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The Supernatural characters belong to Kripke Enterprises and the CW, not me. No money is being made from this story. It is for entertainment only.
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Dean Winchester, Skin Walker
Chapter 13
Climbing the Rockies
From Chapter 12
He approached the lead mare and let her sniff his hands. Slowly and carefully he swung up onto her back, laid down and held on. She quivered under his weight and did a few dance steps but he made no sudden moves and simply laid there breathing softly on her neck. He didn't try to guide her or interrupt her grazing. They even felt comfortable. Her back was warm against the evening air. He simply stayed still and let her get used to him. He might have extruded a few tendrils of tissue into her hide, just to keep him in place. It seemed to comfort her and she remained calm.
Later in the night he saw lights on the other side of the rise and he assumed someone had come home. There was no immediately uproar and his small herd gradually drifted further away from the house. They didn't appreciate the sounds of men's upraised voices either. It was better just to melt into the trees and stay away from trouble.
Chapter 13
Dean slept safely anchored to his lead mare's back. They kept each other company through the long dark watches of the night under the wheeling stars. He had watched Orion's Belt track the ecliptic and the slow movement of the sky sent him peacefully to sleep. When the sun rose in the morning and caressed his back he came near to panicking until he remembered why exactly he seemed to be wearing clothes.
As he shook the dreams out of his head and the mare tossed her dreams away with a toss of her head and a shake of her mane, the herd came awake around them. They were still in the small wood fairly close to the raided farm house and Dean felt the urge to get his herd further away from people.
The smell of water on the wind lead them naturally away and they found a small meadow just outside the tree line, lying next to another of those foothill rills so common on the rising plateau.
Dean was now a man and the grass held no appeal. Carefully loosening the tissue tendrils that held him to the mare he freed his body and hers. This made her nervous. He had suspected those tendrils were more than just a physical connection. Now she showed the whites of her eyes, remembering that she did not trust those two legged creatures called men.
He did not run or make any abrupt movements. He softly laid a hand on her back and rejoined them, fearfully. He hoped she would not startle and pull loose as he had no idea at all what snapping a tendril might do to either one of them. She calmed at the comfort flowing through them both and he thought he could just feel her mind, a mind driven by instruct and emotion. They stood together in the morning sun.
After a short while she dropped her head and began to graze. He carefully disengaged again but this time she did not seem as disturbed. Evidently slow and easy was the correct path.
He considered the herd. He was hungry but wasn't going to get human food riding a wild mare up to a diner with a herd of feral horse following him. He wanted to leave the lead mare with the herd to guide them but that meant changing mounts. He considered his options.
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It took all of the morning and a couple of hours of the afternoon but he finally tamed one of the younger mares to allow him to ride. She was a flashy chestnut with a crooked white blaze between the eyes. He ran his fingers through her tangled mane trying to restore order. The lead mare had spent time shoving him in the back. He thought she might just have a couple of jealous bones in her body but he ignored her and after a couple of hours she got bored and walked away.
He mounted the chestnut who he decided to call Jazzy and slowly they drifted apart from the herd. When he saw the lead mare turn her head to the north and draw the herd over the stream he relaxed. She would not easily give up her position of power for just a man and he thought she would keep the herd together and safe. Wishing them all the good luck in the world he nudged Jazzy forward and they headed west.
For a while they stayed in the meadows, not daring to set a hoof on a road. He was still hungry but remembered well days spent waiting for John to come back to some run down sleaze bag of a motel and a hungry child. He had handled hunger then and he could handle it now.
He wondered where John was. It occurred to him that calling Bobby should be added to his list of things to do. All this fliting about the natural world was well and good but he should still be on alert. He didn't want his first clue to be the whistle of a bullet parting his hair.
He nudged Jazzy toward a paved road he spotted off in the distance while climbing the crest of a hill. It seemed to be time to rejoin the human world.
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Three hundred and fifty miles and two days back John pulled away from the Stone's front yard. The cops 'sirens were getting closer and he wanted no part of that. Let the Valentine cops figure out the body lying in Ed Stone's nicely mowed grass. John had a monster to chase and a lost son to avenge. Dead asshole druggies were definitely not part of his agenda.
"So John," Eldon drawled. "How we gonna chase down this shifter? You have decided it's some kind of shifter wearing your dead boy's face, right?"
The sound of Eldon's voice was beginning to grate on John's nerves. The man's constant need to hear his own voice made John remember how Dean always knew to shut up. The two Winchesters could drive for hundreds of miles with music playing and the wind whistling alongside the car and never exchange a word. Maybe they'd talk about where to stop for lunch or if the Impala made a strange noise but their joined lives, full of shared experiences, somehow were never fertile ground for conversation between them.
They had both missed Sam. Sam was the white noise to their lives and when Sam left he took with him the glue that made them a family. Without Sam they were just another average pair of hunters, protecting each other's backs. John was well aware the Dean had long ago stopped thinking of the older Winchester as a father. John was fine with that as long as the younger man watched his mouth, showed the proper respect and followed orders.
John grudgingly answered. "That girl said he had talked about Denver. Hard to tell if he meant it or was just feeding her a line. I think he might really mean it. He left her behind so what's the point of lying to her? It's not like she's chasing him."
