Chapter 3

That night at about 9pm, an hour before moonrise, Dean and I loaded up and headed out into the cold Pennsylvania night. It wasn't a long drive to Brandon Park, and the Impala's engine didn't even warm up enough to bother turning on the heater.

The wind was still freezing - even more so, now the sun was gone - and the grass in the park was still covered in a light coating of snow. But the sky was still relatively clear and Mother Nature hadn't added any fresh powder since we arrived in town, so it was more like a bad frost. It wasn't even enough to make noise as we walked through it.

Dean and I stood just inside the park gates and looked around. There was a network of paths winding through tidy expanses of snowy grass and around stands of trees. The lighting wasn't awesome, but the full moon made up for that - its silver light was bright enough that I could even see the bandshell in the distance. "So where do we start?" I asked, looking over at Dean.

He considered my question for a few seconds before he answered. "Guess we've just gotta look around. I mean, the werewolf will probably find us anyway." he said, with a shrug. "Isn't that a comforting thought." I sighed, and checked my Beretta one more time before I tucked it back into the waistband of my jeans. "Hey, maybe it'll even find us before it kills anyone else." Dean's voice was cheery as he walked off down a path to his right, and I followed with a few quick steps. It's odd, what makes a hunter happy.

Naturally, the werewolf didn't find us. Instead, Dean and I wandered aimlessly around the park by moonlight for over an hour and saw only two people the entire time. At about 10:30pm, we sat down for a rest on one of a row of stone benches.

"At this rate we're gonna freeze to death before this thing shows its face." I said, pulling my jacket tighter around me and burying my chin in my scarf. I'd thought it was cold in the daytime! Despite wearing two pairs of socks, my feet felt like ice blocks - I was glad I was wearing gloves, because otherwise I'm sure I would've had frostbite.

"Would you rather hunt it in Tennessee?" Dean replied teasingly, a smug little smile on his face. I shot him a look, but he went right on smiling.

I was about to come back with a spectacular retort of my own when a gunshot rang out from a stand of trees nearby. Dean and I exchanged a look, and another shot came as we were getting up off the bench. The second shot was followed closely by a scream - a shrill shriek of terror, that was itself followed by a deep, animal snarl. Dean started running then, gun drawn and safety off, headed for the thicket. I followed only a few steps behind, my climbing heart rate not entirely due to the sudden burst of activity. Running towards the supernatural killing machine tends to jumpstart your pulse, you know?

The trees were a mix of evergreens and stick-like deciduous species, with smaller bushes interspersed between their trunks and a gap at opposite ends to accommodate a concrete path. There was a roughly-circular clearing in the middle, about the size of the average suburban backyard, the trees screening it from the rest of the park. The opening in the canopy of the trees let the full moon shine down through wispy clouds to illuminate the scene almost like daylight.

Dean reached the clearing just ahead of me, and skidded to a sudden stop. I heard him swear under his breath as I pulled up behind his left shoulder, crashing into him and almost knocking him over. I opened my mouth to ask why the hell he'd come to a screeching halt, but the question died on my lips when I looked up and saw what was happening in the clearing.

When I followed Dean down the path into the thicket, I thought I knew what to expect. I'd gotten up-close and personal with Madison after she'd wolfed out, and that wasn't something I was going to forget anytime soon. She'd had yellow eyes, fangs, claws, and supernatural speed and strength; but most disturbingly, she'd still looked kind of human. She didn't grow fur all over her body like in the movies, and she'd still had human limbs and her human face - for the most part, anyway. But the creature I saw in front of me didn't look anything like Madison.

The werewolf in the clearing didn't look human at all. It looked for all the world like an actual wolf, but it was immediately obvious that this wasn't just a rogue timberwolf down from the hills looking for an easy meal. Mother Nature never came up with an animal quite like this one.

The first thing that struck me about the werewolf was its sheer size - it was easily four feet tall at the shoulder, and eight or nine feet long from its nose to the tip of its tail. It was covered in coarse charcoal-coloured hair so dark it was nearly black, and must have weighed nearly 350lb.

The werewolf had a broad, deep chest, accentuated by a slim waist that pulled in sharply at the end of its ribcage. Its legs were long and powerful, and ended in huge paws that were bigger than my hand. Where a wolf's short nails would be, there were three-inch weapons that could only be described as talons - they looked like they were made of sharp, hooked onyx.

