scooted a few inches backwards across the faded fabric upholstery.
"Good boy," said the owner of the voice, and he leaned around the front bucket seat to give the German Shepherd a rough pat on the shoulder. The man was about the same age as the woman, not so old as Mister Stark, but not too many years younger. He wore a flannel button-down over a dark undershirt. His sandy brown hair was longer on the top than the sides, and his pale green eyes were hard and closed off. "You're the new Slayer."
"Ye-es?" answered Peter hesitantly.
"What's your name?"
"Peter Parker."
"Alliterative."
"Yeah, I guess." Outside the car windows, the Slayer and Andrew were engaged in what looked to be a heated discussion. Faith had left her position against the car and marched forward into Drew's personal space, and if she had been looming over Peter the way that she was looming at Andrew, Peter would have been cowering in a corner.
"I'm Dean." The man followed Peter's gaze to the Slayer and snorted. "Don't worry. She won't hurt him. Unfortunately," he added to himself in an undertone.
"Are -" the teenager struggled with himself. This grim guy was intimidating - far more so than Andrew, even more intimidating, maybe, than the humorless woman outside. "Are you a Slayer, too?"
Still watching the conversation beyond the car, the man narrowed his eyes. "God, no."
"A, uh," he fought to remember what Andrew had told him. "A Watcher, then?"
"Hell, that's even worse. I'm a hunter, kid. The better, sexier version of Ghostbusters. I just work with a Slayer, that's all. Geez, Drew didn't tell you sh-t, did he?"
Peter protested feebly, "There was a lot of information."
"Uh huh." Dean turned back around in his seat to stare the teenager down. "Guess that makes this easier, then."
"What?"
"I don't know what your story is," said the man flatly. "And to be honest, I don't really care. It's all the same, in the end. They call you to be a Slayer; they drag you out of whatever dreams of a white-fence apple-pie life that you might have had; and they slam you out here to get brought up to speed. Welcome to Slayer Reformatory High," he chuckled without humor. "Now, Faith, she's gonna want to be soft on you. You've got that underfed, big-eyed innocent look that makes her think she needs to save you from yourself. Me? I don't give a sh-t. And I ain't gonna put up with sh-t. You do a single thing to put her or me in danger - don't matter to me if it's intentional or not - and you'll be on a train to Mexico before you can say, 'Oops.' You hear me, kid?"
Peter gulped. "Yes, sir."
The man's frown deepened, as if somehow Peter's response had managed to piss him off even more. "Don't call me sir." He swung around to face the front, his eyes flicking once again to the window where Faith was still arguing with Andrew.
They sat in the car in silence for another long, endless minute, before the front passenger door was jerked open, and the Slayer practically threw herself inside. "I'm gonna kill him," she growled, buckling her seatbelt with jerking, angry movements.
"Don't make promises you ain't gonna keep." Dean spun the key in the ignition, then took off to the left, following the concrete runway towards the tiny air control tower and the road beyond.
Faith waited until they had cleared the airfield, then she said, "Cover your ears, kid."
"What?"
"You heard the lady," snapped Dean. "Cover 'em."
Peter placed his open palms over his ears.
"Harder," ordered the man.
The teenager made a show of pressing his hands closer to his ears, although he knew that it wasn't much use. With his enhanced senses, he could stuff balls of cotton in his ears and still win a global championship in eavesdropping.
Sure enough, the first whispered words out of the Slayer's mouth came to him as clear as a bell.
"This is a sh-tshow, Dean."
"When aren't Slayer operations a sh-t show?" asked the hunter rhetorically.
"Can it, cowboy," Faith shot back. "This story doesn't add up. Kid wasn't found the usual way - vampire rumors, prophecies, found by a Watcher. Oh, no. A couple of hunters found him wrestling a werewolf in Queens and decided to tranq both of them. The kid, and the 'wolf. And then they called Andrew. Apparently the kid said he was a Slayer right before they shot him full of daydreams, but according to Drew, he'd got no idea what a Slayer or a Watcher or even a werewolf was, outside of the movies. And I just got a call about suspected vamp activity near the resort in Polson."
"That's over an hour from here on Flathead land. You gonna call the shaman to handle it?"
Faith shook her head. "Shaman's the one who called me. He does more medicine and spirits than fangs - plus, he's seventy-five, Dean. We're not asking a geriatric Flathead elder to take down a nest of vampires."
"You're not planning on taking the kid."
"No. Just my bike. You can watch these two." She jerked her chin towards the backseat.
"I think I'd rather take the vamp," grumbled Dean.
The Slayer chuckled. "Sorry, handsome. I'm the one who got the call." She raised her voice. "Peter! You can take your hands down now."
