Chapter Twenty-Four
The morning light was tentatively sneaking under the closed curtains of the Winchesters' room when Dean stirred, yawned, and woke.
"Mornin', bitch," he said, scratching behind one ear, "Shit, you better not have brought fleas in here, or I'll AAAAAAARGH!"
Sam, who had been asleep on the floor on the blanket next to Jimi, opened his eyes, yawned and sat up. "What? What?" he demanded, climbing to his feet.
"Clothes, Sam!" Dean yelped, clamping his eyes shut, "Clothes!"
"What about 'em?" asked Sam, stretching luxuriantly.
"Put some on!" demanded his big brother, "Jesus Christ, it's bad enough you slept with the dog, but no man wants to wake up to seein' his little brother naked!"
"Well, it's not exactly unexpected," Sam shrugged, unconcerned, "It became pretty clear that there was no way I could fit on the bed, so sharing the blanket with Jimi was the most sensible arrangement..."
"You could've put on some sweats," grumbled Dean, peeking from between his fingers, then letting out another bark of outrage.
"No I couldn't," Sam replied reasonably, "Nothing I have would fit me in wolf form."
"Well you can put on some clothes now!" Dean insisted.
Sam sniffed at himself. "I think I'll shower first," he decided, "I don't remember rolling in anything when I went out to take a leak, but..."
"Just leave me plenty of hot water, bitch," ordered Dean, "I gotta exfoliate if I'm gonna ditch the guido thing ASAP."
He didn't open his eyes again until he heard the bathroom door shut.
"And you chased rabbits in your sleep!" he yelled.
Sam's head appeared around the door. "Did I catch any?" he asked brightly.
A pair of his shorts hit him in the face.
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Dean spent a number of hours of quality time with his Baby at a wash bay, while Sam took Jimi – and himself, he cheerfully admitted – out for a walk, then spent some more time online trying to track down information about Butch.
"I mean, doesn't it seem a bit strange to you?" he asked Dean over a box of wings, "This guy, who runs a modelling agency, is strangely undocumented. In this day and age, somebody like that should be cultivating an online profile. His picture isn't even on the Real People website. I've only found it incidentally a couple of times in local media. How can you run a modelling agency and be so media shy?"
"He doesn't want his picture taken?" Dean suggested. "So, if not, why not? Why does he not want his picture taken?"
"He doesn't want his appearance recorded," mused Sam. "He does show up on film, or on electronics, but he doesn't want to. There's something about his appearance he doesn't want people to see. Or notice."
"Shapeshifter?" suggested Dean. "If he changes what he looks like, he doesn't want that documented where anybody could track him down, every time the business moves."
"That would explain the name changes," Sam nodded, "New name, and if necessary, new face. But why the disappearing models? And why more than one? And why mostly women?"
"And why would you shapeshift to a body that looks so, well, like that?" Dean added. "When you could pick something hot? In his business, you could grab a male model."
"Something has," Sam pointed out, "But you're right. Then again, maybe it's like boosting a car; you steal a Ferrari, you're asking for unwanted attention, but if you take a Honda Civic, nobody will look twice."
"The place has a couple of security cameras," Dean pointed out, "Although they cover the exits. It's not like a modelling agency has anything really worth stealing. Is there any way you could get a look at the footage, look for retinal flare?"
"I'll give it a shot," Sam agreed, pulling his laptop, "But the angles aren't real good for that. I'm still looking for his out-of-hours address. Assuming he has one. I sure as hell don't like the idea of you tailing him home to find out, by yourself."
"But Mooooom, all the other Hunters go out after dark by themselves!" whined Dean. Sam shot him a Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean). "Hey, I think I can handle one little recon by myself if necessary, Fido," he grinned annoyingly.
"I just... I don't like that place," Sam complained. "There's something... wrong about it."
"O' course you don't like it," Dean kept grinning. "You're a Hunter. And an awesome laptop dancer. So, you can run that internet red-hot, until that time of the month kicks in, and by then, I will be doing some more research up close and personal with Lois... don't look at me like that, I'll use the opportunity to suss out what she knows about Butch, how long she's known him, she might know where he lives."
"Is that a good idea?" asked Sam. "When I'll be too, uh, furry to be your back-up?"
"You kinky little devil," leered Dean.
"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Sam snapped.
"I know," Dean sighed, "And you worry too much. This is just a recon mission, which happens to be piggybacking onto an evening of the Living Sex God and an enthusiastic worshipper enjoying some beautiful, natural acts. Then, tomorrow, we take a trip back to Casa Jaeger for you to swill down some countercurse, we pool our intel, then we head back here to... what?" Dean came to a halt at the look on his brother's face. "Sammy? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Sam replied immediately, "Nothing, it's just..." he ran out of words.
"What?" pressed Dean.
