Sam ignored the speed limit signs. The straight, empty county road practically demanded he let the Impala stretch her legs. Besides, Dean would've gone even faster. He used the drive time to catch Ruthie up on the missing field crew, and why the name 'Enrique' might have made Manuel clam up. Ruthie's hair whipped around her headrest while her hand hung out the window, surfing up and down in the wind.
"You look happy," Sam shouted to her over the road noise.
"I am." She corralled her blowing hair with her left hand so she could look at him.
"Even though we're tracking something we have no idea how to contain, let alone kill?"
She shrugged. "We always figure something out. I'm in my favorite car with my best friend, on a mission to save the world—or at least this corner of it. I'm friends with an angel. And my boyfriend has stopped being an idiot."
Sam grinned. "Finally."
Ruthie looked out at the road ahead and frowned slightly. "That doesn't sound right."
"What, 'boyfriend?'"
She nodded. "Doesn't really cover it, after everything we've been through. Plus, I feel too old for that word. 'Boyfriend, girlfriend.' Like it's for teenagers and twenty-somethings, you know?"
"Ruthie, you're not that old."
She ignored him. "And Dean's definitely too old for it."
Sam laughed. "Well, whatever you want to call it, I'm just glad you two worked everything out. It's really good to see you happy. Both of you."
"It's because of you."
"What are you talking about?"
"I mean it," she insisted. "It's all thanks to you, pretty much from the beginning. You got Dean to let me out of the bunker. You kept me sane when he was driving me crazy. You found out how to kill Monica; you convinced me I could do it. I know you talked to him for me that night, when I was going to leave. You're the glue that holds this family together in general."
Sam glanced between her and the road, his face heating up despite the wind blowing on it through the open window. He didn't know what to say. Then, a sharp, pungent scent flavored the wind hitting his face, giving him the chance to change the subject. "Can you smell that?"
She turned her face toward her window for a moment. "Onions."
"We must be getting close." The field on Ruthie's side was filled with them: green bunches of pointy stalks, about two feet high. Sam spotted the whitish bulbs at the bottom of the row nearest the road. He scanned the field. Any people would have been easy to spot, unless they were lying flat on the ground. He gripped the steering wheel tighter as he realized that was a distinct possibility.
"Is this the one they were supposed to be in?" Ruthie asked.
Sam checked the upcoming road sign. "Here's 240 East, so yeah, this should be the one."
"Hey, look," she said, pointing through the window. "It looks like somebody drove onto the field."
Sure enough, Sam spotted twin tire tracks, flattening the crops, heading into the field. Whatever vehicle had driven in there was gone now, though. "Let's check it out." He pulled off into the grass on the side of the road. Ruthie went to open her door. "Wait a sec," he said, and pulled out his phone. "I need to show you this." He pulled up the photo of Rachel Schultz. "She's our best guess as to who Azar's possessing now. So if we see her, we hightail it."
She raised a sardonic eyebrow at him. "Dean's orders?"
"Yeah. But I figure if we get lucky enough to spot her, we'll hang back and keep an eye on her from a distance."
"That sounds better."
He showed her his screen and took a second look for himself, memorizing Rachel's short, nearly-white hair, flat nose with a silver nose ring, and big smile. Although, if they did find her, he doubted she'd still be wearing the smile. Ruthie studied the picture, then nodded.
They climbed out and Sam went to the trunk. He fished around until he found what he was looking for.
"The demon knife?" Ruthie asked, looking surprised.
"I don't know whether it will do any good or not," he admitted, tucking it into the back of his waistband. "But it's better than nothing. In case we get cornered and can't run." He and Dean hadn't survived this long by failing to plan for contingencies. He double-checked that his mag was full, racked the slide, and holstered his pistol. "You good?" he asked.
She patted her sidearm in answer.
They started off through the field, following the tracks. The smell of onions rising off the crushed plants was overpowering. Sam's eyes started watering.
"What do you think Manuel saw?" Ruthie asked in a quiet voice.
Sam shook his head. "Nothing good. But at least he got away."
"Only by selling his soul. All the alcohol he can drink, right?"
She had a point.
Sam scanned the field all around them, including the direction they'd come from. He didn't want anyone or anything sneaking up on them. The tracks led toward the northeast corner of the field. He and Ruthie kept following them, walking in silence. The late afternoon sun seemed about three feet overhead, baking the field like a broiler oven. Ruthie's dark hair shone with blue streaks in the blazing light. She grabbed her ponytail and waved the end of it like a fan over the back of her neck. Sweat beads formed on her forehead, but she didn't complain.
Sam wiped his own forehead with his sleeve. "Hey, I see something."
"What? I can't see anything."
"That's because you're short," he teased her.
"Am not, you giant freak."
"Come on." He led the way toward the object he'd spotted on the ground ahead. He and Ruthie stopped where the tire tracks ended in a big circle, as though the vehicle had turned around. Nearby lay a couple dozen red mesh bags filled with onions.
