Chapter 25
Dean and Clark spent the night and the early morning driving around Port Washington, desperately searching for Sam. Dean checked every back alley, every abandoned building, and every niche off the beaten path. There was no sign of Sammy. Without a kid, they had no way of searching for any of the golden dust. Things seemed pretty hopeless.
Clark sat in the passenger's seat of the Impala. He looked over at Dean and saw a determined man. His eyes were focused, like a cat that's locked onto its prey, just about to pounce. However, behind that determination, there was a very evident level of worry. "We're gonna' find him." Clark encouraged the brother.
"You don't know that." Dean shot back almost instantaneously.
"If any of what I've heard about you is true, then we'll find him, and he'll be fine."
"I'm not as great as you seem to think I am." Dean sounded vulnerable for the first time since Clark had met him. "I've done terrible things."
"You're a hunter. It's part of the gig."
Dean chuckled in response, not buying the line for a second. "You should have hunted with Sam. He never did anything terrible." Dean laughed some to himself. "He was practically a priest or something. His moral compass was so sensitive it was actually annoying." He sighed. "But now I miss it."
"You'll get it back. We're gonna' find him."
"Right..." Dean said, wishing that finding Sam meant having his goody-two-shoes attitude, puppy-dog eyed, so-sorry-about-your-loss, shed-a-tear-if-you-stepped-on-a-spider brother back. But it didn't. If they found him and managed to restore him to his adult self, Dean knew he'd just have the Ruby-trusting, demon-blood-guzzling, lying brother back. The one that wanted Dean out of the picture. The one that would rather travel the country with a demon than with his own brother.
They patrolled the town, but had no luck. Sam was gone without a visible trace or a lead to follow. "Now what?" Dean asked, sounding like he was losing hope.
"Sammy's not dumb. He'll find a way to let us know where he is."
"How? He was dragged under the bed and then vanished." Dean pounded his fist on the steering wheel. "Shit!" He shouted. "I was right there and they stole him from right under my nose! Hell, I had my arms wrapped around him!" Dean's eyes were growing teary.
"It's not your fault." Clark tried to explain calmly. "Neither of us had any idea what we were up against."
Dean sighed. "Goblins."
"Yup."
Dean tried to calm himself down and think like a hunter. "Okay. If Sammy was here, what would he be doing to get this hunt going?" Dean asked himself. He looked over at Clark. "Research. He'd be looking up everything he could about goblins."
"So we research." Clark affirmed.
"But he's the smart one." Dean said, sounding self-depraving.
"You're no idiot."
"How would you know?"
"Because Ellen said so." Clark said with a tone of authority, as if Ellen was quotable as factual evidence.
"You know Ellen?"
"Where do you think I heard rumors about you and Sam?" Clark asked with a smirk. "The Roadhouse."
"Okay. So we head back to the motel and we do some research."
"There was nothing in my bestiary. I've never encountered them before." Clark confessed.
"There was nothing in my Dad's journal either." Dean sighed with frustration, but then his eyes lit up. "But Sammy already did research. He left it up on his laptop."
"So we just need to read up on all that he looked at?" Clark asked.
"Yeah." Dean smiled with a sense of pride, like a father who was talking about his son's success in athletics. "But this is Sammy. He didn't just load the websites. I'll bet you anything that Sammy already highlighted everything important."
"You think?" Clark said with a smile.
"I love that kid!" Dean hooped as he directed the Impala back to the motel, a new feeling of hope burning in his heart.