AN: Remember the gore I warned you about? There's some of it in this chapter.
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Every Hunter worth his salt with a few years under his or her belt had that one story. The one that nobody would believe if it weren't confirmed by others. The one that showed them at their craziest and most badass at the same time. It was almost a rite of passage, and it wasn't until a Hunter had one of those stories that they were truly accepted, almost like yup, this guy's nuts enough to be part of our little club.
Pastor Jim, for example, once jumped into a pit full of starving colocolos after the little girl he was trying to save fell in. Caleb once lost his temper and refused to run from a frost demon even with multiple spears of ice stabbing his body. Dad had multiple stories, though Dean's favorite was one he'd witnessed as a very young child when Dad had menaced a full-grown Ogopogo with nothing but a saucepan and a stick. Bobby ran into a whole cemetery full of nkisi to rescue his hunting partner, beheading so many that his machete ended up pocked from the acidic blood. (Bobby himself didn't talk about it but Dean had personally seen the holes surrounded by purplish stains.)
Dean had the terrible feeling that he was in the middle of what would become one of those stories if he survived. (He was no coward, but he wasn't particularly stupid, either. He was heading, wounded, straight at some legendary monster big and powerful enough that its roar literally made the ground shake. A monster that had its own prophecy, including the destruction it would wreak.) Sure, he had all kinds of awesome weapons at his disposal, but he also had no idea exactly what he was taking on...and, far worse, he was taking his little brother down with him.
Dean slowed the Jeep. It had the right tires and suspension for off-roading and the trees were sparse, so they'd decided to drive as far as they could toward their quarry.
"What is it, Dean?" Sam asked, nerves in his voice but his eyes still staring ahead like he could sense whatever it was they were heading toward.
"Sam, we don't even know what this thing is. Minotaur, like Caleb thought? King Kong? Nessie? Kraken? Should we really be running at it with a few guns and a sword? And when we aren't exactly at our best?" Dean stopped them completely and pushed the vehicle into park.
Sam turned to look at Dean, chewing on his lip the way he did when he was thinking hard. "Dean," he started, uncertain. "Did you...think at all about how we got here?"
"You mean the Jeep or what?" Dean asked. He knew damn well that probably wasn't what Sam meant but that didn't mean he couldn't hope.
"I mean that we ended up in North Adams when all the convergence happened when even Hunters who were watching for it didn't end up exactly where it was. And then nobody saw the book in the Houghton Mansion until we did. And then we got dragged out here, practically on top of the monster right as it came to time to go rampaging. Oh, yeah, and we found a sword with Hercules' symbol on it." Sam had started out with the bitchy tone that drove Dad so crazy but had quickly switched over to pleading. He might just as well have said, please listen, Dean. Please believe me.
Unease swirled in Dean's guts. "So you think we're being manipulated? By some higher power or higher purpose or something?" The thought made him feel ill. "You know what I think about destiny and shit like that."
"Yeah, I know. Screw it with a cactus," Sam dutifully reported, sounding slightly resigned. But he wasn't finished, because he never, ever knew when to leave well enough alone. "And, no, that's not what I mean. But we know witchcraft is real, right? Words can have power. So what if prophecy is, like, witchcraft's cousin, and its words can have power too? Remember what it felt like when I said those words? Like they were meant for us?"
Dean didn't like that idea much better. "You think the prophecy made us come here and find all the information and the sword? Or you think it kicked in once we showed up or maybe once you read it out loud?"
"I...actually have no idea," Sam admitted, sounding so put out by the admission that Dean almost smiled. Sam wanted to know everything. "Does it matter? We're here and the monster is going to, uh, 'lay waste from the mountain to the shore.' And the ocean's like a hundred miles away. Are we really going to let it get started so we can find some backup?"
"Dammit." Dean couldn't argue with the logic. After all, at its heart, the argument was the one Dad made all the time. Something bad is killing or is going to kill people. We have a chance to stop it. Are we really going to let people die because we're scared or tired or want to stay in a particular school or have a date Saturday night? The thing was, despite the periodic roars and crashes, Dean wasn't all that frightened. For himself, anyway. A monster was a monster was a monster, and none had managed to kill him so far. But every time that throaty roar sounded, it woke up the lizard part of Dean's brain and he just wanted to bundle Sam up like a very large papoose and drag him far, far from danger.
