Get It While You Can
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Supernatural. All I got to my name is Jayne and Lynn.
Rating: T
AN: Big thank yous to 9Winchester9Girl9, Peridot809, Strangler000, angeleyenc, Heavenstar3, Lov3good, legrowl, impalame, ThreeMoons, Nelle07, Little Rock-n-Roll and martine for the awesome reviews!
"Scarecrow"
Chapter 27: And Now a Word from John Winchester
Then...
Palo Alto, California. November 2, 2005...
"Sam Winchester's pretty, perfect life has officially gone up in flames."
It was like slogging his way out of quicksand, clawing his way through spiderwebs, trying to see and feel and think, only to be shoved back into the dark again, and when he finally emerged after yet another time-out in the blackness, those were the first words he heard.
He didn't know who Sam Winchester was, but he sure felt sorry for the poor bastard. There was a fire crackling nearby. He could hear it, loud and roaring and crackle-crackle-crackling, and he could smell the smoke. There were thick, pungent clouds of it, dark black against the inky-blue night sky, and he would have choked on it, if that was still something he was able to do. He figured he was looking at this Sam Winchester guy's house, watching it burn to the ground.
Sirens wailed, echoing through the night air, on the wind coming in off the sea, and there were people shouting, people running, people screaming... and a part of him wanted to scream too. He could still feel it: a phantom burning up and down his arm, white hot and scorching, but there was nothing there, no flames, no blackened, blistered skin. Everything was off kilter, wobbling side to side like he was walking the tunnel of love in a funhouse, and it was all he could do to squint through the bleariness, out at the deserted parking lot, eyes scrunched against the bright yellow streetlamp overhead. His car was parked behind him, bright orange, with the engine rumbling and the radio playing some old music he'd normally never listen to. The song was old, familiar... some hippie tune he'd normally shut right off, some tune people used to tell him that his mother would have liked... something about California and dreams and leaves turning brown. A song his mother would have liked, but instead it reminded him of his older sister.
The idea that he had a sister was a sudden, grounding, but devastating thought, and he struggled to hold onto it. Once, he'd had a mother, even if he'd been too young when she died to remember her. Once, he'd had an older sister - no, he still had an older sister. He had more than one. There were two, and the oldest liked old, hippie rock songs, just like their mother.
The brunette with the long glossy mane and the blood red lips had flopped down on the pavement of the parking lot, sitting beside the car and watching from a distance as the bright orange flames licked the black sky, consuming the townhouse on the next street over. She clapped her hands in creepy, childish excitement with each stream of red hot sparks that shot up into the sky. It was sick; she looked like she was watching a fireworks display.
"You did that, baby," she said to him, grinning in a way that made his hair stand on end. "You did that."
He couldn't speak. He couldn't move. He was trapped in his own body. It was like a nightmare, but there was no way to wake up.
"Not me," he said, but it wasn't really him who said it. It was his mouth that moved, and it sounded like his voice, but it was wrong somehow, off, stilted and stern and too serious. "Not alone."
"This boy's got skills," the woman agreed, rocking back on her hands as she lounged on the asphalt. "Shiny ones."
There was a thing inside him, and it had been inside him for weeks, writhing and crawling around under his skin, hot and electric as it burned its way through his veins. Something dark and twisted, and it smelled, and it made him sick, but there was no way to be sick, because the thing inside him pulled all the strings and made all the decisions.
Every once in a while, he'd surface again, take back a finger, take back a toe, move his own head, make a noise that was meant to be words. The thing inside him always seemed surprised when he managed to do it, pushing back hard and locking down every time, and his head would burn and whir as high pitched snarling echoed inside his skull.
He'd almost taken it all back, just for a moment, when the fire shot out of his fingertips and he heard the screams. Just for a moment, and only a moment. It wasn't enough. But the thing inside him was still unsettled by that moment. He could feel its confusion and annoyance, and it was the first thing in weeks that he'd even remotely enjoyed.
The woman was still sprawled out on the asphalt like a model for a car calendar, and she flicked her shiny, bouncy brown hair over her shoulder. She narrowed her eyes at the old orange car to her right, her red lips puckering like she was sucking something sour, and then her eyes turned coal black.
"There's something under this car," she announced in her buttery southern drawl, and she sounded pissed about it.
The thing inside him grunted, "Like what?"
"Something," she said contrarily, crawling underneath the car. "I can see it blinking in the dark."
The thing inside him didn't seem to care much. It leaned against the side of the car and stared at the woman's round, denim clad ass. "Ooh," she cooed, voice muffled with her head under the frame. "The boy's got a homing device. Like a plump little pigeon."
She crawled out from under the car, moving too fast backwards, like a crab, and the smirk on her face was terrible and evil and it made him sick, sick like the thing inside him made him feel. She had something small with a blinking green light in the palm of her hand. "Know what this is?"
He did know. He'd seen it before, on a desk in a cramped, dark, musty apartment. There was a brief flash of anger and impatience, followed by relief and hope.
"Somebody's looking for the boy," she drawled, getting up on her feet. "Somebody's got a trace on you, handsome. Who do you think misses you so bad, hmm?"
"Doesn't matter," the thing inside him grunted. "Crush the damn thing. Then we'll go."
"I don't wanna," she said impishly, pouting like a child. "I know who's missing you, sugarplum. You're the wittle baby in the family, aren't you?"
The thing inside him was annoyed and impatient, and he felt sick again.
"Wittle baby," she cooed again, advancing on him, looking up at him through false eyelashes with those horrible black empty eyes. "With two big sisters. Two pretty, pretty sisters. I want to meet your sisters."
"We don't have time for this," the thing said, and he felt the thing roll his eyes. "Crush it."
"There's no need for that," she disagreed, shaking her head. "Let 'em come."
The thing rolled his eyes again and snapped the blinking object out of her hand. "What?"
The woman with the long, pretty brown hair and the sneering red mouth was cackling like an actual, old school, cartoon-cliché witch. She tossed her head back, swinging her flouncy brown locks back and forth, as she laughed and laughed and laughed. He stared at her in horror, eyes fixed on her sneer and her hollow black eyes.
"I say we let them find us!" she chirped. "Lead them right to our door! They'll never guess what they're walking into... it'll be fun! Two problems solved, and it'll be all bloody and messy, and handsome here can watch!"
Her blood red fingernail stroked his cheek almost lovingly. He recoiled, instinctively, and the woman's black eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Tom?" she asked.
"Knock it off, Faye," the thing said, pushing him back, taking control again.
She still looked confused, brow puckered and lips in a misleadingly pretty pout. "You don't want to have us some fun? Like we used to do?"
"There's no time for that."
"We should make time," she simpered, leaning into him, draping an arm over his shoulder, scratching at his chest with her long red fingernails. "I want to get the pretty sisters. I want to make them writhe and cry and scream and beg... and I want to pull their skin from their flesh, and their flesh from their bones, and I want him to watch."
Her nails dug into his skin, leaving stinging red scratch marks under his shirt. He winced, and not just inwardly. His body complied with his command, cringing as she scratched him, and the woman jerked back from him, frowning, with her black eyes flashing. "Tom?" she demanded. "What's happening to you?"
And he had always been hot-tempered, but even he didn't see it coming, as the woman with the curling red mouth leaned into him and threatened his family, and suddenly he felt the bile rise and the heat flare up from his belly, and he heard the snarl of the thing inside him as it pushed back against his rage, struggling with him, and the woman's confused face disappeared, and the whole parking lot went black before his eyes.
"Tom?" he heard her ask again, but her voice sounded far away and underwater. He fell to his hands and knees with a groan, and cradled his head in his hands, but it wasn't just his groan that echoed through the parking lot; the thing groaned with him, rasping and warped, like a bad recording.
"Tom! Control the boy!" the woman snapped.
The thing was clawing at his insides, hanging on to him with all its might. He choked on a pained scream that he couldn't quite get out. He twisted and moaned on the pavement, and then all of a sudden his head snapped back, and black smoke billowed out of his mouth, rocketing straight up into the night sky. It felt like he'd puked up a snake.
He fell forward on all fours, shaking and gasping for breath, dizzy with the sudden sensation of his body being his own again, and suddenly he could see the parking lot, and the woman. The drums from the music thumped in his ears as he stared at her, and she stared at him, gawking like a dead fish, and then she straightened her spine, resolve in her shoulders and murder in her black eyes. She marched at him like the freaking Terminator.
Fire shot out of his fingers, and she flew backwards, colliding violently with the lamppost, ten feet off the ground. She slid back to the pavement with a sickening thump.
"Stay back!" he ordered, and his voice was raspy, hoarse and rusty from disuse. "Or I'll toss you out like I tossed out loverboy!"
The threat didn't faze her, and she got back on her feet, brushing off her singed clothes. He skidded his way off the ground and made a dash for his car. The woman charged straight for him again, and he waved his hand in desperation. He was as shocked as anyone when even more fire shot out of his fingers, flaring up between them, in a ring around the woman, and cutting off her path.
