This host body was his favorite so far, probably because it was the closest to what he was used to. Tan skin, similar hair to Dean's old body, six foot one, over two hundred pounds of muscle. Single guy in his late twenties. Lived alone. Fridge and kitchen cabinets absolutely packed with alcohol.
But this body, though more comfortable to inhabit and easier to pilot than his previous ones, still felt… wrong. He was reminded of how it felt to try on a suit jacket at the store that was labeled as his size but was too tight around the shoulders or rode up his back or didn't have long enough sleeves. Just like the last four. This one was closer, the closest so far, to feeling like it was his, but it wasn't close enough.
He was tired of driving—not physically, because he wasn't carrying around physical symptoms of anything, but emotionally—so for almost two days, he dealt with it. He ate more conservatively—on the chance that he stayed in this body for a while, he wanted to keep it fit—but spent both nights at the nearest bar he could find after driving about an hour from his host's hometown. The first night he just got drunk quietly and minded his own business, but by the second, the itch was becoming unbearable.
He knew exactly what he was feeling. Normally some punk ass Abaddon zealot with a very stabbable face would have shown up by now, but he was now well aware the reason they had been so consistently privy to his location, and that reason had been neutralized. Crowley was no longer riding his ass about every little thing but he was also no longer sending him regular top-offs and sparing him the trouble of seeking them out. Here and now, he was itching to kill, and the more he thought about it, the more excited he got, because he would have to get creative. The euphoria provided by the Blade was unlike anything he'd ever experienced and sooner or later he had every intention of reclaiming it. But the guy he was riding now had no weapons at all in his house, and Dean had searched it from top to bottom. He was totally unarmed, and he was starting to wonder what it would actually be like to fulfill the threat he had delivered to Sam, and rip out somebody's throat with his teeth.
All he had to do was bump into somebody, start a brawl, stove some fool's head in, get out of sight, and smoke out. It would be so easy, and any potential nearby hunters would just skim over the story in the paper, if one appeared at all.
But for some reason, his gaze kept returning to the ladies' room door—behind which he knew was a young blonde woman, probably barely out of college—and the two large men who kept looking in the same place.
He'd noticed her shortly after he arrived. She'd been having a tearful and heated discussion with some guy her age, which had ended with him storming out the door and her fleeing to the bathroom with tears rolling down her cheeks. It seemed that otherwise she was alone. About twenty minutes had passed, it was definitely full dark outside, and Dean feared—suspected that she had lost her ride home when her date had left.
She was definitely beautiful, and very small. Much smaller than the two dudes who were keeping uncomfortably close tabs on the door.
He rubbed both hands down his face. This was exactly what Dean, the old Dean, the weak Dean would do. If he had to kill, if he had no choice and no demons were presenting themselves, he would do everything within his power to select a victim, or victims, who had it coming.
Did you feel sorry for her? echoed Crowley's voice in his head, not for the first time.
Crowley was an obnoxious ass, but Dean was afraid that he was right. He couldn't keep wavering. He couldn't keep showing little Dean's old weaknesses, that self-sacrificing streak he nursed so lovingly, like anything about his identity really depended on it, like anybody else cared either way what kind of man he was. If he had to make a choice that all his future choices would naturally follow, he would forsake humanity in a heartbeat. He would stand by this with absolute certainty. So why was it that in specific situations, he still felt something very near what he would call empathy?
What are you? A demon? Maybe you're human.
He took another swig of whiskey, trying to rationalize all this to himself. If it looked like it was in self-defense, it was less likely to draw attention, right? It was what Dean would do, but wasn't it also just a logical choice to make? He wasn't sure he could overcome his bias. He wasn't sure what his motivations really were. He wasn't sure of much of anything.
All he knew was his hands were shaking, he couldn't focus, and he was so starved for the taste of blood that he was fooling himself into thinking he could smell it.
He got up, not bothering to pay, and retreated into the men's room, where he left his host lying on the floor. Being as subtle as he could manage, he slid under the doors and crossed the five feet of floor space between the restrooms. Sure enough, the girl was sitting on the toilet lid with a mess of used tissues on her lap, mascara streaming down her face, and her phone raised to her ear. Likely looking for a ride, though it didn't look like she was finding any success; if anything she looked more upset than she'd been when Dean had noticed her.
Not letting himself decide how he felt about her emotional state, nor even letting himself believe he had reason to have any opinion at all on the matter, he rose up, and she saw him just in time to let out a terrified squeak before he silenced her by sliding in through her parted lips.
Immediately he was overcome by blubbering, because the hormones were firing in her brain and the tears were still coming and he reached up instinctively to rub at her eyes, but found some unexpected obstacles in her fingernails—they felt so fragile, they were so long and clearly painted recently.
