Chapter 4

"All the motels I can find seem to be corporate." Sam scrolled down his laptop screen some more. "There's some bed and breakfasts, but none of them are actually in town. The closest thing seems to be a Comfort Inn, back down the Daniel Webster Highway."

He noticed Dean shaking his head. "What's the matter with America anymore? It's like it's all gotta be corporate or nothing. Always stomping on the little guy. Don't they know how hard it is to get away with credit card fraud when everything's connected?"

Sam ignored the comment, knowing the question was rhetorical anyway. "We could just give up on this and go."

"Oh, nice try, but not happening. Corporate motel it is." Dean turned the Impala around.

It really did seem like a nice little community. Well labeled streets. Trees everywhere, almost like they'd made a pact with nature to share the landscape and not dominate it. One hour from Boston, or the seacoast, or the mountains, add in the quaint charm, and it would make for a nice place to live, to raise a family. Not that his cards had ever held that in store for him. He'd given up any illusions he'd had of such things two years ago. And now with the demon horde loose and Dean about to… Well, he doubted any place like this would ever be inhabited by the likes of him. Though he'd never tell Dean, he didn't really hold much hope for his continued survival after his brother was gone. There was just too much out there gunning for him.

"Hah! Looks like the place is close to the Anheuser plant." Dean sent a grin his way. "Told you I was destined to take a tour!"

"Yeah, right." Sam twisted his neck to loosen the tight muscles, making a concerted effort to push the dark thoughts out of his mind before his brother might pick up on his maudlin mood.

"No. Oh, for crying out loud, no! Tell me that is not the Comfort Inn." Dean turned off the highway into a spread parking lot. A two story concrete building front with both stairs and a ramp, as well as a wide porch and columns rose before them. It merged in the back with a two story, off white wooden building that spread to either side, obviously partitioned into small rooms from the spacing of the cloned windows outside. "It's pink!"

"That's salmon, not pink, Dean. You need to get your eyes checked."

"Dude, you are so so gay!"

Sam didn't dignify the comment with even a partial eye roll. This so coming from the man who thought black was one of the primary colors. "We parking or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, we're parking." Dean picked a slot as far away from the main building as he could manage. "This place is not going to be good for my image." He patted the Impala's dash as if silently apologizing to the car as well. That was one relationship Sam had never understood at all. But then Dean didn't get his own fascination with books, so he supposed they were even.

They got out of the car, and an amused grin tugged at the edge of Sam's mouth as he watched Dean turn up the collar of his worn leather jacket to try to hide his face from view as they walked back toward the main building. The closer they got, the more his brother sped up to get out of sight.

Luckily the room wasn't in the same color scheme as the main building or Sam might have had to watch his brother go into an epileptic fit. Tame cream colored walls matching the bedspreads and lining on the picture frames met them when they opened the door. The wooden backboards, chair frames, TV cabinet, and tables were a reddish wood color. Every last bit of it clashed with the white and green-striped carpet on the floor.

Sam dumped his duffel on the bed closest to the door, not wanting to be anywhere near the wall air-conditioning unit beneath the window, not after his near fatal interlude with one when he'd been under the influence of the cursed rabbit's foot a couple of months before.

"Is it me, or is this room even smaller than what we usually end up with and for what, about twice the cost?" Dean turned sideways to walk past him and drop his stuff on the other side of second bed.

"We could have gotten the one with the kitchenette. It was bigger."

"Yeah…cause doing the domestic thing in this pink place would so help me not look gay." Dean sent him a dirty look.

Sam exhaled slowly, trying not to get annoyed. The room really was miniscule. And if there was one thing both of them could not be called was small. They'd have to work not to trip over each other.

Dean shuffled over to the lone curtain and drew the drapes closed. Shuffling past Sam again, and almost elbowing him backward onto the bed, he made sure to close the second door lock.

Rather than moving precariously past Sam yet again, he jumped on the bed and crossed on over onto his. Sitting down, he started pulling his boots off.

"What are you doing?"

Dean raised a brow in his direction. "Uh, hello? Earth to Sam? I'm prepping to change. Reason we came to this awful place for a room? Speeding things along to make you happy? Remember?"

This time the exhale came out a lot faster, and too late for the not getting annoyed part. But with it also rose a cold line up his back. He'd totally forgotten why they'd come and still didn't like it any better than before. "Dean, maybe we should wait. See if Ix Chel comes into our dreams again tonight. She might give us more clues on how to find this woman."

His brother shook his head. "I'm pretty sure we're on our own, dude. She never said anything about visiting us again."

He knew his brother was probably right, but the whole thing made him uneasy. It wasn't just the fact they had no idea what they were doing, or that they were dealing with something supernatural, it was the whole thought of Dean physically changing who he was -- what he was. What if he lost his sense of self? Lost control of the change? Became something more like Madison…

Just thinking her name squeezed his heart.

She'd been an innocent, dragged by fate and bite into becoming something different, a creature of death and raw animal instinct. What was there to keep something like that from happening to his brother as well? "I just don't feel comfortable with you doing this."

Dean dropped his second boot on the floor. "Dude, will you stop worrying? It's not like I haven't done this before."

Sam found himself taking several steps toward him all in a rush. "Actually, you haven't! It was her son before. You have never done this. And if somehow you manage to pull it off, you have no idea how to get out of it later."

His brother just stared up at him, hazel eyes hard and lips thinned in annoyance. Then his expression changed minutely, his gaze softening and really seeing Sam rather than just looking at him. "What's this really about, Sammy?"

Sam's brow furrowed in confusion. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Dean pursed his lips still staring at him. "Ooo-kay. Tell you what. Why don't you just go for a walk or something? How's that sound? Maybe go talk to that receptionist about the differences between 'pink' and 'salmon'. Come back in fifteen or so."

Sam's fists bunched at his sides at his brother's suggestion, not sure if he was more pissed at the fact Dean was trying to give him an out or the layer of condescension around it. Sure, he didn't think this was the smartest of things to do, and parts of him were downright scared of something going wrong, but he'd never asked or even implied he wanted to bail out on him. It just wasn't the way they did things. Dean might not give a shit about the few short months of life he had left, but they meant everything to him. Wasn't it enough he'd agreed to go on this mission, wasting time they could have better spent on finding a way of getting Dean out of his deal?

"No. I'll stay."

Though it took all he had, he was able to keep his voice and body level instead of giving in to the impulse to rush forward again, grab his brother by the shirt, yank him to his feet and scream it in his face. "I've seen it happen before. It's not like I don't know what to expect."

The anger rolling inside him flushed out in a rush as Dean's shoulders half slumped in relief and a small grin lit on his face.

"Awesome."

Maybe he wasn't the only one worried about how things might turn out. And the fact Dean wasn't taking the concept as cavalierly as he'd made it sound, helped ease his own fears, telling him his brother wouldn't do something randomly stupid. Maybe…