Part 25

Liz set a bowl of food on the table. Maybe someone would eat it. She kept her distance from John but couldn't stop watching him. He pored over the books, the fingers of his right hand rubbing over the gold ring on his left hand. His pen hooked over his middle finger until he made a note over some of Sam's and circled some of Dean's. Suddenly, he looked up to catch her eye. "Not hungry."

"You are." Liz corrected him and set a fork next to him before moving across the room again.

John read a few more sentences before he picked up the fork to eat because he was hungry but he hadn't wanted to lose his place. Dean cleared his throat but didn't say anything. Nobody was saying anything of relevance. Their notes clued him in loud and clear that there was a part of the story that no one was telling him. No one was explaining why there were notes on personal fantasies and why Djinn texts were even on the table.

Halfway through the bowl, he noticed something he should have noticed sooner. "Dean… where's my journal?"

"In your bag, probably." Liz piped up from the doorway. "I'll go look."

"She knows about this?" John asked quietly.

Dean looked up. "Yeah."

"Your son's not hunting." John cleared his throat and turned when Liz tapped him with the journal. "Thanks."

"Daughter. Not son." Liz corrected. "She's not going to hunt." She looked to Dean. "We've already discussed it." Dean reached out and tugged her into his side. "Dean, you have to tell him again."

"Tell me what again?"

"On the way up here." Dean averted his eyes. "We had a family meeting." He looked to his brother. "We were all in agreement but I don't want to spring it on you at the last minute. We're naming her after Mom."

John nodded, his fingers sliding over the gold ring on his left hand. "Sounds… good. Even better if we can kill the evil son of a bitch who killed her grandmother."

"You remember anything?" Dean asked for the millionth time. "When you woke up, you seemed surprised to see me."

"I didn't know what was happening." John admitted. "I didn't know where you were."

"So, nothing?"

"No."

"You didn't write anything down from all your trips, John." Liz worded her sentence carefully. "We don't know where you were going or what you were doing or if you were hunting anything."

John only nodded and slipped a picture from the front pocket of his journal. It was a bad shot. Mary had always hated it but he loved it. "We'll figure it out."

--

Bobby turned from his books. "What kind of trees are in this wood? The wood that John was babbling about."

Liz blinked at him. "Um… some Oak, mostly along the roads. Willows…" She turned to grab Sam's laptop to pull up a map of the area.

"Where does he take his walks?"

"I don't know how far he goes but I remember he was gone for hours." Liz pulled up a satellite imagine of her little town. "See, he would disappear through here."

"These look like elders."

"I think so."

"Huh."

"What?"

"You're right. Elders and willows and pines into the hillside but the edge is rimmed with Oak and… that looks like… Larch?"

Liz couldn't get a good look in the satellite image and had to run out to the car. Dean met her as she was rifling through some pictures in the backseat. "They're alternated in groups…"

"What?" Dean looked at the pictures.

"That's a Larch… four of them, kind of close together and that's an Oak cluster. They alternate that way all the way down the highway." She explained as she examined the backgrounds of each picture all the way into Jim's study. "Larch is protection against evil, right? What about oak?"

"Oak, especially white oak, is used for solidifying or fortifying a spell." Bobby tapped the book he was reading out of. "So, the next question is what is in that wood that no one wanted getting out?"

"Bobby, it's a big wood. Lots of trees. How sure are you that someone trapped something inside?" Dean protested.

"I'm not. Only one who knew was your daddy but he don't know anymore." Bobby jerked his head towards the door. "It's all starting to add up though."

"So… say there is something in there. It can't get out but Dad walked into it."

"I'd say so and he could have walked into something big." Bobby rubbed a hand over his beard. "Who knows how long whatever it is has been in there. The spell could have weakened after all this time."

"The treeline is pretty dense though. Looks like new trees growing in between the old trees." Liz pointed out. "Wouldn't that make the spell stronger."

"Only if other trees in the protection line weren't cut down by people who didn't know why they were there." Bobby rolled his eyes as if everyone should know to ask questions before chopping down any tree in the woods.

"How will we know what's in there?" Liz gazed back at the room with the books all over all the tabletops.

"Won't know until we see it for ourselves."

Dean shared a look with his wife. "I guess we're going home."

--

Bobby's knees cracked when he climbed out of his truck. It had been a long silent ride with John. Jim would be flying in with a crate of texts he was borrowing from a friend in Maine. Liz led the way to the apartment over the little store. She went about fixing lunch and giving instructions to the bathroom and phone. Bobby watched John wander around the little room, examining the evidence of the previous years. No recognition. John had an excellent poker face and from his face, everyone would guess that he was winning but then… everyone had already seen his losing hand.

Bobby set his notebook and an armful of books on the coffee table which was nowhere near as sturdy as the shelf looked. "Maybe you should reinforce this thing with whatever's holding that thing up."

