Hey SPN Fam! What's good? Enjoy this case story, which, for me, kills two birds with one stone. Number one- it's going to introduce characters that will become rather important later on, and number two- it's my chance to rectify a SPN plotline that a lot of people just plain didn't like (with completely different characters- you'll see what I mean).
Thank you to all of you who continue to read and review and give suggestions- I appreciate every single one of you. Your persistence keeps me motivated to keep going, and I can't tell you how invaluable that is. Thanks to jenmm31 for beta reading!
In this story, Natalie is 17. Part 1 of a 3 part story.
"Oh my god, Chelsea, just SHUT THE FUCK UP! GO TO HELL, YOU WHORE!"
Brooklyn threw her phone across the room, screaming with rage. Chelsea was supposed to be her best friend! She was supposed to do EVERYTHING for her! And she had the audacity to say that she couldn't pick up a twelve pack for Brooklyn because she was attending her grandfather's funeral?! What kind of a friend was that?!
The phone ricocheted off the wall thanks to the protective case, but that only seemed to enrage the teen further. The phone. It was the phone's fault. If the call had dropped, she wouldn't be so angry at Chelsea, now would she? She stalked over to it, grabbing a large and very heavy trophy off her bookshelf on the way, and began slamming the trophy into the screen. Every time she saw another crack in the screen, it fueled the fire to keep going, to keep destroying the current focus of her anger.
"Brookie, what in the world is-"
Brooklyn hadn't heard the door to her bedroom open. She whipped around at the sound of her mother's frightened voice.
"WHEN THE FUCK DID I SAY YOU COULD COME IN, BITCH?!"
"Brooklyn!" her mother yelled, going pale. "You don't speak to me that-"
"I'LL FUCKING TALK TO YOU HOWEVER I WANT TO!" Brooklyn screamed back at her. She clawed furiously at the pervading bump on her neck. It seemed to be getting hotter and itchier, which did nothing but make her angrier. SCREW these zits that kept popping up. When did the fuck did zits ever itch?!
"Brookie, what is going on with you, honey? This is not like you! Why were you yelling at Chelsea? What is going on?" the frightened mother asked, wildly trying to understand the rage and anger spewing from her daughter. Brooklyn had always been the sweetest thing- straight A's, good group of friends, and a track and field star at her school. What in the world was causing her to act out like this?
Brooklyn licked her dry lips, her breath coming out in heaving gasps. She didn't understand the fury she felt at Chelsea, at her mother, at her now deceased phone. All she knew was that the only way to get rid of it was to tear things apart. To make them hurt. To end them. As she took in her mother's shaking hands, the terrified look on her face, and the tremor in her voice, an evil smile crept across the teen's face as the bump on her neck burned to the point of madness.
Goody goody, she thought. Something else to destroy. With inhuman speed, Brooklyn hurled herself across the room, the heavy metal trophy in her hand.
The blood splashed across the bedroom windows of the once happy house.
*SPN SPN SPN*
Natalie waited out by the Impala, tapping her foot impatiently. She'd gotten a call from Maya earlier and couldn't believe what she'd heard. The story couldn't be true. Brooklyn Lewis? Gone psycho? When Natalie told Sam and Dean, they suited up immediately and headed into town. However, since this was Lebanon, home of the bunker, everyone already knew her as Dean's homeschooled seventeen-year-old daughter. No way was she passing as an FBI wunderkind out here. But she insisted on at least going to town with them to see what was happening- from a distance.
Natalie had only ever met Brooklyn twice and hung out with her once, and none of that time ever suggested the girl was a homicidal maniac. Apparently, she'd gone apeshit last night, killing her own mother and destroying her home before committing suicide by hurling herself through a sliding glass door and bleeding out. From what Maya had babbled to Natalie, Brooklyn was the super-popular-everybody-wants-to-kiss-her-or-be-her type, but surprisingly not stuck up. Even knowing that Brooklyn had gone postal, Maya still talked about her almost reverently during the phone call, like she was still a little jealous of the now-dead girl. Natalie shook her head in disbelief. If this was the mindset of the typical teenager attending public school, she was going to have to buy Sam a freaking Rolls Royce as a thank you for teaching her privately.
