The Scent of You Chapter 5, a supernatural fanfic

Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: See Chapter 1.

THE SCENT OF YOU

Chapter 5

Finally Dean went back up to their room and entered, whistling to let Sam know it was him. The bathroom door opened in a billow of white steam and Sam came out, barefoot and fastening his jeans with a towel wrapped turban-like around his head. His face and torso were rose-pink and his fingertips were shrivelled from the amount of time he must have been soaking and…

Dean sniffed ostentatiously and recoiled, "Dude, you smell like a N'Orleans bordello; how many different bath salts did you use for crying out loud? We've got a full week."

"Yeah…" Sam beamed anew at the thought of that bathroom every day.

Passing him to enter the bathroom as his bladder hinted that sorry, but it might have to get rid of some of the caffeine bounty, Dean used one of the towels to wipe the steam from the sink mirror and turned on the sink faucet, which ran for a good minute longer than was good for his bladder and without heating up beyond tepid. Wonderful. But he couldn't really stay mad as he heard Sammy humming wordlessly to himself in the bedroom.

Sticking his head round the door, Dean found that Sam had already dressed in his customary layers – T-shirt, unbuttoned over-shirt and a jacket – and was sitting on the bed putting on his socks. "I'm going to have a cold wet shave," Dean mock-groused, "…and breakfast's over, sorry."

Sam shrugged; he'd never had Dean's appetite – or appetites – and wasn't interested. Even Jess used to fuss over how little someone of his height ate, although she couldn't complain about content, since unlike Dean he understood the concept of salad, low-fat and other dietary goodness. Contrary to what Dean would like to believe, a pot of tar masquerading as coffee and a packet of Oreos did not constitute a nutritious way to start the day.

Fifteen minutes later Dean exited the bathroom and got his usual leather coat from his bed. Sam had already taken the precaution of placing all their hunting accoutrements in one holdall that they took down to the Impala with them for the sake of the cleaning maid's nerves. While Dean had been doing his ablutions, Sam had been doing some more research into the eleven victims and true to Dean's supposition, the tenth had killed himself by walking up to the Lake Meredith Hotel's roof garden and taking a swan dive over the safety balustrade to splatter on the stonework directly in front of the hotel's main entrance to the disconcertion of all present. However the roof garden was only open from 4:00pm daily and so they decided that the risk of being caught picking the door lock to the roof stairway barely four hours after checking in wasn't worth it.

By far the majority of the victims had died within a stone's throw of UNT Amarillo campus. Luckily instead of having to loop back around to the Interstate, Dean could head straight down Highway 136 that went into Amarillo, though it did pass Amarillo International Airport but he could view planes from a distance with equanimity. Inside, Dean admitted that part of him was worried about Sam's reaction. College campuses were a painful reminder to Sam of his loss, but beyond that, Dean saw the wistful expression that often flickered across Sam's face and even though he knew it was irrational, there was a part of him that was convinced if they kept going to too many colleges, one day Sam would decide to stay.

Victim number one had been the 43-year-old lab tech who had overdosed on a chemical concoction she had somehow brewed up in one of the labs and which had been lethal within thirty seconds. The mystery was not her death but how she'd managed it. She'd arrived by car at 7:30am and the campus CCTV cameras showed her walking to the lab and starting to brew the potion – all with characteristically stiff movements, slightly open mouth and vacant stare that proclaimed she was still supposedly 'catatonic'; it was like a lettuce being able to pull off a plan for world domination.

Walking into the main building, Sam and Dean strode purposefully along like they knew where they were going, only stopping to orient themselves when they were in corridors with no other people, and by that method found the science department laboratories, where they entered without challenge.

Fortunately both of them were still of an age where they could pass for college seniors – maybe even juniors – though Sam wondered to himself as they went in what they would have to do once they got too old for that, since he knew that schools and colleges would always provide a lot of business for Hunters like John Winchester and his sons. Young people were like a magnet to evil entities – they radiated vitality and ambition but their confidence was too often not tempered by common sense and they were regrettably imbued with an unwise sense of personal immortality. Added to that they tended to be vulnerable to the overuse of alcohol and drugs and prey to volatile extremes of emotion, all of which reduced their self-control over their own minds and left them vulnerable to being 'psychically carjacked' as it were. The final icing on the cake as far as Evil was concerned was their keen curiosity coupled with a foolish 'modern relativism' scepticism-atheism of anything that couldn't be empirically measured and which left them woefully ill equipped to deal when all that 'paranormal table-knocking silliness' turned out not only to be real but to have fangs, claws and serious homicidal intent.

