"Hey, Dean. Look at –" Sam started to say, but his brother, eyes closed like he was in some kind of trance, half dancing and half shadow-boxing to the Steppenwolf tune blaring out of the black '67 Chevy Impala's open windows, nearly punched Sam in the ear. He ducked. "Watch it!"
"Oh. Sorry, Sammy," Dean said, not sounding sorry at all. He turned on his heel and plopped next to Sam against the Impala's trunk. "You know what? I feel good today." He twisted the cap off a Lone Star Lager with a flourish.
They'd parked on the dirt shoulder of a small back road beneath the spreading branches of an oak to stretch their legs and work the kinks out of their backs before it got too hot. For miles, there was nothing to be seen but cotton sprouting in fields.
The way Dean had been running them the past couple of weeks, Sam thought he'd have been happy at the chance to work another job. He repositioned his laptop so that Dean could view the screen without glare from the sun, brutal even in May. He cleared his throat. "Well, as I was saying –"
"Naw, I mean it," Dean interrupted. He tilted the bottle, taking a long pull. "I don't mean just okay. Or fine. I mean good."
"Great," Sam said, not sure how he was supposed to respond to that, "but would you look at this? I found –"
"This place is awesome," Dean went on. "Best steak in the States. Everything in Texas is huge. It was this big, Sam. This big." He measured a space between his hands about two feet apart and then began air drumming.
"Dude. I was there. You're exaggerating. Now, would you get off your food porn channel? I'm trying to –"
"You missed out, little brother. What was that rabbit nonsense you were eating? I bet I could yank up tastier stuff from the side of the road."
"Dean."
"Man, I'm getting hungry again. When's lunch?"
"Dean."
"What can I do for you, Sammich?" Dean asked in the most unconvincingly innocent tone imaginable.
Sam clamped his mouth shut. He glared at his older brother, working to keep his lips sealed while he waited for Dean to get the bug out of his ass.
Staring directly at him, Dean took another pull of his beer, his eyes – the same color, though not the same shape, as Sam's – catching the sunlight so that they twinkled. Daring him to say it.
"Are you done?" Sam asked quietly.
Dean grinned like a satyr. "Not even a little."
"Look, if this is about Christine –"
"This is absolutely about Christine."
"I couldn't help it! She was taking one of us home and you know it. She just preferred not to go home with a . . . shortie."
Dean leaped upright. "I am not short!"
"From up here you are," Sam said.
It was Dean's turn to scowl. He finished his beer and then stuffed the empty bottle into their dad's ancient metal cooler. The ice crunched and popped. He said something under his breath that sounded like, "Three effing inches."
"Still feelin' good, Dean-o?" Sam taunted.
"All right, whatever, you douche," Dean muttered. He locked the cooler and wiped his hands down his jeans. "Just you wait until I tell your little Hell-buddy."
Sam laughed softly through his nose. "So, you plan to inform a demon that you don't even like that I'm, what, cheating on her?" He'd already won, he didn't need to rub it in, and there was no use trying to explain Ruby when complicated didn't even come close. "No, you know what? Never mind." He shook his head, grinning, and pointed at the laptop's screen, where he'd opened three separate articles. "Colorado. There has been a string of disappearances from nightclubs in the three major college towns, all within the past four days. Nine vanished from Fort Collins, six from Boulder, and five from Golden."
Dean threw him a blank look. "And? What's to say any of these disappearances are related? People go missing all the time, Sam. College is stressful, you said it yourself. Kids go off their heads and run off. They turn into low-level managers at Biggerson's, they go full nudist commune in Key West, they commit suicide. What's to say this is our kind of deal?"
Sam gave him that one. "Maybe nothing," he admitted. He clicked the touchpad a few times and brought up a fourth article. "But on the same night the School of Mines students went missing in Golden, four more disappeared from a nightclub in Denver. Two of them were students at DU."
"I can tell you're trying to make a point, but I'm not seeing it," Dean said flatly. "Tell me why you want me to drive over nine hundred miles to Colorado."
Sam lifted his fingers from the aluminum laptop, which was growing dangerously hot under the sun, but kept it steady against his thighs with the edges of his palms. "Again, this may be nothing, but hear me out. Arithmancy, a form of divination using numbers, was practiced by the ancient Greeks, Chaldeans, and Hebrews. If we look at the numbers of those who have gone missing, nine, six, and five, then four more on the same night, different location . . . It's written in the Book of Genesis that Methuselah lived for nine hundred sixty-nine years. Or, we could look at modern numerology. It's based on the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher, Pythagoras. Pythagoras was a brilliant mathematician, but he wasn't just interested in quantitative solutions. He believed that the physical world comprises the energetic vibrations of numbers. It's why maybe you keep looking at a clock that reads eleven-eleven, for instance, or your lucky number starts showing up everywhere, or suddenly you meet a bunch of people with the same birthdate." He raised his eyebrows at his brother. "Maybe these specific numbers, these specific locations, these specific people, have something to do with one of the sixty-six seals."
