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Chapter Two
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Dean is up to his waist in viscera. Blood hot and sticky under his fingernails. In his hair. Iron on his tongue. A red hot butcher's hook squelches in his back, grilling the meat between his shoulder blades. He's being skinned, flayed alive by claws unseen. All he can hear is screaming. Dozens — hundreds — thousands of voices, ripping through his skin, organs, atoms. His eardrums are being torn to shreds by screams. Men's. Women's. His own. An iron poker sizzles in his belly, and his intestines boil.
Alastair's voice is there suddenly, cutting through the screams, filling him to the point of bursting. Pressing into every nook and cranny of Dean's soul. Shocking through him, sharp as anything.
He's you were so pretty in life, but I like you better this way.
He's I'm a goddamn Picasso; let's move your eyeballs to a new location, huh?
He's you taste delicious like this . He's come on, Dean, come join me and all this will be over.
Alastair knifes in and out of him, in every possible direction, from every possible direction. Tears and spit and snot and blood and bile pour out of him, all mixing together to form whatever's left of him. He's disgusting. A slithering thing at his own feet.
Come on, Dean, don't you want to have a little fun?
Dean wails, hooks embedding themselves through the bones of his wrists. Through the flesh of his cheeks. Through his Achilles tendons. He's strapped and spread, a writhing, sobbing caricature of a human. Hell's own Vitruvian Man.
Alastair's hand — abruptly solid — courses over the small of Dean's flayed back. Instinctively, Dean squirms and leans into the sensation, gasping and shivering, honing in on the first real touch he's felt in decades. The muscles in his wrists tear, barely a blip against the sea of pain roiling in every stripped nerve. Alastair's forehead — that's new, too; since when does Alastair have any parts not made of smoke? — presses to Dean's, his voice thrumming in the pit of Dean's bleeding stomach.
Come on, Dean, he beckons. A palm on Dean's neck. You don't have to stay there.
Dean can't see him. Alastair is nothing but black, or maybe he just scooped out Dean's eyes again.
Dean sags on the hooks like a gutted pig, the hand on his throat as tangible as the hot iron making his skin bubble. Alastair's fingers squeeze, and it feels warm and attentive as he chokes the breath from Dean's lungs.
Come with me, Dean. Alastair's voice is sickly sweet, the squeal of a knife through bone, butterflies feeding on rotting meat. Dean can barely hear the screams any more.
The hand pulls away and Dean gulps sour air. Immediately he shudders, aching with the lack of touch. The burning, ripping, searing pain sweeps back in, and he grieves the loss as profoundly as any death.
There's a grating sound of winding chains and every hook in Dean's body yanks tight. A scream is torn from his chest like a vine from a tree it's killing, and he feels lighter and lighter and lighter until he's ripped into halves. Three pieces. Five. Eight. Fourteen. More.
Little bits of Dean go flying, scattering and splattering and spraying. He drips down walls. He hangs from swinging hooks and seeps into cracks. It's nowhere he hasn't been before.
When he's reassembled, he half expects his body parts to have been reattached in all the wrong places — knees for elbows, head in his groin, whatever the demons find particularly funny at the moment — but instead he's whole and complete. He doesn't trust it. He's on his knees, shins sticking to the gore on the ground, hooks hanging nearby, dripping.
Alastair is above him. He's come with me, you pathetic sack of shit.
He's all you have to do is say you don't want to go back on the rack.
He's all you have to do is say 'no more'.
He's a possessive hand winding roughly through Dean's blood-soaked hair, fingers scraping over Dean's scalp, wrenching Dean's head back. Forcing Dean to look him in the eyes.
Alastair looks like an actual person, and Dean's so happy to see another human face, he doesn't care that the eyes flicker black.
Dean reaches up and clutches at Alastair's arm, clinging like a child to the first thing to touch him in thirty years that isn't red-hot metal. He doesn't know if Alastair actually feels human or if he's just too far gone to be able to tell the difference.
Come on, Dean! Come on, pretty boy!
Alastair takes a scalpel and slices down the side of Dean's neck, and Dean lets him. He carves into Dean's chest, and Dean lets him. He cuts Dean's ear off, and Dean lets him.
Dean has fallen in love with every flavor of pain. He clings to Alastair's human chest and human shoulders and human hands, relishing in the touch of skin on skin as Alastair neatly removes a wedge of muscle from Dean's love handle, as he would the rind from an orange.
And then, as easily as he'd inflicted any variety of torture, Alastair pulls Dean close, into a firm embrace. And it's been thirty years. It's been thirty years. And Dean sobs into Alastair's chest and lets himself be held. And Alastair feels so solid and real and human that Dean can't let go, can't push away. And his fingers dig into Alastair's body like he's offering every kind of shelter.
His head presses to Alastair's collarbone. Alastair's voice goes horribly gentle, pouring down Dean's back like honey.
