I Thought I Saw Chapter 25, a supernatural fanfic

Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: See Chapter 1

I THOUGHT I SAW

Chapter 25

Libby stood rigid as if she had suddenly put down roots on the spot, with her arms down and held out slightly from her sides, palms down and fingers slightly spread. But peculiarly she was managing to lean her torso directly backwards as if buffeted by a strong gale, in defiance of the law of gravity which tended to state that an object leaning at that angle to the perpendicular must fall over, and also the law of biology which stated that a human spine could not arch that way.

The reason for these extraordinary accomplishments was obvious. Having stumbled out of a beat-up suburban, a large man was now standing directly in Libby's path only six feet in front of her, pointing a double-barrelled shotgun straight at her torso. It was an unhappily sure aim, given the palsied trembling of his legs, bloodshot pits of eyes, grossly overdone 'designer' shadow – more like thicket – on his chin and clothes that, if they had not been slept in for several days, seriously needed to sue the launderette in question.

Not the ruddy glow of health, his face was instead suffused with an aubergine-tinged choleric red that bespoke a complete failure of "anger-management" techniques and some dedicated over-indulgence in booze, fast food and tobacco/opprobrious narcotic products. There was an almost greasy sheen to his features that indicated he was currently still the far side of well-oiled and his skin was stretched tight as if across a pimple or boil, indicating lack of elasticity from recent bloating rather than the healthy pink expanse of an always-plump individual.

Pressed up against her mother's back with her gamine face so white it was a bloodless putty-grey, Lacy was in turn trying to shield her brothers behind her with her arms pressing them in till her elbows, wrists and knuckles were white with the pressure. Daryl in turn was straining at the barrier of his sister's right arm, not yet old enough for the human male's inherently stronger musculature over the female to have any effect on his older sister's attempt to hide him from view.

But even as his eyes burned at the shotgun-wielding maniac with a hatred bordering on the psychotic he in turn ruthlessly held his toddler brother behind him using his form as a living shield. Little Toby, shaking so violently his tremors were clearly visible from Sam's distance, had buried his face in the small of his big brothers back and was clinging to that back, hunched up like a hibernating hedgehog in a tactic familiar most parents – for a terrified two-year-old seeking escape, the idea that if he couldn't see the monster, the monster couldn't see him, was almost a universal notion.

Now Sam's stomach somersaulted, fortunately after his safely digested dinner had moved on to the intestinal part of the tour. There was a reason that the old 12-gauge double-barrelled remained a universal weapon of fear despite all the meaner, snazzier upstarts to grace Death's catwalk of carnage such as the AK47, MP5 'room broom' and so forth: the horrific damage it did. A d-b shotgun was like using an ICBM to swat a fly; at close range, before the shot could 'disperse', it did not kill so much as shred.

So if the scumbag pulled the trigger at only six feet the concentrated impact would literally punch through Libby's body like tissue paper, tear through Lacy with as little effort, sear through Daryl form like a laser and shred Toby's internal organs en route as the shot exited the toddler's back to finally hit the dirt that had the density to stop it in its tracks.

Sam sucked in a breath and slowly walked forward into the kill zone making sure he made no sudden movements that might attract attention and a panicky squeezing of the trigger – even if Ex-Mr-Libby (he could be nobody else) – swung the gun to aim at Sam and fired, the shotgun's peripheral blast would still catch Libby in it's lethal swathe; that was also what made shotguns so ugly – it was the collateral damage they did to innocent things and people on the fringes who in some cases weren't being aimed at or intended to be part of the casualties.

As he walked the hand-grip of the gun tucked into his waistband at the back of his pants rubbed against the bare skin of his lower back and when this was all over, Sam was going to agree wholeheartedly that Dean had been right and cheerfully allow his sibling to wallow in the 'big brother smugness'. Since Dean had been turned into the big cat, he had insisted that Sam carry a handgun at the small of his back as Dean customarily carried his favoured Glock-17. The panther had achieved this by lots of growling, yowling and finally sitting on Sam's chest snarling and otherwise refusing to let Sam leave the motel rooms until he showed that he was following the feline diktat. It meant that right now Sam had a weapon he could use to counter the threat of that shotgun if he could manoeuvre the circumstances correctly.

First, try and get that shotgun pointed somewhere else, even if 'else' was at Sam. "Please put the gun down!" he spoke clearly over the man's obscene rambling – the guy's mouth was an open sewer, spewing filth out.

"Butt boy out!" The garbled command and the slurred delivery of Ex- hell, Dean would have dubbed him EML already - was testimony to just how much 'firewater' he must have chugged down his gullet. Of all the drunk-drivers in all the world, why couldn't this one have been the guy who lurched off his driveway straight into a tree?

"I don't want Libby to be hurt."

Standard psychology said that naming the hostage turned him or her from an 'it' – an object – back into a person, i.e., theoretically more difficult for the bad guy to make himself kill. Sam realised it was a mistake as the man's eyes flared with drunken rage.

"Libby?" he mocked. "Is this your latest boy-whore, eh?"

Libby's expression was frozen, not with fear, Sam now saw as he was so close, but a profound contempt. Her eyes flickered momentarily with disgust and Sam realised that she not he had just been insulted as his brain untangled the slurred tonal pitch and understood that EML had not said, 'Is this your latest boy-whore, eh?' but rather, 'Is this your latest boy, whore, eh?"

"Did he sire that last money-sucking whoreson brat of yours?" EML's tone got louder as the fury started to stoke, his face going even more towards aubergine purple rather than crimson-red.

Please God, why not give the bastard cholesterol-induced coronary right now? Implored Sam momentarily but then it occurred to him that the guy's death spasm would probably cause his finger to pull the trigger inadvertently and oh Christ, erm, strike that request please! Sorry, sorry to bother you and the blasphemy thing. With an effort of will, Sam clamped down on his own rather hysteric mental processes. Out of the corner of his eye he saw pallid blobs floating and saw that they were the frightened faces of the other customers peering out at the tableau through the diner's windows.

At the far end the cashier that had served Sam an eternity ago now seemed to be suffering some sort of twitching spasm that made her arms flail and her head twist on one side, but then Sam's eyes decoded the image and he realised she was gabbling frantically into the mouth-piece of a wall-phone receiver. Calling the cops…

Shit. If the local reps of the thin blue line came haring into hearing range with sirens a-wailing whilst EML was still pointing that gun straight at Libby and the bastard panicked and pulled the trigger or thought what-the-hell and pulled the trigger… Sanity, never mind reason, clearly weren't in the building of what passed for EML's booze-drenched brain.

But Sam had one advantage – this dude had effectively committed suicide by threatening children in killing range of Dean Winchester. All Sam needed was a helpfully staged diversion, and he had that – it was big, furious and furry and if Sam knew his brother's MO as well as he thought he did, Dean would be throwing his metaphorical hat into the ring in 5…4…3…2…so long sucker…

Echoing and re-echoing across the parking lot, the bone-chilling scream of an enraged leopard reverberated, turning the blood to liquid ice and reducing every primordial human cell left in a person's body to quivering jelly.

Continued in Chapter 26…