CHAPTER SEVEN

My poor little brother was completely and idiotically dumbstruck.

Don't get me wrong – I actually welcomed the silence. Meant I had at least a little while to collect myself before he started grilling me about the Impala. I really wasn't looking forward to that, because let's be real: I didn't have answers for him. Hell, I probably had the exact same questions that he did!

Dean, you look like crap.

"Wow. Thanks." I grimaced when I tried to remove my bandage and started taking the broken stitches with it. It really wouldn't have surprised me if my brain had sprung a leak somewhere and was filling up my dome with blood, and in an offhand sort of way I wondered if maybe that's why my forehead was bleeding so badly. I was leaning heavily against the Impala's freezing window, so I peeled myself away from it, frowned, and tried to palm the smeared bloodstain off the glass. (All I did was make it worse.)

I don't expect any man who got his ass kicked by a 'walker to look good, the Impala responded matter-of-factly. I scowled at her dashboard.

My brother finally decided to snap out of his trance.

First, his eyes fell to the Impala's steering wheel, and he watched detachedly as the Chevy spun it to the left to ease through a snowy turn. I felt her back end start to drift, the chains wrapped around her rear tires rattling angrily, but with a quick snap of the steering back to straight, she righted herself and resumed the gentle ride. Sam blinked like he didn't quite believe what he was seeing.

Then he saw me in the rearview mirror.

Oh, here we go. Activate mommy mode. You're in for it, Dean.

"Shut up," I growled through the side of my mouth.

"Hey, hey, hey." Sam twisted around in the seat and thumped his hand against my wrist, forcing me to drop my arm away from my gashed head. "Don't touch that. Here." He produced a pack of (probably stolen) gauze pads from our duffel bag, pulled a clean one out, and shoved it into my fist. "Put pressure on it."

"Yes, sir," I muttered, and flinched when I pressed the gauze to my head – it hurt. My brother dug around in the bag and pulled out a roll of that self-adhering bandage stuff. "Hold still," he commanded. I was too weak to resist, so I just sort of growled when he started wrapping it around my head to hold the gauze in place.

"What happened back there?" he questioned.

Dizziness had me swaying, so I grabbed the Impala's door panel to anchor myself. "Dunno. Skinwalker showed up, tied me down, put a gun in my face, so I head-butted it and turned tail." I winced when Sam pressed down on the new bandage to secure it. "That's when you showed up."

"Hmm." Sam hummed in his throat and busied himself zipping the bag shut.

He kept his mouth shut for a while after that. I listened to my Chevy's motor humming in the background: the easy rise and fall of her RPMs as she worked the gas and brake in rhythm to keep her tires from locking up. Though I wasn't driving, I could tell the roads were shitty with ice and snow. But Baby? She handled it like it was nothing. At one point she swung wide into the opposite lane to surge past a brand-new Jeep slugging along through the slush.

I slumped over, causing Sam to jump when my skull thumped the window.

Oh, crap. You okay back there, driver?

Did I even need to answer? I had a feeling that she knew. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off and the pain starting to take hold, I knew I was in bad shape. The light stabbed my eyes. My head hurt like hell. I must've twisted my ankle in my mad dash through the hospital because it throbbed like there was a piece of steel shoved into the joint. Come to think of it, my whole body hurt, probably because, you know, I'd fallen off a table onto solid tile flooring. Maybe I'd broken something important.

If not for the skinwalker, I might have actually asked to be brought back to the ER.

But that wasn't an option, so I kicked my feet up onto the seat, fidgeted until I found a comfortable position, and closed my eyes.

I was just starting to doze off when Sam's voice busted the silence. "What's going on here, Dean?"