Come with me.
And Dean says yes. And it's the easiest thing in the world.
Good boy.
Dean's body stitches itself back together as he follows Alastair's grip up, up, up to standing. Alastair's hands are tight on his shoulders as he turns Dean around to face the rack, where there's already a soul waiting for him.
The soul is small and quivering, fresh from the topsoil. A woman who sold herself to cure her baby daughter's cancer. Dean doesn't care. He smiles, and begins peeling her skin off in strips.
Cas wakes sometime after two in the morning and finds himself staring up at the popcorn ceiling in the soft orange light of the street lamps outside. This is far from the most comfortable bed he's ever been in, but it's warm under the scratchy blankets and low-thread-count sheets with Dean sleeping beside him. Cas rolls onto his side, resettling with an arm tucked up under his pillow.
He still hasn't gotten used to needing sleep, and has found in the month since the Empty spit him back out that he usually wakes up a few times each night, as though his newly human body hasn't quite remembered yet how to stay asleep for more than an hour or two. So he lays there and lets his mind wander, trusting that sleep will eventually return before dawn.
Dean is the opposite, deep in sleep with his mouth slightly open and his face squashed heavily into the pillow. His eyes flick back and forth underneath the lids. A muscle in his cheek spasms. Cas studies the contour of his nose and can't help running a finger down the curve of his jaw. Dean doesn't stir. For once, he's not snoring.
Cas closes his eyes and drifts, listening to Dean's breathing and the occasional rumble of a big rig passing outside of the motel. He doesn't think he'll ever get tired of this kind of peace. The only thing that would improve this moment, Cas decides, is for them to be at home in the bunker rather than a seedy motel a block away from a mall.
The peace only lasts another minute.
He's just about to drop back into real sleep when the sound of Dean's breath hitching in his chest catches his ear. Cas's eyes open again. The muscles of Dean's face have gone taut, frown lines deepening and jaw clenching. His hand twitches into a fist where it lays on the sheet between them. Cas can hear his teeth grinding, and another breath shudders out of him.
Cas places a hand on Dean's shoulder. Everything beneath Dean's skin is tense, a tightly coiled spring. He shows no signs of waking up, so Cas ventures a soft "Dean?" barely above a whisper.
Dean's only response is to flinch.
Cas is familiar with Dean's sleep patterns, has watched over him more than enough times to know what Dean's bad dreams look like, and he has no intention of letting Dean's nightmare continue. "Dean," he says, more firmly, rubbing a palm up and down Dean's bicep. When that doesn't work, Cas resorts to giving Dean a solid shake. "Dean! Wake up."
Dean's eyes snap open like he's been shot, and he yells, jerking back so violently that he falls straight off the edge of the bed.
Cas very nearly jumps right out of his skin. "Dean!" he says quickly, sitting bolt upright. "It's me!"
Dean's hands are braced on the grimy carpet, chest heaving, eyes blown wide like he doesn't quite know where he is or who he's looking at.
"Dean?" Cas says, as gently as he can through his own terror. He's seen Dean startled awake for every possible reason; jerked out of a deep sleep by Jack shaking his shoulder, by Cas hovering hesitantly over him, by the noise of traffic pulling him out of a nap in the Impala's front seat. He's seen Dean wake from nightmares countless times.
He's never seen Dean wake up like this.
"Dean," he repeats, carefully sliding out of bed and placing his feet flat on the floor. There's a feral, detached glint in Dean's eye that makes Cas think invading his personal space might not be a smart idea, but he doesn't get a chance to test the theory.
Dean scrambles to his feet, giving Cas a wide berth, and makes for the bathroom.
The door slams shut. Then, the only sound is Dean vomiting noisily into the toilet.
Cas rubs a clammy palm over his face, fingers digging into the edge of the mattress. His heart thuds away in his chest. "What the hell?" he mutters under his breath.
More vomit splashes into the toilet. A beat of silence, then a flush. The tap runs.
Drawing a deep, steadying breath, Cas stands and approaches the bathroom door. He knocks softly. "Dean? Are you okay?"
Dumb question.
He hears Dean gargle and spit. "Fine," he replies, a bit hoarse, a bit breathless.
Cas swallows, then gently pushes the door open. Dean is hunched over the sink, elbows on the porcelain and forehead resting in his hand. He's splashed water on his face; his chin is dripping.
Cas leans against the doorframe, studying the rigid line of Dean's vertebrae through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. "What was that?" he ventures.
Dean's eyes are closed, like he's avoiding his own reflection in the mirror. He doesn't open them. "Just a bad dream, Cas. Humans have bad dreams."
Not like that, Cas wants to say. Instead, he presses his lips together and watches quietly as Dean finally straightens to brush his teeth.
"Quit looking at me like that," Dean says, spitting a glob of toothpaste into the sink, but there's no bite in his tone. He just sounds tired.
