Chapter 9: Shots In The Dark

'Sam...?' his accent thick with emotion, voice strangled and hoarse after yelling so loud.

It couldn't be. This must be a spirit or something, surely – here to haunt him, here to torture him for leaving Sam behind. He didn't think he could cope with the idea of rocksalting it, it was too much, unbearable. Dean gazed at this apparition, like staring at a sunset and knowing it's your last - thinking how beautiful spirits could be, how cruel its presence was. But he didn't care. He could've watched the sun set on this forever, the sheen of tears across his eyes refracting a million stars around Sam's haloed head, and never batted an eyelid. He was holding his breath, didn't want to risk uttering another word in case the merest whisper blew it into thin air, away from him. And, really, what could be possibly say?

So he almost cried out as the apparition moved, taking a step towards, thinking it would destroy Sammy's image. It kept its eyes – squinting a little through its bangs, in anxiety – fixed on him, and stepped forwards... and hit its head on the door frame, with a grunt of surprise. Woah, wait up. Spirits didn't bang their heads on things. It wasn't a spirit. It was Sammy. Dean heard a strangled moan of relief, a shout of laughter, and realized it was his own – he clapped a hand to his mouth, squeezing at his nose in amazement, staring even harder.

'Urgh, you could've warned me, man!' The spirit reproached him. That clinched it. Dean snapped out of his euphoric stupor, and Sam was nearly thrown off his feet as he powered into him. Painfully gripping his shoulders, Dean stared desperately, half deranged with worry, into Sam's face – suddenly fighting down the urge to cackle wildly. Sam winced as he snatched at him, and Dean jerked his hands away in horror. There was a real deep, nasty cut, running right along Sammy's jaw line, from ear to ear. It had clearly drawn blood, but was healing up already, a ropey clot forming. But... but he could've sworn Sam's neck had been flapping, loose, across his own chest. It must've been the folds of his hood, or something, caked in blood.

'Dude, you were dead!' Dean croaked accusingly, voice oddly high.

'I'm alright.'

'You're alright?'

Sam's eyebrows disappeared into his hair.

'Yeah.'

Dean didn't let go.

'Dude – I'm fine!'

'Maybe we should leave you two alone?' Luke said pointedly, coughing behind his grin.

Dean, brilliant scathing wit, as always, on supply, turned his head and replied:

'Takes one to know one.'

'Sorry, Dean, you might have to repeat that for Sam,' Luke apologised. 'He was lost in your eyes!!'

This earnt him a thump on the arm from Morgan ('Ignore him') and as they all moved to leave the room, spell broken, Luke spoke again:

'Wow, wow-' He was staring down at Dean's hands, smeared with blood from where he'd disturbed Sam's injury. 'Dude, is that... blood?'

'Yeah,' Dean frowned at his hands, resembling a finger-painting child's, in distaste. 'So?'

Luke made a sickly, gulping noise and lurched across the room, crashing into the bathroom and out of sight. His disappearance was followed by the sound of hacking and retching, and the lovely echo of something squelchy hitting the bottom of a toilet bowl.

'Nice,' Sam murmured, queasily. He was feeling weak and shaken, all over, and not in the mood to hear this.

'Dude!' Dean exclaimed. 'You have got to be kidding me.' He addressed Morgan. 'He's afraid of blood?'

Morgan, closing her eyes in a manner which suggested she wished the ground would open up and swallow her, nodded.

'Not blood,' she elaborated. 'Human blood. The living freak him out.'

'The living? What about the decapitated?'

Morgan shrugged. 'Freaks and creeps he can deal with. He's just not so hot on biology.'

'O-hhh,' a voice echoed tinnily off the tiles, next door. 'That's not good...'

'Luke, will you hurry up, for fuck's sake?' Morgan called.

At her insistence, he reappeared, twitching his shoulders up high in a shudder, and shook his head.

'Yeuch.'

Ready to exit the crime-scene, Dean craned his head back to look, in wonderment, at Sam again (at which Sam flushed, embarrassed and sort of pleased, avoiding his eyes). Dean barked out a laugh and made a point of ducking his head (at Sammy's expense) under the door-frame, to leave. The four hunters turned to face each other, on the threshold, closing the door on the damning scene inside. Sam by Dean, Luke by Morgan – there was a moment when they all saw each other's positions oddly mirrored – and then the two pairs turned in different directions, and hobbled off to their respective motel-rooms.