What was taking them long? Natalie was dying to get inside and see the crime scene for herself. Not that she was particularly longing for the gore of the thing, but this had to be something supernatural right in her hometown. Brooklyn wasn't into the drug scene, and there was no way she was drunk considering the level of deliberate and pre-meditated destruction the cops were reporting. Unless the girl had serious undiagnosed mental issues, which also didn't seem likely, there had to be some sort of monster involved in this madness.
Arbitrarily Natalie began a Google search for any similar murders in the area. If there had been something else this close to the bunker, and she'd missed it up until now, she was going to be so pissed. A couple petty theft charges came up in her search, but no death or destruction. Natalie began widening the search, wishing she had her laptop here, but before she could come across anything constructive, Sam and Dean came out of the house.
"Hey! What'd you find?" she called out, stuffing her phone into her pocket. Dean pursed his lips together in displeasure, and motioned for her to keep her voice down. Flushing red at her error, she turned and walked back to her door, getting in to the car as fast as she could, bouncing impatiently as she waited for them to join her. She could hear Sam chuckling at her, but chose to ignore it.
The second the boys slid in to the front seats, Natalie tried again. "So, c'mon, what was it like in there?" she asked eagerly, leaning forward.
Instead of answering, Dean turned around, put his arm up on the seat, and gave her The Eye. "Real subtle back there, kid," he said in his gruff tone. "You forget how this all works? I told you if you were coming with us, you needed to keep a low profile."
Natalie rolled her eyes but looked contrite. "I'm sorry, I got caught up. This is just so freaking weird, you know? I mean, right in our hometown, and someone I know gets attacked practically under our noses. I'm pissed and wanna figure it out."
"Yeah, yeah," Dean grumbled, turning around and starting Baby up. "I ain't too thrilled about it myself."
"So did you find anything that may help us figure out what it was? Or is? Was she possessed? What kind of monster could have done this?"
"Hold on there, Bug, we don't know any of that yet," Sam interjected, looking over his shoulder at her. "We barely know anything more than you do at this point."
Natalie wanted to retort that if they'd let her go in with them, they wouldn't have to waste their time filling her in, but that would only earn her a lecture from the both of them, so she kept quiet and waited for Sam to continue. "It looks like Brooklyn went on a tear around the house, presumably after she killed her mother."
"How did she kill her mother?"
"Police say that the skull was bashed in with one of her track and field trophies."
"Holy shit."
Sam pursed his lips at his niece's choice of words, but knew it was pointless to chase that dog, so he went on. "From the looks of it, she killed her mother in the bedroom-"
"From the looks of it?" Natalie interrupted in a rush. "Have they moved the bodies already?" Both Sam and Dean shot her a look. "What?" she asked innocently.
"You wanna apologize for interrupting your uncle like that?" Dean said hotly, still a little peeved at her for yelling across the street like she had. "What's wrong with you?"
"Oh," Natalie said, her face flushing again. "Sorry, Uncle Sam. I didn't mean to."
"Kid, I don't care that you're all wound up over this, that don't give you the right to be rude."
"I'm really sorry!"
"Yeah, well, you just watch it. Got it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Now to answer your question, yes, they'd already moved the bodies by the time we got there."
"Bug, you and I will go to the morgue later on tonight, see if we can't take a look at her and find whatever it was that made Brooklyn go crazy."
"Okay, cool."
Sam and Dean turned back around, and Natalie slumped back against her own seat. As Dean pulled away from the curb, Natalie couldn't help but lean forward.
"I really am sorry, Uncle Sam," she said in a low tone. She hated any tension between them, even if it was only in her head.
"It's okay, Bug." She could hear the smile in his voice and knew she was forgiven.
*SPN SPN SPN*
Around eleven that night, Sam and Natalie broke into the morgue. Sam and Dean could have gone during the day with their FBI aliases, but since Natalie had actually met the girl, she might be able to recognize something physical about her that the boys wouldn't have. It was no problem to get in and circumvent the older-than-dirt security system. Natalie shook her head, chuckling.
