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Sam knew that following James in stake-out mode wasn't going to work, but he did it anyway., just so he could look Dean in the eye and tell him, yes, he'd been doing what he'd been told – without feeling guilty. But he didn't really see the point; James was a hunter, and he'd surely know somebody was tailing him.
Sure enough, the other hunter came right up the Impala after only a quarter of an hour and tapped on the driver-side window.
Sam rolled down the window and smiled sheepishly. "Hey," he said. "Sorry about this. I kind of have to."
James returned the smile. "It's fine," he assured Sam. "I figured I might as well come out and let you know I know you're here. It's not really nice, being out here in the dark, and I'm on my way to dinner. Care to join me?"
Since it was actually easier to leave the Impala and walk to the restaurant James had in mind, Sam made damn sure that the Impala wasn't going to go anywhere by means of a Club and handle-activated alarm. He pulled his jacket tighter around his tall, lean frame, and fell into step beside James.
The restaurant was a cheery, casual place to grab a bite. They were seated two empty spots at the bar, and ordered drinks as they waited for menus. Although Sam's ears couldn't distinguish any sort of words from the jumble of chatter assaulting his ears, it wasn't too loud for comfort. When the menus finally came, the two men made their choices quickly, as hunger was beginning to make their stomachs complain from emptiness.
Sam settled comfortably against the low back of the barstool with his beer, looking forward to a meal that wasn't one of Dean's bad attempts at packaged cooking, zapped on high for five minutes, served in a run-down diner, or bought in a drive-thru. This was just one part of a normal life he truly missed: gracious living.
"You're Holly's cousin, right?" Sam asked after a few moments of relishing this newly-acquired bit of normal life.
James nodded, turning his glass to shake the ice around in his rum. "She and I grew up together," he told Sam. "She lost her parents young. Never had a dad, really; he walked out on her mom. They weren't exactly married when Aunt Rachel found out she was pregnant."
"Oh."
"Well…my mom was her sister, and she says Aunt Rachel's boyfriend wasn't a keeper to begin with. And walking out proved it," James continued, his voiced edged with harsh bitterness. "Anyway…Aunt Rachel died when Holly was still little more than a baby, about two I guess. I was seven at the time, and my parents took her in. I was an only child before that. She came to us all the way from Massachusetts with Aunt Rachel's lawyer. Poor kid."
Sam stared into the depths of his beer. "How did you get into hunting, James?"
James' smile was wry and rueful. "Not just me. Holly, too."
If there had been no back to the stool, Sam was sure he'd have fallen off. "Come again?"
His companion laughed. "She sure doesn't look it, does she? Nah, Holly and I got into all this stuff when we were young. I was about seventeen, and Holly was twelve," he said. "My dad was a hunter who took care of different haunts around northern England and parts of Scotland. Werewolves, pixies, banshees…usual United Kingdom folklore."
Neither man spoke too loud, preferring to make their voices swim underneath the babble of talk up on the surface. It was a good thing they were sitting close, and that the bartender was on the far side of the circular bar.
"And how exactly did you end up hunting?" Sam wanted to know.
"We were out riding one morning, and we got attacked. Dad had been tracking a werewolf for days, and the four of us – me, Holly, Dad, and the furry lug – all met there, up on the moor," James explained. "As a kid, I'd always wonder where Dad was whenever he went away for days on end. When I got to be a teenager, I thought he was having an affair." He laughed dryly. "Sometimes I wish it just had been one."
---
"James used to think that Uncle Richard was cheating on Aunt Leigh," Holly told Dean. They were back at Holly's apartment, sitting on the couch at opposite ends. "He'd be gone for days on end, then come home…changed, somehow. As if what he'd experienced during his absence made him a different man."
"A hunt'll do that to you," Dean agreed. "Dad used to come home after a hunt looking harder, older."
Holly nodded in agreement. "James is five years older than me," she said, "so I was really just a kid by the time he started thinking like that. We learned the truth when I was twelve and James was seventeen."
"How'd it happen?"
"James and I were riding our horses up on the moor. We lived in the far north of England, quite close to the Scottish border," she explained. "Uncle Richard had been gone a few days, but we met him by accident out there on the moor. Really, James and I were far out of the permitted riding area, and we quickly found out why. We were in the part of the moors where all the legends come from."
"Legends?" Dean repeated, curious.
"Legends about banshees and pixies and werewolves," Holly said. "The British werewolf is much different from your American one. Yours don't really change much out of human form. They grow fangs and claws and acquire incredible physical abilities. But the ones in the UK…well, why do you think they're called wolves?"
"They actually change?" Dean asked incredulously.
"Indeed."
Dean decided that he'd take an American werewolf over a British one any day. "So," he said after a few moments, "you and James met a werewolf, and welcomed your uncle home at the same time. Good timing."
Holly laughed dryly, but at least there was a note of understanding Dean's humor. "Yeah, we did. And we found out everything. That's when James decided he wanted to hunt, too, to help his dad…Uncle Richard wasn't getting any younger, but he was one of the few hunters in our part of the country. The more, the merrier."
"And did you try, too?" Dean wanted to know.
She nodded slowly. "I used to go with them during holidays. My aunt died shortly after the werewolf incident, and I hated being alone during summer hols. So I started going along and learning the ropes. I got pretty good."