She stood stock still, a little startled, and then she glared at him over the flickering yellow flames. He scrambled behind the wheel of his car, fingers trembling, barely able to move, barely able to stand, or to feel. Everything was too sharp and too bright, and it felt strange to be in control again.
Run-run-run! The words echoed on a frenzied, panicked loop in his head. Get-away-get-away!
"I'm going to get you, handsome!" she called over the fire, and his blood ran cold. "I'm going to get you!"
He slammed the car door shut and hit the gas, burning rubber on his way out of the parking lot. He drove as fast as he could, leaving the woman and the wall of fire behind as he turned onto the street. He should head for the interstate, get the hell out of Dodge before the thing got a hold of somebody else, before the woman got around the flames and made good on her promise.
But he remembered the threat on his family, and he remembered the way she laughed at the victim of the fire... that old black car is headed for their street... our old friend took out that pretty blonde thing just minutes ago...
The 'homing device' was still in his hand. He barely thought it through; he turned onto the next street over: Sunset Blvd. He parked the car behind an old, beautiful black Chevy, and he dodged rubberneckers and firemen alike to get to the car and to get underneath it... and then, when he was done, he got back in his car, hit the gas, and spun backwards off of Sunset Blvd and back onto the main road. He roared out of Palo Alto and headed for the highway.
He didn't look back.
Now...
Rockford, Illinois...
"Sam? Is that you?"
Sam sat up straight in his lumpy, creaking motel bed, holding Dean's cell phone to his ear. His heart was hammering against his ribs a mile a minute and he barely breathed. "Dad?" he asked incredulously. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine."
The tiny, dark, cheap-looking motel room felt like it was spinning around him. Sam took a deep breath, blinking, and looked over his shoulder. Dean was still asleep in the next bed over, and Sam tried to be quiet so he wouldn't wake him. "We've been looking for you everywhere! We didn't know where you were, if you were ok..."
"Sammy, I'm all right," his father's deep, rumbling voice interrupted him, surprisingly patient. "What about you and Dean?"
Dean stirred. "We're fine," Sam replied too quickly. "Dad, where are you?"
"Sorry, kiddo, but I can't tell you that."
"What? Why not?"
Dean was awake now, sitting up in bed. "Is that Dad?" he demanded. Sam ignored him.
"Look, I know this is hard for you to understand," John replied. "Just... you're going to have to trust me on this."
It made sense then, in a cold, clinical way. Sam stared at the red bedspread, his eyes stinging as he refused to blink. "You're after it, aren't you?" he asked. "The thing that killed Mom?"
"Yeah. It's a demon, Sam."
"A demon?" he repeated. "You know for sure?"
"A demon?" Dean echoed, shuffling around his bed for his shirt. "What's he saying?"
"I do. Listen, Sammy, I... uh... I also know what happened to your girlfriend. I'm so sorry. I would have done anything to protect you from that."
He sounded truly sorry. He sounded sincere. Sam couldn't address it; he'd break down if he talked too much about Jess. He focused on the demon. "You know where it is," he said to his Dad, and it should have been a question, but it wasn't. Somehow, Sam already knew the score.
"Yeah. I think I'm finally closing in on it."
"Let us help."
"You can't. You can't be any part of it."
"Why not?" Sam demanded, and the tears he'd been trying to choke down turned angry.
Dean held out his hand. "Give me the phone."
"Listen, Sam, that's why I'm calling. You and your brother, you've got to stop looking for me. All right? And I need you to write down these names."
"Names?" Sam echoed incredulously. "Dad... what names? Talk to me. Tell me what's going on!"
"Look, we don't have time for this," John snapped, and suddenly it was like he'd never left, like Sam was back in high school, and having the same old argument with his same old stubborn dad. "This is bigger than you think. They're everywhere. Even us talking right now, it's... it's not safe."
"No," Sam snapped back. "All right? No way!"
"Give me the phone," Dean insisted again, but Sam kept ignoring him. He knew what would happen, if he gave Dean the phone.
"I've given you an order," John returned, back in full on drill sergeant mode. "Now, you stop looking for me, and you do your job. You understand me? Now take down these names."
Sam couldn't do it. He sat there silently, fuming, trying to work up the courage to argue with him, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say. Dean seized the opportunity and snatched the phone out of his hand. "Dad?" he exclaimed into the receiver. "It's me! Where are you?"
There was a long moment of silence as Dean listened to their father. Sam turned to look at him, already knowing how this ended. "Yes, sir," Dean said into the phone, predictably, the good little soldier falling into line. "Uh... yeah. I got a pen. What are the names?"
He wanted to say that he hadn't meant it, everything he'd said back in Roosevelt Asylum the night before. He had said that to Dean, and at the time he'd believed he was telling the truth. But as he sat there, listening as Dean murmured yes sirs into the phone, listening to the scratch of a motel pen on the motel stationary pad, he couldn't help thinking that he'd been right the first time. Dad was giving them an order, and he was wrong, and Dean didn't care. He was going to fall into line, and obey without question, and to hell with what Sam wanted.
He threw the covers aside, got out of bed, and stomped into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
Bang-bang-bang!
The sudden, violent pounding on the motel room door jolted Jayne out of a deep sleep. She jumped, sitting straight up in bed, kicking away the sheets and the dark green duvet, her hand searching for the gun she'd hidden under her pillow.
Bang-bang-bang! The knocking came again, relentless, and she swore she could see the door shake. She frowned at the door, shaking hair out of her eyes. "Lynn! Jayne!" Sam Winchester's voice called through the door, sounding harried and frantic and mostly impatient. "Open the door! It's Sam!"
By this time, Lynn had sat up in bed as well, eyeing her surroundings with visible drowsiness. "You get it," she mumbled.
Jayne glared at her, but it did her no good. Lynn ignored her and rolled over, pulling the duvet over her head. Jayne rolled her eyes and hauled herself out of bed. She snatched her sweats up off the floor and yanked them on.
Bang-bang-bang!
"Damn it, Sam, you bang on that door one more time and I'm going to cut off your damn hand!" Jayne shouted irritably, storming towards the door. The banging stopped immediately. She threw open the door seconds later to find a rather sheepish Sam Winchester standing on the other side of the threshold, his shaggy hair still a little sleep mussed, and his hands jammed in the pockets of his familiar, navy winter coat.
"Sorry?" he offered.
"What do you want?" Jayne demanded.
Sam looked her straight in the eye, his face somber, and she knew something big had happened, even if she didn't yet know what.
"I heard from my Dad."
There were dark gray clouds rolling in over the late afternoon sky, and a strong, cold wind had picked up, blowing dead leaves and litter all around the motel parking lot. Lynn spat black hair out of her face as the wind whipped it into her mouth. Annoyed and feeling at loose ends, she tossed her duffel bag into Janis's bed. It landed on the plastic bed-liner with a loud crack, and she cringed, wondering which thing inside the duffel she might have just broken.
Jayne's bag was already sitting in the truck bed, and she was standing in the nearly empty parking lot just a few feet away, staring down Sam and Dean. The wind was whipping around their hair and their jackets, and Jayne was frowning at both boys as she stood there with her arms folded tight over her chest.
"One more time," she said, in a flat, hard voice. Lynn winced, turning around and leaning against the back of the truck. She sensed an impending argument. "Let me get this straight. Your Dad calls up out of the blue to tell you the thing that killed our mothers is a demon... which we already knew."
Lynn blew her bangs out of her face and started fiddling about nervously with her necklace. She felt a headache coming on. All four of them were standing impatiently in the parking lot, packed up and raring to go, itching to eat some road, and it was all going to end in shouting, she was sure. After Sam's mind blowing proclamation not so many hours ago, he'd left the room so Lynn and her stepsister could get dressed. Then the two women had stepped outside to load the truck and hear the entire story from Sam and his brother. They'd taken their time about it though, apparently researching a list of names John had given them, and Lynn was more than a little irritated about it. Jayne, on the other hand, was downright angry, even if she was trying to sound overly calm and collected, and Lynn was extremely uncomfortable.
"And then," Jayne pressed on. "He ordered you to stop looking for him and sent you on a hunt in Indiana."
"That's pretty much it," Dean replied, sounding annoyed. "But thanks for the sum up, Goldilocks."
Jayne narrowed her eyes, and Lynn saw the most recent truce between Dean and her stepsister scamper off into the wilderness. God, this one hadn't even lasted twenty-four hours.
"Well, that's bullshit," Jayne snapped. "Where the hell is your father?"
"He didn't say," Dean snapped right back.
"I traced the call," Sam announced.
Long silence followed this admission.
"What?" Dean finally asked, sounding no more pleased with his brother than he'd been with Jayne.
"Where to?" Jayne demanded.
"It doesn't matter!" Dean retorted before Sam could even open his mouth. "We're not going!"
"No, you're not going!" Jayne returned. "But I sure as hell am. Sam?"
Sam looked up from the dead leaf he'd been studying to deliver a classic 'deer-in-headlights' expression.
"Where did you trace the call to?" she elaborated.
"California," Sam replied with minimal hesitation. "It was a payphone in the Sacramento area."