"I mean, I guess no one is really going to come in and steal dead bodies, but still, you'd think that a government run building would have a decent alarm system," she commented in a low voice to Sam.
He grinned at her. "Maybe it's just too easy for YOU," he teased. "Little Miss I've-been-hacking-everything-since-I-was-six."
She grinned that smug, cocky grin that she got from her father. Damn Dean for teaching her that, Sam thought amusingly. "Hey, if someone wants to try me and provide something I CAN'T hack into, bring it on. I could use a challenge," she said airily.
"Wow. Arrogant AND self-assured. I can see why Dean never needed a second paternity test."
Natalie playfully punched his arm as they walked towards the exam room. "Yeah, well you should be grateful that I can bypass anything. But you know something weird that I was thinking about?"
"Something weird? Says the girl walking down a morgue hallway at nearly midnight," teased Sam. "No, Natalie, what's weird?" he said in jumped up, goofy voice. She giggled again, shoving him playfully before replying.
"We've never encountered any dogs in any of the houses we've broken in to."
That made Sam stop and think for a moment. "Huh. I guess you're right. Never really thought about it before, but that is a little weird."
"Right? Never had to deal with them attacking or barking or anything. I mean people have dogs. We should have encountered way more by this point."
"I guess we just got lucky?"
"I guess."
After all their meta thinking, about ten minutes later they had located Brooklyn, suited up in protective medical gear, and began exploring the body. Sam pushed the fact that the girl on the slab was the same age as Natalie as far from his mind as he could, and tried to focus on the teachable moments.
Natalie was carefully examining the head and neck, looking for any bite marks or signs of possession. "No trace of sulfur anywhere," Natalie mused, chewing on her lip in thought. She closely examine the eye sockets, noting that the teen's skin was nearly flawless, which made her jealous for a split second before reason kicked in and reminded her that she was alive and Brooklyn was not. Gritting her teeth, she gently turned Brooklyn's head. She furrowed her brow.
"Uncle Sam, look," she mumbled, squinting her eyes. Sam leaned down to look. "That's strange, right?"
"Just looks like a burst zit, Bug."
"Yeah, but look at the rest of her skin. It's perfect."
"Pimples are pretty typical for her age range."
"You don't have to tell me," Natalie said sarcastically, shooting a side eye at him. He smothered a smile. "You think this burst on its own? Or do you think it was something else?"
"Grab a swab and a flashlight and let's see," Sam said. He didn't really think it was anything, but neither did he want to discourage Natalie or leave any potential stone unturned. Taking the proffered swab, he nodded at Natalie. She took his cue, raising the flashlight to the small boil-like wound. He began probing the small lump carefully.
"I don't know that this is- WHOA," he said suddenly, the large Q-tip suddenly sinking deep into the tiny hole. "Holy crap, this wound is deep," he muttered.
"Geez, you're not kidding," Natalie breathed, watching the six-inch swab almost disappear as Sam gently pushed. "What the hell caused that? That is no zit."
Sam carefully pulled the swab back out. It was dripping with a milky, orange goo. "That one's new," Sam muttered softly. "Ringing any bells?"
Natalie shook her head in wonder as she stared at the foreign substance. "Not even a little. I don't remember anything being orange before, or anything in the lore that would suggest anything like it. Do you think it could be a seriously diluted blood mixture or something?"
"Maybe," Sam said, flicking a small amount of the substance onto the table. It hit the slab with the consistency of melted ice cream and puddled. "Well, at least we know it won't burn holes through our hands," he said, bobbing his eyebrows ironically at the small win.
"Good to know," Natalie said nonchalantly, trying to subtly wipe her hand on the examiner's coat she was wearing. Sam gave her a bitch face.
"Did you touch it?" he asked sternly. She looked at him as if she couldn't believe he'd said that.
"What? Me? No," she replied in a high pitched voice. Sam raised his eyebrow in what she knew was his infamous 'you're lying' look. She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Okay, I didn't DELIBERATELY touch it, just accidentally side swiped it before I wiped it off," she mumbled.