Sam looked at his big brother, his mind racing. How was he supposed to explain it?
Dean was his family, the most important person in his life, that was a constant, an unchangeable fact. But the feeling of belonging he'd experienced in the previous four weeks was unlike anything he'd known before. He'd never known his mother, and his relationship with his father had been... well, yeah. He'd had a sense of belonging, of having a pack, a... family.
His pack-sire instructing him, rassling with him, and holding and reassuring him while agonising silver poison ran through his body.
His pack-dam, fussing over him as though he was her own pup.
The unspoken but unmistakeable affection in everything they did, they way they moved, the way they looked at him, the way they smelled...
Us. Our pack.
"Sammy?" Dean's voice sounded worried, uncertain.
"I'm just... worried about you," Sam managed, sounding somewhat lame even to himself. "Will you at least text me where you are before moonrise?"
If Dean wanted to press the matter, he didn't say anything. "Sure," he grinned, "I can do that. So long as I don't have to worry about you sneakin' up and tryin' to peek in the windows. Hey, belay that, if you wanna sneak up and peek through the windows, you might learn something."
"Jerk."
Later that day, Sam managed to link the last disappearance to a modelling job brokered through Real People, but then drew a blank. "Okay, I give up," he sighed, biting into another doughnut then leaning back and stretching, "I think from tomorrow, we gotta suit up, and start askin' questions."
"Families?" asked Dean.
"A couple," Sam replied, "But we might have to travel for that – whatever has been grabbing them has tried to pick out people with minimal ties here." He gave a worried glance at Dean. "Just like your cover story."
"Well, once we get your little excess hair problem solved, we can go present ourselves as two of the Bureau's finest," decided Dean, reaching for his cell as it chirped. "Lois!" he trilled brightly, "Great to hear from you..."
After a couple of minutes he rang off. "That's my cue," leered the Living Sex God, picking up his jacket, "I'm meeting her at a bar not far from here, so I'll leave my Baby with you, so you can go stock up on food before the hormones hit."
"Will you at least take silver? If there could be a shapeshifter involved?" Sam pleaded. Dean gave him a reassuring smirk, and picked a silvered blade out of their arsenal, grinning as he watch the wince on his baby brother's face. "It stinks," Sam complained.
"Well, be a good little werewolf, and I won't have to stick it in you," announced Dean cheerfully. Sam flipped him off. "Don't wait up, you two. Oh, but Sam, at least pull a blanket over yourself this time, huh?"
"Go enjoy yourself, Living Sex Jerk."
"Always." With a last cocky salute, Dean headed out.
Sam turned back to his laptop, frowned, and tried another search. Nothing. With a huff, he shut it down, and glared at the door. The twitchy sense of anticipation was getting stronger. Sunset and moonrise couldn't be far off.
"Maybe we should go stock up for the night, huh?" he suggested to Jimi, "Lay in supplies? More wings, maybe?"
At the sound of the w-word, Jimi sat up and whuffed happily, using the variant of the Canine expression for prey that Sam had come to recognise as meaning the dog's favourite food treat.
"Yeah, thought you'd agree," he grinned. "Why don't you and me take a drive?" He dropped into Canine himself. We will hunt. We will find food.
We will find food! Jimi barked eagerly, tail wagging. Our pack will gorge tonight?
"You're just like Dean, you know," Sam reached down to pat the dog fondly, "Always thinking with your stomach." His own rumbled at the thought of delicious chunks of animal protein as he picked up the car keys. Our pack will gorge tonight.
Their cruise around a couple of take-outs, a pizza parlour and a small Indian place that did very good food at low cost saw Sam and Jimi stock up on enough food to get half a dozen humans, or one Old North werewolf and one half-Hellhound Rottweiler through the night without starving to death. Or at least, without thinking that they were starving to death.
The evening light was fading when Sam realised that a short detour would take him past Real People. Consulting his watch, he thought that he might try a little recon of his own; breaking and entering for the purposes of rifling paperwork was something that both Winchesters were old hands at. He checked his watch, and decided that he might just have time to have a try at finding Butch's address the old fashioned way before he had to hole up and wait until he was feeling human again.
Parked across the street, he was able to satisfy himself that the place was deserted for the day. Opening a box of wings for Jimi and leaving him with strict instructions to snack on those and nothing else, he slid out of the car, and made his way to the rear entrance of Real People.
Security was easy enough to avoid if you knew how, and he had the lock popped quickly. Moving silently, he made his way to the admin desk.
It was the organised mess of somebody who has their own 'filing' system that works for them but looks like a rat's nest to anyone else, and he poked carefully through the jumbled piles of paper, trying all the while to ignore the feeling of something wrong in the place. He was about to give up and have a try at getting the security camera footage up on the computer when he spotted a sheaf of dog-eared utilities bills.