Cas doesn't — won't — apologize for being worried, but he obliges and backs off. "Come back to bed when you're ready."
He returns to the creaky mattress and scratchy sheets, but refuses to close his eyes until Dean comes back from the bathroom nearly twenty minutes later. Cas's heart is still beating far too quickly for him to sleep, and when Dean finally slips into bed, rolling over to face away from Cas with his shoulders pulled in tight, it only makes Cas worry more.
"Are you sure you're all right?" he dares to ask, voice hushed in the dark.
Light flares across the window shades from a car turning outside in the parking lot, engine rumbling through the wall.
When Dean doesn't answer, Cas presses, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"What do you think?" comes the gruff answer, halfway muffled by Dean's pillow.
Cas clamps his mouth shut, glowering at Dean's back. I'm just trying to help, he wants to snap. But if Dean's not ready to talk then he's certainly not ready to argue, and Cas really doesn't want to fight about anything when he doesn't even know what they would be fighting about. Instead, he huffs out a sigh and turns his face into his own pillow, and tries to go back to sleep.
He dozes fitfully in and out for an hour or so, and the next time he opens his eyes Dean has left the bed again.
Cas sits bolt upright in an instant, his mind already spinning with possible scenarios — Dean in the bathroom puking up his guts again, Dean taken off in the Impala without so much as a word, Dean possessed, Dean—
Dean is standing by the window, plastic tumbler of scotch in hand, peering through the curtain and across the parking lot.
Cas scrapes a hand over his face, more exhausted now than when he went to bed the evening before. "What are you doing?"
Dean glances over his shoulder. Shrugs. He takes a slow gulp from the cup, then waves Cas off. "Couldn't sleep. I'm fine, Cas, go back to bed."
Cas doesn't listen and instead hoists himself up to sit back against the headboard. The clock on the bedside table glows a menacing 3:43am. On the low dresser at the other end of the room is the bottle of liquor that Dean apparently brought with them, already a quarter empty.
By the time the clock reads 3:50, Dean hasn't moved a muscle. He stands like a sentry, watching vehicles trickle past on the road outside the motel.
Something nervous and hair-raising settles into the pit of Cas's stomach — he's seen Dean act like this before. In Purgatory. And after, too, in night after restless night when Dean didn't trust the floor beneath his feet and was half-convinced the world around him was some kind of hallucination. He spent long hours pacing like a wolf in a zoo, wearing paths into shabby motel carpets and the bunker tiles, seeing monsters in every empty corner and hearing snarls in the silence.
Dean downs the remaining scotch. The plastic cup hangs loosely from his fingers.
"Do you want to watch TV?" Cas suggests, grasping at straws for something — anything — to bring Dean back to a place of calm.
Dean shakes his head, automatic, like he barely heard the question.
At that moment, Cas decides that what they need is a place with light, and people, and food. He pulls his phone from the charger on the bedside table and does a quick Google search.
Before Dean has the chance to refill his cup again, Cas tells him to get dressed.
Dean blinks at him, eyebrows snapping together. "What?"
"We're getting breakfast," Cas says, already up and rummaging through his duffel for pants and a shirt. "I'm hungry, and I need eggs."
Dean snorts, but does as he's told.
There are only two eateries open at this hour. The first is Denny's, which — ew. Even Dean's standards aren't quite that low. The second is a small diner on the waterfront, and they have to drive back over the bridge onto the peninsula in order to reach it. The stars are out, the winter dawn still a long way off, and Commercial Street is dark. Becky's Diner shines like a beacon, a blinking neon sign and a handful of cars already gathered like animals at a watering hole.
Dean and Cas climb out of the Impala and hunch their shoulders against the bitter cold, dashing across the sidewalk before their fingers can turn blue. Inside is bright and warm and coffee-scented. Carhartt-clad fishermen are scattered down the counter, grumbling into their mugs before they head out to their boats for the day.
Cas snags a booth near the kitchen while Dean excuses himself to the bathroom, and a girl in combat boots and more earrings than he can count sets a pair of menus down on the table.
"What do you recommend for food?" he asks her before she can walk away.
The girl tucks her pen behind her ear. "Well, you could do the Hobson's Wharf Special. It's the most food you can get in the state for eight bucks."
"That's perfect," Cas agrees.
By the time Dean comes back from the bathroom, looking just a bit more bright-eyed, there are two mugs of steaming coffee sitting on the table. He takes a long gulp, wincing when it burns his throat.
"I told her we'd take two specials," Cas says, studying the crappy wall decor and the grizzled patrons lined up at the counter. It's warm and comfortable here; exactly the sort of place someone might want to start their morning before spending the rest of their day working out in the bitter cold. A newspaper sits at the end of the counter, and Cas slides out of the booth for a moment to steal it.
"It's cute that you know my order," Dean replies with a wink, skimming the menu anyways.