"Did you play with it before wiping it off?" Sam asked. Natalie's suddenly darting-around-the-room eyes gave him all the answer he needed. "You are so your father's daughter," he sighed wearily. "Grab me an evidence bag, will you?"
Natalie rushed to obey, holding it open while Sam carefully dropped in the swab. "Do you want to take it home to study it?" she asked, hoping to get off the subject of her playing with the unknown substance before she got another lecture.
"Yeah, I don't think we're going to crack what that crap is here," Sam said. "Let's take it back to the bunker with us when we leave. Hand me a scalpel. I need to see how deep this thing really goes. " They continued their careful, quiet examination as the clock ticked on.
*SPN SPN SPN*
Around one o'clock in the morning, Natalie and Sam pulled into the bunker's cavernous garage. She snickered to herself as she saw the hood of the '65 Mustang, left by the previous Men of Letters, popped open but Dean nowhere in sight. "I told him he wouldn't be able to stay awake long enough for us to get back," she said in a smug tone as Sam parked. "Cause he's old." She gave Sam a toothy, childish grin.
Sam chuckled a bit, but seemed a little confused by Dean's absence. "I guess you were right," he said, unbuckling and looking around. He exited the car, his brow furrowed as he looked for his brother. "Man, he must have been hitting the beer hard for him to not wait to see if Baby made it back in one piece."
"I told you he loves the car more than he loves me."
"Shut up and go put that swab in the alchemy lab before you go to bed. And don't touch it again."
"Bold of you to assume that I'm weak like my father and don't intend to pull an all nighter."
"Bold of YOU to assume I'll let you touch anything tomorrow if you don't get a good night's sleep tonight."
"You don't fight fair, Uncle Sam."
"Never said I did, Bug."
Just then, Natalie's phone buzzed in her pocket. Who the hell was calling her at 1 am? "Oh crap, Uncle Sam, it's Maya," she said as the name popped up on her screen. This was the friend who had alerted her to the murders in the first place. "Ugh, now?" she complained.
Sam looked at her quizzically. Natalie didn't usually get upset at late night phone calls. "You gonna answer it?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes and quickly slid her finger across the screen. "Hello?"
"Na…I….hear the…mo…"
"Wait, Maya, hang on, I'm getting bad reception. Gimme two seconds," she said irritably. She put the phone to her chest and began fishing in her pocket. Holding out the bagged swab to Sam, she quickly said, "I'm gonna go outside real quick. Maya may have heard something from someone at her school and this garage gets crappy reception."
Sam took the bag from her. "Be careful out there," he called kindly as she ran towards the exterior entrance. She stopped, turned, and looked at his as if he was dumb.
"I will- duh," she said. She suddenly blinked as if she'd taken herself by surprise, then stuck her tongue out at him playfully. He chuckled and shooed her away, heading inside. Natalie hotfooted it towards the woods. "Hey Maya, you still there?" she asked as she hit the tree line. There was a slight chill in the air. She pulled her coat in a little tighter.
"Yeah, still here. Did your dad and uncle find anything out about, like, why Brooklyn's dead?"
Natalie rolled her eyes and smiled. "Maya, are you seriously calling me at 1 am to ask that? Isn't your mom going to freak if she hears you on the phone?"
"Oh please. She takes, like, a cocktail of sleeping pills around 11. As long as I don't make the dog, like, bark or whatever, she'll be out. For some reason, like, the dog is what wakes her up. So weird."
Natalie wrinkled her nose, thinking back to the conversation she and Sam had just had back at the morgue regarding dogs. Life was indeed weird sometimes. "Well, sorry to bust your bubble. They won't tell me anything. Classified and all that, you know," she said smoothly with just a touch of irritation to sell the lie. Sam and Dean had drilled it into her that she couldn't let on anything more than she knew because it would blow her cover. As if she didn't know that. Geez, sometimes they could be so overprotective. "Did you hear anything at school?"
"Just that everyone's, like, freaking out. I mean it's just so bizarre, right?" Maya began word vomiting again about how strange everything was. Natalie closed her eyes patiently at her friend's diatribe, knowing that she just needed to get everything out. When Maya took a breath, Natalie took her shot.