"Everything okay?" asked Peter, trying to act innocent and confused. The confusion part was easy; it was true.
Dodging the question, the woman inquired, "You got any family, Peter?" Her voice was kinder than it had been when they first met.
"No," lied the teenager with a brief pang of guilt as he thought of Aunt May. He added truthfully, "My parents died a few years ago."
"Sorry to hear that," remarked Faith, and to her credit she did sound truly sorry. "Anybody else you need to call, tell them where you are?"
"I . . . I get a call?"
Dean grunted, "We ain't kidnappers, kid. You got a phone?"
"Yeah," Peter mumbled.
"Then go ahead and call whoever you need to," said the Slayer easily. "Just do us a favor and don't make it law enforcement. I got a couple of warrants out a few states over for grave disturbances. Uncle Sam hasn't quite come 'round to the whole girl-against-the-undead thing yet."
"Okay." Hardly daring this to be true - he still had an entire hour until he needed to talk to Mister Stark - Peter fished his Stark phone out of his jeans pocket and dialed the familiar number.
"You're early, spiderboy," was Tony's quick, cheerful response, although Peter thought he could still distinguish a hint of anxiety. "Everything copacetic?"
"Hi, Ned."
"I'm not - " For a genius, sometimes Mister Stark could be a little slow on the uptake. "Oh. Listening ears?"
"Just wanted to let you know that I won't be able to come over to play Halo tomorrow," said Peter, aware that both the man and the woman were paying intense attention to every word that came out of his mouth.
"You okay, Pete?"
"Yeah, Ned, everything's fine - I think I just got food poisoning from dinner."
"You need the Iron Legion?"
"No, I can't keep anything down. Not even ginger ale. But I don't think I'm iron deficient, and I don't need chicken soup."
"All right, kid. If you're sure."
"Thanks for offering, Ned. Uh, text you tomorrow?"
"Three hours. I'm starting the clock now. Three hours."
"Friend of mine," said Peter, hanging up the phone, answering the Slayer's unspoken question. "We play video games on Saturdays."
"No video games at our place. But you can help Dean build a fence tomorrow."
Dean growled so low and loud that the German Shepherd lifted its head from its paws and whined.
"See?" said Dean. "Reg here doesn't want me to build the fence."
"Winchester," Faith snapped, and the curt word sent a sharp strike of lightening through Peter's brain. "Shut up."
Wisely, he did.
Throughout the rest of the twenty minute drive through Missoula's main streets and neighborhoods, Peter kept asking himself if he had misheard. A hunter with the first name of Dean and the last name of Winchester? Wasn't - wasn't that the name of the main character in Ned's new favorite books? No, that couldn't be real. Must be a crazy coincidence. Or, more likely, Peter thought, Dean Winchester wasn't this guy's real name. It was probably an alias. Maybe he had read the books like Ned had and decided to borrow the character's identity. After all, he had to admit, the Dean Winchester of the Supernatural books was one badass dude.
When they pulled up in front of the shabby two-story building, the first thing that Peter noted was the peeling paint on the wooden planking that made up most of the house. Faith disappeared like lightning, flying out of the car and into the garage. She came back out barely a minute later, straddling a hefty black motorcycle that was twice as loud as the sedan they had just driven. Her helmet blocked any view of her features, but she gave Dean a terse nod before roaring off down the road.
"Out."
Peter looked away from the blinking red taillight, growing ever dimmer, to see Dean urging the German Shepherd out of the car and onto the pavement. The man had a thick nylon leash wrapped around his wrist, and he eyed both the dog and the boy speculatively, as if wondering which of the two would be giving him more trouble.
"Come on, then," said the man sharply. "I'll give you the tour."
The tour itself was brief. The narrow entry hall led into a living room with much-used furniture, a large television screen, and an empty white fireplace. Opening off of the living room was the kitchen. Another hall jutting off from the living room led the way to a bathroom, laundry room, and a room with a locked steel-reinforced door that Dean referred to as the library and did not open. Back in the entry hall, man, dog, and boy trooped up the steep staircase to the second floor, where there were three small bedrooms and another bathroom.
Dean pointed him in to the corner bedroom, which contained little more than a twin bed, a desk, and a chair. "That's you, kid."
"Uh, thanks." Peter scurried through the doorway, moving past the man's imposing figure and the dog into the bedroom. He set his backpack onto the edge of the bed. "Is there, uh, is there anything else going on tonight?"
The man's forbidding expression softened slightly. "Here." He thrust the blue nylon leash out towards the teenager. "Do me a favor and take Reggie here on a walk. Don't let him piss on the cars, don' take him into the garage, and try to keep him from taking a dump on the neighbors' lawns. You got that? He's a former military dog, so he should halfway behave."