"You are a creature of habit, Dean." Cas opens the newspaper and flips through it looking for anything about Fred Sargent's murder, or anything else strange.
While Cas reads, Dean flags down the waitress again. "Hey, can I get a beer along with the special?"
The girl stares at him like he's got three heads, and Cas looks up, alarm tugging at the pit of his stomach. "Are you joking?" asks the waitress.
"Uh… no? Your menu says you serve beer, and I'd like one. What's the big deal?"
"Sir, it's four in the morning on a Sunday. We can't sell alcohol until noon."
"What? That's stupid."
The girl only shrugs. "Stupid or not, it's the law. If you have an issue with it, you're welcome to take it up with the governor." Without leaving room for Dean to protest any further, she whisks off to another table.
Dean watches her leave with a distinctly irritated expression, and worry twists in Cas's gut.
"You already had quite a bit to drink this morning," he says quietly.
Dean rolls his eyes, his lip curling. "Since when are you my nagging girlfriend?"
Cas grits his teeth and pointedly returns his attention to his newspaper. "You don't have to be rude."
"Whatever," is all Dean says, and sips his coffee.
Eileen wakes with the dawn, the window of the motel room glowing a chilly pink. She sits up in bed, stretching and working the kinks out of her back from the terrible mattress, and blearily rubs the gunk from her eyes. Sam is not in bed, and she blinks a few times to force her eyes to focus before she sees him sitting at the small table in the corner, already dressed and sharpening their machetes.
"Morning," she signs through a yawn.
He smiles and waves back.
"What are you doing?"
Sam sets the blade he'd been working on back down on the tabletop. "I figure if we're hunting a vamp nest, there's no harm in making sure everything's ready."
"I meant," Eileen says through a yawn, "why are you doing it so early? Sun's barely up."
Sam shrugs. "I don't know; couldn't sleep. I didn't wake you up, did I?"
Eileen makes a face, teasing. "It's not like I could hear you." She pushes the covers back and stands, shivering slightly.
Going to the window, she pushes the curtains aside to let more light in. Tendrils of ice creep along the corners of the pane, feathering in ornate patterns across the glass. Their room is on the first floor and looking straight out into the parking lot, where the pavement glitters and the cars — including the Valiant — are all encased in a layer of frost.
Eileen frowns, worry tugging at the back of her head. "Sam," she says. "The Impala's gone."
Sam blinks and rises from the table. "It is?"
She leaves the window and grabs her phone from where she left it on the bedside table. Where are you guys? she texts Cas.
The reply comes back quickly, the phone buzzing in her hand. Got an early breakfast, he says. Join us if you're hungry. The message is immediately followed by the address of a diner on the Peninsula.
Eileen relaxes, waving a hand at Sam. "It's fine; they just went to get something to eat."
Sam is already reaching for his coat where it's hung on the back of his chair. "I'll start the car while you get dressed."
"Don't you want to go for your run first?"
Sam shakes his head, picking up Eileen's car keys from the dresser. "Nah, I'm not really feeling it. I'll get the car warmed up."
As Sam steps outside, Eileen only shrugs and paws through her bag for a set of clothes. She wouldn't want to go running in these temperatures either.
They meet up with Cas and Dean at the diner, sliding into the booth and leaving very little elbow room. It takes only a minute or two for Eileen to notice the tension, the hard set to Dean's jaw as he drinks what's likely at least his fourth cup of coffee. Every few seconds, Cas glances at Dean from the corner of his eye, worrying as obviously as the sunlight shining through the diner window.
"What's up with him?" she signs to Cas.
He touches his forehead, then turns his palm outward in reply. "No idea."
The exchange is silent, but Dean notices from his spot next to Eileen and spits, "Will you two quit talking about me right in front of me? Jesus."
Eileen refrains from poking fun at Dean's lack of sign language comprehension; it's not as funny as it was yesterday. Instead, she only raises her hands placatingly. "Sorry," she says, and changes the subject. "I think we should check out Preble Street right after this, while they're still serving breakfast. People are going to scatter if we wait too long."
"Sounds good," agrees Cas, then calls the waitress back over for a coffee refill.
Eileen asks for a fruit bowl, and Sam orders nothing. "Aren't you hungry?" she asks him.
Sam only dismissively shakes his head and pulls out his phone to recheck the address of the resource center.
An hour later, the four of them trudge up the hill toward the city hub, breath fogging in front of their noses and cheeks flushed pink. The morning sunlight has turned from rosy to golden, illuminating the buckled brick sidewalks beneath their feet as they cross Monument Square, the statue of Nike stoically greeting the day with her sword in hand.
There are already a number of people out and about, heading to work or ducking into coffee shops that are just opening their doors. Eileen watches a man push a shopping cart full of empty plastic bottles across Congress Street, and spots another curled up inside a sleeping bag in the doorway to a consignment shop.