As if to reinforce the feeling, the monster roared four times in such quick succession they seemed to almost overlap.
Dean ran a frustrated hand over his hair then stuck his hands in his armpits wishing he'd grabbed a coat for himself. He looked in the back on the off chance that there was a pair of gloves amid the militia-level armaments. Dean mentally cataloged everything there including...hmmm...that was an idea. "If we're gonna do this, you're gonna stay back and do whatever I say, no questions asked," he snapped, making sure his real thoughts on the matter stayed off his face.
"Yeah, Dean. Of course." Dean looked away, not wanting to see the earnest sincerity Sam projected so well.
"I mean it, Sam. Back at the Misery cabin, you were supposed to keep moving to new positions so I could sneak up on them one at a time." And it certainly had been a head rush to suss out each man's position and ambush them one-by-one, proving that, while they were good, he was better. But once he'd actually managed to get Dave out with a sleeper hold (and even injured, he was a tough old bastard), Dean had heard a gunshot and realized that someone was after his brother. He'd broken every rule of guerrilla warfare by running pell-mell across an open space in a near panic. "You can't do that again. If you're gonna second-guess me, we can't do this. I can't focus on what I'm doing if I'm worrying about you going rogue on me."
Sam looked at him a minute, his eyes bright and intent. If he got this invested in a normal hunt, Dad wouldn't have a single complaint, Dean thought. It just figured that it happened on a hunt that Dean didn't want Sam involved in for another minute. "Okay, Dean. I swear I'll listen to you."
Dean nodded once. "And you're really okay and not more hurt than you let on?"
Sam's hand hovered for a second over his side in an unconscious gesture before he caught himself and dropped it. "Steve kicked me, but nothing's broken or anything. And my throat is scratchy but fine." That was actually more honesty than Dean had expected. Sam's brow scrunched. "Are you okay, really?"
Dean rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm fine. Okay, let's figure out what we have to gank." He wanted to take more time and look Sam over better himself, but he could practically taste the urgency in the air because, for all they knew, the monster was getting stronger by the minute. (And wasn't that a lovely thought?) He pushed aside fatalistic thoughts and bit his tongue rather than make a joke about how his cuts and bruises didn't really matter if he was about to get eaten by some big bad. Sam wouldn't appreciate it.
They had to go slower and slower, the ground more and more uneven and the trees closer together. More and more often, they would find themselves trapped and have to carefully back out and find a new way to proceed. Dean managed to feel both frustrated at the delays and grateful that they weren't facing...whatever...yet. There was something atavistic about that roar that pushed Dean's brain way back to a time where not only were humans not the apex predators, they were little more than on-the-hoof snacks for sabre-toothed this and mega-that. For Dean, who normally thought of himself as a predator's predator, it was an uncomfortable sensation.
He risked taking his eyes off their uncertain path for a second to glance at Sam. Sam had his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together in concentration as he stared ahead, one arm braced on the not-quite-dashboard the vehicle had to keep from being bounced right out of his seat. With the low light and cuts and bruises all over his face and that stupid army jacket, Sam looked different. Focused. Dangerous. Dean realized with a pang of something he couldn't quite define that he was seeing a glimpse of the full-fledged Hunter his brother would one day become...assuming they survived this little adventure. And while Sam was dangerous, certainly more so than even most adults, he was a still kid, younger, smaller, and far more vulnerable than Dean. Any predator worth its salt would immediately focus on Sam when Dean was the alternative. And though that was no insult to Sam, Dean knew he'd hardly take kindly to a reminder of the fact.
That didn't change the fact that Dean didn't want Sam anywhere near the apparently legendary monster that was occasionally shaking the forest with its four-roar song. Yet he was still driving straight (well, as straight as the terrain would allow) toward it with Sam at his side.
In the fight against the psychos that Dean would never think of as Hunters, Sam had proved both his value as a fighter and his potentially fatal flaw of failing to watch his own back or follow orders if he thought that Dean was in trouble.
The terrain got impossibly rougher and tiny trees snapped under the weight of the Jeep as they slowed to a crawl. Dean didn't dare look over at Sam again. He decided that Sam would get one chance to prove that he meant it when he said he'd follow Dean's lead without question. And if Sam failed, well, he wasn't going to be part of the fight at all.
