Shane's eyes fluttered open. She was mildly confused at the sight of tree tops and the tiny glimpses of sky staring down at her. Then, as if someone had hit the rewind button, it all came rushing back. She slowly regained her stream of consciousness and rose to her feet. The book which she had been reciting from was thrown haphazardly to her left. She reached down to get it and then quickly glanced up when she felt a cold breeze.
She circled the stone formation but was stopped short when she saw Dean lying motionless, his right forearm being gripped tightly by the Asinaedo, her lips pressed against his. Shane knew that she had to get the Asinaedo away from Dean but attempting to physically attack the Asinaedo would be useless because without the full moon she wouldn't be corporeal. So instead she quickly flipped through the pages of the book looking for a spell to subdue her. Unfortunately, the rustling of the pages was enough to catch the Asinaedo attention. She lifted her head and looked up at Shane with a smile before releasing Dean's arm and disappearing in a mist of smoke.
Shane quickly ran to Dean and knelt done beside him. She noticed the blood trickling from the fresh cut on his forehead and immediately looked around for what had inflicted the wound. She exhaled sharply as she saw a smearing of blood on the rock formation to Dean's left.
"Shit," she muttered to herself, "blood in."
She grabbed Dean's right wrist and lifted it so she could see what kind of damage the Asinaedo had done. On the inside of his forearm was the image of a pentagram burnt into his flesh. The skin had already begun to heal but the outlining of the pentagram was raised slightly indicating its desire to be seen. Shane shook her head. Shit.
"Dean!" she heard Sam calling from the other side of the rock formation. She had been so caught up in checking on Dean that she had forgotten to look to see if Sam was alright. But indicating from the fact that he could still verbalize his brothers name Shane surmised that Sam was clearly okay.
"Over here." She called back to him and then refocused her attention on Dean. "Dean!" She said sharply as she gently shook him. "Dean!" she called again but he remained unresponsive. She felt Sam kneel down next to her as she shook Dean again. This time Dean slowly opened his eyes and stared up at them.
"Hey, Dean" Sam said with concern as he raised two fingers in front of Dean's face, "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Dean, not in the mood to be babied smugly replied "How many am I holding up?" But as he attempted to raise his middle finger he became aware of the burning sensation in his arm. He glanced at his forearm, which was still being held out by Shane, and noticed the image of a pentagram charred into it. "What did you do to me?" he asked Shane who looked down and noticed that she was still holding Dean's wrist. She dropped it and rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, not only am I trained hunter but I'm also an amateur tattoo artist." She sarcastically replied and shot him a look. "I didn't do this to you." She got up and allowed Sam to help Dean to his feet. "We gotta get outta here." She replied glancing from Dean's bloodied forehead to the blood glistening off the rock formation. "She'll be back."
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She watched the three hunters leave. She smiled as the older one inspected her handiwork on his arm. She only wished the female hadn't interfered. She could still taste him on her lips. She needed more time with him, needed to get him alone. Soon enough, he would be hers.
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About half an hour after the failed exorcism, 15 minutes of which consisted of Dean yelling at Shane for not being properly prepared, Shane telling Dean that if he didn't shut up she'd scar his other arm, and Sam attempting to play peacemaker, the three had managed to get back to the small motel room.
"I don't get." Dean said as he rubbed the mark on his arm and winced in pain as Shane attempted to patch up his forehead. "If the Ason-, Asi-, Asso-"
"Asinaedo." Shane and Sam responded in unison.
"Yeah, whatever." Dean replied, "If this demon bitch marks her prey and then kills them, then why didn't she kill me?" Then he remembered what Shane had told him the Asinaedo had done. "Why did she kiss me?" He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the mental image of the creepy spirit bitch putting her lips on his.
Sam stopped the researching he had been so diligently working on and turned towards Dean, "Hey, spirit chicks need love too." He laughed.
Dean shook his head. "So, not only did she kiss me while I was out cold but she gave me this scar too. I feel violated." Dean replied bitterly. Sam laughed but Shane, who had more knowledge of the Asinaedo, understood the severity of the situation.
"It's not a scar it's a mark." She replied as she tossed the bloodied cloths into the nearby trashcan.
"Scar. Mark. What's the difference? I still look like an animal sacrificing, Devil worshiping, cult member with this thing on my arm." Dean replied.
"No, you don't get it." Shane took a seat on Sam's unoccupied bed, "You're a marked man, Dean. Marked as in death's gonna come a-knockin'." Shane paused, "Well, technically the Asinaedo gonna come a-knockin' and she'll be looking for more of a ritualistic sacrifice then just plain old death. But, I guess technically the outcome's the same, right?" She noticed that the rhythmic clicking of keys from Sam's laptop had stopped. Her rant had obviously caught him off guard and she looked up to see both him and Dean staring at her with wide eyes. "Oh, you don't do technicalities?" She asked apologetically realizing that she probably shouldn't have voiced their current situation so callously. "Sorry."
Silence filled the room for a good thirty seconds before Sam slowly asked, "What do you mean sacrifice?" He attempted to make eye contact with Shane who continued to look around the room, ignoring Sam's question. "Shane," Sam said rising from his seat and positioning himself in front of Shane who was forced to stand up herself in order to gain a more even stand off between her and Sam. "You said that the Asinaedo killed her victims after marking them and then ate them. That's not your typical ritual sacrifice. So either you don't know the difference between a demonic killing versus a demonic sacrifice, or you're not telling us something."
Dean walked over and stood beside his brother, leaving Shane feeling cornered and she decided the best course of action would be honesty. "Okay, fine." Shane said raising her hands and backing away from the ambush. "The box doesn't have a keyhole. Once it's closed, it's closed for good. Except of course if the Asinaedo can find a victim she can bleed which will open the box and release her spirit…for good."
