Note: Mazza is lovely and longsuffering and deserves much more than just my thanks.
Also, I'm sorry that it's taking longer between updates. Everybody I've ever met or ever will meet has either graduated or gotten married or both in the last two months. And I fear it's not going to improve anytime soon. I'm sorry. I'll do my best to hurry.
Chapter 8
Dean's first inclination was to pull over at the first rest stop he passed. But he forced himself to wait 50 miles before turning in at a gravel road and taking out the laptop case. It might mean some backtracking later, but that'd take less time than coming up with another Get Out of Jail Free card.
Inside, there were dozens of tattered manila folders, a few legal pads, an assortment of CDs, the loose pages of what appeared to be a long fax and, of course, the laptop. Flipping through the folders, Dean felt his stomach twist up. They were all labeled with names and places he associated with less-successful hunts – cases where they weren't able to save everybody. Despite America's Most Wanted's grandiose claims, he'd had no idea that they'd been connected with so many.
He was about to put the folders down – he didn't really expect to find any clues on the location of Henrikson's special secret suspect hideout in old case files – when one painfully familiar name caught his eye: Jessica Moore – deceased, 11/02/2005.
He froze. It was a good 30 seconds before his trembling hands responded to his brain's command to 'open it, dammit.'
One look inside and Dean could almost smell it all over again – that awful mixture of smoke and whatever chemical it was that they put in firetruck water. The photos of charred drywall surrounded by the semi-familiar remains of the life his brother had built within them brought back all the raw pain and wrenching worry of that period in their lives.
He turned the page with more force than was really necessary and came to the police report, which he'd already read a million times. But there was more that must have been added after they'd left town – interviews with people whose names Dean remembered Sam mentioning occasionally there at first; results from the arson investigation that Dean and Sam knew better than to take seriously; and what seemed to be Henrikson's personal notes.
"The arson investigation found no traces of accelerants, but if these boys are as well trained as I think they are, that's not even a little surprising. It's too coincidental, Sam's girlfriend dying the same way his mother did, just days after his brother arrived back on the scene. Daddy Winchester must have taught Dean all his old tricks. It wouldn't be the first father and son serial killer team. And it's no stretch to imagine the rest of the family being unhappy with Sam's choice in careers. May have even seen this impending law school interview as a threat, which would explain the timing. I almost feel sorry for Sam – he clearly tried to get out. Almost made it. The autopsy was inconclusive as to whether Jessica was still alive when her body was set on fire, but it seems clear from the police reports that Sam witnessed whatever happened. I wonder if Dean made him watch his girlfriend burn alive, or if he at least had the decency to kill her first."
Dean slammed the file shut there, unwilling to read any more. But he couldn't keep the scene imagined by Henrikson from playing out in his head: Dean torturing his brother by making Sam watch as he doused a terrified Jessica in lighter fluid and lit a match.
Well. Not lighter fluid – that'd leave evidence behind, and Dean was apparently too well trained to let little things like that slip his mind when brutally murdering friends of loved ones.
Fuck. What kind of monster … He shook his head and let the thought go. He didn't have time to dwell right now.
He flipped through the remaining folders quickly, not really wanting to know what else Henrikson wanted to pin on him, and then moved on to the legal pads.
Three of them were already full, pages dog eared and creased, with paper clips tagging some spots for easy access. The notes inside were scrawled in a messy black hand that didn't match the clean-cut image the agent had presented on TV. Random words were circled, underlined and boxed, with arrows pointing to footnotes in the margins. The story they told was depressingly coherent, however.
These notes all seemed to relate to Dean and Sam's more recent escapades, and Dean was again surprised by how much Henrikson seemed to know. The man, despite the lack of discernible organization, knew them. He'd worked out theories on how they chose their jobs – or, as he called them, victims – that were chillingly accurate. Reading further, Dean could see that the man had figured out that they weren't driving the Impala anymore based on the distance between the gas stops that he'd uncovered. And he was working on narrowing down the list of possible new pimpmobiles based on traffic cam photos taken in places he knew they'd been. It all gave Dean the uneasy feeling that he was being watched.