"Dean!" Sam cried out, rocking forward from Dean's sudden stop.
Dean wanted to snap that yes, he'd seen that the ground dropped away, thank you very much, and anyway, they'd been going like 3 miles an hour. But before he could, the wimpy headlights caught on something that made his breath catch in his throat.
They'd come to a stop near the edge of a drop-off too steep to drive down but shallow enough that someone could make his way down on foot with care. Below them, two streams came together forming an upside-down y from their vantage point, one stream coming from either side of them to converge into a single, larger creek. Just before the conjunction stood a body that would have been considered squat if not for the sheer size of it. A long, bloated rectangle covered in coarse brown hair like a yak, the body was approximately the size of two elephants standing side by side. As Dean swallowed his tongue and pawed at the button to turn off the headlights, a brontosaurus-like neck rose jerkily and swiveled roughly in their direction. The neck was so long that the chin was only slightly lower than the ridge they'd come to a stop on.
The head was too big and too long and too flat, with approximately a thousand teeth that were far more t-rex than brontosaurus. It looked like it could bite off a human limb as a tasty snack. More of the shaggy fur hung on either side of the blackish/reddish eyes, giving it the appearance that it was wearing the world's scraggliest wig. A row of what looked like narrow horns but swayed like they were flexible rose from the hideous snout, each taller than the last, the final, at the tip of its nose, at least two feet tall. The nostrils flared over and over as the head oscillated as if searching. The body wasn't nearly long enough for its width, and the neck was far too narrow for such a broad body. All in all, the thing should have looked utterly ridiculous. Instead, the sight sucked all the air out of Dean.
"What – ?" he started to ask in a hushed tone. He stopped when he suddenly realized why the thing always roared four times. A second, third, and fourth head rose slowly. "-- the hell?" Dean finished in a whisper.
"It's...a hydra," Sam whispered in a weird combination of awe and holy-crap-we're-screwed. Dean concurred with the second part completely.
He stared transfixed for a moment longer and then snapped back to Hunter mode. "Okay. And how do you kill a hydra?" he asked, forcing himself to stay focused on the crux of the matter.
"Hercules faced the only one I've ever heard of. Supposedly." Sam's eyes were huge and locked onto the undulating heads like he was hypnotized. "Um. Cut off the heads. But, uh, then you have to burn the neck, I think? Or two heads grow back?" He sounded more distracted than certain.
"Grow back? That's cheating," Dean complained. "You sure about that detail?"
"Yeah." Sam finally looked at him. "All the classics say that. I just...we don't know how much of that stuff's true and how much was added to make a good story, you know?" He was still looking far too fascinated and not nearly terrified enough. Though, to be honest, there was a fair amount of the latter.
"Okay. I'm guessing I'll need the sword for all this, but I'm not too excited about getting that close, so we're gonna start with my good buddy Browning here." Dean waved vaguely toward the back of the Jeep, thinking of the big-ass rifles he'd seen back there. Nothing they'd done had seemed to draw the behemoth's attention to them except for maybe the headlights, so he wasn't trying to keep his voice down. Actually, it seemed like two of the heads were drinking and the other two sniffing around on the ground as the whole monster slowly and awkwardly turned to its left on fat elephant legs. (It might be a big-ass sucker, but it wasn't exactly fast or graceful, and Dean was kind of doubting that there was any real chance that it would lay waste to the whole region. Of course, that didn't mean they could just leave it until someone alerted the military and called in an air strike or some such a la King Kong. Would be nice, though.)
Dean climbed out of the Jeep and moved to the back of the vehicle, palming his just-in-case tools before Sam could join him. "Here's the plan," he said quickly because he could feel Sam gearing up to say something. "I'm going to circle around to the west, then we're gonna see how this bitch feels about getting loaded full of hot lead. You aim for the head -- well, heads -- and I'll focus on the base of the necks." He shrugged with just his eyebrows. "A machine gun would be nice for this about now. Anyway, if that doesn't hurt it enough, I'll move in with the sword and flamethrower – " and, yeah, he had to stop for a second and grin at that phrase, " – while you distract it and piss it off with all the ammo you got."
"Dean, no –"
"Use whatever you want, except maybe leave the dynamite alone, since I'll be close to the thing."