Its thick neck led up to a huge, heavy skull with a wide, flat forehead. The wolf's eyes were ice-blue, like you might see on an Alaskan malamute, and its long, blunt muzzle was full of sharp white teeth. Just the sight of the thing set primitive warning bells ringing in my brain, and every instinct I had wanted me to turn and run as fast as I possibly could in the opposite direction.

I knew we should do something instead of just standing there and staring, but it was like watching a car crash and I couldn't tear my eyes away. The werewolf's victim - a dark-haired, olive-skinned man in his mid-thirties - was sitting against a tree at the other end of the clearing with his back pressed against the trunk. I immediately pegged him as a big game hunter: he wore a green camouflage outfit and carried a high-end, large calibre bolt action rifle that had its own camouflage pattern painted on. There was a set of long, bloody gashes in the front of his jacket where the wolf had raked its paw across his abdomen, probably resulting in the scream that brought us running. The hunter was frantically working the action on the rifle in his hands, but the weapon was hopelessly jammed.

As it approached the defenceless man, the werewolf's lips pulled back in a vicious snarl and its four-inch canine teeth gleamed like steel in the moonlight. Realising he couldn't free the stuck shell, the hunter instead swung the stock of his rifle at the beast and it growled: a deep, resonating sound that echoed off the trees surrounding the clearing and made my blood run cold. No natural wolf could have made a noise like that - a low, savage rumble that resonated with something primal in my subconscious, and set the instinctive warning bells ringing with renewed vigour.

A chill of primeval fear rolled over me, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Dean's gun come up in front of him. His eyes were wider than I thought possible, but his hands were dead steady as he took aim at the wolf. I realised with a shiver that he was going to draw its attention and make it come at us so he could get a shot at the heart, and every fibre of my being screamed at me that it was probably a very dumb idea. Dumb even for us.

The sound of the shot reverberated off the tree trunks and I saw Dean's bullet strike the animal in the shoulder. It stopped advancing on the helpless hunter and swung its huge head to look at the two humans standing at the other end of the clearing. Its ears flattened back against its skull and its eyes locked on Dean, and on the gleaming Taurus in his hands.

They stayed like that for a few seconds, the wolf staring murderously at Dean. The beast almost looked like it was considering whether to attack the guys with the guns, or finish off the prey in front of it. My eyes widened as it actually took half a step in our direction, but then the injured hunter let out a small, involuntary whimper of pain and the wolf's head snapped back around to him. He barely had time to draw the knife hanging from his belt before the beast attacked.

As Dean and I watched on in stunned, helpless horror, the man screamed again and slashed at the animal in a desperate attempt to save himself. The werewolf hung back for a moment and waited for the knife to reach the end of its arc, then was on the hunter before he could bring it around for a second try. The hunter's screech of terror became a howl of pain as the werewolf wrapped its jaws around his left shoulder and clamped down, planting a giant paw on the man's stomach to hold him still.

The muzzle of the enormous black wolf was long enough that its canines bit into the flesh below its victim's pectoral muscle at the front and at the bottom of his shoulderblade in the back. The man's arms and legs flailed wildly as the werewolf's jaws snapped shut, its teeth slicing through skin and muscle like a hot knife through butter. There was an audible cracking noise as it crunched through the hunter's collarbone and shoulderblade, and his cry of pain became a strangled whine when his ribs gave way under the pressure and the wolf's massive canine teeth tore into his left lung and then into his heart.

I could see the bulging muscles that powered the beast's jaws moving as it gnawed at its prey. The man wasn't making any noise at all now, and the werewolf worrying at his shoulder was producing what little movement there was in his body. The entire left side of the man's torso was stained dark under the moonlight by the scarlet waterfall of blood from the huge wound, and I knew there was nothing we could do for him now.

Only seconds after it bit into him, the werewolf ripped a chunk right out of the man's chest with a sickening wet tearing sound. It took everything between his neck and left shoulder, leaving a gaping wound that extended down a full twelve inches into his torso. His left arm fell onto the ground at his side, now attached only by a thin strip of flesh and splintered rib segments that had once been the side of his chest wall. What remained of his shoulder now hung at roughly the same level as his navel.