Dean made Sam go up the steps first.

'Dude,' he muttered, disgusted, squinting at his feet to make sure he didn't slip up. 'I can't leave you alone for five minutes.'

'Hey,' Sam coughed, over his shoulder, as they reached the top. 'It's not my fault I got attacked.'

'By a chick.' Dean slapped him on the back, jovially but a little too hard.

'You mean a vampire?'

'Whatever,' Dean dismissed him, infuriatingly. 'I should keep you on a friggin' leash.'

'Ha,' Sam thought. 'You were worried about me...'

They reached their motel-room. Sam still had the door-key, so Dean took the opportunity, whilst he opened the door (and whilst they were standing closer together than he'd have otherwise managed to get), to scrutinize the back of Sam's head. There was the scabs and blood of more cuts, matting the hair on the back of his head, and the nape of his neck. The soft skin on the side of his right temple had bloated, where a nasty bruise was welling up, and Dean didn't miss the way he was walking gingerly, too – slowly taking shallow little breaths to temper the ache in his ribs. Beat, in more ways than one. Dean shook his head, eyes hardening. Bitch.

Just before Sam got the key worked right, Dean wrinkled his nose, glancing round the walkway. For a second, there, he thought he'd smelled something like- the lock clicked open – nah, never mind.

The Winchester brothers vanished through the cheap wooden door, the room-number painted under the arch of a hokey little rainbow – a badge, stuck onto it – and shut the door behind.

Down in the parking-lot, Lenore slid down the side of the car she was hiding next to and hit the ground. Amazing. She'd seen his limbs suddenly twitch, leap off the floor of the balcony as if electrocuted – which was what the whole ordeal had looked like, actually. Coming back to life. And those two other hunters had clung onto each other, apparently relieved, before helping him to his feet. She'd been close enough to hear their conversation, carrying across the deserted parking-lot:

'Wha- what happened?' from Sam, staring around in shock, rubbing at his neck.

'Nasty cut, mate,' the blond one had assured him. 'Looks worse than it is, I think the bugger knocked you out. For a second there, we thought you weren't going to come round-' (a glance with the black-haired woman) '-didn't we Morg?'

Which was strictly true, Lenore thought.

'Where's Dean?' Sam urged, listening to the sounds of struggle, nearby.

'Downstairs.'

He'd hastened down the stairs, with them – the woman pulling out a big hand gun as she went, a silencer screwed to its barrel, and cocking it with intent. She'd walked into the room, ahead of them, hair drifting back from her shoulders in the wind - like a rocker swaying above his guitar – without the smallest hint of hesitation. Lenore had heard the muted blip of silenced bullets, firing, and known it must be her. Too late for Kate, she knew it, without investigating. The black-haired woman had come out, again, flipped open the trunk of a battered old SUV parked nearby and drawn out a machete, returning with it held by the blade in her fingers.

After an agonized few moments of listening, straining her ears, Lenore had heard the dull thud of a blade biting into carpet.

The four remained inside, speaking together, and then reappeared, heading off in different directions to where she guessed their rooms were. She had peeped her head over the top of the car, to note where the Winchesters' was. One floor up, first door you came to. Just in case.

This was bad. This was really bad. What was she supposed to tell the others, when she got back? That Kate was dead, killed for fighting in the name of a cause they all believed in – the sanctity of one's mate – and that they could do nothing in retaliation? She hopes she could control her nest. They would obey her, she was sure of it, but for how long? This town had done strange things to her clutch of beef-eaters as Eli sometimes called them. It was getting more and more difficult to keep them in check.

Under different circumstances, Lenore thought she'd have gone to the hunters, asked them for mercy. She had a feeling Sam would give it – but if they were there with here these other, new hunters, could she count on them, on him, any more? She knew for a fact that Rufus and his reckless nest had taken humans, people. They had spilled blood, and she had had to literally lock the doors to stop her own nest joining them in the Feed. So, as hunters, they were all within their rights, to (as much as she hated acknowledging it), to slay them. Would they believe her nest wasn't involved, though? The brothers might. But these two new hunters. They were a problem...