"Dean, I won't stay up here while you –"
Dean walked away from Sam, figuring out the best way to carry the flamethrower without losing the rifle or sword. Since the former had a strap, he decided it would just have to go over his shoulder like the world's most badass purse. That sorted, Dean set it on the Jeep's hood for a second because he had a little brother to handle first. Sam was still talking, but he'd already failed utterly at his claim that he'd do whatever Dean told him, so Dean wasn't listening to him. He waited until just the right moment, then whirled and had Sam's left wrist zip-tied to the bar that went from the top of the back window to the back corner of the vehicle before Sam could so much as blink.
Sam understandably but ineffectively turned to look at what Dean had just done, twisting like he could pull his arm free. "Dean? What the – ?"
Dean took advantage of the distraction to hook a pair of zip-ties around the tow hook behind the front wheel and tighten them around Sam's right ankle. He stood and stepped back quickly, not sure if he'd have to dodge a punch.
"There," he said, surveying his handiwork. Sam was stuck in place, unable to reach his bound wrist or ankle with his free hand but also not overly constrained. He had no doubt whatsoever that Sam would eventually figure out a way loose, but it would take time. And while leaving him trapped and stuck and thus potentially vulnerable was terrifying, it beat the much worse prospect of letting Sam throw himself at the hydra.
"You can still use your guns," Dean informed Sam, whose face was darkening as realization dawned. "But I hope you don't need to take a piss before I get back." Maintaining his calm facade, Dean retrieved the flamethrower and slung it over his left shoulder. "Stop it," he ordered without looking at Sam, knowing his brother would be pulling on his bonds but wouldn't have enough leverage to really damage himself.
The vituperative explosion that burst from Sam wasn't unexpected, but it was creative and even more venomous than Dean would have expected. He steeled himself and still didn't look at Sam, because every instinct in his body screamed at him that he was supposed to protect Sam and free him when he got himself trapped. I am protecting him, he told that instinct. (Assuming, of course, that he could take down the four-headed Fido without getting himself killed and leaving Sam pretty much helpless once he ran out of ammo. Dean squashed the thought because the kid wasn't leaving him another alternative. Besides, Sam was smart and creative. He wouldn't be stuck forever.)
Then Sam almost broke Dean's resolve. He stopped his increasingly hysterical and high-pitched rant and gave a little, unsteady, hitching breath. Ah, shit. Don't look at him, don't look at him, don't look at him.
Dean lost the fight and looked at Sam over his shoulder. Thank Buddy's Ammunition Emporium and anyone else he could think of, Sam wasn't actually crying. Tears would have busted Dean right open.
"Dean, please," Sam said, which was almost as bad. "I – please don't go after it alone."
Dean took refuge in anger because he had no choice. He hated himself as he did it, but he pointed an angry finger at Sam's face. "You did this," he accused. "It's your fault I won't have any distraction or cover fire, you know. You swore you'd do what I said without question, but you started arguing before I was even done explaining the plan to you. This is on you, not on me, man."
Sam's mouth fell open. He swallowed hard and Dean knew he should leave before Sam spoke again, but he was weak. "You can trust me to watch your back," he promised.
"Yeah. I just don't trust you to watch yours."
Sam sucked in his lip like he'd been hit. He didn't beg, though. Instead, he said, "Even Hercules didn't defeat the hydra alone. His nephew had to help him."
Dean scowled. "Did this nephew know how to follow orders?"
"And, uh, I don't know exactly what it says on the sword, but all of the words are plural. And the prophecy had a plural form of the name Hercules and said they had to arise and rain down destruction. What if you have to have help to beat it?"
Logic, not whining, even in the middle of borderline panic. Dean's little brother was growing up. "Sammy, lore doesn't tell you the whole story. You know that. Remember the orang bati that was eating people who came to that junkyard by Chesterfield, Missouri? They can 'only be killed by a pure silver dagger painted with the blood of a virgin and sea salt' or some such shit, right? Except Bobby and Dad killed that sucker with a car crusher. There's always a work around."
"Dean," Sam was almost shaking with emotion. "I'm sorry about arguing. Please let me help. Please don't do this alone."
Dean shook his head, and his determination grew stronger when the monster hissed, arched all of his necks, and grew at least a foot taller in one fell swoop, all four heads roaring through the change. "That thing's getting bigger," he pointed out the obvious.
