Chapter 7: Family Ties
A/N: Thank you to my readers! I have already gotten over 100 reads on this story and that is more than I have ever gotten, this quickly, on any other story. Sorry it has taken so long to post this chapter and that this one is a bit shorter. I have started back at work and had my sister's wedding, so have been busy, and also got stuck on how to go about writing this part. Also,please don't hate me for the way I ended this one. If you have any ideas, thoughts, or really anything to say about this story so far, please feel free to post a review! I would love to hear them!
With Leila's kidnapping, Sam and especially Dean only had one focus: save Leila. What had taken her? Where would it go? What will it do to her? All of these questions were running through Dean's mind as he drove the Impala to the nearest hotel. Sam drove Leila's car a little ways behind him. Since there were shadow demons in Leila's house and the flare was long extinguished, they decided it was best to go to a hotel to regroup and try to find their little sister.
After paying for a room, with a fake card and name as usual, they grab a bag or two and take them to the room, dropping them on the beds. They immediately go to the desks in the room and start trying to find anything that would have taken her, paying special attention to the ones that could change how they looked. They consider demonic possession, different type of shapeshifters, and even just some human psycho. However, nothing seems to add up with any of those options.
The longer they thought, the more they felt overwhelmed by their extremely evident lack of time. They had to find their sister and fast. Any monster they thought of as even a remote possibility didn't wait very long to kill their victims. They grab Leila's journal and start to go through it, trying to find an entry that could help them, somehow.
"Who was that guy, anyway? She seemed like she knew him." Sam asks.
"I'm not sure. He did look familiar, though. Was he the guy she talked to at the bar? When she came back to the table looking ready to kill somebody?" Dean asks. Sam thought for a moment, then starts to slowly nod.
"Yeah. I think he was. Did she ever say who he was?" he asks.
"No, she didn't, but I bet her friends knew about him! Let's go talk to one of them!" Dean says, ready to go. He just wants to get his new sister out of this town and out of danger for a while.
Sam looks to Dean, shocked slightly. "Uh Dean? It's 3:30 in the morning…all her friends are asleep."
"This can't wait till morning. We've gotta find her." He responds, dead serious.
"You want to wake up one of her friends right now?" Sam asks.
Dean looks his brother in the eyes and says without even blinking "I will wake up every person who has ever met her if I have to. We are finding her…and if she's dead when we find her…then I am going to make that son of a b- wish he was dead." He grabs his bag and walks out the door, back to his car. Sam grabs his bag and follows, knowing there was no trying to stop Dean now.
Dean looks through Leila's journal and finds an entry that talks about a Virginia Wayworth. Sam uses his laptop to find her address and gives Dean the turn-by-turn. When they get there, they go to the door with their guns in their waistbands and fake FBI badges in their coat pockets. Dean knocks quite loudly and they wait for the door to open.
When it does, they see a very sleepy-looking college-age girl with short, curly red hair in bright green booty shorts and a light blue tank top. She rubs her eyes and squints at the boys through her drowsily irritated daze. "Who the heck are you? It is four in the morning and my alarm doesn't go off 'til 7. This better be friggin' good."
"Are you Virginia Wayworth?" Sam asks, trying to seem apologetic. The woman crosses her arms across her chest and glares at them.
"Who wants to know?" she asks.
"My name is Agent Jerry and this is my partner Ben. We're with the FBI." Dean says and the boys flash their badges. "We'd like to ask you a couple of questions about Katie Smith."
Suddenly, Virginia is wide awake. "Katie? What happened? Is she okay?" she asks, worried for her friend.
"May we come in?" Sam asks kindly. She steps aside and lets the boys walk past her into the living room of her house.
"Just be quiet. My roommate Rachel just got to sleep about an hour ago after working the night shift at the ER." she says after closing the door.
"We'll be brief." Sam says.
"So what happened to Katie?" she asks.
