Four hours and one mom van (that I did, in fact, leave in a place where it would easily be found) later, I was there and prepared. I mixed salt in to the paint before doing the symbols, and threw some on it as it was drying for good measure. All doors and windows were lined heavily with salt, as well as the perimeter as a whole. I wasn't gonna fuck around with this. Once the door opened, a bucket of salt would tip over on the entering person as well.
I seriously wasn't going to fuck around.
And so I waited. I'd brought actual food with me, or at least semi-actual food. Enough to keep me decently fed for two days. The Italian restaurant was a good place, but they really did need to lock their doors if they didn't want thieves (or desperate young adults) to nab a few gallons of water and some sort of food. Bread, mostly. Bread would keep for a while longer than meat, although I had grabbed one or two pre-made chicken meals (freshly cooked that day, my ass) that served as a nice dinner for my hungry self.
I didn't sleep, though. Not for two days. I was afraid of every sound I heard. Every creak was a demon trying to sneak up on me. Every voice was a cop that was going to bust me and kill me. Every car was a death sentence, waiting to crash through the wooden walls. I kept my salt bombs and pocketknives nearby, and carried one of both when I went to use the restroom in a broken toilet that probably didn't actually work anymore.
I didn't complain. Not once.
I had a roof over my head, walls around me, food, a bathroom, and people that were coming to help me. People that believed me and knew what the shit was going on and would HELP.
I was going to be helped.
Two days passed by and night fell once more. No Dean Winchester. No cavalry. No Castiel. No help.
I looked at my phone, the one I'd used to call him. I didn't know whether to call or pray it would ring on it's own. It hadn't over the past two days.
What if they changed their minds?
What if they were dead, all because I'd asked them for help?
What if they'd simply forgotten about me?
I sat there, in the dark, terrified and tired and torn between calling and waiting.
Then I heard it. A noise that chilled me to the very bone.
Howling.
Terrible, awful howling, maybe a half mile away.
That was when I picked up the phone and called Dean, my fingers somehow not screwing up the number. This time, he picked up on the first ring. "Kai?" He asked.
"Dean, where are you?" I asked him.
"We're maybe ten minutes away. Why?"
"I hear some sort of animal." I whispered. The howling sounded again, louder and closer. "Like a wolf or something, but it sounds wrong."
I heard Dean swear on his end. "How far off?" He asked. Another howl rang out, closer again and joined by more.
"Not that far." I whispered. "And there's more than one."
"Did you salt the doors and windowsills like I said?" He asked. I nodded before I realized he couldn't hear a nod.
"And the entire interior perimeter." I answered. "Dean, what's happening?"
"You're going to be fine, just stay inside the salt. We'll be there soon." I could sense he was about to end the call.
"Don't hang up." I said quickly. I could feel a pause on his end. "Please, don't hang up. I don't know what's going on, and if you won't tell me then please, just stay on the line with me until you get here."
He was deliberating. I hoped he would stay. I just needed someone to keep talking with me, so I wouldn't be alone.
"OK." He said. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "I'm going to hand you off to my brother, Sam, so I can get some things prepared while he's driving. Are you alright with that?"
"OK." I agreed. I heard a small exchange of words before a new voice was on the phone. This one was younger, almost lighter-sounding.
"Hi!" He was forcing calm and brightness in to his voice. "I'm Sam. What's your name?"
"Kai."
"No last name?" He asked. I heard those howls again, maybe two hundred feet out.
"No." I responded after a few moments of waiting. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Sam asked.
"The howling." I answered.
"No." He said after a minute. "Not yet. Don't focus on that right now, we're maybe five minutes away." I heard Dean say something I couldn't understand. "We're less than five minutes away." Sam said to me confidently. "Tell me more about yourself. How old are you?"
"18." I replied honestly. Most times I tell people two or three years older, but I was too terrified to fall in to my normal lies. "I'll be 19 in three months."
"That's really awesome. Anything you want for your birthday?"
"Food." Another howling set. Maybe 75 feet. Probably less. "They're closer. Almost here."
I heard the sound of tires screeching as lights flooded the front door.
"So are we." Sam answered. I heard scratching at the walls, saw claw marks appear in the glass at the windows while the howling kept going. I looked at the phone, about to shout for Sam, and saw that the call had been ended by him.