"Hey Maya, I've gotta go. If my dad finds out I'm on the phone at 1 am, he's gonna kill me."
"Oh! Oh yeah, okay. I'll call you tomorrow."
"Get some sleep," Natalie said with a chuckle, before hanging up. She shook her head at her very sweet but ditzy friend and turned back towards the garage door.
The smell hit her a split second before she registered the cloth on her face. By then, it was too late. The hand firmly gripped the fabric over her nose and mouth while an incredibly rock hard forearm kept her in a headlock. Natalie tried to violently twist away while holding her breath, tried kicking her legs behind her to make contact with her attacker, but it just became too much. Her lungs betrayed her as she struggled and forced her inhale. She tried to fight the smell that was putting her brain into sleep mode, but it was useless. Her muscles immediately began to sag. The arm gripping her neck quickly shifted to catch her around the middle.
"There you go then, love," a voice whispered in her ear as the world began to recede.
Her last thought before the blackness was "…love?"
*SPN SPN SPN*
Dean shook his fuzzy head. Everything was…blurry. And it was like there was a mosh pit raging in his skull. He couldn't seem to make his muscles work right. Where the hell was he? What the hell happened? He shivered. The last thing he could remember was working on the Mustang in the garage. No…wait…it was coming back to him. Someone had surprised him from behind and…must have chloroformed him while he'd been fiddling around with the engine. He tried to move his hands and got them to twitch just a little- long enough for him to realize his wrists were zip-tied to the arms of a chair. A quick jerk of his ankles confirmed the same down below.
Dean forced his sluggish eyes to open. He found himself staring at a pair of shiny black dress shoes with open lacing. He coerced his limp neck muscles to work as he looked up. Before him stood a very tall gentleman, not quite as tall as Sam but close, in an impeccable dark grey double-breasted suit. It looked as if the suit had been made exclusively for him, because it fit his slim frame to a tee. For being somewhere in his mid-sixties, it was obvious he hadn't succumbed to the middle age paunch; the man clearly took care of himself. His salt-and-pepper hair was parted neatly on the side and slicked down within an inch of its life. Despite the fact that this bastard had obviously chloroformed and imprisoned him, a stab of shame went through the hunter when he realized he himself was in a torn flannel and dirty jeans, and had probably never looked as sharp as this man ever in his entire life. Well, there wasn't exactly a dress code for getting jumped.
"Ah. Jolly good. You're awake," came the deep and dry, yet somehow charming, voice. Dean's eyebrows crinkled as they registered the man's accent. Dean's mouth wasn't working just yet to ask, but the man seemed to know the next question he was going to ask. "Yes, I'm British. Yes, I'm the one who captured you. Yes, I am going to let you live. Any other questions from you before I get on with my own?"
"Just two," Dean said raspily as he regained control. "Who the hell are you and how do you wanna die?" He glared at the man. "And I don't care which one you answer first."
The man hummed in his chest; what Dean took to be his version of a chuckle. "Well. Aren't you the brave one. Trust me, my good man, you'd be very hard pressed to kill me."
"Take these zip ties off and let's see what you've got then, old man."
"Well, that's rather a bold statement." He smiled patronizingly at Dean. "You can't be that much younger than I am."
Screw that, no one called Dean Winchester old and got away with it. Dean bucked again, his strength returning with his anger. It was only then that he noticed Sam in the chair next to him, about five feet away, slumped over and eyes closed.
"What did you do to my brother, you bastard?" Dean snarled. His blood ran cold as he thought about Natalie, about what they might have done to her, but clearly they hadn't gotten her- she wasn't in the room. He wasn't about to give away the fact that there was another Winchester in the bunker if they didn't know already. He sent up a quick plea for her to stay safe.
"The same thing I did to you," the man responded, bringing Dean back to the moment. "We simply used a bit of a knock-out potion on you, old chap. No harm done."
"Yeah. Get drugged in my own home, zip-tied to a chair by some across-the-pond asshat who keeps calling me old, but yeah. No harm done."