"She was kidnapped by a man. Dark hair, about six feet tall, athletic looking, around her age…she seemed to know him. Do you know anyone that would fit that description? A boyfriend or something?" Dean explains.
Virginia thinks for a moment, then has a realization. "Damien. Damien Matthews. He and Katie dated for a while. They broke up about a month or two ago. She said he had been acting weird for a while. Then she found out the guy was cheating on her with some chick named Vivian or Brittany or something preppy like that. He kept trying to get Katie back. She hated it, though, because he got kinda creepy…like stalker creepy."
Sam and Dean looked at each other, then back at Virginia. "Do you know where he lives?" Sam asks.
"Yeah. He is in that new neighborhood next to the train station. No one else lives there cause everyone says the trains are too loud, but he likes it for some reason." She says, then yawns.
"Well thank you for your time. You have a good night." Dean says quickly as he jumps off of the couch and races out the door with Sam on his heels. They drive off leaving Virginia speechless and immensely confused.
Leila wakes up slowly, groaning slightly, and tries to sit up. It was then that she realized her situation. She was lying flat on her back on a sort of table with her feet tied tightly enough so they were almost immovable. Her hands were tied up by her head so her arms were bent and the bonds were just as tight. There were also two large ropes tying her at her waist and her lower thighs. There was no way she was going to get out of this alone.
If she tried, she wouldn't come out alive.
Sam and Dean were trained and they knew what to do in these situations. She only knew the theory and the literature attached. She tried not to make a ton of noise so she could try to figure out what Damien was before he tried to kill her, which she assumed was his plan. She racked her brain for signs of anything supernatural…other than the things that the shadow demon would have caused. There were no weird weather things or cattle mutilations, but there were a couple grave robberies over the past month or so. Using all of her years of research and the robberies, she came to a chilling conclusion right as he walks into the room.
"You're a ghoul." she says, forceful yet proud of herself.
"That is such a nasty term." a woman's voice says on the other side of her. She had not seen the woman come in, but she recognized that evil voice anywhere.
"Mallory." she says, angrily. Mallory smirks at Leila, happy to have been recognized. "What do you want?"
"To be honest, we want to kill your dad. We almost had him, but apparently, we weren't the only ones." She says.
"Yeah. We had planned to kill him, but he ran. Now our back up is to kill you and your brothers." Damien says.
"How did you even find out about me being a Winchester in the first place? I haven't even known for 24 hours yet!" Leila says.
"As soon as I saw your brothers staying with you that first night, I started to do research and pay special attention to the news… and your house, and your car. You ever heard of wire taps? Birth certificates? Adoption records? All of that can be found online now!" Damien says with an evil grin.
"When we figured it out, we changed our plans and decided to kill you instead! Much more fun for us, since we already have a…history." Mallory says with the same grin as her 'boyfriend'.
"You're not really dating him, are you?" Leila asks Mallory.
"Ew, no. He's my brother." she says.
"Your father was the one that killed our parents. They were simply eating people that were already dead, not even hurting anybody! But when John came and killed them, we decided to kill him. We spent years finding him and instead found your brothers and you." Damien says simply.
"When we found these two idiots that happened to be close to you already, we ate them. So much better than the rotting flesh we are used to." Mallory says with a sick smile.
"Just wait til my brothers get here. They are going to kill you both in a heartbeat." Leila says, trying to sound confident, but sounding more scared.
"Maybe, but not before we've killed you. They don't know where you are, let alone what we are. You won't be around long enough to see their grand rescue mission fail." Damien says with a demonic grin.
He walks up to her right side and makes a long and deep incision along her forearm. After all of the pain she has endured in the past 24 hours, she had no more resolve to hold back her screams. She screams again as Mallory makes a similar slice into her left forearm. She hears her blood pouring into what sounded like a bowl or something. She struggles to get free and, as she does, she hears the speed of the blood flow increase.
Mallory sticks her finger in an open wound on Leila's calf and sticks the blood-covered finger in her mouth. She looks to Damien. "Her blood tastes different." she says.
