AN: Another thing I failed to remember about the first couple episodes of season 10—the Black Spur, where Dean and Crowley were hanging out at the time, was also in North Dakota. Beulah. Less than two hours from Minot. Just wanted to assure you that's merely a bizarre coincidence. I'm not trying to hint at anything with that choice of location.
The news stories start appearing about two hours before their arrival in Minot. Sam watches in horror as they pile up, speaking of an impossibly strong man who killed three people outside a night club in horrifyingly gruesome ways and left the smell of sulfur behind him. Seems he vanished afterwards—both a good and a bad thing. He'll probably be long gone by the time they arrive, but this could mean he's not just body hopping; he might be riding the same guy around, so they could finally get a physical description.
Around the time buildings are starting to pop up around them, the cutout of the state which rests on Sam's lap begins to smolder. They purposely head for the night club mentioned in the news articles, and the nearer they get, the more the edges curl and detach from the piece of the map, floating straight up into the air until they disintegrate in tiny puffs of smoke. By the time they stop in the nearest parking lot, the thing is burning so hot it makes no logical sense that it, just a flimsy piece of paper, should even still exist, and as they make their way as surreptitiously as possible around the police tape, it abruptly dissolves into a small pile of ash.
No doubt left in their minds, they arrive, all suited up, at the Minot police station. But before they step out of the car, Sam turns to Cas and says, "I'll deal with this. You call Crowley."
Cas pauses just a fraction of a second too long, so Sam continues, "We should gather info while we're here but he can't be more than about two hours away. Assuming he stays at least that long at his next location, we can catch him, easily. Call Crowley. Tell him to come now."
Cas blinks at him, but he nods, and pulls his phone out. Sam leaves him to it, and enters the police station. After flashing his badge he gets the report on the bodies—three of them, all males between thirty-one and forty-two, all of them badly cut up with the broken shard of a bottle, two bearing slashes to the throat, the other with the shard wedged into his chest. There were two witnesses, a young couple who saw pretty much everything. The guy is currently being questioned, so Sam sits the girl down in an interrogation room.
"Agent Tull, FBI," Sam says. "What's your name?"
"Angie," says the young woman, running a hand nervously through her dark hair.
"All right, Angie. Could you describe the assailant?"
She looks at him uncertainly, and then comes the usual protest: "I've already been through all this with the police—"
"I'm not the police," Sam cuts her off, less patience than usual in his voice. "Standard procedure, and it won't take too much of your precious time. Please bear with me. Now, the assailant?"
She looks chastised, and glances at her lap before looking back up. "Um, tall. Really tall, like six-four, maybe. Pretty built, too. Uh, white. Pretty pale, actually. Short brown hair. I didn't catch his eye color—my fiancé said they were brown too, but honestly I don't see how he possibly could have seen that."
"Okay, good," he says as he scrawls the last couple words down. "Now, can you tell me what happened?"
Angie gulps, and immediately starts fidgeting with her engagement ring. Sam waits. "We were about to leave," she starts. "We were sitting in our car across the street, in perfect view of the alley. They… they came out through the side, and… I mean, this guy, he was just dragging these two grown men by the hair. They were screaming. I don't know if you've talked to the other girl who was inside, the bartender, but she said they started picking on him… Pretty stupid move if you ask me, he was massive, but maybe he was sitting down and they couldn't tell? I don't know. But she said they didn't even say anything that bad, they were just a little drunk and being obnoxious, but this guy just dragged them outside, and then he…" She falls abruptly silent.
Sam knows where this is going. He never wanted his brother to be the subject of a conversation like this, but he knows where this is going, and he has to hear the rest. "Whatever it was, just tell me what you saw. I've been tailing this guy for weeks now, and trust me, whatever you say can't sound more insane than what I've already heard."
She looks at him in surprise. "Really?"
He nods. "Weird crap follows this guy." Examples would be good, he supposes. Preferably examples that are probably crazier than whatever she actually saw. "Bright lights, amazing strength, spontaneous fires, the smell of sulfur… One of his victims even cut his own—well that's technically classified. But suffice it to say, I've heard it all."
She looks excited now. "I wasn't actually on the scene at any point but I heard police talking about finding sulfur there."
Again he nods, and leans in closer. "Please. Tell me what you saw."
She's decided she will, that much is obvious. And the moment he realizes this, he's suddenly not sure he wants to know.