Dean nodded in understanding. "Then why'd you stop?"
Holly frowned and unconsciously drew herself farther into her corner of the couch. Dean was afraid that he'd strayed into forbidden territory, and sat in uncomfortable silence until she spoke again.
---
"Holly was a damn good hunter," James told Sam after swallowing a mouthful of beef and potatoes. "She'd come along with Dad and me during the summer hols. She hated being alone in the house after Mum died."
Sam wiped his mouth before speaking. "So how did you guys end up in the curator business?"
James was silent for a couple of minutes, and when he spoke it was in a carefully steadied and controlled voice. "We were doing a job with Dad," he said slowly, "out on the Scottish highlands. I was twenty, and Holly had just turned fifteen. Some farmers up the rural areas there had been reporting mauled and stolen livestock for a while, so we decided to check it out. Scotland's got its fair share of black dogs – not the kind you know, though. These ones don't go rounding up souls for the devils."
"What do they do, then?" Sam was genuinely interested in the different kinds of supernatural creatures James had been telling him about.
"Scotland's black dogs are vicious creatures," James explained. "Centuries ago, they'd appear in storms to shepherds on the lonely highlands and down on the moors. They'd lead the shepherd and his flock to safety, and then kill the lot."
Sam felt his pasta primavera go flat and tasteless in his mouth. "And now?" he managed to choke out.
"They appear any time of day now," James said, "whether or not there's a storm. They go after anything, too, not just lonely shepherds watching their flocks. Sheep, cattle, horses, dogs – even children."
---
"When we got up to the highlands, we stayed over at a friend's farm," Holly said, staring off into some far-away corner. "The black dog that had been terrorizing the farms had been working up from the south of the highlands, and their farm was the next on the list. So we settled in, and that night we took up watch from the hayloft."
---
"There was more than just one black dog," James said, his voice grave and hard. "There were six."---
"We managed to get four of them pegged down before they got to the farmyard," Holly recited, her voice strangely mechanical and halting. "You need to shoot them with special bullets – not silver ones, because they're more than just demon-dogs. We plugged them full of iron bullets that we'd laced with salt."
---
James finished up his steak, explaining, "When the iron's liquid, you have to mix it up with coarse Kosher salt. Kosher salt's blessed, you see, so it's double-pure. Anyway…we were there in the hayloft, pegging the bastards full until they dropped. All but two, anyway. And they were the biggest."
---
"They leaped so high…they cleared the stone wall of the farmyard with at least five feet to spare."
---
"And then they tore through the livestock towards the barn." James' eyes were shut now as he spoke, as if he was trying to block out an image he couldn't avoid.
---
Holly's voice, strained to the point of breaking, spoke bravely on. "They were down below, ripping up everything…the smell of blood came up through the hay and the wood. And then, one was in the loft with us."
---
"Dad got the second-to-last one," James said, whispering now. Sam had to lean in close to hear, thankful that the bartender was nowhere near them and that the restaurant was still noisy, if not even more boisterous than before. "Holly and I teamed up to get the one that came up after. It knocked her over against the barn wall, and Dad went to stand between it and her. It killed him, and before I could get across the loft to Holly it was there."
---
"Uncle Richard fell dead in front of me," Holly choked out through the tears that had started to fall. "I was bleeding through the back of my shirt; I'd fallen against a nail sticking out of the wall when the last one knocked me clean over the hay to the other side of the loft…and then it came leaping at me over the hay."
---
"All I could do was watch as it leaped onto her. She was trapped against the wall, with no protection. She'd lost grip of her rifle when she flew through the air."
---
Holly wasn't even bothering to wipe her eyes anymore. "I saw Uncle Richard's knife sticking out of its sheath under his body. I…I don't even remember doing it…but I grabbed the knife and threw it."
---
"She threw Dad's knife," James said softly, "right into its mouth. And it fell dead on the hay."Sam stared, shocked, at James. James was looking straight down at the bottom of his scotch glass. "And that was the end of your hunting careers?"
James nodded vaguely. "Holly kept having nightmares after that. I was already old enough to take her on as my ward, so I did, even though it was tough. We were all either of us had left in the world, and even though Dad was a full-time hunter, our family had money and we inherited it. Mum's side was pretty filthy rich. Anyway…it was enough for us to live on, and enough for Holly to keep going to school. So I told her when September rolled around that we were leaving home and moving to London. And we left behind everything we'd ever known."
Sam blew out a long breath. What an experience…poor Holly. When he was fifteen, he hadn't even really gone out on hunts. He had preferred staying back at the motel or in the back seat of the car, letting Dean go out with their dad to do all the dirty work. He was the researching powerhouse behind all the Winchester hunts, even back then – and even though he did have to get his hands dirty sometimes, he had never been through anything anywhere near as hellish as what James had just told him.
"She's got a scar on her back from that nail," James murmured. At first Sam wasn't even sure if the man next to him was talking to him at all. But then James looked at him. "She keeps it well hidden, even though it's in a noticeable spot when she's wearing her fashionable clothes. It goes from her shoulder all the way to the nape of her neck. Fifty-two stitches were needed to get that thing closed."
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