"Okay, you know what I heard just now?" Dean clapped a hand on Sam's shoulder and acted like he was going to shove him off the Impala. "Numbers blah blah some really old guy blah blah New Age crap."
Sam sighed. "According to the news reports, there are no clues. No surveillance footage. No suspects. The disappearances aren't limited to individuals; couples went missing together in most cases. All are in the same age range. Twelve women and twelve men. Someone, or something, is preying on college kids. Considering we have no idea what the seals are, or where they are, and considering there are a possible six hundred seals, I think it's worth checking out. And let's face it, we've driven further for less."
"All right!" Dean picked up the cooler. "You say there's a job in Colorado, then to Colorado we'll go. But if we're gonna go, let's go. I need a burger."
Back to the food. Sam tucked his laptop safely under his arm. "You're not going to forgive me for last night, are you?" he called after his brother's retreating back.
"Nope!" Dean buckled the cooler in the back seat, then slid into his baby's driver's seat. He reached up through the open window and slapped the roof twice. "Come on, Sammy-boy, we're wasting daylight!"
Sam chuckled. Warm prairie wind combed through his hair, flicking it into his eyes. It took him fewer steps to reach the passenger door. It opened with the familiar loud creak. He folded his long legs into the space below the front seat and then reached between them to pack his laptop in his bag. Dean started the big car, listened in satisfaction a moment to the deafening diesel rumble, put it in reverse, and punched it. The engine growled in a ready-when-you-are kind of way as he shifted.
Together, the Winchesters drove toward the interstate ahead of a cloud of brown Texas dust, Jimi Hendrix licks pouring from the Impala's open windows.
..::~*~::..
Dean had long since switched the music off, but the slowing of the vehicle woke his brother anyway.
"Ooogrff," Sam said. He sat up, stretching and scrubbing the back of one hand into his eye. Under lowered brows, he blinked at the darkness outside the windshield, streaked with dust and neon. "Where are we?"
"Santa Fe," Dean said grandly, though his voice came out rougher than usual. He was feeling a little ooogrff himself. He'd made the first six hundred-something miles in one shot and he was fried. Though Sam could drive his baby, he didn't like Sam driving his baby, especially after that iPod atrocity, so he wanted to crash for his customary four hours before heading anywhere else.
In New Mexico, if it didn't have to be paved, it wasn't. He swung the Impala wide, tires crunching through sandy gravel, and then parked with a jerk. He adopted an accent meant to be Eastwood but probably came out closer to the Duke. "Welcome to the Silver Saddle Motel, cowboy."
"You need sleep. And a shower," Sam mumbled, still trying to get his bearings. Looking mildly confused, he studied a piece of wall art, the silhouette of a bull, composed of scraps from barn doors, plow handles, and a broken cartwheel. It stared down at them from pale yellow adobe plaster. The doors into the ranch-style building below it stood out like bruises, turquoise and garish in the neon glow.
Neither brother said anything about it. Sam knew what the inside of this place would look like the same as Dean did, but all they asked for were beds and indoor plumbing. It wasn't like they could afford the Hilton on credit card scams and hustling poker or pool. Not even in New Mexico.
"Get the bags?" Dean slammed his door.
"Mrgrpf."
Dean smirked. "Aw, is it past Sammy's bedtime?"
Sam, shuffling like a ghoul through the gravel, made a gesture that wasn't ASL and then disappeared behind the Impala's trunk lid. Then his shaggy head reappeared. "Ask if they have laundry services."
"Got it." Dean was already halfway to the office, fishing his real wallet, stocked with a fake ID, from his back pocket. They'd done this so many times before that he didn't even have to check this week's name on the bogus credit card he handed to the surly desk clerk.
He glanced around the office, amused by the helter-skelter décor. Red Spanish tiles underfoot, the planks of the counter branded with the word "Welcome," a dusty ristra hanging overhead, every available inch of wall covered with rodeo posters, animal skulls, rusted saddle bits and spurs, and sombreros, and a small but shiny flatscreen propped high in a corner, playing a Mexican soap opera in original Spanish. When he shifted his feet, his left elbow threatened to knock over a crooked postcard stand, but a folding chair overflowing with magazines on his right convinced him to stay put.
"Room twenty-two, Mister Penham, two singles for the night," the clerk said, handing back the card and a tiny folder containing the room keys. He then dismissed Dean from his notice, subsiding into his chair the way Jabba the Hutt oozed across his throne, his small eyes rolling toward the flatscreen. Somewhere behind him, a swamp cooler kicked on with a sad whine, doing nothing more than moving the air around.
As an afterthought, the clerk waved his hand vaguely over his shoulder. "Around back. Next to the laundry room. Quarters only. I don't have change."
"Thank you," Dean squinted at the brass-colored nametag pinned crookedly to a Hawaiian shirt, "José. That's a good one," he added, indicating the TV. "Monica leaves her husband for his son. The one dating her daughter."
