Chapter Fifty-One

Sam's voice was the first thing Alyson heard. He was talking about the girls that had died. Their bodies had washed up in the bay – that was how they had been found.

"They were all hookers working Hunters Point. The cops are tryin' to keep things under wraps, but they're lookin' for a serial killer."

"And the lunar cycle?"

Dean's voice was closer, beside Alyson, on the bed. He was cleaning the guns maybe. She opened her eyes to find she was right.

"Month after month, all these murders happen in the week leading up to the full moon."

"Which is this week, right?"

"Hence the lawyer."

"Awesome," Dean exclaimed. He seemed a little too excited, considering what they were dealing with.

The bed creaked as Dean stood up. Alyson's head sparked with pain as she was jostled, but she sat up anyway.

"Dean, could you be a bigger geek about this?" Sam asked.

"I'm sorry, man, but what about a human by day, a freak animal killing machine by moonlight don't you understand? I mean, werewolves are badass. We haven't seen one since we were kids."

Dean opened up a case of silver bullets and sat back down on the bed.

"You know what the best part is? We already know how to bring these suckers down." He held up a silver bullet. "One of these bad boys right to the heart."

"How do we find it?" Alyson asked.

"We're gonna talk to the girl who found the body," Sam answered. "She lives maybe fifteen minutes from where you used to."

"Great."

The woman that had found the body – Nate's assistant, Madison – invited them in without hesitation. Sam and Dean were covering as detectives, and Alyson was the newbie. They were showing her the ropes.

A man with a Mission Church shirt was seated in the living room of Madison's living room. He had dark eyes and his face was bearded. His name was Glen. He had come over to check on Madison. She showed him out and gestured for them to sit at the kitchen table.

"You must be pretty shaken up, right?" Sam asked, trying to start a conversation. "You were Nate Mulligan's assistant."

"For two years, yeah."

"So you knew all about him?"

"Probably knew more about him than he did. Nate was . . . he was nice."

"There is a serious 'but' on the end of that sentence," Alyson said.

"Yeah, um, it was nothing, really. He had a few scotches in him, and he started hitting on anything in a five-mile radius. You know the type."

Sam glanced at Dean. "Yeah, I do, actually."

Dean did flirt, but he had been behaving himself recently. He hadn't flirted with anyone other than Alyson in a long time.

"Did Nate have any enemies?"

"What d'you mean? It looked like an animal attack."

"We're just covering all the bases. Was there anyone that might've had a beef with him? A former client, an ex?"

"Uh, maybe. My ex-boyfriend, Kurt Muller. After we broke up, he went kinda nuts. He's . . . well, he's kind of been stalking me. He got it in his head that something was going on between me and Nate. He showed up at my office. Kurt got into it with Nate, threw a punch before security grabbed him. I was lucky to keep my job."

"When was the last time you saw Kurt?"

"A few nights ago. Actually, the night Nate died. We were all grabbing drinks at this bar, and Kurt showed up. He was . . . watching me. Then he was gone. To tell you the truth . . . he scares me."

Sam and Dean shared a knowing look. They both thought this guy was the werewolf. Alyson had no idea what to think. Jerk boyfriend/stalker didn't mean possessive werewolf.

"Was Nate at the bar with you the night Kurt showed up?" Alyson asked. "Did he see you guys together?"

"Kurt saw us. Yeah. He left right after Nate."

Outside, Alyson noticed how warm it was. It was March, but it was already sixty, at least. She'd missed the warmth of her home city.

"Stalker ex-boyfriend? He hates the boss, and he was there that night."

"You think he's our dog-faced boy?"

"Well, it's a theory," Sam said.

"We've had worse. What d'you say we pay Kurt a visit tonight?"

"It's worth a shot," Alyson said as she hopped into the backseat. "We did get the address from Madison."

Alyson was just happy they could leave the windows down in the car, and that they didn't need jackets at the moment.

The address Madison had given them led them to a high-rise apartment building, but he lived only a few floors up. They had to pick the lock, but once they were in they began snooping.

Shelves adorned the purple-blue walls. Pictures filled the shelves. The pictures were of a man with a baby, a man with a little boy fishing. None of the pictures were of Madison, which was strange if he really was stalking her.