They were terrifying. Things I couldn't see, howling and scratching and beginning to break the walls. I heard gunshots, followed by squealing. "Reload!" I heard Dean shout. More shots were fired, followed by the sounds of more wounded animals. I was thankful that we were in downtown Chicago. Cops wouldn't be here for a while. Gunshots were too common for the area.
Finally, after what felt like forever, it ended. I waited, taking a few breaths. One Mississippi, breath. Two Mississippi, breathe. Three Mississippi...
"Kai!" A voice shouted from the door. Dean's, again. I almost wept with relief.
"Kai, are you in there?!" Sam's voice that time, still from the door. I found my voice, nodding and smiling and shouting that I was there, I was alive, and that I was alive again because I was just there, and someone was here to help me.
The door opened, and two tall men came through. One taller than the other, and slightly lankier, with long-ish brown hair. The other had a short, dark haircut and a rougher face. Both were wearing very, very, very dorky looking glasses.
I didn't have anymore time to acknowledge other details, though. That was when the suspended bucket tipped and fell, coating the pair in salt. I took a huge breath in, watching as they stopped, eyes closed and faces scrunched.
"I'm... I'm..." I stopped, registering that they weren't in pain, not at all. They were just annoyed. Mildly confused. "You're not demons." I said. I hadn't even thought about that possibility.
"No, we're not." Sam said, taking a deep breath and wiping salt off his face. Dean did the same, and the pair shook it all off as best as they could. "Nice job on the trap, though. Where did you get this much salt?"
"There was an Italian place that didn't lock their kitchen doors." I answered. "Want some bread?"
"So, you stole." Dean stated, almost as if asking for clarification.
"I didn't have much of a choice." I answered.
"I'm not judging," Dean said, sensing the defenses in my voice. "Just curious. How did you get it all here?"
"There was a mom van." I told him. "I left it where the police could find it!"
"That's probably how the hounds got your scent, too." Dean muttered. "But you hot wired a car, stole food and salt, and drove it all the way here? I'm impressed."
"Dean!" Sam muttered, looking at him pointedly. "Don't encourage her!"
"What?" He asked. "She's resourceful! I like her!"
"What were those things?" I asked, interrupting the two now-obvious brothers. Both of them thought for a minute before Sam answered.
"Those were hellhounds." He said. "They're determined to kill whatever they have the scent of, so we had to kill them first."
"Are they all dead?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"How did you see them?"
"With these," Dean tapped the glasses he wore before taking them off. Sam did the same. "Dipped in holy fire. Can see hellhounds no problem."
"And you guys..." I took a deep breath. "You just... You..." I needed a minute to process this. "You hunt hellhounds. And kill hellhounds. And demons are real and God is real and that probably means Hell is real too and ghosts and oh God I'm going to hell for stealing." I stood for a few minutes, frozen. Everything was hitting me all at once. I hadn't slept since Dean had called me, and hadn't gotten more than four-ish hours of sleep at a time in a long while. I'd been starving, roofless, cold and scared and it all just hit me in one wave.
Demons were real.
Sleep deprivation was a thing.
Hellhounds were real.
This was the first roof over my head that I had been allowed to sleep in in years.
You could see hellhounds with nerdy glasses, and kill them with what sounded like shotguns.
People were here to help me.
My thoughts were swirling. I barely heard Dean and Sam talking to each other for a minute. Finally, one of them snapped me out of my reverie. Dean. They were both much closer to me, startling me for a minute. "Hey, easy there tiger," he said, trying to calm me. "Why don't you come with us back to the Bunker?"
"Bunker?" I asked.
"It's a safe house. Pretty far away, but it's one of the safest places on the planet." Sam answered.
"You're going to take me somewhere... Far away... In your car?" I asked for clarification. "Really?"
Dean and Sam shook their heads, realizing how it sounded all of the sudden. "That is NOT what we meant." Sam said.
"Is there any way that you can teach me here, in Chicago?" I asked. "Like with the weirdo symbol on the floor, or why salt works, or if there's anything a little more deadly I can use. Or how demons and hellhounds are real and why in the hell they're hunting me."
"We don't know why they want you." Dean said after a few moments. "You say they killed your family, right? Maybe they don't like people getting away."
"But why MY family?" I pointed out.
"We don't know. Contract, probably." Sam offered. That just left me more confused, and I could even see Sam and Dean unsure about that one. They'd killed my family years ago. Why me now? Why them, then?
There were a lot of why's, right now.
