(A/N- I apologize to Mr. Pratchett and Mr. Gaiman for the Good Omens reference in this chapter, and also to you AC/DC fans – I rather like them, too.)
Five-year-old Madeline Harvey was out in the garden. Mama was inside making dinner – spaghetti, Maddy's favorite. Maddy wanted to pick Mama some flowers. Mama loved flowers. She said that the faeries loved flowers, too, and that's why she kept so many of them. Mama could see the faeries, just like Katie and Bryce and Maddy could.
"Sorry, faeries, these are for my Mama," Maddy said, bending toward a cluster of white blossoms with her little knife at the ready.
Maddy stopped halfway. The back of her neck was prickling. She listened carefully. The forest was silent. It shouldn't be.
Maddy slowly pulled herself upright, casting glances around the clearing and the surrounding woods. Nothing moving; not a sound. Something was wrong. Maddy wasn't safe.
The back door was a few yards away. If Maddy made a run for it now, whatever was out there might not get her. She hoped.
She took a backwards step toward the door. The bushes across the clearing rustled, and a figure stepped out.
It almost looked like a wolf. Its eyes gleamed bright green, and it almost looked like it was smiling at her with those big dripping teeth. It growled.
Maddy screamed, and sprinted as fast as her little legs could carry her. She just barely made it inside before she heard the thing's awful body slam against the door, snarling and scratching at the wood and trying to get to the tasty little girl on the other side.
"There's one outside!" she yelled, backing away from the door. "It's trying to get through the door!"
Mama came running, with two men Maddy didn't recognize close behind her. Daddy came last, looking very pale and scared, and Maddy knew why; Daddy didn't believe in monsters.
"Man, I was hoping I'd get to try this thing out," the shorter man said, grinning at something he was holding. "C'mon, Sammy, let's go fry a werewolf."
"Boy, if you break my flamethrower…" Mama warned, giving him the same look she gave Katie when Katie wanted to use Mama's crossbow.
"Maddy, you stay back with your father," said the taller man. He had a soft voice, and his eyes were kind. Maddy liked him right away.
There was a loud crash that hurt Maddy's ears, and then lots of guns being fired which hurt her ears even more. Daddy snatched Maddy up into his arms.
"My God," said Daddy, staring at the dead werewolf on the tile floor, and the six or seven more that were coming out from the trees and running straight toward the broken door.
Oakvale, Mississippi, 2005
Sabine Harvey was awakened by tugging on the sleeve of her nightgown. She opened her eyes to see a terrified-looking Maddy standing beside her bed.
"Honey, what's wrong?" she asked.
"Mama, they're coming, I saw them!" the little girl whispered frantically.
"Who?"
"The werewolves, Mama, I saw them in my dream. I was in the garden, and there was one, and I ran inside and it broke the door, and you and a couple other people I didn't know killed it but there were more outside. Oh, Mama, it's going to be terrible!"
Sabine's mind was reeling. She and the Winchesters had killed all the werewolves in Oakvale thirteen years before, hadn't they? Or had they missed a few, and unknowingly let the remaining pack members hide in human form, biding their time until they'd bred their numbers high enough to attack again?
"When did this happen, Maddy? Do you know what day it was?"
"No, Mama, I just know it was warm outside."
Well, naturally. It's June, Sabine thought. She knew it was unfair of her to expect Maddy's visions to be date-specific, but still, a time frame would have helped. She had no idea how long it might take for John and Dean to get to Oakvale from wherever they were. Unless they were the people Maddy didn't recognize in her dream, which would certainly be a good sign if there's a pack of werewolves breaking down the back door.
"Maddy, the people in your dream, what did they look like?"
Maddy's little face scrunched up comically as she tried to remember the details.
"They looked younger than you and Daddy. They both had brown hair, and the shorter one was playing with your flamethrower."
Well, we have Dean taken care of, Sabine thought with a smirk at the mental picture of Dean Winchester – still a skinny, slightly perverted thirteen-year-old in her mind's eye – lovingly stroking a flamethrower in the face of danger.