There was nothing that could lead to werewolf either.

"You getting anything?" Dean asked her.

"Mm-mm. I probably won't. Werewolves are a type of shifter, right?"

"Yeah. Human most of the time."

A door opened and closed and then there was an awful scratching noise. Then came a crash. Before Alyson had even looked toward the sound, Dean was taking off in that direction. She and Sam followed him. Dean reached a balcony, where a sliding glass door led outside.

On the side of the building there were claw marks leading down to the ground. That was where the scratching and the crash had come from.

"Werewolf?"

"Werewolf."

Alyson wondered if werewolves stayed changed all night. The night had barely begun.

"If it was here the whole time, why didn't it attack us?" Alyson asked.

Before either of the brothers could answer, a gunshot sounded through the air. They all shared a look before taking off through the apartment and out the door. They hurried down to the ground floor and outside to the alley by the building.

There was no werewolf, but there was a corpse of a police officer. The werewolf had been there, though, because the poor man's heart had been removed.

"Gross," she said, turning her head away.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I'm gonna call the cops."

"I'd say Kurt's lookin' more and more like our Kujo."

"Dean, if he's out there, we better check on Madison," Sam said, voicing his concern.

"Yeah. Especially if he's got the wolfy hots for her," Alyson said. "Speaking of . . . can he change form whenever he wants to? I mean, I know the murders only happen the week of the full moon, but is it a conscious thing?"

"Do you think it's coincidence that only hookers died until now?" Dean asked.

"I dunno," she answered, shrugging. "But if Kurt's the werewolf, why would he bother with hookers when he was caught up on Madison?"

"Maybe he was just hungry. It doesn't really matter why. We just gotta stop him from doing it again."

In order to look out for Madison, the hunters had to stake out her apartment building. It was still dark and the woman was probably asleep – her lights were off, anyway, and no movement could be seen from her window. Everything was quiet.

As soon as they saw Madison moving around, they went to her door and knocked. The sun had just risen. She was obviously on a schedule.

The guy from yesterday – the one with the Mission Church shirt – opened up the door across the hall.

"What's goin' on?" he asked.

"Police business," Dean answered.

Madison answered then. She was wearing a blue robe. She was confused at first, but then she grew worried. It was normal; she thought they were cops and there they were, showing up at her door first thing in the morning.

"What is it?"

"Maybe we should talk privately," Sam said.

The other guy didn't need to hear anything they were going to say.

"Um . . . yeah, okay." She moved aside to let them in. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Well, it is the best part of wakin' up," Dean said, though neither he nor Sam had woken up at all. Alyson had caught some sleep in the back of the car.

They followed Madison to the kitchen, where Madison already had coffee going.

"Has Kurt been here?" Sam asked.

Madison hesitated before answering. "He was outside last night. Just . . . looking at me. Has he done something?"

Her tone suggested that it wouldn't have been a surprise if he had. Dean wondered if Kurt had a criminal record they could look into.

"It's probably nothing, but we just don't want to take any chances," Dean said. "In fact, Sammy should probably stay here with you, just in case he stops by. Where does Kurt work, if he even has a job?"

"He owns a body shop."

"You mind grabbing that address for us?"

Madison left the room.

"So . . . guess since you volunteered me to stay here . . ." Sam said.

"We're gonna check Kurt out," Dean said, gesturing between him and Alyson. "You get to hang out here with the hot chick."

"Dean, don't turn this into another Sarah thing, okay?"

"What?" Dean grinned. "I wasn't gonna. I'm just giving you an opportunity."

"Yeah, you're very generous."

Dean and Alyson stayed long enough to have coffee. Madison had French Vanilla Creamer, which Alyson seemed to have been grateful for. Once Madison gave them the address to Kurt's body shop, they left to pay him a visit.

"Dean?" Alyson asked from the passenger side. "Are you okay with me working with Jack?"

She had been so focused on doing what she needed to do to protect Dean that she hadn't stopped to think about how he felt about it. Dean and Jack didn't exactly get along. It could cause problems in the long run.

"I don't know." He placed a hand on her leg. "I can't tell you what to do here. I don't trust him. I know that. The only reason I put up with him is out of respect for you. My advice is to play it by ear. If something doesn't feel right to you, it probably isn't."