"So, why me?" Dean asked. "Is it my ruggedly handsome good looks? I mean, it would explain the kiss."
Sam was in no mood for Dean's I-laugh-in-the-face-of-danger act. "Why didn't she use on of her other victims?" Sam asked ignoring Dean's remark.
Shane paused for a second. She knew that she had accidentally walked the brothers into this situation. Dean was right. If it wasn't for her eagerness to destroy the Asinaedo and move on she would have been better prepared. Suddenly, a stream of suppressed memories came rushing back. She turned her back on the brothers attempting to bite back the memories without breaking down in front of them. She had to play the strong hunter, otherwise her mask would be ripped away and there'd be no controlling the emotions that would be unleashed. She took a deep breath and continued to explain. "She needed someone to bleed directly on the box, which Dean did by bashing his head on the rock formation."
"The bitch pushed me." Dean shot back.
"Blood in, blood out." Shane continued, slowly turning back around and looking at Dean, "Dean put the blood in and now the Asinaedo is going to do whatever she can to get the rest of the blood out."
"Great," Dean shook his head, "So, I'm a marked man."
"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" Shane said with exasperation.
"Anything else you'd like to tell us?" Sam asked, receiving a blank stare from Shane, "I mean you seem to know so much about this demon yet somehow you manage to leave out the information we need until we drag it out of you."
"I was keeping you on a need to know basis." Shane replied.
"We need to know this, Shane!" Sam said placing his hands on Shane's shoulders, holding her steady, "Dean's life is in danger! Now, is there anything else we need to know!" He gave Shane a little shake which prompted Shane to pull back and Dean to grab his brother's arm.
"Sam," Dean replied sternly causing Sam to release his grip on Shane. Shane continued to stare up at Sam, her eyes narrowing slightly.
"You know everything that I know." She replied through clenched teeth. She then pushed past Sam and left the motel room, slamming the door behind her.
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"Nice car." Sam said as he slid into the front seat of Shane's Cadillac Escalade. Shane was seated in the drivers' seat, her head leaning against the headrest with her eyes closed.
"Thanks," she replied without opening her eyes, "But, it's not mine."
"Whose is it?"
Shane opened her eyes slowly, reached across Sam and into the glove compartment, removing the owner's card. "Tyrone Campbell's." She said studying the name carefully. She turned her head to look at Sam, "He lost it in a poker game two days ago." She grinned.
Sam laughed. He was beginning to become more and more convinced that she was a Winchester as the day wore on. "Listen," Sam wasn't sure how to start the conversation, "About what happened inside…"
"No worries." Shane cut him off, "You're worried about your brother. We all act kinda crazy when it comes to our family's safety." Shane casually glanced out the window but Sam noticed how the words 'family' and 'safety' had caught slightly in her throat. He watched her for a minute, debating whether or not he should pry. Going against his better judgment he decided to pry.
"Where is your family? I mean your immediate family." He asked finally.
Shane sighed. Her desire to have this conversation was up there with her desire to be flayed alive. "Gone." She said refusing to look at Sam.
"How?" Sam asked.
Shane turned to him, smiling slightly, "Anyone ever told you that curiosity killed the cat?"
"If you don't wanna talk about it-"
Shane raised her hand and cut him off, "No, it's fine." She had never been able to be honest about her past. She had become so familiar with the web of lies that she spewed off to friends, boyfriends and the occasional stranger that sometimes when she was alone, she allowed herself to believe that the lies were true. That her mother had died of a heart attack and her father had been killed by a burglar. Maybe venting the truth to someone who would understand and not go screaming into the distance would be good for her. That being said, it was still going to be hard.
"My mom died when I was 6 months old." She looked Sam directly in his eyes and the understanding was mutual. The demon had taken her mother too. "My dad wasn't as up front as yours though. Heart attack he told me. I was 15 when I found a newspaper article that said my mother had died in a house fire. I confronted my dad and he told me that he wasn't sure what had really happened that night. He had lied to me because he didn't want me to end up like his crazy brother and nephews. Apparently, fours years before my mother died, my Aunt had died the same way and my Uncle and his sons believed that a 'demon' had killed her. That's the first time I heard about the three of you."
Shane stopped. The façade she had been building up over the years was slowly being deconstructed and she felt more exposed then she had ever felt before. She took a deep breath and continued. "I did some research and found out that the things that go bump in the night aren't just stories to scare kids. That's basically when I started hunting. I pulled a Buffy. High school student by day, demon slayer by night. My dad never asked about the unexplained cuts and bruises and bloody clothes. In reality, I don't think he wanted to know. Two years later though, when I was 17, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I left a job unfinished and let a werewolf catch my scent. It followed me home and before I had a chance to kill it, it killed my father and left me with this," she lifted her shirt up slightly revealing three parallel lines scarred into her side directly above her hip. "At his funeral, I finally met my Uncle John and he told me that if I never needed anything to contact him. Day after that, I dropped out of school and this has been my career ever since."
Shane stopped talking and Sam sat in silence next to her. It was strange to hear what his life could have been like had his father not taken the path he had. Had he not had Dean. He wanted to say he was sorry that she had to go through all that alone. He wanted to hug her and tell that he understood her pain. But instead the only thing he could get out was, "Damn."
Silence filled the car again as Shane nodded absently at having just told her life story to a man who was practically a stranger. He's your cousin, she reminded herself. He's family.
But, before either of them had the opportunity to break the awkward silence a scream rang out from the motel room. A sound that Sam was all too familiar with.
"Dean!"