Peering cautiously up at the lightening sky, from far beneath, in her green hood, Lenore made a break for it through the maze of parked cars...

Luke was almost collapsing by the time Morgan got him back to the motel-room, dragging his feet, head lolling forwards – she had to hook his arm over her shoulder, muttering encouragements under her breath to keep him going.

'C'mon, you're almost there.'

Kicking the door open, she helped him across the room, through the bathroom door, and even smacked him between the shoulder-blades to help him get it all up. Luke retched miserably, bringing up the last of It. Lucky they'd bought that bull about him being afraid of human blood. If he'd thrown up this in front of them, they'd have had a hard time explaining: because what hit the bottom of the bowl, here, was not vomit. It was black, and insipid, and clung malevolently to the porcelain bowl until Luke poked it with the toilet-brush. It was what's known, in demon hunting circles, as Ectoplasm. As usual, as soon as the foul stuff was out of his system, Luke felt infinitely better. Well enough to gulp down the glass of water Morgan pushed into his hands, to wash away the horrible taste – oddly like avocado, he'd always thought.

Morgan sat on the edge of the bath while he got his strength back, forearms resting on her thighs, and regarded him where he sat, curled up next to the bog. Luke reached a hand up behind his head and flushed it, theatrically, to which she rolled her eyes and stood, pulling him up despite his wingeing groan of objection. Back in the bedroom, she pushed him at the end of her own bed and started walking around, obviously gathering her thoughts and gearing up to give him a bollocking. So he stood, too.

'I'm sorry-' Luke began, trying to head her off before she got going. Morgan could be harder to stop than a train-wreck, sometimes.

'Sorry? Sorry? Jesus, Luke!'

'I know.'

'Jesus!'

Morgan paced around fruitlessly, hands on her hips, feeling trapped, fishing for something to say and drawing in breath once she landed on it. 'You knew it was going to happen, didn't you? Didn't you? How did you know?' she shot at him.

Luke stared into her eyes – angered, on the surface, but helpless & pleading beneath – knowing, as he did so, that the same expression must be mirrored in his own. Part of him felt proud of his sister, for realising that she was being kept in the dark. That's my girl. Part of him warmed to the fact that – yes, here was actually one person, in the whole, wide world, who could tell when he was lying. Who knew where the Luke persona ended and the real him began. But sometimes it felt like being naked in a crowed room, the emperor in his invisible clothes, knowing that somewhere, in the throng, was a pair of eyes which saw you for what you really were. Or would've been, if only she knew...

He wanted so badly to come clean, right then, and tell her everything. It was filling him with sorrow, this keeping the truth from her, from his toes to the tips of his hair, blooming in his heart like a black vine, extending its thorned tendrils right through him until everything he did, and said, and thought, was choked by its creeping touch. But he couldn't, he couldn't tell her what he saw, sometimes, when he closed his eyes, because that would mean admitting... admitting that he'd...

'Why won't you tell me?' Morgan interrupted, before that traitorous little voice could finish. The closest to a cry Morgan ever came, with anyone, was with him.

'I can't,' Luke murmured thickly, in the back of his throat, shaking his head. 'You... you're just going to have to trust me on this one.'

He trailed off, eyes low, in a breath of Welsh, a sighing wish, sending a charm, a benediction, hovering into the air over her head – and knowing it would kill her: 'Dw i'n crefu ar ti...'

I'm begging you...

Morgan swallowed. She was a sucker for it. Oh, and this look must've been passed out, in leaflets, amongst little brothers – here came the extraordinarily long jade eyes, gazing into hers, as he tried to read her expression. He had such luminously shining eyes, they were almost like stars, blazing in his face. Chin jutting, delicately-fair brows arching at the unfairness of it all, it was the quickest way to drain her of what little resolve she had. Bastard.

Morgan raised her hands – as if to strangle him – but merely tightened them into fists, instead, on the loose collar of his hoodie, resting on his chest. She nodded, eventually, and let Luke go - and as she did so, the necklace he wore shifted back into place, as if it wanted to be seen. Morgan cast a wary eye over it.

Luke dropped his head, too, blonde hair falling forwards in those slightly-effeminate waves (he tucked a strand behind his ear) and looked at it with her.

'I've already used it, in front of them,' he muttered, realising that she was too exhausted now to decry his confession.