Once they cross Congress, the hill slopes downward again, and it's only two blocks before they find the resource center. They recognize it not by the sign at the top of the building, but by the dozens upon dozens of people gathered at the doorways and scattered across the surrounding sidewalks. Some sit on curbs, others wait in line to receive paper-bag meals passed out by volunteers, and a few slump against chain-link fences, eyes rolling in a drug haze. Litter is strewn everywhere, and it's difficult to avoid stepping on needles discarded on the concrete.
"Jesus," says Dean, and Eileen can't say she disagrees.
"I guess we split up?" she suggests. "Talk to as many as we can?"
Canvassing is an agonizingly slow process. Several are too high or drunk to respond coherently to the simplest questions, and several more flat-out refuse to speak with them at all. Armed only with notepads and pens, they slog their way through round after round of questioning. Eileen takes copious notes while chatting with a friendly pregnant woman who looks like she's not had access to a shower in weeks. Across the street Dean talks to a swaying drunkard, while Sam patiently listens to the disjointed ramblings of an elderly schizophrenic woman. Cas kneels on the sidewalk to speak with a man who picks constantly at his skin, riddled with the visible symptoms of a meth habit.
By the time they're finished, they've each interviewed at least a dozen people and the frost has melted from the sidewalks, but Eileen's fingers are still freezing. She blows into her hands to warm them as she and the boys reconvene on the street corner a block up the hill.
"Okay," Sam says, flipping through his pages of notes. "I got reports of four missing people."
"I got three," Eileen chimes in.
"Two more here," Dean adds, tapping his finger on the front of his notepad.
"Six," says Cas.
"Whoa." Dean blinks, his brow furrowing as he tries to do the math. "So that's…"
"Fifteen," Eileen supplies. "Not including Fred Sargent."
Dean whistles lowly. Cas looks a little bit sick.
"How many of these do we think are real cases and not just people wandering off?" Dean asks, scratching behind his ear. "I mean, they might've moved on to somewhere else, or even just another neighborhood."
"Well, I wouldn't say all of them are reliable," amends Sam. "One of them told me her boyfriend was eaten by Wessie."
Eileen can't help laughing, but Dean and Cas both look equally perplexed. "Wessie?" echoes Cas.
"The Presumpscot Python?" she clarifies, but Cas only shakes his head. "Don't you read the news? The giant snake on the loose in Westbrook."
Dean's eyebrows shoot toward his hairline. "...Is that a lead? Do we think these people were killed by an actual snake?"
At that, Sam laughs too, his breath fogging in the chill. "No."
"Well, how do we know? Maybe Wessie's eating folk."
"They found a shed skin, Dean," Sam counters. "DNA testing said it was an anaconda, which can't survive temperatures below fifty degrees. The snake is dead; it was probably just some illegal black market pet that escaped. And even if Wessie was eating people, she wouldn't have gone to the trouble to dispose of her victims in trash bags. This is still a vamp case."
Dean grumbles something about wanting to see an anaconda, but accepts Sam's logic.
At this point, it's past noon and Dean and Eileen are already hungry again. The four of them return to Monument Square and sit on the granite steps below the statue of Nike, eating sandwiches from a small deli that faces the square. Again, Sam orders nothing besides a black coffee, which makes unease tug at the pit of Eileen's stomach.
"Are you okay?" she signs.
He nods and waves her off, sipping his coffee while the rest of them eat.
The day has warmed considerably, but it's still only a couple degrees above freezing. Eileen finishes her lunch quickly in order to shove her hands into her pockets and protect them from the frigid air. Sam surveys the square, watching people go about their day. Eileen imagines the square is busier during the work week, but even on a Sunday there are dozens walking in all directions with thick scarves and hats and their coat collars turned up against the cold. A handful of the public benches are occupied by even more homeless people, huddled under coats and sleeping bags to keep warm.
"There are a lot of homeless here," Sam remarks with a frown, earning a dry retort from Dean.
"You say that like we didn't just spend the entire morning talking to them."
"I'm just saying," Sam continues as he watches an unkempt woman walk past, talking nonstop to herself. "There are more than I'd expect for a city this size. If something is really targeting the homeless population, that's a big pool to fish from, and it'd be hard to spot. It's not like anybody's keeping track."
"That's a chilling thought," Cas says. Eileen can't tell if he shudders out of disgust or just from the cold.
"Well, vamps ain't exactly mindless killers," Dean says, wiping mustard from the corner of his mouth. "A lot of them know how to cover their tracks. It's a smart strategy. My guess is Fred Sargent was an accidental slip-up, and we just got lucky."
Eileen agrees, crossing her arms over her chest to preserve her body heat. "That's probably true."
Sam's phone rings then, interrupting their conversation, and he digs it out of his pocket. "This is Agent Frantz." He listens to the person on the other end for a minute or so before he nods and replies, "Okay, we'll be there soon."
