Sam stared at the house, sitting in the middle of a clearing, trees all around with a barn and a shed squatting behind a pair of trees. He was getting serious X-file vibes, but Scarlet was crouched beside him looking completely unperturbed. She had a pair of nightvision binoculars that had to have cost more money than he had ever seen in his entire life, and it had come from her knapsack. He was slightly afraid to ask if she had gotten them legitimately or not, and decided that he didn't want to know.
"So when are we going in?" Sam asked.
"I'm going in. You're staying out here," she replied in a soft voice slightly above a whisper.
"And why is that?"
"Because you sound like a herd of elephants when you try to sneak around." She pointed. "There. I think that's Molly's room. Unfortunately, there're people around but—" she paused as the front door opened and two men came out.
They had on typical hillbilly gear—flannel shirts under rainslickers, but what caught Sam's eye was that they each carried a shotgun in their hands. Scarlet had stilled completely, watching as they entered the barn.
"What the hell . . . ?" Sam asked, but she didn't answer.
"Stay there," she whispered after several minutes of watching. The two men still hadn't come out. "If I'm not back in twenty minutes, call Dean."
He nodded, not liking this at all. He was cold, wet, and there was definitely something weird going on in the barn. Turning to Scarlet, he muffled a groan. She was gone, but she had left her knapsack in place, the goggles on top.
Sam was tempted to go through it, but he stayed put and watched through the goggles. Two more men and a woman exited and went into the barn, but Scarlet was no where in sight.
He watched for fifteen minutes, then glanced at his watch. Eleven-forty-three. Dean was going to go ballistic. Well, he probably already was.
His teeth began to chatter, and he felt the waves of a headache coming on when he saw two of the men come from around the back of the barn, dragging a limp form along with them.
Shit, shit, shit, he thought, not able to see who it was.
Creepy shit indeed—he couldn't tell if it was Scarlet or not. He needed Dean.
Pulling out his phone, he quickly dialed and waited impatiently as it rang four times.
"Yeah?" came a very disgruntled reply as Dean answered. He sounded pissed but very . . . relaxed. "Goddamn, Sammy, where the hell are you?"
"Outside Molly Wagner's house."
"Where? Why?"
"Uh, Scarlet said she had—"
"Scarlet? What the hell are you talking about, bro?" Dean sounded confused.
"I'm with Scarlet and she went into this house—"
"Scarlet's with me . . . oh shit," Dean trailed off, and it sounded like the phone was dropped. There was a grunt, and it sounded like something fell.
"Dean!" Sam hissed, afraid to raise his voice, and the line went dead. He dialed again, frantically, but no one picked up.
Rocking back on his heels, he looked out at the house and barn. Something was definitely going on out there. Breathing out a sigh, he dug through Scarlet's knapsack, all the while thinking quickly.
Dean had said Scarlet was right there with him, but he was definitely with her at that moment—two Scarlets? What the hell? It stood to reason that one of them was a shapeshifter, but which was the real one? He had thought that the Scarlet who had gone to investigate the house was real, but if the shapeshifter was anything like the one Dean had killed then it wouldn't really matter as it could pick up telepathic images or whatever.
Scarlet had a lot of interesting things in her bag, mostly weapons, and he pulled out a 9mm Beretta, surprised to see that it had a full clip. There were other weapons, and some weird claw things, all stored neatly in various pouches, but he only slid a dagger into his boot and stored the bag under a bush and moved towards the barn as stealthily as he could.
He was almost at the barn when he heard a twig snap behind him. Turning, his eyes widened as a shovel smacked into his forehead, knocking him out.
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Chandre reached the barn almost easier than she had thought, and looked around for a way in. She had decided that she wanted to see what was going on in the barn more than what was inside the house. Spotting an open window one story up, she scrambled up one of the nearby trees and crawled inside after making sure that no one was in the room.
Landing silently in the dark room, she found herself in a loft, surrounded by musty-smelling hay and the sound of soft chanting. The floor groaned slightly, and she shifted until it stopped, realizing that the floor was half-rotted. The reek of blood and a coppery tang of magic hit her, and she stifled a cough, reeling backwards until she bumped into the wall. What the hell was going on?
Moving towards the edge of the loft, she got down onto her belly and wiggled forwards until she could see. The floor creaked again, but she had spread her weight out enough that it should hold her. Even so, it shook slightly, but the chanting voices never paused.
Peering over the edge, she saw four naked men and one woman standing over a limp figure who was bound and gagged, a hood covered his features. The naked people weren't the kind of people she would ever want to see naked, with bulges of fat and sagging parts, but they had smeared a reddish paint over their bodies—she froze, recognizing blood. Two other people stood apart from the group, holding weapons and wearing clothes.
The bound person was bleeding from various cuts, and the blood had been smeared all over his body. Whimpers came up from the hood, cutting through the chanting at times, and she began to move back, but the floor creaked and the boards gave away.
She bit back a yelp as she fell to the ground in a pile, debris raining down on top of her, and struggled to her feet, but the barrel of a shotgun stopped her.
The chanting never ceased.
"Looks like we got a live one, Bert," the man said. "Don't even think about moving, missy." Chandre froze, staring at the barrel of the gun, into the two dark holes. She might be good, but she couldn't dodge that.
Sam would call Dean when she was too late, she knew, and hopefully he wouldn't come out here, because this was, this was bad. Real bad. She didn't recognize the ritual, but it dealt with blood and what looked to be a sacrifice.
"Isn't this the reporter that was snooping around town?" the other asked.
"Soon to be a dead reporter," the first replied. The last thing Chandre saw was the figure in the center of the circle writhing, bubbles forming under his skin and screams droning out the chanting, before the second man brought the butt of his shotgun against the back of her head, and she dropped like a sack of oats to the dirt floor.