They reached the body shop only to find that Kurt wasn't at work and hadn't been all week. He frequented a strip club, though, and they planned on searching for him there.

"Watching girls dance around naked is so not my thing," Alyson said.

She didn't really want Dean going in there either. To her it was a disgusting establishment full of women who just needed help. Alyson knew some of the strip clubs paid well in tips. A girl could go home a couple hundred dollars richer each time she worked the stage. Alyson just thought about how sad it was that the men only gave the women money because she took her clothes off for them.

In the end, Dean had to go in – Alyson refused. To take her mind off of what was happening she began searching through Google on her phone. The reception wasn't that great, so it was taking forever, but she had randomly put her father's name in the search engine.

A page finally popped up, but the links led to more information about the drink – his name was Jack Daniels. She rolled her eyes and narrowed down the search by making certain the thing knew to search for people. She found a birth certificate and a birth record that matched what she knew about her dad. She also found a death record for a little while ago – June, to be exact.

Seeing this new information made Alyson's breath catch in her chest. Even if all of this was a coincidence, it was weird. How many people had the name Jack Daniels and would have died in June, which fit the timeline of when the deal would have been over. And this person had died in San Francisco, where her dad would've been if he'd been telling her the truth about coming after her.

Had Jack been lying to her this whole time? She'd begun to trust him a little, had even wanted to get to know him better, but if he hadn't been honest with her, she didn't know if she still wanted that. And what was she supposed to do? Confront him? And how was she supposed to believe anything he had to say? If this was true, and he had died, how was he alive now? Another deal?

Alyson took a deep breath – for a moment she'd forgotten now to breathe at all. She felt stupid and hurt. Jack had come into her life and she'd wanted to believe him. He'd set everything up just right, and she'd fallen for everything. She hadn't realized how far she'd let her dad in until just then.

Now the small part of her heart that she hadn't even realized she'd given away was breaking.

He'd made her love him – maybe not in the way a daughter should love her father, but she did love him a little.

Alyson made sure she saved the page she was on for when she next saw Jack. She was going to demand an explanation. People didn't come back to life on their own. What if he was working for a demon?

She needed to talk this out with Dean, but he was still in the club. She could stomach going in to find him.

At the door, a big bouncer type in all black blocked her way.

"I.D."

"Yeah, yeah. Hold on."

It took her maybe thirty seconds to realize she had no I.D. on her. But she had cash.

"Hey, do you like bribes?"

The guy's face brightened. "I love bribes."

"Great." She handed him a twenty. "I'm just looking for my boyfriend."

"If you have to search for your boyfriend here, you might wanna consider finding a new one."

If Dean had been here for any other reason than a case, she probably would've wholeheartedly agreed with the bouncer.

Once inside the club Alyson immediately felt uncomfortable. It was dark aside from a few strobe lights scattered around the room. The flickering lights blinked with the music – it made the girls dancing on stage appear to be moving in slow motion. It was dizzying.

As she was looking around for Dean she took in the men around the stage. Some were paying attention, but others were just drinking, barely even noticing the woman in front of them.

Kurt was one of the ones seated near the stage. Dean had to have spotted him if it had taken her less than a minute to do the same.

As she was looking for Dean someone moved in front of her. It hadn't been an accident. The man was looking at her the same way others were looking at the women on the stage. She felt like slapping him.

She didn't do anything, however, until the man touched her hair. He didn't seem threatening, just annoying, so violence wasn't the answer.

"Don't touch me."

She went around the man, relieved when he respected her wish to be left alone. Continuing to move through the room, Alyson calmly reached out to the familiar feeling of Dean. He was following Kurt out of the club. The man had apparently had enough.

She didn't catch up to Dean until he'd reached the Impala, where he seemed to almost fall into a panic when he noticed she wasn't in the front seat.

"I'm right here," she said, putting him out of his misery.

His eyes swept over her. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. What're we doing?"

They both got in the car and waited for Kurt to do the same in his own.

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I have weird news, though."

"Weird?"

"Yeah." She showed him what she'd found. "Jack died in June."

Dean's expression hardened but cleared almost immediately. Alyson didn't understand, because this proved Dean was right. They couldn't trust Jack.