Another long silence descended. Lynn spent this silence staring at the pavement beneath her feet, poking at a small stone with the toe of her boot. This was an important conversation, she knew. Major big time demon hunting developments had occurred.
So was it wrong to be miffed that Sam hadn't even glanced in her direction?
"All right," Jayne broke the silence. "I say we go."
"Really?" Sam asked eagerly.
"Absolutely not," Dean said, his tone firm.
"Lynn?" Jayne turned to her.
Lynn looked at her sister, chewing her tongue. "Well… I don't know."
Jayne didn't look upset with her, which Lynn found strange. "Why?" she asked gently.
Great. Super-sister had sensed something was up.
Lynn shrugged. "Well… I'm not opposed to going, it's just… what are we going to do when we get there? Stalk John Winchester?"
Jayne shrugged. "Sam said his father was closing in on the thing. Right?"
Her eyes swung to Sam, who swallowed visibly before nodding his agreement. "Right."
"So, if their Dad's tracking a demon and the trail led him to Sacramento, I say we go to Sacramento," Jayne said decisively. "We can call Trev, ask for his help... look into possible omens in the surrounding areas. Lynn... maybe we can even find Steve."
Lynn thought the plan over for a moment. It made some sort of sense, she supposed. At the very least, it was better than no lead at all. "Ok," she agreed, after a while. "If that's what you want to do, I'm on board."
Jayne looked both surprised and grateful, and Lynn immediately felt guilty. She'd been lacking in the supportive sister area, she supposed. If Jayne had begun to expect disappointment from her, then maybe she needed another attitude adjustment.
"No," Dean snapped. "It's not happening."
"No one asked you to go," Jayne returned angrily.
"Dean," Sam interjected. "Maybe we should think about this. I mean, what if Dad needs our help? What if the demon is in Sacramento? I don't think we should pass this opportunity up!"
"I said no, Sam!" Dean nearly roared. "Dad gave us an order!"
"And we're just supposed to do exactly what he says?" Sam asked incredulously. "Even if we know he's wrong?"
"Dad's been tracking this bad SOB a lot longer than we have, Sam," Dean retorted. "If he says stay away, then we stay away. Besides, we have another case – and if we don't work that case, someone else could die!"
"What if Dad dies?" Sam shouted. "What then?"
"I said no!" Dean shouted right back. "We're not going! End of discussion!"
The small group arguing in the parking lot lapsed into yet another long silence. Sam was shaking his head, furious, and biting the inside of his mouth. Dean looked equally pissed as he yanked open the driver's door on the Impala. He looked at Jayne over his shoulder. Lynn looked at Jayne too. Jayne stared evenly back at Dean, not flinching.
"I'm asking you not to go," Dean said.
They stared at each other, for another long, intense moment, and Lynn shifted uncomfortably against the back of the truck, lowering her eyes to the asphalt. Their exchange was simple and anticlimactic, and somehow it felt like she was intruding on something intimate.
"Dean," Jayne replied, and Lynn was startled by the gentle quality to her voice. "I'm sorry. Maybe you think I don't get it, but I do. He's your Dad. He gave you a job. You got to do what you got to do." She paused, glancing at the pavement for a moment. Then she met his eyes again and shrugged. "But he's not my dad."
Dean stared at her a moment. "Well, then I guess you got to do what you got to do."
Then he slid behind the wheel of the Impala and slammed the door shut behind him.
Lynn flinched. Jayne stared at the Impala for a second longer. If Lynn hadn't known better, she would have sworn there was regret in Jayne's eyes. But the moment was fleeting, and her stepsister turned from the scene all too quickly, stalking to the driver's side of the truck. She climbed into the cab, and slammed the door too. The engine roared to life.
Lynn looked at Sam. She almost expected him to ignore her, but he didn't. He stared right back at her. There was a long silence, which Lynn supposed was logical. She had no idea what to say to him, and if she didn't know what to say, then she sure as hell doubted he had anything to contribute.
"There's room," she offered, a little hesitantly, jerking her head back at the truck.
Sam lifted his brows, following the nod of her head to the truck behind her. For a moment, Lynn thought he might take her up on that offer.
"Sammy!" Dean roared impatiently from inside the Impala.
Sam's whole expression changed. It went from mostly unreadable to visibly pissed. He glared at the Impala, and then he sighed, shoulders slumping, and he looked at Lynn apologetically, shaking his head. Lynn nodded once, dropping her eyes as she reached behind her, searching blindly for the handle on the truck door.
"I'm sorry, Sam," she announced.
He looked at her, his mouth slightly open. Still he said nothing, and Lynn climbed into Janis before he could utter a sound, shutting the door behind her. She heard the slam of Sam's door moments later, as he climbed into the Impala, and then she heard the familiar rumble of Dean's engine turning over.
She looked at Jayne, who was staring straight out the windshield. Jayne put the truck in gear and pulled out of the parking lot.
Big fat raindrops splattered on the windshield as they drove away. It had begun to pour.
Sam drove down the dark, muddy road, glaring mutinously out the windshield. It was late, and pitch black, with dark gray clouds blotting out the moon and stars, and the road was deserted and lonely, winding through endless forest, trees and shrubs flying past, with no buildings in sight, only the occasional billboard poking out of the greenery. There was fog rolling in all around them, misting across the road, and cutting in and out of the surrounding trees. Beside him, Dean sat in the passenger seat, reading by flashlight, and Sam tried to keep his dark look focused out ahead of him, on the road, and not directed at his brother.
They were going to Indiana, stupid, pointless Indiana, and Sam was pissed about it.
"So, the names Dad gave us?" Sam asked, trying not to let his irritation creep into his voice. "They're all couples?"
"That's right," Dean nodded, intent on the papers in front of him. "Three couples. All went missing."
"And they're all from different towns? Different states?"
"Yeah. Washington, New York, Colorado… they all took a road trip cross country, none of them arrived at their destination, and none of them were ever heard from again."
"Well, it's a big country, Dean," Sam pointed out, feeling more and more annoyed by the minute. "They could have disappeared anywhere."
"Yeah. Could have," Dean returned. "But each one's route took them through the same part of Indiana, always on the second week of April, one year after another, after another."
"This is the second week of April."
"Yep."
"So Dad is sending us to Indiana to go hunting for something before another couple vanishes?"
"Yahtzee."
They paused for a moment as Dean shuffled some papers around. Sam shook his head. He could not believe he was getting sent on this wild goose chase. Maybe Dean thought they were working a case, but Sam knew better. This was a distraction; this was John's way of getting his boys out of his hair.
"Man, could you imagine putting a pattern together like this?" Dean asked suddenly, his voice full of admiration. Sam's knuckles tightened on the wheel. "I mean, the different obits Dad had to go through? The man's a master."
Sam had heard enough. With a vicious twist of the steering wheel, Sam pulled the Impala off onto the side of the road, parking in the dirt mere feet away from a lonely railroad crossing.
"What are you doing?" Dean asked, looking around them in confusion.
Sam shoved the car into park. "We're not going to Indiana."
"We're not?"
"No. We're going to California."
Dean sighed harshly, slamming shut the file he held in his lap. "Sam, we've been through this already."
"No, Dean!" Sam snapped. "No, we haven't been through this! I remember you and Jayne yelling at one another a lot, and then I remember you ordering my ass in the car, but I definitely don't remember going through this!"
"Exactly," Dean retorted. "We've been through this."
"We have to be in on this hunt," Sam said. "I have to be in on this hunt. If Dad is closing in on the thing that killed Mom and Jess, then we have to be there. I have to be there. We have to help."
"Dad doesn't want our help."
"I don't care."
"He's given us an order."
"I don't care."
"Sam…"
"Jayne and Lynn are on their way to Sacramento right now," Sam pointed out. "Maybe they won't find anything. But what if they do find the demon? What if they get the drop on the thing, and we're not there?"
Dean's lips pursed together. His eyes grew icy. "No one was stopping you, Sam," he said in a low, dark tone. "If you wanted to go to California, maybe you should have hitched a ride with them."
Sam stared at his brother for a moment, and then shook his head incredulously. "I can't believe you. You want to kill this thing every bit as badly as I do, but you won't. You won't stand up to Dad. Look, Jayne was right. It doesn't matter what Dad says; we have to do what we have to do."
"Yeah," Dean returned bitterly. "And Jayne made her decision. Jayne left, because that's what she felt she had to do. And your little girlfriend went with her, because at least Lynn understands the concept of sticking with her family."
That stung, but Sam swallowed it down, and tried not to take the bait. He frowned at his brother, who was still glaring mutinously through the windshield. "Did you think they were going to come with us to Indiana?" he asked curiously
"Look," Dean snapped, instantly changing the subject. "Dad's asking us to work jobs. To save lives. It's important!"
"I understand that. Believe me, I do. But we're talking one week here, Dean," Sam argued. "One week. To find Dad, to get answers… to get revenge."