José's focus drifted back toward Dean, who was trying not to laugh. José's thick-lipped mouth hung open slightly. He didn't say anything.
Apparently, no one had a sense of humor at two a.m. Tapping the card keys on the countertop, Dean thought it best to make his escape.
..::~*~::..
The dream grips him in the talons of a devil.
Strobing light. Flashes of tortured sight, longer stretches of absolute darkness.
Chains and rods pierce bodies like needles sewing buttons to a coat. Bone erupts through skin. Fluids stream from damaged organs.
Screams.
Blood-smeared vision.
His screams. His blood.
Their screams. Their blood.
Knives in his hands. Pliers. Saws. Red-hot wires. Hammers. Razors. Slick with thick, hot blood.
So much blood.
..::~*~::..
"Did you know dreams last anywhere from thirty seconds to forty-five minutes?" a much smaller, gawkier Sam had once asked him. His little brother, the Poindexter. "People usually have a dream every ninety minutes. Even though they feel like they last the whole night, all the dreams together add up to only about twenty percent of the time you're asleep."
Hell is like that too, Sammy. Four months up here was more like forty years down there. Forty years of souls on the rack. My soul. Other souls. The torture I endured, and the torture I gave. And every day of those forty years is still crammed in my flawed human head.
..::~*~::..
Dean sat up in the stuffy motel room, abs and lungs as tight as sailor-tied knots. He didn't bother trying to untangle his legs from the sheets. Instead, he leaned over the side of the bed, his hand sweeping near the floor. His fingers touched a glass bottle neck.
Sam's wry voice floated to him through the blackout curtain-induced dimness. "How about some breakfast first, Dean?"
Dean lowered the bottle, licking whisky off his lower lip. He psshhed in response to Sam's side-eye, despite the ache that stabbed his gut when the whisky landed in the bottom of his empty stomach. "Overrated."
Sam grinned so widely his dimples appeared. "Not these. Here. I bought them from a lady in the parking lot. Made them herself."
After digging in a wrinkled paper bag, he handed over a large to-go cup of coffee and a foil-wrapped burrito.
Dean willingly switched the burn of spirits for the burn of java. He sniffed the foil. Still warm. His stomach rumbled more happily. "Do I smell bacon?"
"You smell pork green chile."
"Even better." He took a bite. Through the steamy, spicy mouthful of eggs, potatoes, and cheese, he asked, "Get any further on your Pythagorean problem?"
"I think so." Dressed in his last clean shirt and jeans, his wet hair curling around his ears, Sam sat at the small table near the curtained window. Dad's journal lay open, but he spoke to the glowing laptop screen. "I've got a list of the missing persons. Twenty-two of them are twenty-two years old. In numerology, twenty-two is a Spiritual Master Builder on the material plane."
Dean lowered his coffee, incredulous. How did Sam say that kind of stuff with a straight face? "A what?"
"Yeah, this essay isn't going to win any scientific awards," Sam said with a flick of his eyebrow. He leaned closer to the screen and started reading off a website. " 'This is the "God" energy brought to the material plane and put into form. Because of its great power, the number twenty-two may result in outstanding ascendancy or disastrous downfall.
" 'The Master Number twenty-two symbolizes the principle of precision and balance. When it senses its full capacity as a "Master Builder," it can achieve what is hardly imaginable. The twenty-two can turn the most ambitious of dreams into reality –' "
"Stop, Sam," Dean groaned. He ran his hand down his sticky face. No more sweat. The dream had subsided, thank – well, thank God? "Does that mumbo-jumbo actually mean anything?"
Sam hesitated, gathering his thoughts. "Think of it as stacking the deck in their favor. If demons or witches or djinn or whatever are responsible for these disappearances, then they're preparing to do something big. Something very, very bad. And they're using these people as, I don't know, keys or ingredients of some sort. Probably sacrifices in a ritual."
"To do what?" Dean wedged the last third of his burrito into his mouth and clambered out of bed.
Sam shook his head, slowly, his eyes still aimed at the website. "I'll need more information to know that. I say we head for Denver, the site of the last four disappearances. Something about them doesn't seem to fit."
"You could just be making things up, Sammy," Dean said, crouched by his duffel, searching for his last clean clothes. It was getting a little ripe in there. "You know, the way people fit facts into a prophecy after the fact?"
"Yeah, I know." Sam closed the laptop and sat back with a sigh. He picked up his coffee with two hands, his expression distant. "I still think we should check it out."
"Got it." Dean headed for the bathroom. "We'll go as soon as I've showered. You're on laundry duty."
"What?" Sam glared at him, indignant, but Dean, grinning, shut the door.
A/N: Here we go, the true test. Writing in the Winchester's POV for the first time. How did I do? Does it work? Do you like it? Where do you think I might be going from here? X3
Reviewer Thanks! Topkicker26. Because you're AWESOME.
On your way out? Leave a review! Won't you please? Also, I'm looking for SPN fanfic recommendations. Tell me your favorites!
Cheers,
~ Anne