Chapter 9: A life gone past
I woke up in a cold sweat. That voice, when he talked to me… it was the same voice I heard warning me to run just before Ruby attacked me.
Was he helping me? how was I meant to find him?
It took me a long, confused minute to figure out where I was. I lay back down onto soft cushions, slowly trying to piece together my memories of the day before. By rights, I should be sleeping on a cold bench not waking up in unfamiliar clothes, in an unfamiliar house.
I needed to clear my head, too many words floating in my mind, all too confusing. I sat up and noticed it was still dark as my eyes adjusted, the sun hadn't risen yet. The only light I could see was coming from outside, the garage.
I knew I couldn't fall back asleep so I wrapped one of the blankets around me and stood up to walk around the room. I crept silently over the wooden floorboards, the still air smelt musty and dry. I needed fresh, morning air like was used to on the streets.
I thought back to Ellen's words, don't leave the house. But surely the front yard won't be swarming with black eyed demons. Jo had used a gun against them, I remembered, so I grabbed a similar looking one lying on the table and tucked it under the blanket. I crept to the back door, the cold air hit me like ice as soon as I stepped outside, it smelt like pine trees, I filled my lungs with it, grateful for something familiar.
The sky was a light navy colour just as the sun was rising over the trees, I could actually see the stars unlike in the city. They were beautiful and pale against the winter sky.
I heard muffled music coming from the garage, breaking the early morning silence. I walked over curiously, careful not to step on any discarded scrap metal with my bare feet.
It got louder as I walked towards it, I stepped towards to the rusty, steel door and peered in through a crack.
There was a man standing hunched over the front of a car, he had broad shoulders and his shirt was wet with sweat even though it was near snowing temperature outside. This must be Dean, I thought.
"You might as well stop lurking at the door missy, either come in or leave!" he shouted over the 70's rock music.
I jumped, how did he know I was there?
I creaked open the door slowly and he turned around to see me.
"So, you're our refugee? Esta they said?" he said in a gruff voice.
I couldn't get words out, he was intimidating, although most people seem intimidating from down here.
"Uh, yeah, I guess" I answered softly.
He was holding a beer and I noticed about six more littered around the place. His clothes, jeans and a Tee, were stained with oil and sweat.
He was tall with short brown hair and electric green eyes. He was handsome, especially with his tanned, freckled skin and pretty features.
He dropped the piece of machinery he was holding and sat on the dirty hood, "Couldn't sleep?" he asked me while turning off the music.
"Yeah, I needed some air" I walked over, my blanket dragging along the ground and I sat myself up on a bench, swinging my legs benath me.
He was staring at me oddly.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing, it's just you don't seem like all powerful angel hybrid" he took another swig of his beer.
"That's what I thought" I fiddled with a weird looking wrench before I looked back up.
"Why didn't you come to dinner, they all seemed to want you there" I asked.
"I wasn't hungry" he answered, using that excuse to hide something else.
"Right… so what are you doing here, did you used to be a hunter."
He stared off into nothing, like he was remembering another life. "I was, I still am, hunting's all I have left"
The gun i had hid slid slightly out of my blanket. "And being a hunter, I would know that unless that gun had rock salt bullets, It ain't gonna do much to demons" he added.
I tucked it back in hurriedly "so all powerful demons are killed by a condiment?" I asked while smiling slyly.
"Not killed, just hurt. But yeah, anything that can hurt those sonsofbitches is one of my favourite things." he smiled, even though it looked forced, like he was trying to remind himself on how to laugh.
I should ask, it had hung in the air uncomfortably since I got here.
"I have a feeling something really bad happened?" I was probably being really rude, but I wanted to get to the bottom of this. "To you, to them as well".
He looked up, his green eyes were filled with pain, so much that it blocked out anything else.
"I lost someone, we all did" he explained. His voice was filled with torment as he said it. "My um…" he stopped and looked down "my brother, we lost him".
"I'm so sorry" I said.
He was obviously very close with his brother, I notice a picture torn at the edges stuck up on a tool board with blu tac. It was of two boys, one was Dean, younger than he was now, wearing a brown leather jacket and the other boy, who was much taller than him, must have been his brother. He had shaggy, shoulder length, dark brown hair and a wide grin. He was just as handsome as his brother but in a different way.
They were both laughing at the camera with their arms around each other. I could barely recognize Dean now with so much sadness in his eyes.
He saw me looking, "His name was Sam".
"How… did he-"
"Die?" he finished. "he didn't, we just lost him…"
I studied him, and I could feel what he was feeling… maybe a bit too much.
I suddenly saw flashes of them when they were small children, standing in a field with a man who was teaching them how to shoot a gun, then another of them together, breaking down a door and rushing into a house where a man with fangs stood with blood dripping down his mouth.
This had happened before, if someone's emotions were powerful enough I could sometimes hear their thoughts, see their memories. His pain must have been enough that I could see his memories of his brother and Dean even didn't seem to notice.
It all happened in a split second, one moment I was sitting in the garage with the sun rising and the next I was looking at a vivid memory through Dean's perspective, it was so real, I could see what he saw, feel what he felt… I was thrust back into the past.