Dean sighed. "Look, Sam, I know how you feel…"
"Do you?" Sam demanded angrily. "You were how old when Mom died? Four? Jess died six months ago. How the hell would you know how I feel?"
They stared at one another for a moment. Finally, Dean said, "Dad said it wasn't safe. For any of us. Obviously he knows something that we don't, so if he says to stay away, we stay away!"
Sam shook his head, growing more and more furious with his brother. "I don't understand the blind faith you have in the man. It's like you don't even question him!"
"Yeah, it's called being a good son!"
And that's when Sam snapped. He shook his head incredulously at his brother, and then he opened the car door. He stepped out into the night, slammed the door behind him, and headed for the trunk.
Mere seconds later, he heard the passenger door swing open and shut again. Sam continued rooting around in the trunk for his belongings. "You're a selfish bastard, you know that?" Dean said, rounding the bumper. "You just do whatever you want. Don't care what anyone else thinks."
"Is that what you really think?" Sam asked, hefting his last bag over his shoulder.
"Yeah. It is."
"Well, then this selfish bastard is going to California."
He turned and walked away, down the dark road, back the way they'd come. "Come on, you're not serious!" Dean called after him.
"I am serious!"
"It is the middle of the night!" Dean shouted at his back, but Sam didn't care and he didn't turn around. "Hey, I'm taking off! I will leave your ass, do you hear me?"
He stopped a moment and turned back towards his brother. "That's what I want you to do!"
Dean stared at him. Sam stared back, refusing to budge, and Dean didn't budge either. It was cold and damp and dark, and he could hear the call of a dog or a coyote in the distance, but Sam didn't care. If that car was going to Indiana, then he wasn't getting back in it.
Finally, Dean rolled his eyes and slammed the trunk shut. "Good-bye, Sam."
Sam watched him open the driver side door, and get into the car with only one last angry look back at him. Dean slammed the door shut, and started the engine, and then, true to his word, Dean left his ass. He watched the red brake lights come on, and he watched the back end of the Impala take off down the road.
Then Sam turned around and started walking.
It seemed like the storm was chasing them.
Jayne stared at the damp, dark road, feeling her eyes glaze over. The windshield wipers were pumping full speed, forcing water from one end of the glass to the other. The air in the cab was humid from the heater and the rain. Jayne tapped her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the scratchy, twangy Janis Joplin song playing softly on her cassette deck. She and her stepsister sat silently in the pickup as their wheels ate up the interstate, rumbling along under the black sky.
Every part of her body felt tense and twitchy and on edge. She was having a hard time sitting still in the cab of the truck. Russ had been right. Twenty-two years ago, a demon had slithered its way inside their old, rundown farmhouse in Stamping Ground, Kentucky and murdered her mother. What sort of demon, how powerful it might be… those were still open-ended questions. There was no way of telling whether or not they could handle what they were driving towards.
Sam's recap of the conversation with his father was still ringing in Jayne's ears. He'd said his father was working on a way to kill the demon; not just exorcise it and send it back to Hell, but literally kill it. Kill it the way it killed her mother, and Sam and Dean's mother, and Sam's girlfriend too. Which was, of course, completely impossible... and yet somehow, she still hoped.
"Jayne, I have to tell you something."
Lynn's announcement startled her, ringing out too loud and harsh in the quiet of the cab. Her words came out in a jumbled, panicked rush, and Jayne froze on instinct.
"What did you do?" she demanded.
"I didn't do anything!" Lynn protested, offended.
Jayne didn't say anything; she just lifted an eyebrow and waited for the admission. Lynn sighed.
"I kissed Sam."
There was a pause. Jayne frowned at the windshield, uncertain what she was supposed to say. Lynn was staring at her expectantly, like she'd thought she'd dropped a huge bombshell or something, and honestly? Jayne just didn't care.
"Um… ok," she finally said, shrugging a shoulder.
"That's it?" Lynn exclaimed. "Ok?"
"I don't know!" Jayne retorted. "I mean, uh… what happened? I thought you were all pissed at him."
"I was," Lynn sighed, closing her eyes and pounding the back of her head against the seat. "But then… we were fighting, and… and he said he never knew what I wanted, and I… well, I didn't know how else to make it clear!"
There was another pause.
"Right…" Jayne murmured. "You, um… couldn't just talk?"
"Shut it," Lynn snapped, sulking.
Jayne sighed, shaking her head. "Ok, so… that's it?"
"What do you mean, that's it?"
"Why is this such a big deal?"
"How is it not a big deal?"
"Well… aren't you interested in Sam?"
"I was. I mean… I am. I think I am."
"You think you are?"
"Well…"
"So… what? You guys made up…"
"Not exactly."
"Oh."
"I… I don't know. I think I scared him. Actually, I messed everything up."
There was a long silence.
"He wasn't ready," Lynn said after a while. "He wasn't ready, and honestly? I kind of think he never will be."
Jayne said nothing. She had nothing to offer. She didn't understand what had happened between her stepsister and Sam, she didn't understand why Lynn seemed to think it was the end of the world… she didn't get it, plain and simple, and she didn't really give a shit. Jayne was far more concerned about what was waiting for them in Sacramento than she was about Lynn and Sam's drama. She was more concerned about Sacramento than anything else.
Although the way Dean had looked at her in the parking lot before getting in the car… so betrayed, so angry… that might haunt her for a while.
They both lapsed into silence, and Jayne was more than a little grateful for that. Her mind was still going a mile a minute and she did not want to talk about Lynn's boy drama anymore. They made it a few more miles in the dark, through the heavy rain, down a straight, flat road, through endless green pasture land and rows of short, barely grown, green corn plants. Her headlights cut through the darkness, lighting up fields and chain link fences and abandoned industrial equipment... and then she heard the clunk.
She froze, eyes going wide. The clunk came again - clunk, clunk, clunk - and then the truck started to slow down. Jayne sighed, cussing under her breath, and turned the steering wheel, coasting into the mud on the side of the road. Moments later, the truck spluttered and died, and Jayne groaned loudly, her fingers tightening on the steering wheel as she slumped over and leaned her forehead on the wheel.
"Oh, Janis, come on!" she exclaimed.
"Now what?" Lynn asked grumpily, and Jayne knocked her head against the steering wheel a couple more times.
"I need a fuel pump," she sighed.
"What?"
Jayne lifted her head off the steering wheel and turned to her stepsister. "I need a fuel pump," she repeated herself. "Dean told me I needed a fuel pump, and then I got distracted and I never replaced the damn fuel pump!"
She slammed her hand against the steering wheel in frustration, and then threw open the truck door. Cold hard rain met her as she leaned out of the cab, and Lynn had to yell to be heard over the downpour when she asked, "So we're stranded?"
Jayne looked over her shoulder at her. Lynn looked concerned, her eyes darting from Jayne to the inky sky overhead and the torrential downpour all around them. As though to really drive Lynn's point home, there was a sudden blue flash of lightening that briefly illuminated the road and the farmland all around them, followed by a boom of thunder that shook poor old Janis in the mud alongside the road, before crackling and rumbling and fading away.
"No," Jayne replied, sighing again. "Look, I think I can get her started again. Just slide over behind the wheel."
Lynn looked at her like she was nuts, but Jayne ignored her and ducked out of the cab into the icy, blinding sheets of rain, and Lynn did as she was told, sliding across the battered old bench seat and settling in behind the wheel, perched on the edge of the seat so she could actually reach the pedals. Jayne winced as lightening lit up the sky again, and a second crack of thunder echoed up and down the highway. She vaulted up into the bed of the truck and dug her old rusty toolbox out from under the rest of the luggage, all of it getting wet in the rain despite the cover of a crinkled blue tarp. Jayne fished a small hammer out of the rusty tin box, and then she hopped down from the truck bed, into the mud.
"Try and start her up on the count of three!" she hollered towards the cab, and Lynn gave her a thumbs-up out the open door. "One... two... three!"
She gave the bottom of the fuel tank a good whack, and Lynn started the truck, and Janis roared back to life. Jayne breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't bother putting the hammer back; she jogged back to the truck and clambered behind the wheel, dropping the hammer behind the bench seat and then squeezing water out of her braid before slamming the door shut behind her. Lynn was back in the passenger seat again, staring at her.
"Told you we weren't stranded," Jayne shrugged at her, and then she put the truck in gear and wheeled back onto the road, spraying mud everywhere.
Lynn blinked at her slowly, and then shook her head. "Did you just... fix the truck by... whacking it with a hammer?"
"I hit the fuel tank," Jayne corrected her arbitrarily. "And... yeah."
"Is that what Dean did?'
"Yeah."
"Wow," Lynn breathed, turning to stare out the windshield instead of at Jayne. "I'm suddenly much less impressed by him."
"Good," Jayne grunted. Then she sighed, and gestured at Lynn's phone. "Do you think you can find a garage around here? We're not going to make it to California without a new pump."
"Sure."
The glowing blue screen of Lynn's phone lit up the cab, and Jayne focused on the road as Lynn searched for a mechanic. It was late, and nothing was going to be open, and they were going to have to stop for the night, and then wait who the hell knew how long for the truck to be fixed. The whole mess could take a day, maybe two, to clean up, and by then, maybe the lead they had on the demon, and Dean and Sam's asshole father, would be gone.