"He threw them against the wall," she says. "And when I say throw, I'm talking like… like a pair of footballs. They both hit the wall about ten feet up it and then just fell and stayed where they were. They could have already been dead, for all we knew. I guess he saw one of them moving, or maybe he didn't, but then he started kicking them, just brutally kicking them. We started dialing the police then. That was when another guy came out… and…" She bites her lip. "And the attacker, he… I don't know, he just reached out, and… and this man was pinned against the side of the building. His feet like two feet off the ground. This guy didn't even touch him. And he just kept beating the guys on the ground. He grabbed something off the ground after a minute or so and jammed it into their throats." She gets more upset the longer she speaks. Sam unconsciously leans even further forward, willing her to continue. After a moment to compose herself, she goes on, tears trembling in her eyes, "Surely they were dead after that, but he didn't stop."
An image flashes through Sam's head, an image he's been trying to put out of his mind since the moment it stopped happening—of Dean as he killed Abaddon, and then carried on thrusting the Blade into every yet unblemished part of her face and chest, his arm working tirelessly, ears deaf to Sam's shouts, mind obviously a world away.
He drags his attention back to Angie as she continues, "He turned, and this man, who was still pressed against the wall and apparently totally unable to move, he just… he just started cutting him. We could hear him screaming. It felt like way longer than it should have been, because nobody came to investigate, but I… He just went nice and slow, at times just standing back to watch him, and I have no doubt he was enjoying it." She shudders, gripping her hair in her fists. "Basically… he stopped when he heard the sirens, and the guy fell to the ground without even being touched, and he just jammed his fist and whatever he was holding into the guy's chest. But I am sure he would have gone on as long as he could.
"He stepped out into the streetlight then. That was when we got a pretty good look at him. And I swear, he saw us. He looked right at us. I thought for sure we were going to die. But he just stared at us for a couple seconds, and then just turned and ran off down the street."
She stops, and roughly rubs her eyes, which are definitely producing tears even though she's managed to keep from full-on crying so far. But Sam doesn't have the presence of mind to be impressed by that right now.
Dean doesn't even exist anymore. Not if what he's hearing is to be believed.
He thanks Angie for her time, trying not to let his voice shake, not that it matters much if it does. He finds Cas on his way to the door, talking to an officer, and they head out side by side.
"So," Cas mutters as they step outside, "that's at least three people brutally murdered by a monster we failed to stop."
His earlier words He's not your brother, at least not now; you have to be prepared flash through Sam's mind.
"Sam, if we find ourselves in a situation where the choice is between killing him or letting him go, we have to kill him. We need to establish that. So there's no question in the moment."
The words You know I can't agree to that waver and die on Sam's tongue. Because Cas is right. This happened because they failed. Those men are dead because Sam is dangerously dependent on his brother, because he couldn't bear the thought of losing him, let alone being the one to kill him.
He probably just needs to accept that he's not a good guy. That in some very real sense, he's on a demon's side here. Because he knew, back in the bunker, as he held a knife to Dean's throat, that if he let him go, he would kill again. Nothing has changed.
He's just weak to the point of evil. That's the fact of the matter.
He doesn't respond to Cas. He just walks on ahead and gets into the driver's seat of the Impala. When Cas joins him in the shotgun seat, he asks with the picture of composure, "What did Crowley say?"
Cas sighs softly next to him, but he replies with an address.
It's a grungy motel this time, but at least it's close. The spell points them to the same part of Kentucky as well as a new location, just inside the Montana border. Sam immediately grabs the keys, but Crowley stops him, saying, "Hold your horses, Moose. He could still be on the road. Tell you what: I'll give you a couple gallons of this stuff and some large maps of the States, for your convenience. You run out, just call me, and we'll discuss your failures and see about getting you some more."
They load it into the trunk and drive nearly two and a half hours before the little map of Montana burns into dust, and sure enough, they're in the middle of the highway when it happens. They stop on the shoulder of a back road and spread a map over the hood of the car.
As far as Sam can tell, the newest fleck lands on Miles City, just over two hours away.
They get there in about an hour and a half.
This time they don't know what specific location they're looking for. No news stories have popped up. It's a bit after midnight now, though, and the behavioral patterns of the demonized version of Dean haven't been too hard to pick up on. Sam has Cas pull up a list of the city's top bars and taverns, and they start from number one and go down.
On the way to number two, the map begins to glow and crumble.
Sam puts the vehicle in park, turns the engine off, and is stepping onto the concrete outside the driver's seat in a matter of seconds. He's sick of sitting and there's no time to waste. He notes, however, that Cas is still seated.
He leans down. The angel's gaze is trained on the brick wall ahead of them. The map in his hands is barely holding onto its existence. "Cas," he prompts.
Cas blinks, and turns his head to look at him. "He's here, Sam," he says, voice low and rife with apprehension. "He's here."