"That doesn't really mean anything. I was supposed to be dead too. I had a funeral and everything."

Alyson knew he was saying that for her benefit – to show he was still following her lead on this. It didn't matter, though because her mind had thought of something worse.

"What if he wants me for something bad? What if he's working for a demon?"

"He can't make you do something you don't want to do. You're always tellin' Sam that."

"Right. Okay, yeah."

She still needed to talk to him when he arrived. This was not a conversation one had over the phone.

Dean and Alyson followed Kurt to his apartment. The guy made no other stops. He went straight home. On the way there, Dean couldn't help but think about what Alyson had learned.

He'd been telling the truth when he'd said that there could be an explanation that didn't involve Jack completely lying to them. He didn't know if Jack deserved the benefit of their doubt, but something could've happened – such as the shapeshifter thing that had happened to Dean.

For Aly's sake, he hoped there was an explanation.

"Why didn't he tell me?" Alyson asked. "I mean, that's definitely something you should tell someone, right? Unless, of course, he's evil and he didn't tell me because he didn't want me to know. But if he's evil, then wouldn't he have tried to kill me by now? But then again he's the one who brought up the training thing, and if he's evil, then he's probably gonna wanna use me for something horrible, in which case should I not train at all?"

Dean shook his head, having lost track of her brilliant ranting.

"You're gonna give me whiplash, you keep going back and forth like that."

Alyson's shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry. I just don't know what to do. Part of me doesn't want to deal with it at all, to just tell him to go fly a kite somewhere. But then another part of me just wants to know why. Ya know? Then all of me is saying that since he lied about this . . . what else has he lied to me about?"

Dean wanted to tell her that it didn't matter – her dad was alive and wanting to be a part of her life. But he couldn't say that because then he would be lying to her. It did matter, because if Jack had lied only to get to Aly, they had a problem.

"We know he didn't lie about that prophecy thing. We know he didn't lie about knowing Pastor Jim. I'm tryin' to be helpful here, but I'm running out of things we actually do know about him."

"Exactly. Nothing he told us can be checked, so he could've been lying the whole time."

"And you love him," Dean pointed out. She wouldn't have been ranting if she didn't care.

"I didn't want to," she said. "It just sorta happened. And now I feel like an idiot."

"You're not an idiot. Trust me. I've been around, I know what idiots look like, and you're not one."

"No, I totally am an idiot. He hadn't been around much since I was ten and then he was supposed to have died when I was fourteen. Then he just shows up outta the blue and I believe everything he says. Wouldn't you say that's the definition of an idiot?"

"No. I'd say that's the definition of someone with a good heart. I mean, okay, he's your dad. The only family you have left. It wasn't stupid for you to want him to be a part of your life. It wasn't stupid for you to want to believe him. That's actually pretty normal."

Before Dean could say anything more, Kurt came out of his building. They had to tail him until he did something incriminating or until they decided he wasn't the werewolf.

Kurt went to his body shop for a few hours before leaving to stop by the post office and the grocery store. By the time Kurt got back home the sun had disappeared and the moon had risen.

A few minutes after Kurt went inside a crash sounded through the night. The sliding glass doors of Kurt's balcony had shattered. Someone or something had broken it. Whether it had been broken into or out of was anyone's guess.

"Grab your gun," Dean said, and they both got out of the car. "Remember, aim for the heart."

Once at Kurt's door, Dean had to kick it in. Alyson immediately heard a weird slurping sound. It almost sounded as if someone were sucking noodles into his or her mouth.

"Stay behind me," Dean whispered.

"Really not issue," she said, holding her gun at the ready.

They followed the hallway to the noise. In the room they were led to Alyson noticed Kurt on the floor, dead with something over him. The werewolf, and it was eating something.

Oh God, the heart, she thought. The heart was always missing.

Something drew the creature's attention, and it suddenly turned to her and Dean. It growled and Alyson froze. The werewolf was Madison, and she looked mostly human.

Where was the fur and the black nose and claws? Apparently, Alyson had seen too many movies. The only things different about Madison were her eyes, teeth, and fingernails.

Her eye color had been brown, but it was not an electric blue; her teeth were now fangs; her fingernails were pointed and longer.