She honestly wasn't sure how this could get worse.
It seemed more like late fall than early spring. The rain clouds rolling in overhead had left everything dim and gray, and everything was wet. But the gloomy atmosphere didn't make Burkitsville, Indiana look any less like your cliché, story-book, mid-western small town, with too narrow streets (not that it mattered since there was no traffic) and little shops with canopied doors, and even a little wooden gazebo sitting on a patch of green space, smack dab in the middle of Main Street.
Dean parked his car alongside the curb and heaved a sigh. He'd been driving all night, and he was tired. It was early morning, the sun barely up, and not visible behind the dark gray rain clouds overhead. The streetlamps were still on, and a light, misting rain was falling on the town. Pedestrians jogged past with umbrellas. Dean took a quick look around, and then quietly sighed again, digging his phone out of his jacket.
He couldn't shake what had happened the day before - in the late afternoon, in the motel parking lot, with Jayne, and then late last night, on the side of the road, with Sam. He was still pissed about everything, pissed at Sam and disappointed in Jayne, but most of all, he was worried about his brother, who he'd left on the side of the road in the middle of the night.
He scrolled down through his contacts, passing name after name, until he finally found Sam. He should call him, check up on him, make sure he was ok... maybe even make up. His thumb hovered over Sam's name for a moment, and then he shook his head and scrolled back up.
Maybe he should call Jayne instead. Tell her that Sam had bailed, and was headed in their direction. Maybe she and Lynn could make sure he was ok. Maybe...
His thumb hovered over her name for another moment, and then he rolled his eyes and snapped the phone shut. He shoved it angrily back into his jacket, and then he got out of the car and slammed the door.
To hell with all of them, anyway. They were the ones who'd left. Not him.
There was a diner on his left, with a large covered porch jammed with red checker cloth covered tables, and rocking chairs that lined the covered walkway to the front doors. There was a little white sign over the entrance reading 'Scotty's Cafe.' An older man was sitting in one of the rockers, surveying the empty street, and he looked less than pleased to see Dean approaching.
"Let me guess," Dean greeted him, glancing up at the sign above the door. "Scotty?"
The man took a deliberate look at the sign as well, and then turned slowly back to Dean. "Yep."
"Hi, my name's John Bonham..."
"Isn't that the drummer for Led Zeppelin?" Scotty interrupted.
Dean was taken aback, not used to getting called out like that. "Wow," he replied, laughing a little. "Good. Classic rock fan."
Scotty still wasn't smiling. "What can I do for you, John?"
He reached into his jacket and pulled out the missing persons profiles for the most recent couple to disappear from the area. Scotty accepted the fliers and took a look. "I was wondering if you'd seen these people by chance," Dean explained.
"Nope," Scotty replied after scrutinizing the fliers. "Who are they?"
"Friends of mine," Dean returned. "They went missing about a year ago. They passed through somewhere around here, and I already asked around Scottsburg and Salem..."
"Sorry," Scotty interrupted him again. "We don't get many strangers around here."
Dean took the fliers back, staring at the man. The cafe owner stared him down evenly. "Scotty, you got a smile that lights up a room," Dean said sarcastically. "Did anybody ever tell you that?"
The man stared at him some more, not amused, and Dean gave up. "Never mind. See you around."
He stepped off the porch and walked away, fliers in hand. He could feel Scotty's eyes on him as he headed to the next shop, and he shook his head.
There was definitely something strange about Burkitsville, Indiana.
Sam's shoulders were getting sore. The damp was cutting through his coat. His feet hurt. He'd been walking all night, and he was still on the same highway where Dean had left him. The dawn had broken, gray and dreary, and the road stretched on for miles, not a car in sight. All around him was tall, brown grass and empty fields, not a house or even a building in sight.
He looked back the way he'd came, searching for approaching cars or even Dean's Impala. Not that he really expected Dean to come back. Still… if he did? He might be tempted to ask for a lift to the nearest bus station.
Sam turned back around and stopped short. He blinked. He frowned. On the side of the road, sitting on her knapsack, was a petite woman with short cropped blonde hair, jamming to some kind of death metal music screaming out her headphones.
"Hey!" he called.
She didn't even turn around. Cautiously, Sam crept forward, and tapped the girl on the shoulder. She gasped loudly and flew to her feet, a small yelp escaping her lips. When she whirled around, Sam couldn't help but notice that she was really quite pretty - not that he was looking.
"Dude!" she exclaimed. Her brown eyes were wide as she pulled the tiny speakers from her ears. "You scared the hell out of me!"
"Sorry," Sam apologized quickly. "I just… thought you might need some help."
She laughed a little, wearing an expression that made Sam feel like a creepy weirdo. "Well, I'm good, thanks."
They stood awkwardly for a moment. Then Sam asked, "Where are you headed?"
The girl smiled slyly. "No offense, but no way I'm telling you."
Sam frowned again. "Why not?"
"You could be some kind of freak. I mean… you are hitchhiking."
Sam laughed. "Well, so are you."
She laughed too. Before either of them could say anything else, they were distracted by a loud car horn honking from behind him. Sam turned and saw an old, rusty white van ambling slowly down the road. Sam and the mystery blonde turned to the street, watching and waiting. The van rolled to a stop in front of them. It was an old work van, the creepy sort without any back windows, and the man behind the wheel looked just as creepy as his transportation.
"Need a ride?" he asked.
Even though the guy seemed a little sketchy, Sam answered "Yes." So did the woman beside him.
"Just her," the man replied.
Taken aback, Sam frowned at the guy. Clearly, something was up. The man frowned right back. "I'm not taking you," he retorted.
Sam blinked. He looked at the woman to see if she'd figured out hitching with this guy by herself was a bad plan. But she didn't seem the least bit bothered and climbed into the passenger seat, closing the door after her. Sam watched incredulously as she clambered into the van, and then glanced at the man behind the wheel, before asking in a low voice, "You trust shady van guy, and not me?"
She smirked at him. "Definitely."
The van pulled away from the shoulder and rumbled on down the highway, leaving Sam behind on the side of the road.
It was too early, and it was still too damp and too cold, and Lynn wished she was still in that bed back at the motel, even as lumpy and sagging and flea-ridden as it might be. She wanted to be asleep. She wanted to be warm and semi-comfortable.
Instead, she was hiking down the main street of Montezuma, Iowa, under the gray, early morning sky, through a cold mist with two coffees in her hands. It was a small town, and it was early, and there wasn't a lot of traffic on the street. She was headed for the local garage, a rundown place in a brown brick building with junked, rusty cars sitting in a lot next door, and she could already smell oil and burning metal as she walked down the sidewalk.
When she reached the building, she could see Jayne through the front window, blonde hair piled up on top of her head and a pissed-off expression on her face. She looked like she was arguing with the mechanic, and Lynn rolled her eyes. She flopped down on the bench outside the garage, setting the drink holder beside her, and crossed her legs. She took a cup out of the cardboard holder, holding it with both hands in an attempt to warm up her fingers, and then she took a sip of the coffee as she stared at the street.
A few minutes later, she heard the door to the auto shop slam, alongside the violent clang of the little bell hanging overhead. "Guy's a crooked son of a bitch," Jayne grumbled, flopping down on the bench next to Lynn. "Trying to charge me more than the damn truck's worth just to change out a pump."
"Well, to be fair," Lynn replied with sarcastic sweetness. "Your truck's only worth about twenty dollars."
"Shut up," Jayne snapped. Lynn handed her the other coffee, and Jayne took it, slumping against the ugly brown brick wall behind the bench. "Should just buy the part and put it in myself, but we don't have time to dick around in a junkyard."
"Besides," Lynn sighed, fiddling with her ponytail. "If we did that, then we'd have to call Dean and ask him to install it, and I think he's kind of mad at us right now."
Jayne looked at her like she'd lost her mind. "Why would I call Dean?"
Lynn simply looked at Jayne like she was the one who'd lost her mind. "Have you ever installed a fuel pump before?" she asked pointedly.
"Shut up," Jayne said again, and Lynn took that to mean no. Her stepsister glared moodily off into the distance and took a sip of her coffee. "This might take the rest of the day."
Lynn sighed, blowing her bangs off her forehead. "Do you think we'll lose the lead?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"Maybe we shouldn't go," Lynn said, frowning at some gray work van parked in a lot across the street as she drank more coffee. "Maybe this is... I don't know, like a sign." Jayne snorted at her, but Lynn stuck to her guns. "I'm serious! Maybe we shouldn't do this."
"Why not?"
"I don't know, I just... John Winchester won't even talk to his own freaking kids! How are we supposed to get him to work with us?"
"We don't need him," Jayne returned immediately, shrugging one shoulder. "He told Sam he's closing in on the thing, so... we head out to his last known location and try to track the thing from there."
"And then what?"
