(A/N- The hot weather in Oakvale is directly influenced by the fact that HealerAriel is currently freezing her ass off. Forgive me if you live in a hot place and are just suffering more due to this chapter... Just imagine the Winchester boys with their shirts off, if it helps )
Sabine Harvey was the only woman alive on whom the combination of cowboy boots, a rifle, perfectly coiffed hair and a French manicure didn't look at all odd.
She was also in surprisingly good shape, which was a cause of some discouragement for the Winchester brothers as they followed her through the dense woods. Huffing and puffing in the sweltering Mississippi heat, led by a thirty-three-year-old housewife who hadn't even broken a sweat… well, it wasn't something they were going to be bragging about. Not that they were going to admit to any discomfort, unless it was a hundred degrees in the shade.
"You boys alright?" she asked, looking back at them with a concerned, motherly expression on her face. They both nodded vehemently, forcing themselves to curb their panting. It was only ninety-three degrees in the shade, after all. They could hold out a little longer before dying of heat stroke.
They'd set off right after breakfast to look for the werewolves' lair, figuring that if they could sneak up on the pack while most of its members were sleeping, it was just a matter of pumping them full of silver and torching the carcasses – no tracking or chasing required.
"So," Dean said, "thirteen years of marriage, huh?" Normally he would have balked at the idea of conversation for conversation's sake, but as it were he was clinging to the desperate hope that running his mouth could distract him from the feeling of being suffocated by a hot, wet towel. From the look Sabine gave him, he guessed that she'd picked up on that, but was perfectly happy to talk nonetheless.
"I got married about a week after we cleared out the werewolves," she answered, nodding. Dean's eyebrows shot upward.
"You work fast," he commented. Sabine rolled her eyes.
"Oh, for God's sake! I didn't just arbitrarily decide to get married when the pack was gone. The whole reason I called you and John in was because I thought it might be a little much for David to move into a house under siege by werewolves."
"So you were engaged when we met. And here I spent all these years just thinking you were immune to my charms."
"Well, there was that," she agreed with a smirk. "But the really big issue was that you were still shooting blanks when I met you."
"What're you talking about, my gun was loaded with silv–" He paused. Sabine was glancing at him with a raised eyebrow, and Sam looked like he was fighting off an onslaught of giggles. And it occurred to Dean that perhaps it hadn't been his gun that Sabine was referring to. "Oh, so not cool," he grumbled, his cheeks heating in embarrassment – both for the jab itself, and for the fact that Sam had picked up on a bawdy joke before he had. Way to add insult to injury.
Aside from Dean alternately humming "Bad Moon Rising" and "Werewolves of London" under his breath, the next hour was spent in relative silence. It was only a little while till sunset, and finding the lair was beginning to look like a lost cause. In fact, the trio was seriously considering calling it a day, until Sam tripped over something warm and furry.
That something, upon inspection, turned out to be a buck – or what was left of one, anyway. With so much flesh and muscle and bone ripped away, the only really distinguishing feature left was the rack of horns laying a few feet away from the creature's cracked, skin-stripped skull. Sam's stomach churned, and he scrambled to put distance between himself and the dead animal.
"Looks like the work of a werewolf." Dean sounded far too pleased with this discovery, actually crouching down for a closer look at the kill while Sam was busy vowing that he would never eat venison again. "Still warm, too."
"Then the werewolf that killed it shouldn't be far off," Sabine added with a victorious smile.
What's wrong with these people? Sam wondered, nevertheless falling in behind his brother and Sabine, who had begun following a faint blood trail on the ground. The trail ended at a mass of bushes, which Dean pushed aside to reveal the opening to a small cave. He grinned, and motioned for them to follow him inside.
The passage was only wide enough for them to walk single-file and was low enough in some areas that Sam had to duck – something he'd found out after cracking his head on the ceiling one too many times, and being angrily shushed for his hisses of pain. Covered in dead animal germs and developing a migraine and a not-so-minor case of claustrophobia, Sam decided that he seriously deserved some chocolate for his troubles. Maybe he could convince Sabine to bake some brownies later: pout a little; flash the big, brown puppy-dog eyes. That routine had usually worked to weasel some goodies out of Jess, and if that hadn't done the trick... well, there had been a more fun method of paying for his snacks, but that had been exclusively for Jess. The puppy-dog eyes were just gonna to have to do this time.
It wasn't until he walked into Sabine – who then bumped into Dean – that Sam realized his brother had stopped walking. Up ahead of them the passage widened into a small, round room.
And the ground was covered with at least twenty sleeping werewolves.
"Jackpot," Dean whispered, readying his gun. Sam and Sabine mirrored the motion and, stepping quietly, the three of them spread out around the room, their backs to the walls. If they fired quickly enough, they could thin out the pack to a reasonable number before the creatures were lucid enough to fight back. Some things you feel bad about killing in cold blood. Werewolves, however, have never been among them.
"One," Dean mouthed, taking aim at the monster closest to him. "Two." Sabine pointed her rifle between the eyes of the huge grey lump at her feet; Sam fixed his gun on the bloody-muzzled (I bet you just killed something cute and furry, didn't you? he accused silently) werewolf to his left.
"Three."
The gunfire was almost deafening, echoing back even louder in the enclosed area. With three werewolves dead, the humans aimed and fired again and again, four more rounds in sixty seconds, as the rest of the pack began to wake and realize what was happening.
And, understandably, they were a little pissed off.
A large black monster hurled itself full-tilt at Sam, who dodged and shot it in the back of the head; another leapt at Dean from the side, raking its claws across his arm before he put a bullet into it; two more went straight for Sabine – she felled one, and Dean shot the other; another took a flying leap, caught Sam in the chest with its massive paws and knocked him to the ground, opening its jaws to snap his face off – it wasn't certain who killed that one, because all three guns fired at once, leaving a dead werewolf to collapse on Sam.
It had taken all of a minute and thirty seconds.
There was a collective sigh of relief, and then Sam intimated that he'd really, really like some help getting the enormous corpse off of him if it wasn't too much trouble.
Once the carcasses had been piled up, liberally soaked with lighter fluid, and set ablaze inside their cave, the hunters took stock of injuries. Sam was going to have some bruises from the pouncing, and Dean had blood running down his arm from the scratches, but aside from that they were unharmed.
"That was almost too easy," Dean said, examining what promised to become some very impressive scars. "I was kind of hoping there'd be more of them…"
"Next time we'll wake them up for you first," Sabine promised. "Sam and I can sit back and watch while you play gladiator. Remind me to clean your arm when we get back to the house," she added. "If that gets infected it's not going to be pretty."
"Yes, mother," he replied with a dramatic roll of his eyes. Then he grinned "Hey, you know, I think me and Sam deserve some hero cookies for this; I mean, we were injured in the line of duty." Sabine laughed.
"What kind of hero cookies are we talking?"
"Anything with chocolate," Sam said immediately, a smile spreading across his face. "Chocolate hero cookies."
"Sam's like a PMSing chick when it comes to chocolate," Dean explained, nudging his brother with his non-bloody arm.
Sabine agreed that some chocolate hero cookies would be doable, and the trio headed out of the woods for some much-needed air conditioning, so preoccupied with talking and laughing that they didn't pay any attention to the faint rustling in the bushes, or the sets of glittering green eyes in the shadows that tracked their every move.
(A/N- Heeheehee. Review, please, my darlings, for this is a possible stopping point…)