Morgan groaned. 'Luke...!'

'I had to, Morg. This cop was about to shoot us-'

'I don't care!' She almost laughed, listening to herself, but bit back the inappropriate mirth.

'Did they ask about it?' Morgan continued, before he could say something else to make her laugh.

'Yeah, but I fobbed 'em off.'

'And how long is that going to last?'

'I dunno...'

'You saw!' She stated, 'you saw what Dean did to that vampire. If he had any idea what we've done-'

'Oh, come on Morg. Vampires? It's a bit different-'

'No, it's not! Not to some people! We could be in serious danger, here, Lu.'

Ah. That was the crutch of their situation, alright. He'd landed her right in jeopardy, without meaning to, and it was all his fault. Luke swallowed guiltily, regretful that he'd had to put her through it.

'Yeah, but...' he added, floundering for a positive. 'But... Sam's alive, right? That's good, isn't it?'

Morgan's eyes flicked up to stare at her little brother. She was always caught off guard by... by his sudden ability to see the upside in everything. He was so simple, sometimes. He made complications seem like an adult delusion.

'Aye,' Morgan replied quietly. 'Aye, you're right, it is. There aren't enough decent hunters around...'

Luke puckered his mouth, swinging, fidgeting, from side to side. 'It's a good thing.'

'If they don't find out, yes.'

Luke could feel her thawing out a little, and grinned sheepishly through his hair.

'Oh, you never know... they might be grateful?'

Morgan sighed, shaking her head. 'I don't think so, Luke. You they might thank – but me? No way. No way. Remember that nutter in Louisiana?'

Luke's eyebrows shot up.

'Yeah, but I think he was a few folding chairs, a hamper, a jam jar, and an ant-colony short of a picnic-'

'I know.' Morgan licked her lips, trying to make him see the unpleasant truths, here. 'I know. Sam and Dean, they seem like nice blokes, sure – and I don't regret doin' that, exactly, if it means some young guy doesn't end up as a stain on the pavement. But I think our best bet, here, is to just... leave. Now. Say our goodbyes, and leg it.'

'No!' Luke shot, instantly, panicked. 'We can't!'

'Why not?'

He opened his mouth to speak, and couldn't. 'Because I see visions of the future, Morgy. Because I think Dean's going to die, and I have to work out how to stop it...' He didn't say. Reading his conflict in his anguished face, Morgan sighed again.

'Alright, fine.' She conceded, hands up in the air. One of her hands was sliced, across the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, where Luke had cut her. His own palm had her blood on it, too, where they'd squeezed their fists together, white-knuckle time. The way Morgan kept her voice in check, tightly controlling the tell-tale quaver which wouldn't shown how wounded she was at his concealment? It wasn't lost on Luke...

'So what d'we do now?' he said, chirpy but subservient.

'Well, if we've got to stay,' Morgan sighed. 'I suppose we may as well-' she grimaced crookedly, not quite believing what she was about to say.

'What?' Luke's eyes were round with curiosity.

'...make friends?'

Luke straightened in relief. 'Oh! Okay, well, that's easy enough for me... what're you going to do?'

'Oi!' Morgan cried, smacking him on the arm. 'I can be friendly!' She thought about it. 'With help.'

'O-hh! Right, okay. I think I've got a pack in my wallet-'

'Luke...'

'What?' he was licking his lips, almost-but-not-quite keeping a straight face.

'That's not the kind of help I meant.'

'My God - you're going to slip Dean viagra?!'

Morgan half-yelped 'What?! No! I'm going to... bribe him.'

'Ah.' Luke nodded sagely. 'Is that what the cool kids're calling it these days?'

'Ow... Ow... Ow... OW!'

'Ahh, suck it up, ya wuss!' Dean snapped with a sing-song cadence, breaking off the suture.

'If you'd just let me- dude!' Sam cried out again as Dean slapped away the hands he was trying to reach up to his own neck.

Following the theme of the motel, their room was painted entirely in one color: red. Red 3D-effect wallpaper, red shaggy rug, dark-stained wood, red lava lamps, appropriately hideous paintings of local New England fall on the walls. Red mottled glass in the oblong shapes cut into their sceen. Even red fairy-lights, ranged around their headboards (padded, plush, red). Dean had picked it – in the hope, Sam suspected, of being mistaken for a brothel.