Jayne didn't say anything. Lynn sighed again. "See? Exactly. You don't know. The best we're going to do is exorcise it, maybe. And what about Steve?"
Again, Jayne didn't say anything. "We should be looking for him," Lynn pressed. "Look, I know it's not going too well so far, and we don't really have any leads, but..."
"This is a lead," Jayne interrupted her tightly.
"Is it?" Lynn countered. "You've said it yourself; Steve is running from something. Do we really think he's going to run right at this thing?"
"This is for Steve!" Jayne snapped, and Lynn faltered, drawing back from her. "Ok? If something is after him? Then it's all tied up in this mess. You think it's a coincidence that the demon resurfaced and killed Sam's girlfriend right around the time Steve disappeared? That thing is what he's running from, and if we take it out, then he doesn't have to run anymore. This is how we protect him."
Lynn didn't know how to argue with that. She couldn't argue with that. It was true. But that didn't make her like it, and it didn't make her feel any better about bailing on Sam and Dean, or forget the way they'd looked at her and Jayne back in that motel parking lot.
Her phone started buzzing then, and Lynn scrambled for it, feeling some weird hopeful feeling, and she wondered if it was Sam or Dean calling to...
It was Trev. Lynn swallowed too hard and answered the call. "Hey, Trev. What's up?"
"Where are you?" he demanded.
"Uh..." she returned, frowning, at first because of the rudeness, and then because she couldn't quite remember. All the towns they'd passed through overnight had blurred together and started to look the same. "Uh..." She looked over her shoulder at the sign hanging on the garage. "Montezuma, Iowa?"
Trev was silent for a long moment - too long. "Trev?" she prompted him after a while.
"You're where?"
Lynn frowned harder. "Montezuma, Iowa?"
"No freaking way."
"Um... way? What's going on, Trev?"
"I've been watching for sudden electrical storms," Trev explained. "Just like you guys asked me to? Lynn, there was a big one that cropped up out of nowhere just last night... and it was right around Montezuma, Iowa."
Lynn sucked in a sudden, sharp breath. She remembered the rain on the highway, the thunder and the lightening, the way it had seemed to come out of nowhere and then follow them for a few miles. "Uh... yeah. I think we drove through that."
"Well, that's perfect," Trev returned. "Then you can look into it while you're there. Talk about lucky timing."
"Yeah..." Lynn murmured uncertainly, because she was suddenly positive that luck had nothing to do with it, and that this was definitely not a coincidence. "Thanks, Trev."
"Keep me in the loop!"
Lynn hung up the phone and bit her lip, glancing at Jayne. Her stepsister was staring at her. "Trev?" Jayne asked, and Lynn nodded. "Freak storm?"
She nodded again. "Yeah... and we just drove right through it. What are the odds that Trev spots a freak storm that practically popped up on top of us, right after John Winchester calls Sam and Dean, and we take off for Sacramento looking for a bad news demon?"
Jayne stared at her for a beat. "Bad," she said flatly, after a moment.
"Bad," Lynn echoed. "So... what does that mean? Are we officially in the bad news demon's cross hairs now?"
The idea was unsettling to say the least. Lynn looked all around them as she spoke, up the street one way and down the other, looking for anything creepy or unusual, but she hardly saw any people around at all on the quiet, rundown street. There was a creepy, nagging feeling, prickling at the back of her mind. Any passerby, any shopkeeper... even the guy fixing Janis... there could be a demon lurking in any of them, in anyone at all.
"Maybe we should call Sam and Dean," Lynn suggested uneasily.
"Maybe we should chill out," Jayne returned, with that same slow, easy, maddening calm she tended to embody at the least calm moments, which either calmed Lynn too or completely pissed her off. There was never an in-between. "Have a look around, check for anything strange... wait for this crook to fix the truck... after all, it could just be a storm."
It could, but Lynn doubted it. "Ok," she said out loud. "We'll just... relax, and... investigate."
"You got it."
Lynn swallowed and leaned back against the brick wall. She fidgeted nervously on the bench, playing with her necklace, and then she tried glancing furtively at Jayne, out of the corner of her eye. Her stepsister was watching her, looking calm and unbothered as she leaned lazily back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankles. Jayne took a long gulp of coffee.
"You're going to smoke, aren't you?" Jayne asked dryly.
"Shut up," Lynn retorted automatically, and then she bit her lip. "But yes."
Jayne rolled her eyes as Lynn set aside her coffee, and then reached into her jacket and pulled out her cigarettes. Her stepsister got to her feet as Lynn lit one up and took a deep, heavy drag. "I'm going to take a walk around," Jayne announced. "Check the local paper, ask around about anything weird."
Lynn nodded and waved her off, and Jayne rolled her eyes again before she walked away. Lynn blew out a straight, slow plume of white smoke, watching it drift across the street.
She had a bad feeling about all of this.
Burkitsville, Indiana was not the sort of town one would expect to harbor mass murderers or creepy haunted scarecrows, Dean surmised. Still, here he was, still investigating the small town, and he was pretty sure he was in the right place.
Scotty might have been tightlipped, claiming a little too quickly not to recognize the couple that went missing last April. Same went for the couple who owned the combination Jorgeson General Store and Jorgeson Motors. But then their daughter, or whoever she was, had spoken up. She'd remembered the couple. They were just married. Suddenly, the man who owned the gas station and store remembered them too, clear as a bell. They'd stopped for gas. Not more than ten minutes. He'd given Dean directions back to the interstate – the directions he'd claimed to have given the missing couple.
But when he'd driven down Orchard Road, rounding a bend and passing a large apple orchard on his right, his EMF reader started whirring and flashing like crazy.
"What the hell..." he'd muttered, digging through the crap in the backseat while still trying to drive down the curving, tree-lined road. The damn noisy thing was hiding somewhere in his luggage, stuffed in the backseat, and he couldn't find it without crashing the car. Finally, he pulled off to the side, in front of the orchard. When he finally managed to wrestle the EMF reader out of his duffel bag, he found an EMF reading that was practically off the charts.
Now he was out of the car, picking his way through the apple orchard. There was no one in sight, and he supposed that couldn't be too unusual; he didn't know much about growing apples, but he did know harvest time was nearly five months away. Dean pressed through the fog and the cool, damp air, winding his way through the rows of wet, black trees, branches mostly bare and just now starting to bud. He skirted around random hay bales, and abandoned wooden crates and baskets, dodging multiple white, wooden ladders, until he turned a corner and found himself staring down one seriously huge, creepy ass scarecrow.
It wore some kind of bone-white mask ala Leatherface, and it had long stringy black hair poking out from under its black fisherman's cap. It wore a long, tattered black trenchcoat.
"Dude," Dean announced, staring at the thing. "You fugly."
Naturally, the scarecrow didn't answer.
Dean's eyes were drawn instantly to the scythe in its right hand. From there, he quickly noticed the strange markings on the scarecrow's leathery right arm. Frowning, Dean moved one of the old wooden ladders over to the scarecrow's side and climbed up for a better look.
It was a tattoo. Dean pulled out Vince Parker's missing poster and took a look at the picture. He had a tattoo on his right arm too. The scarecrow's marking was a perfect match. Face grave, Dean eyed the scarecrow for a long moment.
"Nice tat," he said.
"Sorry, the Sacramento bus doesn't run again until tomorrow. 5:05 pm."
Sam blinked at the woman in the ticket window. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He was literally going to have to wait more than twenty-four hours in this dingy, poorly lit bus station before he'd finally be on his way to California.
"Tomorrow?" he repeated. "There's got to be another way."
"Oh, there is," the clerk replied smartly. "Buy a car."
Sam stared at the woman. She returned to her computer, ignoring him. Sighing harshly and gathering up his bags, Sam turned from the window and stomped towards the waiting room. Compulsively, he reached for his cell phone. He scrolled down through his list of contacts, reaching Dean's name.
He hesitated.
"Hey."
The voice was low-pitched but feminine, and oddly familiar. He turned his head and had a bit of a shock. Not five feet away, sitting on her backpack and leaning against a pole, was the cute little blonde from the side of the road. "You again," she said, giving him a smirk.
Sam put the phone away. "Hey," he replied, frowning, his curiosity piqued. "What happened to your ride?"
She shrugged. "You were right. That guy was shady. All hands."
Sam raised his eyebrow, not surprised in the slightest. She smirked again, and shrugged. "I cut him loose," she finished.
He smiled at her slightly. They hit a lull, and he found himself staring at the bus outside the door, loading passengers as he stood there. Music was playing softly overhead on the loudspeaker, something Dean might listen to, an old and twangy CCR song about being stuck.
"What's the matter?" the blonde asked him.
Sam looked back at her. "Just… trying to get to California."
"No way," she returned, sounding intrigued.
"Yeah."
"Me too," she said, getting up. He watched as she approached him, slow and slinky like a cat. "You know, the next bus doesn't leave until tomorrow."
"Yeah. That's the problem."
"Why? What's in Cali that's so important?"
Sam didn't know how to answer that. He laughed slightly, shrugging. "Just something I've been looking for. For a long time."