Dean sized up the coffee table. "If I get my hands on more lumber, I might just make a new one."

"Don't go adding chores to your fix-it list until you finish painting the baby's room." Liz chided from the kitchen. "Your ego is really out of control, mister."

"You're going to make a new table?" Bobby scoffed.

"I made the shelf and the crib." Dean puffed out his chest.

"He's a regular handyman." Sam rolled his eyes and sank onto the couch to resume the research. "Hunter, Builder, Candlestick maker."

"You're hilarious."

"Boys." John chided firmly but softly as he examined the pictures, some of which he was included in. Ran his hands over the shelf and felt its solid strength.

"Dad, you actually helped me put it together." Dean added, watching his father carefully.

"It's a good job, son." John nodded to himself, eyes on the photo of him and this girl, Liz, sitting on a bench with the shadow of the photographer blocking the sun. Next to it, a stolen shot that John burned into his memory. He and Dean, heads ducked under the hood, grease smeared all over their arms and faces. Why couldn't he remember that? He would. He would hold a memory like that in the middle of a fight with evil, to keep himself on the right path. Another, an expression that John knew he wore far too often. Lost in thinking about the thing that killed his Mary and staring off toward the woods. The pain was white hot in his heart again. He'd never blame Dean for it. Knew Dean needed Liz. Could see it in the way they moved around each other, looked at each other. Still, it stung.

Then he felt it. Some silent tugging of his mind. Alarms went off. Not alarms. Sirens. He did not remember leaving the living room but suddenly he was outside on the stairs, clenching the rail and staring into the woods. He heard the cocking shotguns behind him and stopped walking.

"John?" Liz. Was she crying? "What is it?"

"Siren calls." He stated simply. There was nothing else to call them. "I think."

"Fucking Sirens." Dean cursed and jerked his head to Bobby, who disappeared in the house. "And here I thought it was a Succubus."

"Maybe they aren't all that different." Sam muttered.

"Still begs the question of why it hasn't killed him yet."

"Maybe he never found it." Liz whispered as she followed John's gaze. She felt it, too. Something was calling… silently. "John, what do you hear?"

"Nothing." He shook his head. "Feel it. Want to take a walk."

"Time for more research boys." Bobby waved a book at them. "Local lore. Anything to do with the history of those woods and who trapped whatever's in there."

--

John read until his eyes blurred. It was too much. The research on this thing and the research on the life he'd missed out on the last two years. Taking his whiskey bottle out to the stairs, he let the night air cool his burning head and then the whiskey warm him right back up. Missing two years of memory was discomfiting to say the least. He'd read through his journal the barest details on hunts and little to nothing on his life, but that wasn't so unusual. The thing he'd found the most puzzling was a picture of Liz and himself; standing behind her with his arm secured across her shoulders as if he'd been pulling her away from (presumably the photographer) Dean, her hands braced on his forearm and an indulging smile on her face. They had said that he was close with Liz but he couldn't ever imagine being this close to anyone again.

John scooted to the railing when Liz stepped out onto the landing to check on him. Silently, she descended a few steps to have a seat at his feet. She patted his shin and stared off into the woods with him. "I know that you have no reason to trust me right now but… I know you, John. I know you're beating yourself up for letting yourself get caught up in this mess and trying to figure out the best way to fill in the gaps." She turned up to face him. "I owe you, John. You let me keep Dean after all the fights we got in and… I'll help them save you from whatever this is."

"Let you?" John asked, his voice harder than he'd planned.

"I think you had spent a great number of months trying to keep us apart after you saw what took us a little longer to see… but you kept bringing him back to me." Liz had a soft smile on her face. "Then I sort of blackmailed you into making it Dean's decision to stay or go."

"Dean chose to stay?"

"Dean chose to let me have my say. Then he chose to go but he brought you back with him when he came back. His excuse was that if I was going to expand the Winchester line, then it was his job to make sure that you got to see it happen." She took a breath. "I guess it was something you and he had discussed before and he hadn't taken it seriously because he didn't… he didn't ever think that he could have a family of his own."

"He told you that?"

"Yeah. One night… he'd been drinking and you weren't here and he looked at me like he was going to pop the question, only he didn't. He just started talking about family and how it was the most important thing in the world for him. Above prowling for chicks, above prowling the things that went bump… above finding the demon that ripped the heart out of his family. Said that he had never known what you wanted for your boys because maybe you didn't dare say it out loud because then anyone could use it against you. Maybe he was right."

"Maybe he was." John nodded. "You give him something, girl. You do. I always wondered what he would look like if he was really and truly happy and I think I see it." Maybe it was the booze. Maybe it was injuries that he didn't remember acquiring but John felt the tears in his eyes. "I only wish Mary could see him."