Peter blanched. He had never had ten pounds of dog on a leash before, much less an eighty pound member of the K-9 unit, and the memory of the horrible breath and teeth of the werewolf was still blazing fresh in his imagination. "Where should I go?"
"Do a square. Three blocks by three blocks. This is Montana, not the City, so you shouldn't be bothered. Something comes after you, run like hell. If you got no choice, try to set the dog on them. Shelter said Reggie did two tours in Iraq - guess we'll see if he remembers any of it."
"Got it," squeaked Peter.
He held on to his nerves and panic until he got outside of the house, off the front porch, and onto the cracked sidewalk that led towards the adjacent house.
"Okay, then," the teenager mumbled out loud to himself. "I'm just taking a former member of the U.S. military out for walkies. No pressure here. Nope. None at all."
Thankfully, the dog did not appear at all nervous. He strolled a few steps in front of Peter, his ears perked forward, pausing every twenty feet or so to sniff a plant, a mailbox, or a street light. To the boy's great relief, Reggie did not attempt to pee on any of the cars they passed, instead preferring to relieve himself near a telephone pole. Neither did he react to other barking dogs behind their own fences. His job was to walk, and he performed his job with remarkable dedication.
While they completed their three-block wide square, Peter took advantage of the solitude to call Mister Stark and update him on the situation. His cowl - and Karen - were safely tucked away in his bag back at the house, so he used his cell phone. Mister Stark agreed that the best thing to do fo now was to watch and wait, to give it a few days of pretending to be a Slayer trainee and gather more information. Peter held back about the weird coincidence with the hunter's name and Ned's book series. It was probably silly, and he had a hunch about where he might find more information anyway.
At the end of the walk, Peter told Reggie to "sit" and "stay" at the edge of the driveway while he eased the garage door up and up and up. The teenager crept into the garage, feeling against the walls in the dark for a light switch. His fingers finally traced across an outlet, and then he scooted his hand up and around until he found the lever. Light filled the garage.
It was nothing as grim as he had been expected. The walls were surrounded with wooden shelving, and a heavy red toolbox sat beside a tall workbench with a single stool. There was a large metal sink near the small side door that led into the house, and an old axe was leaning against the doorframe. A large pile of wooden planks were stacked by the workbench.
In the center of the concrete floor, occupying the majority of the space, was a gleaming black muscle car. There was not a smudge on her windows, not a speck of rust on her undercarriage. Peter wasn't much good at cars, but when he spotted the shining "Chevrolet" written in the grill near the car's left headlight, his stomach clenched. A well-kept old black Chevy car. Was this guy that obsessed with re-living those weird Carver Edlund stories?
Peter tried the shotgun door handle. It was unlocked. He searched the old Chevy as quickly and quietly as he could, hoping to refute his growing suspicions. Instead, the evidence only grew as he moved from the front of the car to the rear. In the front passenger air vents, he found a single red Lego wedged in so firmly that not even his enhanced strength could make it budge. The ash tray on the driver's side held a little olive green plastic solider, that had melted in some long ago heat wave and then solidified around the edge of the ashtray. In the backseat, on the window deck below the windshield, two sets of initials had been carved: S.W. and D.W.
The parallels between this guy's life and Carver Edlund's books didn't stop there. The license plate - Ohio - CNK 80Q3. The secret compartment in the trunk - filled with an uncomfortably large array of things with sharp edges. A beat-up cigar box inside that compartment containing multiple fake badges from several federal and state law enforcement organizations, including the Texas Rangers, most of which had Dean's face spread across them. There were two, faded and tucked into the corner of the box, which showed a man with longer hair and hazel eyes and were stuck together with an old rubber band and a post-it note that read "Sam."
As the last of his disbelief faded away, Peter carefully rushed to put everything back where he found it. Then he killed the lights, lowered the garage door, and stared at Reggie, who was waiting for him still. The teenager picked up the end of the leash once again. "Come on, Reg," he said quietly. "Let's head on in."
Peter wandered from room to room, but the downstairs was deserted. Lost in thought, he trooped slowly up the stairs, the German Shepherd padding at his heels. When he saw the light streaming out from under the doorframe of his assigned bedroom, Peter's heart sank down to his ankles. Gritting his teeth and girding his courage, he took the final two steps across the landing and turned the door handle.
Crouched over his backpack, Peter's red and blue cowl from Mister Stark in his hands, was Dean Winchester - the real, live, resurrected Dean Winchester. As the door opened, he looked up from the cowl to the gangly teenager in the hallway. All the mistrust and dislike had vanished from his green eyes, and his gaze was filled with wonder.
"Holy sh-t," he breathed, rising to his feet. "You're Spiderman."