November 28th, 2042
They'd been on the road for just over four hours, the last hour of which had been spent in near silence. There was only so much DJ could take of his dad's gruesome true crime podcasts, and dad's tolerance for listening to the oldies' station apparently ended when they started playing Asia. DJ wasn't touching that with a ten foot pole; his dad had been glaring at the highway as though it had personally offended him since they drove through York. It was dark and freezing, and DJ was bored and restless, jiggling his knee and gnawing on his thumbnail while he stared out the passenger window at nothing in particular.
"Dean…" his dad sighed, exasperated, eyes darting from the road to the errant knee and back again.
"Sorry," he muttered, willing his body to stillness.
Dad sighed again, but this time he just sounded tired. Out of the corner of his eye, DJ watched the older man roll his shoulders, crack his neck, and push his glasses up the bridge of his nose—all classic signs of an impending heart-to-heart.
"You don't have to apologize," his dad started. "I know I've been—"
DJ's ringtone was unbearably loud in the quiet confines of the car, interrupting whatever his dad had been about to say. The sound startled him, delivering a swift kick of adrenaline to compliment his traditional roadtrip caffeine-and-sugar high. He fumbled it out of his pocket, intending to silence it and let the call go to voicemail, but he paused when he saw the contact information.
"It's Cass," DJ excused himself, "I can't just…"
"Answer it," Dad insisted, returning his attention to the road.
"Hey," DJ attempted a greeting, but Cass cut him off almost immediately.
"It's not a werewolf," he said grimly, half-shouting so as to be heard over Sam hacking and coughing in the background.
"What?" DJ demanded, ignoring his dad's curious glance.
"I said it's not a werewolf!" Cass yelled; DJ grimaced and pulled the phone away from his ear.
"No, I heard you," he assured him, "but… what? Are you sure?"
"Pretty goddamn sure, DJ!" Cass snarled indignantly.
"All right, Jesus, calm down," DJ attempted to pacify him. "What the hell happened? Because yesterday you were pretty goddamn sure it was a werewolf."
"We, uh," Cass hedged. "We kinda broke into the crime scene."
"Cass," DJ groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose and slowly counting to ten.
"What!?" Cass burst out. "This case has been a total bitch, okay? Donna called in a favor to get us that first set of crime scene photos, but since then we've been chasing fucking shadows, dude!"
"I'm not criticizing you," DJ tried to interrupt, but Cass was on a roll.
"The neighbors don't know anything, there are never any witnesses, the cops have been all over the crime scenes by the time we get a crack at them—if we're even that lucky! So excuse me for thinking that crossing a police line might help us catch a break!"
"Cass," DJ tried again when the other man paused for breath. "I'm not—" he frowned, distracted by the sound of Sam whining and choking. "Is Sam okay?"
"Sam? Oh, yeah, he's fine. He just got a face full of sulfur."
"Sulfur?" DJ queried, nonplussed.
"Put him on speaker," his dad said gruffly; DJ shushed him.
"Yep; the whole place stinks like rotten eggs," Cass confirmed. "But I wasn't stupid enough to snort a line of it off the windowsill."
"But that means—" DJ started.
"I know, right!?" Cass sounded almost excited. "Nobody's dealt with anything infernal in what, almost ten years now?"
"Dean!" Dad persisted, making a grab for the phone.
"Hey!" DJ snapped, irritated, twisting out of his dad's considerable reach. "Hold on, Cass. Dad wants me to put you on speaker."
"Oh; hey Big Sam," Cass said, acknowledging dad's presence as DJ set the phone on the center console. "So, anyway. We always thought these kills were overdone, you know? Like, the hearts were missing, sure, but these vics had been ripped to shreds, man. It was just—"
"Sloppy," Sam cut in finally, still wheezing.
"Yeah, that," Cass continued. "So we're thinking hellhound."
"That's an awful lot of deals come due all at once," DJ commented, mentally tallying up the body count.