"YOUR home. Ironic," the man said, with a hint of a smile that didn't reach his eyes. He suddenly became serious and efficient again. "We needed you subdued in order to question you, and given the amount of weaponry and such located in the bunker that you all might have figured out how to use, we felt it best to do it by stealth." It didn't escape Dean's notice that the man said 'we', meaning that he had an associate. But rather than chase that dog, Dean decided to try a different tactic. He gave a sarcastic laugh.
"Weaponry we 'might have figured out'?" he asked with a sarcastic smirk. "Oh buddy, you have no idea who you're dealing with, do ya?"
"I know that you're squatting in a bunker exclusively reserved for an organization that dates back centuries. I count myself proud to be a member of said establishment. And as such, I have every right to kick out trespassers."
"Yeah, we know what this place is," came Sam's slurred voice. Both the man and Dean turned to look at him. Sam was slowly blinking as control returned to him, but his hazel eyes were burning with anger. "This is the Men of Letters bunker. And you're the one who is trespassing," he said, fury radiating off him.
"Oh, I hardly think so," the man said scathingly. The clicking sound of his shoes on the stone floor as he crossed to Sam was as neat and crisp as he looked. Dean wondered to himself if he'd ever even owned a pair of shoes that could make that sound, let alone be that shiny. "Just because you've found a place to live in that's not your mother's basement doesn't give you the right to claim this one."
Before Dean could snap out a nasty retort, a younger man, not much more than a teenager, came jogging into the room. He was definitely shorter than Old Grey Suit, but not any less flawlessly dressed. The boy's suit was a deep black, so black it almost looked as if it had recently been dipped in the darkest ink. It hugged his shorter but clearly muscular frame perfectly. His tuxedo-style bowtie was neatly knotted and immaculately straight. His shoes and hair, however, were a far cry from the impeccably dressed man at which he now looked. The boy's hair was floppy, a dark dirty blonde color, and it might have been slicked at some point in the evening but that was long done with. One of the shoe's laces were nearly untied, and they had recently been scuffed with dirt on one of the toes. The taller man looked down at the shoe, then back at the boy with a fiercely raised eyebrow. The younger man blushed and quickly rubbed the dirty toe against the back of his calf.
"Taron, that's not-" the older man blurted out, then closed his eyes, exasperated at the lost cause. The teen appeared not to notice. He planted his now-shiny shoe on the ground, examined it, and then looked up at the older man with a charming grin.
"That's alright, then, innit?" he asked cheerfully. The older man sighed and looked back at Dean, ignoring the boy's question. But before he could speak, Dean cleared his throat. The boy turned to look at him.
"So- Taron, was it?" Dean asked, narrowing his eyes at the British teen.
"Nice to meet you, mate," the boy said in that twinkling tone of his, a lopsided grin bursting on his face.
"Fuck off," Dean snarled back. Taron backed up a bit at Dean's harsh epithet, a roguish gleam in his eye.
"Well, that ain't good manners, now is it?" he said, looking up at the older man.
"No, it certainly isn't," the gentleman agreed. "Now, to answer your earlier questions, my name is Reginald Payne, and this, as you already know, is Taron."
"Cheers," the young man said, holding up his hand and waving, grinning to beat the band. Dean watched with slight amusement this time as the older man closed his eyes briefly in frustration again at the boy's lackadaisical attitude before refocusing.
"As to your other question of how I'd like to die, well, I imagine living to a ripe old age and in my sleep. Wouldn't you agree?"
Taron laughed. "Wait a mo," he said in a winning tone, then pointed at Dean. "This bloke asked you how you wanna die?"
"He did indeed," Reginald said, allowing himself a paper thin smirk. Taron chuckled again.
"Bruv, did you back the wrong horse," he said proudly to Dean, folding his arms in front of him to watch the show. Reginald smiled fondly at the boy.
"I assume the girl has been taken care of?" Reginald asked. Dean felt his skin ice over. Shit. They were talking about his baby girl. This little fuckwad found her.
Taron nodded. "Sleeping off her potion as we speak. Didn't want her to get any blood on her in case we needed to rough these two up a bit, so I left her in a room down the hall, zip tied to a chair. I made sure she was gonna be comfortable when she wakes up."