"What if the hydra decides to climb up here, huh?" Sam asked, switching back from pleading to pissed. "Or Lance and Dave get free and show up? Or a bear or something? Or --" he pursed his mouth in a move that said he was fighting for control over his emotions. "Or you die? Then I, what? Stay here until I die of dehydration?"
"Not gonna happen," Dean answered because bravado was all he has left. The fact was, Sam's concerns were real, just smaller than the likelihood that one of the stupid snake heads would take a bite out of him.
"So, sorry, Sammy, but I'll be right back." He tried for a cocky smile but wasn't sure he succeeded. "When I tell this story for free beers, I'll say you swung in on a vine like Tarzan and cut the last head off with nothing but your butterfly knife." With that, Dean turned and made his way to the west and down the most gradual part of the slope, hardening his heart and ignoring the pleas and cursing behind him. Sam might hate him for a while, but at least he'd be alive to do so. All night, Dean hadn't been able to protect Sam from a single damn thing, and that was changing right now.
One of the monster's heads was picking up stones from the streambed in its mouth, chewing, then spitting them out. Another was tipped way back, staring up at nothing, apparently. The ones on the ends were still nosing along the ground and occasionally looking around. It wasn't real bright, then. But the closer Dean got to level with its fat feet, the more he really understood how huge the thing was. Its legs looked ridiculously short for its body, but they were every inch of six feet long and bigger around than Dean could reach. But there was nothing for it – he had to figure out a way to kill the bastard, which was growing rapidly and aiming to pull a General Sherman. Good thing Dean was armed like Van Damme and Willis combined.
Once Dean was far enough to the side that there was no way that his attack could possibly make the hydra look Sam's direction, he looked out from behind a massive oak and opened fire.
The impacts of the bullets jarred the necks and heads they hit but seemed to cause more confusion than anything else. They weren't even making the thing bleed. So much for that idea. Too bad there weren't any more RPG's. Fine.
"Hey, megalon!" Dean called, darting out from his hiding place. Not a single head turned his way, though one started rummaging in the branches of the tree he'd been behind. He hated to do it, but Dean couldn't cut off any heads unless they came down to his level. He had to get its attention, so he slashed at one of the legs with his sword.
It was like hacking at wood, the impact feeling a bit like hitting a long ball with an aluminum bat. But at least it opened a long, shallow wound that dripped dark blood.
And it worked to get the hydra's attention. Three of the heads whipped Dean's way, so fast that it was as much luck as anything else that he got a good swing in. Cutting the neck was nothing like cutting the leg. One slice cut halfway through the one he caught. He didn't have time to celebrate, though. A bathtub's worth of blood splashed down, then a rush of air barely alerted Dean in time to dive backwards as two of the heads – including the partially decapitated one – swung past in succession like a living cat o' nine tails.
"Yeah, do that again, snakey!" he taunted, regaining his feet and poking at the bloated side? Stomach? Whatever of the monster closest to him.
This time, just one head came and Dean didn't get a hit in. He didn't have to prompt another attack and found himself immensely glad for the monster's stupidity. He predicted the path of the already-injured head and stepped forward, holding the sword up and bracing himself as best he could. The hydra did all of the work, its momentum bringing the neck into the sword for bisection.
The head fell close enough to Dean to make his hair wave in the breeze it caused. The empty neck fell limp. The hydra threw back its three remaining heads and screamed like an enraged eagle, only a thousand times louder. Much more dangerous, it moved its body around much more agilely than he'd expected, making him have to flee for his life. One monstrous foot landed on the severed head, exploding it in a shower of gore that painted the ground for twenty feet.
It was touch and go for a few moments as the monster stomped around, and Dean very nearly was crushed when its thrashing knocked down a tall beech almost in his lap. When it slowed slightly, he began to ready the sword to piss it off again when he noticed something disturbing. (Even disturbing given everything he was dealing with!)
The stump of the cut neck was no longer bleeding. Instead, it was pulsing, two different bumps bulging, then almost disappearing over and over. Cut off one head, it grows two more, Dean remembered. He'd really hoped that wasn't true, or at least that it didn't happen quickly. So much for wishes.
Changing tactics, Dean stabbed the sword lightly into the ground simply for a place to keep it ready and pulled the flamethrower off his shoulder. It was unwieldy and slowed him enough that it took a few moments until he dared run forward enough to use it.