"Oh God." I breathed, as the werewolf crunched the man's ribs and collarbone into fragments with a few movements of its jaw, before swallowing the mess of pulverised bone, bloody flesh and ragged chunks of organ. I half-expected it to raise its head and start howling at the moon right then, but instead it turned its gaze back on us.

Dean raised his gun again as the wolf started to stalk towards us, its bloodstained teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. As soon as he had a clear shot at its heart, he emptied his remaining rounds into the werewolf's broad chest one after the other until the Taurus clicked empty.

I didn't expect what happened next. To the considerable surprise of both Dean and I, the wolf didn't collapse onto the ground in a bloody, dying heap - it stopped its advance and looked at Dean, growling low in its chest as if it hadn't just been shot multiple times with little chunks of werewolf poison.

I knew there was no way Dean had missed its heart. Any one of those shots should've killed it instantly where it stood. The fact that the monster was still alive meant we weren't dealing with a werewolf, and that meant our guns full of silver bullets might as well have been water pistols for all the good they were going to do us. The thought made the bottom drop out of my stomach.

I glanced over at Dean, his eyes wide with the same realisation I'd just had. As he stared into the wolf, its cold blue eyes bright with an unsettling intelligence, I got the distinct and chilling impression the beast was considering whether or not it should charge us. I could almost hear the wheels turning in its mind as it licked its lips.

Before I knew it my Beretta was up in front of me, my hands on total autopilot as they aimed, and the gaze between Dean and the werewolf was suddenly interrupted as I shot it in the head. I wasn't about to let it tear me apart without even firing a shot, and you never know - it might've worked.

Of course, it didn't. The beast gave a sharp yowl and pulled back, shaking its head like it had been stung by bee or something. And it might as well have been, for all the damage the bullet did. There was a small, bloody tear in the wolf's skin just above its right eye, but being shot in the head with silver at point-blank range hadn't been nearly as fatal as I'd hoped. It must have hurt, though, because the werewolf snarled savagely at me and backed off a few steps as it considered its options. Before I could shoot it again, it turned and grabbed what was left of the hunter in its jaws before loping off into the trees with its kill.

I frowned and lowered the gun slightly as I watched it go, then looked over at Dean. He was watching the trees with an expression of shock and confusion. "Dean, that's no werewolf." I said, quietly. I knew I was stating the obvious, but I didn't know what else to say. "I know." he took a deep breath, pulling the spare clip from his jeans, and deliberately avoided meeting my eyes as he reloaded his Taurus with slightly shaky hands. He watched the trees the whole time for any sign of the werewolf - or whatever it was.

There are few things that literally strike fear into the hearts of hunters, but being eaten alive is one of them. It's a basic, primal fear - the kind that makes your heart skip beats and turns your blood to ice - and take it from me, it's bad enough when you haven't been torn to ribbons by a Hellhound. After the things he'd gone through, I couldn't even begin to imagine what terrible things were going through Dean's head right then. His ashen face made me think I didn't want to know.

"We've gotta get out of here, Dean. If that thing comes back, we're dead." I put a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't respond. He was off in his own little world, eyes fixed on the darkened patch on the grass where the wolf had torn the hunter apart before our eyes. The blood looked black under the moonlight.

"Dean! We have to go!" I spun my brother around and shoved him back in the direction we came from - right then, I wanted nothing more than to get as far away from this Godforsaken park as possible. Dean shook his head like he was trying to clear it, and his eyes focused on me. There was a haunted look on his face as he ran a shaky hand back over his hair. "Let's get the hell out of here." he flicked the safety back on, but didn't put the gun away as we turned tail and ran back to where we'd left the Impala.

Neither of us said a word on the drive back to our cabin, but I didn't have to be a mind-reader to know what Dean was thinking. He hadn't ever drawn me a picture, but he'd told me what a Hellhound looked like and this werewolf was the very image of the beast that dragged him to Hell.

Dean kept his eyes fixed firmly on the road in front of us, gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white - every time he loosened his grip, his hands would start shaking again. He didn't look over at me, but I could see that haunted look was still on his face. The similarities between that werewolf and a Hellhound obviously weren't lost on him, and coming face-to-face with it must have dragged up some things he wished he could forget.