He'd hardly registered it before, but she was wearing a dress, and a fairly short one at that. Modest enough that, as far as he could tell, she didn't have to worry about pulling on it to cover everything when she changed position, but just barely. He sat there, resisting the urge to reach up and feel her chest, until he had to ask himself why he bothered to resist that urge at all, until he harshly reminded himself that he was doing this for a definite purpose, and shouldn't waste time.
He stood up, and immediately tripped, finding it impossible to right himself, and falling flat on the girl's face. Jeez, she had no upper body strength at all—it was immediately apparent as he tried to break his fall, and as he turned the borrowed body over to examine the girl's shoes. Sure enough—heels. Open-toed heels. Super. He knew she hadn't been drinking at all but he was sure going to walk out of this bathroom like she had been.
He gathered up everything in the room that looked like it belonged to her (too much, there was too much crap, how did she cope?), shoved it unceremoniously into her purse (seriously, how did she do anything with these nails?), checked her ID (her name was Rachel and she was only twenty-three), got distracted by her reflection in the mirror only briefly (okay, for a couple minutes straight, so sue him, she was hot), and exited the room, walking with as much dignity as he could.
The moment he stepped outside, he missed his own body more than he had since he'd left it. Everything was so huge. Every single person that he could see towered over this poor woman.
A thought flashed in the back of his mind of perhaps purposely seeking out physically weak hosts. It could be an exercise in character-building.
He grimaced without realizing it, mentally smacking himself. Maybe later, when and if he started getting bored with eternity, he could try out crap like that. But right now, he didn't have everything he wanted. He had to reclaim what was his—the First Blade. Till then, he couldn't afford not being in top form.
As he slipped through the crowd, taking each step mindfully, he could see those two men out of the corner of his eye. They hadn't moved since he'd first noticed them, but now, they stood up, and started for the same door he was heading for.
Perfect.
He stepped outside, and quickly scanned the area. The street was pretty deserted, no pedestrians in sight. No alleys nearby either. Everything was connected, with only two-lane streets separating each building. Nowhere to hide, really.
He picked a direction at random and started walking, and a few seconds later, he heard the door open not far behind him.
The good news was they were probably planning on following him until they were sure they had no witnesses—just what he wanted. And they almost definitely knew the area better than he did, so he'd leave the location of the slaughter up to their discretion.
He didn't have to walk too far before the little shops turned to large suburban homes—not exactly mansions, but it was clearly a well-off area. Very walkable though.
He almost caught himself thinking it seemed like a nice sort of place to live.
Just as this thought began its flight across his mind, the pair of rhythmic footfalls behind him started accelerating. Not too noticeable, to someone who wasn't looking for it. But this was it. They were making their move.
He stopped in his tracks and turned around, and jumped just the tiniest bit. They were closer than he had realized, perhaps two long strides away.
"One—" he started, but immediately snapped his mouth shut in shock at the high pitch of the voice that came out of it. Without thinking, he snarled at the thought that he probably appeared frightened because of this, and pushed on: "One warning: stay away from me. You're not gonna like what happens if you don't."
He wasn't sure why he said this, why he gave them a chance at all. What if they took it? He had to kill somebody.
Fortunately, and not at all surprisingly, though, they did not.
Now, based on the fact that the body he was inhabiting felt too weak and fragile to snap a toothpick, the plan had been to transfer himself into one of these guys and then beat the other one to death from there. That was why it was so ideal that they came in a pair. But, as it turned out, in a time of immediate danger, in the heat of the moment, drawing his essence out through his own mouth still came less instinctively than throwing punches. Which was why, when one of the guys strode forward, reaching for him, rather than smoking the hell out of a fight he knew he couldn't win, he found himself ducking and thrusting a tightly clenched fist forward into the guy's abdomen.
The man, all six feet and two hundred fifty pounds of him, flew two yards back and landed on the sidewalk, his head connecting with the concrete with a sickening crack. He was already dead. Dean stood still, staring at the body, feeling the thrill, the utter ecstasy of the kill spread through him, flooding through this poor girl's veins to every furthest corner of her body like a sudden cancer, but it had gone too fast, it wasn't enough.
He turned his head to the other man—who was still blinking dumbly at the body of his fellow—mind quickly registering that he was down one victim, but he didn't need to leave this body to get what he needed. His voice, the gravelly, masculine voice that was rightfully his, sounded in his own mind: "You know, I got a hell of a lot more runnin' through me than just demon juice."
He glanced down at his host's arm, because it was shaking, and though the Mark was indeed absent, the orange glow that formed and spread under his skin was there just the same, forming a familiar shape a few inches below the crook of his elbow. It would be gone when the euphoria was. Fine with him. His eyes slipped from the light show under the skin of his arm to the tiny feet wobbling in those ridiculous shoes below him.
They were perfect. It would be nice and slow.
He tore the shoes off the girl's feet, and, a wild grin of unholy excitement curling her painted lips, he rushed towards his second would-be attacker, relishing the look of bewilderment and terror on his face just before he started screaming.