It didn't, however, read like a man about to go off the deep end. The guy seemed … intense. But not desperate. Nothing in the notes screamed vigilante in the making, and Dean wasn't sure what to make of that.
So he kept reading.
The fourth pad was only about one-fourth filled, so Dean surmised that it would have the most current notes. He flipped to the end thinking maybe there would be evidence of what sent him over the edge – and where the edge might be located .
It took him a little while to understand what he found.
It was a list. Dates and coordinates on the left, city names on the right. All places they'd been recently, but not on the dates they corresponded with. Everything was a day or so behind, except the very last entry. The date for Guthrie was spot on.
Dean frowned. That … didn't make sense.
Until he flipped back to the previous page. Then it was all too clear.
"Freak electrical storm," Henrikson had written and circled a few times. Then drawn squares around it for good measure. The effect was that the word stood out like a marquee. Dean stared at it, his heart rate speeding up. What would an FBI agent care about electrical storms? Unless he'd somehow put two and two together and come up with 'x equals they would lead him to his quarry.'
But that would mean the electrical storms had been following Dean and Sam. Which would mean the demon was following Dean and Sam.
Which cast the day's events in a whole new light.
The demon had led them to Guthrie. It'd been trailing behind them before for reasons Dean couldn't imagine, but it had used Andy to lure them to Guthrie. Dean didn't know why the idea hadn't occurred to him before.
And Dean doubted that the demon brought them there just so that they would rot in jail – or at least, he doubted that was in its plans for Sam. Which meant it was straining the limits of credulity to believe that the FBI agent just happened to go so nuts that he'd kidnap a suspect at exactly the moment a demon was trying to get to said suspect.
And that changed everything.
But it also made Sam a little easier to find. Because underneath the words "freak electrical storm," Henrikson had scratched out a name and phone number. And underneath the name, he'd written "NOAA" – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A big fancy name for The Weather Geeks Agency.
Five minutes later, Dean was on the phone with NOAA meteorologist Carey Tomlin, introducing himself as Special Agent Victor Henrikson's partner. Then there was some 'just wondering if any more electrical storms had popped up since Victor called.' It was thankfully met with a 'yes, and here are the coordinates.'
And then Dean was on his way.
OOO
There was a storm brewing in the rearview mirror when The Thing turned the car onto a dirt road – little more than a rutted path hidden between the rows of corn, really. They'd been driving through the endless cornfields of the Midwest for hours, and Victor could say now with some authority that the corn was indeed high as an elephant's eye. But really he was getting more of a Children of the Corn vibe than an Oh What a Beautiful Morning feel.
And lookey there. Man, he hated always being right.
There, in the clearing at the end of the trail were the children of the corn. Or, at least, a few of them were children. The rest were very menacing looking young adults. And they were surrounded by a lot of corn. And one very rickety-looking old house.
They pulled to a stop, and when the locks popped open and Sam's cuffs fell off, Victor wasn't the least bit surprised to see Sam shoot out. He'd dealt with enough Winchester escapes that he could have told The Thing that was going to happen. Not that he would.
Or … well. Maybe he would. He still hadn't decided exactly what outcome he was rooting for here. On the one hand, he believed The Thing when it said it wasn't planning on keeping Sam comfortable, and he really didn't want anything to do with those plans. But on the other hand, God knows Victor had less than no idea how to get out of here on his own, so Sam was running away with his best chance for escaping this mess.
The Thing inside him snickered and tore his gaze away from Sam's sprint for the edge of the corn. Victor found himself again staring into the rearview mirror at the wrongness that was currently his own eyes.
"I wouldn't get too worried about being left behind," it said. "They've been training."
It turned Victor back toward Sam just in time to see the boy go flying inexplicably backward toward the Corn Children. Several of them broke off from the group and headed Sam's way.