Only, they weren't bills. They were statements. Because the accounts were being automatically debited every month.
The address for the statements was not Real People, it was a residential address, and it was addressed to B. Schwartz.
It would make sense, he thought, if some fugly had a house as home base, paying the bills automatically would make sure that they were never late, and never prompted any service provider to come banging on the door, maybe seeing something they shouldn't. He took out his cell, and snapped a picture of one of the statements.
The feeling of anticipation rippled through him again, so he carefully let himself back out and headed for the car.
Jimi was pleased to see him, but cocked his head and growled as Sam slid back behind the wheel.
"Hey, what's wrong, fella?" Sam ruffled the dog's ears, but Jimi continued to growl a warning.
Wrong-thing! Wrong-thing! You carry the scent of the wrong-thing!
"You're telling me," muttered Sam, "There really is something creepy about that place..."
He turned to look at the dog.
"Have you smelled this scent before?" he asked. You recognise the scent? You know of the... thing out of place?
Wrong-thing! Jimi barked urgently, using the expression Sam didn't recognise again.
"Well, we're onto something, at least," Sam sighed, pulling into the traffic, "It's not just me. If you can smell something wrong, then there's something wrong. Dean's right, you really do have a nose for evil shit." He sighed. "Crap, what a shame that Stanford didn't offer Freshman Canine..."
As he pulled the car back into the bay outside the Winchesters' room, he could've bitten himself for being an idiot.
He let himself and Jimi into the room, and dialled a fluent speaker.
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"Nice digs," Dean noted, getting out of the car and following Lois through the well-manicured garden and up the stairs onto the porch.
"I'm good at what I do," she smiled, taking out her key. "The whole bohemian artist live-in-squalor-because-only-my-work-matters? Screw that."
"Amen," he agreed, watching her very shapely figure as she led the way into the house.
Once inside she turned to him, smiled seductively, and said,
"So, did you get it...?"
He extracted a scrap of leopard skin print lycra from his pocket.
Lois let out a low, throaty chuckle that went straight to his Downstairs Brain.
"Why don't I fix us a drink," she purred, gesturing to another door, "While you go and check out the décor in the master bedroom. I think you'll find a couple of the prints particularly interesting. And I'll be right with you."
"Why don't I do that," he agreed, as the Killer Smile cranked up the wattage.
The word for the room was 'sumptuous'. The bed was huge, the decoration was tasteful, and there was a large, luxurious faux fur rug on the floor. The bathroom through a second door had a huge spa bath, and double shower.
Dean sighed happily, then took out his cell to text his brother.
When Lois returned a few minutes later, she found him bouncing experimentally on the bed.
"You started testing the mattress without me?" she pouted.
He put a wistful look on his face. "I'm sorry," he said, standing up and accepting his drink. "I promise I'll make it up to you."
"That's what I want to hear," she smiled, mollified, as she reached out to turn off the main light switch.
"You aint shy, are ya?" he teased, as she sashayed up to him in the semi-darkness.
"I'm a photographer," she told him, "I'm picky about the lighting. The overheads, they just wash everything out. In the bedroom, I prefer something a bit softer."
She drew him towards the head of the bed, and reached to a bedside lamp.
The speed with which she picked it up and hit him in the head was such that he didn't see it coming, and he was out before he hit the floor.
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"You're cutting it awfully fine," growled Ronnie, "You really should be staying out of sight."
"Yeah, but this is important," insisted Sam, "I went to have a look around at Real People. There's something about the place that makes my claws want to pop out."
"A scent of something?" she asked.
"Yeah," Sam agreed, "I think so. I'm just not very good at listening to my nose while I'm human, I guess. I haven't had time to practise. But Jimi picked up on it, and I think he knows the scent, but I don't know what he means, I just don't have the experience, or the, uh, vocab."
He put his cell on speaker, and whuffed briefly to Jimi, holding it out for the dog . Jimi barked a greeting to Ronnie, who greeted him back, then asked,
What did you scent, when your Second went casting for the Hunt?
Sam heard Jimi bark urgently again. Wrong-thing! Wrong-thing!
"Oh, shit," breathed Ronnie.
"What is it?" Sam asked, "We were wondering if it was a shapeshifter..."
"It's not a shapeshifter," she cut him off, "Jimi smelled vampire!"
"Vampire?" Sam gawped at the phone. "But..."
The cell buzzed with a text.
It was from Dean, sending him an address as promised.
It was the same address as the ones on the statements he'd found in Butch's name.
"Oh, no," breathed Sam, "Oh, noooooooooooo..."
There was the sound of tearing fabric, and a crumpling noise as his claws crushed the phone.
I think Mavgang the plot bunny of undecided gender can see the finish line! Send reviews, because they are the Strange Little Plastic Cups Of Lurid Drink Distributed As The Plot Bunny Runs The Marathon Of The Story!