He was wearing his greyhound t-shirt now, sitting on one of the table's chairs, Dean in the other, drawn up close enough that their knees were locked together. So he could practice stitching on baby bro's face. Lucky him. The cut was only really deep below his right side-burn, where she'd pressed the knife-tip in (Dean had been twisting his head around, uncomfortably). He'd probably have a nasty scar for a while.

'Now quit whining and take this,' Dean (the mother hen) ordered, pushing a bag of ice at him.

Sam took it off his chest, where Dean had thrust it (tutting at the wet patch), and pressed it tenderly to the back of his skull, trying not to wince as it spread cool dampness across the egg-sized bumps and cuts there. Meanwhile, Dean took his left wrist, stretching his arm out, unceremoniously, across the table (Sam's eyes flickered in annoyance at the jerk of his shoulder blade) so he could bandage up a cut Sam had, there. There the metal hand-rail had bitten him when she'd pulled him down.

Eventually, job done, Dean threw all of the stuff back haphazardly into their jumbo first-aid box (before Sam could protest that he wasn't putting things back where they belonged), pushed his chair back and stood, stretching exuberantly.

'What about your cuts?' Sam asked simply, accent thickening because he was tired, pointing at the now-totally-disorganized first aid kit.

Dean shrugged, full of machismo.

'Pff, I'll do it later. Or maybe I'll get someone else to do it for me... I wonder if Morgan has a nurse's outfit...'

Sam rolled his eyes as Dean skipped off into fairyland. 'I need to lie down.' He croaked, swinging his long limbs arthritically off the chair towards his bed (the one closest to the table, but furthest from the door).

'You're just too fragile.' Dean chuckled at his back, as Sam levered himself onto the covers, engulfing the bed in a welcoming bear-hug:

'Bite me.'

Grinning, Dean had just retaken his seat – boots propped up on Sam's vacated spot – and whipped out a newspaper from the pile on the table (to see whether there was anything new on their case) when there was a knock at the door.

'You gonna get that?'

'Urgh,' Sam mumbled into his pillow.

Eyebrows raised, unsurprised, Dean wound his way past the foot of the beds – sparing Sam's big feet a slap of his hand – and opened the door. Morgan was sitting on the handrail opposite him, wearing the black leather-jacket he recognized from the night they'd met. He seized the chance to check out the scenery before she noticed him. Puffing on that cigarette in a way which made him suck in his breath, appreciatively, through his teeth. Her magnificent head turned into the cold wind. She realised he'd answered the door at the scrape of his hand – Dean had lifted it to rest on the lintel as he took in the view.

'Hey,' Dean said, nodding his head upwards, pleasantly surprised, and shooting her a smile – little more than a lick of shadow under one cheekbone. Back in Zippo mode.

'I see you're lighting your own cigarettes now,' he remarked.

Morgan chuckled huskily under her breath, raising a brow at it as she tapped off the ash.

'Yeah,' she replied, 'it's this new-' she swallowed down bracingly '-spirit of Female Independence. Luke's trying to beat it out of me.'

Dean noticed, as she said this, that she was nursing a broken bottom lip, and frowned.

'Did I give you that?' he asked, motioning at it. He remembered hitting someone.

Morgan licked her lip, trying it out. 'You did.'

Damnit! He whined in his head. How to loose a chick in ten seconds!

Although, actually:

'Got a minute?' Morgan prompted.

Huh...

'I- uh... Sam-'

Dean glanced over his shoulder, into the room behind him, where Sam- where Sam was lying, fast asleep, dead to the world (but not to him, thank God), one arm trailing along the floor, over the edge of the bed. The light, streaming from the open door, brought a bar of white floating into life over him – or pink, 'cause the covers were tinting it red. Illuminating the one half of his face (mole by his nose, nostril flaring as he breathed deep) which was still visible above the pillows. Eye shut, dark lashes quivering under the messy wisps of hair which half obscured them. Dean rolled his eyes. Typical.

'Sure,' he repeated. 'Just- give me a sec.'

An idea had occurred to him – he was in an odd, giddy mood.

Dean turned back into the room, and padded stealthily across the carpet (which gave way under his boots) to the table.