"How do I defend myself better?" I decided to move on to questions they could answer. "Why do the salt and the symbol and the shotguns and the glasses work?"
Why did God give me your phone number?
That was the one I had wanted to ask the most. Why me in particular, and why them in particular. I mean, obviously they knew their shit, bu the they KNEW his name, knew Castiel. They'd asked if I'd seen him. So where was he, how did he know them.
I had enough questions to give a congressman problems and an unknown amount of time to get them answered.
"We'll tell you if you come with us." Dean replied. "There's a safe house in California, on the harbor. We'll explain it all on the way."
"No." I argued. I couldn't believe I was arguing with the guys who saved my life, but I couldn't help it, either. Strange men definitely twice my age, telling me to get in a car with them during the middle of the night.
"Why not?"
"Because I've made it this long on my own without you two, and no offense, but I'm not going to get dependent now. So tell me what I need to know, and I'll be out of your hair." I decided.
"Where will you go?" Sam asked. I thought about that one for a minute.
"Somewhere." I answered defensively. "Haven't been to Nevada yet. I mean, it's mostly desert, but nobody will look for me there."
"Kai, we know you're homeless." Dean said blatantly. I shrugged.
"So?"
"Don't you want a place to stay?" He asked. "Somewhere with safety and knowledge and options?"
Yeah.
Yeah, I did. Badly.
But not as a place to run and hide. I needed a place I could make a home, not a place where I could be stashed to the side until they know what to do.
I've already spent a good part of my life learning to survive. I couldn't just stop doing that at anything that terrifies me.
"Not as a hiding place." I answered, keeping my head high. "Not as somewhere that I can run away from my problems."
Dean let out a small sigh. "Fine." He said. "We'll teach you, under one condition."
"Two conditions." Sam piped up. I waited, nodding for them to continue. "You allow us to put you in a motel while we teach you, including a few meals." I was about to make a comment when he put up his hands. "Call it an early birthday present."
"Alright." I said. I didn't like the dependency thing at all, I really didn't. Like, I hate handouts. I hate welfare. I hate people giving me things. I have no problem with the idea, I help out those around me as much as I can, but I hate it for myself. I've lived homeless and middle class. I hated pity. I hated people feeling obligated.
I knew that was probably the same situation for the training, but it was still different to me. I had asked them for help on that. I would go out on my own and help others with the knowledge.
Like job training.
"What's the second one?" I asked.
"You keep that phone." Dean said. "And call us. Keep that phone, keep the address for the safe house, and call us if something comes up. Don't be afraid to."
"Alright." I conceded. Training in exchange for knowledge, with a bit of pity that I would have to stomach.
"Alright." Dean and Sam said.
"What motel am I meeting you guys at?" I asked. They looked at me, stunned. "What? I'm still not getting in a car with strangers."
"The nearest motel is 20 minutes away, by car." Sam pointed out.
"Ok. See you in thirty, then." I grabbed my backpack, and slung it over my shoulder as I walked past them. The car was nice. Very nice. The 1967 black Chevy Impala had been my littlest brother's favorite car.
Art talked for hours about cars.
He would've loved the opportunity to ride in one.
"Nice car." I commented as the brothers joined me. I could still smell the salt on them. "Chevy '67 Impala. Almost belongs in a museum."
"You know cars?" Dean asked.
"No." I answered, moving to open the back passenger door. I threw my backpack in first before I hopped in, settling down in the seat and taking a second to pray I was doing the right thing.
Thank you, Castiel. I thought. Thank you for sending me people who could save me.
I hope you're still alright, wherever you are.
Dean and Sam took the driver's and shotgun seats, respectively. Neither said a word about my change of heart. They just put the car in gear and left the warehouse in the dust. I took a second to look back at my temporary home. Two days with a roof and bathroom and food was longer than normal. Most places only allowed you for a day, or only did food and had you find your own place. Areas that let you stay for longer, I tended to avoid. The people in those areas were ones who needed it, people who had families or couldn't make it on their own. Even then, those areas only lasted for a week, tops.
If I'd gone to any of those in the beginning, I would've been a system kid. That wasn't what I wanted to be.
Those two days in that shack, that had been the longest I'd had an actual roof and four walls in a long time, and I was about to stay in a hotel for the first time in a long, long time.
Did it really take me being attacked by demons and hellhounds (still wrapping my head around that bit) to achieve a small part of safety?
Apparently so.