Eldon looked out the passenger window. He pulled his rifle up out of the foot well and laid the gun over his thighs. "So I'll just keep an eye out here for anything that looks at us funny. It'll be good target practice anyway. It's been a while since I hunted from a moving vehicle."
"What the fuck?" John growled. "You're just going to sit there and shoot out the window? You really are six different kinds of asshole, aren't you? You'll get the locals on our ass for sure."
"Winchester, loosen up," Eldon laughed at him. "Maybe I'll get lucky and shoot that shifter of yours by accident. What are we, Hunters or Park Rangers? Who the hell cares if I leave a bunch of dead wildlife behind?"
John stopped talking but he had made up his mind. Light was more trouble than he was worth. The first opportunity he got John was tossing the man out of the truck.
For right now John just pointed the nose of the truck towards Denver. He thought he knew where Dean would go. That climb out of the back end of Denver mounted up into the sky. He bet that he'd find Dean there; sitting on the top of that mountain climb, looking over the world below.
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Dean spotted the roadside tavern in the valley below. It was further away than it looked but the air of the plateau was deceptively clear. He and Jazzy just sat and looked for a while then Dean decided to go downhill and follow the road. He knew both he and his horse appeared to be a little off. The mare, while healthy definitely looked rugged and wild.
He sat comfortably on her without either saddle or bridle. He didn't even have a loose halter on her. In addition he was barefoot. The double pair of socks had given up fairly quickly that morning and he had abandoned the slapping tops still clinging to his ankles. He and his horse definitely looked like they were sleeping rough.
He gave the situation some thought and decided that a strange man riding up on a feral horse might be a little threatening. He would rather be given breakfast instead of taking it. Perhaps he could play on some cook's sympathies if he was a teenage runaway. The more he considered the idea the better is seemed.
Jazzy stood patiently in the shadow of a couple of windblown trees while Dean closed his eyes and dropped his head. He dug back into his memories and began to remember what if felt like when he was fourteen.
His body began to twist and change from stocky and muscular to whip thin. He grinned as he decided to increase the size of his eyes a fraction. They were already large but now were ready to be painted on velvet. He skipped the adolescent acne. His stolen clothes hung off his body, flapping in the mild breeze. As a final touch, to assure sympathy, he created some bruises on the left side of his jaw. They were healing bruises, as if he had been slapped and slapped hard, days ago. He stopped transforming when he felt one more step would tip him into waif territory.
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Caroline headed for work a bit late. They could just stuff it. It really wasn't her job to pick up the supplies that Andy had forgotten. She was beginning to feel somewhat taken advantage of. It seemed lately that the cook was 'forgetting' a lot of stuff.
Then she remembered that Andy was covering for her. If the cook didn't go in and open up at five she would have to. That extra hour of sleep was precious. So what if she had to stop along the way? The system worked for both of them.
She put up with the job. She liked her current crew and the tips were good at Al's Roadhouse, especially at night when the kitchen closed but not the bar.
Her beat up Corolla ate up the dusty county miles. She had come to Colorado from New York City forty years ago and had never regretted it. The wide open Colorado skies, the mountains rising on the horizon and the long sweep of open prairie was soothing and peaceful. Occasionally she would have dreams about New York although there were fewer every year as the memories faded.
She had followed her first husband out west more than happy to leave the bitter cold New York winters behind. The winters here were just as cold but at least they were clean. The snow stayed white on the ground, not piled up in dirty drifts, pounded into ice with the passing of thousands of feet. She had settled into country life very nicely. Husband number one had disappeared long ago but she stayed. Now she had lived in Colorado longer than anywhere else. In her early days she had wandered but this place was home.
She was happy here, welcome and well known in the small town of Abberville. Her dark eyes and wavy dark hair had snagged husband number two a long time ago. Now he was gone. She put him in the ground one spring early in the century. He was buried next to their only child, a sweet little boy too fragile for the world.
Even so Caroline was more or less satisfied with the life she had lived. If it was empty in the center she had learned to be content.
Early in the morning this road was usually empty. It was the old road into Denver long since bypassed by the new interstate. Traffic was usually non-existent so she was not really that surprised to see a horse and rider on the shoulder. It was somewhat nostalgic to see the old ways coming back into the country. She shifted the Corolla into neutral to try and keep the engine quiet as she rolled past the pair.
As she went by she glanced over and was somewhat surprised to see that the rider was a kid. Maybe not exactly a kid; he was most likely a young a teen she thought. She focused first on his long legs hanging down the side of the horse. His feet were bare and hanging loose, long toes, smooth skinned; more the feet of a child than a man.
He turned his head to look at her and she caught her breath.
He was a teenager, just verging on the edge of manhood but god he was beautiful. His eyes were huge and sparkled in the sunlight. Even from this distance she could tell they were as green and as bright as it was possible for a human's eyes to be. The string of busies trailing down the side of his face were a blasphemy.
As quick as that she was past him. There was nothing she could do. She wasn't going to stop the car and stare as much as she wanted to. His face hung in front of her memory. She wondered if it could possibly be real or if she had deluded herself into believing she had seen an angel on the road to work.