The gout of flame was satisfying but didn't cover much distance. Still, Dean's aim was perfect. The air was suddenly filled with monster screams and a smell like burning grease and ammonia. The skin charred and hissed and stopped pulsing with new growths.
Coughing, Dean retreated, watching out for stomping feet and working to get the awkward (and hot) weapon back over his shoulder.
In his distraction, Dean missed seeing one of the heads whip toward him until it was too late. He just managed to angle his body enough that the blow was merely glancing.
Merely glancing was still enough to send him across the forest floor, rolling and disoriented with a mouth full of blood. His ears were ringing, and he had no idea where the sword or flamethrower had ended up.
A dark shape blocked out the moon. Dean looked up to see a mouth gape open above him and thought, well, shit. Sorry, Sammy. Get yourself free and get out of here.
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AN: Radpineapple, I hope you're not too disappointed that the monster isn't an actual dragon! The whole point of this story was to write about a "baby" hydra because I've always wanted to. I actually did write a fanfic with a tarasque dragon. It's called Euphemism, but I'll warn you that it isn't a terribly happy story.
Misery is a book and movie by Stephen King about an obsessed fan who "hobbles" her favorite writer so he he can't leave her remote house until he rewrites his latest book and doesn't kill off her favorite character.
Sam is right about the words on the sword. They are: ήρωες – heroes, προστάτες – protectors, and αδερφια – brothers.
General Sherman refers to William Tecumseh Sherman, who is infamous for his "march to the sea" during the American Civil War, during which he and his army laid waste to everything in their path.
Van Damme and Willis are Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis, two of the biggest action stars in Hollywood at the time of the story.
Megalon is a giant beetle-thing in some of the Godzilla movies.
Timelady66: I love the moose/squirrel nicknames and it cracks me up how Jared has embraced it. I've had it in my brain to quote something from Rocky and Bullwinkle for a while now. You are so right about intelligent and/or successful women often being accused of witchcraft and there are definite (though accidental) parallels with Dave believing that only witches could possibly have put together the clues to track the monster down. By the way, I hope you're not too disappointed.
sylvia37: I love you terming Dave's guys as 'the idiots.' As an aside, that's how I refer to my cats. LOL Sorry you had to wait on finding out what the monster is.
Colby's girl: If the last chapter was high octane, this one didn't let off the gas very much. Just long enough to let the engine breathe before hitting the nitrous button. Heh. That's a great question about the trapdoor. Paul told Sam and Dean that it was way too heavy to open without power, which was knocked out by the explosion. As for whether or not that will be a plot device, I have no comment. It does, however, give me a chance to use a word I just learned today: I cannot promise that I won't stoop to blatant sardoodledom. How's that for a sesquipedalian lexeme?
muffinroo: Ha! Anything shy of a severed limb, huh? You aren't far off! It's so nice to hear that an action scene worked. They're so hard to write. Sorry it's not an actual dragon. Hehe!
bagelcat1: I know! I definitely stuck to form with that one. And yup, I wanted to emphasize the difference between the guys and the psychos. Janice is still helping with chapter titles, luckily. I bet you can figure out the inspiration for all of the "head" phrases now!
Christine: No, no rest, no shower, nothing! *laughs evilly* Yeah, I made Dave really nutso. (That's a technical term...) Glad you liked the moose and squirrel reference!
Long Live BRUCAS: But of course they don't get any help to fight the huge monster! I'm so mean to the poor boys.
stedan: Thanks! No, they really can't catch a break. Psychos and giant monsters and prophecies, oh my! You'll see some of John, I promise.
Kathy: I am firmly convinced that Dean is a genius! He made a historical reference in this chapter too. It was fun to give them all the weapons to play with...I mean choose from. I would feel so claustrophobic in a place like that! So it wasn't a dragon but I hope a hydra is almost as good. *grin*
Shazza19: I wouldn't give the boys a sword and not let them use it! hehe
sfaulkenberry: I'm pretty much a child myself, so it's pretty easy to write boy humor. No, nothing ever goes Sam's way, like ever. (Not when I'm writing the story anyway.) I like the idea of Paul showing up again! What a fabulous image -- the boys in tarnished armor taking on a dragon.