But the fact that Maddy had seen two young men had thrown her a bit. Obviously John wasn't there, and that made her nervous. Trigger-happy Dean was good to have on your side in a fight, but John had been the brains in the outfit last time. He'd been the reason they were able to find the werewolves' lair and kill the whole pack.
Well. Maybe not the whole pack, after all.
"Listen, Maddy," Sabine said, lifting her little girl's chin and looking her in the eyes. "I'll call somebody who can help us in the morning, and until the werewolves are gone I want you and your sisters to stay inside the house, do you understand?"
"Yes, Mama."
"And whatever you do, don't tell your father," Sabine added, shooting a glance at her husband, still sound asleep on the other side of the bed. "I'll… try to find some way of explaining it myself."
A physics professor who didn't believe in anything he couldn't see, touch, and explain with a mathematical equation, David Harvey was terribly out of place in his own mediumistic, faerie-and-spirit-seeing family. But he loved them all dearly despite their idiosyncrasies, and that was really all that mattered.
How he would react to his wife hiring monster exterminators… well, that would be an interesting conversation, to say the least.
Out on the open road…
"I can't believe you made us stay at that diner for two hours," Sam Winchester complained, more than anything just to drown out AC/DC's "Big Balls". One of these days he was going to smash and burn Dean's entire music collection…
"Dude, did you see the waitress? Hell, I'd still be there if I didn't have you whining at me." Sam rolled his eyes.
"How did you manage to get anything done on your own? You waste all your time hitting on women."
"Next best thing to shooting stuff," Dean replied, smirking. "You should try it sometime, Captain Purity, it's very fulfilling."
"Yeah, whatever," Sam sighed, and went back to willing the stereo to break, or eat the cassette, or cause every tape to change to Queen after a fortnight; just about anything would have made Sam a little happier.
Dean's phone started ringing, and Sam's musically-challenged brother motioned for him to turn off the radio. Sam obeyed, silently praising the caller's good timing.
Dean answered the phone with an oh-so-unprofessional "Yeah?" A second later, Sam watched a huge grin spread across his brother's face.
"You kidding? How could I ever forget you?" Dean said into the phone, his voice an octave lower than normal. Sam let out an amused snort. He'd bet his soul that there was a woman on the other end of that phone line.
"Well that's because I am all grown up now, Ms. McLeod," Dean practically purred into the receiver, the lascivious grin evident in his voice. Probably a good-looking woman, too, Sam decided.
Dean's grin disappeared.
"Oh," he said flatly. "Mrs. Harvey, excuse me… How long you been married? …Thirteen years, huh? …No way, three kids? Well, that's… that's great. Congratulations."
Sam shook with silent laughter at the disappointment on Dean's face; cruel, he knew, but it was kind of a funny situation from where he was standing. Dean glared and flipped him off, which only made it funnier.
The woman on the phone spoke for a few more seconds, and Sam watched Dean's facial expression go from one of disappointment and annoyance to one of concern.
"But we got 'em all last time; we made sure of it," he said, actually sounding worried. Sam knew his brother well enough to be quite sure that when Dean was worried, the situation was likely much worse than it had originally seemed.
"Do you know how many there are this time? …What d'you mean, you haven't seen them, how do you know they're there? …Babe, this is me you're talking to, nothing's gonna sound too weird," Dean assured the woman on the phone.
Moments later his eyebrows lifted in surprise. "…Your daughter what? …No, no, I believe you. We'll be there sometime tomorrow; depends how much speeding I can get away with. …Yes, I know it's against the law," he said, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "Seeya." He shut off the phone, checked the side and rearview mirrors for cops, and then accelerated to 80.
"Another job?"
"Yeah, Oakvale, Mississippi. Middle of nowhere. Dad and I helped Sabine, the chick on the phone, get rid of a pack of werewolves in '92. She thinks they're about to make an encore performance."
"How does she know that?" Sam asked. Dean shot him a sidelong glance.
"Get this: her youngest daughter dreamed about it. Apparently, the kid has visions. You should be right at home."
Sam was momentarily stunned and comforted to know he wasn't the only freak with prophetic dreams… then Dean turned the damn radio back on, and Sam went back to just wishing the stupid thing would break, and soon.