"Well," she smiled ironically, eyeing him a little too intently. "Then I'm sure it can wait one more day. Right?"
It couldn't wait one more day. It couldn't wait one more hour. It was too important. His dad might have left by now. The demon could have moved on. He was wasting time. But the girl had a nice smile and an easy way about her, and Sam found himself laughing again in spite of himself.
She grinned. "I'm Meg," she introduced herself.
"Sam."
They shook hands. At the very least, Sam decided ruefully, if he had to spend the night in this bland white bus station, complete with florescent lights and elevator music, there was someone interesting there with him, with whom he could pass the time.
It was much later in the day, though it was still just as dreary, damp and gray as it had been before. Lynn and her stepsister had spent the day looking into Trev's freak storm slash possible demonic omen findings, and hours later, they still had nothing. Lynn was starting to think it was just a coincidence after all: a highly unlikely, freaky coincidence. It was just a storm.
The mechanic had called Jayne just a little while ago, and now they were back outside the old auto shop in downtown Montezuma. Jayne was inside, settling the bill, and Lynn was right back where she'd started her day: on the old bench outside the garage, knocking her head back against the building's ugly brown brick wall. She had a feeling once Jayne got Janis back, they were going to call it a day and take off, head out in the direction of Sacramento again, and at this point, Lynn was more than ok with that.
Her cell phone started to ring and she heaved a sigh, predicting another call from Trev. Then, a small, stupid, hopeful part of her thought it might be Sam, calling to apologize, calling to tell her that he wanted in on this whole track down John and hunt the big bad demon plan after all.
It was neither. Private Number flashed up at her from the phone screen, and Lynn heaved another sigh, rolling her eyes. She answered it anyway. "Hello, this is Lynn Juarez."
"Where are you?"
The voice was sharp, angrier than necessary, and with a little trace of street to it, more street than the speaker should have had, especially seeing how he should have none. Lynn about swallowed her tongue, sucking in a sharp, painful gasp of air. "Steve?"
"Yeah, it's me," her missing little brother replied impatiently, and Lynn saw red. "Where are you?"
"Me?" she snapped back, her shock gone and officially replaced by outrage. "How about where the fuck are you, you stupid jerk?"
There was a pause. "Ok," Steve said, less impatient this time. "I deserve that. Now tell me where you are, and I'll come to you."
"And what if we're on the other side of the country?" Lynn retorted snottily.
"Then we'll meet halfway!" Steve shot back, more impatient again. "Look, Lynn, I know you're pissed..."
"Pissed doesn't even remotely begin to cover it!" she exploded. "Do you have any idea what kind of crap you put us through? We've been worried sick! We thought you were dead!"
"Lynn..."
"I started smoking again!" she shouted.
Steve snorted, and she saw red again. "Like you ever stopped."
"I did too! I quit!"
"Sell that story to some other sucker, huh?"
"Where have you been?" Lynn demanded. "Why haven't you called?"
"Look, things have been rough," Steve explained, without really explaining anything at all. "I'll tell you when I see you. We got to be quick, though. Give me a location."
"Why don't you give me a location?"
"This isn't a game, all right? Tell me where you are!"
"You really have a lot of nerve," Lynn retorted frostily. "You don't want to play games? Then why'd you start this bullshit hide-and-go-seek exercise to begin with?"
"If I wanted to get my ass chewed out, I'd have called Jaynie!" Steve retorted. "Yell at me all you want once we're together, all right? Just tell me where you are. It's important."
"You are going to get your ass chewed out regardless!" Lynn snapped. "Just wait until she gets her hands on you!"
"Look, I'm sorry!" Steve exclaimed, and Lynn was a little taken aback by the apology. "All right? I'm sorry. I'll explain everything when I see you. Where are you?"
Lynn took a deep, steadying breath through her nose and let it out slowly. "Montezuma, Iowa."
"Where are you staying?"
Lynn heaved a sigh, and glanced up and down the main road, and then rattled off the address of the crappy little motel they'd booked. "There's a bar next door," she added. "We can meet there."
"I'll be there in four hours."
He hung up the phone.
Lynn stared at her display screen with wide, wild brown eyes, glaring at the Private Number that stared back at her. He'd called out of the blue, demanded a location, gave her no way to contact him, and then hung up on her. And worse, she'd given him the location, let him do things his way, let him be the same old selfish Steve, who always needed everything to be on his terms.
"Stupid jerk," she whispered at the phone.
The door to the garage swung open, and Jayne stepped out, keys jingling in her hand. "Truck's fixed," she announced. "We ready to go?"
Lynn bit her lip, looking up slowly from the phone. Jayne frowned at her as she met her eyes, and Lynn cringed a little. "Steve called."
Jayne's hand, the one jingling her keys, fell limp at her side. She blinked at Lynn, slumping a little against the building's brick wall. "What?"
"Steve called," Lynn said again, and for some reason, she thought she might cry. "He said he's going to meet us here."
"Here?" Jayne echoed. "In Montezuma?"
"Yeah," Lynn nodded, inhaling shakily. "I don't... I don't have a number. I can't call him back."
She wasn't sure why that detail seemed so important, but it did. Jayne ignored the comment, still leaning all her weight on the wall, her eyes fixed on the sidewalk, and she was clearly working through the new information, coming up with a plan and schooling her face to not show signs of shock or concern or happiness. It might have annoyed her, under different circumstances, but at the moment, Lynn actually really wanted Jayne to take over and be her calm, rational self, because Lynn wasn't sure she was capable of being any of that.
"Are we staying?" Lynn asked, too quickly, words tumbling and jumbling out of her like a running faucet. "Are we going to sit here and wait? He's such a jerk! I just... we're staying, right?"
Jayne slowly took a seat on the bench beside her. "Of course we're staying," she replied calmly.
"Really?" Lynn returned, even though literally three seconds ago she'd been advocating for that very thing. "We just let him get away with being Steve? With driving us crazy for over six months, scaring the crap out of us... and he just gets to sail back in, on his terms, making his demands..."
"You're right. He's an inconsiderate, self-absorbed jerk," Jayne replied evenly, and Lynn snorted out a high-pitched, hysterical laugh. "But... everything we've done for the past several months has been about finding him. Making sure he's safe. That doesn't change. Of course we're staying. Of course we wait."
Lynn nodded. "Of course," she echoed. "We wait."
Jayne pushed herself off the bench and headed around the corner of the building without another word, keys jingling again, presumably to get her truck. Lynn watched her go, and then she blew her bangs off her forehead. She felt a little sick to her stomach.
She wrestled her pack of cigarettes out of her jacket, and lit another one.
Dean had a hard time believing that the townspeople of Burkitsville were even remotely innocent.
Oh, sure. He supposed it was possible. It was possible they didn't know about the freaky scarecrow. It was possible they didn't know the thing did... uh... something weird to innocent couples every April. Hell, the scarecrow could be causing the cars to crap out, luring the young men and women into its orchard, devouring them and making suits out of their skin all on its own.
But Dean doubted it.
He especially doubted it now. Where were the couples' cars? What about their clothes and luggage? Why was nothing being reported? It had to be the townspeople, cleaning up after their resident evil scarecrow. One look at the red SUV being worked on by the gas station man, and he'd known who his villains were. Emily, the gasman's niece, could smile pretty and talk up her nice small town in the boonies all she wanted, but Dean knew there was something wrong with this town. He knew that nobody anywhere could ever be this nice.
The only question left was why? Why were they helping the thing? What was in it for them?
After Emily finished filling up his gas tank, Dean marched right into Scotty's Cafe, his ears full of Emily's babble about her town being blessed and his head full of thoughts of saving this latest young couple from being sacrificed to an evil scarecrow. That was what he'd decided he was looking at; some sort of ritual sacrifice involving that creepy ass scarecrow in the orchard, and when he found the young couple in the cafe, devouring the kind of spread a Death Row inmate gets on their last night before the injection, he was certain he was right. Scotty, who Dean remembered being quite the opposite of friendly, was fixing the young man and woman with a huge friendly smile, and giving them apple pie on the house.
"Hiya, Scotty," he greeted the diner owner with a cocky smirk. Scotty glared at him. "I'll get a coffee, black."
Still glaring, Scotty headed for the kitchen. Dean plopped down at the next table over from the young couple. "Some of that pie too!" he called after Scotty. Then he glanced at the couple, who ignored him, concentrating on their feast. "How you doing?" he asked, hoping he sounded friendly. "Just passing through?"
They nodded. The man didn't seem too enthused, but the woman was friendlier. "Road trip," she grinned around a mouthful of pie.
"Mm. Yeah, me too."
The couple returned to their food, leaving Dean to contemplate his next move.
"I'm sure these people want to eat in peace."
Scotty had returned from the kitchen, bearing a pitcher of cider. He refilled the couple's glasses.
"Just a little friendly conversation," Dean replied.
Scotty gave him the skunk eye.
"Oh, and that coffee," he reminded the diner owner.
Still glaring, Scotty slunk off.
"So what brings you to town?" Dean asked the couple.