"John, I tend to give you a lot of grief about the way that I believe you raised your family but I will be the first to admit that I can't think of what you could have done differently." Liz stared out into the night. "When I was 17, a friend of mine, a very close friend died. I knew, I just knew there was no way that it was an accident and everyone was telling me that he killed himself and that was just the most wrong thing in the world to me. Alex was a lot of things, least of all depressed or suicidal. I took hold of that knowledge and I didn't let go until I found the truth…" She glanced up at him. "Avenging him was bittersweet but… that's what I did for my friend. God save the thing that kills Dean because I loved Alex and I love his memory. Dean is so much more than that to me. I will march into Hell itself to bring him back."

"That makes two of us." John leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his daughter-in-law's forehead.

"Well, it's nice to see that I still have your blessing."

"Well, I hope I have as nice a time getting to know you as I apparently did before." John fished the picture out of his pocket.

She laughed when she saw it. "I wondered where this one got off to. Dean and that leather jacket. You said you'd take me as an even trade for it since apparently Dean had no intention of giving it back… that was right after Dean tried to negotiate for the Impala." She slid her fingers over the shadow in the picture. "He never has gotten that you gave him that car years ago."

"Yeah, I guess not." He took the picture when she handed it back.

"I'd like us to be friends again but I know that it won't happen overnight." She started to stand, getting to her feet was becoming more and more awkward. "John, I just want you to keep in mind that… Dean's taking this whole thing really hard." When John averted his eyes, she nodded. "Yeah, I know you know. The two of you are close… but you've been closer. You've been really open with him and he's been enjoying every minute of it. Sometimes when I'm looking at him when you're talking and I can see the little boy before his mother died. I have never doubted your love for him, John. Never… but he has and the two of you got it all squared away and… he's scared that it's changed because you don't remember."

"I didn't do right by my boys. I know. I should have done better but they're grown men, now."

"I'm really glad that you and Sam are talking. It's been yesterday to you but years for him and I'm really glad that… It's a good step and he needs you right now."

"You going to come and have all these talks for them?" He joked.

"If I have to." She used his shoulder as an anchor to get back up the stairs.

John tipped the bottle back into his mouth. The Demon. The monster in the woods. He could barely remember the time in his life when 'the monster in the woods' wasn't just a story he told around the campfire for a cheap thrill. A hand on his knee, made John stop drinking for a minute. The hand slid up his thigh and then another on the other and when John looked down, there was his son's wife. Different hair, different clothes and minus a pregnant belly.

"John." He heard his name in her voice but her mouth didn't move. Her hands slid up his thighs, spreading them so she could slide between. His vision zeroed in on her tongue as it slid over her full lips. "Kiss me, John, I've missed you."

Leaping to his feet, John stepped inside the apartment door and slammed it shut. Breathing hard, he tried to piece together what had just happened out there. Behind him, he could feel their eyes on him. All of them, including… "Shit."

"Dad?" Dean approached slowly.

"Something's out there. Not a ghost." He managed tightly. "It's… seducing me."

--

Mermaids. Sirens. Succubae. They all could summon men with a word, a song, a dream. Troll, imps and pixies were known for tricking drunks. John hated to admit to his flaws but he drank and he sure as hell looked at pretty women. Sue Lyle was the last time he'd gotten laid so he was probably due for a fantasy or two about the fairer sex. John knew there was more to it but he didn't know how much more or what it would mean.

"I say silver is a solid bet." Dean offered.

"You just like the smelting." Sam snorted.

"Hell, if it didn't have such a hold on the old man, I'd just say we should move the hell away from it and never look back." Bobby groaned. "Where is he today, anyway?"

"Sleeping off his scare." Dean gestured to the couch where his father's leg dangled off the side.

"Guess we better figure out what it is and how to kill it quick."

--

John stood at the tree line but did not step in. He could see his intended path almost as if he were already walking it. Could see that he would end up where he started but with none of the familiar things he had around him. Dean was gone. Sam was on the other side of the country. Then bits and pieces flashed before his eyes.

He knew that it wasn't true but he didn't know what else to do with the hole in his chest, growing bigger by the second. He stepped forward and kept his eye on the surrounding foliage. Pieces of his lost memory came to him as he traveled to the heart of the wood. Where something was trapped, they said. Something horribly old. Had probably been weakened in order to be trapped and had spent who knew how long recuperating in the wood. John himself had been weak and he'd probably walked right in and fed the damn thing so now it had a hold on him. Then he stopped abruptly.

There was a clearing. Small but there. There was a woman sunbathing in the sunlight coming down from the hole in the trees. She wasn't model beautiful but held a sensual quality that instantly made John's crotch heavy with want. He'd be infirmed if he thought she didn't know he was there, the way she arched and stretched. He didn't know why but he couldn't step between the two trees that would lead to that beauty. He wanted to. He knew what she was but he wanted to anyway. One step forward and he would be in the clearing with her. That's when he looked down and saw the glint in the sunlight. Silver. Silver spikes all around the clearing. Then he looked up again and she was staring at him. John, boy, you are in deep shit.

TBC