Damien doesn't seem to hear her, or just doesn't care. He looks at Leila as she squirms, writhes, groans and whimpers. "You have to calm down. If you don't you'll bleed out too fast, and that is just no fun. You and I both know you never liked it when a fun thing went too fast…particularly when that good thing happened in the back of Damien's car."
The door to the house abruptly flies open and Sam and Dean burst in with their guns drawn. Leila didn't have much energy left, but she could just barely see her brothers walking in the room. With as much volume as she could muster from her broken body, she yells to them "Ghouls". Just as she is about to pass out, Leila hears two gunshots come from the boys' shotguns and the subsequent thuds of the now decapitated bodies hitting the floor. The Winchester boys knew that ghouls could only be killed with headshots.
Sam and Dean both pull their switchblades out of their pockets and start cutting her bonds. After she is free, Sam helps her sit up though she is unconscious and Dean goes to the kitchen and grabs two towels to help stop the bleeding.
"We have to get her back to the hotel." Dean says.
"No. She's been hurt too badly for us to just fix. We have to take her to a hospital." Sam says, worry etched on his face.
"Oh yeah? What do we tell the doctors? What do we say happened?" Dean says, just as worried, but still thinking ahead.
"She got mugged, but we got to her before he could kill her. He ran off and left town, we didn't get a good look at him, but we got her out of there and to the hospital. It doesn't matter as long as she lives and she has lost too much blood for us to just stitch her up." Sam says, more concerned with saving his twin sister than with his brother's concerns.
Dean debates for a moment but after a second look at his little sister's senseless form, he nods and pulls his keys out of his pocket. Sam picks up his twin and gently but swiftly carries her to the Impala. Dean opens the door for Sam and then gets in the driver's seat. Meanwhile, Sam rides in the back, keeping pressure on her still-bleeding arms to try to slow the blood flow. He constantly checks her vitals, her pulse in particular, hoping and praying that they don't lose the sister that they only just found.
When they get to the hospital, Sam runs in with Dean on his heels and Leila in his arms. "I need a doctor!" he yells. A nurse runs up to the trio and checks Leila for a pulse.
"What happened?" she asks.
"She's a friend of ours. We got a call from her and she sounded like she was in trouble. We found her in an alley being beaten by a man with a knife. We fought him off, but he got away. She lost a lot of blood, though." Dean says, glad he has had a lifetime of practice with lying.
Another nurse comes up to them with a gurney and tells Sam to put Leila on it. Once he does, she is rushed off further into the hospital. "Where is he taking her?" Sam asks the first nurse.
"He is taking her to surgery. She is going to need x-rays, stitches and a full examination." She says.
"Is she going to be okay?" Dean asks. Sam just seems in shock from the whole situation.
"I can't tell you for sure, sir, until a doctor has fully evaluated her condition. Now do you two need to see the doctor as well? You don't seem to be in the best physical condition yourselves." She says, looking at their wounds from the shadow demon fight the night before.
"No. We're fine. We just need her to be okay. She's like a sister to us." Dean says.
"What is her name and what are your names so that we can call you when she comes out of surgery?" the nurse says, pulling out a slip of paper.
"Her name is Katie Smith and I am Sam Giles and this is my brother Dean." He says. The nurse stops for a moment with a look of horror.
"Wait. That is Katie Smith?" she asks.
"You know her?" Dean asks.
"Yeah! My sister, Ruthie went to school with her! They used to hang out at my house all the time. She is so sweet!" the nurse says. She shows them to a private waiting room and then walks out looking distracted, but also more determined to help them.
The boys sat in silence for hours: pacing, reading, thinking…waiting in silence for someone to give them news of their sister. Then after nearly 11 hours of them waiting, a doctor comes in holding a clipboard. He has a cap on and a mask hanging from his neck. He must have been one of the people that performed the surgery.
"Katie Smith?" he asks.