"We just stopped for gas," the woman replied. "And the guy at the gas station saved our lives."
"That right?"
"Yeah, one of our brake lines was leaking," the man spoke up. "We had no idea. So he's fixing it for us."
Dean nodded, a sinking feeling settling in his gut. "Nice people."
"Yeah," the man agreed.
"So how long until you're up and running?"
"Sun down."
That couple needed to be on the road long before then.
"Really? To fix a brake line?" Dean didn't have any trouble sounding skeptical as he leaned towards the other two conspiratorially - he didn't believe anything was wrong with their car at all. "You know, I know a thing or two about cars. I can probably have you up and running in about an hour. Wouldn't charge you anything."
The man was getting uncomfortable. "You know, thanks a lot," his wife cut in. "But I think we'd rather have a mechanic do it."
"Right," Dean smiled.
They smiled back and returned to their food.
"You know, it's just that these roads, they're not real safe. At night."
"I'm sorry?" the woman asked.
Dean could already tell it was a lost cause from the looks they were giving him, but he tried anyway. "I know it sounds strange, but… you might be in danger."
The woman frowned. "We're trying to eat," the man said, giving Dean a nasty look. "Ok?"
"Yeah," Dean said as they turned their backs on him, clearly irritated and unsettled by his warnings. He stared at the couple's red and white checked tablecloth, suddenly acutely aware of how much he missed his brother. Sam wouldn't have had any trouble convincing these people. "You know," he went on, half to himself. "My brother could give you this puppy-eyed look, and you'd just buy right into it."
The couple looked still more uncomfortable, but Dean barely noticed. He was talking to himself now.
"My friend, Jayne, though," he chuckled, shaking his head. "She'd probably just... well, hit you."
He got a couple of glares. Then the door to the diner swung open, and in walked the local sheriff. Dean swore under his breath.
"Thanks for coming out, Sheriff," Scotty said, suddenly reappearing from the swinging kitchen door and making a beeline for the police officer.
The cop sauntered over to Dean's table, that contemptible cocksure policeman authority oozing from every pore. Dean instantly hated him. "I'd like a word, please," the cop informed him, his hands on his hips.
"Come on," Dean returned in annoyance. "I'm having a bad day already."
The cop leaned into his face. "You don't want to make it worse."
Twenty minutes later, amid flashing lights and whining sirens, Dean roared out of town with the sheriff on his tail. The Impala crossed the town line, and the cop wheeled into the dust on the side of the road, making a sharp, precarious turn around, and then the squad car sped back towards town.
Dean drove only a little bit further, rounding a bend in the road, and then he pulled over into the brush, swearing. He parked and banged his head on the back of the seat. Damn his luck. He was reaching for his phone before he knew what was happening. He was tired, he was irritated, and he was mucking up this job big time. He missed his brother. He missed Jayne. Hell, he even missed Lynn.
He flipped his cell phone open, scrolling down through the address book. But when he reached Sam's name, he froze. He stared at the screen for a few minutes. Then he cussed again, and chickened out. But he didn't put the phone away. He scrolled back up, to Jayne's name on the contact list, and he stared at her name a moment, thumb hovering over the screen.
Then he set his mouth in a determined line and he called Jayne.
"All in."
The middle aged man pushed his money forward, looking only half certain about the decision he'd made. Lynn raised an eyebrow at the man sitting across the table from her. "All in?" she repeated, biting her lower lip.
He smirked. "That's right, little lady."
She eyed her cards and then eyed him. "All in," she agreed with a small nod, and then pushed her money in too.
They were sitting in a hole-in-the-wall bar, dark and cramped, with booths and little tables crammed into every available space. Her poker partner was attractive, even though he had at least ten, probably more like twenty years on her. His name was Ted, and the laugh lines on his face seemed to be arranged aesthetically, creased in a picture-perfect way, so that he maintained as much youth and handsomeness as possible. He had soft, kind brown eyes, and one hell of a smile. It was the sort of smile she figured Dean Winchester would be wearing a couple of decades down the road.
When Lynn and her stepsister had stepped into Montezuma's local tavern, they'd taken a small back table hoping to avoid unwanted attention. Despite that, Ted had sat down mere minutes after they had. He'd asked Lynn her name, her origins, and then bought her a beer. Jayne had left moments later, visibly annoyed. And Lynn, believing it a shame to waste an opportunity, had asked Ted to play a game of poker.
Now Ted was smirking broader. He slapped his cards down on the table. "How do you like that?" he asked triumphantly. "Straight."
Lynn widened her eyes at the cards on the table. "Wow."
He continued to smirk.
Lynn breathed in through her teeth, and then laid out her hand on the table as well. "Well, gee, Ted," she said. "And all I have are these four aces."
Ted was taken aback. He blinked, looking from Lynn's cards to his own.
"I thought you said you weren't so good at this," he accused her, raising an eyebrow.
Lynn shrugged, affecting innocence. "Must be my lucky day."
He shook his head as she scooped up her winnings. "You just about cleaned out my wallet, little lady."
"Sorry," she said, smiling brightly.
Ted got to his feet and gave her another smirk. She didn't miss the way he his eyes dropped down to the neckline on her sweater. "Well, it's been a pleasure losin' to you, Lynn."
She smiled back. Lynn even found herself eyeing his backside as he walked away from the table and approached the bar. Then the scrape of chair legs on the hard wood floor drew her attention away from the older man, and Lynn turned her head to see Jayne sitting down beside her.
"Flirting with the locals?" Jayne asked.
Lynn smirked. "More like taking their money. Look what I won." She fanned out Ted's bills, her smirk becoming decidedly wicked, and displayed them for the benefit of her sister. "Poker is my game."
Jayne whistled, eyeing Lynn's winnings. "Well, look at you playing the breadwinner."
"Are you going to make me a roast?" Lynn quipped, and Jayne gave her a dark glower. "Just kidding. I wouldn't dare eat a damn thing you made."
Jayne ignored the crack at her expense, and glanced nervously at the bar's entrance. "He's late."
Lynn glanced at the door as well, and then looked down at her cards. "Maybe he chickened out."
"That bastard," Jayne spat, and Lynn looked up at her in astonishment. "If he made us wait here for over four damn hours just to not show, I will hunt him down and light him on fire."
Finally, after months of worry and non-committal grunts, Jayne was pissed. She would have been glad for the company a few weeks earlier, but now Lynn wasn't sure what to say to Jayne. She had nothing to offer in the way of comfort, and nothing to add in the way of agreement, so she said nothing. She sipped on the beer that Ted had bought her and nervously shuffled her cards.
Jayne sighed, taking a gulp from her own beer, and wrenched her eyes from the door. She eyed the cards. Lynn smiled, shrugging. "Go Fish?"
The absurdity of playing a child's card game under the circumstances was enough to pull a smile from her stepsister's tight lips. "Ok," she replied, shrugging a shoulder.
Lynn dealt. Jayne frowned at her cards as Lynn swept her own off the table and tried to figure out her first move. Then Lynn glanced at the door.
"Got any threes?" Jayne asked.
Lynn didn't respond right away. She was distracted by the man standing in the open doorway.
He was about Sam's age, but much shorter. Shorter than Jayne, too. He was stocky and muscular. One of those navy uniform shirts was visible under his open leather jacket. His jeans were faded and worn out in the knees. Small diamonds hung from his earlobes. In many ways, he looked the same as she remembered. Same tanned, olive complexion, same stormy gray eyes, same thin black goatee, and he had that same hard ass glare on his face. But he was different, too. He'd shaved off his dark hair, and now his bald head shone in the overhead light by the door.
"No threes, yes threes… give me a nod or something," Jayne said in annoyance.
Lynn glanced at her sister, and then nodded at the door. "Looks like you won't be lighting anyone on fire just yet," she announced.
Jayne blinked. Her cards slipped from her hands, fluttering down on the tabletop. She turned around to look where Lynn was staring.
Stephen Juarez made his way across the dark, smoky bar, his eyes focused intently on his two sisters. Lynn swallowed a lump in her throat. She wasn't entirely sure what to do. Her cards hung loosely from her hand. She sat on the edge of her chair, considering getting up and failing to follow through.
Jayne got to her feet. She stood up straight, pushing the chair back with a loud scrape, like a big man with an anger problem itching for a bar brawl. Steve reached the table, pausing before it, jamming his hands into his coat pockets. There was a long moment of silence as they all just stared at each other. Steve chewed the inside of his mouth, eyeing his sisters. His chin was tilted up proudly, attempting to disguise the twitchy fear in his eyes. Lynn just stared at her brother with her mouth open.
"Lynn," Stephen nodded at her. He looked at Jayne and visibly tensed. "Jaynie."
She looked nervously at Jayne next, and she winced when she saw Jayne clench both her jaw and her fists. Steve didn't seem to see it though; he didn't seem to realize he was on thin ice. He smirked the half nervous, half cocky grin he usually reserved for these types of confrontations. "So, uh… guess it's long time, no see, huh?" he quipped.
That's when Jayne hauled off and slugged their little brother in the face.