As soon as we got inside the cabin and locked the door securely behind us, Dean produced two glasses from a kitchen cabinet and poured us both a drink while I sat at the kitchen table and dialled Bobby's number. I put the phone on speaker and set it down on the table, then took the glass Dean held out to me. We both downed our whiskey in one shot and I handed my empty glass back to him, and he refilled both without saying a word. The haunted look was gone but he looked pale and drawn, with bright red spots high on his cheeks. I figured I probably didn't look much better - I was feeling bad enough to drink Dean's cheap whiskey, after all. Usually, I avoided that stuff like the plague.

Bobby answered on the ninth ring, sounding sleepy and irritated. "Dammit, Sam, do you know what time it is?" he demanded, by way of a greeting.

That threw me, and I paused before I answered. "Um - I don't know. Late, I think." I replied, blinking. I took the refilled glass Dean offered me and took a deep break before I went on. "Look, Bobby, we've got a problem." I said, before the grumpy hunter could launch into a lecture about not waking people up in the small hours of the morning. I wasn't in the mood for that.

"It's about the werewolf." Dean interjected, as I took a deep breath and drank down half my whiskey. God, it tasted terrible.

"What about the damn werewolf?" Bobby still sounded irritated, but there was a note of concern tempering his annoyance now.

"We're not even sure it is a werewolf." Dean said, and there was a silence on the other end of the phone.

"What do you mean, you're 'not sure it's a werewolf'?" Bobby asked slowly, and I could just imagine him narrowing his eyes.

"We got a look at the thing tonight while it was tearing into some poor guy that was trying to shoot it with a hunting rifle." I began, and then paused as my mind started replaying the scene.

"And?"

"It's not a werewolf, Bobby." Dean scrubbed a hand over his face. "It looked more like an actual wolf. A big one - like, the size of a lion. At least four feet tall at the shoulder." I said, and there was another silence on Bobby's end.

"You're sure it's not a Skinwalker? Or even a wild wolf that came down from the hills looking for some easy prey?" Bobby didn't sound hopeful, even as he was asking the question.

"This isn't a Skinwalker or some random wolf from the hills!" Dean snapped, then drained his glass and almost slammed it down on the table. I gave him a warning look, and he narrowed his eyes at me. "I emptied a full clip of silver bullets into it, and it didn't even slow down! It looked right at me, and I swear to God, it saw my gun and considered whether to attack or not. It thought it though." Dean continued, just as intensely but a little more quietly. He took a deep breath and sat heavily in the chair opposite me.

"Honestly, Bobby, it seems more like a human wolf than a wolf-man." I mused, remembering the intelligence in the wolf's eyes when it looked at us. "I might as well have been shooting it with a BB gun. No wonder it's killed the last three hunters that went after it." Dean frowned as he looked at the mostly-empty plastic tray of silver bullets on the table in front of him. "Your bullet to the head hurt it, though." he added, looking at me thoughtfully.

"You shot it in the head?" Bobby asked incredulously, and I shrugged. "I wasn't about to let it eat me with a full clip left in my Beretta." I replied, deadpan. That got a little smile from Dean.

"Okay, Rambo. Any other details you can gimme before I hit the books?" I could imagine Bobby shaking his head as he thought about me shooting a werewolf between the eyes.

I looked at Dean, who shrugged - it was apparently up to me to explain. "Well, it's definitely only been killing people around the full moon - the two nights before and the night of. It was a four-foot-tall black wolf with bright blue eyes, canines that must've been four inches long and claws that would've been nearly the same length." I said, and heard a pen scratching on paper as Bobby wrote it down. "And get this - the ME found wolf hair on the bodies."

"Werewolves don't grow wolf hair." he replied, as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Like Dean and I didn't already know that.

"Yeah, Bobby, we know. Like we said, this isn't a werewolf." Dean rolled his eyes.

"It eats parts of its victims, but we can't say for sure whether it was specifically after the heart or not - their chest cavities were pretty much empty, and it also ate a lot of muscle tissue." I went on, wincing as I remembered the half-eaten bodies in the morgue. After what we'd seen the wolf do tonight, I was starting to think those people had gotten off easy.