Eileen raises her eyebrows expectantly as he ends the call.
Sam tucks his phone back into his jacket. "That was the officer I spoke to at the station yesterday," he explains. "He says he found something we should see."
After a quick pit stop to change into their suits before returning to the Portland police station, Sam and Dean are greeted at the reception desk by a uniformed officer who immediately recognizes Sam. Behind them, Eileen and Cas follow, still in the same clothes from that morning.
"Agent Frantz, welcome back," the officer says. He's young — late twenties, maybe — with sandy blond hair and heavy coffee breath. He looks worn out, like he's been up all night watching TV.
"This is my partner, Agent Byrne," Sam introduces Dean, then gestures to Cas and Eileen. "And this is Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison. They're civilian consultants with our branch."
The officer nods, taking the lie at face value. "I'm Jake Paradis," he says. "Come on, this way."
Officer Paradis leads them past the desk, through the office floor and to a small, dimly lit room at the back of the station. The five of them crowd inside to find a wide desk that barely fits, stacked with multiple screens. Paradis sinks into one of the two rolling chairs while Eileen takes the other.
"Okay, so," Paradis starts, fingers clacking away at the keyboard. "I was going through the traffic cam footage of the Portland waterfront, because in order for the bag to have washed up on the inner side of the Spring Point breakwater, it would have had to come from one of the wharves on the Portland side of the Fore River."
A window opens on the monitor, displaying the sidewalk on Commercial Street near the head of one of the fishing wharves, the image in color but grainy. In unison, Sam, Dean, Eileen, and Cas all lean forward to get a better look.
"I found the place where it was dumped," says Paradis, and presses Play.
On screen, they watch as the figure of a man in boots and a heavy jacket lugs four large black trash bags from the direction of the wharf. He approaches the side of the road, then leaves all four bags beside a big pile of purple garbage bags awaiting collection and walks off back to the dock.
"Well, the coroner was right about him being in multiple bags," Dean says. "Do you have any idea who the guy is?"
Paradis shakes his head. "No, but given what he's wearing we think he works on the docks in some capacity. We've got a couple officers asking questions in the area."
Paradis fast-forwards the footage, people walking past the pile of trash at times-five speed, until a minute later when a garbage truck rolls down the street and pauses in front of the pile of bags. The footage speed slows down again to a normal pace, and they watch as the garbage crew works, picking up bag after bag after bag. Finally, it continues on its route and rolls off-camera.
The four black trash bags are still sitting on the sidewalk, untouched. Cas tilts his head in surprise.
Again, Paradis hits the fast-forward button, scrolling through another hour or so of the footage before resuming its regular speed. The man in the coat and boots returns, walking toward the street from the wharf, but this time he stops short, obviously not expecting the black bags to still be there. The man turns on his heel, his hand touches his head as if in panic, and after a moment's hesitation he picks the bags back up, hauling them back the way he'd come.
Paradis pauses the video, and leans back with a huff. "I'm guessing he threw them in the ocean when they didn't get collected."
"I don't get it," says Dean.
"See, Portland has a strict policy about trash pickup," the officer explains. "They don't collect anything not in a purple bag."
"Why?"
"It's one of the ways they fund the service. People have to buy the purple bags in order to have their garbage collected."
Sam frowns in confusion. "Wouldn't this guy have known that if he works in the city?"
"Exactly what I thought." Paradis snaps his fingers to emphasize his point. "So, I went through all the security footage from the past year, and this happens at least twice a month. Always on garbage day. Except," he says, leaning forward, "the garbage men usually pick up the black bags."
Eileen clicks her tongue against the inside of her teeth in thought. "So… if the garbage men are picking up the black bags when they're not supposed to, you think they're in on it?"
Paradis shrugs, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair. "I wouldn't be surprised, but really I don't know. At this point, it'd be speculation. I did notice that it's always the same truck, except for this particular week."
"That's something," Sam comments, and requests that Paradis pull up the footage of the truck that usually does the trash collection so that he can write down the license plate number.
"I figure we head to the sanitation department lot tomorrow morning when it opens," Paradis suggests. "We can track down which crew uses that truck every week. I'm willing to bet there's more people missing than just Fred."
Dean nods, standing up straight again. "Sounds like a plan."
As they squeeze back out of the tiny office into the larger main room of the station, Sam asks another question. "What happens if someone reports a homeless person as missing?"
Paradis swallows and scratches lightly at his temple. "Honestly? Not much," he answers soberly. "I mean, homeless folks… they're drifters. Much more like to have just gone to another town rather than actually disappeared. It's one thing if there's a body, but…" He clicks his tongue and shakes his head. "Fact is, even if there is a body, there's usually no family waiting for answers. They're low-priority cases."