"Karen's got the whole throwing things around pretty much down, but she's still working on the fine motor skills involved with holding people in place. It's harder than you would think."
Sam pushed himself up only to spend a couple of seconds wobbling before being thrown down again. By the time he struggled back to his feet, the Corn Children were on him. He raised his fists and Victor wondered just how many people he thought he could fight his way through. But it didn't matter. Sam had only landed a few good blows when a short Asian kid grabbed one of his hands mid punch. Sam immediately went down on his knees, back arching in some pain Victor couldn't account for. The kid let go, and Sam fell the rest of the way down and stayed there.
"Good thing Henry's doing better with his studies," The Thing said. "He's taken it down from electric-chair level to taser strength. Last week he was still killing everything he touched."
As The Thing turned to exit the car, Victor saw from the corner of his eye another one of the kids bend down and heft Sam onto his shoulder as though he weighed nothing. The Thing didn't bother to explain that one, but Victor could guess.
And wasn't that just a bad sign.
The Thing strode past the corn children and Victor lost track of Sam as he made his way into the house. That might have worried him more if he hadn't immediately been presented with a whole new set of worries.
The house was old, built long before the invention of air conditioning, so it was laid out with a long hall running from the front door to the back for airflow. A half a dozen doors opened off on either side of it, and the Thing glanced into each room as it passed, treating Victor to a tour to rival Ripley's Believe It or Not. In the first room on the left, a small boy with dull brown eyes was snapping his fingers in time with the disappearance and reappearance of a flame on a candle.
Across the hall, a preteen girl with blond ringlets was observing with boredom as a roiling twister of debris danced in front of her. After that, there were a couple of rooms with floating furniture, three or four where the kids seemed to be concentrating very hard on something he couldn't see, one that made his hair stand on end just passing the doorway, and one where a little girl seemed to actually be charming a snake.
"Animals are easier to control than humans at first," The Thing murmured to him. Then it was turning into what apparently passed as a master suite in 200-year-old farm houses.
A glance outside the window showed a small cluster of 20-somethings staring unemotionally up at a low-lying thunderhead. The Thing smiled, it's version of pleased, before turning away. As it did so, it caught Victor's reflection in an old spotted mirror hanging on a far wall and walked over to it. It stood there for a moment, taking in the view, leaving Victor plenty of time to contemplate the differences between this and what he usually saw in a mirror.
And there were differences. Victor rarely really relaxed, always held himself ready for action. But The Thing had him looking loose limbed and careless, casual even. Except, again, for the eyes. No one would ever have accused Victor of having gentle eyes, but this … this was different. He wondered what Sam Winchester must have thought, looking up into them from the interrogation room floor. No wonder there had been dread on his face.
The Thing caught him looking and stared back at him with a malicious grin.
"I've been meaning to thank you," it said. "This is one of the best bodies I've ever had the pleasure of … shall we call it renting? People think we demonic types don't appreciate beauty, but we do. We just find it in different places. For instance, the ripple of your biceps earlier, just before your elbow connected with Sam Winchester's head. Work of art, that."
As it said that, the image replayed before Victor's eyes.
"Normally I don't bother with the hand-to-hand stuff. No reason to. But you … you just make it fun."
Again, Victor's elbow slamming into Sam's cheekbone. The slightly surprised look as his head flew back and ricocheted off the dingy cinder blocks. The truly fearful look afterward. Victor knew he could be scary when he wanted, but no one had ever had cause to look at him like that before.
"Well. First time for everything. You'll get used to it."
Suddenly the memory morphed into something else entirely: Sam, stretched across a bare mattress laid out on a dirty wood floor, hands bound to a post above his head.
A splash of red from the boy's broken lip on the back of Victor's knuckles as he straightened up after a heavy backhand.
The crunch of bone as the dusty toe of Victor's dress shoe slammed into ribs.
Victor's stomach twisted up, and he reminded himself that The Thing said it couldn't predict the future.
"Maybe not," The Thing said, evidently eavesdropping. "But what's going to stop me from bending the future to my will?"