"Very chivalrous of you," the older man complimented.
"I thought so," Taron said, looking very proud of himself.
"Now," Reginald said, turning back to the brothers. "As I said before, you have found yourself in the precarious position of housing in a place you're not wanted." He calmly folded his hands together in front of him, eying both Winchesters. "First thing I'd like to know is how in the world you two…" his lips curled, "…yokels got in." Taron snorted a laugh that was quickly squelched at a side eye from Reginald.
"We are Men of Letters," Sam said roughly, his own ire up just as much as his brother's. "We have every right to be here. We were given the key to the bunker from our grandfather, Henry Winchester. We're legacies."
"Legacies?" Reginald said, his eyebrows hitting his hairline. Clearly, he hadn't expected this answer. "You say that your grandfather was...a Man of Letters?"
"Hang on," Taron interrupted suddenly. "Did you say Winchester?"
"Yeah. He did," Dean snarled at the boy before Reginald could scold him for interrupting. Dean watched with sadistic glee as the boy's face turned liquid paper white.
"As in…Sam and Dean Winchester?" Taron asked, his eyes growing wide with wonder as he pointed to each brother in succession.
"Taron," Reginald said, interrupting. "We don't have time for your silly obsession with American pop culture right now."
"No, no, no, wait…you don't understand," Taron breathed out heavily, his brow starting to bead with sweat. "If they're the Winchesters, then…" He suddenly stopped and shot straight upright. "That means she's….oh shit."
"Language!" Reginald scolded, but once again, Taron didn't take notice. He was too busy tearing off towards the room where he'd left the girl.
Cursing under his breath, he rounded the corner. Fuck. If she was the Winchester girl he'd heard about, leaving her alone and unguarded was a very stupid thing to do. Reginald had very little patience for stupid things.
Taron's eyes took in every square inch of the halls. This place was like a maze, but his training had taught him to navigate labyrinths like this, taught him how to quickly memorize locations and how to get to them. He tore around another corner. The door to the room he had left her in was still ajar. Taking a deep breath, he cautiously walked in.
He was greeted with an empty chair and four cut zip ties.
"How the bloody hell did she do that?" he wondered aloud to himself. Suddenly, a fierce pain exploded in the back of his right knee. He yelled, his buckling knee causing him to fall forward. Sensing her rather than seeing her, he twisted around and bent low, narrowly avoiding the sweeping roundhouse that would have knocked him unconscious. She hadn't expected the kick NOT to land, and in the two seconds it took her to recover her footing, Taron forward rolled out of her strike zone and came up, panting. She turned, furious, and for the first time, his baby blue eyes met her fierce green ones.
They were so stunning to him that he actually froze for a second, ignoring the fact that she was crouched into a fighting stance. "Well, you're a right fit one, ain'tcha?" he asked, a bit breathlessly.
Natalie cocked one eyebrow at his accent, then the penny dropped as the memory of his previous words came to her. "Oh, that's right," she snarled, sounding surprisingly like her father in tone. "You're British. Well, pip pip cheerio, tea and crumpets and all that shit. I'm still gonna wipe the floor with you, guv."
Taron held up his hands, partially to placate her and partially in self defense. "Whoa, hold on there, love," he said, a little chuckle in his voice. "I know who you are and what you can do, alright? No sense in me hurting you to prove your point, now is there?"
Natalie's jaw dropped at the smooth cockiness of the boy. He really thought he would hurt her? "You know who I am, huh?" she said in a sarcastically sweet tone. "Then I feel honored that you flew all the way across the pond for me to kick your ass in person. I'm touched. Now put your money where your mouth is and fight me, motherfucker." She firmed up her stance, furious and focused.
It was Taron's jaw that dropped this time. The part of him that had been taught all his life to be chivalrous to ladies went out the window as his pride roared loudly that he was being challenged. This was interesting. She clearly wanted to fight, and what a great story it would be to bring back to the boys. And Taron couldn't resist a good story.
He grinned cheekily at her as he motioned her forward with his finger. "Then bring it on, love," he challenged, his eyes sparkling dangerously.