While Paradis speaks, Cas feels his stomach growing tighter and tighter with every word, bile rising in his throat. Human bodily reactions are still somewhat unfamiliar to him but he doesn't have to stop and ponder why he's feeling this way. He's angry. Angry and disgusted.
The previous time he'd been turned human, back when the condition was temporary, he'd had nowhere to live. He'd slept on bus stop benches and wherever he could find that seemed remotely safe and out of the cold. He'd seen the hardships faced by these people and experienced the same things firsthand. He'd made friends, and found support in places where one might have thought people had no more to give. And the police don't care.
A hand clamps down on his shoulder, and Dean's voice murmurs low in his ear, "Hey, calm down."
Cas realizes abruptly that his hands have curled into fists, his jaw clenched tight, and he can feel a flush creeping over his face. He draws a deep breath and tries to relax. He really has to practice not reacting to things outwardly; it might blow their cover.
Paradis isn't oblivious, and sees Cas's reaction. "Hey, I'm not saying it's right," he says, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "I'm just saying, y'know, statistically—"
"Hey, buddy?" Dean cuts him off tightly. "You're not making it better."
The officer shuffles slightly, clearing his throat. "Sorry."
Cas forces himself to give a smile, though he knows it's a weak one. "It's alright. As you said. Statistically."
"Well, I'm gonna do everything I can to get to the bottom of this case," Paradis promises. "I swear."
They leave the conversation there, with Sam telling Paradis to give them a call once the warrant is approved.
Once they've returned to the parking lot, Dean nudges Cas in the ribs. "Hey, you all right?"
Cas inhales slowly, letting the cold air calm him from the inside out, and nods. "Yeah. I'm sorry. It's just…" he trails off, not quite sure how to finish that sentence.
Dean nods in understanding, a shadow of guilt rippling over his face. "That was hard for you to hear."
"Yes. But Officer Paradis is just doing his job, and he's not wrong." Cas shakes his head, squaring his shoulders. Sam and Eileen are halfway across the lot now, heading for the car, and Cas is grateful for the space. He reaches for Dean's hand, intertwines their fingers. "What about you? Are you feeling better since this morning?"
Something darkens in Dean's eyes, and Cas feels the tips of Dean's fingers go cold in his palm. For a moment, Cas expects him to rip his hand out of Cas's grip, to snap something like I told you I didn't want to talk about it. But instead, Dean squeezes Cas's hand before he lets go and says, "Yeah, Cas, I'm fine."
He then pulls his flask from his inner jacket pocket and takes a swig, squinting up at the sky. "It's getting late. We should check out the sanitation department and do some of our own snooping before the police get in the way."
Dean, ever the master of misdirection, steals a quick whiskey-flavored kiss from Cas before they return to the car.
The sun is already sinking close to the horizon when Dean parks the Impala on the street outside the waste management parking lot, a fenced-in grid of pungent trucks laid out a decent distance from the city proper to keep the smell from bothering residents. Overhead the sky glows orange and gold, the day drawing to a close before it's even five o'clock, and it feels like they've had barely any daylight at all. The temperature is quickly dropping again as they climb out of the car. Eileen shivers and huddles close to Sam's side while Dean digs through the arsenal in the Impala's trunk, handing a machete to each of them.
"All right," Dean says with a grin, taking a long gulp from his flask. "Who's ready to roll a few vamp heads?"
Cas gazes past the chain-link gate to the fleet of garbage trucks parked for the night. "We don't know that we'll find the vampire nest here," he says. "If Fred was bitten before he was put into the trash bags then it's unlikely this is where they're feeding."
"Fair point." Sam flips his blade once in his hand, testing the weight like he didn't sharpen it just that morning. "But it doesn't hurt to be prepared."
Fortunately, garbage collection is exclusively an early-morning service and the lot is completely empty of any employees. There is nobody to catch them in the act as the four of them scale the fence.
Eileen grips her machete and signs to Dean and Cas with her other hand, "Sam and I go left, you two go right. Be careful."
"Got it," Cas signs back.
Row by row, column by column, they work their way through the regimented sea of trucks, checking the license plates one by one. The sunlight bleeds quickly out of the sky above, and before long they have to take their flashlights out of their coat pockets in order to see anything.
"There's one thing I don't understand," Sam says to Eileen while they work, tucking his blade under his arm briefly in order to sign with both hands.
"What's that?"
"If they were trying to dispose of the body, it would have been a lot easier to just put the parts in a purple bag," he elaborates, his brow furrowed. "The garbage men would have just taken the body to the landfill and nobody would have known."
"True," Eileen agrees, shining the beam of her flashlight over the license plate of the nearest truck before moving on to the next one. "It's not like vamps need anything else after a victim's been drained."
"So they must be using the rest of the body," Sam reasons, though confusion clouds his features even in the dark. "I can't think of why, though."