"Look," Ruthie said, holding up an abandoned water bottle. "Why would they leave this behind? It's so hot."
"Why would they leave at all?" Sam asked in a grim voice. He studied the tire tracks. "The vehicle stopped here, then the driver cranked the wheel before taking off again. See?" He showed her the marks in the field where the soft dirt had been shoved to the right, leaving two ridges.
"I see it. And look here. Are these footprints?"
Sam followed her pointing finger. Sure enough, a messy trail of compressed soil ran roughly parallel to the tracks, where the vehicle had been stopped. They all turned at the same spot, crossed over one tire track, then turned back the direction they'd come, but only for a couple feet. Then they disappeared.
A chill shivered down Sam's spine despite the hot sun. One look at Ruthie's face told him she understood, too.
"He loaded them up," she murmured. "All of them."
Sam gritted his teeth and nodded.
"But where did he take them? And how did he convince them to go without burning anyone up?"
He wished he knew. He pulled his radio from his back pocket, twisted on the power control, and squeezed the talk button. "Hey, Dean?" He let go and waited several seconds before trying again. "Dean, we got something. Can you hear me?" He waited again, roasting, wishing he'd left his suit jacket in the car. No answer. Great. They'd just blown their money on these stupid radios and now they still had no way to communicate.
Ruthie sighed, switched on her radio, and held it up several inches from her mouth. "Bo, this is Daisy. Come in, over."
One second later, their radios crackled. "Daisy, I read you, over."
Sam rolled his eyes, wondering for the millionth time how his brother was still an actual six year old. "We found tracks in the field. We think he loaded them into a truck or something."
A long pause. Then Dean's tinny voice saying, "Call sign? Over."
Sam stared at Ruthie in disbelief.
"You might as well get it over with," she said. "He won't talk to you until you do."
Sam pressed his lips together and tipped his head back to look at the sky. Fine. Fine. "Bo Hazzard, this is Luke Hazzard, come in, over."
"Read you loud and clear, Luke. You say he took them to a secondary location? Over."
"Affirmative," Ruthie said. "Location unknown."
"Copy. I'll ask our witness about it. Over."
"Get anything from the witness yet?" Sam asked.
There was a pause. "Negative. Cooter played good cop for a while. Now he's playing bad cop. It's going exactly how you'd imagine. Over."
Sam could almost hear Dean's eyes rolling.
"We'll keep you posted," Ruthie said.
"Copy that. Over and out."
Sam and Ruthie clipped their walkies to their back pockets and headed back toward the car.
He shot her a sideways look. "Cradle robber."
"Huh?"
"I think what you're doing is technically illegal. Don't you think you should wait until he mentally turns eighteen?"
Ruthie laughed. "You love him, too."
"I'm stuck with him: we're related. You chose him."
Her laugh softened into an affectionate expression. "You would, too. If you had to choose a brother, out of anyone in the world, you'd choose him."
She was right, of course. But he was still male enough not to agree out loud. "It looks like he followed the same path back out onto the road," he said, gesturing at the tracks again.
She nodded. "And from there, we've got no way of knowing where he went."
Sam thought as they walked. "But the crew went missing sometime today, right? And Manuel had time to get back into town, get loaded at the bar, and get arrested between the time they were taken and when we saw him. So he couldn't have taken them very far, right?"
"Makes sense," Ruthie said. "Guess it wouldn't hurt to drive around a bit, see if we find anything. Hey, look!"
They'd emerged from the field, and Ruthie was pointing at the grass between the onions and the road. Two tire tracks flattened the grass, curving north. "He turned that way."
"Good eye."
They got into the car, and Sam tossed his jacket into the back seat. He wished, not for the first time, that the Impala had air conditioning. Once, he'd mentioned to Dean that they should get one installed. He'd endured an epic tongue-lashing for daring to suggest Baby wasn't perfect just the way she was. Dean hadn't let him drive for a month.
He and Ruthie buckled up, and he pulled back onto the road. There wasn't much out here, just rows of trees between some of the fields, and farmhouses and silos in the distance.
"What are we looking for?" Ruthie asked.
"I'm not sure. Suspicious looking trucks, maybe? Somewhere you could take ten people and not be visible from the road?" He kept going, scanning the view out his window while Ruthie searched hers.
"Sam, look," she said, a note of excitement in her voice. "Slow down."
He obeyed, and looked where she was pointing. A dirt path cut through the soybean field on her side. It curved and disappeared behind the plants, but off in the middle of the field stood a small, rickety old barn.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"Worth a look." He pulled off the road again and made his way slowly up the dirt trail. Dust billowed behind them. Staying ahead of the dust clouds was easy; there was no breeze at all. He followed the curving track through the soybeans right up to the abandoned barn. It was actually pretty picturesque; the decaying brown barn contrasted with light blue sky and a row of leafy green trees in the background.