Let me sleep, I thought grumpily as I blinked the heaviness out of my eyes. Sam was facing forward with his hands working uneasily in his lap like he wasn't sure what to do with them. (Can't say I blamed him – what the hell are you supposed to do with your hands when you're sitting in the driver's seat of a car that's controlling itself?) He'd scooted over so he was sitting more towards the middle of the bench, and I noticed he'd angled the rearview mirror so he could see me in it. He was worried, that much was obvious. He was white as a ghost with dark half-circles rimming his hard eyes.

Ohh boy. Here we go.

Dragging in a breath, I decided to tell him the truth: "I don't know."

He pursed his lips and looked out the window. The Impala's speed fell off as she pulled up to a stoplight. The blinker stalk clicked into place on its own, and she idled rough in anticipation.

"So you hit your head," Sam went on, "and suddenly the car's alive."

Not quite.

"She and I have talked," I said, earning a roll of the eyes from my brother. I ignored him. "We've decided that when the skinwalker pinned my head to her door, something got knocked into place." I thrust an index finger at my bandaged skull. "Like an unplugged cable found its socket. When it got plugged in, a link was established, and now I can hear her. Right, Baby?"

You got any better ideas?

"She talks to you in your head, telepathically." Sam frowned and got that look on his face he always got when he was concentrating hard. (I thought it made him look constipated, but now wasn't the time to remind him of that.) "So… does she speak, like, English? Or some strange car language?"

Seriously? What do you take me for? A Model T? I'm not primitive!

"English," I responded, mouth twisting with a silent snicker. "She sounds hot."

Aww, you think I sound like a sexy lady. I'm so flattered! Only mild sarcasm.

"Right," Sam said, taking a handful of hair and tugging at his scalp.

He still wants to take you to the looney bin. The Impala joined the slow flow of traffic on the highway. Brake lights. Brake lights everywhere. Guess the snowplows were having a hard time keeping up with this storm.

"It's your fault," I mumbled, and rested my cheek on the cool leather seat back. I folded my arms over my chest and settled in. It was gonna be a long drive. Ah, well. At least Baby was keeping it warm in here.

"So all those phone calls I got earlier." Sam frowned again and caught my gaze in the mirror. "That really was the car, wasn't it?"

"Dunno. Was it you, Baby?" I repositioned myself, working my shoulders down so I could kick my feet up on the opposite door panel. Sam had draped my jacket over the back of the seat; I snagged it and slung it over my chest like a blanket. The heater was cranked all the way up, but I couldn't help but shiver, even underneath the heavy fabric.

What do you think? I couldn't just sit back and let the 'walker tear you apart, and, well, a phone call was the only way I could think to get a hold of Sam for you. Reckoned he'd come running – do I know your brother, or what? The Chevy's engine quieted, then revved up as she got back on the accelerator. God, Dean. If you hadn't left that phone with me…

I nodded to that and raised both eyebrows at Sam in the rearview.

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Dean, I can't hear her. If she's saying something, you've gotta translate for me."

Ah. Yeah. That made sense. "I left my phone in the glove box. She used it." Exhaustion set it, and I sank lower into the seat.

Sam nervously tapped a hand on the dashboard, shaking his head back and forth, back and forth, started jiggling his foot against the floorboards. "I'm sorry. I'm just having a hard time with this. If the Impala's been sentient all this time, why wait until now to reveal it?"

Honestly, I wasn't sure how to respond to that, and I didn't feel like keeping this conversation up. I turned my face away from my brother, tucking it against the seat, breathing in the familiar scent of aging leather, lulled by the rumble of the Impala's motor. Why had she waited? I understood that she was afraid of my younger brother, but I couldn't help feeling a little hurt – my own car didn't trust me?

No, driver. That's… that's not it. At all. I – we'll talk later. Okay?

"Dean?"

I could literally feel myself slipping off the ledge, my handhold on awareness slowly diminishing. This was getting old. "I'm tired, Sam," I slurred, tripping over the words.

His face softened, and thankfully, he got the message and dropped the discussion. "I know you are," he said quietly. "Try and get some rest."

I was too far gone to respond.