Eileen shrugs. She's not the type to make assumptions at the beginning of an investigation. Whatever answers are out there, she's certain they'll stumble onto them eventually.
Sam raises his flashlight again to check the next truck, and something in the way the light moves makes Eileen look over. His hand is shaking.
She stops in her tracks and touches his arm. "Are you feeling okay?"
He nods, but even in the encroaching dark she can see that he looks nauseous. Despite the cold a faint line of sweat has formed at his hairline.
"You haven't eaten anything all day," she presses. "What's going on?"
Sam shifts uncomfortably. "Nothing, I'm probably just coming down with a stomach bug or something."
Stomach bug my ass, Eileen thinks, although she's not entirely sure why her gut is telling her to disbelieve him. Before she can probe any further, Dean or Cas whistles from the other side of the lot and makes Sam raise his head.
"Come on," he says, jerking his head in the other direction.
They find Dean and Cas four rows over, standing at the rear of one of the trucks. The license plate matches the one from the security camera footage. Dean runs the beam of his flashlight over the compactor and shudders.
"That'd be a horrible way to go," he remarks.
Cas gives him an odd look. "I'm fairly certain these people are dead before they're put in the compactor."
"I know. I'm just saying."
Eileen frowns. "Are we sure they're actually being put in the compactor?" she asks. Sam is right — if they're going to the trouble of separating the bodies from the regular trash, then the point must be to save them for some other use, for a specific purpose, and it would be illogical to throw them in with everything else.
Sam hands his machete to Eileen to hold for a moment and clamps his flashlight between his teeth. Then he grabs hold of the handlebars and hoists himself up onto the back of the truck. He braces himself against the freezing metal and, a few seconds later, twists over his shoulder to say, "There's something here."
Dean leans forward, shining his own flashlight where Sam is looking. Sam reaches further into the truck, fumbling, and his fingers wrap around a handle tucked away in the corner, out of the way of the compactor. He gives the handle a tug, and a panel falls open. The opening is just big enough for a trash bag to be tossed inside, though it doesn't look like it goes anywhere — it's a storage compartment.
"Something tells me that's not a feature of most garbage trucks," Cas says.
"It's not," Sam agrees. "There are welding marks here. It's been customized."
Dean's head turns suddenly and he touches Eileen's shoulder in warning, pressing a finger to his lips. Sam, alarmed, jumps down from the truck and takes his blade back from Eileen. Cas sweeps the beam of his flashlight across the lot, searching for anything amiss.
"Heard something," Sam signs to Eileen, and she nearly misses it in the dark.
Her heart knocks against her ribs, eyes wide and alert. The four of them remain rigid and silent, machetes in hand, scanning the lot for the slightest glint of vampire fangs lurking in the shadows. Dean, his hand twitching, all too eager to chop off a monster's head, steps forward slightly.
A slight movement to the left makes Eileen turn her head, the beam of her flashlight briefly catching a glimpse of a coat disappearing around a truck. "There!" she says, and breaks into a sprint.
She doesn't look behind her to see if they're following, but her legs are shorter than the boys' and Dean quickly overtakes her, then Sam, dashing past and skidding on the gravel as they round a corner. Dean runs down a row of trucks and vanishes from view momentarily, Sam pounding after him, and reappears as Eileen and Cas race to catch up.
There's a scuffle and a wild flailing of flashlight beams when Dean tackles the stranger in a move that would have made the NFL proud. They crash into the icy ground, and Dean's machete goes flying, clattering several feet away. Sam instantly joins the fray, seizing the stranger by the back of his coat and flipping him onto his back, Sam's knee on his chest and blade at his throat.
The night has only gotten darker and it's difficult to see much detail at all, but Eileen doesn't miss the look of surprise that takes over Sam's features.
In the gleam of their flashlights, the stranger's eyes glow a menacing yellow, huge teeth bared.
There's only a moment of stillness before he swipes up at Sam with large claws, and with superhuman strength throws Sam off. Sam hits the ground bodily and scrambles to right himself, while Dean reaches to retrieve his machete. The stranger is back on his feet before either of them can do anything about it, and Cas and Eileen chase after him at full speed.
He's too fast, gaining distance quickly despite their efforts, and they manage to just spot him as he leaps up onto the top of the fence at the edge of the lot, flipping easily over it and landing unharmed on the other side. Without waiting to see if they'll follow him further, he darts into the woods beyond, and disappears from view.
Cas and Eileen stand at the fence, staring after the stranger as they catch their breath, until a few seconds later when Sam and Dean reach them.
"He's gone," says Cas, chest heaving. "He went into the woods over there."
"Damn it." Dean winces, picking gravel out of the palm of his hand where it was scraped.
"Well," Sam says, shining his light toward the trees as if the stranger might be coming back already. "That wasn't a vampire."
"Nope," agrees Eileen. "That was a werewolf."