A definite hum-squawk turned Sam's attention back to where Dean was using his homemade EMF detector – or at least had been about to use it. The brothers exchanged glances and mutually raised eyebrows; they hadn't even done a circuit of the room yet. The EMF detector whined and the needle flicked at the top end of the Here Be Dragons scale. Serious mystical mojo had gone down in this room in the recent past, removing any lingering doubt over whether the catatonia had been medically rather than mystically induced.

They did a circuit of the room anyway just to make sure even though the EMF detector had all the little bulbs lit a steady glowing red and it was making frantic whiny yim-yim-yim sounds as if trying to convey how really, really serious it was that there was funky supernatural badness all around. There was the clack of approaching heels and an Asian-American woman in white lab coat entered the lab as Dean smoothly pocketed the EMF detector, pausing in surprise at the sight of the pair.

"Can I help you?"

"Sorry, wrong place," Dean flashed the woman his 'I'm gorgeous-and-I-know-it' smile, "we're looking for…Home Ec."

The two brothers hastily left, leaving her looking after them, stopping when they turned the corner.

"Home Ec?" Sam snorted derisively.

Dean shrugged but then the EMF detector started up again. "Where are we?"

Ensuring nobody was around to see him checking the map of the campus's layout that, as genuine students they would have known, Sam found it, "Arboretum and Horticulture."

There was virtually nobody about, and nothing menacing other than a verdant lawn and bright flowers and in the distance a short, fat dude in gardening overalls was weeding some flowerbeds. Soporific serenity abounded.

"Well according to this, the azaleas are evil incarnate." Dean held up the EMF detector to show the readings. "Let's see if we can find any more hotspots on campus."

With Dean popping the EMF detector into his coat pocket the two men circumspectly strolled around the campus and though there were areas of absolutely nothing, such as the refectory and sports department, almost every other area had at least one hotspot that sent the EMF detector into frantic yim-yim-land.

Finally they used the lunch break end bell to discreetly slip back outside the main entrance. Dean shook his head as he looked at the now quiescent EMF detector, "Well, I'd say that definitively answers whether this is our kinda gig. If there were really such a thing, UNT Amarillo would be built on top of a Hellmouth."

"You watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer…" Sam paused, "…what am I saying? Sarah Michelle Gellar, of course you watched Buffy."

"Actually it was the little redhead," Dean confessed, "she could've put a spell on me anytime…and anyway, that show actually got a hell of a lot – no pun intended - of the technical stuff right, so that makes it educational TV…Dad's buddy Jefferson reckoned they must have had an inside guy."

Rolling his eyes at this smug justification, Sam said, "Well we know inside the campus is a hellish hotspot, but how far do around the grounds does it extend do you think?"

"One way to find out, and we know where to start," Dean patted his pocket and they set off.

Victim number eleven had been spotted walking calmly in the campus grounds, with passers by unaware his frantic family had just discovered him missing at home, and had simply stopped in the middle of the path outside the campus main library. It had a decorative fountain centrepiece out front and two little side gardens of lawn and roses enclosed by miniature privet hedges. Into one of those little lawns the victim had stepped, pulled a snub-nose Derringer from his pocket that he put to his temple and fired in the space of about two seconds before anyone realised what was happening.

Sam and Dean likewise stepped over the miniature little hedge which was neatly trimmed at ankle height. Dean's EMF detector immediately let out a confirmatory squawk, which made the pretty passing co-ed turn and look at them. Unfortunately so did the man mountain she was with, giving them a fuliginous glare. Smiling nervously until the couple went past, Dean slid his hand into his pocket and prudently turned the EMF detector off, as the next Neanderthal might attempt more forceful remonstrance.

The last thing they could afford was to get into a brawl on campus, or arouse suspicion as to how a couple of relatively scrawny guys were able to drop-kick an Incredible Hulk into the middle of next week. When it came to the Winchester family rules, 'Be Inconspicuous' followed right on the heels of the Prime Directive of 'We Do What We Do And Shut Up About It'. Unfortunately that sometimes meant pretending you were a seven-stone weakling and letting the behemoth kick sand in your face.

"Dean…" Sam whispered softly, having crouched down and let his fingers drift over the grass and soil.

Dean also crouched next to his brother and saw what Sam meant. There were ultra fine deposits, as fine as talcum powder, of black and yellow specks on the lawn, soil and flowerbeds. Both brothers knew what that fine powdery residue indicated; the black and yellow were soot and sulphur, by-products of a demonic entity.

"Eleven tremendously different people, all with no connection other than this college," Sam reiterated as they straightened upright again. "What do you think?"

"Right now, nothing," Dean confessed. "I'm baffled."

"Welcome to the club, son." commented a dry voice from behind them.

Continued in Chapter 6…