"Okay, boys. Don't get yourselves eaten before I can work out how to kill this thing."

"Don't worry, Bobby, we're not going back out there until we have something to kill it with." Dean assured him. The colour was slowly returning to his face, but he still looked like crap.

"Right. Stay the hell inside, and I'll call you when I know something."

After I hung up the phone, Dean and I sat at the kitchen table in silence for a minute before he spoke. "You know, just because we're not going outside doesn't mean that wolf won't come in here." he said slowly, trying not to put too fine a point on it. I'd been thinking it too, but hearing Dean say it out loud made me shiver. "Well, we've already got salt lines down. Wanna add some goofer dust?" I offered, and Dean shook his head. "Nah. If the salt doesn't stop it the goofer dust won't."

I frowned a little as I looked over at the bright white lines at all the windows and by the front door. On most jobs, salt lines were enough to keep out whatever might want to hunt us. Spirits, demons - Hellhounds, even. Salt usually equalled safety, but not tonight. Consequently, after Dean and I had drunk enough to feel like hitting the hay, I spent most of the night lying awake in the dark watching the windows. We kept the guns loaded with silver rounds within arm's reach, for all the good they were going to do us if the wolf showed up.

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I must've fallen asleep at some point, because when I woke up the weak morning sun was shining through the gaps in the curtains and Dean was already at the kitchen table drinking his coffee and watching the morning news.

"Look." He didn't even bother saying 'good morning', he just nodded towards the TV and turned up the volume. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, blinking at the small colour screen in the corner of the room.

"In other news, local man Patrick Danville was found dead near Brandon Park this morning, after apparently being mauled by an animal." the pretty brunette anchor was saying, in that serious voice unique to newsreaders. There was a picture hovering over her left shoulder, and I immediately recognised it as the big game hunter the werewolf had torn apart in front of us the night before. Having a name to put to the face only served to make last night's events more horrific.

"Police and park rangers are refusing to be drawn on whether Mr. Danville was killed by the same animal responsible for the recent spate of deaths in the northern Williamsport area." she continued, and the picture cut to a sergeant from the local police department standing in Brandon Park, near the clearing. The area was ringed with yellow crime scene tape and people from the ME's office were taking away a distinctly deflated-looking body bag.

"We're working closely with rangers from the nearby national parks, to find the animal - or animals - responsible for these attacks. We're advising residents living on the northern outskirts to remain vigilant and stay inside after dusk until the situation is resolved." the sergeant said, and the image switched back to the newsreader. Dean frowned and pressed the 'mute' button as she started a story about Williamsport's road salt budget.

"I wonder how many more people it killed last night that they haven't found yet?" I wondered out loud. In the cold hard light of day, when a giant supernatural wolf wasn't staring at me, I couldn't help thinking we should have tried to do more. Dean heard it in my voice and sighed wearily.

"Sam, you said it yourself - if we'd run into that thing again, we'd be dead. It would've done to us what it did to Patrick Danville, and then we'd be no help to anyone."

I let out a sigh of my own. "Yeah, but it just feels wrong to run, you know? I mean, we're usually running headlong into harm's way." I knew he was right, though.

That got a sardonic little chuckle from Dean. "Well, we've usually got a weapon of some sort. You know, one that actually works."

"Yeah." I agreed, a small smile touching my mouth. It soon disappeared when I paused to think about that. "What kind of werewolf is immune to silver, Dean?"

"Don't know, Sammy." he replied, quietly. Obviously, he'd also been considering that rather sticky question. "There's nothing about it in Dad's journal, and I've never heard of a werewolf that actually looks like a wolf. Hopefully Bobby turns up something, because we can't let this thing run around killing a pile of people every month." he drained the last of his coffee and got up to refill the mug.

Even from my bed halfway across the room, I could see his eyes were bloodshot and there were dark circles under them. I got the distinct impression Dean had gotten very little sleep last night - even less than me. But I knew pressing him to talk about it was only going to end in a fight, and in my sleep-deprived state I just didn't have the energy for that.

So, as per usual, I got up and took the coffee Dean offered me, sat with him at the kitchen table and ignored the Hellhound-shaped elephant in the room.