Ruthie leaned forward in her seat to see better. "No vehicles here."
"Probably wouldn't have hung around," Sam said. "C'mon, let's have a look. We'll check the outside first." Hunter protocol. Locate all exits. Check the perimeter. He pulled out his radio. "Bo, this is Luke, come in."
Their radios hissed. "This is Bo, go ahead, over."
"We found an abandoned barn about a mile north of the field. Checking it out now." Keep your partner updated on your location.
"Copy that. Over."
He led Ruthie around the outside of the barn at a safe distance. The thin, hard layer of dirt along the back wall did show tracks and footprints, but they were too faint to be of any use. No telling how old they were. He should've found out when it had last rained. He pulled out his phone to check. No signal. Of course. He wished it would go ahead and rain right now. Some wind, some water, anything to cool him off.
One big sliding door stood halfway open on the back wall. Sam tried to peer into the barn, but he was too far from the door to make out much besides some empty bottles in the rectangle of light it let in. He kept going, around the side facing the treeline, where a gray silo stood at the far corner. Past the silo, along the wall facing the road, and back to where they'd started. "Okay," he said. "Don't let your guard down. Let's see what's inside."
Ruthie nodded and followed him. On his way to the door, an unsettled feeling plucked at his stomach. He didn't question it; he just drew his gun. Trust your instincts. Behind him, he heard Ruthie follow suit.
The breeze he'd been wishing for picked up, blowing from the west. The barn blocked any cooling effect. But it didn't block the smell. Ash. Decay. Death.
They were in the right place.
He shot a questioning glance back at Ruthie. Her wide eyes and wrinkled nose told him she knew they'd find something unpleasant inside. The determined set of her jaw told him she wasn't waiting in the car, so he might as well save his breath.
Sam edged into the dark barn, stepping to his left, out of the rectangle of light, letting Ruthie follow him inside. He made room for her next to him in the dark. Their eyes would adjust more quickly here. A few narrow shafts of light shone from holes in the walls and roof, scattering bright spots on the dirt floor. He scanned the open area, willing his eyes to make sense of the shadows.
He waited the space of three breaths, then their surroundings started to come into focus: broken boards and dead leaves piled against the opposite wall, an overturned bucket in the middle of the floor. And—there. At the far end of the barn, near the opening to the silo. Two bodies on the floor. One misshapen and burnt black, far beyond recognition. The other unburned, but covered in blood. Ruthie sucked in a sharp breath—she'd seen them, too.
He started toward them slowly, gun still at the ready. But there was no one else in the barn. Unless… He walked past the bodies, eyes glued to the silo in the corner. Bent down to check inside. Empty. A sour smell wafted from the hot silo; flies buzzed over a puddle of half-dried vomit. He straightened up and joined Ruthie, looking down at the corpses. Short lengths of knotted rope, frayed at the ends, littered the ground at his feet.
Rachel Schultz's bleach-blonde pixie cut and silver nose ring were unmistakable. Her pretty face had frozen in a look of terror. A heavy weight dropped into his stomach. Poor woman. Not to mention their best lead was gone now. But what he couldn't understand, what made no sense at all, was how she had died.
"Werewolf?" Ruthie said, sounding just as confused as Sam felt.
"That's what it looks like." That's exactly what it looked like. If he'd run across this body under any other circumstances, there wouldn't have been a doubt in his mind. It looked as though a small bomb had gone off inside her chest, skin and bone blown outward, a big messy hole where her heart should have been. Textbook werewolf.
He moved toward the other body. Except, he could see now, it wasn't one body. One lay flat on the floor, and the second seemed hunched over it. The fire had melded them together like a single macabre sculpture. They reminded Sam of the preserved bodies at Pompeii, killed in an instant by volcanic ash. It was impossible to tell the age or gender of the victims. He was sure they'd deserved better, whoever they were.
Ruthie stepped closer to the burned bodies, crouching down to examine them. She focused on the area beneath the hunching figure's head. "Sam, look at this." She pointed to a hollowed-out space in the charred torso of the body underneath. "Looks like this heart is missing, too."
She was right, again. He nodded, trying to come up with a theory to fit the evidence.
She stood up, forehead creased. "What is going on here?"
He shook his head and pulled out his radio. He didn't bother with call signs this time. "We've got three bodies, including Rachel Schultz. The other two were burned. Two missing their hearts."
Ruthie stood, watching him silently during the long pause that followed. Then their radios crackled and Dean's voice rang out in the barn. "Say again?"
"You heard me. It's not just the demon. We've got a werewolf, too."
Sam lowered his radio, returning Ruthie's troubled gaze.
Her eyes shifted left, behind him, and flew wide open. She yanked out her gun, aimed it at the door, and shouted, "Freeze!"
Dun dun dunnnn. Concerns? Predictions? Feels? Lay 'em on me.