"How many?" Dad demanded.
"Including this one? Fourteen," Cass answered promptly.
"That we know of," Sam amended.
"Shit," Dad said softly, biting his lip.
"Cass, man, are you sure?" DJ couldn't help but ask. "Like, one hundred percent? There's not, I don't know, a gas leak or something that could explain the sulfur?"
"Dude, even without the sulfur," Sam said seriously, "feral werewolves don't draw sigils."
"Sigils?" DJ asked, heart sinking.
"More like one big-ass sigil," Cass clarified. "It's fucking gross, dude, you'd have lost your lunch. It's all done in blood and… other bits."
"And before you ask," Sam said, "No, we don't recognize it. That's actually why we called; we thought your dad might know what it's for. I'm sending a picture."
The phone chirped as the message came through; DJ picked it up, swiping across to the grisly image. The sigil was spotlit in a dark room, rough slashes of crimson daubed over pale wood flooring. He swallowed heavily, repulsed.
"I've never seen this before," he admitted, flipping the phone around and holding it up to eye-level. "Dad?"
He only had a moment to register the sheer terror on his dad's face before he was flung violently against the passenger door; he dropped the phone, throwing out one hand to brace himself against the dashboard while he scrabbled desperately with the other for the grab handle, his seatbelt cutting painfully into his neck. He swore as his dad overcorrected drastically, jerking the steering wheel to put the car back on the right side of the road.
"Jesus Christ, dad! What the fuck!?" DJ shouted, but his dad drowned him out.
"Get the hell out of there!" he roared, eyes blazing. "Boys! Get out of there now!"
"DJ!? What the fuck is happening!?" A tinny, concerned voice demanded from the floorboards; DJ couldn't tell whether it belonged to Cass or Sam.
He cast about frantically until he saw the blue backlight blinking up at him, then released his death grip on the grab handle to pluck his phone out of the footwell.
"I'm fine," he panted. "We're fine, but-"
His dad snatched the phone right out of his hand, and this time he just let it go.
"Listen to me!" Dad ordered, in a tone that brooked no argument. "You boys get out of there, right fucking now. Shut up; just get in the car and drive! Where are you?"
"Hastings," DJ supplied. "If we meet them halfway, it'll be half an hour, tops."
"Too risky," Dad gritted out, shaking his hair out of his face. "Dean, take the wheel."
DJ didn't hesitate, reaching across to keep the vehicle steady as his dad punched numbers into the phone.
"I'm gonna send you coordinates," he told the twins, still typing. "We're gonna meet you there."
"Coordinates? To where?" Cass wanted to know.
"To a safe place," Dad snapped. "Drive. And turn your brights on."
"Yes sir," Cass grumbled; obedient, but with attitude.
Dad gestured to DJ to let go, and took back control of the car.
"You boys got salt? Holy water?"
"Yeah, of course," Sam answered, sounding mildly offended.
"What about road flares?"
"Flares? Um, I think we have a few. Why?"
"When you get there," Dad continued, ignoring the question. "Light up one of those flares, lay a ring of salt, and keep that holy water handy. You stay in that circle, and you keep the light on, you understand?"
The twins muttered their assent, and DJ watched as his dad scanned the shoulder, clocked a mile marker, and rolled his wrist to check the time on his watch.
"We'll be there in an hour," he informed them, accelerating abruptly enough that DJ reached for the grab handle again. "Don't do anything stupid."
He hung up then, tossing the phone in DJ's direction. Unprepared, DJ just barely managed to catch it before it slid to the floor.
"Dad," he huffed, annoyed and anxious all at once. "What is going on?"
Dad ground his teeth, his stranglehold on the steering wheel tightening until the tendons cracked. Clearly, an answer was not forthcoming. DJ rolled his eyes and opened his chat thread with the twins to read his dad's message.
"Three nine point eight two…" DJ's head snapped up as the realization dawned. "These are the coordinates to the bunker."
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