Amidst the tangle of newspapers, maps (one with a neat little Venn-diagram of attacks – which Sammy had rigged, to figure out where the nest was) and, now, medical stuff, was a large bowl of red wax fruit. (One apple had a set of teeth-marks indented in its smooth surface, where he'd accidentally bitten into it, the day before). Dean upended the bowl onto the table, holding his other hand underneath so the falling fruit wouldn't make a noise, and shooting glances at Sam's sleeping back. Nadda.

He sneaked into the bathroom, filled the bowl half to the brim with water, and returned, kneeling reverentially by Sam's side, like a priest going to prayer, and eased it gently under his fingers.

Yahtzee.

Beaming with himself, Dean strolled towards the beckoning fresh air, pausing in the doorway, pleased, to admire his handiwork and closed the door behind himself. As the door swung shut, the bar of light narrowed to a splinter – and, had anyone been around to see it, they might have noticed (from what little was visible of his face), that a tiny smile curled itself around the edge of Sam's "sleeping" mouth...

Outside, Dean faced Morgan.

'What can I do for ya?' he started, filling in an x-rated answer in his head.

'You can give me the pleasure,' Morgan replied, 'of your company.'

Damnit! So close...

'Luke being an ass, huh?'

'Oh yeah. I wanted to talk to someone who isn't a complete cretin.'

'Really?'

He pretended to know what that meant.

'Really really.' Morgan repeated. 'So, d'you know anyone?'

Dean huffed a breath of laughter, shaking his head. He walked forwards to put his hands on the rail beside her (she got off and emulated him, leaning forwards on her elbows) and they both gazed out over the parking-lot.

'You-' Dean began, and then rewound before he gushed at her, like Sammy would've. 'You are not good with people.'

'Piss off!' Morgan snorted, with irony. 'I've got loads of friends.'

'Like who?'

'Well, you met my girls, earlier.' She said, stiffly.

Resisting the urge to make a crack about her boobs, Dean twisted his neck to look at her – happy that the distance he had to look was much less than usual, because she was so tall. Must've been only a couple of inches shorter than him.

'Your girls?'

'Aye.'

Morgan swung herself away from the rail, cigarette propped in her mouth, cocking a leg as she between them with one hand, behind herself with the other. From behind her back (beneath her jacket) she drew out the gun she'd had trained on him earlier – the now un-silenced Magnum – and, from (what he realized was a strap on) her leg, a little Beretta.

'My girls,' Morgan explained. 'Maggie,' she indicated the Magnum, 'and Betty.' the Beretta

He liked the way she just whipped them out in broad daylight. Not that she wasn't cautious, but that she just didn't give a fuck. Dean couldn't pin down what was making a smile twitch around the corner of his mouth, until: Oh yeah – he was impressed.

'You named your guns?' He asked, not quite believing it.

'Yeah,' Morgan said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world, and tucked them away. 'Don't you have anything you're attached to?'

Dean smirked.

'As a matter of fact I do. Maybe I'll introduce you two later on.'

They both skimmed over that one, into a relaxed silence, staring out over the parking lot as the sun rose higher in the east, over to their right. Early morning for everyone else, all in a night's work for hunters. Cars started to whizz up and down the road, kids going to school, students in what Luke called Serious Knit-wear. Dean spotted someone in doctor's scrubs padding along the opposite sidewalk with a cup of coffee in her hand.

'Oh, that reminds me,' Morgan burst, having noticed the very same thing. She twisted round (Dean watched where to) and picked up, from the floor beside his doorway, a pair of Styrofoam-capped cups.

'Liquid breakfast,' she said, handing him one. 'I don't know how you take it, but I got my usual - two shots of espresso in black?'

'Nice,' Dean breathed, eyes lighting up. 'Whaddya call that?'

She smiled crookedly. 'A shot in the dark.'

Dean took an experimental slurp. 'I like it.'

They lapsed into silence again, sipping their coffee, using the white-steaming cups to warm their hands, against the chill. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, and it felt... oddly... simple.

'Hey Morgan?' Dean said.

'Hey Dean?'

'Sorry I hit you.'

Morgan looked surprised at the apology (he saw out of the corner of his eyes).

'D'worry about it,' she reassured him. 'You can't punch.'

Gee. She didn't skimp on the compliments, did she?