Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: see Chapter 1
LIVING LA VIDA LOCA
Chapter 6
"This is the point where we need to move on," Sam gave Peter and Julie Hanson his best smile – his No.1 sweet baby brother smile that he used to use (and still did) to make Dean cave to his little brother's wishes – in order alleviate any hint that the Winchesters were running out on them, "the last thing you need is our presence muddying the waters with the sheriff."
John and Dean were nodding agreement as they took the three men's gear and prepared to depart back to town in Dean's car. Just before Bernice Hoskins at arrived at seven o'clock, Julie Hanson had phoned the employment agency and cancelled Clarice Wigmore for the day using the excuse of unexpected visiting relatives. Julie and Peter would unpack their belongings once more to stay for the rest of the year, but first they were gathering the children and heading for Wakefield sheriff's office with a vengeance. It didn't take a genius IQ to realise that little Thomas Hanson was highly unlikely to be the woman's first victim. While Julie had been on the phone to the agency, John Winchester had discreetly drawn Peter out of earshot and in a quiet aside suggested that if he had the sheriff check, it would very probably be found that Ms Wigmore strongly preferred to work only with pre-vocal children. Coupled with the Hansons' video tape, her M.O. designed to target victims unable to speak out against her could be turned back upon her.
Sam wouldn't have liked to have been Clarice Wigmore in Julie Hanson's vicinity, but over and above complications with the local reps of the law, he certainly did not want Dean to manage to get within striking distance of the evil woman. When Sam was eight he had met a man, cheerful and jolly and friendly. By that time he was so accustomed to real monsters, things with fangs and claws and insane bloodlust which viewed little boys as a tasty mid-morning snack, that he had not been able to see through the far more subtle veneer of the monster disguised as a man – he was too used to Evil looking like it.
He hadn't really liked the 'touching game' his new friend had started to play and had told Dean. Sam had never before seen the look that came over his thirteen-year-old brother's face, but it frightened him. John Winchester had been gone somewhere on another hunting trip as per usual, and Dean had simply, quietly, told Sam he would take care of everything. Sam didn't see his friend again after that and a week later the man had been in the local newspaper as a missing person, something that for some reason had terrified Sam at the time though he couldn't have consciously said why. The incident had quickly been forgotten and most of the time Sam didn't think about it…but when Mary Worthington had been trying to kill them, Sam had had a pretty good idea why Dean's eyes also bled…a secret where someone died. It had been part of the reason why he had confessed that Mary would come after him – before Dean could. It was one thing to know what your brother had done, another thing entirely to be suddenly faced with the prospect of him making it far too real by saying it aloud.
Dean drove them back to town. By unspoken consent Sam drove Dean's Impala around the back of the diner to transfer things to John's car that he had parked there to hide it from the eyes and curiosity of the town's law enforcement representatives, while Dean accompanied their father to the little bed-and-breakfast motel to collect his remaining possessions and pay the bill. John had been known to skip out on motels in the small hours but not this time; he was known to be a friend of the Hansons and it would have been socially embarrassing for them – and by extension the wealthy, powerful Arthur Wainwright III – to have him split town without paying his motel bill.
Dean waited silently while John made trite small talk with the hotelier and as usual paid cash. None of the Winchesters had had a bank account or credit card in their real names for years, and especially not since that ludicrous website article on them by that Fox Mulder wannabe; such things were simply too easy to trace by interested parties such as Federal agencies and bureaucrats – and things that weren't totally or even slightly human.
Dean felt his tension rise as proceedings wound down. He could see dad gearing up to do his patented, 'Well it's been fun but I gotta…' gig from here. Sam wouldn't take it and they would fight, and Dean, as always, would the juicy bone caught in the middle of this pair of snarling dogs, the one being emotionally savaged and forced to make impossible choices. He used to wonder how mom would have handled the war until he realised that if mom were alive, there wouldn't have been any war. Mary Winchester wouldn't have tolerated this crap from either husband or son; she'd have set them down hard immediately.
His cell phone vibrating in his jacket pocket made him jump slightly. Plucking it out, Dean frowned in puzzlement at the direct call symbol on the screen. All calls to his cell were voicemails forwarded from John Winchester's cell, and the only two people in the world who could or would simply call him were right here.
Flicking it open he raised it to his ear, "Yeah?"
"Dean, get dad and come round to the car."
"What?"
"It's important."
The phone clicked off. Dean looked at it for a moment; Sam's tone had been sharp to the point of rudeness.
There certainly hadn't been time for Sam to get snockered on the diner's beer or high on some miraculously scored local illegal herbage, besides which, Sam would never have done either. Even when Sam was alone at college for two years, Dean had never been worried about his brother ending up on the road to committing slow suicide by Scotch or acquiring a desperate need for Columbian nose candy. The major 'in' for demonic possession and similarly related nastiness was a person not fully in control of their own mind – which was why he himself avoided travelling on airplanes unless absolutely forced and preferably sedated, because when it came to 'leaving your mind wide open to demonic squatters' idiocy, top of the Big Three was an extreme emotional state.
And the other two were being drunk or high. It was why certain meditation techniques were so dangerous, and why certain religions that did allow meditation – such as Judaism and Christianity in the Bible – explicitly forbade doing so in conjunction with the use of alcohol and/or narcotic herbs. Unless you were very careful you were spiritually putting up a FOR RENT sign outside your body and could find your Id being carjacked and dumped naked at the side of the road while a laughing demon roared off in your prize Mustang for a murder and mayhem road trip that you would take the rap for.
"Dad, Sam wants us at the car," he smoothly stepped forward.
John shot him a look of gratitude at being rescued from the oblivious hotelier, who was reciting a tee-by-tee account of his last golfing vacation and hadn't even left the first hole yet. Hastily making their excuses, the two men went over to the diner and nonchalantly strolled around to the back.
Where Sam was standing very still with a large gun pressed hard against his temple.
Dean stopped dead, his agile mind momentarily stuttering at the sight. He could count on a couple of fingers the number of times that whatever had been trying to whack them turned out to be human and so, despite the mini-arsenal always within reach, had only a little practical experience of killing humans. The guy who currently had one arm around Sam's throat forcing his head back looked completely human…and kinda scrawny.
…and young if his adolescent acne was anything to go by.
The teenager's eyes – if he was nineteen, he was pushing it – almost glowed back with the intensity of his rage. Sam was standing very still with his hands down and slightly away from his body, both to appear non-threatening and to maintain his centre of gravity as the youth's left arm choke-hold around his throat forced his chin up and his head back slightly. Baring his teeth in a parody of a smile, the boy looked at John Winchester and said, "Hi dad."
Continued in Chapter 7…
© 2006 CD Stewart