"Sam," Alyson muttered. Sam had been with Madison the whole day. What if something had happened to him?

Madison growled and lunged at Dean, pushing him past Alyson and into the wall. Dean didn't fight back.

He'd been knocked unconscious. Alyson would have to kill Madison on her own. But first she needed to get the wolf away from Dean.

"Hey," she shouted, not really having a plan. She just didn't want Dean being eaten or bitten at all.

Alyson trained her gun on Madison, but Madison launched herself at Alyson. She fell backwards and used the wolf's momentum to flip her above and over to the floor. Madison growled loudly, and Alyson got up quickly.

Werewolves, however, were faster than mortals so Alyson only got knocked over again. Fingernails dug into Alyson's chest and blood seeped into the material of her shirt. She wasn't too worried about the wounds. She knew she'd heal. She just wanted to get out from under Madison.

One second she was fighting to get free, and the second after that Alyson was screaming. Fire was running through her veins, the source igniting at her wrist. Madison had bitten her, and she wasn't letting go.

Alyson's muscles seized as if she had tetanus and she couldn't move. Was Madison making her a werewolf? Was she going to become something Sam and Dean hunted?

Lashing out in pain and fear, she used all of her strength to knock Madison in the temple. Madison drew back, shrieking, and turned to jump out the balcony window and over the side.

Alyson definitely wasn't going to chase her. She was too busy looking at the wound on her right wrist. Then she took note of the ring on her left hand. It was the silver one Dean had given her.

Silver! It was pure silver, obviously, and it had hurt the wolf part of Madison.

Pain shot up Alyson's arm and her head began to feel dizzy. The burning she'd felt earlier began to center around the bite mark and Alyson kept in a scream. This pain reminded her of the time she'd expelled the succubus from her body.

She let out a whimper and Dean began moving.

"Dean?"

He responded to her voice by grabbing the back of his head.

Alyson swallowed back bile as her stomach churned. She was hurt and he was hurt and there was a werewolf running around freely. And there was a dead body near her – a dead body that had been ripped open so the heart could be removed and eaten. She had the right to feel sick.

"Dean, are you okay?"

She moved towards him, but stopped as her head began to feel as if it were floating. Her skin felt overheated too, and she really wanted to vomit. Every movement was an effort as her muscles were still tightened.

"I'm good," Dean answered. "Head hurts."

"Dean, I'm . . . I'm not okay." She didn't know how else to put it.

"Did you break something?" he asked before moving to her side.

Any other time she probably would've warned against moving with his head wound – concussions and all – but she needed him at the moment.

"She bit me," she admitted.

All the color left Dean's face.

"I'm sorry. She pushed me and it happened so fast I couldn't react quickly enough."

She began panting, breath coming in small gasps.

"But . . . it's okay, right?" Dean asked desperately. "I mean . . . you'll heal, right?"

"I haven't healed yet." Or the bitemark hadn't. The claw marks had healed almost instantly. "It hurts."

Dean seemed helpless. He didn't know what to do here.

"Dean, I don't wanna be a monster."

"Hey, you're not gonna be a monster, okay? This is . . . we don't even know what that bite will do to you. I mean, maybe your body's fighting it off right now."

Dean took her hand to look at the wound. He wiped the blood away.

"Dean . . . you have to call Sam, make sure he's okay."

"We gotta get you outta here first. Someone could've heard the noise we made."

Dean picked her up so he could carry her out of the room and down to the car.

"We're gonna get you cleaned up, okay?"

"Mm." She grabbed her head. "Are we spinning? It feels like we're spinning."

"I'm not even moving, Aly." His voice was shaking. "Don't you dare pass out on me."

"You should be more worried about me throwing up on you."

By the time they made it to the car, Alyson's senses had dulled somewhat. Dean, however, was sending her myriad emotions.

Fear for her and for Sam; uncertainty at what was happening to her; wonder about how they would handle her changing; guilt and self-loathing. That was just Dean. He probably thought that it was his fault because she'd gotten hurt while he was unconscious, unable to help her.

"I'm gonna get you back to the motel, and then I'm going for Sam."

"What if I change?"

"You won't."

Dean couldn't deal with this at the moment. Alyson was okay with letting it be for now. She didn't really want to think about it either.